“Don’t shoot the dog. Please,” Ned mimicked, then laughed. “Okay, you idiot. My kids love that dog, too. They’ll be only too happy to care for it when poor Aunt Chyna dies. Now, I don’t think anyone is outside, but considering that a few people believe you’re a bad witch or a demon and might be hiding out there, waiting to drive evil from their town, I’m not going to tie you up or in any way make you look like a prisoner. You’re going to walk out to my car just as
calmly as you normally would. The only difference will be that this time, I’ll be behind you with a gun pointed at your back.”
“Where are you taking me?”
Ned was speaking, but suddenly Chyna couldn’t hear him. Instead, she heard a sweet, light voice singing, “Star light, star bright…”
“Are you listening to me?” Ned demanded.
“I-I’m sorry. I’m scared. What did you say?”
“Is this your way of stalling? Because it’s not going to work.”
“I’m not stalling. I said I’m sorry. I… I…”
Again it came. “Star light, star bright…” Abruptly the room disappeared. For a moment, Chyna saw only darkness. Then, in a burst of color, she saw a neon sign, an old sign she hadn’t seen lit up in over twenty years: STAR LIGHT DRIVE-IN THEATER.
The scene changed. No longer did she see the theater in its heyday. She saw it as it must have looked after it had been closed, the stars and moon providing the only light shining down on the poles holding rusting speakers, and the deserted concession stand, surrounded by weeds, ivy creeping up its sides, although the place did not look as if it were nearly devoured by flora as it did now. It looked—
Like it did twelve years ago! Suddenly Chyna knew this was where Ned had taken Zoey. Zoey and Heather and Edie and Deirdre. And this was where he was taking her.
“Goddammit, Chyna, I said mover Ned shouted. “Right now or—”
“All right!” she cried. “We’re going to the Star Light Drive-In, right? The old concession stand? That’s where you took all the others, isn’t it, Ned? If you’re going to kill me, you can at least answer one question for me. You’re taking me to the old drive-in theater on Route Five?”
“You just have to show off, don’t you?” Ned said in disgust. “Well, genius, you’re right. That’s where I’m taking you. Another proof of your amazing sixth sense. The only trouble is, it came a little too late to save you.” Ned sounded
completely exasperated, verging on desperate, and his eyes no longer looked flat. They’d seemed to go wild, almost as if they were full of fire. He grabbed her shoulder and whirled her around, jabbing the barrel of the gun in her back. “Now get moving!”
As she moved away from the desk, Chyna kept a tight grip on Zoey’s necklace. They walked toward the door, Ned right behind her. Rex was still moaning, and Chyna tried to shut out the sound. “How do you plan to explain your uncle lying shot in the living room?” she asked Ned. “You can’t just hide the body. There’s way too much blood to clean up.”
“Thought I got mad and lost my head when I shot him, don’t you?” Ned asked smugly. “Well, you don’t know everything. It was all part of the plan.”
“I see.” She reached out toward the coat tree and Ned jabbed her with the barrel of the gun. “You wanted this to look normal, Ned. It’s forty-five degrees outside. I wouldn’t normally be going out without a coat on. Or didn’t you figure that into your brilliant plan?”
Ned allowed her to slip on the coat, but when she reached for her purse he hissed, “Forget it. Do you think I don’t know your cell phone is in there? That you think you’re gonna secretly click it on, auto-dial someone like Kendrick, talk loud until you hear him say hello, then ask me again if I’m dragging you to the Star Light Drive-In? Give him a clue? Well, it’s not gonna happen. Just get out the door.”
Chyna felt tears rising in her eyes and she blinked furiously. She would not let Ned know he’d guessed exactly what she planned to do. She did have Scott’s cell phone number on auto-dial. Two flicks of a button and he could have heard every word she said. But now she was helpless.
As they left the house, she walked straight and tall, knowing Ned couldn’t see her tear-filled eyes. He was never more than a couple of inches behind her as they walked to his car. “Open the door,” he said as they reached the passenger’s side. “Then scoot on over to the wheel.” She looked at him. “Did you think I was going to let you just climb in, shut the door, and wait like a good little girl for me to amble around
to the driver’s side? Get behind the wheel and keep in mind I’ll have this gun pointed at your head every moment.”
Chyna slid across the seat. Ned had left the keys in the ignition. She turned on the car and put her hand on the gearshift. “Don’t get any ideas about ramming the car straight ahead and wrecking us. You’ll have a bullet in your brain before this car ever hits the garage door.”
And he means it, Chyna thought. He had a plan, all right, but he wasn’t figuring on letting her go free if things didn’t go perfectly. He was beyond being careful. He’d probably gone beyond being careful as soon as he heard Deirdre May-hew had regained consciousness and would soon be identifying her abductor, if she hadn’t already. Now Ned cared about only one thing—the thing he’d cared most about since they were children—killing Chyna.
They’d ridden for about ten minutes in silence before Chyna finally asked, “What gave you the idea to use the drive-in?”
“The place had been closed down about six years when one evening a bunch of us guys drove up there. Weeds were already taking over, growing everywhere, especially around the old concession stand. It was locked. We didn’t break in. I didn’t push it because I wanted to come back in and break in by myself. I wanted to explore every inch of that big place because it just… well, I hate to sound like you … but it just spoke to me. Especially at night. We were two abandoned souls, things nobody cared about, things left to rot while everyone concentrated on what was younger and better and sparkling.” He sighed. “It’s the only place where I ever felt entirely at peace.”
“At peace?” Chyna repeated, amazed. “You took the girls you planned to murder there because it’s where you felt at peace?” Ned nodded casually. “But you didn’t kill them immediately, did you? After you broke into that concession stand, you liked it so much, you decided to keep your victims in there and torture them for a little while, didn’t you?”
“Torture them? I never thought of it that way. The con-
cession stand was my secret place where I could … enjoy them for a while before we had to say good-bye.”
Enjoy them? Bile rose in Chyna’s throat. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard a couple of times. How had her brother “enjoyed” Zoey and the others? Chyna wouldn’t ask. She didn’t want to know.
“And do you plan to enjoy me, too?” she asked instead.
“I’m afraid there’s no time.” He looked over at her, one side of his mouth lifting in that strange, feral smile that let her know he’d finally lost the control that had protected him since he’d tried to kill her when he was ten. “Besides, Chyna, we’re brother and sister. It just wouldn’t be right. Now get out of the car and keep in mind that I will be directly behind you. If you try to run, you won’t make it more than six feet.”
Intellectually, Chyna knew that she should be thinking at top speed, trying to come up with a means of escape. Emotionally, though, she felt that her only chance lay in trying to cut as many analytically chattering thoughts from her mind as possible. Still clutching Zoey’s necklace, Chyna believed her only hope lay in what came from outside her small realm of reality, in what answers existed in the huge world that existed beyond the circumference of the five senses.
But the other girls had not entered the concession stand as she was, Chyna thought. They’d all been unconscious. Ned had opened the door, dragged their limp bodies from his car, and carried them inside. And then …
“Key to the padlock,” Ned said, waving a ke
y in front of her while holding the gun in his right hand. “You will use it to open the padlock.”
“So you’re not trying to open a lock while holding a gun on me,” Chyna said. “Ned, you really are brilliant.”
“Stop patronizing me.”
“I wouldn’t bother. It’s too easy.”
“One more comment like that and—”
“And you’ll blow my head off right out here in the open? That can’t be part of your plan, Ned. It’s too crude. Lacks your usual finesse.”
“I know what you’re doing,” Ned snarled. “You’re trying to get me so enraged that I’ll completely lose my head, blow the whole damned thing, and you’ll have a chance to get away. But it’s not going to happen, Chyna. I’m too close to the end to let anything you say fluster me into making a mistake.”
“Well, whatever you say.” Chyna tried to sound maddeningly offhand. She had a feeling what Ned wanted most was to see her reduced to a shaking, fear-addled adolescent, barely more than a child. Her brother fed on fear, he “got off ” on terror, he lived for control, and the ultimate control was the power of life and death. The problem was, for Ned, the high that he got from killing never lasted long enough. He needed fix after fix after fix. Oddly, she believed he thought his constant need for fixes would end when he killed her, but she knew that it wouldn’t. As long as Ned lived, so would his hunger for destruction.
She unlocked the padlock and pushed open the door. Small windows lined the upper edge of the one-story building and they let in a small amount of moonlight, but not enough to be much help. Then Chyna heard a click behind her and the beam of a flashlight cut through the darkness and fell on a huddled figure in the corner. A blanket had been thrown over him, but part of his beaten, bloodstained face showed clearly. Gage Ridgeway. He blinked in the sudden blaze of light and ducked his head, but not before Chyna had seen the duct tape across his mouth.
“So here he is,” Chyna said somberly. “I knew you hadn’t killed him, Ned. Mind telling me why?”
“Because he is going to kill you.” Ned pushed shut the door, but he didn’t turn off the flashlight. He didn’t need to be careful, Chyna thought. They were quite a distance from the highway, and no houses or businesses sat near the drive-in. “Want to know why he’s going to kill you?”
“I’m dying to know.”
“Cute, Chyna. Sit down.”
“I don’t want to sit down.”
Ned pointed the gun at her head. “I said to sit down.”
Chyna sighed as if thoroughly exasperated. Actually, she felt as if she were on the verge of fainting and was only too happy to sink down to the cold concrete. She just didn’t want to look as if she were collapsing from fright. “Okay, I’m down,” she said coolly. “Please continue enlightening us with your brilliance before you burst.”
Ned shot her a knife-edged look, clearly infuriated that she was showing neither fear nor the proper respect for his power. “I’m about ninety-nine percent certain Deirdre didn’t see me. I was dressed like a ghost when I took her—keeping in costume like everyone else so I wouldn’t be noticed. Afterward, I wore a ski mask around her. But just in case she recognized my voice or something, it won’t matter. There is so much evidence pointing to Gage as the killer of all those other girls and Rusty Burtram that everyone will convince her she was so befuddled by terror and chloroform she got confused and mistook me for Gage. After all, I’m the upstanding family man. While Gage here—well, we all know Gage Ridgeway’s reputation even without the evidence.”
“So Gage is going to trial and take the fall for all the murders you’ve committed.” Ned nodded. “What if the jury isn’t convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that he’s the killer who’s prowled Black Willow for twelve years?”
“There won’t be any trial because Gage is going to disappear. He’s already disappeared. You saw that for yourself when you and Kendrick went snooping out to his house this morning. The cops had already been there last night. Of course, as usual, it took them too long to get there. While they were all standing around watching Deirdre get pulled out of that grave, I was already forcing Gage away from home. Using one of his own guns, by the way,” Ned said, looking at the .38 revolver in his hand.
Chyna frowned. Then she understood. “Of course. Rex was shot with Gage’s gun.”
“Yes. Gage shot poor old Rex when he stupidly tried to defend you.”
“If Gage was hell-bent on simply disappearing from Black Willow, why would he have come after me?”
“Because you were the only person he had to fear. He could hide anywhere from anyone. From anyone except Chyna Greer. After all, you found Deirdre. That had to shake him up. So he decided to kill you, the last threat to his freedom, before he vanished.” Ned looked over at Gage, whose eyes had not been covered with duct tape. They were blackened and a streak of dried blood ran beside the right one, but their green depths burned with hatred. ’They’ll never find you, Gage, but eventually they’ll find Chyna’s body and those of the other girls.”
“You’re going to kill me and bury me in the same place you buried them,” Chyna said. Ned nodded, smiling, but almost instantly his face faded from her view. She didn’t see Ned; she didn’t see Gage; she didn’t see the filthy interior of the concession stand. She saw Zoey, dressed in her white jeans and her blue top, standing in the lot of the drive-in, the screen looming behind her.
Her voice rang sweetly in Chyna’s ears, “Star light, star bright…,” as her right arm swept gracefully over the moon-washed, graveled remains of the theater lot. “The last star I see tonight…” The rhyme said: ’The first star I see tonight,” Chyna thought. But Zoey sang, “The last star I see tonight.” And then, with sickening clarity, Chyna knew what Zoey was telling her. The Star Light Drive-in Theater was the last symbolic star that had shone upon her before she was buried.
“They’re all here, aren’t they, Ned?” Chyna said stonily. “Zoey, Heather, Edie… they’re all buried here at the theater. ’It’s the only place where I ever felt entirely at peace.’ That’s what you said to me about this place, Ned. So it’s where you gave your victims peace, too, isn’t it? A peace they didn’t want. A peace I don’t want.”
Ned looked at her in surprise for a moment before that chilling smile returned. “Now see why I have to do away with you, Chyna? Why Gage has to do away with you? You’re just too smart for your own good, little girl. Always were.”
“No, I wasn’t, or I would have caught on to you a lot sooner. I don’t know why I didn’t,” Chyna said sadly. “Maybe
it was because of our blood relationship or because I loved you too much.”
Ned’s smirk faded. He looked at her gravely, almost affectionately, and at that moment Chyna knew that her brother had felt something for her besides jealousy and resentment all those years. But he’d never let that better side of him flourish. Instead, he’d tried to keep it buried with the fires of hatred, and tragically, he’d done a damned fine job of it.
“Why did you bring me out here, Ned?” Chyna asked. “If my death is going to be blamed on Gage, you could have killed me and left me anywhere.”
“Old man Dickens has owned this place for fifty years. Even when it closed down, he wouldn’t sell it. But he’s dying. As soon as he’s gone, his children are going to sell it to a company planning on turning it into a shopping mall. Digging will probably start on it next spring. Then they’ll find the skeletons. Naturally, Gage would put his last Black Willow victim here with all the others, knowing they wouldn’t be discovered for so long. It’s so much safer to shoot Gage out here in the middle of nowhere before I haul him away.” Ned looked at her with a strange, skewed tenderness. “And I want to bury you with Zoey, Chyna. That will please both of you.”
Ned took a deep breath, stood up, and stretched. “Well, I think we’ve talked long enough. I can’t be gone half the night again. Beverly’s going to start thinking I’m having an affair.” He laughed. “Gage, since you enjoy looking at women so
much, I’m going to let you watch me kill my sister before I kill you. Special treat since you’re being good enough to take the blame for me.” Ned looked at Chyna. ’Take off your clothes.”
She sat perfectly still, staring at him. No, this can’t be happening, she thought. I know that he’s sick, I know he’s done unspeakable things, but not this. Please, Zoey, Mom, somebody, help me…
“I said, Take… off… your… clothes,’” Ned repeated evenly.
Gage made a raspy, growling sound and began thrashing
beneath his blanket. Ned whirled on him. “Think you’re going to save her? You can’t even save yourself, so shut up and quit distracting me or I’ll go ahead and kill you first.”
Gage grew quiet, but his eyes continued to burn at Ned. He would kill Ned if he got the chance, Chyna knew with absolute clarity, as much for his long-lost Edie as to save his own life. But he wouldn’t get the chance.
Chyna started to stand. “You don’t have to stand up to take off your clothes,” Ned snapped.
“No, but I can get them off twice as fast this way, and if this is inevitable, I’d like to get it over with quickly.” The words came out in Chyna’s voice with just the right mixture of fear and resolution, but she had not meant to say them. Someone else had said the words in her voice. Someone else was with her, maybe even within her, she realized. Should she try to figure out what was going on? No. The thought went off like a gong in her head. No. Let go. Let someone else take control.
Chyna took off her coat, then pulled off the heavy sweater she wore over a lightweight blouse. She still held Zoey’s necklace in her left hand, so she began unbuttoning her blouse using only the fingers of her right hand. She let the blouse slide off, then stepped out of her shoes. The cold concrete floor seemed to bite through her thin trouser socks, but she tried to show no discomfort. She unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans, then pulled them down to her ankles. It was then Ned asked sharply, “Why are you keeping your left hand clenched? What do you have in there?” He jumped up, pried open her hand, looked at the necklace, then threw back his head and laughed. “Oh God, Chyna, I know you’re a freak, but really! What the hell good do you think dragging Zoey’s necklace around is going to do you? Are you going to jab me in the eye with it? Or is she sending you secret signals through it?”
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