Nightmare Child (6 page)

Gently, then, she pushed him away.

"Now, that's what I'd call a good start." She laughed. "But this is a very slow track."

"Yes, I seem to remember you saying something about that."

"And I remember you giving your word about going slow."

He grinned and leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. "And I remember giving my word, too. This time I don't plan to spoil anything, Diane."

They spent the next two hours in the den watching a TV movie about an astronaut who came back to earth as an alien time bomb meant to kill the President of the United States. While it was not exactly an original premise, the script and acting were quite good, and Diane and Robert took turns telling each other how much they enjoyed it. Only a few times did Diane think of her husband and how, in much the same way, they'd sat so many nights in the den, similarly enjoying themselves.

Afterward, in the kitchen, Robert helped Diane load up the dishwasher. In no time the appliance was thrumming and Robert was glancing at his watch.

"I'd say it's time for a respectable couple without a chaperone to say good-bye for the evening," he said.

She kissed him on the cheek. "Thanks for keeping your word. I've had a great time."

"I hope I've earned another invitation."

"I was just thinking about asking you for Saturday night."

"How about if I rent a movie?"

"That sounds great. I hadn't thought of that."

"Did you ever see Cape Fear, with Robert
Mitchum
and Gregory Peck?"

"I don't think so."

"Then that's what I'll bring. If you like suspense movies, you'll love this one. I promise."

"Fantastic!" she said, walking him through the house to the front closet, where she gave him his rugged green parka.

Wrapping his tan wool scarf around his neck, he puckered his lips and pushed his face forward.

She kissed him quickly and withdrew.

"I've had a beautiful evening, Robert. I really have."

"So have I. And I almost hate to ruin it."

They were at the front door now.

"Ruin it? How?" she asked.

"By asking you to do me a little favor."

"Oh?"

"Uh-huh." He nodded in the direction of the
McCay
home. "The next time you see that both Mindy and Jeff are out of the house, call me right away, all right?"

"Sure, if you'd like. But why?"

"Because I'm going to go in there and look around."

"For what?"

He shrugged. "I'm not sure. But there's something odd going on there. They won't let anybody in anymore—no doctors, no clergy, no social workers—nobody. And they won't let Jenny go to school…or go out anywhere, for that matter." He smiled. "Now, as one busybody to another, aren't you kind of curious about that?"

She opened the door. It was like throwing back the covering on a deep freeze. Even inside, the temperature seemed to drop by twenty degrees.

"I'll call you as soon as they both leave the house."

He took her hand and held it. "Maybe if I get lucky I can even persuade you to go in there with me."

She nodded. "I'd like that." Her dark eyes became somber. "I'd like to see Jenny again. I miss her."

He squeezed her hand, and then made his way out into the howling night.

Diane came awake around two o'clock that morning. At first she assumed it was the wind that had brought her up from the depths of a cozy, warm sleep, a wind furious enough to rattle windows and set chill invisible snakes of cold air slithering across the bedroom floor.

Beneath her electric blanket Diane stirred, but only grudgingly. She had been dreaming of a summer picnic with Robert Clark at which he had again been a perfect gentleman. She had felt secure, and no longer ashamed to like this first man since her husband.

And then she'd been awakened.

Silty
white snow sprayed across the windows, making a soft shushing sound; shadows blue and black gave the bedroom a mysterious and somewhat ominous depth, the sort of depth from which the boogeyman of her girlhood might again appear; and moonlight the color of hammered silver was painted thinly across the top pane of the westerly window.

She did not want to move; she was too comfortable. But then the cry, almost lost on the wind, came again and she remembered now what had awakened her. It hadn't been the wind…

It had been someone crying out…

Throwing back the covers, simultaneously reaching for her robe and swinging her feet off the bed to find her slippers, she sprang from bed and rushed to the window.

This high up, she could see little more than the whipping snow.

The stair landing between the first and second floors would give her a much better view of the
McCay
house, from where she now knew the cries were coming.

Careful of the stairs in the darkness, she reached the landing and pulled back the curtains.

Her first glimpse of the house made her think that she'd been imagining things. Imposing in the winter night, the
McCay
home gave the impression of providing warmth and comfort for its occupants during the long winter darkness. No light burned anywhere; no sound, and certainly no cry, came on the currents of the wind. Tucked in for the night, the
McCays
were obviously asleep.

From where had the cry come? And had it, in fact, been a cry? Keening wind could certainly play tricks. As she stood there on the landing, gathering her robe around her in the chill, Diane smiled to herself and shook her head. She was so suggestible. She and Robert had spent much of the night speculating on the
McCays
, and obviously that speculation had planted all sorts of fantastic notions in her head, so that when she heard a particularly savage howl of wind, her mind interpreted it as a human cry.

Half-amused with herself, Diane took one last look at the darkened
McCay
house, then shook her head again and started up the stairs to her bedroom.

She was on the fourth step when she heard, unmistakably this time, a wailing sound that rode the edge of the wind and seemed to permeate every inch of the house.

Terrified but fascinated, she ran back down the stairs, stumbling once and falling into the wall as she went, dragging herself to the landing window, and pulling back the curtains.

At first glance, the
McCay
home still seemed happily bedded down for the night.

But when the cry came again and her eyes fell to the front yard, she saw that all her worst suspicions had come true.

Through the veil of blowing snow on this cold, dark night, she saw the white, naked figure of Jeff
McCay
wandering like a lost and perhaps deranged man toward the street.

She did not know which was more shocking—his nakedness or the peculiar wailing sound he made, a sound that was still more dominant even than the wind.

Her next glance was at the front door of the
McCay
house, to see if Mindy were coming out to get Jeff and bring him back inside.

But darkness still prevailed inside the house, and if Mindy were coming out to help Jeff, she as yet gave no sign of it.

Moving on instinct now, Diane started downstairs, careful to keep her hand on the banister. Falling from this height, she could injure herself seriously.

Walking across the floor to the entranceway closet, Diane found the light switch and clipped it on. From inside the closet, she took one of her own heavy winter coats and a pair of fleece-lined boots. She put them on quickly and then reached back into the closet for one of her husband's overcoats, one of the many items of clothing she'd been planning to give away but that sentiment stopped her from doing.

In moments, she opened the door and stepped outside. The wind raised her up slightly and slammed her back against the door. Now her own cry could be heard on the wind as she tried to stop herself from being thrown around and slammed once more against the door.

Ducking her head, angling her entire body against the wind, Diane started her careful, slippery way down from the steps.

Far ahead, she could see Jeff
McCay
in the road, still naked, still giving the impression of being crazed, his arms flapping at his sides almost comically.

Keeping her head down, Diane moved toward the man, through the piles of wet snow that had drifted along her walk, then along the deeper drifts piling up like a wall along the edge of the street. Already, her face felt frozen and chafed; her sinuses were plugged up; and her fingers —how could she have forgotten gloves?—were numb from the cold.

But she continued forward, pushed back momentarily every few steps by a particularly strong gust of wind.

She tried calling out to Jeff a few times but it was hopeless. Her calls were lost almost as soon as they left her lips.

She could see now that he was headed in an easterly direction, apparently toward the brook that traveled on one edge of
Stoneridge
Estates.

For a long stretch, thanks to a windbreak of poplars, there were no drifts so she could move faster, and cut down the distance between them.

Shouting for him once again, she pushed through a drift that nearly reached her knees, holding the coat she'd brought for him up against the smashing wind.

"Jeff! Jeff!" she shouted as she came near him.

He started to turn. She felt idiotically happy that perhaps he was finally hearing her, after all. But then his head swung around and he continued on his way down to the brook.

Fighting her way through the
snowbanks
, she came within ten feet of him, shouting so hard now she could feel her throat grow hoarse. He looked terribly white, almost ghostly in the faint silver moonlight.

Not until she was within five feet of him did she see what he was going to do—jump the twenty feet to the rocky brook below. In his condition, he would either be very seriously injured or even, perhaps, killed.

Wading through thigh-deep snow now, with the same torturous progress she would have made wading through thigh-deep water, she reached out to grab the back of his head, but it was no use.

As she stood by helplessly, Jeff vaulted from the snow, twisted twice in midair, and then fell to the darkness below. He made no sound and the lashing snow muted his collision with the rocky brook.

Shouting again, Diane dragged herself to the edge of the embankment. Cupping her hands against her eyebrows so she could see down into the brook, she moved as close to the edge as she dared.

He was there, a broken white figure who had smashed through the ice and was even now probably drowning.

An animal cry trapped in her throat, Diane began the steep descent, finding only scattered roots and rocks to hang onto.

Twice, she was afraid she would pitch forward herself, cracking her skull on the rocks below, and join Jeff in his grave.

By now, her face was so numb it was virtually devoid of feeling. Her eyes watered up, cutting down on her vision even more, and her feet were beginning to callus from the chafing boots. She had not had time to put on socks.

It took five minutes to reach the unmoving form of Jeff
McCay
as he lay sprawled across the ice, face down in the water.

Testing the ice to see if it would support her weight, Diane moved cautiously toward the unconscious man, kneeling next to him finally, pulling his head from the water.

He came up coughing and spluttering, and almost immediately began throwing up.

"Can you hear me all right?" she shouted.

Helping him to his feet, she thought of a demonstration she'd once seen in a wind tunnel. That was what this was like—standing in such a tunnel and trying to be heard.

Huddled into himself, obviously freezing, he glanced at her with huge, wounded eyes.

She draped the overcoat on his shoulders. He pulled it tightly around him. Without acknowledging her kindness in any way, he set off up the hill, stumbling and falling backward every few feet, but keeping enough momentum going to reach the top before Diane could quite do or say anything.

"Jeff wait!" she shouted, and started her own path up the hill.

By the time she reached the drifts above, Jeff was gone. Anxiously, she looked around, wondering if, in his obviously dazed mental state, he had gone off in the wrong direction. The churning snow made seeing impossible. He could well be out there somewhere wandering around—but there was nothing she could do for him except run to Mindy's and have her call the police.

The trek back to the
McCay
place took nearly fifteen minutes. Halfway there, through the haze of wind and snow, she saw the same faint downstairs light she'd noticed when she'd brought the pie over.

Sneezing, her head pounding with tension, wishing she would find both a steaming cup of tea and a certain lawman named Robert Clark waiting for her in her kitchen, Diane trudged through the last of the snow and up to the
McCay
door.