The Dark: A Collection (Point Horror) (3 page)

"No!" Bianca had
moaned. "Help me! Please help!"

She had tried to
climb out of her hospital bed. The Shipleys, her parents and the
police chief had been forced to hold her down until she had stopped
flailing about.

Doc had turned the
lights back on. Bianca had felt better but drained, as if someone had
sucked the energy out of her.

"Now will you tell
me that last night didn't happen?" Doc had looked at Bianca with
a deep wisdom. His pointed stare had transfixed her and made her
unable to turn away. "Were you scared of the dark last week?"

"Bianca wasn't
scared of the dark even when she was a little girl!" her mother had
exclaimed.

The police chief had
reminded them,

"Remember, we found
the power cut to the house from the outside. Everything must have
happened in pitch darkness."

"'Even the
murder?" Bianca's mother had groaned, unable to believe what had
happened in her peaceful neighborhood.

"Even the murder!"
the chief had confirmed.

That had been the
beginning of Bianca's long, close friendship with Doc Ernie
McCollough. He had started to act as her doctor, whom she liked and
trusted more than any of the older doctors at the hospital. The
senior doctors had been able to sense the growing confidence Bianca
had in the medical student. They had assigned Doc the case on an
outpatient basis as soon as Bianca had been released.

Doc had graduated
from medical school and become an intern in psychiatry. He had
convinced Bianca that she'd been at the Shipleys' house when Mrs.
Ingersoll had been shot and tumbled down the stairs. Bianca's fear
of the dark hadn't left her. It had been the one wound that had
stubbornly refused to heal from that night onward — that and her
lost memory.

For the past two
years Bianca had been having a terrible time dealing with her new
phobia. She had to sleep with the lights on. Bianca was so
embarrassed by her fear of the dark that she'd never attended
slumber parties since. She had shunned movies, telling the other kids
that she liked videos and DVDs (which could be watched with the
lights on).

She'd wanted to
impress her new date, Rick. She had hoped that her fear of the dark
wouldn't matter. Doc had bet her that she could do it if she set
her mind to it.

Boy, had Doc been
wrong!

The movie on the big,
silver screen was getting bloodier. Bianca forced herself to watch
it. Rick and the other kids in the theater screamed with delight. The
woman that the killer had shot appeared wearing the bloody dress. She
sneaked up behind him. She stuck the barrel of the gun into his back.

"But — but —
you're dead!" he shrieked. "You can't come back from the
grave!"

The lady called the
"Black Widow" laughed. "You forgot something important."

The Black Widow
pulled out a gold locket in the shape of a heart from inside the
bodice of her dress. A bullet had deformed the outside of it but had
not pierced it. She grinned as she pushed it up against his nose.

He shook his head and
backed up, groaning. "No, no, no!"

"Yes!" The
would-be victim proclaimed.

Still holding her
pistol in one hand, the Black Widow popped open the locket with the
other. Inside were two tiny color portraits, one of her and one of
him.

"So this is how
much you love me, is it?" A crazy look suffused her face. "Let me
show how much I love you!"

"Mercy!" The man
fell to his knees.

She fired three
times. He collapsed on the ground dead.

Bianca looked down at
her lap. All the gunfire, the screaming, the blood. . . It didn't
matter if it was only a movie, if the actors drank Cokes together
when the camera wasn't on them. She wished the lights would come
back on. The darkness was pressing in around her. It made her pull at
the neck of her T-shirt and cross and recross her legs. It made her
wish that Doc were here. Only he could understand how she felt.

Two of the younger
policemen on the force, who had graduated from high school only a
year ago, waved at Bianca from across the aisle. They were with their
dates, off-duty and out of uniform. She'd gotten to know the local
police over the past two years. They had met with her every month or
so and asked her if she had remembered anything about the killer.
They had also questioned scores of "the usual suspects". Still
there had been no arrests, despite the fact that the police
detectives and evidence teams had examined the crime scene searching
for clues for days after the slaying. The killer was still at large.

She cast the officers
a sick smile and waved back.

"Hey, isn't this
the best movie ever?" Rick stuck the gooey, butter-covered popcorn
into her face again.

"Ye-yeah!"

"Don't you love
the way the Black Widow came back from the dead?" he hissed. "It's
a scream."

Bianca squeezed her
eyelids shut. They popped open. Closing her eyes made the darkness
more oppressive.

"Isn't it neat
the way she's going berserk after she killed her lover? Hey, she
must have wasted ten people already — including three cops!"

Bianca swallowed
hard. She couldn't think of anything more cool. It made her want to
puke. She didn't know what she would have done for the past two
years without the support of the police force.

Rick went back to
munching his popcorn so loudly and guzzling his Coke with such gusto
that she thought he was drinking and chewing inside her head.

Bianca couldn't
help but look around at the other kids. They were staring at the
screen with murderous enthusiasm. Their eyes glowed. They hung on
every word.

She wanted to scream,
"Don't you guys know that this could be real? It isn't a game.
People get murdered every day." She had to live under the threat of
murder every day herself. The killer knew who she was, even if she
could not remember his face.

Bianca's gaze
rested on a familiar figure sitting on the other side of the theater
near the front. It was "Doc" Ernie McCollough, wearing his
trademark horn-rimmed glasses that made him look like a nerd. He was
here tonight after all! He was wearing one of his nicest suits, of
which he must own a hundred. She could make out his pointed nose.

Bianca waved and
tried to attract his attention. Doc wasn't looking her way. He was
occupied with some gorgeous nurse from Brunswick Memorial Hospital.
The young woman with the long, shapely legs was leaning all over him.

Doc had cautioned
Bianca that she couldn't depend upon him all the time. She was
almost eighteen, while he was almost twenty-three. Being more
independent was part of the healing process. She had to get out with
other kids, find a boyfriend, and make friends her own age.

Doc was only her
junior medical adviser. More senior psychiatrists were ultimately in
charge of her case. He couldn't be her best friend and substitute
date as well. She had leaned on him when she'd gotten out of the
hospital. He'd been new at this doctor business. He'd let her.
They had become fast friends — perhaps a little more. Doc said that
wasn't right. It was interfering with her development as well as
his own objectivity in studying her case.

Bianca tore her eyes
away from Doc and swallowed a sob, though it made her throat burn.
She went back to looking at the other kids. The more she stared at
them, the more they resembled monsters. Their teeth were turning into
white fangs. Their eyes were glowing with a weird, red light. They
were paler and leaner. The hands that clutched their popcorn boxes
had sprouted long, red claws.

Bianca thought,
Anyone could be the murderer. Anyone could have a handgun concealed
in his pocket . . . a switchblade in his belt. Anyone could be
looking at me right now . . . sneaking up right this minute to stab
me in the back. . .

A hand landed on her
shoulder. She opened her mouth to scream.

Chapter 3

"Hey, are you all
right?" The usher shone his flashlight into her face. He was
dressed in a long-sleeved, gray uniform with red stripes down the
sides. He wore a matching cap. His big, dark eyes stared into hers.

"Ye-yes." Her
voice quavered with emotion.

"Can I get you a
Coke on the house?"

"No — no thank
you. I'm not thirsty." She wished the usher hadn't surprised
her.

The material of
Rick's shirt tightened against his big shoulders as he leaned all
the way across Bianca's seat. He was almost eyeball to eyeball with
the usher.

"So, you're one
of the Fellini brothers, huh? I don't think you're in any
position to be bothering girls."

The usher pressed his
lips together to form a tense, taut line.

Only then did Bianca
recognize the usher as Harry Fellini, a wiry guy with big, dark eyes
and flyaway black hair that was very fine and straight. He was one of
the few kids in her senior class at St. Simons High that she didn't
know well. He always kept to himself.

"Sneaking up on
Bianca and scaring her to death?" Rick sneered at Harry. "In
about another six months you can join your brother in prison."

Harry's dark eyes
flashed. He bit his lip. His lower lip trembled as he brushed his
flyaway hair out of his eyes and marched up the aisle without a word.

"Harry didn't do
anything! That was just his older brother, Mike Fellini, who went to
jail," Bianca protested.

She noticed that the
two off-duty policemen were following Harry with their eyes.

"One rotten apple
in the bunch makes them all rotten." Rick stuffed his mouth with
buttered popcorn. "The whole Fellini family belongs in jail."

Why had she gone out
with such a bigoted lout even if he did have a lot of friends? She
supposed it was because she'd never been asked to go out on a date
before. Before that terrifying night she'd been quite shy. Doc had
been so eager for her to find someone to have fun with. He had
insisted that she was too grim and solitary. She'd wanted to
impress him.

She glanced at Doc in
desperation. He was still occupied with the sexy nurse from Brunswick
Memorial Hospital. He wasn't going to save her from Rick Roscoe.
She would have to do it all by herself.

"Ex-excuse me, ah
— I need to use the rest room." Bianca started up the aisle. She
had to escape this heavy, oppressive darkness. The air seemed so
thick. It weighed down on her lungs.

Glowing yellow eyes
appeared in every corner of the theater, especially the darkest ones.
They were turned toward her. They bored into her back and made icy
prickles go up and down her spine.

Bianca forced herself
to put one foot in front of the other without giving in to the
temptation of looking over her shoulder. Her heart pounded against
her chest with such violence that everyone in the theater must be
able to hear it.

She remembered what
Doc had told her about deep breathing, about focusing her thoughts on
some image to keep herself calm. But none of Doc's advice was
working.

Bianca started to
run. It seemed that the aisle would never end. The little lights near
the floor at the end of each row of seats formed a path. She focused
on them, forcing all other thoughts out of her mind.

She thought she heard
footsteps behind her, coming faster. She couldn't be sure whether
they were real or the beating of her own heart. Bianca stumbled and
nearly fell to the floor. She clutched on to someone's armrest and
toppled into his lap.

A monstrous guy with
big feet was sitting there by himself in the back of the theater. He
obviously didn't want to be disturbed. He gave her a dirty stare.

"Ex-excuse me!"
she stuttered.

"Beat it!" he
hissed.

She fled as if she'd
seen Frankenstein himself.

The lights
surrounding the lobby doors beckoned. If only she could reach them.
She was almost there, though she could swear she heard ragged
breathing behind her. Was it her own, indrawn gasps or somebody
else's? She imagined that she could feel someone breathing down her
neck .

Bianca fell with all
her weight against the double doors. They swung wide open.
Refreshments spilled all over the aisle. Gooey buttered popcorn
landed everywhere. Coke puddled on the carpet. Crushed ice shimmered
in the half-light of the lobby. A blonde girl with braids impaled
Bianca with her stare.

"Oh, I'm so
sorry!" Bianca groaned.

"This stuff cost me
twenty dollars!" the girl hissed. "Watch where you're going.
This isn't a jogging track. It's a movie theater."

"I'm so clumsy. I
don't know what came over me."

Bianca fumbled with
her purse. Doc told her to carry wipes at all times. They were vital
if you were attacked by a case of the "cold sweats". She located
her purse travel pack and tried to help the girl clean off the big
Coke stain in the middle of her T-shirt with a moist towelette.

The girl with the
braids frowned. "This T-shirt is designer. I paid fifty dollars for
it. The stain won't come out. I'll have to give it to the
Goodwill."

Bianca searched for
her wallet, which was never where she wanted it. She felt herself
flushing with embarrassment. She'd gladly pay the fifty dollars for
her own clumsiness. But she didn't have the money in her purse. All
she had was a twenty and a five. She offered the twenty to the girl.

The girl grabbed it
and glowered at Bianca.

Harry appeared from
nowhere in his gray-and-red usher's uniform. "They don't send
you up the river for spilling a Coke." He shoved the girl with the
braids inside the swinging doors of the theater.

Bianca smiled shyly
at Harry. This was the second time tonight that he'd come to her
rescue.

He met her eyes
briefly. He knelt down with a dustpan and broom to clean up the
buttered popcorn.