Nebulon Horror

by Cave, Hugh

  They had no trouble finding it. Melanie had discovered an old man on the edge of the Everglades who carved the birds of the Glades—cranes, ibises, egrets, and a dozen others—out of Florida woods. Using only a jackknife and sandpaper, he turned out creations so real they seemed likely to cry out and take wing if disturbed. The delighted couple from New England bought three of them.

  Soon after the departure of these happy customers, Olive Jansen came into the shop.

  "Hi," Melanie greeted her. "Aren't you off early?"

  "I asked off." Olive looked tired and wan as she sank onto a small chair Melanie kept for customers who might not want to stand. The remarkable yellow hair was not quite tidy. The Cupid's-bow mouth trembled. "I have to talk to you, Mel. I'm scared."

  Melanie leaned on the glass showcase and nodded.

  "Last night after the three of you left my place," Olive said, "Elizabeth Peckham called. You know how Jerri's been goin' over there to play with the Crosser girl. Well, Saturday when I stopped by there to pick her up . . . " In a voice that refused to be steady, she told about the frog, and then repeated what Elizabeth had said on the phone. Talking about it seemed to have a beneficial effect on her. Almost angrily she said in conclusion, "It doesn't have to be true, of course. How do I know if it is or not?"

  "You don't."

  "She just about admitted she'd had Teresa on the witness stand ever since it happened. From Saturday afternoon till Sunday night is a long time. You know? The child could have blamed Jerri just to get out of it, couldn't she?"

  "She could indeed. What does Jerri say?"

  Olive exhaled heavily and shook her head. "I'm a coward, Mel. I haven't told her about the phone call."

  "Because of what happened in the park?"

  "I suppose so. One thing on top of the other, you know? Jeeze. I'm scared out of my wits."

  "You remember my theory about what happened in the park?" Melanie said. "That Jerri might have been dreaming? Well, Keith agreed with me, but we were wrong. He phoned at noon and said he'd spoken with Vin, and Jerri was never asleep. Where is she now?"

  "My mother's."

  "Why don't you take her over to Doc Broderick? Tell him what's been happening and let him talk to her. I know he's not a psychiatrist, but he's awfully good. Especially with children." She gestured toward the phone on her desk. "Go on. Call him."

  "My God, Mel, what can I tell him? That Jerri accused Vin of feelin' her up and clawed his face? That she put Teresa Crosser up to pokin' a frog's eyes out?"

  "He knows about Vin's face, of course. And you aren't sure she was the guilty one at Teresa's house; you can only tell him what Elizabeth said. Go on, Olive, call him. Doc will know what to do."

  Olive slowly shook her head. "Not just like that. Jeeze. I got to think about it."

  "Think about it then. Look, suppose Keith and I come over this evening. Will Vin be there?"

  Olive nodded.

  "The four of us can talk. Maybe we'll be able to figure something out."

  "All right." Olive stood up and her mouth trembled. "Tonight then. Don't let me down now, will you?"

  "Call Doc."

  "If I can screw up enough courage."

  It was closing time when Olive departed. Melanie emptied the cash register and put the day's receipts in a small safe Keith had found for her. She walked around the shop, rearranging a few items that had been moved from their proper places during the day. A gift shop ought to be neat, she felt. Otherwise it could easily become a kind of junk shop and turn people off. Locking the door behind her, she glanced at her watch. It was after five as she began the walk to her apartment on the lake. She always walked to and from work when she could, using her car only when forced to by time or the weather.

  A police car sped past and she frowned. There had been an unusual amount of police activity throughout the afternoon. Had something happened, or was it just coincidence? She shrugged. There was no point in guessing. If anything had occurred, it would be on the news at six. Nebulon had a bright, busy radio station that always did a good job of reporting local happenings.

  Leaving the business section, she entered the park.

  This was always the part of the walk she enjoyed most. About six acres in extent, the park ran along one side of the lake. On the other side were three new apartment houses—she lived in one—and some elegant private homes. Flowers and flowering shrubs filled the air with exotic scents. The winding paths were cool in the shade of handsome red maples and live oaks. There was a rustic bandstand of weathered cypress where the band played on Sunday evenings.

  Another who enjoyed walking in the park was Ruby Fortuna. Mrs. Ruby Fortuna. Before her marriage to Joe Fortuna, thirteen months ago, she had been Ruby Perez. She was nineteen, black-haired, pretty, and vivacious. She laughed a lot. Nebulon's park reminded her a little of a park in the small Cuban town she had left when she was eleven years old.

  This afternoon Ruby wore a tight-fitting, pale-blue pantsuit and happily pushed a baby carriage. The infant in the carriage was her first-born, Joseph Fortuna, Junior, as good-looking and good-natured as his mother. He talked to himself without pause, using hands as well as mouth, while Ruby wheeled him along the park paths. People passing looked down at him and smiled, made happier by his antics. Some of them then looked at Ruby and smiled at her too.

  Life was good. Her husband, Joe, had a fine job as a mechanic and they had just made the down payment on a little house their hearts were set on. The baby was a joy. Just look at him, would you. Everybody loved him.

  Ruby halted. A little way off, through the trees, something that glittered caught her attention. It was a drinking fountain. No one was near it, but she could see bubbling. Something must be stuck.

  She was thirsty, she realized. She had been walking the baby for an hour, at least. Besides, someone ought to shut the fountain off, or try to. It wasn't right to waste water that way.

  She looked to see whether the path she was on would bring her to the fountain if she continued to follow it. It wouldn't; it went on down the lakeshore to the bandstand. She could wheel the carriage over the grass, of course, but you probably weren't supposed to do that.

  She put the brake on and leaned over the carriage to look at her son. "Mommy's going for a drink, Mister Joseph Fortuna, Junior." She made a face at him that produced a gurgle of delight and an explosion of bubbles. "Don't you go flirting with the girls now. I'll be back in a jiff."

  Giving one of his tiny feet a loving shake, she hurried off through the trees.

  The fountain was stuck, she discovered. It was one of those with a button you pushed down when you wanted water to shoot up, and the button was stuck in the down position. She drank her fill and then had to work on the jammed mechanism for a minute or so before it let go and the water stopped spurting.

  When it finally did stop, she felt proud of herself. Now she could tell Joe she had fixed a park fountain. He liked her to be able to fix things. He was always teaching her how to change faucet washers, make the toilet stop running when it wouldn't—things like that. A wife ought to know how to do those things, he said.

  Smiling at herself, she hurried back through the trees to the path and bent over the carriage to tell Joe Junior how smart she was.

  Her smile abruptly vanished. All the color disappeared from her face, leaving it pasty white. Her mouth fell open as though to voice a scream.

  The carriage was empty.

  She did not scream. She was just not a screaming woman. Swiftly straightening, she looked about her, her sandals remaining glued to the path while her slim, taut body twisted this way and that as she tried to look everywhere in a hurry. The baby could not have got out of the carriage by himself. Impossible. He had been lifted out, then. Whoever had taken him could not be far away; she hadn't been gone that long.

  Nothing. Nobody. The path in both directions was empty. There was no sign of anyone by the lake or in the trees toward the fountain.

  She began to tremble. Her m
outh, especially, began to quiver. Still making no sound except the quickened sound of her breathing, she left the carriage and went racing to the top of a small rise. From there she could see the path for another hundred yards, at least.

  Four persons were on it. Two men walked slowly toward her, one of them talking a blue streak and using his hands almost as much as little Joey did. Behind them an old couple puttered along, arm in arm. No one else.

  Scared now, really scared, Ruby Fortuna whirled about and ran at top speed in the other direction. This way the path turned toward the lake and went winding through the trees along the shore. She couldn't see far ahead because of the trees.

  She ran until she reached the bandstand, from where she could see she was wrong again. There were a few people sitting on benches near the stand, but no one with a baby. No cars in the parking area. Nothing.

  She turned and raced back to the carriage, gasping for breath now and whispering over and over, "Please, God, please!" Shaking with fear, she peered again into the empty carriage. Then slowly, with ultimate dread rising in her like a tide that must drown her, she backed away and turned to look at the lake.

  Forty feet away the water shone darkly behind its screen of trees, its almost calm surface littered with floating leaves. Near the shore something white, the size of a beach ball, floated among the leaves. It might have escaped her notice had she not been so desperately searching.

  A beach ball? She suddenly knew it was not, and her tense body began to tremble as though struck by a blast of arctic wind. What floated there was the baby she was looking for. Some part of his clothing had trapped a pocket of air

  Now at last she would have screamed, but her throat was numb and she had no voice. All she could do was race open-mouthed and silent through the screen of trees and go plunging with out-flung arms into the lake.

  The muddy bottom sucked at her feet, pulling her sandals off. It caused her to lose her balance and fall forward. The dark water closed over her, but in a fury of motion she struggled back up and kept going.

  Her hands at last fastened on the thing floating there. Gasping and choking from the murky water she had swallowed, she snatched it from the lake and staggered back onto the grass with the baby in her arms. There she fell to her knees and peered like a madwoman into its face, seeking a sign of life.

  There was no life. The child's mouth was fixed open as though in one last agonizing gasp for air, his sucked-in cheeks resembling those of a soft rubber doll squeezed out of shape by a cruel owner. A cloudy white veil had fallen over the half-open eyes that only a few minutes earlier had been so bright with mirth. His arms and legs hung limp, as though the bones in them had melted.

  At last she made a sound, lowering her baby to the grass and uttering a loud, shuddery wail above it. The wail caught the attention of the two men she had seen on the path earlier. They stopped in their tracks and lurched about to locate the source of that awful noise. Then they broke into a run toward her.

  At first they saw only her, and the anguish on her face as she rocked there on her knees with the torrent of grief pouring to heaven from her bent-back head. Then they saw the small shape in front of her knees, wrapped in sodden baby clothes and partly hidden by the height of the grass. "Oh, Jesus!" one said, and the faces of both were made shapeless by the shock of it. But, recovering, they stumbled closer to try to help.

  Melanie Skipworth became aware of the commotion when she reached the bandstand. Something was going on there where the path she followed curved close to the lake and ran along the water's edge for a short distance. Curious, she quickened her pace.

  A loose ring of spectators had formed on the grass some twenty feet from the lake. Inside it a man on hands and knees leaned over an infant that could not be more than two or three months old. His mouth covered the baby's mouth as he attempted resuscitation. The infant's clothes and hair were wet.

  A woman knelt there too, twisting her hands together and moaning as she watched the man's efforts. A terrible anguish distorted her pretty face. Her raven-black hair was wet and hung in limp strands to her shoulders. She wore a pale-blue pantsuit that clung soddenly to her kneeling figure. Her feet were bare.

  Melanie reached the circle of hushed onlookers and found herself standing next to a Mrs. Gramiak from her own apartment building. "My God, Helen," she said in her usual low voice, "is the baby . . . ? What happened?"

  "I don't know. I saw the girl splashing around in the lake and she came out with the child in her arms. That man took it from her and has been trying to revive it. Another man ran to telephone the rescue team."

  Melanie stood staring, her face ashen and heart pounding so hard she felt it might burst.

  The crowd grew a little larger, though there were never many people passing through the park at this hour. Melanie's gaze swept the circle of intent faces. The only other one she recognized was that of the mayor's little boy, Raymond. Living in one of the elegant homes on the other side of the lake, he often played in the park and sometimes spoke to her as she walked through on her way to or from work.

  She heard the pulsing wail of an approaching siren. At the same time, a policeman came sprinting across the grass and burst through the circle of spectators. He looked down at the man giving mouth-to-mouth respiration. After watching for a moment he nudged the man aside and took his place. The policeman seemed more sure of himself, but the infant's face remained a death mask.

  The fire department's rescue wagon wailed its way to the parking lot but could come no farther because of the trees. Firemen trotted the rest of the way burdened with equipment. They took over from the policeman. He in turn drew the woman away so she would not impede their efforts. Melanie was close enough to hear him say, "What happened, ma'am? Can you tell me?"

  That must have been what the woman wanted: to tell someone, to let it out. Almost hysterically she said, "I only left him for a minute, to go to the fountain for a drink of water. Only a minute! When I got back, the carriage was empty and I thought he'd been stolen. I ran around looking for him. Whoever took him couldn't be far away; I wasn't gone that long. But I couldn't find him. Then—oh, my God—I saw him in the lake. Somebody must have taken him out of the carriage and thrown him in the water." The hysteria fled and her voice diminished to a whisper. And suddenly Raymond Hostetter was standing there saying, "She's lying."

  The policeman said "What?" before he realized who had spoken. Then he said hoarsely, "Hey! We've been looking all over for you!"

  "She's lying," Raymond repeated. He stood very straight and still, one thin arm rigidly pointing at the baby's mother. "She did it herself," he said calmly in a high, reedy voice. "I saw her do it. She took the baby out of the carriage herself and walked down to the lake and threw it in. The story she just told you is a lie."

  The crowd gasped.

  There was a flurry of activity on the grass then. A fireman stood up with the infant in his arms. Another said to the policeman, "We're taking him to the wagon. Better bring his mother along."

  The woman had turned to stare at Raymond. She looked at him as though she could not believe she had heard him say what he had just said. If she had any thought of answering him, though, the policeman dispelled it by saying, "Go with them, ma'am. I'll be right along."

  He turned to Melanie, and she saw he was having trouble deciding where his duty lay. "Miss Skipworth," he said, "you suppose -you could do me a favor and take Raymond home? He's been missing since before noon, in case you don't know. Ran away from school.

  If he was to disappear again now, I'd be in big trouble. But that woman and her baby . . ."

  "I'll walk him home."

  "Thanks."

  Taking the boy's hand, she said, "Come on, Raymond," and was glad to get him and herself away from the onlookers who, after hearing him accuse the woman, were staring at him as though they too were incapable of believing he had said it. Leaving the small crowd behind, she said, "So you ran away from school, did you'? Why?"

  "
I wanted to."

  "Well, I suppose that's as good a reason as any. Especially if you're the mayor's son. Where did you go?"

  "I'm not telling."

  "You're not telling. All right, I don't really want to know. But I would like to know why you told that awful lie back there about that poor woman."

  "It wasn't a lie. That's what she did—she took the baby out of the carriage and threw it in the lake."

  They were alone now on a path made almost dark by the broad, spreading crown of one of the largest trees in the park. Raymond's home was in sight. Still holding his hand, Melanie halted, forcing him to halt too. "Raymond Hostetter," she said, "I don't believe you."

  He smiled. It was a frightening kind of smile, not childish at all but old and wise. "You will, though," he said calmly, and Melanie wondered whether his eyes were really the color they seemed to be.

  If the tree under which they stood had been a turkey oak in the fall, with a turkey oak's flaming red leaves, she could have blamed the strange glow on that. But it wasn't. It was a live oak and its leaves were green.

  A few minutes after seven that evening Dr. Norman Broderick—"Doc" he was called by nearly everyone—said good-bye to Olive and Jerri Jansen and locked his office door. He had no evening hours on Mondays and would not have seen these two so late in the day had not Olive seemed so distraught over the phone when requesting an appointment.

  Lighting a cigarette—he allowed himself five a day now—he climbed a flight of stairs and entered his living room. A widower, he lived alone on a tree-lined street near the library, using the downstairs floor of the house for his practice and the remodeled upstairs for his living quarters. He was fifty-six years old and a fine specimen of manhood, with a mop of unruly dark hair that would have looked more appropriate on a medical student.

  Strange, he thought, relaxing in his favorite chair to enjoy his smoke. Damned strange, the way little Jerri Jansen had answered some of his questions. What was the meaning of that repeated reference to a door?

  In the beginning he had talked to the two of them together, thinking they had come only about Jerri's behavior at the concert. He knew about that, of course. Vin Otto had come for treatment last night after it happened. And Olive did talk about it for a while, mainly to bring out the point that the child did not remember the incident. Then she had gone on to talk about the frog and Elizabeth Peckham's accusatory telephone call.