by John Saul
“What’s she talking about?” Jeff whispered to Christie. Christie looked up at Diana and saw that the strange blank look had come into her eyes. Her fear grew, and she took Jeff’s hand, clutching it tightly in her own.
“I don’t know. But don’t cry.”
“Cry?” Jeff repeated. “Why should I cry?” But even as he spoke he felt tears welling in his eyes. “I want to go home,” he said. He tugged at Christie’s arm, and Diana, disturbed by the sudden movement, looked down.
“What are you doing?” she asked. “What are you doing to my baby?”
“Nothing,” Jeff whimpered. He dropped Christie’s hand and began backing away, fear twisting at his stomach. Something was wrong, and he wasn’t sure what to do. The tears in his eyes spilled over, and he tried to choke back a sob.
Diana stared at the little boy, and as the wind screamed around her and the crying child tormented her mind, her memory opened once more.
She was a little girl, and she was behind the barn, playing with a little boy.
The little boy was teaching her a game.
He called it doctor.
And then, while the little boy had his pants down, her mother had appeared.
She had watched, waiting silently, while her mother beat the little boy, knowing that when it was over, it would be her turn. And when her turn came, she forced herself to endure the beating silently, rage building up deep within her to replace the tears she wasn’t allowed to shed.
Now she felt that rage building inside her again, and as she stood in the night, her mind confused, she saw once more the little boy and the little girl.
But she was the mother now, and the little boy had been playing with her little girl all day.
Playing what?
She searched her mind. Had they been playing doctor?
They must have been, for they looked scared. Scared and guilty.
Filthy children.
Filthy, sinful children.
Diana, in the grip of her madness, moved forward and struck Jeff Crowley across the face.
He screamed, clutched at his cheek, then began sobbing, but Diana’s fists flew through the air, pummeling him, lashing at him. Floating through his terror, he could hear Christie’s voice.
“Don’t cry, Jeff. Please, don’t cry!”
Christie watched in horror as Diana struck Jeff again. The force of the blow sent him, writhing, to the ground. She tried to pull Diana away from him. “Stop it, Aunt Diana,” she begged. “He didn’t do anything. Don’t hit him anymore!”
Diana didn’t hear her. She had picked up a stick and, raising it over her head, she brought it crashing down into Jeff Crowley’s face.
“Filthy,” she was whispering over and over again. “Filthy, evil little child. Stop crying. Do you understand me? Stop crying and take your punishment.”
Blood gushed from Jeff’s nose, and Christie, able to stand it no longer, burst into tears and fled into the night. Behind her she could hear Jeff’s cries, fainter and fainter, and the dull thudding of the stick in Diana’s hands.
Where could she go?
Home? To Miss Edna?
But where was she? Which way was home?
She paused and looked around. Nothing seemed familiar. And then she came to a trail.
The trail that led to the mine. The mine and Esperanza’s cabin.
Esperanza would help her. She would go to Esperanza, and the old woman would come back with her, and they would help Jeff.
Tears streaming down her face, Christie began stumbling along the trail toward the mine.
Jeff Crowley’s body lay still at her feet, and Diana, the bloody stick still clutched in her hand, searched the darkness for her little girl.
She, too, must be punished.
“Baby?” she called.
There was no answer, except for the wind.
And then, once more, she heard it.
It was faint, but as she moved off into the darkness it began to grow louder.
Listening to the crying of the child, Diana hurried down the trail toward the mine. She had to find her baby and make it stop crying.
“She’s up in the mountains with the kids?” Dan asked. It couldn’t be true.
“It might not mean anything,” Bill said. “But I thought you ought to know.”
“It’s a damn good thing you did,” Dan replied grimly. Half an hour earlier he’d had a call from Denver, and ever since he’d been trying to decide what, if anything, he should do.
The bones had been analyzed.
All of them were human.
All of them were infants.
All of them were over one hundred years old.
All except one.
One of the skeletons, its parts fragmented, had turned out to be much more recent than the others. If Dan could believe what the archeologist told him, it was between ten and fifty years old.
And, unlike the others, its arms and legs were broken, its ribs mangled, and its skull plates battered.
To the scientist it appeared that this baby had not been born dead, but instead had been beaten to death, sometime shortly after its birth.
Tonelessly he repeated the information to Bill and Matt. Matt looked puzzled, but the blood drained from Bill’s face.
“Diana’s baby?” he asked at last.
Dan nodded. “Seems like it might be.”
“But Miss Edna said she buried it. What’s going on?”
Dan’s eyes were hard as he faced his friend. “I think something is way wrong out at the Ambers’, and I think we better go find out what it is and where Diana and those kids are, too.”
Though Matt Crowley wasn’t sure exactly what was going on, and neither Dan nor Bill took the time to explain it to him, he went with them anyway. Somewhere, his son was out there, and the wind was blowing.
Kim Sandler had died while the wind blew.
Jay-Jay Jennings had died while the wind blew.
And Diana Amber—what did she do while the wind blew?
Did she kill?
Dan gunned the engine, flipped on his siren, and put the car in gear. The other two men braced themselves as the car lunged forward. “You trying to wake up the whole town?” Matt asked.
“I have a feeling the whole town may be awake tonight anyway,” Dan said, his voice grim.
When Edna Amber opened the door, Bill Henry saw at once that something had changed.
She seemed to have shrunk. Her back, usually so straight, was bent, and her shoulders were stooped. Her blue eyes, the twin sapphires, which had sparkled fire for so many years, were pale and streaked with red, as if the old woman had been crying.
“Miss Edna?” Dan asked. “May we come in?”
Edna nodded and held the door open for them. She stood aside and let them precede her into the little parlor at the front of the house. When she spoke, her voice was weak, and she seemed to have trouble finding the right words.
“Do you want to see Diana? I—I think she’s gone out somewhere.” Her eyes moved nervously around the room, as if she were looking for something. “Yes,” she repeated. “I believe she’s gone out.”
“We need to know where Diana went,” Dan said. “And we need to talk to you about Diana’s baby.”
Edna’s eyes, rheumy and tear-filled, went to Bill. “I shouldn’t have told you,” she said reproachfully. “I should have kept it to myself.”
“I’d have found out anyway, Miss Edna,” Bill said gently.
“She thinks I killed it,” Edna said quietly. “She thinks I killed her baby.”
“And did you?”
Edna was silent for a long time, and Bill wasn’t sure she had heard the question. But finally she nodded.
“Maybe I did,” she said.
“I beg your pardon?” Dan asked. He had to lean forward to hear her.
“I said that maybe I did kill her baby. Maybe it was all my fault. Do you think I was too hard on her, William?”
“Too hard? How?”
“I was al
ways strict with her. But mothers are supposed to be strict. And I wanted her to be a good girl.” She looked sorrowfully at them. “But Diana never was, you know. She was a sinful little girl. Filthy and sinful.”
Dan and Bill glanced at each other, and Bill spoke. “Can you tell us what happened, Miss Edna?”
Suddenly the old lady’s eyes were frightened, and they flickered warily between the three men.
“Oh, I couldn’t do that—it wouldn’t be proper.” Then she smiled, her face a grotesque caricature of what it had once been. “But it’s going to be all right. I’m going to take care of everything.”
The three men glanced at each other uneasily. “Miss Edna,” Dan said, “why don’t you let us take care of everything? Just tell us where Diana is, and we’ll take care of her, all right?”
Edna got to her feet and leaned her weight on her cane. “You don’t think I’ve been a good mother, do you?” she asked. “Well, maybe I haven’t. But I did the best I could. That’s all anyone can do, isn’t it?”
“Of course it is,” Bill said. Though his mind was whirling, he forced his voice to stay calm. What had happened? What had gone wrong? It was as if, overnight, Edna Amber had become senile. “Has something happened between you and Diana?”
“She hit me,” the old lady told them. “My own daughter hit me. And she said I killed her baby.”
“Did you?” Dan asked once more.
Again Edna seemed to think the question over. Finally she shook her head. “No,” she said. “She did it. I think it must have been the wind.”
Dan nodded his head, as if he understood. “The wind,” he said. “Tell us about the wind.”
“She never liked it, you know,” Edna told them. “Ever since she was a baby, when the wind blew, she had headaches and cried. But I never let her cry for long.” Her voice hardened, and for a moment her eyes cleared. “She was a bad child, and I had to punish her.” She paused, and once more her eyes clouded over and her voice dropped. “But she never remembered. It was as though the wind swept her memory away.” She smiled, as if she’d finally discovered the truth. “That must be what happened—the wind must have swept her baby away.”
Dan swallowed hard. “Miss Edna,” he said. “Miss Edna, we have to know where Diana is. Can you tell us?”
“Why, she’s with the babies,” Edna said.
“The children,” Bill corrected her. “We know she’s with the children. But where did she take them?”
“She didn’t say. She doesn’t like me anymore, you see. After all I’ve done for her, she doesn’t like me. But I only wanted to help her. All I ever wanted to do was help her.”
Dan stood up. “Miss Edna, we have to go find her. Will you be all right?”
The old woman leaned on her cane and smiled at them.
“Me? Of course I’ll be all right. You don’t have to worry about me—I can take care of myself. And I can take care of Diana, too, if she’ll let me. When you find her, you bring her back here. She’s just a little girl, you know. She’s just a little baby girl who doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
“Maybe I’d better stay here,” Bill began. “You and Matt go ahead.” But Edna shook her finger at him.
“I don’t want anybody out here,” she said, her voice taking on a querulous quality that was no more than a vague echo of her former imperiousness. “I have some things I must do, and I want to be alone.” She paused, then: “I’ve never been alone, you know. I’ll have to get used to it.”
Reluctantly they left Edna Amber by herself.
When they were back in the police car, Dan glanced at Bill and Matt. “Any ideas?”
“Jeff said there’s a stand of aspen and cottonwood with a spring,” Matt said. “Know where it is?”
Bill nodded. “On the way to the quarry.”
“Is there a road?” Dan said.
“Go toward the mine, but turn left about a quarter of a mile before you get to it. That’ll get us pretty close to the place, but we’ll still have to walk some of the way,” Bill replied.
Diana plunged through the night, as though the sound of the crying baby were a siren’s song, luring her on. The bloody stick with which she had killed Jeff Crowley was cradled in her arms.
The wind tore down from the mountains, filling the air with mournful keening, and slowly the doors of Diana’s memory swung wide.
It was a night like this thirty years ago, when the wind was blowing, but all she could hear was the steady crying of a baby.
She was in bed, but it wasn’t her bed. It was a strange bed, in a room that wasn’t hers.
Instinctively she knew that the baby was in her bed, in her room.
She crept through the house, searching for the source of the sound. And then, in the nursery—her nursery—she found it. In the cradle there was a tiny baby, its fists waving helplessly in the air, its eyes screwed shut, though tears were running down its cheeks.
Diana stared at it, hating it.
It was crying, and no one was punishing it.
It was wrong. Crying babies had to be punished.
And there was something else.
As she looked at the baby she began to remember.
It was her baby.
She’d been a filthy, evil little girl again, and now there was a baby.
She crouched over the cradle and touched the baby, and its cries grew louder.
What if it woke her mother? She would come in and find the baby and realize what Diana had done.
And once more, as she had been so often in her life, she would be punished.
She had to hide the baby.
She picked it up and wrapped it in a blanket, muffling its screams, then took it from the house.
She carried it through the night, wondering what to do with it, where to hide it.
And that night, for the first time, she heard the sound that guided her, and that had stayed with her ever since.
A baby, crying. Not the baby in her arms, not her own baby, but another. And suddenly she knew.
“I’ll take you to them,” she whispered. “I’ll take you to the other babies.” She began following the sound, and it led her up to the mine, then past it on up the hill, until she stood at the entrance to a cave.
And there, as the baby in her arms kept crying, she picked up a stone and made it stop.
The baby had cried, and she had punished it.
Now, thirty years later, as the memory unfolded, Diana realized what she had done.
It hadn’t been her mother who had killed her baby.
She had done it herself.
As she stumbled on through the wind and darkness, she began to cry.
27
Edna Amber watched the white Chrysler disappear into the night.
Soon, she was sure, the ranch would be teeming with people, and they would find Diana, and everyone would know their secrets. She couldn’t let that happen.
Even though Diana was lost to her, she was still her mother.
Edna put on a coat and went out into the night.
She heaved the heavy garage door open and got into the ancient Cadillac. As she backed it carefully out of the garage, she wondered if she would get there in time, and if she would be able to do what had to be done.
Matt Crowley should have already done it. He’d said he would, but he hadn’t.
That was the trouble with children. They said they’d do things, but they didn’t.
Well, she’d do it herself.
She was old, and she was tired, but her memory was still good, and her husband had taught her things she’d thought she’d never need to know.
Tonight she was going to need that knowledge.
After tonight … after tonight, there would be nothing.
She drove carefully, putting the old car into its lowest to grind slowly up the hill toward the mine.
The wind battered at the car, but Edna didn’t mind. The Cadillac had taken worse in its time, and the wind had never bothered her.
That was something she had never understood about Diana. She knew there were people who blamed things on the wind, but Edna had never really believed them. It was just that people didn’t want to be responsible for themselves.
That was Diana’s problem. She had never wanted to be responsible for anything.
Now it was too late.
Everything was over, and all Edna could do was try to hide the mess, just as she’d been hiding messes for Diana since the day she’d been born.
Christie staggered up the steps of the dark cabin and pounded on the door.
“Esperanza? Help! Please—help me.”
She could hear nothing over the screaming of the wind, but still she knew that the cabin was empty. She tried the door, but it was locked.
She would have to try to get back to the house. She pounded on the cabin door once more, then turned away. But as she was about to start down the steps, she sensed a movement in the darkness. She shrank back into the dark shadows of the porch and watched as Diana came toward her.
As Diana drew close Christie began to hear her talking, mumbling almost to herself.
“Mama? Mama, I’ve been a bad girl. Are you going to punish me? Mama? Where are you, Mama?”
Diana passed the cabin, her eyes staring straight ahead, and disappeared into the mine.
Christie stood on the porch, trying to figure out what had happened.
Aunt Diana was crying. Why was she doing that? She’d never cried before.
And then Christie saw lights approaching, coming up the hill. She waited on the porch of the little cabin and finally recognized the Ambers’ ancient Cadillac as it shuddered to a stop. Miss Edna got out, then stood by the car, as if she were looking for something.
“Miss Edna?” Christie called softly. The old woman swung around, and her gaze fell on the little girl.
“Where is she?” Edna asked. “Where’s my daughter?”
“In the mine,” Christie whimpered. She left the porch and went to Miss Edna, staring up into her face. “She killed Jeff,” Christie whispered.
Edna looked down at Christie, then gently stroked her cheek.
“In the mine?” she asked. “Did she do it in the mine?”
Christie shook her head. “He’s back there,” she said, pointing toward the aspen grove a half-mile away. “I—I ran away.”
