Second Child (23 page)

She opened the door a crack, peering inside.

Yes.

It was going to be all right.

Once again Phyllis had left Melissa’s bed restraints off, and Melissa was curled up on her side, her head sunk deep into her pillow. Teri could even hear the steady rhythms of her breath as she slept. Satisfied, she closed the door again, then moved silently back into her own room, locking the bathroom door behind her. She switched off the lamp on her nightstand before going to the door, opening it a crack, and pausing to listen once more.

The house was silent.

Teri opened her door wider, slipped out into the hall and pulled the door closed. Carefully, she inserted the old-fashioned key into the lock, wincing at the distinct click the bolt made as it slid in. The hall was lit only by the small night-light at the head of the stairs, but Teri made her way easily through the gloom and a few seconds later was at the foot of the main staircase. She crossed the foyer and went through the dining room and the butler’s pantry to the kitchen.

Blackie’s snuffling and whining at the door was louder now, and when he scratched at the door, the rasping of his claws seemed oddly amplified.

Teri moved toward the door, and for a moment Blackie’s whining grew eager as he heard the approaching footsteps. But when Teri opened the door, the whine turned into a low growl.

“It’s me, Blackie,” Teri whispered, holding the door wide open. “Don’t you want to come inside?”

Blackie, his tail dropped low to the ground, backed away a couple of feet, and once more a growl rumbled softly in his throat.

Teri stepped outside onto the back porch and stooped down, holding her hand out to the big dog. Blackie hesitated, as if confused by the gesture, but then stretched his neck out to sniff suspiciously at Teri’s fingers.

“Good dog,” Teri whispered. “See? It’s only me. You don’t have to be frightened.” She rose up from her crouch and moved closer to the dog, but Blackie backed warily away from her,

For a moment Teri considered trying to grab his collar, but then changed her mind. If the dog got frightened and ran off into the woods or down to the beach, she’d never find him.

An idea came to her. “Stay,” she whispered. “Stay there!”

Blackie hesitated a moment, his eyes riveted to her, then sank down onto his haunches. Leaving the kitchen door open an inch or two, Teri went back inside and searched in the cupboards until she found a box of Milk Bones. Taking one of them, she went back to the door.

Blackie was exactly as she’d left him.

“Here,” she whispered. “Do you want this?”

Blackie’s head stretched forward and he whined pleadingly, but when Teri reached out to him, he shied away once more, slinking down the steps and a few yards out onto the lawn. But as Teri spoke to him again, he turned back.

“Come on, don’t you want a cookie? Don’t you see what Teri has for the nice doggie?”

Once again the whine rose in Blackie’s throat, and this time, as Teri moved closer to him, he held his ground. His head came up and he stretched his neck out to take the treat.

As she gave Blackie the Milk Bone with her left hand, the fingers of her right hand slipped through his collar. “Good,” she said. “That’s a very good dog.”

Blackie, munching happily on the Milk Bone, wagged his tail.

While he chewed, Teri used her left hand to untie the thick terry-cloth belt of her robe and pull it free from its loops.

As Blackie finished the Milk Bone, licking the last crumbs from the closely-cropped lawn, she slipped the belt around his neck.

“That’s right,” she crooned softly. “That’s such a good dog.”

The belt was all the way around Blackie’s neck now,
and finally Teri released her grip on his collar to take the other end of the belt.

Blackie looked up expectantly, hoping for another treat.

And Teri, with a sudden jerk, pulled the terry-cloth belt tight around his neck.

The big dog’s eyes jerked wide open as his breath was suddenly cut off. He tried to twist free from the noose, but Teri stood straight up, lifting the Labrador half off the ground, his forequarters suspended helplessly from the knotted belt. His legs lashed out, kicking wildly as he searched for something to brace himself against, and then his lips curled back as he bared his fangs. His hind legs, still touching the ground, clawed helplessly at the lawn as he tried to free himself from his tormentor, but as Teri began jerking on the belt, yanking it first one way and then the other, he lost what little traction he had.

The struggle went on, eerily silent in the darkness of the foggy night, and for a moment Teri thought she might lose her grip on the belt.

But then, with a sharp snap, the battle came to an abrupt end.

Blackie’s body, sixty pounds of violently thrashing bone and muscle, suddenly went limp as his neck broke, severing his spinal cord.

Teri held on to the belt for a few more seconds, until she was certain the dog was dead. Then, half carrying Blackie’s corpse and half dragging it, she went back into the house and started up the servants’ stairs.

At first Melissa didn’t know what the sounds were; didn’t even know when she’d first become aware of them. She was sitting alone in the featureless white room, a room that sometimes seemed so immense she could barely see the walls that surrounded her. But at other times those same walls seemed to press in on her with a terrifying closeness that made her feel as if she were suffocating.

She didn’t know why she was in the white room or how long she’d been there.

But she knew it was some kind of punishment, some kind of penance she was required to suffer for some crime she couldn’t even remember having committed.

But the room had been silent, so silent that the only sound she’d been able to hear at all was the quiet rasping of her own breath and the rhythmic beating of her own heart.

It seemed as though she’d been sitting in the silence forever, but at some point the sounds had begun.

She knew what they were now.

They were footsteps.

They had an ominous sound to them, and Melissa knew that whoever was approaching the room was coming for her.

The footsteps would not pass her by and fade away again. Instead they would stop, and then she would have to wait.

Wait for the door to open.

The hollow thumping grew louder, and suddenly the walls began to close in, moving toward her, threatening to crush her. She looked around, searching for a door or a window, but there was nothing.

And even if there were a way to escape the room, all that waited beyond was the terrifying being whose ominous tread came ever closer. The walls pressed in yet closer, and suddenly Melissa lashed out at them, shoving back at them with all the strength she could muster.

She jerked awake, and for a moment didn’t know where she was. Then, as the remnants of the dream slipped away from her consciousness, the room began to take shape around her.

Her room.

She was home, and in bed, and …

Tied up.

Her heart sank. Had her mother come back tonight, after she’d gone to sleep, and put the restraints on?

The familiar panic she always felt at the sight of the hateful straps boiled up inside her, and in her mind she started to call out for D’Arcy. But even as she summoned her friend, her muscles automatically contracted against the bonds.

And her legs moved.

She wasn’t strapped down at all.

Instead, she was tangled up in her sheet, one of her arms pinned to her side. She rolled over, squirming, and
the sheet released its hold on her. Working her arm loose, she began tugging the folds of material away from her body, and finally kicked the sheet away entirely. She sat up, reaching for the sheet to straighten it out.

And heard the footsteps again.

Clear and distinct, they echoed in the silence of the night.

Melissa froze, listening.

The footsteps came again, and for a moment Melissa was certain that it was her mother after all. She must have cried out as she woke up from the dream, and wakened her mother.

There was a thump, and then the footsteps sounded once more.

But not from outside her room, not from beyond the door to the hallway.

From above.

From the attic.

Melissa’s breath caught and she unconsciously held it, waiting for the sound to come again.

It came. Once, twice, three times. Then silence.

A moment later it happened again. Three distinct steps, and then silence.

D’Arcy.

Melissa released her breath as the name came once more into her mind. But it couldn’t be D’Arcy—D’Arcy wasn’t real. She’d made D’Arcy up herself.

Or had she?

The footsteps echoed from the ceiling once more, and at last Melissa got up and put on her robe, then found her flashlight in the second drawer of her desk. She opened her door a crack and peered out into the hallway.

All along its empty length closed doors seemed to gaze blankly at each other. Pulling the robe close around her and tying its belt, Melissa crept out into the hall, leaving her door open.

She moved slowly toward the far end of the corridor, coming at last to the door behind which lay the stairs to the attic. She hesitated.

What if her mother woke up and heard the footsteps, too?

What if her mother found her in the attic in the middle of the night?

But it wouldn’t be like the other times. This time she was awake and knew what she was doing.

At last she turned the knob and pulled the door open. The stairs, the familiar flight she’d been up and down hundreds and hundreds of times, now appeared steeper.

Steeper, and darker, rising upward into what seemed nothing more than a black void.

She switched on the flashlight, but its beam barely penetrated the darkness.

And yet, despite the darkness, the ominous shadows above seemed to be reaching out to her, beckoning her. Taking a deep breath, Melissa started up the stairs.

She came to the top and stepped through the second door, into the attic itself. She paused, listening, but the seconds ticked by and she heard nothing.

She reached for the light switch, and the single bare bulb that was the attic’s only light came on.

Suddenly Melissa stood in the center of a pool of light, and the darkness in the far reaches of the attic grew even deeper. Then, as if from far away, she heard a faint sound, almost like a soft chuckle of laughter.

A twinge of panic grasped at her. Could there really be someone up here?

And then she understood.

Teri.

It had to be Teri, playing a trick on her.

The fear drained away from her and she giggled out loud, but cut the laughter short as it echoed loudly around her. “Teri?” she whispered as loudly as she dared. “Come on, I know it’s you.”

There was silence for a moment, and then the strange chuckle came again. Melissa listened, trying to determine from which direction it came.

“Teri? Where are you?”

She began playing the light around the attic, certain that at any moment she would catch her half sister in its beam.

A moment later, as she aimed it toward the far end of the musty chamber, the end above her own room, a figure loomed up in the darkness.

A figure clad in white, its face veiled.

And next to it, suspended from the rafters by a white rope, was Blackie’s corpse.

Even from there she could see the dog’s grotesquely twisted head and bulging eyes, see its swollen tongue hanging over its sagging jaw.

And around the dog’s neck she saw something else, something that made her blood run cold.

It was a string of pearls.

The pearls her father had given her for Christmas last year.

She stood spellbound, her eyes fixed on the softly glistening beads as her mind tried to accept what it meant.

She began moving forward, her vision narrowing until the string of pearls blotted out all else around it. She reached out, her fingers touching the pearls, and then clutched at them, pulling them over the dog’s head.

A split second later a scream erupted from her throat, shattering the silence in the attic. Panic welled up inside her, overwhelming her, and she bolted toward the door, leaving the light on as she pounded down the stairs. She reached the second-floor hall, turned the corner and hurled herself through the door of the master suite. An instant later a light came on and her mother sat up in bed, staring at her in bewilderment.

“Melissa? What on earth?”

“It’s Blackie,” Melissa wailed. “I saw him, Mama. I
saw
him!”

The last vestiges of sleep dropping away from her, Phyllis reached for her robe. “What on earth are you talking about, Melissa? If you’ve brought that dog into the house—”

“But I didn’t,” Melissa cried. She was crying now, tears streaming down her cheeks as she instinctively ran to her mother.

But instead of taking her into an embrace, Phyllis grasped Melissa’s arms and sat her firmly on the edge of the bed. “Melissa, I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about. Now stop crying and tell me what’s wrong!”

With an effort of pure will, Melissa caught the sob that was rising in her throat. “U-Upstairs,” she stammered. “He’s upstairs. He—He’s dead, Mama.”

Phyllis stared at her daughter, exasperated. “Melissa, I haven’t the vaguest idea what you’re talking about.”

“Blackie,” Melissa wailed. “I keep telling you, Mama. He’s up in the attic. He—He’s dead!”

Slowly, the story coming out in fragments, Melissa tried to tell her mother what had happened, but even as she repeated what she had seen, she could tell her mother didn’t believe her. Finally, when Melissa was done, Phyllis shook her head. “Melissa, you know how I feel about the things you make up.”

“But I’m not making it up, Mama,” Melissa pleaded, offering her mother the string of pearls. “I found these up there.”

Phyllis eyed the necklace. “Your pearls, Melissa? Why would they have been in the attic?”

“Th-They were around Blackie’s neck,” Melissa stammered, her voice quavering as her sobs threatened to overwhelm her. “If you don’t believe me, go up and look!”