Ghost House Revenge (13 page)

Alicen laid her white purse on a table in the foyer and walked down the long hallway.
She passed several doors before finally opening the one that led to the library. For
some reason she wanted to look at the picture of Scrooge in Gina’s book, the one that
looked so much like Mr. Percy. She heaved it down from its shelf and lugged it to
the sofa.

Scrooge was shaking his fist at someone. (Mr. Percy was
wagging his finger at Alicen.) Scrooge was running scared from a ghost. (Mr. Percy
was running scared from a . . .)

A what?

Alicen stared at the ink drawing and wondered what she was doing in here. She hadn’t
felt right since the accident. It was a feeling of failure, as if she were supposed
to have made something happen and hadn’t. She sighed and looked up at the carved angels
that watched the room from atop the bookshelves.

She shivered. The room had suddenly grown cold, even though the sun was shining warmly
through the windows. Alicen placed the book on the library table in front of her and
stretched out on the sofa. She pressed a finger to one of the buttons in the upholstery
and started to twist it. She could hear the squeak of metal on metal upstairs as Gary
worked out in his therapy room. Outside in the yard, Lad barked at something. Birds
sang, someone laughed—

Alicen sat up abruptly. It had sounded as if the laughter were right there in the
room, and yet she was alone. She looked around. It was the same high-pitched laughter
she had heard in her bedroom. Now she found its source. It was one of the angels that
were carved in the shelves, its mouth opened wide, emitting short, cackling guffaws.
Alicen looked up at it, mesmerized, watching its head loll back and forth as it screamed.
She sat up straighter.

The other angels joined in the laughter. Alicen looked from one to the other, seeing
angels no longer, but demons. Hideous demons with sharp teeth and bats’ wings and
blood dripping from the vines that hung around their necks.

“Ohhh,” Alicen moaned, trying to stand.

Something pushed her back down on the couch.

“You defied me today,” a voice said angrily. “Gina is still alive!”

Something snapped inside Alicen’s head, and she was reminded of the pact she had made
the night before. She bit her knuckles hard and stared up at the filmy mass before
her. Though she could not see them, she could feel cold hands around her wrists.

“I tried, mother,” she whispered. “I made Gina sit up front, but—”

“Shut up!” the vision snapped. “The VanBuren brat is still alive. Do you want to see
your mother again?”

“Yes!”

“I don’t think you do—”

“Yes, I do,” Alicen cried, tears streaming down her face. “Oh, mommy. Why don’t you
show me your face?”

There was a long silence.

“You must make them go away from here,” the apparition said at last, ignoring Alicen’s
plea. “They must all die.”

“Mommy, why must they all die?”

But the vision was gone. Alicen looked around the room. The angels were still. Her
head felt very heavy, and, unable to stop herself, she let it flop back as she fell
asleep.

“I’m telling you, I never saw the driver of that bus,” Hank Emmons insisted. It had
been just a few hours since the accident, and he was sitting in Bryan Davis’s office.

“You must have seen it coming,” Bryan said. “You could hardly have missed a huge vehicle
like that, heading right for the fence.”

“Hey, look,” Hank said, waving his hands, “I was busy. The union just ended a strike,
and there’s lots of work to do, you know? I don’t waste my time running to investigate
every car that comes speeding down that busy highway. Sure, I heard the thing. I think
everyone from here to Montauk heard it. But I didn’t see the bus till it came crashing
through the fence. Geez! Everything happened so fast after that.”

“What about your men?”

“What about them?” Hank asked. “Oh, I get it. No, they didn’t see any more than I
did. My guys pay attention to their work, you know? They’d better, at least, for what
I pay them.”

Bryan ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. He was getting nowhere and wished
the case had been left entirely to the Suffolk County police. He shouldn’t have volunteered
to ask questions. Sure the kids were from his town, and he owed it to them, but where
was all this getting him? Nowhere. He had no answers after hours of questioning, and
doubted he’d get any more in the days to come.

“Listen,” Hank said then, “I want to find this driver as much as you do. I want to
know who she is when I sue the bus company for damages. Say, why haven’t you called
the depot? They’d have her name on a sign-out sheet, wouldn’t they?”

“One of my men is seeing to that,” Bryan said, a little resentful that this other
man should tell him his business. “The office was closed for lunch, but we ought to
be hearing from him shortly.”

The phone rang.

“That’s him,” Bryan said, lifting the receiver. “Belle Bay Police. Well, no ma’am,
we’re working on it.” He shook his head at Hank. “I’m sorry about your boy. How is
he? Gonna be okay? That’s good. Yes, ma’am. It is a shame, ma’am. We’ll let you know.
. . . Yes, yes. Goodbye now, ma’am.”

He hung up. “Damn! That was the mother of the boy who broke his arm. I wish I had
answers for her.”

“You’ve been getting a lot of calls,” Hank commented.

“People are angry,” Bryan answered. “They want to know who this driver is. I’ve got
a lynch mob out there, Mr. Emmons.”

The phone rang again. Bryan shifted a little before answering it, bracing himself
for another barrage of unanswerable questions. This time, it was the cop at the bus
depot.

“What can you tell me, Mike?” Bryan asked. “Who’s the driver?”

“Nobody,” Mike said, his tone serious.

“What?!”

“I mean it,” Mike said. “There isn’t any name next to the bus number on the morning
register. The supervisor says he saw her writing in the book, but there’s nothing
on the page. Not even an indentation from an empty pen.”

“Damn,” Bryan whispered. “Mike, did the supervisor get a good look at her?”

“I asked,” Mike said. “He was too busy to notice her. All he remembered was her blond
hair. And get this—she was wearing fur boots.”

“Must have been on drugs or something,” Bryan said, “dressing like that. Okay, Mike,
that’s all. Why don’t you go to lunch now?”

“I’ll do that,” Mike said, hanging up.

Bryan put down his own phone and looked at Hank Emmons. The man was sitting across
the desk with his chin in his hands, studying Bryan’s face. Now he sat a little straighter,
ran his palms over the front of his shirt, and said, “You haven’t got the slightest
idea what do do about all this, do you?”

“No,” Bryan admitted. He started to bounce a pencil on his desk.

“Say, I have to get back to work.”

Bryan looked up. “Huh? Oh, sure. Sure. I’m finished with you.”

With a wave of his hand, Hank indicated a piece of paper.

“You have my number if you need me again,” he said.

“I know,” Bryan answered.

He stood up and walked from the room with Hank. The two men parted company out in
the hall, Hank heading for the front door and Bryan for the men’s room. When he returned
to his office, he was surprised to see a girl sitting in a wooden chair near his desk.
He looked over her long black hair and chubby face and remembered her from the school.
He smiled at her.

“Alicen, right?” he asked.

“Right,” the girl said, not smiling.

“My memory’s pretty good, isn’t it?” Bryan said, sitting behind his desk. “So, what
can I do for you?”

“I came to tell you what happened on the bus,” Alicen said. “I saw everything.”

“Yeah?” Bryan asked, a little skeptical. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“Everything happened too fast, and I was scared,” Alicen cried, her expression becoming
frantic for a moment. Then it quickly dissolved again into blankness. “Now I remember
things. Just before the bus hit the fence, the driver opened the door and jumped out.”

“She did, huh?”

“You have to believe me!”

“Okay, okay,” Bryan said, waving a hand. “So what happened after she jumped out?”

“I saw her roll down a slope,” Alicen said. “I don’t remember anything else.”

Bryan picked up a pencil and started to bounce it again, his habit when thinking.
This was possible, he thought. Anyone crazy enough to drive a bus at over eighty miles
an hour might be crazy enough to jump from it. That would explain why Hank hadn’t
seen her. But then again, none of the other children had witnessed this feat.

“I think I remember some of the kids saying Mr. Percy made you all lie down on the
floor?”

“Yeah.”

“Then how could you have seen what the driver was doing?”

“I wasn’t on the floor,” Alicen said. “My friend Gina was too scared to move, and
I was supposed to hold her—I mean, she was holding onto me, and I couldn’t move, either.”

“But Gina didn’t tell me she saw the driver jump,” Bryan said.

“She had her hands over her eyes,” Alicen said. “She was scared, but I wasn’t.”

“I’m just glad she wasn’t hurt,” Bryan said. “I like Gina.”

“You know her?”

“Yeah, from some work I did with her family last year,” Bryan said. “Nothing that
concerns you.”

“Were people really murdered in her house?”

Bryan’s eyes widened. “Who told you that?”

“People,” Alicen said, shrugging.

“Well, it’s not true,” Bryan insisted, his tone a little uneasy. “Listen, honey. I
appreciate you coming here, and I’ll call the Suffolk police. They’ll take a look
along the roadside.”

At that speed, he thought, they’ll be looking for a body.

Alicen nodded. To Bryan, her expression looked a little smug. He was suspicious of
her, and yet her explanation was the only one he had to go on right now.

Half an hour later, Derek found his daughter sitting on the porch swing, tickling
Lad’s fur with her bare toes. He sat down next to her, putting an arm along the edge
of the seat back.

“I saw your purse in the hallway,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me you were home?”

“You were busy,” Alicen said. “I didn’t want to bother you.”

“You wouldn’t have bothered me.”

“You always tell me to work out my problems for myself,” Alicen replied.

“But this is different. This is not one of your nightmares. It was a serious accident,
and I’m concerned about you. I heard what happened to Mr. Percy. You must have been
terribly frightened.”

“I wasn’t,” Alicen said.

“I don’t believe you.”

“I’m glad he died,” Alicen said, staring at a ladybug that crept along the white railing.
“I hate him.”

“Alicen,” Derek said gently, “you shouldn’t ever hate anyone.”

Alicen looked up at him, her brown eyes deep. “Don’t you hate anyone?”

“No one,” Derek said.

“Not even the man who killed my mother?”

Derek sighed deeply and put his arms around his daughter. Unaccustomed to such affection,
she stiffened. Derek drew his arms away.

“Alicen, of course I hate what that man did,” he said, “and I’ll never get over losing
your mother. But I can’t hate the man himself. He’ll have to live with his guilt,
and that’s enough without my hatred, too.”

Alicen closed her eyes. “Sometimes I talk to mommy, and it feels like she’s really
here.”

“Alicen,” Derek said patiently, “you know what I told you about those dreams. It’s
nice to wish your mother was alive again—God knows I do—but you have to accept the
fact that she just isn’t coming back.”

“She’s coming back for me,” Alicen said, opening her eyes to glare into her father’s.
“We’re going to be together again.”

Derek wasn’t about to encourage Alicen’s fantasies by arguing with her. Ignoring her
bizarre words, he stood up and walked to the porch railing. The azaleas were starting
to wither now, but their fragrance was still sweet. Derek watched a flock of birds
shoot up from the nearby woods and heard the swing creak behind him as Alicen rocked
it.

She didn’t seem upset by any of this, and that bothered him. Had he scolded her so
many times for being overly emotional that she was now afraid to let him know her
feelings? He didn’t like her having nightmares or pretending to talk with her mother.
But he had never meant for her to hide her fears when those fears were justified.
He had to make her understand she could trust him.

“Say, Alicen,” he said, turning around, “would you like to go out to dinner with me?”

It worked. Alicen’s dull expression suddenly brightened, and she nodded eagerly. He
hadn’t taken her to dinner in years. Derek glanced at his watch; it was still early
afternoon.

“Well, it’s too early for dinner yet,” Derek said. “We can go in a few hours.”

The look on his daughter’s face was one of such disappointment that Derek tried to
think of a quick remedy. He ran his fingers through his dark hair and said, “I know.
We’ll spend the afternoon in the city. Would you like that?”

“Okay,” Alicen said, sounding genuinely eager.

“Then get your shoes and raincoat,” Derek said. “And I’ll meet you down here in fifteen
minutes. I just have to let Gary know we’re going out.”

After changing his clothes, Derek walked out into the hall. He heard Alicen talking
in her room. Knocking at her door, he asked if she was ready. When she didn’t answer,
he pushed
the door open a little. Alicen was sitting on the edge of her bed with one foot propped
up and her fingers wrapped around her shoelaces. She was not moving and had a frightened
look on her face. She seemed to be staring at something. Derek followed her gaze and
saw a milky cloud hovering near the window.

“What the hell is that?” he demanded.

“Dad!”

Alicen jumped, pulling her hands away from her shoe. The cloud disintegrated and became
a beam of sunlight.
Just sunlight
, Derek thought.
My eyes must be playing tricks on me
.