Summer of Fear

by Lois Duncan

  This room wasn’t as dark as Bobby’s had been; it looked toward the east, where the sky above the Sandia Mountains was beginning to lighten with the promise of a new day. I could see, very faintly, the outline of the twin beds, with Julia’s form on one of them. The shape on the bed hadn’t stirred with the opening of the door and it stayed immobile as I put a tentative foot into the room.

  Slowly and carefully, feeling ahead along the carpet with each bare foot, I crossed the room and reached the chest of drawers at the far end. In the mirror above it I could see my own image, a blob of featureless black, moving against the lesser darkness of the east window. Would the letter still be there? Yes, it was. I could make out the square white shape of the envelope against the surface of the dresser. As I was reaching out my hand to pick it up, Julia gave an odd little moaning sound and changed her position on the bed. The sheets rustled and the springs creaked, and my hand froze in midair, poised above the letter.

  For a long moment I stood there absolutely motionless, afraid even to breathe. The thud of my heart seemed to fill the entire room. I could only imagine that Julia must be able to hear it. Apparently she didn’t, however, because she didn’t move again, and as time passed I began to relax a little. Once again I lowered my hand, and this time it closed on the envelope.

  The trip back across the room was as torturous as the first crossing; perhaps more so, because in the short time since I had entered the sky had become lighter. Or perhaps my eyes had become more accustomed to the darkness. For whatever reason, the feeling of concealment was gone, and the sound and movement from Julia had pushed my nerves to the breaking point. It was with a breath of relief that I stepped through the door and eased it closed behind me.

  Moving more quickly, but as silently as possible, I slipped back down the hall and stairs to the hallway below. Once there I hesitated, undecided as to what to do next. I needed a reading light, something I wouldn’t have if I returned to Bobby’s bedroom. I was still too worried about detection to feel safe turning on any of the lights in the downstairs living area. Finally I thought of the bathroom. I went inside and closed the door and pushed in the button in the center of the knob. At the reassuring click of the lock falling into place my knees went suddenly weak from release of tension. I flicked on the light and sank down gratefully on the edge of the tub.

  I sat there a moment, letting my heart slow down, blinking my eyes to accustom them to the burst of brilliance. Then I turned my attention to the letter. I was surprised to see that it was still unopened.

  How could she not open it? I wondered. It’s the first letter she’s received from anybody since she arrived here. You’d think she’d be so glad to hear from one of her friends that she would’ve ripped it open at once.

  It wasn’t too long ago that I would have recoiled in horror at the thought of opening a letter addressed to someone else. Now I didn’t hesitate. Quickly I ran my thumb under the flap of the envelope and pulled it open.

  The stationery was cute and informal, of the type that comes in multicolored pads with matching envelopes. At the top of the sheet in black block letters was printed “Memos From Mary.”

  Mary’s handwriting was round and even and slanted slightly upward as it ran across the page. The letter was a short one:

  Dear Julie—

  How is your summer going? How come I haven’t heard from you about the house party? Will your mom and dad let you come? I really hope so! Without you and your guitar and silly jokes it just won’t be fun for anybody. I got a note from Gail and she can make it and so can Sharon and Teresa. Remember, it’s the third week in August and we can all go back to school together from here.

  My brother Kent saw your picture in the yearbook and he wants to be the one to meet your plane! Write soon and tell me that you can make it for sure.

  Love,

  Mary

  That was it.

  My disappointment was so acute that I actually felt physically ill. For this I had hoped and schemed and frightened myself to death sneaking into Julia’s bedroom, for this plain, ordinary, dull little note. Julia was invited to a house party and had evidently been planning to clear the matter with her parents. Of course, she’d had no chance to do so. In all the turmoil of the accident and the subsequent move to Albuquerque she had undoubtedly forgotten all about something as trivial as a classmate’s party at the end of vacation.

  What did the letter tell me about Julia? Absolutely nothing. In fact, it was hard to visualize Julia as the person to whom such a note might be written. A Julia who told “silly jokes” and planned get-togethers with girlfriends was a far cry from the intense, plotting, calculating Julia who killed a little dog with a wax statue and put a kind old man in the hospital. And both of these were different from the Julia who put a motherly arm around Bobby when he was upset, who gave my mother a daughterly hand in the kitchen, who smiled up lovingly at my father and called him “Tom.” Was there really one girl named Julia, a definite and distinct personality, or were there a dozen Julias, all of them different?

  Was Mary, as Julia’s friend and possibly even her roommate, aware of her supernatural talents? Would it be possible for her to have spent a couple of years living closely with Julia in the confines of a private boarding school, to have formed a close enough relationship so that a party “just won’t be fun for anybody” without Julia there, and not know that she was different from other people?

  No, it wasn’t, I told myself. Mary must know a lot of things that she had no reason to mention in this letter. If I could just sit down and talk with her for a little while, I thought helplessly, I could ask about Julia’s relationship with her parents and what other students thought of her and if she dated anyone. I could find out if there were any strange happenings, collapses and illnesses and cases of hives, among the student body while Julia was with them. I might even find out what it was Julia wanted, where she was headed. Girls who live closely together find out things like that about each other pretty quickly. They have to find something to talk about during the evenings when they’re finished studying and it isn’t time to go to bed yet. If I could talk with her—

  Why not? The question came into my mind like a kind of explosion. Why don’t you talk to Mary Nesbitt? Haven’t you ever heard of an invention called a telephone?

  If I made the call right now there would be no chance of anyone overhearing me. My family was sleeping and would remain that way for at least another hour. I glanced at my watch. Five forty-five. There was a two-hour time difference between Albuquerque and the East Coast. That meant that in Boston it would be seven forty-five, a little early for a call but not out of the question.

  I decided to go for it. It might not get me anywhere, but there was nothing to lose by trying. It was better than sitting there doing nothing.

  Mom had given me back my cell phone, but it was in Bobby’s bedroom and, rather than risk waking him, I decided to call from the house line in the kitchen. I got up from the edge of the bathtub and turned out the light and let myself out into the hallway. The house was no longer dark but gray and still with the pale half-light of dawn. I went soundlessly down the empty hall to the kitchen and pulled shut the door and took the receiver off the hook. I punched in the number for information, squinting to make out the handwriting in the upper left corner of Mary Nesbitt’s envelope.

  “I need a number,” I told the operator. “I want to call the Nesbitt residence in Boston, Massachusetts. The address is 1572 Jackson Avenue.”

  “Just a moment, please,” she responded in a singsong voice.

  There were a number of clicks and buzzes, and then a second voice came on, sounding strange and far away as though it were coming from another land. “Would you like me to connect you?” the new operator asked.

  “Yes, please,” I answered. There was another click and silence.

  Then, at the far end of the line, a phone began to ring. I clutched the receiver hard against my ear and was surprised to find that my hand was
shaking.

  “Hello?” a woman’s voice said. “Hello?”

  “Hello.” My own voice came out unnaturally high and nervous. I tried to haul it down into a more normal tone. “Could I please speak to Mary?”

  “She’s asleep,” the woman said. “This is too early to be calling her.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m calling from New Mexico. It’s about the house party.”

  “Oh.” The woman sounded slightly less irritated. “Well, in that case I’ll wake her. I know she’s been going crazy trying to get together with everybody.”

  There was a wait that seemed to go on forever and then a girl’s voice, still dull with sleep, came on the line and said, “Hello. This is Mary.”

  “Mary—” and now suddenly I didn’t know what to say. “I’m Rachel Bryant. My cousin Julia Grant is one of your classmates at boarding school.”

  “You’re Julie’s cousin? From Missouri?”

  “No,” I said. “From New Mexico. There was a terrible accident in the beginning of June right after Julia got home for summer vacation. Both her parents were killed in a car wreck. Julia has come to live with us.”

  “Her parents were killed?” The drowsiness was gone from the girl’s voice now. She sounded wide awake and sincerely distressed. “Oh my god! Julie loved her parents, especially her mother! The poor thing! Can I talk to her?”

  “No,” I said quickly. “She can’t—I mean, she’s so upset she can’t face talking about it. Besides, she’s in bed right now. I’m calling because of your letter. It came yesterday. Julia had forgotten all about the party and I told her I’d call for her—to apologize to you for her not being in touch .”

  “Oh, tell her I understand,” Mary said with such sincerity that I felt guilty about the deception. “Who could think about a party after a tragedy like that! Please tell her how bad I feel for her, and the other girls will too when they hear. Julie’s everybody’s favorite. She is coming back to school in the fall, isn’t she?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It hasn’t been decided yet.”

  “She just has to,” Mary said. “It won’t be the same if she’s not there. Julie’s the glue that holds the group together. She’s class president and lead soprano in the choir and she’s in charge of the talent show and—oh, there’s just no way we can go through senior year without Julie.”

  “The choir?” I said, startled. “Julia sings in a choir?”

  “In chapel every Sunday and at the Wednesday evening worship service. You know what a beautiful voice she has. How is she taking it? Is she holding up all right?”

  “She’s adjusting well,” I said. “She’s bearing up much better than anybody would have thought.”

  It was in my mind, the question I wanted to ask her. I couldn’t bring it to my lips. Now that I actually had Mary Nesbitt on the telephone and heard the very real concern and affection in her voice when she spoke of Julia, how could I ask it? How could I say, “Has anything ever happened that led you to believe that this dear friend of yours might be a practicing witch?”

  I grasped instead for something less dramatic.

  “Does Julia,” I asked, “like dogs?”

  “Does she what?”

  “Like dogs? Any kind of dogs?”

  “I don’t know,” Mary said blankly. “I guess so. Doesn’t everybody?”

  “Did you ever see her pet one?”

  “No,” Mary said. “Not at school. We’re not allowed to keep pets in the dorm.” She sounded bewildered. “Why did you ask that?”

  The conversation was getting me nowhere. Worse than that, Mary was beginning to become suspicious. I had put through my phone call impulsively without properly planning what I would say, and as a result I was floundering. My precious opportunity was being wasted, and it wouldn’t come again.

  “Who did you say this was?” Mary Nesbitt asked. “Are you really a cousin of Julie’s? Are you sure this is a long-distance call? You’re not just somebody playing a joke?”

  There was no help for it. I must plunge ahead or the chance would be lost forever.

  “Do you know,” I asked, “if Julia ever studied witchcraft?”

  There was a long pause. When Mary finally spoke again, her voice was clipped and cold.

  “I don’t know what kind of weirdo you are,” she said shortly, “or why you decided to call me, but you’d better not make any accusations about Julie Grant. I’ve been her roommate for two years and I know her backward and forward. She’s as clean and straight and open as sunshine. You’re either someone out to hurt her, or you’re just plain crazy.”

  “Just plain crazy”? Was I? My suspicions would seem so to many people. Mary Nesbitt thought Julia was one of the finest people in the world. It wasn’t as though she didn’t know her either. As her roommate for two years, she should know her better than I did. Was it possible that anyone as evil as the Julia I knew—or thought I knew—could keep up a pretext that long? Would Mary Nesbitt lie to protect her? If so, why?

  Am I crazy? I asked myself. I couldn’t believe that I was. I was on the edge of something crazy, perhaps, but I myself was sane. I knew the things that Julia had done. I hadn’t invented them. The professor understood, I could tell that by his eyes. The fear there last night had not been imagined. Something terrible was happening one step at a time, and the fact that I had no proof to offer didn’t make it any less real.

  What do I do now?

  An immediate answer occurred to me, something that must be done before anything else, and I did it. Still by the phone, I deactivated the caller I.D. and punched in the number for Presbyterian Hospital and got transferred back and forth in the computerized call system before a receptionist finally answered.

  “I’m calling to tell you that the life of your patient Professor Jarvis has been threatened,” I told her. “If you have any regard for his safety, you will restrict all visitors to members of his immediate family.”

  Not waiting for a response, I replaced the receiver on the hook. I could imagine the reaction at the front desk of the hospital office. Would the woman I had seen there the night before still be on duty? If so, she had probably fainted on top of the visitors’ register. Or perhaps a replacement had taken over her position by this time, someone who had never heard of Professor Jarvis. She would now be searching frantically through the patient file on her computer, trying to place him. Now she would have found him. She would be lifting the receiver—dialing someone with authority.

  “I just got a really disturbing call,” she might be saying. “A threat to one of our patients!”

  So much for that, I thought with a feeling of satisfaction. Julia wouldn’t have a chance to walk three times clockwise around that particular bed.

  But in making the call I had cut off my own contact with the professor as well as Julia’s. That contact might have been extremely helpful. The night before, in my final moment at the hospital, I’d realized it was possible to communicate with Professor Jarvis. His eyes had been intelligent and alive, receptive to such communication. I might have presented him with questions and worked up some sort of code between us—a blink of the eyes, maybe, once for yes, twice for no. “Spell out your answer, Professor,” I might have told him. “One blink for A, two for B, three for C.” It might have taken us hours to have gotten across one short message, but it could’ve been well worth the effort. The knowledge that lay buried in that snow-white head was invaluable. If we’d been able to speak to each other for even one moment, I was sure he could have steered me to an answer. He could have given me enough information about the workings of witchcraft so that I could have exposed Julia for what she was.

  But this wasn’t meant to be. Given the choice, his safety was more important than the help he might give me. Somehow I must work out a solution by myself. I had a number of pieces to the puzzle, but they wouldn’t fit together. The Julia I knew and the Julie known by Mary Nesbitt appeared on the surface to be two entirely different people. He
r Julie went to church and sang lead soprano with the choir. This seemed impossible. Could anyone practice black magic and still be a participating member of a Christian church? As far as I could recall, we hadn’t attended church since Julia had come to live with us. My own family was lax about going, ever since Pete and I had become teenagers and our lives had filled with too many conflicting activities. And Julia herself had never suggested going to church. As far as the singing went, I’d never heard Julia sing. She hadn’t brought a guitar with her, unless it was crammed somehow into one of those boxes stored in the attic.

  And the Julie of the “silly jokes”—to me she didn’t exist. There was no levity, no sense of fun in the Julia I knew. Could it exist beneath the surface? I asked myself. Could it have lain hidden for these past months, buried beneath the weight of parental loss?

  No—no. I couldn’t believe that to be the case.

  Nothing fit. I had to have more information.

  I need more to go on, I thought hopelessly. I needed something that made all the parts go together into some kind of workable whole. With Professor Jarvis no longer able to help me, where could I turn? Only to the books, both of which I had read through several times.

  Perhaps I’m missing something, I thought. I decided to read them again.

  Leaving the kitchen, I went softly down the hall and let myself back into Bobby’s bedroom. He was sleeping as soundly as he had been when I had left him. In the time since I’d been gone the room had grown light enough so that reading was possible.

  I opened the drawer in which I had stored the books and took them out and carried them over to the bed.

  The history book looked solid and factual and unhelpful. There was nothing factual about the type of information for which I was searching. I was looking for a will-o’-the-wisp, a flickering light, a glimpse past the solid and the real into another kind of reality. It was like trying to grasp quicksilver.

  I shoved that book aside and picked up the second, the one on superstitions. This was where I would start, and somewhere, somewhere, in these pages, I would find something I could work on.