Summer of Fear

by Lois Duncan

  I stared at her in amazement.

  “But I thought you were in love with Mike!”

  “With Mike Gallagher?” Now it was her turn to look amazed. “You must be crazy. What would I want with a boy still wet behind the ears? Mike Gallagher—your brother Peter—I used them to learn on. The next time I make a man love me it’s going to count. I’ll marry a man who’s older and working at a good job, a man who has money and a place in the town, who can give me a nice home, my own car, clothes, all the things I need. Not a little schoolboy.”

  “And where will you find a man like that?” I asked her.

  “I’ve found him already. This is my home,” Sarah said. “I’m going to stay here.”

  “You mean—you can’t mean—you plan to marry Dad!”

  Of all the disclosures so far, this was the one impossible to accept. I would’ve laughed out loud except that there was no laughter in me.

  “My father isn’t available, Miss Sarah Blane! He’s happily married to a woman he loves very much, and he’s not going to leave her for you, no matter what charms you use on him. If there’s one thing I’m sure of it’s the relationship between my father and my mother. Nothing is going to break them up, absolutely nothing.”

  “That’s probably true,” Sarah said, “as long as your mother is here. But what if she isn’t?”

  “There’s no sense to that question. She is here.”

  “This minute?”

  “No, of course not. But she’ll be back by noon.”

  “She will?”

  “Of course she will,” I said. “Why wouldn’t she?”

  “The Grants were coming back too. By dinner.”

  “The Grants—”

  “There was an accident,” Sarah said.

  “An accident?” A chill swept over me. “You don’t mean—you didn’t—”

  “The car swerved,” Sarah said, “at a terrible place, there on a curve with a drop-off to the valley. Your uncle was a careful driver. I’ve wondered sometimes what he thought in that last moment when he turned the wheel and nothing happened, when the car kept on going and going and going.”

  “You did it?” I whispered. “You made them have that crash? But you weren’t even there! You were back at the house in the hills, waiting.”

  “Waiting,” Sarah said. “Yes, waiting.”

  “But that was murder!” I said incredulously.

  “Was it?”

  “Of course it was. You killed three people, my aunt and uncle and cousin! That’s murder if I ever heard of murder!” I was shaking with rage. “You won’t get away with it either! I’ll tell! I’ll tell everybody!”

  “Oh?” Sarah said calmly. “And who will believe you?”

  “I’ll start by proving that you’re not Julia Grant! There are plenty of ways that can be proved. Fingerprints, for one thing, and bringing in people from the school she went to as witnesses. Mary Nesbitt could testify. And there are dental records. DNA tests. People will believe!”

  “Do you really think I plan to let you tell them?”

  “Can you stop me?”

  “Of course I can stop you. I stopped the professor, didn’t I? It’s a bother, I’ll admit. I didn’t plan to do that. And I expected you to be in the car with your mother today.”

  “In the car with my mother!” The full significance of the statement struck me and all the strength went out of me. My knees turned to rubber and I grabbed the edge of the shelf that held the chemical trays and leaned on it for support. I could picture it then, the road to Santa Fe. It was filled with curves and along one side rose a bank of red clay cliffs. On the other was a sheer drop into a valley. It was the sort of road on which one drove fast if one was a good driver, a smooth highway, one lane going in each direction. If a driver were confident of her car, if she didn’t expect it to swerve, if she was in a hurry to get home to a sick niece—

  “You can’t!” I breathed. “You won’t! I won’t let you!”

  “It’s a bit late for that,” Sarah said. “It’s already done. What do you think I was doing in my room last night with the road map? Your mother’s car will leave the road at one particular spot. There’s no way you can prevent it. In fact, it may have already happened.”

  “It hasn’t!” I cried, my voice rising to a scream. “It hasn’t! It won’t!” I didn’t stop to think about what I was doing, I just did it. I grabbed the tray full of stop bath in front of me and hurled the contents straight at Sarah. Her hands flew up to protect her face, and at that point I had reached the door. I plunged through it and slammed it behind me and grabbed for the padlock which Mom used to keep Bobby’s friends from invading the little room and using it for a clubhouse. I thrust it through the security ring and snapped it closed at exactly the instant that Sarah grabbed the door handle from the inside.

  The voice that rose from the far side of the door was not the voice of a girl. I had heard that voice before on several occasions, the first of which was when it was directed at Trickle.

  You vicious, rat-fanged varmint! it had shrieked then. It used other words now, and they made me shudder. The person who had talked to me in the darkroom had alternated between the language of backwoods Sarah and educated Julia. Perhaps she herself had not known with certainty who she really was.

  But the cries that rose now came from the throat of no one but a witch.

  Had it happened on the way up or was it supposed to be on the return trip? Sarah hadn’t told me, but I could hope it was the latter, for she had said, “It may have already happened,” and not, “It has happened.”

  I glanced at my watch. It was eleven twenty. Mom’s appointment had been at ten. There was a chance that she might still be in the conference. If I could catch her before she left the magazine office I would be able to stop her.

  I tore through the garage and into the kitchen, slamming the door on the sound of the shrieking voice and pounding fists. I snatched up the phone and punched in the number of Mom’s cell.

  The voice that answered was vaguely familiar, but it wasn’t Mom’s.

  “Hello?” the voice said uncertainly. “This is Bonnie Chavez.”

  Oh, no! I’d completely forgotten that Mom had loaned the professor’s daughter her cell phone.

  Without taking the time to respond, I hung up on her, then punched in the number for information.

  “New Mexico Magazine in Santa Fe,” I told the operator. “I don’t have a contact person, but it’s at the Department of Development. Please hurry! It’s an emergency!”

  The call went through quickly. The voice that answered was young and secretarial.

  “This is Rachel Bryant,” I said. “My mother, Leslie Bryant, had a ten o’clock appointment with the art editor. Is she still there? It’s very important that I speak with her!”

  “Just a moment,” the assistant said. “I’ll check and see.” There was a silence broken by the hum of voices rising and falling in the background. Then the secretary came back on and said, “I’m sorry. She left the office about ten minutes ago.”

  “Did she say where she was going?” I asked frantically. “Was she going to stop for lunch or do some shopping before she started home?”

  “Let me ask,” the woman said, and again there was a pause. “No,” she said finally, “not that anyone here knows. She did mention that a member of the family was ill and she wanted to get back to Albuquerque as soon as possible.”

  “Thank you,” I said and hung up the phone. What could I do now? Call Dad at work? Call Peter? Both Dad’s office and the music store where Peter worked were halfway across town, too far for either to get home quickly even if I convinced him it was necessary.

  Which left one possibility—Mike. He had said he wouldn’t be working, but that didn’t necessarily mean he would be home. It took me only a matter of seconds to cover the distance between our houses and press the Gallaghers’ doorbell. Mike’s car was in the driveway, which was a good sign. If he was out someplace he would definitely have
taken the car. I pressed the bell again and began to bang on the door. What was taking him so long? Had he gone deaf?

  “Mike!” I called. “Mike!”

  The door opened.

  “Hey,” he said, “take it easy. You don’t have to knock the door down.” Then he saw the expression on my face. “What’s wrong?”

  “I need help,” I gasped.

  “Something’s happened at your house? Somebody’s hurt?” In one long stride he was through the door and had started down the porch steps.

  “No, it’s out on the freeway.” I clutched at his arm. “We need to take the car.”

  “Has there been an accident? Is it one of the family?”

  “Come on,” I begged. “There’s no time for talking. You’ll just have to trust me. It’s really important. Please, Mike, believe me!”

  Though, honestly, why should he? What was Mike to me at this point, or I to him?

  I looked up into his face and saw bewilderment in his eyes. He would, I knew, demand an explanation. People didn’t go rushing off down the highway without an understanding of what was happening. He would make me stop and explain, step-by-step, in a logical manner. What was the problem? Who was in danger? Why did I think so? Was I crazy or something?

  They were the questions he might have asked, but he didn’t ask them. Instead he grabbed my hand and started for the car.

  “I believe you,” he said. “Where do we go?”

  “Onto the freeway,” I told him, “and north toward Santa Fe.”

  “Right.” He threw open the car door, shoved me in the passenger side and then ran around to the driver’s seat. Thrusting the key into the ignition, he started the car and backed out of the driveway. I glanced back at the house and saw Mrs. Gallagher standing in the doorway, a look of surprise on her round, motherly face. She took a step forward as Mike slammed the car into first and brought his foot down on the accelerator. Her mouth opened, and although I couldn’t hear her I could read the words: “Where are you two going?”

  The car leapt forward. Mike took the corner at the end of the street and put us onto Louisiana Avenue. The light in front of us was red. We went straight through it. Several cars blew their horns at us as we shot past them. A ramp lay to the right, and we sped onto it and around the sloping curve that brought us onto the freeway. The road led west and then it curved once more and at last we were headed north with the highway straight and smooth before us and the land stretched flat to the mountains on either side.

  “Now,” Mike said. “Can you tell me where we’re going and why?”

  “It’s Mom,” I said, wondering how much he would be able to accept. “We’ve got to intercept her. She’s going to have an accident.”

  “You mean there’s something wrong with her car?”

  “Well—yes.”

  “What sort of thing?”

  “It’s the steering,” I said. “The car is going to swerve.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just—do.”

  “How?” He glanced over at me. “You’ve got to be basing this on something. What makes you think the steering’s going to blow?”

  I drew a deep breath. “Julia told me.”

  “Julia? How does she know? Julia doesn’t know anything about cars.”

  “Mike,” I said, “you told me you believed me. Please trust me and I promise I’ll explain it all later. I can’t even think right now about anything except Mom. If we’re late—if we don’t reach her in time . . .” I let the sentence fade off, unable to complete it.

  “Do you know that she’s left Santa Fe already?”

  “I checked right before coming over to your house. She’d finished her business meeting ten minutes before. That means she could be a third of the way home by now.” I forced myself to say the words. I didn’t want to face them. A third of the way home would mean she was already driving in the area of the cliffs.

  “Not necessarily,” Mike said. “You know what the parking is like around the plaza during the summer. She might’ve had to put her car in a lot. That would mean it could take twenty minutes or so for her to walk back to it and get paid up and out on the road.”

  “Can we go faster?” I begged.

  “We’re already going the speed limit.”

  “Please, Mike, go faster!”

  Mike, who had never broken a law in his life, glanced in the rearview mirror and bore down on the gas pedal. We passed the turnoff to the pueblo so quickly that I never saw it flash by. I closed my eyes and tried to send my mind flying ahead of the car. Mom, I screamed silently, pull off the road and stop! Wait for us—wait for us! But I knew she wouldn’t hear me. It was Julia, not I, who could do things with her mind.

  No, not Julia, but Sarah. I’d never known Julia, the laughing, joking, singing Julie who had been my cousin. That Julie had gone to church and worn yellow dresses and played the guitar. She had been seventeen with her life still in front of her. There was a boy named Kent Nesbitt who was eager to meet her; he liked her picture. Perhaps she would have liked him too, if she had met him. Perhaps they would even have fallen in love. Seventeen years old with no chance to be eighteen! Oh, Julie, I thought, you were cheated! You never had a chance for anything! And I wanted to cry for the girl I hadn’t known and now never would.

  I opened my eyes and saw we had left the flat land behind us. The road was steadily rising and the terrain was changing. We were into the hills and the curves and dips, and the earth had lost its dust color and was growing red with clay content. The sky seemed bluer and the air clearer.

  “How much farther?” I asked.

  “To the heart of Santa Fe?”

  “To the cliffs. How far to the cliffs?”

  “We’re almost into them,” Mike said. “You can see how the land’s getting craggy. You still won’t tell me?”

  “I can’t until we find her!” The road was no longer straight, it was winding, and the hills on the sides were growing higher. “There’s a place,” I said, “where the bank drops off. It’s a sort of canyon. Not really deep but—deep enough.”

  “Is that where we’re headed?”

  “Yes.” My hands were clenched in my lap. “How much farther is it?”

  “Not far at all. We’re almost to it.”

  “That’s where—” I broke off as the car began to jerk. “What is it? What’s happening? You’re slowing down!”

  “It’s the gas,” Mike said. “It’s acting like it’s out of gas. I don’t understand it. I filled the tank yesterday. There must be a leak in the tank or—”

  “We can’t stop now!”

  “I’m sorry,” Mike said. “There’s nothing I can do about it.” He twisted the wheel to the right and guided us onto the shoulder. The car lurched and coughed and sputtered and the engine went silent. We rolled a few yards and came to a stop.

  I threw open the door and jumped out.

  “Hey, come back!” Mike shouted.

  I didn’t answer. My eyes were focused on the curve up ahead. Beyond that curve was the place I was headed. You’ve done your job, Sarah, I thought wretchedly. A leak in the gas tank!

  I began to run and after a moment I realized Mike was running beside me. How long we ran I don’t know, because after a while we reached a point where there was no such thing as time. There was only my pounding heart and the blazing heat of the sun on my head and the thud of my feet as they struck the road. I couldn’t seem to get enough air into my lungs. The heat shimmered on the road like rippling pools of black water moving always a little ahead of us, and I knew we would never get there until it was over.

  It was late, too late. As I rounded the curve I knew what I would see. Swerve marks on the road. A gaping hole in the guardrail. A blazing car in the ravine. How could I have stopped it? Sarah had planned it, and Sarah did not make mistakes.

  But I was wrong; that wasn’t the scene that greeted me. The rail was intact and there was no sign of an accident. There was only a stretch of road that I
knew well, so well, and as I recognized it I knew, too, what would happen in the next few minutes.

  There was a dream in which I was running along a winding road. There were stark, red cliffs on one side of me and on the other there was a drop-off. My legs ached and my breath was coming in gasps, and I cried to Mike who was running beside me, “Will we get there in time? Can we get there before it happens?”

  He said, “Are you crazy, Rae? If you’d only explain—”

  “I can’t!” I cried. “There’s no time!”

  Up ahead, far, far ahead, a tiny reflection of the noonday sunlight signaled the approach of a car coming toward us down the road.

  “Stop!” I screamed. “Stop!” And as in the dream, I ran straight into the middle of the road with my arms outspread. The car came roaring toward me, and I was able to look directly into the eyes of the driver, wide, familiar eyes that recognized me as I did them. I could see Mom’s face as she hit the brake, a white face blank with amazement. The car went past me and then it began to swerve. Like a child’s windup toy with faulty steering, it moved in a steady line toward the drop-off and came to a stop a matter of inches from the edge.

  There was a moment of dead silence. Then, as from far away, there came into my head the sound of singing, high and joyful and sweet. Faint and far, a ringing in my ears—part of the dizziness of relief, or something else? Angel Julie singing?

  I didn’t know. It didn’t matter. What did matter was that we had, after all, made it in time. Mike’s arm was around my shoulders and Mom was opening the car door and getting out.

  “My god,” she said shakily. “The steering wouldn’t work. If I hadn’t seen you and started to slow down before it happened—” She glanced at the drop-off and shuddered. “What in the world are you two doing here? When I saw Rae running up the highway I couldn’t believe my eyes!”

  “I don’t know,” Mike said. “Rae knew, somehow, about the car.”

  “It’s been so long,” I said. “I called the magazine office. They said you left there a little after eleven. It’s almost twelve-thirty now. You should have reached this spot a long time ago.” Something had delayed her. That was obvious. Something had been working for us, something that Sarah, with all her powers, could not defeat or control.