The Girl in the Attic
Page 19
But she did it.
She closed her eyes and shoved her hand down inside his right pocket and found . . .
At first she wasn't sure what it was, but gradually, feeling the corners of it, she knew that her fingers had come in contact with a lighter.
She jerked it out of his pocket so furiously that the fabric tore.
She had just started to stand up and had backed toward the closet when something in her peripheral vision stopped her.
Something had moved—or had it?
She peered into the gloom at the bottom of the stairs for sight of the rats, but she saw nothing.
Sighing, she decided she had been hallucinating. She stared at Carleton again. He certainly hadn't moved. He was dead.
Gripping the lighter in her hand, she made her way back up the stairs and once again into the maze of boxes. She had no problem finding the closet.
She opened the door, stepped inside, and held up the lighter torch-like, so it would spread light a good distance and . . .
The lighter wouldn't work.
It gave off sparks. But if wouldn't work. Not the way she needed it to, anyway.
She tried to get glimpses of the big closet in the flashing sparks but all she could see were the white walls and deeper shadows at the far end of the large room.
Then she heard the whimper, the unmistakably human whimper.
Clutching the lighter, she ran to the other end of the closet, the continued whimpering guiding her.
And it was there she found her mother.
She took the tape off her mother's mouth as carefully as possible, then worked on the rope binding her ankles and wrists.
"Oh, Mom, I love you so much," she kept saying over and over.
They hugged each other as they'd never hugged before. "Anne didn't kill those people," Jamie said, and she told her mother everything Bobby had learned from the diary. She finished by saying, "It was like Anne took ahold of my hand or something—and aimed the ax right at her father's chest."
"Oh, honey, oh honey," her mother kept repeating, holding her, crying, finally starting to stand up. "Let's go find the sheriff."
At first Sally limped. She'd been tied up so long her circulation had been impaired. By the time they were near the landing, however, she was moving well again.
Hanratty flipped his Winston out the window and got out of the van as soon as it reached the curb in front of the Royal Hotel.
"You know where you're going, man?" Gonzalez called.
"The attic," Hanratty shouted over his shoulder.
Carleton stood in front of them.
Jamie was a few steps ahead of her mother when she saw him.
"Mom!" Jamie cried, holding out an arm so her mother would go no further.
They both stared at the man.
He had pulled the ax from his chest, and now it lay in his hands, dripping with blood and entrails. His eyes had ceased being human hours ago. Now neither Jamie nor her mother could bear to look at them—there was too much sadness and rage and madness in them.
"You little bitch, you tried to kill me," Carleton said.
"No, it wasn't me. It was Anne . . . your daughter."
"She's dead. Has been for years."
Jamie could see that the man had the strength for only one more act—and that was going to be her death.
Sally ran toward him, hoping to knock him off his feet, but he was surprisingly fast.
He swung the ax around so that the flat end caught her in the jaw and catapulted her backward into the boxes.
Jamie screamed and started to go to her but tripped and fell.
"You little bitch," Carleton said again.
He stood over her now with the certainty of a man operating a guillotine.
The blade gleamed.
All Jamie could do was huddle into herself and wait for the worst to happen.
Then the voice said: I won't let him do it, Jamie. You're my friend.
Jamie opened her eyes in time to see the ax fly from Carleton's hands and then turn back on him. The ax opened up his stomach so that his innards fell out in a steaming pile; then his arms were cut off; then his feet.
He fell over, the strength to scream still not having left him. Then the ax fell across his neck, cleaving it from his shoulders.
Jamie had ceased watching minutes ago.
This time when she opened her eyes, she saw that somebody else stood at the top of the stairs looking at them.
The reporter Hanratty.
Jamie watched as he went over and helped Sally to her feet and watched as they embraced, Sally beginning to sob helplessly.
Slowly Jamie got to her feet, trying to avoid sight of the human remains that had once been Carleton Edmonds.
Ten minutes later, Jamie sat in the back of Dr. Gonzalez's van. The night flashed red and blue as police and emergency vehicles filled the area around the hotel. Soon, they would discover the diary, tattered and coated in gore, when they found Carleton’s body. Then they would understand.
Next to her was her mother, who held her as if she were afraid Jamie would be blown away by an errant wind.
Gonzalez started the engine and said, "How about if we all go get cleaned up and then go out and have some breakfast. Sound good to you, Jamie?"
"Sounds great," Jamie dead-panned.
She knew that all three adults wanted her to sound exultant.
But she had been through too much. Her old life seemed very far away. She seemed older to herself, and she did not yet know if that was a good thing.
"Jamie loves pancakes," Sally said. She stroked back the girl’s hair and forced a smile. It was obvious she was trying to sound happy, too.
"Then that's what we'll have," Hanratty said. "Pancakes."
The van pulled away from the curb, the hotel receding in the chill night behind them.
Something prompted Jamie to turn around for a last look at the place.
And then she saw it.
In the window. The attic window. A glow. For just a second—so fast that most people would have mistaken it.
A glow.
"Goodbye," Jamie whispered to her friend Anne, who was free now to enjoy the life of the dead.
"Did you say something, Jamie?" her mother asked.
But Jamie knew better than to share her secret with anybody.
No one, not even a kindly mother, would understand such things.