The Otherworld

by Mercedes Lackey

  "I don't think so, Miss McCormick," Andrew said, still smiling—but with the smile artfully condescending. "I think you may be right, that psychological help would be in order for Amanda—but I don't think that a school counselor who works for peanuts and sees his, ah, clients in the sardine-can atmosphere of public education would be of much use. While we want Amanda to be mainstreamed in a public school, and not sequestered away in a private and privileged academy, I don't think my open-mindedness runs to welfare-quality counselors. I'm sure we can find someone much more suitable through our contacts."

  Bingo, Lianne thought. And dollars to donuts she'll never go to see anyone, because they can't take a chance of Amanda talking to anyone. Outwardly, though, Lianne kept her expression neutral. "Of course, Mr. Kendrick. I wasn't suggesting that our counselor could provide therapy—only that she might be able to give us a direction in which to look for the problem. However, I'm sure that your choice of counselor will be even better. Just let me know when you come up with someone."

  The teacher stood. "I've taken enough of your time. Thank you for talking with me. I think we've come up with some positive avenues to explore, and I'm sure Amanda will benefit."

  Merryl and Andrew walked her back through the maze to the front door and showed her out, making small talk all the while.

  And when I get home, you creeps, I'm calling Social Services. And we'll see if you get away with blaming your kid's behavior on your ex-wife to them.

  CHAPTER SIX

  "You didn't ask to be excused," her step-mother called from the dining room.

  "Amanda Jannine Kendrick, get back to this table at once!" yelled Daddy.

  Amanda-Abbey, halfway up the steps to her room and running headlong, reluctantly turned and plodded back to the dining room.

  "Where were you going in such a hurry, young lady?" her daddy asked her.

  He glared at her from the head of the table. Her step-mother, lingering over hot tea and a wafer-thin slice of pound cake, shook her head with annoyance. Sharon sat next to her real mother, looking secretly pleased that Amanda was in trouble again.

  Amanda-Abbey looked from one adult to the other, and her fingers twisted against each other. She took a deep breath.

  "May-I-please-be-excused-I-have-to-go-clean-the-pony's-stall," she said in a rush.

  Her step-mother nodded curtly. "Wear your coveralls. I don't want those clothes ruined any more than they are."

  Her daddy just smiled, playing with his lighter, tumbling it end-over-end between two fingers.

  "I won't get them dirty. Promise."

  Amanda-Anne took over, hurling the child's scrawny body out of the dining room and up the stairs two at a time and into her room at breakneck speed. She grabbed worn coveralls from their spot behind the hamper and darted into the closet, closing the door behind her. Trembling and breathing hard, she flung on the coveralls in the darkness, then crept to the door. She listened, soft ear pressed against the cool, white wood. On the other side, there was nothing but silence.

  Silence, Amanda-Anne knew, was very bad.

  There were two sets of steps, one on either end of the hall. Both had landings halfway, and closets at the top and the bottom—

  Amanda-Anne closed her eyes and thought. No answers came to her, no pictures. And every minute she wasted gave the Father one more minute—

  She bolted out her door and to the left, heading for the front stairs, which were farthest from the dining room, praying that she had guessed right.

  Past the top closet and down the stairs—safe.

  Around the landing—still no sign of Him.

  Down the rest of the stairs—only a little further to go.

  Past the partly-open door of the closet at the bottom of the stairs—and an arm shot out and grabbed her and dragged her into the closet.

  "Boo," the Father whispered. He laughed softly in the darkness of the closet, and his hands pinned her against the smothering piles of coats. "You're lucky I'm not a monster."

  Amanda-Anne struggled to get away from him. The Father tightened his grip until her arms hurt. "Monsters wait in the dark for bad girls, Amanda. Getchells and morrowaries, slinketts and fulges. Big, drooly monsters with bloody red teeth and sharp claws and white eyes that glow. Slimy, slippery shapeless things that slither and drip burning goo and won't even leave your bones behind for anyone to find you, Amanda. And it's almost dark outside, Amanda. They'll be there any minute. Hungry monsters. When you go outside to clean your pony's stable, be sure the monsters don't get you."

  * * *

  Someone picked up after the seventh ring. A masculine voice said, "Hello?"

  Lianne closed her eyes and leaned her head against the wall next to her phone. Getting through to the government agency after-hours had been a morass of answering machines, people who were home but not on call, and people who were on call but not at home. The hospital emergency department's Cumberland County Social Services' after-hours emergency phone numbers were one week out of date. The person she'd finally reached, after an hour of trying, had given her four numbers that might put her in touch with the person she needed. She had tried three of the numbers, and they hadn't. This was her last hope, and she clenched the receiver in her hand until her knuckles went white. The real live voice on the other end of the line wasn't getting out of this until Amanda's rescue was guaranteed.

  "Hello," she said. "This is Lianne McCormick—I'm a teacher at Loyd E. Auman Middle School."

  "Don Kroczwski. What can I do for you?"

  Lianne took a deep breath. "I suspect that one of my students is being abused. I want her family checked out."

  "What kind of evidence do you have of the suspected abuse?" The man on the other end of the line sounded tired; bone-tired and heartsick.

  Lianne's voice went tense on her. "Evidence?"

  "Do you have reason to expect imminent danger to life or limb?" he asked—or rather, recited.

  This wasn't what she had expected. "For example—?"

  Kroczwski sighed deeply. "For example, does the kid say either of his or her parents said they were going to kill him or her? She or he have any old cigarette burn scars, rope burns, broken bones, bruises on the face or body, brothers or sisters who have died or been hospitalized in the last few weeks—anything like that?"

  Lianne's stomach contracted at his list of horrors. "She. Her name is Amanda Kendrick. And no. Nothing like that."

  The voice on the other end of the line sighed. "You got any reason to think the kid will be dead tomorrow if I don't go over there tonight?"

  The teacher bit her lip. "No," she said softly. "She shows psychological damage—personality problems—but nothing that makes me think her parents will murder her."

  "Okay. That's a problem, Ms. McCormick. I know that you know your students. I understand that you probably can tell when something is wrong, and I trust your judgment and your instincts, but I have to have something tangible. Bruises, something the kid told you, something I can show a judge. I can't walk up to her parents' house and tell them they are being investigated for child abuse because their kid's teacher has a bad feeling."

  "But I know something is wrong."

  "Ms. McCormick, I believe you, but let me give you an idea of how wrong things can be. I have a neighborhood outbreak of syphilis among three- to nine-year-olds that I'm investigating; I just got a call from the Cape Fear Emergency Room about a little girl whose mother dumped hot oil on her because she wouldn't be quiet. I have a five-month-old baby with broken arms and broken legs that the mother's boyfriend threw across the room and whose four brothers and sisters have to be gotten out of that situation. I have a dead kid who showed up in the morgue whose body hasn't been claimed. I have a list of call-in's from concerned neighbors and teachers and relatives as long as my arm with complaints that may or may not end up with a bunch of little bodies in little body-bags if I don't take care of them yesterday—and it's already almost tomorrow. Child abuse is the year's biggest growth indus
try. I understand wrong—I really do. You give me something to go on, and I'll be out there to check on your kid in a heartbeat. Okay?"

  Lianne's throat tightened. "Okay," she whispered. "If I can find anything, I'll call you back."

  The voice sounded even wearier. "Day or night."

  Tears started down Lianne's cheeks. "Okay. Thanks." She hung up the phone. Images of infants with arms and legs in plaster casts, little children with burns given to them by the people they wanted to love, with bruises and cuts and old scars and new wounds—kids who'd been shaken, beaten, screamed at, starved, tortured, raped, neglected—those images swirled around in front of her eyes, blurred by tears. And all those children began to have Amanda's face.

  * * *

  Amanda's pony was not kept in the main barn with the pedigreed Arabians Merryl Kendrick raised. It had its own quarters—a neat little doll-house version of the bigger barns, one Andrew Kendrick had ordered to be built for Amanda when she was five. It sat next to the main stables but did not connect with it in any way. Its cheerful, red-painted sides and white trim gleamed in the twilight; warm, yellow light spilled out of the opened top half of the front Dutch door. The neat, cedar-chip path crunched under Amanda-Alice's feet as she scurried down to finish cleaning the pony's stall.

  "Lazy slut," Amanda-Alice muttered under her breath. "You should have cleaned the barn when you got home from school. Then he wouldn't have made you come down here now. Stupid, wicked, worthless tramp—out chasing evil elves when you should have been working. You deserve to be punished. You deserve it."

  Amanda-Anne didn't have time for guilt. In the near-darkness, things moved. Shambling phantasms pressed close, deformed grotesqueries chittered in her ear, and—"Come to us, Amanda—we're hungry," unseen things whispered from the shadows, while their awful stomachs growled.

  No! Amanda-Anne thought, and lurched into a gallop.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that the darkness gained. The horrors were almost upon her—she could feel their breath on the back of her neck—

  "No!" she shrieked, and heard them laugh.

  And then somehow she was through the barn door, intact and uneaten, and the door was closed behind her. The heavy wooden bolt dropped into its brackets, and Amanda-Anne was safe from the monsters.

  In the stall, she picked up the pitchfork and began loading manure and straw into the little wheelbarrow. Her pony, Fudge, poked his head into the barn from the pasture entrance and whickered.

  "Vile, filthy beast," Amanda-Alice snarled. "You leave these messes to get us in trouble, don't you? You don't deserve supper."

  She ignored the bin of sweet feed in the corner, avoided looking at the little Shetland, and continued mucking the stall with short, sharp, angry jabs.

  * * *

  Andrew Kendrick paced the living room floor. Merryl curled in one of the overstuffed chairs, contracts spread on the floor around her.

  The man punched one closed fist into the palm of his other hand. "That child is a disgrace. When I was a child, my behavior was excellent. I never had a visit from one of my teachers. And for that woman to suggest school psychiatrists—"

  "Counselors," Merryl corrected. "Only counselors. Public schools don't keep psychiatrists on staff."

  "It doesn't matter. How dare that child cause me this sort of humiliation? How dare she?" A scowl carved itself deeper into Andrew's face, and his complexion flushed a hotter, uglier red. "She obviously hasn't had enough discipline," he growled.

  "Jesus," Merryl muttered. "Leave the kid alone for once."

  Andrew turned his anger on her. "Stay out of it, you bitch! She's my child, my responsibility. As you keep reminding me. It's up to me to make sure that she grows up to be a useful adult. She won't if you ruin her with your lax attitude. Look at Sharon. She's getting old enough that she needs firm discipline, and you let her run wild. She'll be worthless when she grows up."

  Merryl's voice went flat and dangerous. "Leave Sharon alone."

  Andrew stiffened and glared at his wife. "We'll see," he told her. He walked heavily toward the outside door. "I'm going to make sure Amanda does a good job on that stall. She's going to clean it until it's done right, even if she's out there all night—she's going to learn that I'm in charge around here. And she's going to learn that she has to do what I expect." He stopped and stared at his wife with cold, ugly rage. "That's something you could stand to remember, too, Merryl."

  He stalked out, slamming the door behind him.

  * * *

  Belinda sat cross-legged on the bed in Peterkin's shoddy hotel room, two decks of cards spread in front of her on the cheap polyester bedspread. "Black three on the red four . . . okay, and that opens up the red jack to the black queen . . . hah! Moves that to there—yes!" She briskly restacked, completed, and removed piles of cards.

  A rustle from the foot of the bed distracted her. She looked over from her game of Napoleon's solitaire to the floor, where Stevens and Peterkin were turning blue. "Oh—hi, guys." Her voice was bright and cheerful. "I thought you were dead already. Would you mind hurrying it up a little? I have plans for the evening." She grinned—perky, sexy, and charming, obviously a woman having a good time—and turned back to her cards.

  She played a few more moments and sighed with minor annoyance. "Dammit! I almost won that one." She riffled the cards together, staring at her two thugs.

  "Seems my prescription was okay, huh? At least it's working pretty well on you two. Well, fellas, I don't know why you wanted to double-cross me, but I guess we've proven that wasn't a good idea." She smiled at the dying men and began laying out the cards again. "Jerks."

  She spread out a deck of poker cards and began another game of solitaire, latex-gloved hands shuffling with some difficulty.

  Peterkin made strangling noises, then quit breathing. Froth foamed out of his mouth. Belinda smiled and flipped her hair back out of her face.

  "That's good—that's very good. You did that nicely, Joe. One down, one to go, Fred-ol'-buddy. Let's see if you die well, too."

  Fred Stevens lay on the dingy green carpet, sucking air like a beached fish for over half an hour after his partner threw in the towel. When his breathing ceased, Belinda folded up her cards, took both men's wallets, changed the ID's and other important papers, and dumped the wallets back on the dresser. Then she walked down to her car. When she came back, she carried a large shopping bag. She emptied the bag onto the bed and strewed her purchases around the room: a small packet of crack cocaine and the attendant drug paraphernalia, a white feather boa and a large, skimpy leopard-spotted negligee, a queen-sized pair of fishnet hose and patent leather shoes with six-inch spike heels—sized 12EE—a black leather men's bikini, battered handcuffs, and a well-worn bullwhip.

  Then she cut the clothing off of both men with a pair of heavy-duty bandage scissors, the kind EMT's and paramedics used, rolled the clothes into a ball and stuffed them into her now-empty bag. She rolled Stevens onto Peterkin in the best "compromising position" she could manage, considering he was the smaller of the two corpses and weighed more than twice what she did. But police training came in handy. When she had them more or less posed, she put the shoes on Peterkin's feet and the handcuffs around his wrists, and draped the feather boa once around Steven's neck. Then she stood, breathing hard, and chuckled softly.

  "That ought to amuse the investigators for a while," she whispered, and grinned cheerfully. She looked at her watch. Time to see what my race-driver is doing. I need to be able to collect him tomorrow.

  * * *

  The front doors of Amanda's barn rattled. The child was busy shoveling manure into the wheelbarrow and didn't notice the noise the first time. The second time, however, she stopped and cocked her head to one side, listening. The noise did not recur a third time, and after waiting a moment, she nodded with satisfaction and resumed her cleaning.

  She didn't realize the Father had come into the barn through the pasture door until she heard the top Dutch doors click,
and the heavy thud as he carefully dropped the door-bar into the brackets.

  Inside the pony's stall, all the Amandas stiffened. Cethlenn noticed the change in their attitudes and froze, listening.

  A series of light clicks followed—the sound of a key in a lock, the sound of light furniture being moved, the clink of metal.

  Suddenly, Cethlenn realized that Amanda-Alice and Amanda-Abbey were gone. The only one who remained with her was Amanda-Anne.

  Thud, thud, thud—the Father's heavy steps left the storage room, walked slowly closer—

  Then the Father was right there, standing in the doorway of the stall, completely filling it. Cethlenn watched with Amanda-Anne, staring up and up and up at the huge form of the man.

  "The stall looks very dirty, Amanda," the Father said. "What a very lazy, nasty, dirty little girl you have been." He smiled, his lips pulled back across his teeth so that they gleamed in the light of the naked, dangling light bulb.

  Inside their head, Amanda-Anne made a mewling sound that died before it reached their lips. Cethlenn shuddered.

  "I ought to make you lick the floor clean," the Father said. "Would you like that?"

  Knives and whips and ropes and sharp, hot things danced in Amanda-Anne's head, and dull red rage blurred the child's vision. Cethlenn was forced back by the spreading fury, and fear clutched at her.

  The Father's smile got bigger, and he took a step toward them. "I said," he whispered, "would you like that?"

  Oh, gods, just answer him, child, Cethlenn thought.

  "No," Amanda-Anne said.

  "No," the Father mimicked, his voice a chilling falsetto. "Oh, no. You wouldn't like that. But you're a dirty little girl, aren't you, Amanda?"

  The child stared at him, silent.

  "I said, you're a dirty little girl, aren't you?"

  "Yes," Amanda-Anne said.

  "And we know what dirty little girls really like, don't we, Amanda?"

  Amanda-Anne wrapped her frail arms around herself and stared up at the Father in silent terror. Cethlenn felt sick.