Nebulon Horror

by Cave, Hugh

  "Just that. It's so intricate. So . . . sophisticated."

  "May I ask where you discovered it?"

  "I'd rather not say."

  Elizabeth seemed annoyed by the rebuff. "I suppose it was done in school, and you're wondering about the child who drew it. I can't help you, I'm afraid. I have no knowledge of such things. But"—still another shrug—"I would call it just an exercise in doodling by someone quite artistically inclined." Excusing herself, she returned to her desk.

  Lois went home. Soon after she arrived there, Keith Wilding came to plant the hibiscus he had not been able to plant the day before. She had discussed the project with Willard and was able this time to tell him where to put them. An hour or so later, when she opened her handbag to pay him, she found she still had the drawing of the school-yard diagram and dropped it into a wastebasket.

  That evening Willard Ellstrom wanted a scrap of paper on which to do some figuring, and looked in the nearest basket. It was a habit of his. His wife was an inveterate paper waster—many school teachers were, weren't they?—and any basket in the house was likely at any time to yield only partly used pieces of perfectly good paper.

  He found the drawing and looked at it with interest. "Did you do this, Lois?"

  "Yes."

  "What in the world is it?"

  She told him.

  "I see." He dropped the paper back into the basket. But later, when he happened to remember the photograph he had taken of Elizabeth Peckham's house—the one with the lineup of children on the veranda—he quietly fished the paper out again and tucked it away in his pocket.

  10

  The remainder of that week in Nebulon was as strange as its beginning.

  At the Hostetter residence the mayor and his wife questioned their son, seeking to learn where he had gone and what he had done after running away from school. They learned little. "I just walked around," the boy insisted.

  "You walked around where?"

  "I don't know."

  "You must know where you went. This is a small town. You're familiar with every part of it."

  No answer.

  "Where did you go?"

  "I don't know, Daddy. I just walked."

  His mother said, "Why did you behave that way in the school yard?"

  A shrug.

  "It was a wrong thing to do. Don't you know it was a wrong thing to do?"

  "Yes, Mommy."

  "Why did you do it?"

  "I don't know."

  "Were you angry with those children for something they did? Or something they said to you?"

  "No."

  "Then why?"

  "I don't know."

  "Why did you talk to Mrs. Ellstrom the way you did?"

  "What way, Mommy?"

  "You know what you said to her!"

  "I forget."

  "You used words that you certainly never learned in this house. Where did you ever learn them?"

  "What words?"

  "I'm not going to repeat them. You know what I'm talking about. Why did you talk to Mrs. Ellstrom that way? Why did you call her a cripple?"

  "I don't know."

  They gave up.

  The police, too, questioned Raymond. Nebulon's chief, Lorin Lighthill, came to the Hostetter home with the policeman who had been in the park when the boy made his accusation.

  Chief Lighthill was a gray-haired man in his fifties. He weighed 290 pounds. He had been chief of police much longer than Duane Hostetter had been mayor, and had a mind of his own.

  He told Mr. and Mrs. Hostetter that Ruby Fortuna, the mother of the drowned child, had collapsed and was in the hospital. She swore Raymond was lying. In the presence of the Hostetters he asked Raymond to describe again how the woman had put her baby in the lake.

  "She just took it out of the carriage and went to the edge of the lake and threw it in," Raymond said.

  "You actually saw this? With your own eyes?"

  Raymond nodded.

  "Where were you?"

  "On the path, going home."

  "Why didn't you yell or something, to stop her from doing it?"

  "I didn't know what she was going to do until she threw the baby in."

  "Why didn't you yell then?"

  "I don't know."

  "Didn't you know the baby would drown?"

  No answer.

  "I don't suppose he realized," Mrs. Hostetter said. "He's a good swimmer, himself. Living so close to the lake, we made sure he learned how when he was small."

  The chief frowned and said, "That baby's mother says she did not put her child in the lake. She even asked us to give her a lie test. Raymond, are you dead sure you didn't see some other person take that baby out of the carriage?"

  Raymond shook his heads "It was her."

  "You want us to believe Mrs. Fortuna threw that baby in the lake and then went charging in after it?"

  "That's what she did."

  The chief exhaled heavily. He looked at Mayor Hostetter. He said, "Okay, but I find it hard to swallow."

  "Why should my son be lying?" Hostetter demanded.

  "You tell me."

  "I don't understand your attitude."

  "Mister Mayor," Lighthill said, "that girl has lost her baby, and if she isn't heartbroken I've never seen anyone who is. If this boy sticks to his story, she may be charged with homicide as well. You tell me why he did what he did at school. You tell me where he was from the time he left school until he turned up in the park. Then I'll know better what to think about all this."

  The chief and his man departed, and Mayor Hostetter looked at his son. Angered by the chief's words, he spoke harshly. "Are you lying about that baby?"

  "No, Daddy," Raymond said calmly.

  "Because if it turns out that you are, I swear to heaven I—"

  "Duane, please!" his wife said. "I'm sure that isn't the way. I'm going to call Doctor Broderick."

  Doc Broderick talked to Raymond alone for more than an hour. He examined the boy. Then he talked with the parents. "I can't find anything wrong with him physically," he said. "But I suspect his lapse of memory isn't genuine."

  "He's keeping something from us, you mean?" the mayor said.

  "There's something queer going on. I can't guess what it is, but several kids in the second grade seem to be involved. They play together sometimes at the old Gustave Nebulon house."

  "I don't understand," Reatha Hostetter said. "Raymond doesn't go there."

  "He's been there."

  "Are you sure, doctor?"

  "He's one of six kids on the veranda in a photo I've seen."

  "May I call him and ask him?"

  "Why not?"

  Mrs. Hostetter called her son from his room, where he had been told to wait while his parents talked with Doc. In front of Doc and her husband she held the boy by both hands, gazed steadily into his eyes, and said, "Do you ever go to the old Nebulon house where Miss Peckham lives now?"

  He nodded.

  "What for?"

  "To play."

  "Is that all you do? Play?"

  "Of course."

  Doc said, "What other kids play there, Raymond?"

  "Jerri and Debbie and Teresa and . . ." The boy went on to name six.

  "They're all in your grade at school?"

  "Yes."

  "Okay," Doc said to indicate he had no more questions.

  "Can I go now?" Raymond asked.

  His mother nodded and he departed.

  Duane Hostetter said, frowning, "Well, Doc? What now?"

  "There's something going on in that house," Doc said with conviction, "something that's affecting the kids who visit the place. You've heard what happened at the band concert Sunday night, I suppose!"

  They nodded.

  Doc told them about the frog. About to go further and tell them what Jerri Jansen had said about the mysterious door, he changed his mind and decided not to repeat what might be only a childish fantasy. In conclusion he said, "Is there some way the police could get
inside that house, Duane?"

  "To do what?"

  "I haven't the foggiest. Just to look around, I suppose."

  The mayor shook his head. "I don't see how. I'll speak to the chief, but I don't believe we'd have a leg to stand on."

  "Well then, I can only tell you what I've already told Olive Jansen: If I were you, I'd keep my child away from there. At least until we can investigate these apparent aberrations further. Keep him at home the rest of this week, anyway."

  It was true. Doc had advised Olive Jansen not to allow Jerri to go to the old house again. Phoning as he had promised after her visit to his office, he had told her of his feeling that the house might be having some malignant influence on the child. "I have no idea what the hell is going on, Olive, but let's play it safe."

  The trouble was that Olive could not be sure—at least, not absolutely sure—that her daughter was obeying. True, she could have ordered the child to go straight to the apartment after school and stay there, and then could have phoned from the restaurant to see whether Jerri would answer the phone. But it would be cruel, wouldn't it, to coop the youngster up like that?

  More often Jerri went to play with one of the neighbors' children, and the only way to check on that would be to call the neighbors. She just could not act the policeman in such a way, and so had to trust Jerri to obey her.

  At least once she was sure the child had not done so.

  It was on Thursday. Vin Otto, making a delivery in the nursery pickup, stopped at the restaurant for a moment to speak to her about a house he had found for rent. Would she go with him that evening to look at it? She would. "I will be going past your place," he said then. "Do you wish me to stop and find out if Jerri is there?" He knew she was anxious.

  "Please, Vin."

  Jerri was not there. She was not there when he checked again, half an hour later, on his way back to the nursery. He took the time to drive past Elizabeth Peckham's house and saw children in the yard. One resembled Jerri but he could not be sure because they were at the far end of the yard, in the deep shade of trees, sitting on the ground in a circle.

  He could have backed the truck up for a second look, but did not want Jerri to think he was spying.

  Driving on for half a block, he stopped and walked back. By then the children had disappeared, apparently into the house. From the nursery he phoned Olive to tell her.

  When Olive reached home at her usual hour, Jerri was seated on the hall floor, quietly looking at one of her school books. "Well, hi," Olive said with feigned cheerfulness. "How long have you been here? Did you come straight from school?"

  "Yes, Mommy."

  "You didn't, you know."

  "Huh?"

  "Vin stopped by. You weren't here. Where were you?"

  "I was out back, playing."

  "Who with?"

  "Myself."

  "Jerri?"

  "Yes, Mommy?"

  "You're not lying to me? You didn't go to Teresa's?"

  "Of course not."

  But you did, Olive thought. You did.

  She called Melanie Skipworth. Monday evening, as planned, Melanie and Keith had come over and the four of them had talked until well after midnight. She of course had told about her visit with Jerri to Doc Broderick, and how Doc had advised her afterward, over the phone, to keep Jerri away from the old house until it could be determined what was going on there. If, of course, anything was.

  They had discussed Jerri's attack on Vin, too. In depth. They were trying to understand why, even if the child had subconsciously wanted to hurt him in some way—in retaliation for some imagined offense, say—she had chosen that particular way to do it. Why the charge of "touching," screamed out at a public gathering? Why not something more in keeping with the workings of a seven-year-old mind?

  Nothing had come of the talk, of course, except, in Olive's case, a feeling that at least she had done her best to find some answers. Calling Melanie now, she said in a troubled voice, "Jerri disobeyed me. She was at that damned house today."

  "Are you sure, Olive?"

  "She was there. Vin is almost certain he saw her."

  "What does she say?"

  "She denies it. Mel, what can I do? Tell me!"

  After a brief hesitation Melanie said in a voice touched with anxiety and pitched even lower than usual, "Nothing, Olive. Leave it alone. If you force her into lying about it, you may make things worse. Look. Why don't you keep her out of school tomorrow and let Vin look after her at the nursery? Keith won't mind. For Saturday we'll think of something else, and you can be with her yourself on Sunday. Maybe before she has to go to school again Monday we'll know something."

  Olive's answer was a sigh of relief.

  Another who was relieved that week was Lois Ellstrom. Her freedom from anxiety came when Raymond's mother telephoned her at school. She and her husband thought it best, Mrs. Hostetter said, to keep Raymond at home in case the police wished to talk to him further about the incident at the park lake. "And of course we are still trying to find out why he behaved as he did at school, Mrs. Ellstrom, and why he ran away."

  "Yes, Mrs. Hostetter."

  "So we'll just forget about school this week. After that, we'll see."

  "I quite understand."

  Lois told Willard and he too was relieved. "I want to go to Miami," he said. "There's to be a demonstration of new products by one of the photo companies. I'd just about written the trip off, but if things are going to be quiet for you at school . . ."

  "Of course you can go, Will."

  "It's an evening thing. I'll have to stay over."

  "I'll be quite all right. You go ahead."

  Arriving in Miami about five, Willard phoned an old friend, a bachelor professor at Miami University, to see if they might have dinner together. John Holden taught in the department of anthropology. Over dinner in a cozy Coconut Grove restaurant, Willard told him some of what had been happening in Nebulon and showed him the copy Lois had made of the Hostetter boy's school-yard scratchings.

  "A seven-year-old did this?" Holden said. He was a man almost as tall as Willard and had a bony face that quickly and clearly revealed his feelings. The face now showed he was startled and deeply interested.

  "In the second grade," Willard said.

  "Fascinating. May I copy it?"

  "Keep it. I fished it out of a wastebasket after Lois threw it away."

  "She threw it away? Good Lord, why?"

  "Well, it seems our town librarian, a formidable Miss Peckham, told her it was just doodling. You think it may be more, eh?"

  "I do. If I'm right, I'll give you a ring. It will take some looking into, of course. These esoteric things can lead one a merry chase over all sorts of murky roads." And like a treasure hunter who had just stumbled on a cryptic map, Professor Holden carefully put the sketch in his wallet for safe keeping.

  At the Pink Swan on Friday Olive Jansen found herself serving her former husband. He came in alone and went to one of her tables without waiting to be seated. She was annoyed. She nearly refused to serve him. But when she saw the manager critically watching, she drew a veil over her annoyance and with exaggerated politeness took Hayden's order.

  When she came with his lunch, he said, "1 want to talk to you."

  "I'm busy."

  "I said I want to talk to you." His hand shot out and gripped her wrist. Physical strength, of course, was a thing he had possessed from the start, just as tact had always been a stranger to him.

  Knowing his hand would only become a vise if she resisted, she forced herself to relax and said, "What do you want? Make it short."

  His handsome face darkened. "Is it true what Jerri was yelling at the concert Sunday night? Did Otto make a pass at her?"

  "No, of course not."

  "Why did she say so, then?"

  "She dreamed it."

  "What are you talking about? She never dreamed anything like that in her life."

  "She dreamed it, I tell you. Let me go. Mister Dion i
s watching us."

  His grip tightened. He said in a low, threatening voice, "Let me tell you something. If I find out he did make a pass at my little girl, or if he ever does, I'll kill the bastard. You understand?"

  She was free. She turned away. She served him the rest of his meal seething but in silence, and he did not touch her or speak to her again.

  On her way home Olive stopped at the nursery to pick up her daughter and asked Vin Otto how Jerri had behaved. When she put the question, Vin was on his knees, wrapping the roots of a five-foot Hong Kong orchid tree he had just dug up. Jerri knelt on the other side of the excavation, adoringly watching him.

  He looked up, grinned, and said, "She has been an angel." Olive could not help comparing the gentleness of his unhandsome face with the cruelty on the face of the Adonis she had married.

  "You sure? No trouble?"

  "Not the slightest."

  "Come on then, Jerri. Say good-bye to the nice man and we'll go home. Where's Keith, Vin? I ought to thank him."

  "He is out on a job. I will tell him for you."

  Olive kissed him and took Jerri's hand. "We'll see you tonight." When she got to her car, she turned and waved to him. She was especially happy with Vin just now because the house they had looked at together had turned out to be suitable, and they had rented it. Now with a place to move into, they could be married.

  Soon after Olive's departure Keith drove in, with Melanie Skipworth on the pickup seat beside him. "Sorry I'm late, pal," he said to Vin. "It occurred to me that my cooking has been lacking something lately, so I drove around to pick up an expert. It kind of helps that she's good-looking too, of course." He nodded approvingly at what Vin was doing. "Nice work, man. But run along now, hey? I told you to take things easy till that face healed."

  Vin left.

  Tucking Melanie's arm through his own with a flourish, Keith said, "Come walk with me, lady. I want you to see what's happening to those exotics I got last month. You, ma'am, didn't think they'd thrive up here, remember? You even hinted I might be stupid. Nice to have around, maybe, but stupid."