Hear the Children Calling

by Clare McNally

  “There’s our first guest,” Virginia said, tapping Jill’s shoulder. “He looks familiar.”

  A silver-haired man approached, dressed in a dark suit and red tie. He held a notebook in one big hand, and two pens stuck out from his breast pocket.

  “Oh, it’s Patrick Cameron,” Jill said. “He writes a science-and-math column for the Suffolk County Chronicle. He’s given the museum more publicity than any other journalist.” She smiled, holding out a freshly manicured hand to greet him.

  “Jill, don’t you look wonderful,” Patrick said. He helped himself to a glass of champagne from a passing tray. “To continued success,” he said, lifting the stemmed goblet. “I know you’ll attain it, Jill. Ever since you started working over in Centerport five years ago, I knew you’d be doing something of your own someday.”

  “Well, maybe we aren’t as big as the Vanderbilt Planetarium,” Jill said, “but I think we offer an important service to the children of Long Island.”

  A few more people came through the door, then another group, and soon Jill was busy moving from one guest to another. Some clustered in chattering groups; a few wandered through the exhibits, trying them out. After a while, Virginia tapped Jill and whispered that everyone had arrived. Jill lifted a rubber baton and tapped it against a series of chimes, clear tones filling the room. Her guests turned to her.

  “I want to thank you for coming tonight,” Jill said. “I didn’t prepare a speech, because I know these exhibits will speak for themselves. There will be two tours, one to be led by my assistant, Virginia Dreyfus, and one to be led by me.”

  While Virginia led her group into the adjoining hall, Jill remained in the front room.

  “You heard the chimes I played a few moments ago,” she said. “It’s part of our Sound and Hearing Exhibit. You’ll notice this particular room is dedicated to the five . . .”

  She felt a sudden flash of heat across the back of her eyes, and for a moment the sentence was lost. Jill blinked and quickly regained her composure.

  Stage fright, that’s all. Take it slow!

  “. . . dedicated to the five senses,” she went on. She led them to a table laden with variously sized brandy glasses. “The kids get a big kick out of this one.”

  She dipped her hands into a bucket of soapy water, then dried them. Gently, she ran her fingertips over the rims of different glasses, producing a bell-like rendition of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

  Her guests laughed and clapped.

  “When my hands are clean and dry,” Jill explained, “my fingers rub over the glass and shake it ever so slightly. This produces the musical tones you hear, according to how much water is in the glasses or how big the glass is. If my hand was oily, it would only slide over the rim and no sound would come out.”

  Her guests moved about, trying out tuning forks and old gramophones.

  “Let’s move on to the next exhibit,” Jill said. “Here we have Sight, and in this particular instance, color. Color comes from light, and the colors we see are those that bounce from the object to our eyes. A red apple looks red because all colors but red are absorbed. But how we see color also depends on its relation to the colors around it.”

  She scanned her guests, her eyes resting on the name tag worn by a woman in a blue-green suit. Deliah Provost. Jill couldn’t remember her from the guest list, and when she met her dark eyes, that strange burning sensation shot through her skull again.

  “With . . . different accessories,” Jill said, steadying herself, “Miss Provost’s suit might look either green or blue.”

  She led them on.

  “Here are some color panels,” Jill said. “The kids love looking through these, seeing things in different colors. And please try the kaleidoscopes.”

  For the next thirty minutes, Jill showed off her exhibits, growing more confident with each presentation. Worry about stage fright passed quickly, and when the tour was over, she stood back and watched her guests with a satisfied smile.

  Someone touched her arm, the fingers warm against her chilled skin.

  “I’ve come with a message, my dear,” a voice whispered. “Ryan is alive. You must go and find him, for he is in terrible danger! I can’t stay . . .”

  Jill felt herself falling, lights whirling over her head like the vortex of a tornado. Voices, music, and footsteps all blended into one confusing mess. The walls began to move, to close in on her. She grew feverish, sweat forming on the top of her quivering lips. Jill’s chest constricted, her heart pounding as if struggling to make more room for itself.

  It was all over in a matter of seconds. Jill’s eyes snapped open and she looked around herself. Whoever had spoken to her had already disappeared into the crowd. On legs that seemed boneless, Jill turned and hurried from the room. Busy looking over the displays, none of the guests noticed her. A short flight of steps took her into her office, where she sank into a leather swivel chair and forced herself to breathe deeply. After a few moments, the dizziness passed, and she was able to lift her head to stare at the door.

  “How the hell did you know?” Jill whispered.

  With her eyes closed, Jill could still imagine the last time she saw her child alive—a three-year-old in ticking stripe overalls with a red shirt and high-top sneakers. With his blonde hair tousled by the warm summer winds, he turned at the end of their walkway to say good-bye.

  “See you, Mommy!”

  “Keep an eye on him, Jeff. Don’t let him eat too much, okay?”

  “He’s still my kid, Jill. I wouldn’t let anything happen to him.”

  “Good-bye, Ryan. I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Mommy.”

  “Good-bye, Ryan. I love you,” Jill whispered now. They were the last words she had ever spoken to him.

  That evening, a policeman had appeared on her doorstep. He was a young man, with bright-red hair shaved close to his head and a small scar that ran along his hairline. Funny, Jill thought, how she could remember that particular detail: “I’m sorry to inform you that there’s been a terrible accident . . .”

  And he’d gone on to describe how witnesses saw Jeffrey’s car fly over an embankment, bursting into flames at the bottom. There was no way to get to it, and by the time the fire was put out, the bodies inside were burned beyond recognition. Two bodies—a man and a child.

  “No! No! You’ve made a mistake! They can’t be Ryan and Jeff. It’s a trick. Jeff’s kidnapped our son. It’s a trick!”

  But everyone else involved finally convinced her that the bodies had, indeed, belonged to her little boy and ex-husband. For weeks after the funerals, Jill had walked around in a fog, sleeping little and eating less. She became like a zombie, not caring about anything. Her mother came to check on her one day and gasped to find an emaciated shell where her daughter had once been. She had bodily lifted her and carried her to the hospital, where Jill was treated for anorexia. Therapy had followed, convincing her she had to get on with her life. And that meant getting away from people who stared or offered stupid, sympathetic comments. She finally made use of her science degree from Michigan University and moved to Long Island, where she had worked in various labs and museums until finally earning enough to open up her own. And in all that time-six long years—she had never told anyone about Ryan.

  So how, she wondered, could anyone have known?

  “I’m damned well going to find out,” she said, pushing back her chair and rising. She dried her eyes, checked her mirror to be sure they weren’t red, and returned to the party. Everyone was buzzing, and no one seemed to notice she had gone. Looking them over, Jill was more confused than ever. She knew all these people and had never taken one of them into confidence. Who, then, had been the one to open up a still-painful wound?

  3

  KATE EMERSON HELD FAST TO HER LABRADOR’S leash, the leather strip snapping taut each time the dog saw a squirrel or a rabbit. She pulled back on it, commanding him to heel, but Boston Blackie had other ideas.

  “I
know, fella,” Kate said. “You’ve got fall fever. I’d like to run through these woods myself.”

  She breathed deeply, taking in the scent of damp leaves newly colored red and orange. Though it was early morning, she could already smell the cinnamon aroma of pumpkin pie wafting through the cracks in a nearby kitchen door. The air was crisp, the wind tickling the back of her neck where skin showed between the rim of her cable-knit sweater and her bobbed brown hair.

  “Sweater weather,” her sister Diane called it. It was Kate’s favorite time of the year, so relaxing after a busy and hot summer. And this summer, the coastal New England town of Gull’s Flight, Massachusetts, had been particularly busy. They’d just celebrated their tricentennial, and the little curio shop where Kate worked had done booming business.

  Boston Blackie was yelping at something. They were nearly to the end of the woods, coming upon a roadway that would lead them to the house Kate shared with her husband, Danny, and their two children.

  “B.B.,” Kate scolded. “Will you please stop this yanking?”

  But Boston Blackie’s yelps grew more frantic.

  “What is wrong with . . .”

  As Kate stepped out of the woods, the crisp autumn air suddenly rose in temperature about thirty degrees. The multicolored trees that should have been across the road had disappeared, leaving only a long stretch of barren ground.

  “What on earth?”

  Kate gazed across the roadway, lined now with sagebrush instead of chrysanthemums and asters. Somehow, she was standing on a desert roadway, looking toward a row of flat-topped mountains. Mesas, her subconscious told her, pulling out a file from her school years.

  Mesas, in New England?

  Kate let Boston Blackie’s leash drop. The dog cowered next to her, its tail between its legs, making pathetic whining noises. Kate turned a complete circle, confusion contorting her face.

  “I must be sleeping. That’s it. I fell asleep on the couch. I was so tired after raking leaves and . . .”

  She bit her lip and felt pain.

  You don’t feel pain in a dream, do you? And you don’t smell pumpkin pie and you don’t feel the hot wind on your neck . . .

  “But there is no hot wind here,” Kate cried. “It’s autumn in New England.”

  Suddenly hot, she tore off her sweater, letting it dangle at her side. She could feel the warm sand tossing against her face as she undid the top buttons of her blouse.

  Then she heard the child’s voice.

  “Momma!”

  Kate looked all around.

  “Momma, help me!”

  A little girl stood far off in the distance, dressed in a green plaid smock with a white collar, and green twill shorts.

  Dressed the way Kate’s daughter, Laura, had been on a class trip she’d taken with her nursery school six years ago, a trip from which she had never returned.

  “Laura?” Kate’s voice was no match for the hot, whistling wind.

  “Mommy? They want to hurt me. Make them stop.”

  And then she could see the child clearly, a little girl with long dark braids standing stiffly, her arms opened.

  “Laura,” Kate screamed.

  It wasn’t an illusion. It couldn’t be an illusion. Her daughter had come back to her. Everyone had said Laura must have drowned when the boat capsized, that the strong undercurrents of Great Gull Bay had dragged her out to sea. But Kate had never believed that, and here was her daughter now, calling to her. Laura was alive!

  “Mommy?”

  “Oh, Laura,” Kate squeaked, racing toward her daughter with tears streaming down her face. “Oh, Laura, you’re safe!”

  Laura stood her ground, waiting. But Kate began to notice that no matter how much she ran, her daughter was always the same distance from her. Something was keeping her from getting to the child.

  “Laura,” she shouted, stopping. “Come to me.”

  Laura didn’t move.

  “Laura, please!”

  But now the child turned around slowly and walked away from her mother. Kate ran after her, one arm reaching forward to grab the retreating child. She cried out her name, begging her to come back. Her feet wove themselves into a knot of tumbleweed, and she flew forward, smashing her head on a jagged rock. Kate burst into tears, pounding the desert floor angrily. Sand flew up, stinging her eyes.

  Then the sand stopped flying and the desert floor seemed harder, and it was no longer so terribly hot.

  Kate felt arms around her and turned to see her husband’s concerned face. She wasn’t outside anymore and she wasn’t dressed in her cable-knit sweater and corduroy pants. She was wearing a nightgown, and she was crouched down on the bathroom floor.

  “Kate, you had a nightmare,” Danny said, hugging her. He touched her forehead and brought back a finger dotted with red. “You must have woke up when you fell against the tub.”

  “I hit my head on a rock,” Kate choked.

  Danny smiled reassuringly. “There aren’t any rocks in here. You had a dilly of a nightmare, that’s all.”

  Kate stared at him. A nightmare. She had only dreamed her baby girl was alive.

  Danny helped her to her feet. “Let me put a bandage on that,” he said. “Then I want you back in bed.”

  Kate didn’t say a word as Danny gently dabbed at the wound to clean it, covered it with antiseptic cream, and bandaged it with gauze. Danny was so much like Laura, as if she’d only inherited her father’s genes. Dark eyes and hair, big bones. Even at three Laura had been an exotic child. But in the dream, she had appeared much older. As old as she might be today . . .

  The dream had been so real Kate could still feel sand scratching the back of her neck. She reached back there and felt something gritty. Her hand came around so fast she almost struck her husband. Tiny brown crystals sparkled beneath her nails. Sand.

  “I—I saw Laura,” Kate stammered. “She was in a desert, calling to me, and I couldn’t get to her. Danny, Laura is alive. She’s alive and she needs us.”

  “No, Kate,” Danny said. “Laura was killed. She’s been gone for six years.”

  Kate shook her head. “No, she’s alive,” she said. “She’s alive and she’s sending me messages to come for her. Danny, we have to find our daughter. She’s alive. I know she is.”

  She threw herself in her husband’s arms, sobbing uncontrollably. Danny rubbed her back, staring at his reflection in the door mirror. His wife seemed so small against his massive football player’s chest. Kate’s nightmares had stopped about eighteen months after Laura’s death.

  Why had they come back?

  4

  WHEN THE SCHOOL BUS PULLED UP TO THE STONE steps of the Thomas Jefferson Grade School, in the San Francisco suburb of Sandhaven, ten-year-old Elizabeth Morse was the first one out. She held her books close to her small frame and scurried through the drizzling rain, yards ahead of the next child.

  “Good morning, Elizabeth,” Mrs. Bettany greeted.

  Beth nodded and slipped into her seat. Usually, that would have been the extent of the attention Mrs. Bettany paid to the child. She was so unassuming it was easy to forget she was there. But because of the rain, the children would not be playing in the school yard, and Beth had come into the classroom before the others. It gave Mrs. Bettany a rare few minutes to wonder about her. Beth was so pretty. Her thick, wavy red hair could have been the envy of the other fifth-grade girls, if only Beth would do something with it. She had those kind of thick eyelashes that would never need mascara. And Mrs. Bettany had no doubt the child’s complexion would always remain peaches-and-creamy.

  But there was a sadness about her that overshadowed her sweet loveliness. It wasn’t because of an abusive environment, the reason other children she’d met had that haunted look. Beth’s father was a prominent real-estate tycoon, and her mother an illustrator, Mrs. Bettany had met them and knew they were kind. She had been with Beth from the time she was a young child, when her twin brother, Peter, had died in a plane crash. Sick with the fl
u, Beth had missed the trip. And because she had survived when her twin hadn’t, she carried an unfair burden of guilt on her small shoulders.

  But the small desks had filled with children and it was time to get on with the business of teaching fifth grade. The morning went on, and Beth Morse simply blended into the background.

  As Mrs. Bettany discussed the atmosphere of Jupiter during a science lesson, something made Beth turn her eyes toward the window. It had grown dark outside, storm clouds blocking the sun and bringing night to the morning. Rain pattered on the window, but Mrs. Bettany’s voice was louder.

  Then Beth heard another voice. It was familiar, and yet she couldn’t quite place it. It seemed to be coming from outside, as if someone were calling her from the school yard down below. Slowly, she rose from her seat and walked toward the window. Mrs. Bettany, busy drawing on the board, did not see her. But one by one, the children began to notice. They exchanged glances and giggled behind their hands.

  Beth stopped at the radiator, placing her hands gently on the frosty pane of glass. She gazed into the school yard, her eyes drawn toward the swings. There was a boy sitting there, looking up at the windows. He had thick red hair like her own. Even though it was raining, he wasn’t wearing a coat. He reached up toward her with both arms.

  Help me, Bethie. Please help me. They’re going to kill me.

  Beth began to scream.

  Mrs. Bettany swung around from the board and gasped to see the little girl standing at the window, banging so hard on the glass that cut-outs of pumpkins worked loose and fell to the floor. “Elizabeth!”

  The teacher hurried through the desks, reaching to take hold of the child. “Beth, what’s wrong?”

  The class went wild, laughing and talking all at once.

  “Stop this noise,” the teacher ordered, as much for the other children as for the little girl in her arms. “Mary Swenson, get the nurse.”

  Beth kept screaming.

  “Elizabeth Morse, you stop this!” Mrs. Bettany turned her around and looked directly into the child’s wild green eyes.