by L. J. Smith
“The problem,” Elena returned, tapping an index finger against her upper lip, “is that we’ve got too many problems at once and I don’t want anybody—and I mean anybody—going out alone. It’s clear that there are malach in the Old Wood, and that they’re trying to do unfriendly-type things to us. Kill us, for one.”
Matt basked in the warm relief of being believed. The conversation with Sheriff Mossberg had shaken him more than he wanted to show.
“So we make up task forces,” Meredith said, “and we split the jobs between them. What problems do we need to plan for?”
Elena ticked off the problems with her fingers. “One problem is Caroline. I really think someone should try to see her, at the very least to try and find out if she has one of those things inside her. Another problem is Tami—and who knows who else? If Caroline is…contagious somehow, she might have spread it to some other girl—or guy.”
“Okay,” Meredith said, “and what else?”
“Someone needs to contact Damon. Try to find out from him anything he knows about Stefan leaving, and also try to get him to go in to headquarters with us to influence Sheriff Mossberg.”
“Well, you’d better be on that last team, since you’re the only one Damon’s likely to talk to,” said Meredith. “And Bonnie should be on it, so she can keep—”
“No. No Calling today,” Bonnie pleaded. “I’m so sorry, Elena, but I just can’t, not without a day of rest between. And besides, if Damon wants to talk to you, all you need to do is to walk—not into the forest, but near it—and call to him yourself. He knows everything that’s going on. He’ll know you’re there.”
“Then I should go with Elena,” Matt reasoned. “Since that sheriff is my problem. I’d like to go by the place where I saw the tree—”
At once there was a protest from all three girls.
“I said I’d like to,” Matt said. “Not that we should plan for it. That’s one spot we know is too dangerous.”
“All right,” Elena said. “So Bonnie and Meredith will visit Caroline, and you and I will go Damon hunting, all right? I’d rather go Stefan hunting, but we just don’t have enough information yet.”
“Right, but before you go, maybe stop by Jim Bryce’s house. Matt has an excuse to stop by anytime—he knows Jim. And you can check on Tami’s progress as well,” Meredith suggested.
“Sounds like plans A, B, and C,” Elena said, and then, spontaneously, they all laughed.
It was a clear day, with a hot sun shining overhead.
In the sunlight, despite the minor annoyance of Sheriff Mossberg’s call, they all felt strong and capable.
None of them had any idea that they were about to walk into the worst nightmare of their lives.
Bonnie stood back as Meredith knocked at the front door of the Forbes home.
After a while of no answer and silence inside, Meredith knocked again.
This time Bonnie could hear whisperings and Mrs. Forbes hissing something, and Caroline’s distant laughter.
Finally, just as Meredith was about to ring the bell—the height of discourtesy between neighbor and neighbor in Fell’s Church—the door opened. Bonnie neatly slipped a foot in, keeping it from being shut again.
“Hi, Mrs. Forbes. We just…” Meredith faltered. “We just wanted to see if Caroline was any better,” she finished in a tinny-sounding voice. Mrs. Forbes looked as if she’d seen a ghost—and she’d spent all night running from it.
“No, she’s not. Not better. She’s still—sick.” The woman’s voice was hollow and distant and her eyes scanned the ground just over Bonnie’s right shoulder. Bonnie felt fine hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stand up.
“Okay, Mrs. Forbes.” Even Meredith sounded false and hollow.
Then someone said suddenly, “Are you all right?” and Bonnie realized it was her own voice.
“Caroline…isn’t well. She’s…not seeing anyone,” whispered the woman.
An iceberg seemed to glide down Bonnie’s spine. She wanted to turn and run from this house and its aura of malevolence. But at that moment Mrs. Forbes suddenly slumped. Meredith was barely able to break her fall.
“She’s fainted,” Meredith said tersely.
Bonnie wanted to say, Well, put her on the rug inside and run! But they could hardly do that.
“We’ve got to take her inside,” Meredith said flatly. “Bonnie, are you okay to go?”
“No,” Bonnie said just as flatly, “but what choice do we have?”
Mrs. Forbes, small as she was, was heavy. Bonnie held her feet and followed Meredith, step by reluctant step, into the house.
“We’ll just put her on her bed,” Meredith said. Her voice was shaky. There was something about the house that was terribly unsettling—as if waves of pressure kept bearing down on them.
And then Bonnie saw it. Just a glimpse as they stepped into the living room. It was down the hallway, and it could have been the play of light and shadow there, but it looked for all the world like a person. A person scuttling like a lizard—but not on the floor. On the ceiling.
19
Matt was knocking at the Bryces’ door, with Elena at his side. Elena had disguised herself by stuffing all her hair into a Virginia Cavaliers baseball cap and wearing wraparound sunglasses from one of Stefan’s drawers. She was also wearing an over-large maroon and navy Pendleton shirt donated by Matt, and a pair of Meredith’s outgrown jeans. She felt sure that no one who had known the old Elena Gilbert would ever recognize her, dressed like this.
The door opened very slowly to reveal not Mr. or Mrs. Bryce, nor Jim, but Tamra. She was wearing—well, close to nothing. She had on a thong bikini bottom, but it looked handmade, as if she’d cut a regular bikini bottom with scissors—and it was beginning to come apart. On top she had two round decorations made of cardboard with sequins pasted on and a few strands of colored tinsel. On her head she wore a paper crown, which was clearly where she’d gotten the tinsel. She’d made an attempt to glue strands onto the bikini bottoms as well. The result looked like what it was: a child’s attempt to make an outfit for a Las Vegas showgirl or stripper.
Matt immediately turned around and stood facing away, but Tami threw herself at him and plastered herself to his back.
“Matt Honey-butt,” she cooed. “You came back. I knew you would. But why’d you bring this ugly old whore with you? How can we—”
Elena stepped forward, then, because Matt had whirled with his hand up. She was sure that Matt had never struck a female in his life, especially a child, but he was also over-sensitive about one or two subjects. Like her.
Elena managed to get between Matt and the surprisingly strong Tamra. She had to hide a smile when contemplating Tami’s costume. After all, only a few days ago, she hadn’t understood the human nakedness taboo at all. Now she got it, but it didn’t seem nearly as important as it once had. People were born with their own perfectly good skins on. There was no real reason, in her mind, to wear false skins over those, unless it was cold or somehow uncomfortable without them. But society said that to be naked was to be wicked. Tami was trying to be wicked, in her own childish way.
“Get your hands off me, you old whore,” Tamra snarled as Elena held her away from Matt, and then she added several rather lengthy expletives.
“Tami, where are your parents? Where’s your brother?” Elena said. She ignored the obscene words—they were just sounds—but saw that Matt had gone white around the lips.
“You apologize to Elena right now! Apologize for talking that way!” he demanded.
“Elena’s a stinking corpse with worms in her eye sockets,” Tamra sang glibly. “But my friend says she was a whore when she was alive. A real”—a string of four-letter words that made Matt gasp—“cheap whore. You know. Nothing’s cheaper than something that comes free.”
“Matt, just don’t pay any attention,” Elena said under her breath, and she repeated, “Where are your parents and Jim?”
The answer was littered with
more expletives, but it amounted to the story—truthful or not—that Mr. and Mrs. Bryce had gone away on vacation for a few days, and that Jim was with his girlfriend, Isobel.
“Okay, then, I guess I’ll just have to help you get into some more decent clothes,” Elena said. “First, I think you need a shower to get these Christmas doodads off—”
“Just try-hy-hy! Just try-hy-hy!” The answer was somewhere between the whinny of a horse and human speech. “I glued them on with PermaStick!” Tami added and then began giggling on a high and hysterical note.
“Oh, my God—Tamra, do you realize that if there isn’t some solvent for this, you may need surgery?”
Tami’s answer was foul. There was also a sudden foul smell. No, not a smell, Elena thought: a choking, gutcurdling stench.
“Oops!” Tami gave that high, glassy giggle again. “Pardon moi. At least it’s natural gas.”
Matt cleared his throat. “Elena—I don’t think we should be here. With her folks gone and all…”
“They’re afraid of me,” Tamra giggled. “Aren’t you?”—very suddenly in a voice that had dropped several octaves.
Elena looked Tamra in the eye. “No, I’m not. I just feel sorry for a little girl who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But Matt’s right, I guess. We have to go.”
Tami’s whole manner seemed to change. “I’m so sorry…. I didn’t realize I had guests of that caliber. Don’t go, please, Matt.” Then she added in a confidential whisper to Elena, “Is he any good?”
“What?”
Tami nodded at Matt, who immediately turned his back to her. He looked as if he felt a terrible, repulsive fascination for Tami’s ridiculous appearance.
“Him. Is he any good in the sack?”
“Matt, look at this.” Elena held up a small tube of glue. “I think she actually did PermaStick that stuff to her skin. We have to call Child Protective Services or whatever, because nobody took her to the hospital right away. Whether her parents knew about this behavior or not, they shouldn’t have just left her.”
“I just hope they’re all right. Her family,” Matt said grimly as they walked out the door, with Tami coolly following them to the car, and shouting lurid details about “what a good time” they had had, “the three of them.”
Elena glanced at him uneasily from her place in the passenger seat—with no ID or driver’s license, of course, she knew she shouldn’t drive. “Maybe we’d better take her to the police first. My God, that poor family!”
Matt said nothing for a long time. His chin was set, his mouth grim. “I feel somehow as if I’m responsible. I mean, I knew there was something wrong with her—I should have told her parents then.”
“Now you’re sounding like Stefan. You’re not responsible for everyone you meet.”
Matt gave her a grateful glance, and Elena continued, “In fact I’m going to ask Bonnie and Meredith to do one other thing, which proves you’re not. I’m going to ask them to check on Isobel Saitou, Jim’s girlfriend. You’ve never had any contact with her, but Tami might have.”
“You mean you think she’s got it, too?”
“That’s what I hope Bonnie and Meredith will find out.”
Bonnie stopped dead, almost losing her hold on Mrs. Forbes’s feet. “I am not going into that bedroom.”
“You have to. I can’t manage her alone,” Meredith said. Then she added cajolingly, “Look, Bonnie, if you go in with me, I’ll tell you a secret.”
Bonnie bit her lip. Then she shut her eyes and let Meredith guide her, step by step, farther into this house of horror. She knew where the master bedroom was—after all, she had played here since childhood. All the way down the hall, then turn left.
She was surprised when Meredith came to a sudden stop after only a few steps. “Bonnie.”
“Well? What?”
“I don’t want to frighten you, but—”
This had the immediate effect of terrifying Bonnie. Her eyes snapped open. “What? What?” Before Meredith could answer she glanced over her shoulder in fear and saw what.
Caroline was behind her. But not standing. She was crawling—no, she was scuttling, the way she had on Stefan’s floor. Like a lizard. Her bronze hair, unkempt, hung down over her face. Her elbows and knees stuck out at impossible angles.
Bonnie screamed, but the pressure of the house seemed to choke the scream back down her throat. The only effect it had was to make Caroline look up at her with a quick reptilian movement of her head.
“Oh, my God—Caroline, what happened to your face?”
Caroline had a black eye. Or rather, a purplish-red eye that was so swollen that Bonnie knew it would have to turn black in time. On her jaw was another purple swelling bruise.
Caroline didn’t answer, unless you counted the sibilant hiss she gave while scuttling forward.
“Meredith, run! She’s right behind me!”
Meredith quickened her pace, looking frightened—all the more frightening to Bonnie because almost nothing could shake her friend. But as they lurched forward, with Mrs. Forbes bouncing between them, Caroline scuttled right under her mother and into the door of her parents’ room, the master bedroom.
“Meredith, I won’t go in th—” But they were already stumbling through the door. Bonnie shot quick darting glances into every corner. Caroline was nowhere to be seen.
“Maybe she’s in the closet,” Meredith said. “Now, let me go first and put her head on the far side of the bed. We can adjust her later.” She backed around the bed, almost dragging Bonnie with her, and dumped Mrs. Forbes’s upper torso so that her head rested on pillows. “Now just pull her and put her legs down on the other side.”
“I can’t do it. I can’t! Caroline’s under the bed, you know.”
“She can’t be under the bed. There’s only about a five-inch clearance,” Meredith said firmly.
“She’s there! I know it. And”—rather fiercely—“you promised you’d tell me a secret.”
“All right!” Meredith gave a complicit glance through her disheveled dark hair. “I telegraphed Alaric yesterday. He’s so far out in the boonies that telegraph is the only way to reach him, and it may be days before my message gets to him. I had an idea that we were going to need his advice. I feel bad, asking him to do projects that aren’t for his doctorate, but—”
“Who cares about his doctorate? God bless you!” cried Bonnie thankfully. “You did just right!”
“Then come on and swing Mrs. Forbes’ feet around the bottom of the bed. You can do it if you lean in.”
The bed was a California king-size. Mrs. Forbes was lying at an angle across it, like a doll thrown on the floor. But Bonnie halted near the foot of the bed. “Caroline’s going to grab me.”
“No, she won’t. Come on, Bonnie. Just get Mrs. Forbes’ legs and give one big heave….”
“If I get that close to the bed, she’ll grab me!”
“Why should she?”
“Because she knows what scares me! And now that I’ve said it, she definitely will.”
“If she grabs you, I’ll come and kick her in the face.”
“Your leg’s not that long. It would bang on the metal bed-frame thingummy—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Bonnie! Just help me heeeeeeere!” The last word was a full-fledged scream.
“Meredith—” began Bonnie, and then she screamed, too.
“What is it?”
“She’s grabbing me!”
“She can’t be! She’s grabbing me! Nobody has arms that long!”
“Or that strong! Bonnie! I can’t make her let go!”
“Neither can I!”
And then any words were drowned in screaming.
After dropping Tami off with the police, driving Elena around the woods known as the Fell’s State Park was…well, a walk in the park. Every so often they would stop. Elena would go a few steps into the trees and stand, Calling—however you did that. Then she came back to the Jaguar, looking discouraged.
> “I’m not sure that Bonnie wouldn’t be better at this,” she said to Matt. “If we can brace ourselves to go out at night.”
Matt shuddered involuntarily. “Two nights were enough.”
“Do you know, you never told me your story from that first night. Or at least, not when I could understand words, spoken words.”
“Well, I was driving around like this, except almost on the other side of the Old Wood—near the Lightning-Split Oak area…?”
“Right.”
“When right in the middle of the road something appears.”
“A fox?”
“Well, it was red in the headlights, but it wasn’t like any fox I’ve ever seen. And I’ve been driving this road since I could drive.”
“A wolf?”
“Like a werewolf, you mean? But, no—I’ve seen wolves by moonlight and they’re bigger. This was right in between.”
“In other words,” Elena said, narrowing her lapis lazuli eyes, “a custom-made creature.”
“Maybe. It sure was different from the malach that chewed my arm up.”
Elena nodded. Malach could take all sorts of different forms, from what she understood. But they were siblings in one way: they all used Power and they all needed a diet of Power to live. And they could be manipulated by a stronger Power than they had.
And they were venomous enemies of humans.
“So all we really know is that we don’t know anything.”
“Right. That was the place back there, where we saw it. It just suddenly appeared in the middle of the—hey!”
“Go right! Right here!”
“Just like that! It was just like that!”
The Jaguar screeched almost to a stop, turning right, not into a ditch but into a small lane that no one would notice unless they were looking directly at it.
When the car stopped, they both stared up the lane, breathing hard. Neither had to ask whether the other had seen a reddish creature zip across the road, bigger than a fox but smaller than a wolf.
They looked up at the narrow lane.
“The million-dollar question: should we go in?” Matt asked.
“No KEEP OUT signs—and hardly any houses on this side of the wood. Across the street and down a way there’s the Dunstans’.”
