No Time to Die ds-3

by Элизабет Чандлер

"Peace."

  Maggie stroked my face with a thumb that felt like cold sandpaper. "Don't you know, there is no peace for those who have lost someone too soon. I still hear Melanie calling me. In the middle of the night I awaken and hear her. Don't forget me, Mommy. Don't forget, she says, just as she did when I'd work long hours away from home. In the middle of the night I feel her soft breath on my cheek. Sometimes she tells me what to do."

  "What to do-like what?" I asked warily. Maggie was acting strange but not necessarily suicidal. I wondered if she had written the note to lure me up here.

  She tilted her head and gazed at me solemnly. "It shouldn't surprise anyone, Jenny, that you became upset at camp. You kept hearing about Liza. You were having dreams about her. And someone was playing pranks, haunting the theater like the ghost of Liza. No wonder you became confused and depressed."

  "I am not depressed."

  "How unfortunate your parents chose this time to leave you alone." Her voice had shifted from high pitch to low and smooth as syrup. "I'll write a note explaining-in your handwriting, just like that on your application. I'll explain why you had to kill yourself."

  I took a step back from her. The strange, sympathetic look on Maggie's face chilled me to the bone. I glanced at the stone sill, then beyond it. Below me the tower roof sloped far too steeply to stop a fall. I began edging toward the trapdoor.

  Maggie saw the movement and lunged at me, shoving me back against the wall with such force I couldn't stay on my feet. I slid onto the sill. My head snapped back, as if someone had pulled a chair out from behind me sixty feet up. I reached out wildly for something-anything I could get my hands on-the stone sill, the pillar. My feet touched cement again and I dropped down in a crouch. As long as I was lower than the sill, she couldn't push me over it. I crawled toward the trapdoor.

  "Get up! Get up!" Maggie shrieked and kicked at my stomach, bringing her foot up hard into my ribs. Breathless from, the blows, I scrambled through the door, dropping down so quickly my foot missed the rung. It caught two rungs down. I descended as fast as I dared. When I reached the spiral stairs, I turned so I could run down them face forward. I heard Maggie's footsteps above me.

  At last I was on the regular-size treads. I raced downward. Too fast! My heel slipped over the edge of one. I went sliding down on my back, my left wrist bent behind me. I was stopped by the wall. Pain crippled my left wrist. With my right hand I quickly grasped the railing, pulled myself to my feet, and continued downward.

  Reaching the hall, I rushed through it and around the corner toward the back door of the theater. I pushed hard against the double doors. They gave slightly, then stopped. I glanced down at the handle. A chain, someone had chained the doors!

  I didn't know what to think. This was the entrance I had come through just a few minutes ago and now it was locked from the inside. Maggie had acted as if she alone was after me, but this door had been chained by someone else.

  I heard Maggie's footsteps in the hall and hurried up the steps to the stage. The light above the staircase suddenly went off.

  "Who's there?" Maggie called out.

  I glanced over my shoulder. The lights in the hall below had also gone off. The uncertainty in Maggie's voice told me she hadn't been the one to cut the power. I tried to remember if I had seen an unmarked door downstairs. If I knew where the electrical room was, I'd have some idea where the other person was, perhaps the person who had chained the doors. But my mind was reeling with fear and the sudden darkness confused me. It must have confused Maggie, too, for I heard doors opening and closing below and soft cries of surprise.

  Tiptoeing onto the back of the stage, I saw the emergency Exit signs glowing and the trail of tiny floor lights leading up to them. I wanted to make a run for it. But what if the lobby's outer doors had been chained, too? And what if the lights came back on? I'd be cornered with no place to hide.

  I tried to recall what scenery and props were in the wings, to think of something that might conceal me. I remembered the extension ladder. I could climb to the catwalk, then kick aside the ladder. I doubted Maggie would be able to get up the wall rungs, and, as far as I knew, she had no weapon.

  I thought we had placed the ladder close to the center of the catwalk. Using the Exit signs to center myself, I moved slowly downstage, putting both hands out in front of me. I touched the ladder. Placing my foot lightly on the first rung, I reached with my left hand to pull myself up and gasped with pain. I had been too panicked to notice how badly my wrist was hurt. It was useless to me. I took a deep breath and quietly began to climb the ladder using only my right hand.

  I heard Maggie at the bottom of the stairs to the stage. I continued on in slow motion. I heard her at the top of the steps, flicking switches. No lights came on. I continued to climb stealthily.

  "Stay where you are," Maggie said loudly, as if she were directing campers.

  Objects were knocked over. It sounded as if she was looking for something. There was a long moment of silence and I was afraid to move, afraid that just a shift of weight on the metal ladder would give me away. I figured I was little more than halfway up the thirty-foot climb.

  A bright light came on. She had found a flashlight.

  The light swung slowly over the stage, the beam wavering as if her hand was shaking, touching the ladder, passing below me. Maggie walked toward the apron of the stage. I watched the play of the beam along the rows of seats. It became steadier, then the light spun around and streaked up the ladder, stopping at me.

  I scrambled up two rungs.

  "Stop!" she commanded, shining the light in my eyes.

  I felt as I did under the glare of stage lights. My stomach grew queasy. I began to sweat. I pulled myself up a rung, but my legs felt unsteady.

  "One step farther and I will knock over the ladder," Maggie threatened.

  I turned my face away from the light. "Why are you doing this to me?"

  Maggie circled the ladder, trying to keep the beam in my eyes.

  "Please tell me why."

  "You still don't remember?" Her voice quivered. "You must! Every day of my life I wake up remembering the fire."

  "The one Melanie was in?"

  "You were only three when it occurred," she said, "the same age as Melanie, and your parents were careful not to talk about it. But the memory is with you. You're standing in the third-floor window with Liza. The lights of fire trucks and emergency vehicles are shining up at you. A crowd has gathered below."

  As she spoke, a wave of sickness washed over me.

  I gritted my teeth and took a step up. My hands were slippery with sweat.

  "Every time you stand on a stage with lights shining up at you, darkened faces in the audience watching you, the memory and the fear come back."

  I climbed another rung. My heart pounded in my ears.

  I could feel the heat at my back. I saw strange faces three stories below me, people looking up from a dark New York street. There were lights in my eyes, a dizzying pattern of red, yellow, and blue lights on the street below.

  "Jenny, come on! Jenny, please!" Liza begged. She reached for my hand, then grasped my fingers. The metal ladder that had inched toward us finally rested against the windowsill, but I didn't want to get on it. It clanked and moved with each step of the firefighter climbing toward us. "Don't be afraid. I'll help you."

  "It's coming back, isn't it?" Maggie observed, her voice breaking through the memory.

  There was no blue gleam in these images and no blue gleam in those I had seen at Maggie's house. I should have noticed that before. When I'd gazed at Melanie's picture, I had seen the fragments of buried memory, not the images of a psychic vision.

  "Brian recognized you the first day of camp from a photo Liza had shown him," Maggie went on, "but he didn't tell me until this morning. He pretended interest in you so he could find out why you were here. It was stupid of him. I know why, and you, remembering as you must now, will understand why I had to kill Liza."

  "I
will never understand!"

  "You will!" she shouted back. "And you'll remember every horrible detail and suffer as I have every day since the fire.

  "We were neighbors in New York, all of us working long hours, raising small children. Your parents let Brian and Melanie stay with you, even when they hired a sitter. My husband was glad-it saved money-but I should have known better. Liza was a wild child. One February night, when I had Brian with me and had left Melanie with your baby-sitter, Liza played with matches."

  I sagged against the ladder, guessing what came next.

  "Liza set the fire. Liza killed Melanie!"

  Now I understood what my sister had been referring to in her final e-mail, the terrible thing she had done but didn't mean to. "And when Liza saw you and Brian, she remembered it," I said.

  "She remembered the fire, but she didn't recognize Brian or me. In New York she knew me as Mrs. Jones. When I divorced, I took back my maiden name. The name Brian Jones is common enough, and Brian is a man now, not a five-year-old boy. I didn't tell her who we were until the day before she died.

  "For the first three weeks of camp I quietly watched her shine, dark-haired, blue-eyed, and pretty as my daughter would have been, a bright future ahead of her, the future my daughter should have had." Maggie's voice grew breathless. "Liza talked endlessly about her experiences-experiences that should have been Melanie's-about all her successes-successes my child deserved! "

  Maggie turned suddenly. The beam of her flashlight dodged around the stage. "What's that? Who's there?"

  "I didn't hear anything."

  I figured that someone else was in the building, but if it was someone who wanted to hurt me, I was no worse off. And if it was someone who would help, then better to pretend I'd heard nothing. Maggie wasn't thinking clearly enough to question the cut in electric power; perhaps she thought I had done it.

  The beam of her flashlight paused at a table of tools. Maggie walked over to it, and I took two more steps up.

  "At the end of the third week someone set a fire in Drama House," Maggie continued as she fingered the sharp tools. "Liza could brag about her experience with fire, too-how she and her sister had escaped with their baby-sitter through a third-floor window, but a playmate had hidden in a closet and died."

  Maggie's face looked distorted, her jaw and the deep sockets of her eyes illuminated by the light she held over the table.

  "How your parents showed you the fire exits at every theater and every place you stayed, how they taught you what to do. Like I was a bad parent!"

  The beam of her flashlight bobbed and glittered off the knives on the table.

  "Like it was my fault that Melanie died!"

  She picked up a wood chisel, a four-inch point with a sturdy handle. I glanced upward. There were six more rungs to the catwalk, but just one more would allow me to reach up and grasp it.

  "Your parents told Liza it was Melanie's fault for hiding when the baby-sitter called her." Maggie's voice kept rising. "They should have told Liza how wicked she was, how she killed someone, how she murdered my daughter!"

  "Liza was only four years old," I protested. "She didn't understand the consequences."

  "Liza took from me my greatest treasure!" Maggie cried out, then lowered her voice. "Last summer I took back. I wrote the note she thought Mike had sent. I knew Liza would slip out, even wait for him till I could be sure she and I were alone. Finally I had justice. Your parents and I were even, each left with one child. Then you came." She took a deep breath. "I liked you, Jenny. I felt… motherly toward you, when I didn't know who you were."

  "We can work things out, Maggie," I said. "We can get help for you and me, for our families-" "Don't you listen?" she exploded. "No one can help me! No one can end for me that night I watched you being helped down the ladder, watched you and Liza and the baby-sitter. I waited on the street, clutching Brian's little hand." Maggie's voice grew hysterical. "I watched and I waited for Melanie. I'm waiting still!"

  The abrupt shift of the flashlight warned me. I pulled myself up one more rung, then felt the impact of her rushing against the ladder. I flung my hands upward, grasping the edge of the metal walk as the ladder was dragged out from beneath me. It crashed onto the stage.

  "Flashlight, flashlight," Maggie called from below, like a small child calling a pet-or an adult totally unhinged. "Where are you, flashlight?"

  High above her I dangled in darkness. My left hand was useless. I hung by my right. She found the light and shined it up at me. I pulled back my head to study the structure of the catwalk, a suspended strip of metal lace. My shadow flickered over it like a black moth.

  "It's almost over, Jenny," Maggie said, her voice growing eerily soft. "Sooner or later, you will let go. Everyone lets go, except me."

  There was a ridge along the catwalk's edge, the thin piece of metal my fingers grasped, then a large gap between that and a restraining bar. I knew I had to swing my legs onto the narrow walkway, but my right hand was slick with sweat. If I swung my body hard, my hand would slip off. I hung from one arm, looking down at Maggie.

  "Sooner or later."

  "Maggie, I'm begging you-" I stopped midsentence. I had felt the catwalk vibrate. I grasped the metal harder, but my grip kept slipping. My hand rotated, my palm sliding past the thin ridge.

  "Hold on, Jenny!"

  Mike's voice. He must have climbed the wall rungs. His footsteps shook the catwalk.

  The base of my fingers suddenly slid past the edge. I tried to tighten my grip, but felt the rim of the catwalk moving toward the tips of my fingers. I was hanging by the tips-I couldn't hold on. "Mike!"

  A hand swooped down.

  The theater went black.

  I've fallen, I thought; I've blacked out. But Mike's fingers were wrapped tightly around my wrist. Maggie had turned off the flashlight.

  "Other hand! Give me your other hand, Jenny!"

  "Where are you? I can't see."

  "Here. Right above you."

  "I can't grip with this hand. I hurt it: " "Hurt it where?"

  "My wrist."

  Mike's fingers groped for mine, then moved quickly and lightly past my injured wrist and halfway down my forearm. Now he gripped hard.

  "I'm lying on my stomach," he said, "and have my feet hooked around the walk. I'm going to pull you up."

  He tried, but it was impossible from that angle.

  "I can swing my body, swing my feet," I told him, "if you hold on tight. Don't let go."

  He grasped my arms so fiercely I knew I'd have bruises. I swung my legs and hips as if I were on a high bar, till I caught hold of the walk with my feet.

  With Mike's help I clambered up the rest of the way.

  He pulled me close and wrapped his arms tightly around me. I couldn't stop shaking.

  "You're okay, Jen. I've got you."

  I clung to him, burrowing my head into his chest. He reached with one hand to touch my face, then quickly put his arm around me again, as if he had sensed my panic when he let go. Instead of his hand, he used his cheek to smooth mine.

  "I'm not going to let anything happen to you."

  "Where is she?" I whispered. "Where's Maggie?"

  "Don't know," he answered quietly. "Stay still. Listen."

  There was a long minute of silence, then a sudden banging noise.

  "The door," I said. "She's at the door at the bottom of the steps. She can't get out that way. It's chained."

  "Chained?"

  "From the inside," I told him. "How did you get in?"

  "I tried the doors, everything was locked, so I came through Walker's window."

  "Did you cut the power?" I asked. No.

  "Then someone else is in the building."

  He was silent for a moment. "Brian?"

  "I don't know."

  "Stay here," Mike instructed and carefully disentangled himself from me. "I'll see what's up."

  When he stood, I grabbed his ankle. "Oh, no, you don't. Not without me."

 
"It's safer here."

  "It's safer two against one," I argued.

  "It could be two against two."

  "All the more reason." I reached for his hand, pulled myself up, then grasped the restraining bar.

  We climbed down the wall rungs, then tiptoed to the steps and paused to listen.

  "I want you to stay behind me," Mike whispered. No way.

  "Don't be heroic, Jenny. We just want to get out."

  "Heroic? I'm faster and don't want to get stuck behind you."

  He swallowed a laugh, then pulled me back against him. "If we get out of here alive, you've got a date for a race.

  I wondered if he thought I was as brave as I pretended. "Did you leave Walker's door open?"

  "That's what we're shooting for."

  When we reached the bottom of the steps, we crept side by side down the hall. My ears strained to pick up movement. We had to be close to the turn, I thought, close to Walker's office. I prayed no one had shut and locked the door. Finally my hands touched the corner of the hall.

  "Almost there," I whispered.

  Just as we reached the office door, something fell, something in Maggie's office.

  Mike pushed me from behind. "Go, Jen! Go!"

  I rushed through Walker's office toward the open window. Mike shoved me through and I pulled him out after me. We sprang to our feet, ready to run, then heard commotion inside the building. Maggie screamed. The blinds in her window were flattened against the glass, as if something had crashed against them. Mike and I waited, holding on to each other, shivering.

  After a long moment the shades swung inward ominously, the weight no longer pressing on them. They were pulled up and Arthur peered out. He opened the window, his face shining in the pale light, a dark streak on his cheek.

  "I'm all finished," he announced.

  Mike's arms tightened around me.

  "All done. There's no reason to be afraid."

  Mike walked backward, away from the building, pulling me with him.

  "I won't hurt you. It was her I had to kill," Arthur said. "She took what was mine. She killed the girl and pretended to be me. You understand, don't you?