Second Child

by John Saul

  “Did she?” Teri asked, suddenly tense. “What did she say?”

  Melissa smiled slightly. “That she loves you very much.”

  Teri relaxed. “Will you tell me who you are?”

  A moment of silence, then: “Melissa’s friend.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Upstairs.”

  Teri glanced upward, her heart beating faster. “Then why are you here?”

  “Because Melissa needed me.”

  “Needed you for what?”

  “To protect her from her mother. When her mother’s mad at her, I come and take care of her.”

  Teri turned the words over in her mind, then spoke again. “But what happens to Melissa? Where does she go?”

  “She goes to sleep,” D’Arcy replied.

  “What about you?” Teri asked. “Don’t you want to go to sleep, too?”

  D’Arcy was silent for a moment, then shook her head. “I can’t sleep,” she said. “When Melissa’s tied up, I have to watch out for her.”

  Once again Teri thought for a while. And then, working carefully, she began to unfasten the restraints from Melissa’s ankles.

  A moment later she’d freed her half sister’s wrists as well. “There,” she said. “Now you can go back upstairs.”

  But Melissa’s eyes had already closed, and now her breathing had taken on the deep rhythms of sleep.

  Her lips curving in a dark smile, Teri pulled the sheet back over Melissa. Silently, she slipped away, leaving Melissa alone in the darkness.

  Alone, and released from her bonds.…

  CHAPTER 12

  The bonfire had burned down to no more than a pile of glowing embers, and the breeze from the sea had taken on a dank chill. Wisps of fog were swirling over the beach, and as she glanced around, Ellen Stevens shivered slightly. “Let’s go home,” she said to Cyndi Miller. From the other side of the fire pit, his face barely visible in the reddish light of the coals, Kent Fielding grinned evilly.

  “Scared?” he asked.

  Cyndi Miller shook her head. Yet as the breeze died away and the fog began to thicken, she felt her nervousness increase.

  But it was stupid—she’d grown up here, and never felt scared on the beach at all. And all her life she’d run back and forth between her friends’ houses and her own, threading her way through the patches of woods with never a second thought.

  But tonight, somehow, it was different.

  It was the ghost story.

  And it was stupid, because it certainly wasn’t the first time she’d heard it. In fact, she and Ellen had been talking about it only the other day.

  Except that when they’d been talking about the ghost of D’Arcy then, the sun had been shining brightly and they’d been lying around the pool at the club, surrounded by their friends.

  Now it was night, and the fog was closing in around her, and suddenly everything looked different.

  Telling herself she was being stupid, she resolutely got to her feet and zipped up the light jacket she’d put on an hour ago. “Why should I be scared?” she asked, more to hear the sound of her own voice than anything else.

  “Because of D’Arcy,” Kent told her, his grin broadening. “Look around—it’s just the kind of night she likes. She can sneak through the fog, searching for her bloody hand, and no one can see her.” His voice dropped, growing more menacing. “In fact, she could sneak up behind you, and reach out …”

  Cyndi felt the skin on the back of her neck begin to crawl, as if there were someone behind her, reaching toward her, but she refused to give Kent the satisfaction of turning around to look.

  “… she could grab you by the neck …” Kent went on.

  And suddenly Cyndi felt fingers closing around her throat.

  She screamed, jerked away, then spun around just as Jeff Barnstable burst out laughing.

  “Gotcha!”

  Her face flushing hotly, Cyndi glared at Ellen Stevens. “Did you know what he was doing?” she demanded.

  Ellen, unable to suppress her own giggles, nodded. “I’m sorry,” she finally said. “It was just too good to pass up. The way you were staring at Kent. And he kept talking while Jeff sneaked up on you—”

  Suddenly, Cyndi, too, was giggling. “Well, if D’Arcy really is out there, it won’t be us she comes after,” she said, shifting her glare to Jeff and Kent. “After all, it’s boys she’s mad at, isn’t it?” She turned to Ellen. “Are you ready?”

  Ellen nodded, shoving the last of her things into her beach bag.

  “Sure you don’t want us to walk you home?” Kent asked.

  Cyndi eyed him archly. “I think I’d rather have D’Arcy chase me than have to fight you off,” she said.

  Leaving Jeff and Kent to shovel sand onto the last embers of the fire, the two girls started along the beach. A few seconds later, when Cyndi turned around, the boys, and the fire pit as well, had disappeared into the thickening fog.

  Once again Cyndi shivered and moved closer to Ellen. “I—I’m not sure I like this,” she admitted, keeping her voice low to make sure Kent and Jeff couldn’t hear her.

  “Oh, come on,” Ellen replied. “It was only a ghost story, and there’s no such thing as ghosts.”

  And yet as she, too, peered into the dense gray mist that covered the beach now, she felt a tiny flash of doubt. But that’s stupid, she told herself. There aren’t any such things as ghosts.

  But what else might be out there, concealed in the fog, waiting for them?

  “L-Let’s get off the beach,” she said out loud, her own voice dropping to the same level as Cyndi’s. “The fog’s never so bad in the woods.”

  They turned to the left and walked a few paces, and suddenly Cyndi felt water swirling around her feet. “What—” she began, then shook her head as she realized what had happened. “We got turned around,” she said, reaching out and taking Ellen’s hand. “Come on.”

  They turned their backs to the water and started across the beach once more.

  Even the soft lapping of the surf was oddly muffled by the thick, nearly black mist that had settled around them. Cyndi found herself straining to pierce the fog with her eyes, but no matter how she tried, she could see nothing. Her foot struck something, and she tripped, nearly losing her balance.

  “Are you okay?” Ellen whispered.

  Cyndi nodded. “I think these are the steps that go between the Fieldings’ and the Chalmerses’. How come you didn’t bring a flashlight?”

  “Who thought we’d need one?” Ellen countered. “I mean, there wasn’t any fog last night.”

  They moved up the wooden steps that led from the beach to the path that formed the only boundary between the Fielding property and the ten acres next door that the Chalmerses owned. They came to a stand of pine trees, and a few yards farther on, as Cyndi had hoped, the fog began to thin. Now they could see the trunks of trees around them, though when they looked up, the treetops seemed to fade away into nothingness.

  “It’s weird, isn’t it?” Ellen whispered. “I mean, it’s like everything just ends all around us.”

  They moved quickly along the path, and after a few moments, off to the right, they could see the Chalmers house looming out of the fog. Then, as they watched, the fog grew thicker and the house slowly disappeared, as if it had been swallowed up by the mists. A tiny gasp caught in Cyndi’s throat. “Come on,” she whispered, her voice taking on a new sense of urgency. “Let’s get to your house.”

  They scurried along the path for a few more yards, but although they were moving inland, the fog seemed only to thicken. And then, like the cold breath of the living dead, the breeze began again.

  It was nearly pitch-black now. Something slapped against Ellen’s cheek. She yelped with shock more than pain, and as she stopped short on the trail, Cyndi collided with her from behind.

  “What’s wrong? How come you stopped?”

  “S-Something hit me in the face,” Ellen replied. She reached out, her fingers timidl
y exploring the damp air around her. And then, a moment later, she felt the familiar soft prickliness of a pine branch. “It was just a branch,” she whispered. She started forward again, then froze in her tracks.

  Ahead of her, somewhere in the mist, she saw something.

  Indistinct, almost formless, it was barely visible.

  But it was there.

  “L-Look!” she whispered, reaching back to grab Cyndi’s hand and pull her forward.

  A second later Cyndi was beside her. “What?” she hissed. “What did you see?”

  Ellen strained her eyes, peering into the black fog.

  Where a second ago there had been something, now there seemed to be nothing. Her heart, which had been racing in her chest, calmed slightly. “I—I don’t know. I thought …”

  She felt Cyndi’s hand tighten on her own as the fog ahead dissipated.

  In the path ahead of them a strange form seemed to be hovering a few inches above the path.

  A white form, almost shapeless.

  “Oh, God,” Cyndi whispered. “What is it, Ellen?”

  “I—I don’t know,” Ellen replied, her voice trembling now with the fear building inside her.

  A moment later, as the fog closed in once more, the strange apparition disappeared.

  Cyndi, her hand clinging to Ellen’s so hard it hurt, trembled in the pathway. “Wh-What are we going to do? Should we go back to the beach?”

  Ellen started to nod, then remembered the fog that already shrouded the beach, blinding them completely.

  “No,” she whispered. “L-Let’s keep going. Maybe it’s nothing.”

  But even as she started forward once more through the dank chill of the night, she didn’t believe her own words.

  They moved onward, and suddenly the invisible woods around them came alive with unseen menace. Everywhere, they could hear tiny twigs cracking and the heavy breathing of invisible creatures. They kept going, uncertain of where they were, but too terrified to stop.

  And then, from behind them, they heard a sound, louder than the rest, and different.

  A moan, low and anguished, that made them freeze in their tracks.

  “Wh-What is it?” Ellen breathed.

  “I don’t know,” Cyndi wailed, her words choking as a terrified sob rose in her throat.

  Slowly, Ellen turned around and forced herself to peer once more into the darkness of the forest.

  The wind picked up, and once again a rent appeared in the fabric of the mist.

  Standing in the path, behind them now, was the distinct form of a girl, her face veiled, in a white ball gown.

  The figure didn’t move, but simply stood still in the path, staring at them.

  Then, slowly, its right arm came up and a finger pointed at them.

  Ellen stared at the figure for a moment. Panic welled up in her and a scream emerged from her throat as she turned and fled down the path, ignoring the pine branches that whipped at her face, the tendrils of vines that threatened to entangle her feet.

  Only a few feet behind her, struggling to keep up, Cyndi Miller also fled from the terrifying specter that emerged from the fog.

  Jeff Barnstable and Kent Fielding were making their way across the broad lawn in front of the Fieldings’ rambling shingle-style house when they heard Ellen’s scream.

  For a moment neither of them was sure where the cry had come from, but then Kent broke into a run. “It was from behind the house,” he yelled to Jeff. A second later both boys were racing-through the fog, Kent leading the way, his feet so familiar with the landscaping around his home that he had no need to see where he was going. At the back of the house the blackness of the fog was brightened to a pale gray as the floodlights on the terrace came on. His father, clad in a flannel bathrobe, stepped through the French doors from the living room.

  “Kent?” Owen Fielding called. “Is that you?”

  “I’m over here, Dad,” Kent called back as Jeff caught up with him. “Someone screamed.”

  Just then, both of them crying, Ellen Stevens and Cyndi Miller staggered up the terrace steps and ran to Mr. Fielding.

  “Ellen?” Owen asked, as both girls clung to him. “Cyndi? What’s wrong? Was that you screaming?”

  Cyndi, regaining her breath barely enough to talk, nodded. “We—We saw something out there,” she gasped. “In the woods.”

  Jeff and Kent, moving closer to the girls, eyed them suspiciously. “What?” Kent asked, exchanging a knowing glance with Jeff, a scornful grin already playing around the corners of his mouth.

  Cyndi stared at him. A glimmer of doubt entered her mind as she saw the white running suit Jeff was wearing. Instead of answering Kent’s question, she asked one of her own. “Was that you in the woods?”

  Kent’s grin faded slightly. “We were just coming up from the beach,” he said. “We had to put the fire out, remember?”

  Her breathing finally settling back to normal, Ellen looked up at Owen Fielding. “We—We saw something in the woods,” she said. Her eyes shifted to Cyndi, as if pleading for help. “It—It looked like a ghost,” she went on, her words sounding hollow now that she was safe on the Fieldings’ terrace, the terrifying darkness and fog held at bay by the glowing halogen floodlights. “At least, it looked like—”

  “It looked like D’Arcy!” Cyndi Miller said. Her voice, much stronger now, had taken on a defiant note as she met Kent’s mocking eyes.

  “Oh, sure,” Kent drawled. “We sit on the beach and tell ghost stories all night, and then the fog comes in and the moon goes down. The two of you were already so scared you’d have thought a bush was a ghost.”

  “That’s not true!” Cyndi shot back, turning to Ellen. “Tell them, Ellen. Tell them what we saw.”

  “It—It looked like a girl,” Ellen said. “The first time we saw her, she was in front of us, and we weren’t really sure what it was. It kept disappearing in the fog. So we kept going, and then we heard something behind us.”

  “It was like a moan, or something,” Cyndi interrupted. “Really scary.”

  Now Ellen’s eyes shifted from Kent and Jeff to Owen Fielding. “And when we turned around, there she was. It was a girl, wearing a white dress, with a veil over her face.”

  “She was staring at us,” Cyndi added, shivering at the memory. “And then—And then she pointed at us.”

  She turned away from Kent’s skeptical smirk and looked instead at his father. “It’s true, Mr. Fielding,” she said. “That’s what we saw. You believe us, don’t you?”

  Owen Fielding, one arm still around Ellen Stevens’s shoulders, reached out to give Cyndi’s arm an encouraging squeeze. “Well, I certainly believe you believe that’s what you saw,” he said. “But before we all scare ourselves to death, why don’t we go inside and make some cocoa. And then I’ll drive you home.” He waited for a moment, and as he’d expected, the girls did not object to his offer of a ride, although neither of their homes was more than a few hundred yards away. “You guys coming in?” he asked as he steered the girls toward the French doors.

  Kent hesitated, glancing at Jeff, then shook his head. “I—I think maybe we’ll take a look around,” he said.

  Owen Fielding chuckled appreciatively. “Have a good time,” he said, “and don’t stay out all night. And be careful,” he added with a mischievous leer before he closed the doors. “The girls might be right. D’Arcy might be out there, and she might be looking for you.”

  Half an hour later, with the fog so thick they could barely see their hands in front of their faces, the boys were back.

  They had seen nothing.

  They had heard nothing.

  And yet, as they hurried back toward the glow of the floodlights on the terrace, both of them had the eerie sense that someone—someone they could neither see nor hear—had been watching them.

  Phyllis Holloway woke up at six-thirty the next morning, rolled away from the bright shaft of sunlight pouring through the window, and opened her eyes. She’d been dreaming,
a wonderful dream in which she’d been at the August Moon Ball, proudly watching her daughter—the most beautiful girl in the room—dancing with Brett Van Arsdale. All the women she’d known for years, the women who had made her life miserable with their deliberate slights and their snubs made only more hurtful by their subtlety, were gathered around her, complimenting her on her daughter’s beauty and hanging on every word she had to say.

  In the dream, Teri MacIver had been her daughter.

  She lingered in bed, clinging to the warm comfort of the dream, then remembering once again the conversation she and Teri had when her stepdaughter had come home last night.

  It had been the kind of talk every mother dreams of having with her daughter.

  And the kind that had been denied her with Melissa, she reflected bitterly.

  Sighing, she threw back the silk sheet and got out of bed, pulling on a robe before leaving her room to go down the corridor toward her daughter’s room.

  She paused outside Teri’s door, then tapped softly in the vain hope that Teri might call her in and she could put off going in to Melissa for a few more minutes. But when there was no answer, she went on to the room next door, giving the mahogany panel only a perfunctory tap before turning the knob and letting herself in.

  She stopped just inside the door, frowning.

  Melissa was sound asleep, lying on her side, her right arm curled up under her pillow.

  Her frown deepening, Phyllis strode across the room and pulled back the sheet that covered her daughter.

  The restraints—the leather straps and nylon mesh belts that she’d carefully secured to her daughter’s limbs the night before—were lying haphazardly across the mattress.

  “Melissa?” Phyllis said. “Melissa!”

  Her daughter stirred on the bed, then rolled over, pulling the pillow with her to cover her head.

  Phyllis reached down and jerked the pillow away, then grasped Melissa’s shoulder and shook her sharply.

  Startled, Melissa sat up, her eyes snapping open. As she recognized her mother, she automatically drew back against the headboard.

  “Look!” Phyllis commanded, pointing at the straps that snaked across the mattress.