“Nathaniel—no!”
He vanished into the dark.
Curving nails closed over my shoulder, bit deep...
* * *
I cried out, vaulted up from the mattress to find Katie’s wide, startled eyes appraising me.
“Elliot? Are you all right?”
I couldn’t seem to speak.
“Elliot? Stop staring at me like that!”
I craned around quickly. The nursery was clear of haze. The room glowed mysteriously from the dozens of candles Katie had placed around the mattress before we settled down to await the witching hour.
I whipped back to the clock so fast it sent a lance of pain up my neck: 12: 01.
“What happened?”
She gripped my arm in her hand. “You were making these terrible sounds in your sleep! Like…growling! I thought you’d never wake up!” She put a hand to her forehead defensively. “I’m sorry, I guess we both dozed off!”
I couldn’t quite seem to get my lungs to fill properly. “We missed it?”
“I guess we did. I’m sorry. Sweetie, you’re dripping sweat!” She looked down at me. “What’s this--?”
I followed her eyes to the big carpet ball clutched in my hand. It was clean of blood.
I lifted it slowly, inspected it closely under candlelight. Blinked and scanned the room again. “The mist is gone…”
“Mist?”
I shoved to my feet so quickly it got a startled yelp from Katie.
My eyes darted everywhere around the shadow-billowing room.
“Elliot? What is it?”
“Nathaniel was here!”
Katie pulled herself up by my wrist. “Are you sure?”
“Look! The nursery doors are open! Didn’t you shut and lock them?”
Before she could answer I was running for the mantle, the echo of the clock’s chimes still resounding in my skull. I grabbed up one of the candles, shoved it at the shadowed mantel, illuminating the clock. I jerked back reflexively, half-expecting to see that feral visage from the computer reflected there. The clock face showed only my own haggard appearance. I lowered the candle, dipped it into the black mouth of the fireplace itself. “I need more light!”
Katie was already across the room at the light switch. “We only used the candles in case the electric went out, remember--?” The room flooded with painful incandescence from the ceiling fixture.
I squinted, waiting for my pupils to adjust, bent again to the fireplace. Empty.
I blew out the candle, turned and began quickly stalking the nursery, every corner and nook, of it, every inch.
“Elliot—“
“He was here! I saw him! He was right here!”
She remained by the switch, studying me.
“Katie, he spoke to me!”
“Who spoke to you--?”
We turned to the tall shadowed figure outlined in the nursery doorway.
A fist punched my chest. The panther man!
Katie backed up a step as the figure entered the room, moonlight from the bay window falling across it, revealing Byron. “What’s going on?” he demanded, voice alert if slightly thick with sleep.
“Byron,” from Katie, “how long have you been standing there?”
“Not a minute. Everything okay with you two?”
I started to reply but Katie interrupted. “Yes. Elliot had a dream…”
“It was not a dream!” I blurted. Then clammed up under Katie’s warning eyes and turned to Byron. “Sorry. Did we wake you?”
“Not really, I wasn’t sleeping all that well anyway, got up to use the head, heard the racket down the hall.”
I nodded, held up an apologetic hand. “Sorry. Are Donna and the kids okay?”
“Fine. What kind of dream?”
I balked. “I…just some…vague nightmare. Nebulous. Hardly remember it.”
Byron craned around the room. “It’s this damn nursery. I’m going to have it torn down…”
I kept seeing Nathaniel’s very real image disappearing into the mantle shadows.
“That’s funny…” We both turned to Byron. “…the clock over the mantle.”
I turned my head and regarded it. “What about it?”
“Says 12:03.”
“So?”
“It’s 12:15 now. It must have stopped.”
A pang started through me. I was striding suddenly past Byron to the doors, heart knocking with every step.
“Elliot--?”
“Where’s Nathaniel?”
“I told you,” from a nonplussed Byron, “in our bed with Donna and the baby.”
I strode quickly out of the nursery in my boxers and Tee, into the hallway…and then I was sprinting, oblivious to the voices calling behind me.
In a moment I head Katie’s and Byron’s footfalls running behind me. “Elliot--?”
I hit the master bedroom door and slapped the wall light.
Donna was curled on her side, asleep, baby Natalie wound in her arms.
The mattress beside her was empty.
I was already coming out of the connecting bathroom and jerking open the closet doors, searching, when Katie and Byron hurried into the room.
“What’s going on?” from a muffled Donna, shading her eyes from glare, one arm still about the sleeping baby.
“Where’s Nathaniel?” I shouted at her, probably too loudly.
Donna’s blinked incomprehension. She looked up at her husband. Then she whipped around to the empty bed beside her. Back to her husband again. “Byron?”
Byron’s jaw was unhinged, eyes leaden with fear.
Donna’s face constricted.
“Nathaniel!”
THIRTEEN
We searched, of course.
In vain.
Of course.
The girls took the house, Byron and I the front and back yards.
We looked everywhere, even in the silliest of places, including the locked carriage house. We passed each other once in the back. Ankles and pajama bottoms soaked with dew, Byron grabbed my shoulder. “Tell me what happened in the nursery!”
I hesitated, bifurcate, wondering what Katie was trying to explain to Donna right now in the house. “I’m…not sure…”
I could barely see his moon-lit face, but Byron’s voice was tight with frustration and fear. “What do you mean you’re not sure? The nursery doors were closed when you went to bed! Why did you open them?”
We didn’t.
I didn’t want to lie, didn’t want to tell half-truths, especially ones I had no particular faith in. “I…thought I heard something. It might have been a dream…”
“A dream about what?” His tone was desperate now, not at all certain he could face this thing all over again, or that his wife could.
To derail the conversation I grabbed his hand from my shoulder firmly. “Look, Byron, the kids were with you!”
That seemed to give him pause.
He whipped about and we kept searching the yards, then the neighbors’ yards.
“Nathaniel!”
Light began coming on in upstairs neighboring windows…
* * *
Byron and I reentered the house through the back kitchen door just as the women were coming up from the cellar. A brief glance told both parties no one had found the boy.
Donna faltered once coming across the linoleum to us. “Oh God, Byron! Oh God, oh God, oh God!”
He grabbed her and pulled her hard against him. “Easy.” But from the look in his hollow eyes I felt the gesture was more to keep his wife from seeing his own fear.
I glanced worriedly at Katie.
She was leaning against the kitchen counter, long legged and becalmed, chewing thoughtfully at her index nail, frowning concentration. I could tell she was way ahead of the rest of our fears, already considering the alternatives, the next logical move. How does she do it? I thought, remembering what Donna had said was written all over her face, how can she be so detached? Does she really love kids
?
She looked up sharply as Byron reached for the land line wall phone; an old rotary dialer he’d doubtless kept around for aesthetic reasons. “What are you doing?”
“We have to notify the police!” Byron quaked, giving her his back.
“I wouldn’t do that.” Katie’s voice was firm.
Byron hesitated, hand on the big plastic receiver, and turned to her. “They need to know!”
Donna nodded desperately. “We need their help!”
Katie remained against the counter, the picture of composure. “Like last time, you mean?”
My eyes darted to the Sandersons, back and forth between them and Katie; I wasn’t so sure what the right thing to do was.
Byron’s hand clung to the receiver without lifting it, eyes on Katie; then on his wife.
“They’ll send a sheriff’s car around,” Katie told them softly, give the place a cursory look, “then tell you they can’t officially file a missing persons report for 24 hours. The last time Nathaniel turned up in his crib again in what—under an hour?”
Donna nodded slowly. “I found him…”
“And what if you find him this time, Donna? And the police are here again? You told me how they looked at you before. Do you think they’ll look at you less that way if it happens twice?”
Donna shuddered visibly, turned hopeless eyes to her husband.
“And if we don’t call?” from Byron. “And Nathaniel doesn’t magically reappear this time? We’ll have to bring the police in eventually. And when we finally do notify them, they’re going to ask why it took us so long to do so! Going to be even more suspicious of…” He trailed off under his wife’s tears.
“Of me!” Donna sobbed, hysteria close behind. “Of the nutty Sanderson woman pulling another of her crazy pranks! Only this time they won’t be so politely judgmental! This time they’ll take me downtown--on the way to the loony bin!” She choked and her shoulders began to hitch uncontrollably. Katie came to her quickly.
And slapped her hard.
Byron and I gasped simultaneously.
The color shot back into Donna’s face as Katie lifted the woman’s chin up roughly. “Don’t! Don’t do this, Donna! You don’t have the luxury of falling apart again! We’re going to find your son! You have to have faith, and I have to have your complete trust, that’s the most important thing of all! We’re battling something that loathes trust! We have to use it as a weapon, as the main part of our arsenal!”
But the tears only renewed themselves. “I was alone in the bed with him! Byron got up to check on you and Elliot in the nursery! I was alone with him, Katie! Again!”
Katie shook her, shook back the hysteria an inch. “The police don’t have to know that! The police don’t have to know a thing we don’t tell them!”
Byron turned back to the wall phone and looked at his hand still gripping the receiver. “Eventually, though…”
Katie pulled Donna close, held her, stroked her hair. She glanced up past her at the kitchen wall clock: 1:20.
“Yes, eventually,” she nodded, “if Nathan doesn’t reappear. But I say we give it some time first. The police were no help last time, they’ll be no help now! It’s your decision, but I say we give this thing a few hours.”
“And when the cops ask later,” from Byron, “what time my son went missing?”
Katie gave him an even look. “We lie! Make-up a time—say, sometime after five or six when we got up in the morning. We also tell them that you and Elliot spent the night in the nursery with Nathaniel. That Donna and I slept here in the bedroom with Natalie.”
“So Nathaniel disappeared on our watch,” I confirmed.
“That’s right,” Katie nodded. “They’ll buy it. We’ll play it all prissy, work into the conversation the fact that Elliot and I aren’t married, are die-hard religious fanatics or something. Maybe this time they’ll stop concentrating their suspicions on the mother and start putting them where they belong--on the house!”
Donna sniffed back tears. “What a web of lies we spin…” she leaned against Katie’s shoulder.
“It’s that or attempt a crash course in the paranormal with the local gendarmes. I can imagine how by-the-facts cops would regard that.” Katie sighed, patted Donna’s back and made a scoffing sound. “Lies.” She shook her head. “That whole damn nursery is a lie, sweetie. Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.”
She was going out on a limb and she knew it. And she knew I knew it.
But not to back her at the moment would have been detrimental to everything leading up to our arrival at the Sandersons’ home.
Beside, Katie had on her face now; her I’m on a quest and you’d best leave me to it face.
Put your logic on the shelf, Elliot, I could imagine her thinking, it’s time to go on pure instinct now...
Her eyes, peering over Donna’s shoulder, caught mine, saw me thinking it.
We could lose this case, her eyes said.
We could lose this boy, my eyes shot back.
Then we all jolted at once under the strident ring of the doorbell out front.
Upstairs little Natalie, rudely awakened, began a frightened, miserable wail.
The four of us stood looking at each other silently.
The doorbell rang again, then again insistently.
Donna finally broke free and headed for the front hall with Byron close behind.
Katie glanced at me and bolted after them.
On the way there she did a strange thing: she snatched Byron’s car keys from the dining room table and, in passing through the big foyer, threw them absently under the living room coffee table.
The doorbell rang once more as Byron took Donna’s shoulder, pushed her gently aside, pulled the brass knob and let the night’s sea air inside. Along with a pungent waft of cigar smoke.
Two men in blue suits stood under the porch light, one tall and athletic-looking, the other short and moon-faced and clearly on a diet of doughnuts. And cigars.
The tall one reached inside his coat as he addressed Byron.
“Mr. Sanderson?”
“Yes.”
Flashed his shield. “Lt. Detective Rand of the San Diego PD. My partner Det. Sergeant Fellows.”
“What can I do for you gentlemen?”
Rand replaced his shield case, looking past Byron’s big shoulders to the foyer’s interior. “Had some complaints…well, calls actually, from the neighbors, about possible prowlers around your place.”
Byron did a bad job of looking surprised. “Oh? Haven’t had any trouble here.”
Rand nodded. Fellows puffed his cigar.
“Good, glad to hear it. Haven’t been outside yourself tonight by chance?”
“No,” Byron blurted.
Rand dropped his eyes to Sanderson’s dew-soaked pajama cuffs.
“Mind if we come in a moment?”
“Yes,” Katie pushed in next to Sanderson, “we do.”
Rand looked her up and down. “Ah! And you would be…?”
“Friend of the family. Have you a warrant, Detective?”
“Do I need one?”
“Afraid so.”
Rand took his time putting a stick of gum in his hand. He offered the pack to Katie.
“And why would that be?”
“No thanks. Because it says so in the charter,” Katie told him. “Otherwise, cop or not, it’s a B&E and we can shoot you.”
I looked past the two suits to their patrol car at the curb. An old blue Ford Galaxy was parked near it. It looked vaguely familiar but I couldn’t immediately place it.
Rand smiled at Fellows; Fellows blew cigar smoke, smiling back.
“Are you hiding something, Ms.—“
“Only the bodies,” Katie told him.
Rand smacked gum. “Cute. Sorry, I don’t think I caught your name…”
“That’s because I didn’t throw it. Now, if you’ll excuse us…”
“Pajama party?” from Det. Fellows.
K
atie turned to him. “It’s a cluster fuck, Detective Fellows, call the major and get that warrant and you can join us.”
“Pretty tough, aren’t we?” Fellows smirked.
“Yes,” Katie told him, “both of them. And my face is up here.”
Rand barked a short laugh. “What are you hiding, Ms.—“
“Jones.”
Rand grinned wide, winked at Fellows. “No…I don’t think so…”
I saw Katie’s jaw tighten in self-retribution. He got her.
“Seems to me I’ve seen your picture in the magazines before. A Ms. Bracken, isn’t it? Paranormal something or other?”
“Investigator,” Kate spat, “you’re probably not familiar with the word.”
Another quick bark from Rand. “And the lady behind you…Mrs. Sanderson? Believe our boys have visited you before?”
Katie filled the doorway implacably as she heard Donna approach from behind. “Your boys, yes. Patrol cops, not detectives. What brings the higher-up to the Sanderson home, a social visit?”
Rand quit smiling, quit chewing, and looked past Katie at Donna Sanderson with a confident air. “How are the kids, Mrs. Sanderson?”
Donna took Katie’s arm, pulling her aside gently. Katie—“?
Katie stood her ground.
“Donna, let them in…”
* * *
Rand instructed his partner to put out his cigar as the two detectives came through the big foyer. “Beautiful old home,” he said cordially, “Doing some remodeling, are you?”
Byron tightened the cord on his pajamas, puffed up his already-broad chest. “Yes.”
Rand nodded. “Thought I smelled turpentine. That what you spilled on your pajama cuffs?”
Byron wasn’t used to being quick on the uptake, especially under pressure.
I touched his arm. “It’s from the grass,” I said. “Mr. Sanderson was out in the yard earlier.”
Rand gazed about the entranceway, impressed. “Oh? Thought Ms. Bracken said—“
“She forgot,” I interrupted, “Byron here lost his car keys. We were looking for them.”
Rand nodded, appraising the ornate ceiling. “I see…”
“Will you come into the living room, Detectives?” from Donna, “I’ll put on some coffee.”
NIGHT CHILLS: A Bracken and Bledsoe Paranormal Mystery Page 14
