The Forgotten (26 page)

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Authors: Tamara Thorne

Tags: #Horror

BOOK: The Forgotten
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70
“Miss Boyd?” Pete Banning put on his biggest, whitest smile.
“Yes. Oh, hi, um, you're Mr. Ah. . .” Even though it was past noon, Heather Boyd appeared to be wearing nothing but an ass-high pink cotton robe. The cotton-candy polish on her fingernails and toenails matched her lipstick. Her dark hair was in two pigtails. All she needed to complete the look was a lollipop and crotchless panties.
“Banning. Call me Pete. I'm the owner of Caledonia Cable. I came by the other day?”
“Yes, yes, sure. I remember. You adjusted my sets. Is there anything wrong?”
“No—well, yes. Would it be convenient if I just came in for a moment and tweaked a couple things?”
“Yes, now's fine. I mean, I was just going to take a shower. You can tweak first. It'll only take a moment, right?” She stepped back to let him pass.
“Miss Boyd, it will take just as long as you want it to.”
“Okay.” She shut the door. “You want to do the family room or the bedroom first.”
“Let's get the family room out of the way first.”
She nodded, and led him into the downstairs room where a boy of nine or ten sprawled on the floor in front of the tube, glued to cartoons.
“Hello, young man. What's your name?”
The kid didn't look away from the screen.
“Rudy.”
“Get out of the way, Rudy. He's gotta fix the television.”
“Isn't broken.”
“I'll be out of your hair in a flash, Sport.” Pete fiddled with the cable box, making it go off and on repeatedly, enjoying the sound of the kid letting off steam like a teapot. “This your little brother?” he asked Heather.
“Yeah.”
“Where're your parents this morning?”
“They're in Bermuda.”
“Yeah,” said Rudy. “Maybe they'll get lost in the triangle.”
“They leave you two alone?” he asked, putting his screwdriver in his back pocket and smiling at her from hair to toenail polish.
“Oh, please, I'm a sophomore at Greenbriar. I'm not a high-school kid. You ready to go upstairs?”
“I sure am.”
“Follow me.”
“Bye, Rudy.”
Rudy, absorbed in the TV, grunted.
Good
.
Pete stayed four steps below Heather on the stairs, but couldn't catch sight of any bush. Probably, she was wearing a thong.
“So, are you a cheerleader?” he asked as they entered her room.
“Me?” she laughed. “Why would you think I was a cheerleader?”
“You have the personality for it. And you look like a cheerleader, you know . . .” He feigned unease. “You're very vivacious.”
He walked to the set.
“Hey,” she said, behind him.
“Yes?” He kept his eyes on the cable box. Turn too soon and all would be lost.
“Thanks.”
“You're welcome, Miss.”
“I got implants last year. Want to see?”
71
Felicia Banning loved her house in the Heights. She loved her furniture, her vehicles, her jewelry, her clothes. . . why she loved just about everything in her life, except for her rutting, rotten husband, Peter Banning.
But since he was rarely home and didn't even make that many demands on her physically, he was a small price to pay for such happiness. Every towel was Egyptian cotton, her everyday dishes were fine hand-painted china, her water glasses were crystal, and she had a housekeeper to handwash those things that required such care. She wasn't a snob; she just liked owning things. In fact, most of the time, she used simple Fiestaware dishes and Mexican blown glass—she had several sets of everyday dishes and glasses.
Her sheets were pima cotton with staggering thread counts that made them feel like the softest down. She loved sheets and had them in every color of the rainbow, along with a dozen different comforters, which were kept stacked in their own closet on shelves that rotated. Sachets of lavender, of rose, of cinnamon, fragrance tarts to melt over tea lights in porcelain holders, scented candles, bath salts, skin creams, handmade glycerine soap, everything with a fragrance, were kept in a small cabinet Pete had specially built just to hold such delicacies a few Christmases ago.
How could she complain? She couldn't, she didn't. Felicia finished her workout in her own exercise room—keeping her body nice for Pete was, as she saw it, part of the deal—and headed for the shower, stripping off her shorts and sports bra as she walked. Pete was long gone; she doubted he'd turn up again before evening, and the maid wouldn't be in until three o'clock. The only person who would be visiting her before then would be her lover, and that would be soon.
Walking naked down the hall, wiping sweat from her blond brow, she noticed that the door to Pete's office, the one that was always locked, was ajar. “Pete?” she called. “Petey, darling, are you here?”
He wasn't. She looked at the door.
Bluebeard's Closet.
Or did it belong to Blackbeard, or maybe the king who chopped off Anne Boleyn's head? Who cared? She smiled slightly, wondering if he had dead women's heads in there, if she would join them if she looked, like in that old story about the guy with the beard. “Nah,” she said.
But just to be safe, she bounced and jiggled downstairs and looked out the window. No vehicles. She went into the kitchen and opened the door to the garage. The silver SUV was gone.
Grinning now, she ran back up the stairs and tiptoed into the office without turning on any lights. She knew him well enough to look for cameras, but didn't see anything, and he was such a freak about keeping the door locked, he wasn't likely to bother with them. Besides, he trusted his little Cunnikins. And she was trustworthy; he probably wouldn't even mind her having a lover if he knew who it was.
Just a quick peek.
She tiptoed farther into the room, around a screen, and found a bank of mini-TVs. Sur-veliance equipment. There were six TVs and four were on. One showed some kids watching television and a weird white ghosty-looking thing walking back and forth behind them. Another showed Mickey Elfbones sprawled in front of his television—
shouldn't he be working?—wearing
a metal hat. The third was an empty living room, and the fourth was a real hoot. She concentrated on it. All she could see was a bed, a girl spreadeagled under a man who was pumping away like there was no tomorrow. Curious, she turned the volume up slightly. Just a lot of grunting. Then the man pulled out and sat up. She could only see his back, damn it, and she didn't recognize the girl, but she could tell she was young.
The man pushed the girl's crotch up, legs over his neck and started munching. “Mmmm-mmmmff,” he said, muffled. “That's good eatin'!” He sounded like
Slingblade.
“Pete!” Felicia turned the sound down. “Pete, you bastard! You're only supposed to say that to
me!”
Furious, she stared harder at the screen, finally making out the blur of the Navy insignia tattooed on his ass. “You son of a bitch!” she muttered. “You dirty rotten son of a bitch!”
The doorbell rang.
Her lover.
She turned and left the room, raced downstairs and peeped out the window then opened the door wide.
Her lover's eyes opened just as wide at the sight of Felicia's naked body. “Well, hello, Felicia! You're looking good.”
“Get in here!” She grabbed Jennifer Labouche by the arm, yanked her in, then closed and locked the door before kissing Jenny.
“Wow. You're wet,” Jen said, running her hands down her belly and over her sex.
“I haven't showered yet. I'm just sweaty.”
“Then let's go shower together.”
“In a minute.”
Jenny smiled. “You need a quickie first?”
“No.”
“Well, why are you so excited?”
“Come upstairs. You have to see this. It's Pete. He's cheating on us!”
72
Mia Hunt Hartz watched the young cop, Officer Hoyle, as he prowled through her house.
“I'm sorry, ma'am, but there is no sign that children broke in.”
She closed her eyes. “I heard them. They were in the yard, and then they were in here. Ask my housekeeper.”
Jamie, the plump little housekeeper, nodded. “I heard them too, Officer.”
“I'm sorry. There's no one he—”
Distant laughter echoed down a hall upstairs.
“I told you,” intoned Hartz.
“Stay here.”
Eric raced up the stairs, hearing the laughter twice more, louder. He stopped at the top of the stairs. “This is the police. No one will hurt you. Come out now so that I can see you. You're trespassing and need to leave this house.”
Whoooosh.
He felt something pass through him, something that giggled in several voices and left a slight smell of dirt and shampoo in its wake. He thought of the movie
Poltergeist,
where the mother feels and smells her missing daughter pass through her. It was like that, only not so nice.
Eric, with Abby Abernathy's ghost still fresh in his head, took no chances on the phantom children returning. He took the stairs down two at a time, slowing only when he knew he'd encounter Mia Hartz. He caught his breath.
“Well?” demanded Mia Hunt Hartz, all imperious and foul, her voice as thin as her equine face. “Well, I told you, didn't I?”
“I saw nothing, Ms. Hartz,” Eric said. He didn't know what he would have said had he liked the woman, but he couldn't stand her, and he wasn't lying: He saw nothing.
“You heard something. I know you did.”
“Something far away. There's nothing here. I think you ought to talk to your therapist about this, Ma'am. Now, have a good day.”
 
 
Nurse Boobies always had Saturdays off, so Kevin had gone in with Gabe, who was working a half day. Ordinarily, Gabe would have had to con him into it with sex, food, or presents, but not this time, and they both knew it.
Now, having had lunch at the Gables Inn, they were done for the day. Arriving home, they went into their bedroom and called Maggie and Will, with no luck, then Eric and Barry. Eric was working and Barry had rented a roto-tiller and was about to tear up his garden. They declined their invitation to come over and weed.
Now, here they were, in the bedroom again, too full to do anything but watch television. “Even my eyes are full,” Kevin said when Gabe suggested reading.
Gabe nodded. “Maybe we ought to go for a walk or a run.
“In a little while,” Kevin agreed. “It's time for The
Christopher Lowell Show,
” he said, turning on the tube.
“You hate him,” Gabe said, flopping down on the bed next to Kevin.
“I know. Let's make fun of him.”
“You go ahead. I'll listen.”
The show was half over when Kevin realized he'd been asleep. He nudged Gabe, who snored softly beside him.
“What?”
“Wake up.”
“Why?”
“It's time for your sleeping pill.”
Gabe groaned and tried to wrap a pillow around his head, but stopped cold. “What the hell was that?”
“Uh, Christopher Lowell?” Kevin asked.
Gabe muted the television. “God, I hope so.”
Then they heard it again, just a little ways down the hall; a hair-raising cry of distress.
“Gabe?”
“Uh-huh?”
“I sure hope that was a peacock.”
“Why's that?”
“Because if it isn't, we've got dead babies!”
“Kev?”
“Yeah?”
“Let's go to the Crescent and take a nice long walk on the beach.”
“We need the exercise,” Kevin agreed, up and changing into shorts and a polo shirt.
“Turn off that damned fairy,” Gabe said, dressing as fast as he could.
“You got it.” Kevin turned off the set then waited for Gabe. “Age before beauty.”
 
 
Sex. Sex, sex, sex. Dick wouldn't leave Daniel alone. After Mother was buried and Daniel had been allowed a couple hours of sleep, Dick was up and at 'em, standing tall, at attention, on red alert. And bitching. Dick didn't care if he'd just orgasmed, he wanted another one. He didn't care if Daniel's hand was ready to have a stroke—not the good kind, either—he just wanted to be serviced.
That was when the Jehovah's Witness showed up at the door. Daniel answered it warily, and there she was, an attractive sixtyish woman extending a flyer to him. “Do you want to go to a better place?” she asked.
Dick said yes. Daniel invited her in.
And the old lady talked about the Rapture, but not very well, not like the Witnesses whom Mother had allowed to ramble on. This one was distracted and, sure enough, she changed subjects suddenly, asking him if he'd ever seen a ghost. She blushed and said one was visiting her at night. A gentleman caller, an old boyfriend. He was interesting, she said, very interesting, did Daniel know what she meant.
Daniel didn't. Dick did though. It was time to harvest the winter wheat.

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