by John Saul
The pottingshed.
Teri froze for a moment, thinking quickly. Then, dropping her towel on one of the chairs that surrounded the pool, she crossed the lawn. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “What are you staring at?”
Tag glanced at her, sniffing at the air. “Do you smell something?” he asked.
Teri inhaled, and a rancid odor filled her nostrils. “Yuck,” she said. “Where’s it coming from?”
“I think maybe it’s the pottingshed,” he said, moving forward. Teri fell in beside him, and together they approached the crumbling shed behind the garage. The closer they got, the worse the smell became. “Jesus,” Tag said, wincing at the foul odor. “It smells like something died in—” He fell silent as he heard his own words. “Oh, God,” he breathed softly. He hurried forward and pulled the door open, reflexively backing away from the cloud of flies that boiled out of the shed. But a moment later, holding his breath against the putrid odor, he stepped inside and glanced around. Except for a rusty shovel, the place was empty. But as he scanned the floor, he spied the loose boards. He let his breath out, then gagged as he took in a lungful of the fetid air that drifted up from beneath the floorboards. Coughing, he darted out of the potting-shed, took another lungful of the fresher air outside, and held his breath once more. Going back in, he reached down and lifted one of the loose floorboards.
His gorge rose as he gazed down into the space below the floor. Blackie’s body, bloated with rot and crawling with squirming white maggots, was barely recognizable, but despite the putrefaction, Tag knew instantly what it was. He recoiled from the sight of the corpse, his eyes moistening with tears. “It’s Blackie—” he gasped, turning to Teri so quickly she didn’t have time to erase the twisted smile that had come to her lips as she watched Tag discover his pet. His eyes widened as he saw the cruel smile, and he stepped back. “You!” he breathed. “I was right.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Teri said, her smile vanishing as she fixed her eyes contemptuously on the boy. “Why would I want to kill your dog? Don’t you see? Melissa must have done it!”
Tag shook his head. “She wouldn’t have. She loved him even more than I did.” His mind raced, and suddenly he remembered Saturday night, when he’d gotten up late and looked out the window. He’d seen Teri, moving around in the house. A light had gone on in the attic, then gone out again, and a few minutes later come back on. Then it had gone out again, but after that he’d seen Teri moving back and forth between her room and the bathroom she shared with Melissa.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “What are you doing to Melissa?” But even as he spoke the words, he knew. “It was you,” he breathed. “It was you she saw in the attic Saturday night. And you killed Blackie, too.”
As he took a step toward her, a look of pure hatred came into Teri’s eyes and she hurled herself forward, shoving Tag backward. He staggered under the force of the shove, tripping on the steps that led to the pottingshed stoop. Flailing wildly, he tumbled over backward. He reached out with his left arm to break his fall, but his hand dropped through the space that had been occupied by the missing floorboard and sunk deep into the moldering corpse below. He tried to roll over, his right hand searching for something to grab on to, but it was too late.
Teri, her eyes glazed over with hatred, seized the shovel that leaned against the shed’s wall, grasped it with both hands, and raised it high.
A second later its blade flashed down, smashing into Tag’s face.
He felt a searing stab of pain as the shovel’s blade crushed his nose, and instinctively he tried to roll away from the next blow, but it was too late.
The shovel rose again, then smashed down on the back of his head. He twitched for a moment, then lay still.
Teri, breathing hard, stared at Tag’s body for a moment, her mind already working. She hadn’t really meant to kill him, she told herself. If he’d only accepted her story that Melissa had killed the dog, it would have been all right. But then he’d remembered Saturday night and figured out what he’d seen.
So she’d had to kill him—he hadn’t given her any choice.
Instinctively, she scanned the grounds beyond the potting-shed door, but saw no one. And why should she? Everyone would be at the Barnstables’ except for Melissa and Cora.
Cora wouldn’t be back for at least forty more minutes.
And Melissa was in her room, sound asleep.
Asleep.
As she repeated the word to herself, she knew what she was going to do.
She knelt down and gingerly touched Tag’s neck. For a moment she felt nothing at all, but then a pulse beat weakly under her fingers.
He wasn’t dead after all.
At least not yet.
She rolled him over and looked at his face. Blood was oozing from his smashed nose, and his eyes were closed. She could hear his breath now, an uneven rattling sound in his chest interspersed with coughing as his own blood threatened to choke him.
Leaving him where he was, she ran back to the house, hurrying up to the attic, where she took the old white dress out of the trunk in which she’d hidden it late on Saturday night. Taking it with her, she went back outside, but instead of going back to the pottingshed, she went into the garage where the gardening tools were kept.
There, leaning against the wall, was the machete she’d seen Tag using to hack away the ivy on the north wall of the house. Smiling to herself, she picked it up.
Back in the pottingshed, she removed more of the floorboards and rolled Tag over once more, letting his unconscious body drop onto the decaying corpse of the dog. Then she gripped the machete, raising it high. Without so much as a second’s hesitation, she brought the enormous blade down, feeling a slight shock as it struck Tag’s skull, split it, then pierced through to the corruption below. Jerking the machete free, she hacked at Tag’s body twice more, then finally put the machete aside.
Using the ancient white dress as a rag, Teri wiped up as much of the blood as she could from the floor, then reached down to sop up more from the body below. Standing up, she shook the dress out and smiled contentedly as she saw the red stains that now covered its front from the bodice to the hemline.
She folded the dress carefully, then put it aside while she once more replaced the floorboards over the joists. Flies hovered over the floor, and even as she watched, a few of them crept down through the cracks to feed on the feast below. But with Tag’s body now covering most of Blackie’s corpse, the vile odor seemed to fade away.
Taking the dress with her, Teri returned to the house and went once more to the attic, where she returned the bloody dress to its hiding place.
Cora let herself in the kitchen door, glancing at the clock. She’d been gone a little over an hour, but she still had plenty of time to make the pie for Melissa and get the Holloways’ roast into the oven before going home to start supper for herself and Tag. She unpacked her bag of groceries, put away everything that she wasn’t going to use immediately, and was about to start preparing the pie when she realized that neither Tag nor Teri had shown up even to say hello to her, much less to offer her a hand with the groceries. Not, of course, that she expected any courtesy from Teri.
She frowned, pursing her lips as she thought about it. She remembered Tag saying something about going out to look for Blackie some more, but what about Teri? Surely she hadn’t gone off and left Melissa by herself.
She pushed through the swinging door to the butler’s pantry and called out. “Hello? Anybody home?” There was a brief silence, then she heard Teri’s voice.
“I’m in the library.”
With a small sigh of relief that at least she hadn’t left Melissa alone in the house, Cora plodded through the dining room and across the entry hall, then down the short corridor to the library. Teri, clad in a pair of jeans and a white blouse, was sprawled on the red leather sofa watching television, her sneaker-clad feet propped up on one of its arms. “I can’t believe your mother didn’t teach you not to put your fe
et on the sofa,” Cora commented, but Teri ignored her. “Is everything all right?”
“Of course everything’s all right,” Teri replied. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Well, you might have come and offered me a hand with the groceries.”
Teri shrugged. “I didn’t hear you come in. Besides, it’s not my job, is it?”
Cora, her jaw setting angrily, said nothing, but left the library and started up the stairs, nearly certain that anything could have happened to Melissa while she’d been gone and Teri would neither have noticed nor cared. But when she got to Melissa’s room, the girl was still curled up in her bed, sound asleep. Feeling mollified, Cora returned to the kitchen and began putting together the pie.
Twenty minutes later, with the pie in one oven and the roast in the other, she went out the back door and crossed the lawn toward her own house. She stepped into the little entry way and called out to her grandson, but there was no answer. “Tag?” she called once again. “Where are you?”
She listened again, then glanced at the heavy man’s watch that was strapped to her wrist. It was past six, and Tag was never late coming home. She moved down the short hall to the kitchen and searched for a note, but there was nothing. Puzzled, she finally returned to the main house and went once more into the library.
“Have you seen Tag?”
Teri reluctantly tore her eyes away from the television screen. “Why would I have seen him?” she countered. “Was he in the house?”
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be askin’, now would I?” Cora replied tartly. “But he’s not home, and I was just wondering if you might have seen him.”
Teri shook her head. “Maybe he went off to see his friends,” she suggested.
Cora sighed heavily. “He said he was gonna look for Blackie—” she began, but cut off her own words as Teri rolled her eyes scornfully. “And his best friend is Melissa,” she went on a moment later. “Seems to me he might have come in to see how she was doing, that’s all.”
Now Teri groaned audibly. “If his best friend’s Melissa, he’s even stupider than I thought.”
Cora’s ruddy face grew even redder. “Some people,” she said, “sure aren’t anywhere near as nice as they make themselves out to be, are they?” she asked.
Teri smiled with exaggerated sweetness. “And some people,” she said, deliberately mimicking Cora’s tone, “might not be working here anymore if they don’t show some respect for their betters.”
The two of them stared at each other for a long moment, but in the end it was Cora who finally looked away. Turning abruptly, she left the room, pulling the door closed behind her with a loud thump.
Teri, snickering at the housekeeper’s impotent fury, turned her attention back to the television.
Melissa woke up an hour after midnight, her mind still fogged by the sedative she’d taken that afternoon. For the first few moments she felt confused, but then it all began to come back to her.
She’d gone to Jeff Barnstable’s funeral and felt everyone watching her.
And when she’d looked into the coffin, and touched him …
Even now she shuddered at the memory, and instinctively drew the covers closer around her. But it was all right, she told herself. She was home, and in her own bed, and her mother hadn’t tied her down.
Nothing bad had happened.
She rolled over and felt something tangled around her legs and feet. For just a second she felt a moment of panic—had her mother tied her down after all?
But no—her hands and feet were free! It was just the sheet.
She jerked at the bedding, trying to kick it loose, and the sheet pulled away from the foot of the bed. But her feet were still tangled in something.
Turning on the lights, she sat up and threw the bedclothes back.
And there, tangled around her legs, was the dress.
D’Arcy’s dress.
The dress she’d worn on Saturday night, when Jeff Barnstable had died.
And now, on the day of his funeral, it was in her bed, wrapped around her legs.
And covered with stains.
Bloodred stains.
She gasped, her heart pounding. It wasn’t real—it was just another nightmare. It had to be.
She closed her eyes tight, then opened them again with a vain hope that the dress would have disappeared.
It was still tangled around her feet, and the stains seemed to have spread even in the moment she’d closed her eyes.
A squeal escaped her throat, but she clamped her hand over her mouth. And then the door to her bathroom opened and Teri, wrapped in a bathrobe, came in. “Melissa?” she asked. “Are you all—” She stopped speaking as her eyes came to rest on the bloody dress. “Oh, Melissa,” she breathed. “What have you done now?”
Melissa’s eyes widened and she cowered back against the headboard, finally managing to kick free from the folds of material. “N-Nothing,” she whispered, her voice reflecting the desperation she was feeling. “I just woke up. I felt something, and—” She tore her eyes from the dress and looked beseechingly at her half sister. “Teri, what’s it doing here?”
Teri crossed to the bed and picked up the dress. Holding it almost gingerly, she turned to face Melissa. “Don’t you remember?” she asked.
“R-Remember?” Melissa stammered. “Remember what?”
Teri closed her eyes for a moment, shaking her head sadly. “Oh, God,” she breathed. “I thought you were awake. But you weren’t, were you?”
Panic rose inside Melissa. It wasn’t possible, was it? Surely she hadn’t been sleepwalking again. “What are you talking about?” she begged. “I’ve been asleep.”
Teri dropped the dress and sat down on the edge of the bed, taking Melissa’s hands in her own. “You went out,” she said, her voice taking on a pleading note. “You must remember—you have to!”
Melissa mutely shook her head.
“It was—I don’t know—maybe an hour ago,” Teri told her. “Tag was outside, calling you. He woke me up, too. I told him you were asleep, but then you came out the back door.” Her eyes flicked to the dress, then back to Melissa. “I thought you were wearing your bathrobe. You know—the white terry-cloth one? But—But …” Her voice trailed off. “Where did it come from?” she asked. “Where did you get it?”
Melissa shivered, despite the warmth of the night. “I don’t know,” she wailed. “I thought it was gone—I thought you got rid of it.”
“I did,” Teri lied, her eyes meeting Melissa’s. “I took it out to the trash. I thought it was gone, Melissa. They came and took the trash away this morning.”
Melissa swallowed. If Teri had thrown it away, how … Her mind reeled. It wasn’t possible—it had to be some kind of a nightmare. None of it could be happening.
“You went off with Tag,” Teri said. “I thought you must be going to look for Blackie.”
“No,” Melissa moaned, covering her ears as if she could shut out Teri’s words. “I was asleep! I didn’t go anywhere!”
“But I saw you,” Teri insisted. “If I’d known you were walking in your sleep, I’d have come and gotten you. But I thought you were awake. Whatever happened, it’s my fault, too.”
“H-Happened?” Melissa echoed. “What—”
“The blood,” Teri said. “It must have come from somewhere.…”
Melissa buried her face in her hands, willing herself to wake up from the nightmare. But when she looked up again, Teri was still sitting by her bed. “Wh-Where.…” she breathed. “Where did we go?”
Teri shook her head. “I don’t know—you were going out behind the garage.”
“But there’s nothing there,” Melissa moaned. “Just the old pottingshed.”
Teri stood up. “We’d better go see,” she said. “Where’s your flashlight?”
Melissa shook her head. “No—I don’t want to. I—”
“But we have to,” Teri insisted. “We have to find out what you did. Don’t you see? If you’
ve done something—”
“No,” Melissa wailed again. “I couldn’t have—”
“But you must have,” Teri pressed. “Come on!”
She pulled Melissa off the bed and helped her into her bathrobe, then turned off the light after she’d retrieved Melissa’s flashlight from the drawer in her night table. Silently, she led her half sister downstairs and out the French doors onto the terrace. The night was bright, with the moon high, and Teri instinctively ducked into the shadows close to the house. They skirted their way along the terrace, then dashed around the pool behind the bathhouse. A few seconds later they stood in front of the pottingshed.
“Oh, God,” Teri whispered, sniffing at the air. “It smells like something died in there.”
Melissa’s eyes widened and she felt a chill pass through her, but when Teri pushed the door of the pottingshed open and stepped inside, she followed, almost as if in a trance. Closing the door behind them, Teri turned the flashlight on and shined it around the little room.
The beam caught the machete, its blade still glistening with blood.
Melissa gasped as she saw it. “Wh-What’s it doing in here?” she breathed. “Tag keeps it in the garage.”
Teri shifted the beam of light and played it over the floor-boards, where more bloodstains showed. “Look,” she said softly. “They’re loose.”
Dropping down to her knees, she lifted one of the floorboards and shined the light into the space below.
A scream rose in Melissa’s throat as she saw Tag’s body sprawled out beneath the floor, his head split open, maggots already nibbling at the dead tissue of his brain. But then, before any scream could erupt into the quiet of the night, she felt Teri’s hand clamp over her mouth.
“Don’t scream,” she heard Teri say. “If anyone hears you, there won’t be anything I can do. They’ll know what happened, and they’ll send you away.”
The scream died away in Melissa’s throat, to be replaced by a wrenching sob. It was all impossible—Tag couldn’t be dead—it was all just a horrible dream, and she’d wake up.
