The Dark: A Collection (Point Horror) (22 page)

"Remember what I
warned you about post-traumatic stress syndrome. Somebody who has
your past — I took the liberty of looking up your medical records
at the hospital — and who was just stranded on the roof of the
lighthouse and almost killed by an assailant three times in one week
shouldn't be left alone."

Bianca guessed she
had to agree. Besides, as she looked into his eyes, he smiled at her.
He quelled all her doubts about going to a stranger's apartment.

He stood by while she
put a few items into a suitcase and wrote a note in case her parents
should return earlier than planned.

As soon as she'd
unpacked, Ronnie told her that they would practice some relaxation
techniques in the living room. That sounded like a good idea. He told
her to lie down and make herself comfortable on the sofa. He helped
her put her feet up on a pillow. He propped her head up on another
pillow.

"Comfortable?" He
asked.

She nodded.

He repeated his
mantra about relaxing one leg and one arm at a time. Something about
his presence was making her heart beat faster and faster rather than
relaxing her. He leaned closer while he was talking to her. Her heart
pounded against her chest.

Ronnie stopped
talking and kissed her lips. The touch of his lips stunned Bianca.
Again she felt deja vu. She felt transported back to several months
ago, even a year or more. She had placed all her trust in "Doc"
Ernie McCollough in those days. In fact, she had adored him before
she'd found out what he had been up to. Still she could summon up
the feeling, despite all that had happened.

Strange, she was
beginning to feel that way again with this new young man from
England!

Ronnie moved from her
lips to her chin and down her neck, tracing a path with his lips. He
kept on repeating as he did so, "Relax at my touch," in a tone of
voice that was hypnotic. He pulled up her T-shirt and kissed her
breasts. He traced a path down to her belly button, unzipping her
jeans. She felt herself yielding to him completely. For a moment she
experienced a quaver of a doubt, until she remembered seeing Harry
with Marianna at the cafe. Then she had no more doubts.

"Good, now you're
relaxed." Ronnie got up to make tea, almost as if this were part of
every doctor's routine for making a patient relax.

Her body was still
throbbing to his touch.

He had her stay in
his apartment even after he left for the hospital. He told her to
make a late dinner. When he got back, he ate and went to bed early.
She could hardly sleep, tossing, turning and thinking about how
strange the bed was and how dark it was in her separate bedroom. The
bed somehow seemed too high off the ground. With the door shut, she
could hardly breathe. She kept on thinking about the casket.

Bianca crept over to
Ronnie's bedroom in the middle of the night. She remembered this
was how she used to behave with Doc. They would stay late at the
medical library. He would say it was too late to go back home. They'd
check into a motel. At first he would study. They would go to sleep
in separate beds. She'd ask to come into his bed at some time
during the night because the darkness would be getting to her. He'd
let her.

"Please!" she
urged Ronnie when she saw his eyes open. "I need some company. You
see, I'm still scared of the dark. I thought I was licking it this
spring. During the past few days, ever since the lighthouse, I feel
much worse."

He pulled back the
covers for her.

Near morning she got
up to go to the bathroom. She came back to bed. A ray of light
illuminated Ronnie's body in a certain pose that sent shock waves
through her. It reminded her exactly of the way Doc used to sleep.
When Ronnie turned and she could see his face, she felt reassured
again that he wasn't a ghost. She could snuggle up against Ronnie
and go back to sleep.

Chapter 4

When Bianca woke up
later in the morning, Ronnie was at his desk, studying patients'
records in preparation for going on duty at the hospital. She made
scrambled eggs and bacon. While the bacon was sizzling and she was
turning it over, she remembered Harry. The memory stung more than the
bacon spitting at her and burning her arm.

Harry. . . This was
the first time that she'd been unfaithful to him since they'd met
that May night at the movie theater. She couldn't blame herself
entirely, though. Harry had been two-timing her with Marianna. She
and Harry had to talk. She longed for the intimacy of their
conversations, where they bared their souls to each other and
discussed matters as equals.

She served Ronnie
breakfast at his desk. He was on the phone talking to the hospital as
he ate. While she was eating her own breakfast alone in the kitchen,
she got out her cellphone. She punched in Harry's dorm phone
number. His answering machine came on.

"Hello, Harry, I've
got to talk to you. This is Bianca." Bianca started to leave a
message. She glanced back over her shoulder. She was afraid that
Ronnie would hear.

"Harry's not here
right now. He's in class." A female voice with a nasal snort
interrupted Bianca's recording. She spoke in a southern accent.
"Could I take a message?"

Bianca pressed the
end button. She threw the phone down and stared at it before she
burst into tears. That had been Marianna. There could be no doubt
about it.

"Harry Fellini is
part of your problem." Ronnie slipped his arm around her shoulders.
"You should have better taste. He's after your money."

She groaned. "That
must be why he took one hundred thousand out of my account without
saying anything."

"Call your banker
right now. Instruct him that Harry Fellini can't withdraw any
more."

"But — but I told
his mother that if they needed anything. . ."

"The Shipleys have
been generous enough with that Fellini crime family. I took the
liberty of reading back issues of the newspaper in the hospital
library to acquaint myself with the situation. You don't have to
give the Fellinis another cent — believe me!"

Ronnie found the
banker's number in her address book. He handed her the phone. She
stuttered and acted awkward. As it turned out, the banker thoroughly
agreed with Ronnie. Harry wasn't to be trusted.

So it went for the
rest of the week. Her parents were away. Bianca lived in Ronnie's
apartment when she wasn't in summer school or at the Shipleys. She
did the cooking and housekeeping. Ronnie rarely took her out. He said
that he was too tired after his rounds at the hospital. He preferred
to stay home and teach her to relax.

Bianca's fears
didn't seem to be abating since Mike Fellini had locked her inside
a coffin. The felon was still at large, which accounted for some of
her jitters. Ronnie had to start dropping her off at school and
picking her up. He took turns along with the Shipleys, despite the
fact that her car had been towed back to her house from Fort
Frederica. Bianca was afraid to walk or drive alone near the
cemetery. The trees there made it dark on a bright, sunny day.
Besides most summer days in Georgia were overcast. The sky was white
and washed out, if not downright cloudy.

In summer school her
English class was supposed to put on a play. Since the incident at
the lighthouse, Bianca couldn't climb the narrow stairs up to the
stage without clutching the railing. The stage had never seemed too
high before. Now it did.

The upper floor at
the library? Forget it! She couldn't ascend the narrow, spiral
staircase to save her life, not without getting down on her hands and
knees and crawling. If she needed a book, a librarian had to fetch
it. Either that or Bianca did her research online.

Ronnie often met her
at the library. He made a point of watching her climb up and down the
spiral staircase, encouraging her as she did so. Her legs were so
wobbly she felt like a cripple.

On Friday her English
teacher assigned Bianca a paper that was due Monday. She had to do
research about Edgar Allan Poe in the library and stay after school
real late. Even the librarian had left. The librarian had instructed
her to close up after she was finished. Everybody trusted Bianca.
Bianca Winters was the heroine of St. Simons Island. Only lately she
hadn't felt much like a heroine.

As she read, the
hairs on the top of Bianca's head stood up on end. Somebody was
watching her. During the last few months she'd learned to trust her
instincts. She leaped up from the table where she had been taking
notes and hid behind a row of encyclopedias on the lower floor.

The lights blinked
out. Only a pale glow filtered in through the windows. It was cloudy
and dark, right before a summer thunderstorm. She waited until she
saw a darting shadow behind the next stack. She made a dash for it to
the elevator, illuminated by a red emergency light. She raced inside.
The doors closed behind her.

"I'm not happy
with you, Bianca. Not only do you prevent me from taking Little Katie
and ending this all real fast, but now the police are snooping on the
street outside my hideout. Police make me nervous, Bianca. I don't
like to see them drive past in a squad car."

"Mike?" she
asked. "Is that you?" He was talking in a bare whisper so as to
disguise his voice.

"Do you think I'd
be stupid enough to tell you who I am? You'll find out soon enough.
Then I pity you, Bianca. Do you hear me? I pity you."

She could feel his
hot breath on her neck. He toyed with her, making his fingers skitter
up and down her throat. His fingers closed around her windpipe and
pressed down.

The elevator must be
broken. It went up and down from floor to floor without stopping. She
didn't know if it was because of the thunderstorm or because the
stalker had control of it. Finally the doors opened. She screamed and
darted out. At the end of the darkened hallway, Bianca ran smack into
a head of dark, flyaway hair.

"I'm home for the
weekend!" Harry hugged her. "I rushed back from Brunswick and
almost got a speeding ticket. Your parents told me you were here
researching a paper."

Bianca gasped. For a
minute she wondered whether it had been Harry in the elevator shaft.
There was nobody else around. He didn't usually sneak up on her
like this.

She remembered the
girl who had answered the phone when she had called Harry's dorm
room — Marianna Haynes. Bianca could hear her sugary sweet,
southern accent. She could imagine Marianna holding Harry's hand
and squeezing it in the cafe. The $100,000 withdrawal from her bank
account flashed through her mind.

Bianca smacked Harry
across the face.

He gaped at her and
blinked. "What did I do wrong, hon?"

"Don't play
innocent. I thought we were supposed to share everything, tell each
other everything." She glowered at Harry.

He looked at her
blankly. "That's exactly what I do every day."

"How can you stand
there and tell me that after everything I've seen?"

"Hon, I was back
here on Monday. I don't remember your saying any of this then.
What's come up? Why didn't you call me if something's wrong?"

"Why didn't I
call you?" Was Harry mocking her? Without another word, Bianca
stomped out of the building.

Harry grabbed her by
the shoulders and spun her around to face him. "Bianca, you're
not acting like yourself."

"Ronnie says I
shouldn't believe you, that you've been after my money all along,
and—"

"Who's this
Ronnie dude?"

"Dr. Byron Kingsley
is the hospital intern who carried me down from the lighthouse on
Monday. He's a doctor specializing in psychiatry from England."

She didn't mention
how he'd saved her from the casket and the alligator. Now she felt
she was on shaky ground. She'd been living with Ronnie for the
whole week in his apartment. Harry knew nothing about it.

Harry first paled,
then turned red in the face. "I'm gonna go find this creep and
have it out with him."

"I saw you with
Marianna Haynes at Charley's Cafe in the Village. I heard Marianna
answer your dorm phone. There's no way to pretend you didn't
withdraw one hundred thousand dollars from my bank account without
even asking me. Not that I begrudge you the money. But I'm not
gonna have you spend it on other girls behind my back."

Harry's jaw
dropped. He looked so shocked that he wobbled on his feet and caught
on to a nearby trash bin to steady himself.

"Now wait a minute.
. . After the way we feel about each other, how could you believe any
of this crap. . ."

"Simple. I saw it
with my own eyes."

"I wasn't out
with Marianna Haynes. There haven't been any girls in my dorm room.
I've never taken any money from you in my life."

He fumbled with his
wallet to get out his checkbook. He waved the check register in her
face, pointing to the bank balance.

"There ain't no
hundred thousand grand here, hon. You're dreaming," Harry
insisted. "I'll take a lie detector test if you don't believe
me."

She burst into tears
and ran for her car. "Leave me alone!"

She'd seen a flash
of the old Harry in his eyes. He looked earnest enough. Then how
could she deny her own eyes and ears? The whole world had gone crazy.

Bianca leaped into
her car. She locked the doors and flooded the motor. Harry pounded on
the window glass and tried to make himself heard over the roar of the
engine.

She was off in a
cloud of exhaust. Bianca was too upset to know where she was driving.
She retraced the same path aimlessly around the Village in the
"downtown" part of St. Simons Island near the harbor. She heard
Ronnie talking in her head. He repeated again that she had to learn
to "get hold of herself". Then she remembered that she had
planned to go home after the library to pick up some dresses of hers
to take over to Ronnie's apartment. Ronnie had told her that they
were going to be attending a big party.