Last Seen Alive

by Carlene Thompson

  They would probably have been relegated to the waiting room if Kate hadn’t gushed forth again and Beverly wavered, “I think she’s been poisoned,” before nearly passing out. The two people ahead of them urged that Kate be taken in next. “Stay out here with Ian,” Beverly told Chyna, who looked at the terrified little boy in a Donald Duck suit and felt helpless despite always feeling in control when she was on duty at the Albuquerque hospital, where she was not dealing with her own family. “I’ll call Ned,” she said to Beverly, ready to rush down the hall with a nurse and a heaving Kate. “What’s his cell phone number?”

  “I saw his cell phone on the bedroom dresser recharging, and I can’t think of his private office number.” Beverly started to cry. “Oh God, I’m just blank!”

  At the sight of his mother’s panic, Ian began to howl. “Never mind.” Chyna waved for her sister-in-law to follow the nurse, a heaving Kate in tow. Then Chyna bent down to her nephew. “Ian, you know I’m a doctor and I promise you that everything is going to be fine,” she said in what she hoped was a convincing voice.

  “Kate’s gonna die,” Ian insisted. “She ate poison canny.”

  “We don’t know that the candy was poisoned. Maybe she was just allergic to it.”

  “What’s ’lergic’ mean?”

  “ ’Allergic’ means it didn’t agree with her. It made her sick.”

  “But it could kill her and then who’m I gonna play with? The boys don’t like me anymore ’cause I’m a duck.” Ian sobbed harder, then burst into a siege of hiccoughs.

  Chyna didn’t know whether to be annoyed or amused that Ian was mainly concerned over the possible loss of a playmate. She decided on amusement when she reminded herself he was only three years old. He could get away with being selfish at three.

  She started to suggest they get something from the candy

  machine, then decided that was the worst idea possible after Kate’s experience with candy. Instead, Chyna picked up Ian and said, “Let’s look out the window at all the pretty lights across the street,” the pretty lights coming from the house of a family who left Christmas decorations up all year long. Ian sniffled and agreed. In a moment, he stared mesmerized by a giant sleigh pulled by remarkably lifelike deer and carrying Santa. Three large artificial trees in the front windows were draped with glittering ornaments and strings of old-fashioned lights, and every eave of the house looked as if it bore dozens of glowing white icicles.

  Ian smiled and pointed. “Pretty!”

  Chyna stared until all the lights began to blend, forming a swirl of bright color. “Forever,” she muttered. “Forever and ever and ever.”

  Ian ignored her, his attention captured by Rudolph’s huge red nose. Chyna didn’t see the garish nose. Chyna saw tall, dark shrubbery. She reached out and touched a leaf, strong and green. Then she saw white. Just a flash. “A ghost?” she murmured.

  “What?” Ian asked with a mixture of excitement and fear. “Ghost? Where?”

  Chyna gasped. Pain shot through her head, as if she’d been struck. She threw out her arms, leaving Ian to drop straight down onto his heavily padded duck bottom. She felt herself flailing, something scratching the flesh on her arms, stinging badly, something closing around her neck. Then she smelled a sweet odor. Don’t breathe, she heard in her mind. From a long way off, she heard Ian crying, but she couldn’t concentrate on him—only on not breathing. Don’t breathe! Don’t breathe! Can’t help it. Can’t help …

  “Are you all right?” Someone had taken hold of her shoulder and was shaking her gently. “Ma’am?”

  She struck out with her left arm and a man’s hand closed around her wrist before it made contact with his chin. “Ma’am, what’s wrong? Ma’am?” Suddenly his weather-beaten face sharpened into Chyna’s view. “Nurse? Somebody?” he yelled.

  Chyna shut her eyes for a moment, then snapped them

  open. A woman held Ian, her gaze fastened on Chyna with outrage. “You dropped him!”

  Chyna staggered and the man helped her to a chair. “Lady, what’s wrong?”

  The waiting room, the man with the weather-beaten face, the woman with the furious eyes, poor sobbing Ian in his ridiculous costume, all came into focus. “Oh my God,” Chyna gasped. “I don’t know what happened. I… Ian! Ian, are you hurt?”

  “No, he isn’t, no thanks to you!” the woman snarled, squeezing Ian so tightly he could hardly breathe. “What’s wrong with you? Are you drunk?”

  “Drunk? No! My niece. She’s back there….”

  The man still hovering over Chyna gave the woman a hard look. “I was here when this woman came in with her sister. Her niece has probably been poisoned. I think the shock just hit her.”

  “Yes. The shock…” Chyna mumbled, knowing very well she wasn’t suffering from shock. She’d had a vision. A soul-shaking vision more vivid than she’d had for years. “I’m all right now.” She looked up at the woman. “May I have my nephew?”

  “No,” the woman snapped truculently. She glared at Chyna with her cold, narrow eyes. “What are you going to do next? Throw him against the wall?”

  Ian struggled in the woman’s death grip. “Aunt Chyna,” he managed almost breathlessly. “Want Aunt Chyna!”

  “Give her the child,” the man said. The woman looked at him defiantly. “Give her the child, lady,” he said forcefully. “He’s her nephew and she’s all right now.” The woman glared at the man, then at Chyna, then back at the man. “Ma’am, do I have to call security?” he asked the woman in a low, stern voice.

  “Oh, okay, but if she hurts him, it’s your fault!” The woman thrust Ian at the man, who gave him a reassuring smile, then set him gently on Chyna’s lap. “You looked like you were going to pass out and I couldn’t get a nurse in here to help you,” he said to Chyna.

  “I don’t need a nurse. I’m fine now. Really.”

  “All right. How about a cup of coffee instead? It’s only that vending machine stuff….”

  “That would be wonderful,” Chyna said with a shaky smile. “And thank you for your kindness.”

  Twenty minutes later, after the narrow-eyed woman had loudly told every newcomer to the waiting room about Chyna dropping Ian, a nurse arrived and asked Chyna to join her sister in an examining room. Chyna clutched Ian and fled the waiting room, still shaken by her experience but more worried about Kate. Oh God, she thought. Don’t let that vision have anything to do with her. Let her be all right.

  And she was. Although Beverly still looked as bleached and frightened as if her daughter had nearly died, the doctor told them that Kate had merely ingested that famous vomit inducer ipecac. “A large dose can be fatal, but your daughter swallowed just enough to make her sick,” he told Beverly. “It’s a dirty trick some people like to pull on kids at Halloween, but not uncommon.” Then he assured everyone that Kate would feel better in the morning.

  The four of them dragged out to the car. Beverly and Chyna were both limp, although giddy with relief, but Kate was another matter. She’d ruined her princess gown, which set her howling in heartbroken tears all the way home. Ian wailed right along with her just to keep his sister company.

  Ned arrived at the house shortly after they did. “Where in the world have you been?” Beverly demanded. “It’s almost ten o’clock!”

  Ned looked tired, frustrated, slightly disheveled, with the lines between his eyebrows deeper than when he’d left for the car lot. “I never worked so damned hard selling two cars in my life! Father and son wanted the same new Lincoln and I thought they were going to come to blows before the spoiled kid gave in and allowed his father to buy him something else.” Then he saw his two tear-stained children and shouted, “What the hell happened here tonight?”

  Exhausted and shaken by her experience at the hospital, Chyna left Beverly to explain the disaster of the evening and

  drove quickly through town, where a few beyond-curfew trick-or-treaters wandered, then up the badly lighted asphalt road to her own home. This was the first nigh
t without daylight saving time, meaning darkness had fallen an hour earlier than usual, and she suddenly wished the lighting along the road were better even though the stars seemed especially bright.

  As soon as she opened the door to the house, Michelle bounded toward her with a mixture of ecstasy and fear. Heart sinking, Chyna yelled, “Uncle Rex,” a couple of times, but she knew he was gone even though she hadn’t looked in the garage for his car. On a table beside the door and under a lamp lay a note from him saying that as of eight o’clock they’d had not one trick-or-treater, so he’d decided to go visit an old friend who’d recently lost his wife. They might go out for a few beers together.

  Chyna shook her head as she put down the note. Typical Rex—charming and unreliable. Just because no one had come to beg for candy didn’t mean a few of the town’s teenage troublemakers wouldn’t decide to do some damage to a large, dark house on All Hallows’ Eve. “But Rex would never think of that,” she told Michelle, who was nervous at having been left alone in unfamiliar territory and clung closely to Chyna. “Uncle Rex thinks mainly about having a good time. He always did.” She quirked a smile at Michelle. “But you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

  Michelle huffed in agreement.

  Still shaken by what had happened earlier, Chyna circuited the house, making certain every door and window was locked. Then she fixed a vodka tonic and sat down on the family room couch to watch a movie, but she couldn’t relax and concentrate. Don’t breathe! The words she heard in the hospital waiting room kept echoing in her mind in a slightly familiar voice: Certainly not Zoey’s. Then there’d been the flash of white, the stinging of her arms, then an overpoweringly sweet smell. None of it fit together. It was a jumble, nothing but a jumble. Random images like a dream, she told herself. I was tired and upset and cold and …

  “And something is wrong,” she said aloud in a hopeless voice. “I can’t escape it. Something awful has happened tonight.”

  Chyna waited until one o’clock, but Rex never came home. If she’d known what friend he was visiting, she would have called; that’s how desperate she was. Tonight the house seemed large and lonely and—she hated to even think it— haunted. Michelle, sensing Chyna’s distress, cuddled close to her in bed. She hugged the big dog close to her, grateful that tonight of all nights she wasn’t completely alone.

  2

  Deirdre Mayhew stepped out of the house for a cigarette. Her father would have a fit if he knew she smoked. He would have a fit if he knew she drank, even sparingly during a Halloween party at a friend’s house. He really didn’t even want Deirdre to go to the party, but after the necessity of making her work at his cafe, L’Etoile, while she finished her senior year of high school and helped with her dying mother, then watching Deirdre’s pain when she’d learned she’d finished summer school too late to attend college this year with her friends, he’d been unable to deny all of her pleasures. Not that this party was as much fun anyway. Not without Nancy, who was always the life of any party. Deirdre knew a lot of the partiers felt the same, but those who attended the university just two hours away had come anyway because the Halloween party was a tradition.

  For Deirdre, this one wasn’t only bad because of Nancy’s absence, though. Deirdre felt years older than the people she knew from high school. The parents of the girl having the party were gone for the evening and everyone had expected this festivity to be especially fun because it was the first one held in any of her friends’ houses not chaperoned by hovering parents, but no matter how hard they tried to act as if they were having a ball, their gaiety was obviously forced. Oh well, Deirdre thought, even this event was better than sitting

  at home with her father watching educational programming on the habits of the wildebeest, one of his favorite episodes. How much happier he’d been, how different everything had been, before her mother’s death from cancer last year.

  Deirdre took another puff on the cigarette, listening to the laughter and bantering of the few inside who had actually managed to get drunk. Honestly, the people her own age sounded like a bunch of adolescents. She tugged at the silly balloon-skirted party dress of her mother’s she’d worn as a costume and thought about Chyna Greer. Deirdre knew Chyna’s mother had also just died, but her life wouldn’t change as Deirdre’s had when her own mother died. Chyna had already left home and was well on her way to a successful, admirable career. And she was so beautiful, so smart.

  Throughout the years, Deirdre had heard all about Chyna and even seen old pictures of her winning numerous science contests while a teenager and a picture in the high school showcase of her as senior class president, but she was so much prettier in person. She’d gotten even lovelier with age. She didn’t look like a teenager anymore. She looked womanly and somehow slightly exotic even in a turtleneck sweater and slacks. No wonder Scott Kendrick gazed at her the way he did. The day they were in the café, he didn’t see anyone in the room except Chyna. Not even me, Deirdre realized glumly, although he was polite enough to talk to me and introduce me to Chyna. But that was Scott’s way. Good looks, good mind, good manners. He was a prize, the kind of man women dreamed about having as a husband.

  But he’d never be hers, Deirdre mused. He was in his thirties, just a year or so younger than her father. And Scott didn’t think of her as a woman. He called her kiddo, for heaven’s sake. Besides, even if he were in his twenties and he’d never met her before, if Deirdre was any judge of potential romance, what she’d seen today told her he’d like to end up with Chyna Greer rather than Deirdre Mayhew.

  Besides, I’ll be at L’Etoile next year, not in a fancy college like the one Chyna attended. Even Lynette will be leaving for college in September, although neither her grades nor

  her ambition can compare with mine, Deirdre thought guiltily. After all, Lynette was her best friend.

  Although she’d had an excellent school record, Deirdre hadn’t even applied for a scholarship. Daddy won’t find any help to suit him, she’d thought. If I left, he’d miss me. He’d forget to eat. He’d already lost twenty pounds he didn’t need to lose since her mother died. Deirdre understood his intense grief. Her parents had met in grade school, “gone steady” since they were fifteen, and been married since they were seventeen. Ben Mayhew had spent over half of his life with Deirdre’s mother. He won’t go out with friends, Deirdre added to the list of ways in which her father wouldn’t try to help himself. He’ll just work and come home to watch television until he dies. Or until he gets so lonely he lets Irma Vogel force herself into his life. That thought almost made Deirdre ill. She couldn’t stand Irma, who’d circled like a vulture waiting for Deirdre’s mother to die so she could swoop in and snatch up Ben Mayhew. No other man in his right mind would have Irma. Only someone so devastated or crazy he didn’t know what he was doing would marry Irma with her little mind and sneaking ways.

  No, I’m Dad’s only lifeline, Deirdre decided. I’m his only protection against someone like Irma. So how can I ever go blithely off to college and leave him? I’ll just stay here in Black Willow forever. Forever and ever and ever.

  She took another deep drag off her cigarette and wished she’d brought a beer outside with her. It would be nice to sip it and look up at the clear, star-studded night all alone even though it was cold. Going back into that den of raucous music and whooping teenagers earnestly trying to have as good a time this year as they usually had seemed unbearable.

  Deirdre tossed down her cigarette and walked to a hedge of rhododendron that stretched across the back lawn. In the spring, the bushes towered over seven feet tall and were laden with white and bright pink flowers. The bushes bore no flowers now although they were still heavy with leaves. Deirdre reached out and touched one of the thick, leathery

  leaves that would stay on the shrubs, sturdy and green, until warm weather returned.

  Her mother had been an excellent gardener. The Mayhew lawn used to look beautiful all through the spring, summer, and autumn thanks to her. Neither Deirdre n
or her father had the knack, though, and it seemed to Deirdre that their lawn had died along with her mother.

  The weather was much chillier than the newscaster had predicted. Deirdre drew her sweater tighter around her, wishing she’d worn a jacket instead. Oh well, she planned to go home in fifteen minutes or so anyway. Deirdre was reaching out again to touch a rhododendron bud that would be a flower in the spring when she heard a scratching noise, the sound of shrubbery branches brushing together. She dropped her hand, standing still. Again the sound. She tensed. Then she smelled a caramel-coated apple and saw a flash of white.

  Deirdre immediately relaxed. “Oh my!” she exclaimed dramatically. “Is there a scary ghost hiding in these shrubs?”

  She thought she heard a stifled giggle. Obviously, a child was in a ghost costume trying to scare Deirdre. She’d play along. “Gosh, I’m really afraid of ghosts. I always have been. I sure hope one doesn’t jump out at me!”

  Another rustling in the bushes. Something ran past her legs so fast she almost let out a scream, stepped backward deeper into the tangle of branches, then realized the runner was just Lynette’s small black cat. Deirdre smiled. How pleased the child must be that a black cat happened to be available to add to the suspense of the moment. Halloween was just made for black—

  Suddenly everything went quiet. The air around Deirdre stilled as if suspending itself, waiting, waiting… Then, in an instinctive flash, Deirdre knew danger was upon her. She heard an intake of breath just behind her, followed by the quick rushing noise only a few steps might make—adult steps. In one blinding, terrifying instant, Deirdre realized it was not a child who stood hiding in the leafy growth behind her. As she started to run, something hard crashed against

  the back of her head. Deirdre crumbled, hitting the cold, hard ground with a thud, still conscious but stunned by pain in her scalp, feeling a trickle of warm blood running through her hair. A clump of dead grass and dirt fell into her mouth when she opened it to scream, but she still tried and managed a ragged grunt just as an arm circled her throat, jerking so hard she couldn’t make a sound. She flailed her arms, but even through a sweater the strong rhododendron branches painfully scraped her arms. She fought for footing, once digging the heel of her shoe into the moist earth near the bushes, but the heel broke and the shoe slipped off as someone dragged her over dew-laden ground.