Nightmare Child Read online

  "Just show me the advertising, son, and cut the bullshit."

  Flushing, not liking to be berated in front of the rest of the team, Jeff said, "Yessir."

  And whipped back the covering to reveal a brand-new print ad on which three brand-new TV commercials had been based.

  Jeff read the theme line: "Reddy Teddy. With the smell and taste of charcoal-broiled steak."

  What ensued then was what always ensued when you pitched a client. You sat and studied his face as he thought it over. If it twitched, was that a bad sign? If he cleared his throat, was that a good sign? Once they'd even had a client pass gas, and God only knew what that had meant.

  Five minutes later Mr. Culhane said, "I'll tell you one thing, boys. It sure doesn't give me the chills. I guess I expected a lot better campaign than this."

  Eleven months before, Diane Purcell wouldn't have been able to tell you the difference between an annual and a perennial. Tending soil, preparing plant beds, spacing seedlings properly, fertilizing—none of this had ever appealed to the forty-one-year-old schoolteacher until her husband, Charlie, had died so suddenly of a heart attack.

  Now—having quit her job because of all the insurance money and because she vaguely had the idea of writing a book along the lines of the Victoria Holt novels she loved so much—her daily reality was her garden.

  Wearing one of Charlie's blue work shirts and a faded pair of her own jeans, Diane worked in the garden, tending her nasturtiums and marigolds. The autumn wind coming down the hill was melancholy with the smells of smoke and sunlight. Here it was, already the first week of November, and the temperature remained at sixty-seven. The Midwest was rarely this warm.

  Knees tired, Diane rose, dabbing at her face with her forearm, her rubber-gloved hand full with a trowel. A slender woman with dark hair usually worn in a soft chignon, Diane's blue-eyed face had clarity that some mistook for beauty. But she had long known better.

  The slight hill her house sat on gave her the opportunity to look around the rest of Stoneridge Estates, seventeen expensive homes set against the backdrop of a massive forest. She particularly admired the way everybody had insisted on different styles for their homes, helping to avoid the look of a development. On her block, a U-shaped dead end, you found a Georgian next to a French Normandy—style farmhouse next to a sprawling, two-level ranch. Her own home was a country style with a dramatic two-story foyer, a formal living room with a marble fireplace, whitewashed oak floors, extensive wood moldings, and French doors. There was even a sumptuous master bath with a vaulted ceiling, skylights, and a sunken whirlpool tub, with planter boxes on the surrounding deck.

  Their dream home, it had been. Both having come from relatively wealthy families, and Charlie being a most handsomely rewarded general surgeon, the Purcell's had spent the last six years there as blissful as any couple could be. Not even the fact that Diane was unable to bear children troubled them unduly. They had each other and that was more than enough.

  Some nights now were unendurable, memories too vivid, lonely-ache too raw. She was beyond tears, into something far more vast and terrifying. A shrink had been suggested, and while she'd tried one twice, the sessions had yielded nothing but a certain embarrassing self-consciousness. Diane had always been a very private person.

  She was just about to drop to her knees once more and resume working with the trowel when the caw of a silken blackbird caught her attention and she looked up the timbered, sloping hill behind her where sunlight dappled the brown grass of a clearing.

  A young girl stood in the clearing, obviously staring at Diane.

  Diane's first reaction was to reject what her eye told her was true. It could not be. Impossible.

  Her second reaction was to whisper to herself, "My God, I don't believe it."

  In the clearing stood nine-year-old Jenny, the next-door neighbor girl who had this past summer been kidnapped and presumably killed. Diane had always been enormously fond of the girl, perhaps even thinking of her subconsciously as a substitute for the daughter she could never have.

  Dropping her trowel, putting out her arms, Diane started running up the hill, laughing and crying at the same time.

  As she drew closer, she shouted, "It is you, Jenny! It is you! You're home!"

  Mindy had not always been fat. She dated her obesity from the day she'd lost her first and only pregnancy to a miscarriage. In dreams, nightmares really, Mindy still spoke to the shadowy little girl who'd come to nothing but a bloody puddle. From then on, she'd eaten with an almost psychotic hunger.

  Attempting to sate that hunger, she presently did jumping jacks on the sunny redwood deck in the rear of her opulent Mediterranean-style white-brick home, just west of the landscaped courtyard.

  As the disco music pounded from the small Sony recorder, as the sweat inside her pink jogging suit with the black piping began to have the viscous texture of oil, she opened her eyes to see if there were any bunnies on the hill behind their place.

  It was then that she saw the girl.

  Doing a double take that Abbott and Costello would have been proud of, Mindy's stare became a glare and she stalked so abruptly to the edge of the deck that she stumbled over the tape recorder. So angry and frightened was she, that she drop-kicked the tape-player clear over the edge of the deck, into an orange swirl of autumn flowers.

  It could not be.

  No way.

  But it was.

  Fleeing inside, slamming into the sliding-glass door that led to the deck, Mindy began to hyperventilate. Within two more steps her nose began to bleed.

  "Oh, God," she said, recalling what Dr. Moeller, the psychotherapist, had told her to do.

  Stretching herself out on the oak floor of the living room, she was at once attacked by her golden toy poodle, Ringo.

  Liking blood, the dog began to lap at her nose, his quick pink tongue sandpaper-rough on her face.

  "Oh, please Ringo. I don't need any more grief," she said, trying to push the dog away.

  But even this much movement caused her nose to spurt more red blood, so that all she could do was back-down, and let Ringo have at her.

  "She's alive," Mindy said miserably. "We killed her, we buried her two hundred miles from here, but she's alive. Do you hear that, Ringo? She's alive!"

  Ringo just continued to yip and lick her face.

  Once Jenny was in her arms, Diane knelt next to the small girl for a closer look at her. Dirt darkened Jenny's face and smudged her white blouse, jeans, and Reeboks. Her blond hair was a bird's nest of tiny leaves. She looked as if she'd been traveling for days. But kneeling there in the clearing, the sun warm on her back, Diane was far more disturbed by Jenny's eyes, a blank blue that suggested shock.

  "Where did you come from, Jenny?"

  Jenny's gaze registered understanding but she said nothing, just stared at Diane.

  "Why don't we go tell Mindy you're home? Do you know how happy she'll be?"

  Diane rose and took Jenny's fragile hand, starting to lead her toward the McCay property.

  Jenny's grip suddenly became iron. She jerked on Diane's hand, pulling Diane back.

  "You don't want to go home? You don't want to see your sister?" Diane asked.

  With the severe blue gaze unchanged, Jenny shook her head.

  "Where do you want to go, then?" Diane said, her glee having turned abruptly to a curious exasperation.

  With her free hand, Jenny pointed to the house: Diane's house.

  "Do you have any idea how many people were looking for you? The TV stations estimated that more than one thousand people joined the search one Saturday. And that wasn't counting the police and the State Patrol and the State Bureau of Investigation." Diane said all this as they stood in the bathroom. She washed Jenny's face and hands with a soft pink washcloth soaked in warm, soapy water. "They searched parks and farmland and the clay hills to the north and they put your picture in all the supermarkets and sports arenas and department stores. And once a night, there was an update
about you." Diane frowned. "I hate to say this, Jenny, but everybody started believing that you were dead. They just assumed that your kidnappers had gotten scared and murdered you."

  As she finished washing off the girl's face, Diane noticed again how ominously silent the girl was. She listened to every word. You could see that by the way her expression changed as she listened. But she never spoke. Diane had the unnerving sensation that the girl wasn't human at all, but rather some life-size doll.

  Drying her off, Diane said, "Now, why don't I take you over to see your sister?"

  Anger shined in Jenny's gaze as she shook her head. "But, Jenny, why don't you want to go home?" Exasperation tightened her voice once more.

  Jenny shook her head for a second time, then, seeming about to cry, ran out of the bathroom.

  It took twenty minutes to find her. As a younger girl, Jenny had often come over to Diane's and played hide-and-seek, her favorite game. This time she hid in a cedar chest in Charlie's old office.

  When Diane opened the trunk, she had the terrifying feeling that Jenny had died. She lay so still, hands folded across her chest, eyes closed tight, that that was the impression she gave.

  Diane decided not to mention Mindy for a while. "You must be starving."

  Getting out of the cedar chest, Jenny nodded.

  "How about a turkey sandwich on rye and some potato chips on the side?"

  Jenny nodded again.

  "Whatever happened to that talkative little girl I used to know, anyway?" Diane said on the way downstairs to the kitchen.

  Jenny ate two turkey sandwiches, a healthy wedge of cheesecake, a half-cup of spinach, and drank two glasses of milk.

  They sat in the sun-splashed kitchen. Two tomcats sat across from them, watching.

  "Autumn's my favorite time," Diane said. She realized she was chattering. It was her way of compensating for the fact that Jenny said nothing at all. "When I was your age, I liked to walk through the woods and smell leaves burning. It was the most exotic aroma I'd ever smelled. And I loved Halloween. I loved to dress up like a ghost and jump out from behind trees and scare my big brother, who always liked to pretend he was so brave."

  As if to comment on her reverie, one of the cats yawned.

  She stopped herself and looked across the butcher-block table at Jenny. "I wish you'd talk, hon. Are you afraid to talk?"

  Jenny stared at her.

  "Did they tell you they'd hurt you if you tried to talk?" Jenny shook her head.

  "Do you know what happened to your kidnappers?" Jenny went back to staring.

  Diane dropped her gaze. Sighed. "Maybe I'd better go call Mindy now."

  A snake could not have moved faster than Jenny's hand. It clamped onto Diane's wrist, hurting her. It was obvious she did not intend to let go.

  "Jenny," Diane said through her pain, "why don't you want me to call your sister?" Then: "Please, Jenny, you're hurting me."

  Jenny let go at once.

  Rubbing her wrist, letting the worst of the pain dissipate up the length of her arm, she said, "Then will you let me call a friend of mine, Jenny? He's a policeman. Chief Clark. Do you remember him?"

  Jenny nodded.

  "Is it all right if I call him?"

  Jenny took a full minute thinking it over.

  Finally, a wisp of a sigh escaping her small mouth, she tilted her head forward, meaning yes.

  It was known as the Hubba-Hubba Room. Located in the dusty, shadowy basement of the Foster Dawson Agency, the ten-by-ten room was furnished in Salvation Army modern, equipped with a small wet bar and, most important, it could be used only by the four executives who had keys to it. In the era of liberation; this meant one female and three male vice-presidents. The room was used for "quickies," as the executives were prone to call them.

  This afternoon, the Hubba-Hubba was being put to struggling use by Jeff McCay and a most appealing young woman named Brenda Kohl, who was an assistant art director and had been Jeff's lover for the past seven months. Red of hair, green of eyes, sumptuous of body, Brenda could most often be found straddled on top of Jeff in the overstuffed chair. As now.

  "Oh-oh-oh," she said, tossing her head back, closing her in eyes in what Jeff took to be ecstasy.

  "Oh-oh-oh," Jeff said right back, closing his own eyes in what he took to be ecstasy.

  Finished a few minutes later, the skirt of her fashionable gray Jaeger suit pulled into place with fierce modesty, she said, as she always said, "Did you get a chance to talk to Barney yet?"

  Now they were seated sensibly across from each other. She held a Coca-Cola, he a Diet Pepsi.

  He smiled. "I'm sorry, babe."

  "God, you did it again."

  "Oh, I'm sorry. 'Babe,' you mean?"

  "Yes. I hate that."

  "I'm sorry."

  "And stop apologizing. It's so…unmanly."

  Jeff McCay had long had this dream of having an uncomplicated relationship with a woman. Other men, over drinks, always told him about their uncomplicated relationships with women. But somehow it never happened for Jeff. Certainly not with Mindy, who could be like living with an entire psychiatric ward all at once. And certainly not with the ten—or was it twelve?—women at Foster Dawson with whom he'd had "things" over the past four years. A little hot, quick, garter-snapping sex; that was all he asked for. But it quickly became so much more, sunk in that morass of failed expectation and enmity. Take gorgeous Brenda, here. She was one of those women who seemed basically to hate men. But, knowing it was men who more than not still dominated the business world, she was not in the least averse to sleeping with one of them now and then to get what she wanted.

  And what she wanted was simple enough in agency terms: a full art directorship with all the commensurate salary increases, the real and imagined perks, and the real and imagined prestige that went with such a position.

  In the beginning, part of his seduction scheme, Jeff had hinted (but was careful not to promise) that he would talk to Barney Graves, the Chief Art Director, and put in several million good words for Brenda. But all along, Jeff knew that he would not do this because he kept his own job only because the agency's largest client was his uncle-in-law. He was resented enough already; if he started getting his girlfriends promotions, he would be in dangerous waters indeed.

  The second problem was that he was in love with Brenda and did not want her to get the promotion because once she did, she'd say good-bye for sure. In love. He thought about that as he stared across at her perfect white legs and her perfect white posture and her perfect tumbling red hair. God, he did love her; she could destroy him he loved her so much, and that made him feel both wonderful and terrible—wonderful because she made him feel so good, and terrible because he knew, deep down, that she'd dump him without a care and he would be maimed in some spiritual way forever.

  "I checked his calendar," Brenda said.

  "Oh?"

  "Yes. He's free for lunch tomorrow."

  "Oh—you mean Barney and—"

  "Barney and you."

  "Oh."

  "Why do you keep saying `oh'? It's almost as annoying as your saying 'babe.'"

  "I'm sorry."

  "God. There you go again."

  Each time now, her distaste for him was more apparent. He wanted to have some kind of personality transplant—Why not? They were transplanting everything else these days—and emerge from surgery as just the kind of non-annoying man Brenda Kohl liked.

  "I'll talk to him."

  "When, Jeff?"

  "Tomorrow."

  "How about today?"

  "If I get a chance."

  "You're that busy?"

  "I'm afraid I am."

  "I'm tired of your lies, Jeff."

  Hearing her harsh words, seeing the anger in her green gaze, he thought again of how other men, particularly in bars, spoke and felt about women: as breasts, as bottoms, as legs and as laughs. Leave it to Jeff McCay to fall in love with a woman who essentially hated him.

&nbs
p; "Why can't we be the way we used to be?" he said.

  "We didn't use to be any way but the way we are right now, Jeff—me pleading, you evading."

  "Who's evasive when the subject of love comes up?"

  "Oh, God, Jeff, not 'love' again! I'm twenty-four years old and I've slept with four men in my life and one of them could barely get it up—what do I know about love?"

  In that whining tone of his that he despised so much, he leaned forward, palms sweating, head pounding, cheeks ablaze with shame, and said, "You know how much I love you, Brenda. Doesn't that mean anything?"

  "I used to think it would mean an art directorship. To be frank, I mean."

  "Well, that's a fine thing to say, Brenda. That's a fine thing."

  She indicated the small room with a regal turn of her slender white wrist. "Jeff, I almost feel sorry for you. This is the Hubba-Hubba Room. This is where people come to use each other—for sex or for promotions or for a way of alleviating boredom. But nobody, Jeff, nobody falls in love in the Hubba-Hubba Room. Can't you understand that, Jeff? Can't you?"

  He was about to yield to her, collapse inside and make a bitter promise (which he intended to keep) to go up-stairs and talk to Barney right then, when something that almost never happened in the Hubba-Hubba Room happened.

  Behind the bar was a battered old black phone, the type Humphrey Bogart used to speak into when he was playing Sam Spade. It almost never rang (the Hubba-Hubba Room was supposed to be for uninterrupted pleasure), but now it rang as shrilly as the scream of a dying person.

  Brenda said, a touch sardonically, "It won't be for me. Assistant art directors aren't that important."

  He flew to the phone and snatched up the receiver. "God, I'm so glad I got you. You've got to get home immediately."

  Mindy.

  Glancing over his shoulder at Brenda, who was studying her perfect red-painted nails, he said, "How did you know this number?"

  "Your receptionist gave it to me. She didn't want to, the bitch, but then when I reminded her about my uncle— what's her name, anyway?"