Nightmare Child Read online

  "Who?"

  "Your receptionist?"

  "Sandra."

  "She sounds like a Sandra."

  "How does a 'Sandra' sound?"

  "Snotty. Bitchy. I'm going to ask Uncle Ray to have her fired." Mindy was not bluffing. Mindy never bluffed. Mindy had gotten any number of people at the Foster Dawson Agency fired. "But right now you've got to get home."

  "Why?"

  "Because I saw something."

  "What did you see?"

  Behind him, Brenda stood up and waved. He wanted to lunge at her, hold her from leaving and shout I love you! until she confessed her love for him back.

  Brenda left.

  "Jeff? Are you still there?"

  "Yes."

  "Why do you sound so surly all of a sudden?"

  "Mindy, I'm just buried in work and I really don't have time to—"

  "She's back."

  "Who's back?"

  "Who do you think?"

  Still irritated and forlorn over Brenda's quick exit, he said, "I don't have time for guessing games."

  "I had to take three Valiums. That's the only reason I'm calm. But I started hyperventilating so I got a nosebleed."

  "Please try to make sense here, Mindy. Please."

  "She's back. Jenny. Jenny's home."

  "Oh, Mindy. Mindy. Please call Dr. Moeller and make an appointment and—"

  "She's right next door. At Diane Purcell's home. And about five minutes ago a police car pulled into the drive."

  "What are you talking about, Mindy? Jenny can't be home. We—" He thought of tapped phones. Given all the palace politics of advertising, you couldn't ever be sure. "You know why that's impossible."

  "It may be impossible, but it's true."

  "But—"

  "You get in your fancy-schmancy sports car that I bought for you and you get your buns home. Fast. Do you understand?"

  "But—"

  "Do you understand, Jeff? Right now."

  Mindy hung up.

  He looked miserably about him and thought of Brenda's ironic words. How only he, Jeff McCay, would be stupid enough to give his heart away in the Hubba-Hubba Room.

  Forty-two-year-old Robert Clark had had three dates with Diane Purcell. While none were especially a disaster, neither were they memorable. Clark, a tall, shaggy, dark-haired man who frequently made jokes about being the "Chief" of a police department consisting of six officers and three cars, had hoped that he would get somewhere with this most attractive widow. At his age, he'd had enough "relationships." A Vietnam veteran who'd kicked around the world for several years following his hitch, Clark was ready for marriage. Perhaps too ready. He secretly felt that his over eagerness had terrified Diane and driven her away.

  At the time Diane's call came in telling him that Jenny had just sauntered into sight in her backyard, Clark was listening to a pitch from the local Plymouth dealer who felt it highly unfair that the last two times the department had purchased cars it had gone to Ford. Not only was a Chrysler product better than a Ford product, but it offered more features for fewer dollars.

  "All right, Mike," Clark said toying with the pipe he rarely smoked. He shrugged at the Plymouth dealer. "Prove it to me."

  "Huh?"

  "Take all the things I'll get in a new Ford Fairlane and put them in one column, and then take all the things I'm going to get from your Plymouth at the same price." The Plymouth dealer glowered.

  "You said you could prove it, Mike. What's wrong with making out a comparative list?"

  Which was when the phone call came through from Diane.

  The Plymouth dealer, seeing immediately that Clark was going to be distracted for the third or fourth time during this presentation, stood up, waved good-bye, and exited the knotty-pine office, making no promise at all that he'd get back to the Chief with that list of comparisons.

  As he pulled up on the gravel crest of the hill overlooking the Stoneridge Estates, Clark saw again how beautiful this region of the Midwest could be, especially with the trees run riot and a soft blue haze over everything. In the distance a chestnut mare ran along the grassy edge of a hill. Directly below, entering the Estates through the black iron gates, a tan Volvo passed a blue brook as a red cardinal soared above a golden collie.

  The Estates spoke of a peace and comfort Clark had never known but now wanted to know quite badly.

  Five minutes later, wheeling the white police vehicle into Diane's drive, Clark grabbed the two-way and told Ben Hibbs, the young officer catching squawks, that he would probably be at Diane's for at least a half-hour.

  Walking up the drive, he noticed he was shaking. Nothing major, but shaking nonetheless. Diane had meant more to him than he'd cared to admit until this very moment.

  Diane answered on the first ring. Even in faded work clothes, she radiated a gentle appeal.

  "Come on in," she said. "I fixed some chocolate. With marshmallows, if I remember correctly?"

  He smiled. "I'm flattered."

  She laughed. "With the social life I have, it's not too difficult to remember things like that."

  "Still a hermit?" he said as they passed through the cool, late-afternoon shadows collecting in the step-down living room.

  "Afraid so," Diane said, leading him into the kitchen. Clark's first glance at Jenny told him that here was a seriously disturbed youngster.

  It wasn't just the scruffy condition of her clothes, nor the fact that she looked pale and exhausted. No, it was more the blankness of her gaze. There was something… inhuman about it.

  "Jenny, this is Chief Clark."

  "Hi, Jenny," Clark said, breaking into a social smile. "We've been looking for you every day for the past three months."

  At the worktable, pouring two cups of hot chocolate, Diane said, "I told her all about the search parties." She glanced at Clark. "I hope she was impressed." She paused. "The truth is Jenny hasn't said much since getting here." Pause. "In fact, Jenny hasn't said anything."

  When she turned around and brought over the chocolate, Clark could see how concerned Diane looked.

  The chocolate served, Diane went over and stood next to the girl, taking one tiny hand in her own.

  "Jenny, are you afraid?"

  Nothing. Just the stare.

  "Jenny, do you remember me?"

  The same stare.

  "Jenny, do you know that I'm your friend?"

  Nothing.

  Diane turned back to Clark. "Do you see what I mean?"

  Clark nodded. "Has she seen her sister yet?"

  "That's the odd thing. She won't. Every time I try to take her over there, she grabs my wrist and stops me." She rubbed her wrist. "She's a very strong little girl."

  Clark walked over to Jenny. "Do you feel all right, Jenny?"

  Once more, the stare.

  "Would you like us to get you a doctor?"

  No response.

  "Are you afraid of your sister, Jenny?"

  Nothing.

  Setting down his chocolate, Clark said, "Why don't we walk out on the deck, Diane? I'm sure Jenny will be all right here for a while."

  Diane nodded. She looked at Jenny. "Will you be all right, hon?"

  But of course Jenny did not let on that she'd heard a word.

  "God only knows what they did to her."

  "The kidnappers?"

  "Right."

  Diane shuddered. "I don't even like to think about it."

  They leaned on the deck, gazing up the hill at the scrub pine and the clear blue sky. Distantly, a train rumbled through the hills. Closer by, a blackbird cawed.

  "I just wonder why Jenny acted so funny about Mindy."

  "Makes me curious too." He leaned on his elbows and watched a hawk soar in a wide loop toward the sun.

  "You've got a nice place to relax here, Diane." He smiled fondly. "You should try it sometime—relaxing, I mean."

  "I'm afraid I've never been any good at that. I suppose that's why I was always so drawn to Jenny. She reminded me of myself at
her age. There's always been an urgency about her. I suppose it's because of Mindy."

  "What about Mindy?"

  "Mindy's so…self-involved. I don't mean that critically, just as an observation. Her weight, her hair, her social calendar. There just hasn't ever been much time for poor little Jenny. And Mindy's had her for four years, ever since their parents were killed in a private-plane crash."

  Clark shrugged. "Maybe that's why Jenny doesn't want to go back there. Maybe for right now she needs the warmth and reassurance of somebody who really cares about her."

  Diane studied the hills. "I wonder where she's been all this time."

  "Maybe she just escaped a while ago."

  "She looks so…pale."

  "It isn't her coloring that bothers me."

  "No?"

  "No. It's her eyes. At first I thought we might be dealing with a very severe case of traumatic shock. But now I don't know. I've never seen eyes quite like hers."

  "Neither have I."

  "It's like she's–" He shook his head, not wanting to say it.

  "Like she's what?"

  "You know, Diane. You know what I want to say."

  "Not quite…conscious. Is that it?"

  "Something like that."

  "That's impossible, of course. But she does—" Diane paused. "She does give that impression, doesn't she?"

  "I think you should call Dr. Moeller."

  "I was wondering about that."

  "I've worked with him a couple of times. As shrinks go, he's a pretty sensible guy."

  She smiled. "Is that an anti-shrink attitude I detect?"

  He smiled back. "I suppose so. I'm not real fond of the way they always try to excuse everything by bringing in somebody's past. And I don't like the way they try to complicate everything with all these theories. Moeller's pretty straight ahead."

  They moved away from the edge of the deck, brushing up against each other as they did so.

  "Sorry," Diane said.

  "I enjoyed it," he said. Then he snapped his fingers. "There I go again."

  "There you go again?"

  "Right. Being pushy." He sighed. "I guess I may as well say it. I think I frightened you away a few months ago—by coming on too strong. I think that's why you suddenly stopped seeing me."

  She laughed softly. "You'd make a good shrink, Robert."

  "I would?"

  "Sure. You're doing the same thing you accuse them of doing."

  "I am?"

  She nodded. "You're making things more complicated than they need to be."

  "Oh."

  "I quit seeing you because I was…afraid. I liked you more than I was ready to like you, if that makes any sense. I just needed…time alone, I guess."

  "I'm glad you told me that. Maybe sometime I'll ask you out again."

  "I'd like that." She paused. "Sometime." She pointed to the shadowy interior of the house. "Let's go in and see how my new houseguest is doing."

  They were ten steps into the kitchen when Clark saw that the stool Jenny had been sitting on was empty.

  Diane ran through the house, to the front door. "There she is!" she called to Clark.

  "Where?" Clark said, running to meet Diane. "She's going across the lawn. To Mindy's house."

  As Clark came abreast of Diane, he said, "Well, maybe she worked through whatever difficulty she was having. Maybe she understands that it's a good thing to go home after all."

  But Diane's eyes clouded with worry as she watched the retreating figure of the frail blond girl. "I hope that's why she's going back," Diane said. "I hope that's why."

  Ordinarily, Mindy did not drink liquor. Sophomore year in college she'd gone on a kegger with some other Tri-Delts and ended up, near midnight, lying alone on the edge of a sandpit, nude and covered with chigger bites. She had never found out what she'd done—or what had been done to her—but whatever it was she blamed it all on drink.

  Today, seeing Jenny coming across the lawn, she got down a fifth of Old Grand-dad from the kitchen cupboard, poured herself a shaky finger-full in a wineglass, and slugged it back.

  "Oh, God," she said to no one in particular. "I know I'm going to hyperventilate and get a nosebleed. I know it."

  Just then the doorbell rang an explosion of chimes on the sullen, silent air.

  Jenny. Her younger sister. The girl she'd killed—or thought she'd killed—months ago. At the front door.

  She had one more equally shaky drink, this one causing her to cough, and then she walked to the front door with as much dignity and purpose as she could summon.

  Peeking through the spy-hole, she peered down on the familiar form of her sister, Jenny.

  Mindy made a squealing noise when she saw the shades, those hideous red heart-shaped sunglasses little Jenny had always been so inexplicably fond of, the sunglasses that made her look like a midget version of a movie goddess.

  Mindy, throwing the door open, dropped to one knee and said, "Come here, Kitten! Come here!"

  Mindy held her arms out for Kitten, urging Jenny to run into her embrace.

  Only that was not what happened.

  Jenny took one step over the threshold and then did something most surprising for a girl her age and size.

  She reached out and clawed her right hand down the side of Mindy's neck. Deep, dark blood appeared in long, ragged rivulets.

  Mindy screamed.

  Jenny had come home.

  During this time, only a cleaning woman named Iona caught even so much as a glimpse of Jenny. One day when Iona was cleaning the bathroom in a master bedroom (you'd think a forty-nine-year-old man would learn to flush, for God's sake), she glanced outside and there in the window of the house next door was little Jenny, austere in her KISS T-shirt and almost ominous in those red, heart-shaped sunglasses she'd worn the past three Summers.

  Jenny and the McCays were the one ceaseless topic of conversation in Stoneridge, their situation being even far more fun to speculate on than who was sleeping with whom in Parish Heights, the closed enclave estates twenty miles north, where the people were younger and more daring.

  One thing everybody took note of, were the curtains in the McCay house.

  They had not been opened once since the day Jenny had returned.

  DECEMBER

  The Christmas season was beautiful in Stoneridge Estates. Not only were the rooftops and the scrub pines mantled festively in white, but on each home were hung elaborate electrical ornaments that at night were as spectacular as anything that could be seen in the downtown areas of large cities. Against the chill starry night sky you saw a red-cheeked Santa urging on his long team of reindeer; over the soft fall of feet through powdery snow, you heard a chorus sing "Silent Night" to a front-yard replica of the famous manger scene; and on a hill behind the Estates, you saw a large plastic Frosty the Snowman, lighted from inside, waving hello to all the good boys and girls.

  This was also the time when the people of Stoneridge realized that they were friends and not just folks who happened to live next door to one another. Women exchanged recipes and cookies and holiday cakes; men exchanged Sunday-afternoon football highlights and hunting tips and helped in digging out a car buried in snow.

  All the neighbors, that was, except the McCays.

  From the time little Jenny had come home, the McCays had become almost suspiciously insular, showing a downright aversion to exchanging anything more than the briefest of greetings with their neighbors. Mindy—who had been variously "into" Amway, the Junior League, mall fashion shows, and the Negro-for-an-afternoon program that the country club once sponsored until one of the ungrateful little wretches bit the white hand that happened to be feeding it—was especially silent.

  And skinnier.

  The women of Stoneridge didn't know what kind of diet Mindy was on this time, but whatever it was, it certainly seemed to work. By Stoneridge estimates, Mindy had dropped as much as twenty-five pounds, the one drawback being that the woman's face looked terrible—gaunt, with eye rin
gs as pronounced as a raccoon's, and a disposition problem that bordered on psychosis.

  Eventually, the women of Stoneridge—who did not like to think of themselves as gossips but merely exchangers of information—came to realize that Mindy was on no diet at all.

  No, the trouble was Jenny, whom none of the Stoneridge ladies had seen since the day of her return. Only Diane had seen her. Jenny's problems were so severe that they were causing Mindy to lose weight. That was the conclusion of the Stoneridge women, and presumably they were correct because since November 2, the day of Jenny's return, the McCay driveway had held the cars of three psychiatrists, a priest, a Bishop, an Orthodox Rabbi, a steel-haired Presbyterian Minister whom the Stoneridge women instantly dubbed "sexy," seven different officers from local, state, and federal bureaus, a psychic whom the Stoneridge ladies recognized from her show between bouts on the local professional wrestling "Saturday Wipeout," three women from a church bearing flowers, four men from the Jaycees bearing balloons, and two men in a hearse who said they were from Wisconsin and had devoted their lives to checking out stories of possible abductions by UFOs, of which poor little Jenny might be an example.

  TWO MONTHS LATER

  Diane knew why she'd baked the pie, of course. She just wouldn't quite admit it to herself.

  All morning she fussed with the preparation —flour felt good on the fingers, and cutting the firm red apples with a paring knife was nice crisp work—and all afternoon she'd pause in her cleaning or her laundering to put her head into the kitchen and smell the sumptuous results of her labor.

  Who could resist an apple pie? Could even secretive Mindy McCay turn her down?

  At four, Diane went into the kitchen, tugged on a huge blue oven mitt, and brought forth her triumph, a plump, crusty pie that would serve six, or two extremely hungry ten-year-olds, especially if you served cold white milk on the side.

  At five-thirty, the pie having cooled sufficiently, Diane wrapped up both it and herself, and proceeded across the snowy expanse separating her house from the McCay's. It was dark already, with stars bright in the gray-black firmament, and the pure chill evening excited her. She would see Robert Clark at seven-thirty. She would suggest a walk. He loved lagging behind, to knock off her festive red winter cap with a soft snowball.