Nightmare Child

by Ed Gorman

  Where could they be going? And both of them at the same time? And why didn't they take the car?

  Only then did Diane realize the opportunity she had. Robert had asked her to tell him if Mindy and Jeff ever left the house together, leaving Jenny alone.

  Dashing to the yellow wall phone, Diane dialed the number of the police department, a number she knew by heart already.

  "May I speak with the Chief, please?"

  "One moment."

  As she waited, she felt like a child, so excited she could scarcely stop herself from jumping up and down. She stood on the lowest rung of the stool to see if she could catch sight of Mindy and Jeff. Just now, their heads were disappearing on the other side of the hill, dark shapes against the brilliant white day.

  "Hello," a male voice said.

  "Hello?"

  "You're holding for the Chief?"

  "Yes."

  "Afraid he's tied up right now. There was a fire on the edge of the business district. Pretty bad one. Damage is probably going to run at least half a million."

  "But isn't the fire department—"

  He'd anticipated her objection. "Right now, the fire department needs all the official help it can get, including the Chief. Sorry. Is there something I can help you with?"

  Diane thought about it but decided no. It probably wouldn't be a good idea to let one of Robert's co-workers know that he was at least contemplating "visiting" a place without a search warrant.

  "No, thanks. I appreciate your time, though."

  After hanging up and stepping down to the floor, Diane leaned against the counter for long moments in the sunshine. Her heart still pounding at the prospect of possibly seeing Jenny, she knew she would have to make a decision quickly.

  What if they came back while she was in there? What if she found that Jenny had been abused in some horrible way that Diane could never forget?

  Shaking her head at herself, knowing that she owed her young friend all the help she could give, Diane ran to the hall closet, took down her coat, tugged on her snow boots, and went out the back door.

  Outside, the sun was even more blinding. It was one of those freezing days when you could scarcely breathe.

  She paused a moment as she struggled through the knee-deep snow. She looked up at the McCay house. While it was one of the more expensive homes in Stone-ridge, there was still something sinister about it. She'd never been able to figure out what. In the dazzling sun-light and beautiful snow, it should have looked like an ordinary, friendly house. But there was a shut-away aspect to it, the windows too dark with drawn curtains, as if it were a place in which sick people were kept.

  Shuddering, knowing she was being silly, Diane went the rest of the way to the McCays' front door, determined to go in there, find out Jenny's condition, and take whatever action was appropriate.

  Reaching the front steps, she heard the yipping of the tiny golden toy poodle, try the bell first. Terry went crazy, even managing to sound fierce despite his diminutive size.

  She rang the bell one more time. Its chimes sounded too full, almost corny on the clear afternoon.

  Anxious again, her chest feeling tight, she put her right hand down to the knob and twisted gently. The door was open. She pushed it inward a bit farther. Terry flew at her like a heat-seeking missile.

  Bending down to grab him, his pink tongue found her face and began inflicting big wet slurps.

  Despite herself, she giggled. Terry's breath might be bad, but his tongue tickled.

  Holding him to her side, she crossed over the threshold and took two steps inside the McCay's house.

  Her first impression was that the place was badly in need of a straightening-up and dusting. Magazines, newspapers, pizza boxes, and beer cans were strewn everywhere, and the dust was thick enough to write your name in clearly. In all, the downstairs, with a chair overturned here and a shirt thrown over the couch there, resembled the world's most expensive dormitory for boys. A mess, but, in some strange way, a friendly mess.

  The biggest mystery was how Mindy could live there. Mindy's house had always been her pride. Generally, she'd invited Diane over once or twice a month to view whatever gadget Jeff had brought home that time. The house was always immaculate, due, no doubt, to the full crew of cleaning women Mindy had in once a week.

  What had happened to the cleaning women? Had they gone on strike? Had they been deported for being illegal aliens?

  "Jenny."

  In the silence, Diane's voice sounded strained, unnatural.

  "Jenny."

  No hint of a response came as Diane started through the house. On the dining room table were piled stacks of paper plates smeared with the residue of countless dinners. Ants crawled on the plates. Diane shuddered. What was going on there?

  In the kitchen, she found two large sinks crammed with dirty dishes. The counters were packed with the empty tins of canned vegetables.

  It was the floor, however, that held what appeared to be the worst secret so far.

  A circle in crayon had been drawn near the refrigerator. In the center of the circle were large splotches of blood, and stuck to some of the splotches were dirty white feathers and shriveled-up animal innards that resembled feces. The handsome tile floor had suffered deep gouges. Only after Diane bent to look closer did she understand what had happened there. Blood, feathers, gouges—one or more animals, most likely chickens, had been slaughtered on the floor.

  Standing up straight, feeling her chest contract again, Diane decided to get out of the house. Certainly what she could describe there would be enough for Robert to get a search warrant.

  As she rushed back through the ground floor, she did not hear clearly the sound from upstairs. Only when she reached the front door, out of breath and frightened, did she glance upstairs toward where the noise appeared to be coming from. It was laughter. There was no other way to describe it. But no pleasant laughter. No, this was the essence of something dirty, salacious, vile; laughter that reflected unwholesome pleasures.

  Her gaze followed the grand staircase that reached up past the landing window, brilliant with flat blue sky. The frost rimming the window reminded her that everything was most likely all right, that there might be some kind of reasonable explanation for the condition of the house, even for the blood in the circle in the kitchen. Momentarily, the house became knowable again as the laughter died. She had been there so many times and enjoyed herself. She had just let her fears get the best of her and—"Aunt Diane."

  Her name being spoken was even clearer than the laughter had been.

  Her eyes swept the staircase for sight of Jenny, for it had been Jenny's voice just then. But the staircase was empty.

  "Aunt Diane."

  Her hand falling away from the door, Diane took a few tentative steps back toward the center of the house. Shouldn't she leave now and call Robert? Have everything there checked out, just in case something was wrong?

  "Aunt Diane."

  But something in the girl's voice urged Diane on. She reached the staircase and gazed up at the massive crystal chandelier that caught the afternoon sun's brilliance. Beyond the glare of glass she heard her name called once more…

  "Aunt Diane. Help me. Please."

  Her hand touching the banister for the first time, Diane began the long climb up the sweeping staircase. "Jenny…Jenny, where are you?"

  "Upstairs, Aunt Diane. Waiting for you."

  "Are you all right, Jenny? Are you all right?"

  But the only answer she got was her own echo on the still air.

  The higher she rose, the warmer it became, both because of the sunlight and her anxiety.

  "Jenny?" She called again, but it was no use. There was no response.

  The house was once again a mysterious place, not the familiar refuge she used to enjoy. Shadows looked darker and deeper than they might have otherwise, and every small creak of wood seemed to carry sinister import.

  When she reached the landing on the second floor, she
clamped her hand over her nose and mouth, afraid she was going to vomit.

  All she could liken the rancid smell to, was a dead possum that had been in a cabin she and her husband had once rented. The temperature had been at the one-hundred-degree mark for days and the cabin had been completely closed up.

  Falling against the wall, tears filling the corners of her eyes, she took several deep breaths from inside her cupped hand. From inside her coat, she took a handkerchief and tied it bandit-style across her face. Finally, she moved away from the wall and began looking around.

  If the downstairs was a mess, the upstairs resembled a war zone. The hallway was a jumble of smashed chairs, drawers, paintings, and torn clothes. Along the walls were large brown smears of what Diane guessed—with disgust and horror—were human feces. In the first room she looked into, a bedroom, the dressing-table mirror had been smashed, and dried blood and feces were painted all over the wall. In the center of the bed was a thick, dried pool of scarlet—more blood—as if somebody had been spread out on the savagely torn sheets and tortured.

  "Jenny."

  Her voice sounded even more alien in this room, where unimaginable events had taken place.

  She called once more. "Jenny." The word was warm and damp against the handkerchief covering her nose and mouth.

  She could not even get in the door of the next room. It resembled a place where a grenade had been thrown. Fragments of furniture, clothing, books and paintings covered the doorway. Beyond, on the walls, were scribbled what appeared to be words in a language Diane had never seen before. The words had been written in feces.

  Diane realized how dark and quiet it had grown up there. While the sunlight had been strong on the staircase, the hallway seemed trapped in some kind of false night, shadows long and deep, gray covering everything. The silence was just as deep. All Diane could hear was her own irregular breathing and the thrumming of various household appliances. Only minutes before, Jenny had called to her for help. Where was Jenny now?

  In the third room, what had once been the den, Diane found the source of the horrible odor.

  Inside a circle identical to the one she'd found on the kitchen floor downstairs, Diane discovered three animals in various stages of decomposition. Two had been cats, one a dog. All were at that point of disintegration where they looked like bad examples of taxidermy, limbs too eerily stiff, eyes little ghoulish buttons that seemed to stare at you no matter where you moved.

  Clapping the handkerchief tighter to her mouth, she fell back out of the doorway. Panic overtook her for a moment and, unthinking, she ran back down the hall to the stairway. One of the animals—the Siamese—she had recognized as Fu Manchu, the cat the Gabrielson's down the street had given their young daughter for her birthday, the cat that had been missing for the past two months. The people of Stoneridge, who doted on pets almost as much as they doted on children, had just assumed that Fu Manchu had wandered out of the Estates and been struck by a car.

  As Diane reached the stairway, her feet ready to fly down the carpeted steps and out the front door, the voice came again. "Aunt Diane. Help me."

  The words were startling—clear and loud—on the rancid air.

  Diane's head snapped alert. Was she only imagining the voice? Was she only hearing what she wanted to hear?

  Just as she turned back to the hallway and its deep, ominous shadows, she glanced out a window and saw on the hill in the back of the place two heavily bundled, dark figures making their way toward the house. She had no doubt who they were: Mindy and Jeff.

  Knowing she could not afford to be caught there, Diane started down the stairs again.

  "Aunt Diane, please don't leave me here. Please don't leave me here."

  At midpoint on the staircase, Diane stopped. "Where are you, Jenny? Tell me so I can help you."

  "I'm upstairs, Aunt Diane. In the sewing room."

  "Can't you come out here, Jenny? Mindy and Jeff—"

  "I know, Aunt Diane. They're coming back."

  Diane was struck, then, by the fact that Jenny's voice was as clear as if the girl were standing right next to her on the staircase. How was that possible? Where was Jenny hiding?

  Diane started back up the staircase, her right hand gripping the banister tightly. Perhaps there was time…

  Nearby, she heard a dog barking. Mindy and Jeff must be getting closer to the house.

  No, she could not afford to be caught in there. That would help nobody.

  "I'll be back today to get you, Jenny. Within a few hours. I promise."

  Paralyzed on the stairs—a part of her wanting to go back up to find the girl; the more sensible part knowing she had to get out of there—she said, "Jenny, I love you."

  Again, there was only the empty silence, gray as the shadows on the second floor.

  "Aunt Diane," Jenny called again.

  "Just hold on, honey. Just a little while longer."

  Torn with guilt and a sense that she'd really let the little girl down, Diane started her descent again, taking the steps two at a time until, out of breath, she reached the front door.

  She had only to open it a few inches to see that Mindy and Jeff were coming up the walk, gaunt and dark figures against the white snow, wrapped up like lepers in the eighteenth century.

  The back presented her only means of escape. Starting through the house, stumbling against the edge of a chair, she reached the kitchen and the rear door. It was locked. As she fumbled with the doorknob, trying to open it, she heard tramping feet coming in through the front door.

  The door would not unlock.

  The footsteps were louder now, tramping toward the kitchen in heavy snow boots.

  Damn this door!

  Just as the footsteps reached the dining room, which was adjacent to the kitchen, she saw what her trouble had been. Hanging on a small nail behind the curtain was a tiny key. Taking it down, she inserted it in the lock. The door opened with no problem.

  Gasping, saying a prayer of thanks at the same time, she had just taken a step onto the back porch when a voice behind her said, "Diane, what are you doing in our house?"

  The voice was Jeff's.

  When she turned to glance at him, she saw that his face, bundled inside a parka hood, seemed to have no details; it was just a dark area with burning, yellow eyes.

  Screaming, she pushed even farther out onto the porch, slamming into the screen door and falling down three steps leading to the ground.

  She fell head first into a snowbank, but even as she struck, she was already scrambling to her feet, ready to sprint across the yards of knee-deep white stuff separating the McCay's place from hers.

  "Diane! Come back! We'd like to talk to you!"

  This time it was Mindy's voice calling her. Diane did not even pause in her run, however. She wanted to be in her own home, on the phone to Robert, describing what she'd found, convincing him to get a search warrant.

  The run was exhausting, the snow heavy as she lifted one foot and then the other to make her way.

  When she reached her property, she turned back once and there they were, two people swathed in heavy clothes, their faces only dark emptiness, except for the burning, yellow eyes that watched her…

  …watched her.

  In her own kitchen, Diane threw off her coat and let it fall to the floor. Leaning toward the window for a secretive glance, she found that the McCays still stood on their back porch, their eyes glowing within the smoky darkness of their faces.

  Struggling for breath, Diane pulled herself to the wall phone and lifted the receiver. Punching the proper digits for the police station, she forced her breathing to slow with the same exercises she used to instill calm.

  A female voice answered this time.

  "Chief Clark, please."

  "I'm afraid he's not here. May I help you with something?"

  "Is he still at the fire?"

  The female officer sounded hesitant, as if she should neither confirm nor deny the question. "He's…not her
e at the moment."

  "Thank you."

  Hanging up, Diane allowed herself a brief smile. She probably hadn't made her best case when she'd called so out of breath.

  Panting, she went into the half-bath beneath the staircase and carefully washed her face and hands, which relaxed her more than the breathing exercises had. The odor of the McCay's house still burned in her nose, and the sight of the dead, decaying animals still imposed itself on her vision.

  In the hall, she found a blue knit cap she liked, put it on, buttoned up her coat once more, and then went through the breezeway to the double garage, where two cars stood in the gathering dusk of the afternoon, a gray Volvo sedan and a red Subaru station wagon.

  She chose the Volvo. Once inside, she reached up and depressed the button on the garage door opener.

  The door had long been in need of repair—something wrong with the motor—and it went up, creeping inch by creeping inch.

  Diane sat behind the wheel, the engine running smoothly, waiting to shoot out through the open door.

  In the meantime, while she waited, she busied herself by emptying the ashtray—filled with gum wrappers, mostly—into the small white plastic garbage bag that hung off one of the radio knobs.

  Finished with this, she glanced in the rearview mirror again. Her response was a gasp.

  The garage door was fully open now, but in it stood, outlined against the white snow, the two dark shapes she had come to fear, Mindy and Jeff McCay, their eyes tiny glowing circles in their otherwise empty faces.

  They started walking into the garage, one on either side of the car.

  Knowing she had to make a quick and dangerous decision, Diane floored the Volvo, screeching backward across the concrete floor, slamming into Jeff McCay as she did so.

  Jeff went flying backward, the sound of his head smacking the garage wall with a sickening crunch.

  Mindy shouted several obscenities at her, but nothing could deter Diane now. She left the garage doing twenty-two miles an hour in reverse, beginning to fishtail as soon as the steel-belted radials touched the ice-covered snow on the driveway.

  She continued fishtailing all the way down the drive to the street, where, sliding, she ran into a wall of snow piled there by city graders. Mindy and Jeff ran down the drive toward her.