The Dark: A Collection (Point Horror) (34 page)

"It's not so easy
to defeat Doc Ernie McCollough!" Doc proclaimed.

"I've alerted the
police, you know," Harry continued. "I called them as soon as we
took off. They believe me now all too well — about Dr. Byron
Kingsley, of course. The big shock will come when they find out it's
you, Doc, returned from the grave. I suspected it all along myself."

"You won't win."

"No? I don't
think I've got much to worry about." Harry sounded assured.

"I could threaten
to blow Katie's and Bianca's brains out if you touch down at
Jacksonville."

Bianca held Katie
more tightly to her.

"I don't think
you will, Doc," Harry insisted over the loudspeaker. "Bianca and
Katie are your whole kingdom, your whole world. You don't have any
other subjects except a little baby and the sweetest girl ever to
worship you and call you a god. You're nothing without them, are
you?"

Bianca thought, Don't
make Doc angry, Harry. He's liable to do anything when he feels
cornered.

"It's rather
pathetic, isn't it?" Harry taunted Doc. "You're the one who
belongs in the psycho ward, not Bianca. She's one tough cookie."

Bianca spotted the
bathroom door in front of the first-class seats. It was open. She ran
for it. She barricaded both herself and Little Katie inside.

"Bianca, what do
you think you're doing!" Doc pounded on the bathroom door. "Open
that door at once!"

"Please don't ask
me. I — I can't."

"Now!"

"I'm doing it for
Katie. If it were just me, I wouldn't care."

"You always listen
to me, Bianca. You never do anything else."

"Forgive me, Doc. I
have to make sure she's safe until we land," Bianca begged in a
soft, soothing voice. She didn't want to excite him any more.

"You're my wife,
Bianca. Are you forgetting that?"

She glanced at the
big diamond ring and the matching gold band. A sob caught in her
throat. It took all her strength of will to suppress it.

"No, Doc, I haven't
forgotten." She remembered last night. A strand of Doc's hair was
sticking to the skirt of her suit.

"You promised to
obey me. Open that door!"

Doc ran against the
door with his shoulder. The door wouldn't open. She could hear him
working on the door with his tool kit. She didn't know how to
barricade herself in the way that Harry had.

Doc soon had the door
open. He grabbed Bianca by the hand and forced her out.

"If Fellini wants
to land this plane in Jacksonville, we'll take a different flight."
He was yanking her away from the cockpit door.

Had Doc taken leave
of his senses?

"What — what are
you talking about, Doc? There isn't any other flight."

"You show a limited
imagination, Bianca. You have to trust me. I'm so much smarter than
you are, my dear."

He pulled her back to
the coach section. Doc had packed gear into the overhead
compartments. She remembered those boxes he had been buying the day
before they'd left. He looked as if he had been buying goods for a
lifetime — as if he never intended to return to the United States.

Doc ordered the Harry
look-alike to take down a box. He grabbed equipment from it.

The others helped him
by holding flashlights. They had switched on some overhead lights
above the seats and found that it was still too dim. Bianca could not
help but shiver at how dark it was up here, though she could see tiny
lights way down on the ground.

"Here, put this
on!" Doc fastened something around Bianca's waist.

"What is it?"

"A parachute, of
course," Doc informed her as he put on his own.

The other crew
members were hastily climbing into theirs as well. Apparently they
had come prepared for all eventualities. Lights flicked on up and
down the coach section.

She gaped at Doc. It
took her a few seconds to recover her voice. "But — but, Doc, I
— I can't jump from an airplane."

"Your lover boy has
left us no choice. I had a royal welcome prepared in Brazil. We'll
have to rough it until I can arrange for another flight with a more
reliable pilot."

He acted as if he'd
asked Bianca to do no more than descend a stairway. Bianca had become
nervous about climbing up on to the stage at school. She felt her
head start to whirl around.

"I'd —"

"I'll pull it for
you."

"Little Katie would
get sucked right out of my arms."

Doc fastened a
special papoose attachment on to the front of Bianca's parachute.
He took Katie from her and strapped the child in. His twisted mind
had thought of every last, little detail.

Bianca clutched his
hand. "Let's leave Little Katie on the plane. Let's not take
her with us. I'll go with you instead."

It would be hellish
to part with Little Katie. But anything would be better than risking
her life.

Doc shook his head.
"We can't leave Katie here. She's worth too much. Besides, you
like her. She's useful to have around."

Doc forced Bianca
down the aisle toward the back of the plane. She dug in her heels.
She lifted Little Katie out of the parachute. She held the bawling
Katie with one arm and tried to grab on to every seat back she could
with the other.

The darkness closed
in around her. It was like that time she'd been stranded on the
roof. She had felt as if she were falling head over heels all the way
to the ground. This time she would be dead before she reached it. The
fright would kill her. The lighthouse had been one hundred feet tall.
She didn't want to imagine how high up she was now.

She relived her
dream. Bianca had pictured herself falling from a great height. How
had she known ahead of time that was going to happen? Had Doc
whispered to her what he might do when she had been asleep? How would
Doc know then that Harry was going to catch him with his pants down?
She bet that this time it wouldn't end like her dream. She wouldn't
wake up in bed.

Doc continued to yank
Bianca and Katie toward the hatch in the rear of the aircraft.

With Katie as her
responsibility, she couldn't allow herself the luxury of a swoon.
She had to hang in there and fight Doc with everything she had left.

She couldn't drop
Katie on one of the seats. Katie wouldn't be strapped in. She
wouldn't know how to take care of herself. Even worse, she might
try to come after her "Anca". The toddler would get swept out of
the airplane if Doc opened the hatch. Bianca couldn't reach Harry
to give the child to him.

No matter what, she
couldn't let Doc pull her out of the airplane as long as Katie was
alive.

"Harry! Help me!"
Bianca called.

"Hold on, Bianca!"
he answered. "We're almost back. The police should be out in
force. The Shipleys might be back from London. When I radioed the
tower the first time, they told me they would inform them. They might
have taken a private jet back here. If they left London at once, they
should be touching down in Jacksonville right now."

If the Shipleys were
going to be in Jacksonville, Bianca couldn't allow them to hear
that their little girl had fallen to her death out of a jet!

"Doc's trying to
parachute out of here. He's taking me and Katie with him!" Bianca
screeched as she fought against Doc with every bit of strength that
she had left.

"Not from this
height!" Harry practically hollered over the public address-system.

Doc called out, "I'd
rather risk anything than being hauled in by a bunch of stupid
policemen who don't know what I'm capable of, who don't
understand that the ordinary laws don't apply to me, who will try
to pin the rap on me for killing two nobodies who happened to get in
my way. YOU have a choice, Fellini. DON'T LAND IN JACKSONVILLE.
Then I promise not to jump."

"I don't have
enough fuel to take you to Rio," Harry announced.

"Take me to any
other airport. I'm not picky."

"There's an alert
out at every airport all the way up and down the East Coast. They
know the description of the plane. Besides, we're being tracked by
radar."

"Land at Smith's
Airfield out in the middle of nowhere. We can escape from there. The
limo should still be parked under the tree." Doc's brain worked
fast. "The police won't be expecting it and won't have enough
time to—"

The lights went out.
The floor fell out from underneath Bianca's feet. Her knees
collapsed. She plummeted to the floor along with everyone else.
Marianna shrieked. Doc swore.

Harry was doing a
nosedive, racing down out of the skies toward the ground at a record
pace. They lost thousands of feet in seconds.

Doc's iron lock on
Bianca's hand had been knocked loose. Her head was whirling around.
She was disoriented. She wasn't sure that she was still conscious
and that her head hadn't been bumped against something. She crawled
down the aisle on her hands and knees with the child in tow. She
clapped her hand over Little Katie's mouth to try to avoid giving
herself away.

"Come back here,
Bianca!" Doc shrieked. "I don't have time for a game of cat and
mouse."

She thought she saw
him get up and move about the cabin behind her, a shadow in the
blackness. Doc sounded as if he were feeling along the ceiling for
the light switches above every individual seat. He was cursing and
swearing under his breath.

Harry had cut the
power to the cabin. Harry wanted to help her escape. That gave her
courage. She felt him pulling for her every second.

The plane dove lower.
It flattened her against the floor of the cabin.

"We've got to
jump, Bianca," Doc hissed. "I can't wait. Already I can see the
airport lights and the runway."

Bianca kept mum.

"Bianca, this is
your last chance."

She bit her lip.

"All right, Bianca.
I'm leaving by myself, if that's the way you want it. I'll be
back for you if I make it. I swear it. If I don't make it, think
how guilty you will feel. You will have killed me not once-BUT
TWICE!"

Footsteps were
heading away from her rapidly. Doc must be walking toward the hatch
in the rear of the aircraft. If he opened that hatch, she and Little
Katie would be swept out. Neither would stand a chance.

Bianca scrambled into
the first seat she came to. She strapped herself in. She'd better
not try to hold Katie. If the cabin depressurized she might not be
able to keep the child in her arms.

Bianca strapped the
toddler into the seat next to her so tightly that the little girl
protested. She held on to Katie for dear life as she heard a loud,
wrenching sound. In her mind's eye she could see Doc force the door
open. It felt as if she were in a tornado. Winds tore at her. They
pulled at her head. They tried to suck her backward like water going
down a drain.

The air was being
sucked out of the cabin as well. Something hit her head. It was the
oxygen mask that had fallen down out of the overhead rack. She took
Katie's and struggled to position it over the little girl's head
so the child could breathe normally. At the last minute, just before
she was going to lose consciousness herself, Bianca positioned her
mask over her own mouth.

Out of the corner of
her eye, in the bare, milky glow of the approaching airport, she
thought she saw Doc leap from the plane. He seemed to be struggling
with his vest to open his chute when he disappeared through a cloud.
The cloud was just becoming visible in the early light of dawn.

In her mind's eye
she saw him hurtle through the air. She could imagine the look of
horror on his face as he realized what was about to happen to his
brilliant future. He was about to be really stone-cold dead.

Her lips moved. She
said a little prayer for Doc's soul if the worst should happen. Her
heart seemed to stop for a minute. Had he hit the ground?

"Doc!" She gave a
little whimper.

She felt the air
being forced out of Doc's lungs. She felt his bones being crushed
as if the same had happened to her. She saw Doc's last flash of
consciousness. Then the darkness swallowed Bianca, too.

No sooner did the
plane touch down in Jacksonville than it was swarming with police and
searchlights. Even before the police reached Bianca, Harry did. He
must have unbolted the cockpit door and raced back to the rear
section of the aircraft. When she opened her eyes, his face was the
first thing that she saw.

Bianca reached her
arms around his neck and hugged him as he helped her take off her
parachute.

"Bianca, is it
really you?" Mrs. Shipley's voice made itself heard over the
policemen who were arresting Marianna, the lawyer, the minister and
the Harry look-alike, all wearing parachutes. They had chickened out.
They had not jumped like Doc. With their oxygen masks on, they sat
strapped into seats behind Bianca.

Mrs. Shipley and
Bianca clung to each other and then looked toward Little Katie who
sat strapped into her seat wearing her oxygen mask. She was still
holding her two favorite bears, TR and Lou.

"Harry told us over
the radio during the last few minutes before landing that Doc Ernie
McCollough wasn't dead! You poor thing! How you must have
suffered." Mrs. Shipley hugged Bianca.

Mr. Shipley picked up
his little daughter. "Bianca's better than a whole troop of
private detectives. She's worth her weight in gold. That's just
what you'll get out of this — your weight in gold and diamonds. I
hope it compensates you a little for what you've been through."

Bianca protested. The
Shipleys were adamant. On the spot they also hired Harry to be Little
Katie's bodyguard. He would draw a top salary while he was
finishing surveillance school.

It didn't matter
about his brother. Mike Fellini, the jailbird, had just been picked
up. He had been lurking about the Jacksonville Airport, thinking that
he would have a chance at Katie and Bianca if they showed up there.