The Girl in the Attic

by Ed Gorman

  This time the mental pictures were accompanied by a headache, a terrible one.

  The raisins and the Saltines were knocked onto the floor as Jamie fell back holding her head; the Coke spilled on the rug.

  Who was the woman she saw in these pictures and why was she seeing her?

  Jamie knew that Anne was controlling her mind.

  And she also knew that terrible things lay ahead; far more terrible than the darkness or rumbling thunder of this night.

  After a while, mercifully, she folded her hands beneath her head and slept.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  1

  Van headlights sliced through the sodden darkness, lighting up gravestones that were soon cast back into eternal darkness.

  Hanratty spotted Sally first and jumped from the van before it had stopped moving.

  He lost his balance twice in the ankle-deep mud that covered the east side of the hill leading to the grave where Sally Baines knelt, still as the black stone statue that watched over all.

  When he reached her, out of breath, he sank to his knees. Sweat covered his face and stung his eyes. His chest heaved. He put out a nervous hand and touched her shoulder.

  He didn't have to look at the name on the grave; he knew it well enough. He'd been here several times during his investigations into the Anne Edmonds story.

  "She all right?"

  Gonzalez came up out of the gloom with vampire-like stealth.

  "I don't know."

  "Let's have a look."

  From his pocket Gonzalez took a small medical flashlight. He bent toward Sally and shone the light in her eyes.

  She blinked. She didn't seem to be in shock, but she didn't seem to be normal, either.

  "Sally," Hanratty said, getting to his feet. The knees of his trousers were heavy with mud from where he'd knelt.

  She said nothing.

  "Sally, come on, we need to go now," he said gently.

  But she kept right on staring at the grave marker.

  "Anne is controlling her," she said to no one in particular.

  She looked first to Hanratty and then to Gonzalez and then back to the headstone. "Anne is controlling Jamie. She told me that herself."

  Hanratty and Gonzalez exchanged a helpless glance; then each man leaned down, took an arm, and slowly, carefully got her to her feet.

  She started crying. "Are we going to find Jamie? Are we going to help her?"

  All Hanratty could say was, "We're going to try, Sally. We're going to try."

  She pressed against him and began sobbing there in the drifting night, a full moon riding thunderheads now that the rain had stopped again.

  He did the only thing he could. He let her cry until she was exhausted. Then he helped her to the van, where Gonzalez waited chewing anxiously on a piece of gum and listening to the radio.

  When they were inside the van and leaving the cemetery, Sally said, "My daughter's in terrible danger, isn't she?"

  Hanratty slid his arm around her. "We're going to find her and she's going to be all right."

  "Do you really believe that?" she asked, almost childlike.

  In the light from the dashboard, Hanratty's jaw muscles worked, and then after a bit too much of a pause, he said, "Yes, yes I do. I believe that sincerely."

  2

  "Like this."

  He tried again and he still wasn't any damn good at it.

  "No. Not like you're smoking a cigarette. Hold it down in your lungs. Deep."

  He giggled. She'd given him two quarts of Budweiser and he'd drunk them both straight down.

  "What's funny?" she said.

  "Oh, nothin', I guess."

  "You forgot our promise?"

  He had in fact forgotten their promise. "Yeah. I guess I have."

  "You turd."

  "Just remind me. Then I'll remember."

  "If I remind you, of course you'll remember."

  All the time he talked, he was looking at her breasts. They were huge, mammoth, colossal, spectacular, overwhelming.

  They sat on her bed in the shadows from the lone streetlight outside her trailer. The air was heavy with marijuana—which she was trying to teach him to use properly—and popcorn. She'd made them a batch and put two whole sticks of melted margarine on it.

  "Okay," she said.

  "Okay what?"

  "I'm going to tell you the promise."

  "Good."

  "We promised we'd never have any secrets from each other once I showed you the stuff I promised you I'd show you."

  "Oh, yeah, right."

  "Well, I showed you what I promised I'd show you, right?"

  "Right."

  "Well, then don't have no secrets from me, lover, okay?"

  "So tell me why you're gigglin'."

  He felt his face get hot. He hoped she couldn't see him blush.

  "Oh, just' cause I'm feelin' older. You know."

  "No, I don't know."

  "Well, all the kids—well, you know how they treat me. Like I'm—like I'm not right. Because of the accident I had and all, and because I'm kind of slow."

  "You're not slow."

  "In a way I am."

  "Well, not real slow."

  "Well," he said, and then for a long time they lay and said nothing.

  He hadn't been fooling her about feeling older. In his time he'd read some paperback novels that his uncle always kept on his bureau. He had learned from them how adults felt after they'd just had sex.

  Bobby wished he smoked so he could send up a "blue haze," as the writers usually described it.

  Instead he just lay beside her feeling her very soft stomach, smelling her perfume and marijuana, and listening to his own stomach gurgle, trying to stop it.

  "So, you goin' to keep your promise?"

  "About not having any secrets?" Bobby asked. "Uh-huh."

  "Yeah. I'm gonna keep it."

  "Then that means you're gonna let me see the book, right?"

  He didn't say anything for a time, but then: "I guess."

  "You guess? I thought we were friends."

  "We are, Bethel."

  He sounded very young in the darkness.

  "Then let me see it."

  "Well. . ."

  "Well what?"

  "Well, I guess it'd be all right."

  "You let One Eye see it. He told me about it."

  "Yeah. I let him see it. But not right away."

  "Not right away? How come?"

  "Well, I found it in the cabin there, you know, kind of stuffed back into this hole behind a picture. And then—well."

  Silence again. Then, distant trains, a hoot owl, his own gurgling stomach.

  "I wonder why she killed him."

  "Who?"

  "That little girl, Jamie. I wonder why she killed One Eye."

  "You liked him, didn't you?"

  "He was nice to me," Bobby said.

  "Yeah. He was a wonderful guy, all right."

  Bobby sensed something less than sincerity in her voice, but then he wasn't truly an adult so he didn't know if he could really judge her.

  "Maybe the book was why she killed him."

  "Huh?"

  "Maybe he told her what he found out in the book and that's why she killed him."

  Bethel laughed. "Boy, I can't want to see this thing. Why don't I turn on a light and we'll look at it."

  Bobby gulped. "Shouldn't we put our clothes on first?”

  "Why?"

  "Well, 'cause you're going to turn on the lights and all."

  She laughed again. "You afraid I'm gonna see your little pee-pee?"

  Now his face was very hot. "No, it's just—"

  But she stopped him. "Okay. Let's put our clothes on first; then we'll look at the book."

  He had had so little kindness in his life that when anybody offered any at all, he was genuinely moved. "Thanks, Bethel," he said.

  He pulled his clothes on, feeling very much like an adult.

  Then from the back pocket
of his jeans he took a small leather bound book stamped DIARY and handed it over to her.

  Bethel took it eagerly.

  3

  When the Edmond O'Brien movie finished, Ron Evars said, "That was some picture, wasn't it?"

  "I wish he wouldn't have had to die."

  "That's what makes it so good."

  "That he had to die?"

  "Yeah. In most movies the hero lives."

  "Oh, yes; I see." Carlotta wanted to see, but she really didn't see. The hero didn't die in "The Sound of Music," the hero didn't die in "Carousel," the hero didn't die in "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers." But then, now that she thought about it, all the heroes in those movies sang songs. Maybe if Edmond O'Brien had sung a song in "D.O.A.," he wouldn't have had to die, either.

  Then she remembered what they were going to talk about.

  Ron Evars, apparently remembering too, and still not wanting to talk about it, started up from his chair and said, "Well, I guess I'll go down the hall and see if all our guests are doing okay."

  "I want you to tell me about Anne."

  He put a good evasive look on his face. "Oh, that's right. We were going to talk about that, weren't we?"

  "We certainly were." She sounded a little peeved that he'd tried to sneak out.

  "Well, everybody talks about Carleton and everybody talks about Anne," Ron said, "but you know who nobody ever talks about?"

  Carlotta shook her head.

  "Simone."

  "Carleton's wife."

  "Yep."

  "What about her?"

  He got evasive again. Ron was one of those reluctant people who hated to give offense by giving an opinion. In election years he managed to find good things to say about both sides and you never did know who the hell he voted for.

  She had to prompt him. "What about Simone, Ron?"

  "I'm not sure she was what she seemed."

  She frowned. She didn't like guessing games. "What do you mean?"

  He wiped at the beads of sweat on his cheek. "Darn stuffy in here."

  "Don't start evading the issue again."

  He looked at her and smiled. "You know something, Carlotta?"

  "What?"

  "I really like you."

  "Well, that's good."

  "You didn't let me finish."

  "Then go ahead, finish."

  "I like you most of the time except when the subject of Anne Edmonds comes up."

  She stared at him, irritated. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "It means that you should leave well enough alone." Something akin to sadness crept into his expression. "It means that maybe there were some things that you didn't know and that when you keep prodding them and all—well, maybe something terrible will happen."

  "I don't understand, Ron."

  "I know you don't understand, and I don't want you to understand."

  "Well, that's a heck of a thing to say."

  He stood in the doorway still looking curiously sad. "Just let it be, Carlotta. Let's just say that Anne did what she was accused of and forget it because even if she didn't, it makes no matter now. All right?"

  She started to say something else.

  "All right, Carlotta?" he said.

  And then, abruptly, he was gone.

  4

  Bobby slept.

  Bethel had given him sufficient marijuana and wine that he would be asleep a long time. Or so she hoped anyway.

  She sat at the round kitchen table with the red plastic napkin holder and the yellow plastic salt and pepper shakers and read the diary.

  She had been reading for nearly half an hour now, and even though it was written in a cramped longhand style, she read it as though it was a great gaudy trashy novel.

  Which in its way, of course, it was.

  The more she read, the more her dreams embellished themselves. She'd started out in black and white, on a small screen, but by now her dreams (given what the diary would buy her) were in full color, on a wrap-around Cinemascope screen and with the whole London Philharmonic playing the soundtrack.

  A couple times she heard Bobby stir.

  But then it was back to the diary and her Cinemascope dreams.

  5

  Lordy, was he going to pay; lordy, was he.

  After a while she put her hand in his and he took it and held it with a real reverence.

  He had not been with a woman since his cocaine days, and he missed not merely the sex but the tenderness. So he held her hand as if it were the most precious object in the universe.

  He knew better than to talk.

  He watched the plump raindrops sliding down the darkening windows, red here and there from the neon lights of the hospital emergency room below. Gonzalez had suggested she come here, dry off, rest. Now they sat, Hanratty and the Baines woman, in a lime-green room in the back of the hospital.

  "How am I going to find her?"

  "I checked with the sheriff’s office. They're looking for her."

  Bitterly, she said, "Of course they are. They're hunting her down like an animal."

  "They won't hurt her."

  But she was too tired to argue.

  They didn't talk for a while again. Outside in the corridor the hospital noises went on—squeaking shoes, the rubber wheels of gurneys, discreet calls for doctors over the public address system.

  She said, "I'm taking it out on you, aren't I?"

  "That's all right."

  "No, it isn't. You're actually a very nice man. I was wrong about you."

  "Maybe I was being cynical about it all."

  "What do you mean?"

  He sighed, glancing out the window at the whipping red lights against the raindrops.

  "When Carlotta contacted me about the Anne Edmonds story, I was desperate to get back at the network after they'd fired me." He shrugged. "I suppose I convinced myself that there really was something supernatural going on out here, so I came out and tried to build my case."

  "You don't think it is supernatural anymore?"

  "I'm not sure."

  She had tensed up again. "My daughter didn't kill that man." She withdrew her hand from his. "And what's more, I'm going to prove it."

  "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I'm not saying your daughter did kill anyone."

  Her temper flared. "Then what are you saying?"

  "I—I'm not sure again."

  She leaned back against the bed and closed her eyes. Softly, she said, "Maybe it would be better if you left."

  "You need a friend."

  "I've got a friend."

  "Who?"

  "Carleton Edmonds."

  "I'm not sure about him."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Nothing for sure. I just said I don't know about him."

  She nodded toward the door. "Please. I'd really like to be alone."

  This time she sounded exhausted. So he stood up, put a hand out, and touched her hand. Then he started to the door.

  "You know," he said, "you should stay here. Get some rest."

  "We'll see."

  "Whether you know it or not, I'm your friend."

  "Thanks." But her voice was hollow, and obviously she wanted him gone.

  "Sure," he said, "sure," and then was gone, one more pair of squeaking shoes down the hospital corridor.

  6

  Jamie came up out of her sleep as if she'd been slapped awake.

  She looked around the room, saw the moon shadows through the window. The rain had stopped.

  She had been dreaming, she wasn't sure about what.

  Then slowly it started to come back to her . . .

  It was night. From the forest surrounding the cabin came two people, a man and woman. They were holding each other, laughing. They stopped in the middle of the clearing and began kissing. His hands were all over her. It was as if their passion was so overwhelming they couldn't wait to get inside. You could see their knees begin to buckle. She threw her head back and her hair in the moonlight wa
s like fire. Then the man began to unbutton her clinging yellow summer dress and within moments she stood pagan-naked in the circle of grass and moonfire. The man fell to his knees and began to taste of her . . .

  Then Jamie received another impression, of something else going in the woods surrounding the cabin.

  Eyes.

  Yes, that was it.

  Eyes. Watching. Two pairs of them.

  Burning in the darkness there with the fire of the moon itself. . .

  Then the dream had ended and Jamie had come awake inside the cabin.

  She went in the bathroom and sat on the toilet for a while because she was so groggy she couldn't even pee. Finally she finished and then she shuffled back into the living room.

  And that was when she saw the big teenaged boy staring through the window.

  That was when—forgetting all about her exhaustion—she began screaming.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  1

  There was a tavern, RUFF NEX that Bethel liked to cruise on paycheck Fridays. The men there tended to be married and therefore in a hurry for the kind of drunk brought on by cheap drinks and quick sex. She just wiped herself off every half-hour and then went out into the woods in back, where she took it again for $20 or $25 or whatever she could argue them out of. She took it standing up or bending over with the scent of minty trees in her nostrils and sweat stinging her eyes and jism running down her legs and the country western jukebox bawling at the moon.

  Tonight she went to RUFF NEX to make the call. Of course, some of her regulars, pie-eyed on Jim Beam shots and 3.2 beer chasers, wanted to make sexy with her. She told them she was so tired she didn't think she could give 'em their money's worth tonight. They said, hell, she was woman enough for three men any time o' day or night. They thought that that's what she wanted to hear—but all she really wanted was to sit at the bar, smoke her Benson and Hedges, and think about how good it would be to have all that money and what she could do with it.

  What she really wanted was to work up the nerve.

  No matter how powerful the book made her—no matter how much One Eye had told her—it was still kind of scary.

  Calling him.

  Telling him.

  Demanding the money.