Hand Me Down Evil (Hand Me Down Trilogy) (2 page)

I waved Phyllis and Amber off and barely noticed that Tally had entered the kitchen and was standing next to me. She looked just like Amber, except that her eyes were brown and her long, straight hair tied in a ponytail was reddish brown. She already had on her pink and white flannel pajamas.

Unlike Amber, Tally usually slipped out of her school clothes as soon as she came home and threw on something more comfortable.

“We’ll have dinner when the two of them get back,” I said. “I bet you’re hungry. Phyllis made some spaghetti and Greek salad and lentil soup. Doesn’t that sound scrumptious?”

Tally nodded in agreement.

“Can you check the mail chute in the living room?” I asked Tally.

“Sure,” she replied as she headed toward the kitchen door. She returned a few minutes later holding a stack of envelopes in her hand. “That’s all there was,” Tally said, plopping them down on the table.

“Thanks,” I said, examining the heap of fliers, advertisements, and envelopes. “Letters, letters everywhere and not a single envelope from the scholastic testing center,” I sighed. “Everyone at school got their ACT scores weeks ago, and I am still waiting for mine.”

I went to the stove, uncovered the dinner rolls I had baked earlier, and tossed them on a platter. Mom had taught me how to make rolls two weeks before she left. It seemed like she was purposely teaching me a lot of things before she disappeared. Perhaps she planned to leave.

Thoughts of Mom whirled around in my head. She had behaved strangely just before she went away. Mom added Phyllis as a joint owner on all of her bank accounts the day prior to her departure. I wondered if she intended to leave and wanted to make sure that Phyllis had enough money to take care of me and my sisters. I used to stay awake all night thinking about things like that.

Now when I am in a cheerful frame of mind, I can recall how pleasant and cozy our little bungalow was when Mom still lived at home. But when a pessimistic mood takes hold of my emotions, a terrible, wretched sense of despair grips me and invades my soul.

Helping Amber and Tally maintain a sense of normalcy kept me going, though. I packed their lunches for school as usual every morning, helped them with their homework, and bought their clothes. Every once in a while, when I was feeling exceptionally happy, I baked homemade cookies, or I rented a movie for me and my sisters to watch while we devoured popcorn and fruit smoothies.

“It will be just a few minutes before Amber and Phyllis return,” I reassured Tally, as I tossed the last roll into the platter.

But Tally did not hear a word I said. She was busy looking out the window.

“Celia!” Tally shrieked.

I
dropped the platter which tumbled to the floor and shattered into a hundred jagged pieces. I hurried toward Tally, bent down, and grasped her by the shoulders.

“What?” I asked, shocked.

Tally almost never got excited about anything.

Right then it occurred to me that Amber’s constant stories about the woman had shattered my nerves and had me and Tally on edge.

“The woman is in a white car, and she is following Phyllis and Amber up the road,” Tally said. Her voice rose a pitch.

It took me a minute to process Tally’s words. My brain could not completely comprehend what she had said. The woman? I peered out the window but could not see anything. Phyllis had driven my blue Taurus and was already out of sight, hidden by the canopy of tree branches.

“What woman?” I asked, as beads of perspiration began to form on my forehead. I had never heard Tally talk about the woman before. Could she be seeing things too? Or did Amber’s crazy outbursts about the woman convince Tally that there was such a person?

“Have you seen the lady who Amber talks about?” I asked, unconsciously tightening my grip on Tally’s shoulders.

“Yes,” Tally replied. “She comes to our bedroom window and stares at us. Amber doesn’t like her. She thinks that she is evil and up to something bad.”

Tally stepped back, looked down, and swallowed hard.

I loosened my clutch on her shoulders.

“Why didn’t you tell me about the lady before?” I asked.

Tally hesitated a moment before answering. “Amber warned me not to tell you. She said that if I say something, you will start taking me to doctors just like you took Amber.”

Tally must have seen the shocked expression on my face because she felt the need to explain further.

“I did not want you and Aunt Phyllis to be mad at me, too. So I didn’t say anything,” Tally said. I hope you’re not upset with me. I didn’t mean to do anything wrong. Honestly, I didn’t.” Her voice was barely audible.

“I’m not mad at you. But I’m worried about Phyllis and Amber,” I explained.

The two of us stared out the window in silence.

In the distance where the road curved beneath the maple and elm trees and the setting sun slightly illuminated the landscape, I could see the back end of the blue Taurus creeping up the path. Then I caught a glimpse of a white metallic object trailing close behind. In a split second, both cars vanished from view.

It became apparent that Tally had also seen the cars disappear from sight. Her demeanor changed, and her face betrayed a look of alarm. We gaped at each other in dismay for a brief moment before pressing our faces to the window pane to search for any sign of the vehicles.

Bam!! I heard a loud explosion that came from the direction of Mitchell’s Market. And I saw thick plumes of black smoke fill the air.

I
don’t remember exactly what happened next. A surge of panic washed over me as I telephoned my next door neighbor Eleanor. I asked her to babysit Tally so that I could make a mad rush to Mitchell’s Market.

Eleanor, a short, vibrant woman in her mid-sixties with grayish brown hair and hazel eyes, arrived a few minutes later. As Tally stood in the kitchen explaining what she had seen to Eleanor, I bolted out the back door, down the stairs, and up the dirt road. Mitchell’s Market was about a mile away, and I estimated that it would only take me a few minutes or so to reach the store if I ran the entire way.

Darkness was descending upon the small town. There were no lamp posts along the roads of any kind on this side of Grayling. The light of the moon overhead slightly illuminated the path as I sprinted toward Mitchell’s.

All sorts of thoughts rattled in my mind. What if the explosion had nothing to do with Amber and Phyllis? Mitchell’s Market could have suffered some type of calamity, or some freak accident could have happened.

Stay calm, I thought. Perhaps there was a plausible explanation. Breathe in, breathe out. Don’t jump to conclusions. Above all, stay calm. Maintain your composure, I ordered.

Perhaps I was overreacting since Amber and Tally were both uttering nonsense about the woman. Maybe there was no such person.

But the fleeting image of the white car was at the edge of my subconscious. There was no mistake as to what I had seen.

When I have no one to talk to, I naturally start to over analyze things. There was no one to tell me that my fears were unfounded. What made matters worse was that I had left Tally home alone with Eleanor, who had no idea what was happening. What if there really was such a woman who was stalking my sisters? What if she returned to the house?

After a couple of minutes, my legs began to ache, and I started to stagger up the road. The panic that burst through every vein in my body did not help matters any. I hoped that I could reach Mitchell’s Market, learn that everything was fine, and that Phyllis would drive Amber and me home.

Then I realized that I should have believed Amber when she started complaining about the woman last year. Just because I could never catch a glimpse of the woman did not mean that Amber was making up stories. Everything seemed so confusing. My brain resisted the suggestion that Amber might have been right all along.

As I got closer to Mitchell’s, curls of black smoke filled the air. My breath came in short gasps, and I slowed down a bit.

In the distance, sirens wailed.

Two police cars raced past me and stopped in front of Mitchell’s. An ambulance was already parked outside the store with its back doors wide open. My blue Taurus was engulfed in smoldering flames a few yards away.

Two paramedics were helping Phyllis climb onto a stretcher as she talked to them, pointing to her leg. There was a big gash above Phyllis’ right eye brow, and her face was covered with soot.

A crowd of about twenty people had gathered, mostly customers who heard the explosion. I scanned the road for any sign of the white car, but there was so much commotion and people milling around that I did not see anything out of the ordinary.

The smoke was making my eyes water, and I started coughing.

I moved past the ambulance toward the Taurus. The police were searching the perimeter of the vehicle. But what about Amber? Where was she? Wasn’t anyone going to help Amber get out of the car?

I pushed my way through the crowd of onlookers toward the Taurus, grasped the passenger door handle and peered through the window. No one was there.

A
couple of police officers motioned for me to step back.

“It’s dangerous for you to get too close to this vehicle,” a policeman yelled out, as he began securing the area with yellow tape.

“That’s my car,” I heard myself say. No one seemed to pay any attention to me.

The flames around the car were barely visible now. The siren of a fire engine howled in the distance and grew louder as the vehicle made it closer to where I was standing. A few more patrol cars arrived as well. Policemen were ordering people to keep away as the paramedics eased the stretcher that held Phyllis into the ambulance.

Instinctively, I dragged myself toward the rescue vehicle. Perhaps the paramedics had already pulled Amber out of the Taurus. Maybe she was already in the ambulance.

“Phyllis,” I screamed.

With great difficulty, Phyllis lifted up her head to look at me. She appeared confused, weary. She had been scratched up pretty bad.

“Take care of the girls. I’m just shook up a bit,” she said, as a paramedic closed one of the doors to the ambulance.

“Where’s Amber?” I shouted.

“In the car. She’ll be fine,” Phyllis said.

“No, no!” I shook my head. “She’s not in the car.”

Phyllis closed her eyes and sank down onto the stretcher.

“Aunt Phyllis,” I yelled, as I reached into the ambulance and grabbed her hand.

Her fingers stirred slightly. She lifted her head up a little and tried to force her eyes open. Then she moved her lips and uttered a series of garbled words that I could not decipher. Finally, she gave up and closed her eyes. I stepped away from the rescue vehicle.

The paramedic slammed shut the other door, and then the ambulance was gone.

Somewhere in the horizon, a ripple of thunder rumbled, and a burst of lightening streaked the dark sky. A storm was definitely heading our way.

It was entirely possible that Amber could have wandered out of the car after the explosion and was still out there somewhere. The woods were deep, and she could be in the thicket, I thought. Maybe she was disoriented following the blast.

“A person just doesn’t vanish into thin air,” I muttered under my breath. She had to be close by.

I scanned the group of people who had gathered outside Mitchell’s Market. Amber could be in that crowd walking around somewhere. Or better yet, maybe an onlooker found her and took her inside the store for a glass of water. That was a very likely explanation.

A short, bald officer with a crooked smile and a tall, skinny officer with black rimmed glasses and an indifferent expression approached me.

“Hello, did I hear you say that the Taurus belongs to you?” the tall officer asked.

“Yes, it does,” I said glancing toward my car.

“Please,” I said. “My sister Amber was in the Taurus, and now I can’t find her.”

“How old is she?” the tall officer asked. “By the way, my name is Ken, and this is Henry,” he said, pointing to his colleague.

I nodded my greetings. “She’s ten. Have you seen her?” I asked.

“I’m sorry,” Henry said. “Ken and I were the first two responders here, and the lady who identified herself as Phyllis was the only person in the car. We called the paramedics who took over from there.”

“But Amber was with Phyllis. I saw her get in the Taurus just a few minutes earlier,” I explained.

“Is Phyllis your mother?” Kenneth asked.

“No, she’s my aunt.”

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“Where are your parents?”

“My father died in an automobile accident years ago.”

“And your mother?”

“She’s not home,” I replied. What else could I say about my mother? Was it really the policeman’s business that Mom had left me and my siblings last year? I thought about telling them that I was responsible for my sister, but decided against the idea.

I gave the officers a brief description of what Amber looked like, as well as what she was wearing.

Ken and Henry surveyed the crowd of onlookers.

“I’ll go see if your sister is inside Mitchell’s,” Ken said, as he headed toward the store.

H
enry pulled out a notepad, scribbled something down, and then stuffed it back into his blue shirt pocket.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Celia Kristine Lawrence,” I replied.

“Oh, could you be related to Victoria Lawrence, the scientist?” he asked.

“Victoria is my mother. How do you know her?” I asked.

Henry chuckled. “You know it’s a small world. Last year, I worked on the investigation regarding her disappearance,” he said. “But then my boss called off the search after only a day or so. I guess your mother and Tom must be building a new life for themselves somewhere.” He grinned widely.

I did not find that amusing. But I said nothing.

“It’s been about a year since she left. Did you ever hear from her?” he asked.

“No,” I replied, looking down.

Everyone in town thought that my mother had abandoned me and my sisters because she wanted to elope with Tom, but I knew better. She was already divorced from Peter. She could have married Tom if she wanted. Mom did not have to take off the way she did. Despite all of the disparagement that she received, I still believed in her. I knew deep down that she would never abandon me and my sisters. We were all she cared about.