The Dark: A Collection (Point Horror) (21 page)

She stopped and
turned around in a hurry. Was someone following her? She stood there
listening, her heart beating a mile a minute.

Marianna Haynes drove
up beside her and slowed way down in her broken-down jalopy. Bianca
turned away. She recalled the scene she had observed yesterday
evening in the cafe. It made her blood boil to think of it.

"You haven't got
any wheels. Poor little rich girl!" Marianna taunted. Then she sped
up, leaving Bianca in a cloud of exhaust fumes.

Bianca heard the
sound of leaves crunching behind her. A few twigs snapped. Worse, the
crunching sound was accompanied by the scraping of something against
the pavement.

What could that be?
With a sudden stab of fear, she knew it must be footsteps.

She told herself to
keep moving and stay calm. This was a public sidewalk. Other people
could and did use it, even if it was late morning on a blustery hot
Georgia summer day.

The footsteps were
getting louder. It sounded as if someone were about ready to run
right into her. Was it because she was focusing on the sound? Was it
because of the racket her heart was making? Bianca sucked in her
breath to get up her courage. She turned around and peered over her
shoulder. She couldn't see anyone.

If the footsteps were
that loud, somebody would have to be visible. Had somebody ducked
behind one of the many trees, some with hollowed-out chambers big
enough for a person to hide himself and nobody be the wiser? Or was
Bianca imagining it all?

Bianca speeded up.
She stopped. The footsteps stopped. She resumed walking. They resumed
walking. Now she knew that she wasn't imagining things. Someone
must definitely be following her.

Bianca ducked into
the Christ's Church Graveyard. The gravestones and mausoleums were
big and moss-covered. She hid behind the first mausoleum that she
could find, a memorial to a man and his wife that rose at least eight
feet into the air and was topped by a big cross. Soon she saw a
shadow pass in front of the same crypt. She couldn't tell who it
was.

Suddenly footsteps
pressing down the grass sounded near. The stalker had obviously
bounded around behind the mausoleum to search for her. Without
glancing over her shoulder, she bolted. She threw herself down on the
ground behind some live oaks in a patch of high grass.

Mosquitoes hovered
overhead, big, fat ones that looked like vampires with long stingers.
They kept on biting her. She didn't dare slap at them. She heard
footsteps move all around her, as if someone knew she was nearby but
didn't know exactly where.

Right in front of her
rose the biggest and oldest mausoleum on the island. If only she
could reach it maybe she could find someplace to hide until the creep
went away. Bianca didn't hear anything for a long while. She dared
to stand up as quietly as possible. No one lunged at her. She moved
forward slowly, step by slow step. Finally she pressed herself up
against the big mausoleum door.

To her surprise, the
door opened. She stepped inside. No one would think to look for her
here behind the wrought iron, swinging gate — rusty at that — of
an old tomb. She could wait here until the assailant got tired of
looking for her and went away.

Someone grabbed her
from behind. She tried to scream. His hand was over her mouth. He
dragged her away from the wrought iron door to the back of the
mausoleum. She saw shelves lining the walls from floor to ceiling,
each with an old mahogany casket resting on it.

He slammed her up
against the cold stone wall, cold even in this heat. The wall felt
damp with slime and mold. Spiders skittered around her. Cobwebs hung
overhead, draping themselves from one side of the tomb to the other.
They touched her cheek. They felt wet and sticky.

"I warned you what
was going to happen to you the next time I saw you." It was Mike
Fellini's gruff voice.

She could barely make
out his shadowy outline in the dim light of the mausoleum. His voice
she would remember anywhere.

Had he been the one
to abandon her in the swamp last night for the alligator? Had he been
the one who had chased her and Little Katie up into the lighthouse
tower, even though at that point he had still supposedly been in
prison? Had he been able to come and go at will from his cell until
he'd gotten so tired of it that he had escaped permanently?

"I —I had to
protect Little Katie. I —I couldn't let you kidnap her and hold her
for ransom."

She remembered all
too well the incidents of the spring. If she hadn't let Mike think
the cops were concealed behind a tree in the fog, he would have taken
the little girl. Who knew if Little Katie would be alive now?

"I — I also had
to protect Harry."

She gulped, recalling
how Mike had been beating Harry silly that night in May. That night
she and Harry had been so close, far from the way it was since
Marianna had intervened.

"It's payback
time!"

Mike's giant form
loomed over her. The nineteen-year-old was nearly seven feet tall and
weighed over two hundred pounds. He was built like a football player
with big, broad shoulders and a titan's chest.

"You can remember
my kid brother while you're kissing this world goodbye."

Holding Bianca firmly
in place with one hand, he reached up on a shelf with the other. He
knocked over a casket. It popped open. A skeleton with empty eye
sockets and white hair still attached to it fell out.

It looked like a
woman's skeleton, dressed in tattered, torn silks from early in the
past century. Her leather shoes toppled to the floor, breaking off
the brittle foot bones and taking them to the ground. Bianca didn't
have a chance to scream before Mike lifted her up and hurled her into
the casket. He slammed the lid down on top of her. She felt him
lifting the casket back up on to the shelf. She heard footsteps
leaving. The rusty gate swung behind him. Mike was gone.

A dim light shone
through a crack in the casket. She could hear birds from the outside.
She could still breathe.

Bianca had to get out
of here. She tried to push the casket lid up the rest of the way. It
was stuck. It wouldn't budge more than an inch or two.

What was she to do?
Die here lying in a mausoleum in an old, musty, moldy casket? Bianca
felt for her cellphone in her pocket. Thank God it was still there!
Would it work inside the mausoleum?

She thought of
calling Harry. When she punched in his number, it rang and rang. His
message machine wasn't working.

Should she call 911?
They would probably think it was a crank phone call if she claimed to
be stranded inside a casket in a mausoleum. It sounded like a horror
movie.

Bianca remembered the
slip of paper in her wallet. She reached into her jeans pocket. It
was still there, the one that the new doctor, Byron Kingsley, or
Ronnie as he had asked her to call him, had given to her only this
morning when he had taken her home.

There was barely
enough light to read the number and dial it on the cellphone. She
punched the numbers in and held her breath while the phone rang.

"Hello? Dr. Byron
Kingsley here," came the prompt answer in that crisp British
accent.

"Thank God I
reached you!" She burst into tears.

"What's wrong,
Bianca?" He recognized her voice. "Try to keep calm and tell me
what's happened now."

"I'm — I'm
trapped inside a casket."

"Have you been
drinking? Are you on medication? Remember those flashbacks I warned
you about. You could be hallucinating," he cautioned her.

"I wish I were
hallucinating," Bianca sobbed. "Mike Fellini escaped from prison.
He's the brother of Harry Fellini, the guy I was going out with.
Mike hates me because I didn't let him kidnap Little Katie. Instead
he got captured and returned to prison. He swore revenge on me. So
when he broke out of jail, Mike followed me on my way to summer
school and chased me through the cemetery. When I tried hiding in the
big mausoleum, he slapped me inside a casket. The casket's barely
cracked open so I can breathe."

"I'll be there in
an instant. Stay on the phone. Don't hang up. I don't want to
risk losing contact with you for one second."

At least Ronnie
believed her! Bianca guessed that after he had found her lying tied
to an oak tree beside a swamp with a steak tied to her foot and an
alligator chomping her tennis shoe, he would believe anything.

Every second seemed
like an eternity as she waited in the casket for Ronnie to find her.
He kept on talking to her every few minutes. She could hear him
getting into his car and slamming the door. She could hear the sounds
of traffic. While she waited, Bianca felt connected to the real
world.

"I've just
arrived here at the cemetery. It says Christ's Church."

"That's the one!"

"I'm coming after
you," Ronnie promised.

"It's the big
mausoleum. It's taller than all the others. Older, too. It's a
real dingy gray. It's right in the middle of the cemetery beside a
big live oak tree with lots of Spanish moss." Bianca tried to
remember all the details.

Finally she could
hear footsteps in the grass outside the mausoleum. Her heart started
pounding faster.

"I'm in here!"
she called out as loudly as she could.

The rusty door swung
open. Ronnie broke open the casket and snatched her up into his arms.
She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him to her as if she never
intended to let go.

"Now try to stay
calm. You're safe and sound. You'll be all right," Ronnie
assured Bianca as he stroked her back and smoothed down her mussed-up
hair.

He carried her out of
the mausoleum to his car parked along the side of the street. She
clutched him around his neck and buried her face in his chest. Bianca
couldn't stop sobbing from fright as Ronnie put her down next to
him in the front seat. Her arms closed around his waist as he got on
his cellphone and called 911.

"Dr. Byron Kingsley
here. I'm at the Christ's Church Cemetery." He spoke with the
sound of command as he stroked her head. "Get me the police."

He waited a second
before he was connected.

"I have Bianca
Winters in my car. There's been attempted foul play. Yes, officer,
Mike Fellini clapped her into a casket in the old McCollough
mausoleum. That's right, the oldest one in the cemetery. That's
where I found her — inside a casket with just enough space to
breathe. She called me on her cellphone and asked me to come and get
her."

The McCollough
mausoleum? That had to be Doc's family from a long time ago! She'd
been inside the casket of one of his female ancestors. The new
McCollough mausoleum, the one from which Doc had been exiled, was on
the other side of the cemetery. She'd seen it when she'd gone to
Doc's funeral to watch him being buried in a pauper's grave.

"How did you know
it was the old McCollough mausoleum?" She dried her tears as they
waited together for the police to arrive.

"It said so right
on the front, in faded letters," he replied matter-of-factly.

She flushed as she
continued to dab her eyes. How stupid of her! She had not been paying
attention.

"Wipe all thoughts
of what has happened from your mind. Think of nothing except
relaxing. Visualize yourself relaxing each part of your body one at a
time. First let your right arm go limp, then your left. Think that it
feels heavy. Let your right leg go limp, then your left. Relax your
neck. Think that you can't hold it upright any more. Try to slump
against the seat and feel tired as if you could go to sleep."

"But — but I
can't go to sleep now! I — I could have died!"

He took her chin
between his fingers and stared deep into her eyes, giving her a
strange feeling that she could not quite put her finger on.

"Many people go
through near-death experiences and survive to tell about them —
many more than you can possibly imagine. You can't dwell on the
past. You have to go forward."

She nodded obediently
and stopped sniffling. She sat there silently while the police
swarmed around their car. Ronnie got out to help them.

At the last minute he
leaned in the window.

"Wait here with the
doors locked. Don't go anywhere or talk to anyone until I get
back."

Ronnie led the police
back into the cemetery to the exact spot where he had found her.
Bianca waited there with the air-conditioning running. When he still
did not return after awhile, she leaped out and looked around. She
paced back and forth in front of the car, not liking to be left
alone. Despite the fact that Ronnie had told her not to, she even
started into the cemetery to look for him.

She spotted his blond
head rising above a bush. She heard voices as Ronnie approached
talking to the policemen. They were taking notes based on what he was
telling them. He saw her at once and frowned, motioning for her to
climb back into the car.

"As long as Miss
Winters feels well enough, we could ask her some questions," the
policeman suggested.

Ronnie said nothing,
though he crossed his brows at Bianca. It seemed that he had wanted
to spare her this ordeal. He stood quietly beside her while the
policeman asked question after question. Finally Ronnie gave the
officer his card and drove Bianca home. He accompanied her inside the
house.

There was a note from
her parents on the kitchen table. They were going to be away for a
week on business for their travel agency.

"This is no place
to leave you for the next few days," Ronnie told her. "You're
coming home with me to my apartment. I don't have any roommates.
I've got plenty of space."

"But-"

He started to lead
her toward his car.

"I need to pack."
She tried to stall and think. He was rushing her so fast!