The Frighteners (4 page)

“Who were you expecting, Gloria Vanderbilt?”

“I’m Dr. Lynskey. I work at the medical center.”

“Dr. Kamins is my personal physician,” the old woman snarled, implying that this young and attractive person couldn’t possibly offer good medical care.

In saying these words, she waved her right hand, and Lucy noticed it was wrapped in makeshift bandages torn from an old bedsheet.

“What happened to your hand?”

“I told you, Dr. Kamins is my physician. I’ve never seen you before.”

Lucy said, “Dr. Kamins is attending a funeral today. I’m seeing his patients.”

“You’re a doctor?” she asked incredulously.

“I sure am,” Lucy replied, showing off her hospital badge.

“Very well, then.” The old woman sighed. “Come into the house. You can see me in the lounge.”

The inside of Bartlett House was amazingly ordered, considering what had gone on there the night before. Lucy let herself be taken to the living area, which was more like a den surrounded by books that no one had read in a very long time. Lucy was amazed by the age of the medical texts. Being there was like being time-warped into the sanatorium library round about the year 1900.

The old woman sat on a couch and let Lucy unwrap the fingers she had so diligently encased in torn bedsheet. The cuts had, since the night, turned septic. They were green and pus had formed around the edges of them. The smell of dying tissue assaulted both their noses.

“These cuts look very bad, Mrs. Bartlett,” Lucy said. “How did you get them?”

“I was cutting vegetables and the knife slipped.”

The young doctor got a pot of hot water from the stove and washed the wounds. Then she painted them with Betadine solution and wrapped them in sterile gauze pads.

“A few stitches and you’ll be fine,” Lucy said. “I’ll drive you to the ER.”

“Impossible,” Old Lady Bartlett said.

“But these are deep cuts . . . nearly to the bone.”

“Just clean it up and give me some antibiotics.”

From the entrance to the lounge, Patricia suddenly spoke. “If the doctor says you should go to the emergency room, Mother, you must go.”

Lucy turned to see Patricia standing in the lounge doorway. She was as plainly dressed as she had been the night before, and had a slightly vacant gaze in her eyes. Upon hearing her, Old Lady Bartlett leaped to her feet, perhaps astonished at having found her daughter alive at all.

“Patricia! To your room!”

Lucy thought she saw a special sadness in the woman’s eyes.

“You’re hurt, Mother,” Patricia said. “Let the doctor care for you.”

“Go to your room this instant,” the old lady ordered.

Patricia hesitated, as if torn between obeying her mother and doing what was best for her. Lucy wondered about their relationship. What is it that makes a seventy-something mom order around her fifty-something daughter as if she were a toddler? Yet the younger woman had care in her voice as well as a certain resignation. Whatever was going on between them had been going on for a long time.

Lucy got to her feet and went to the younger woman, who shrank away as she approached.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Lucy said.

“Are you really a doctor?” she asked, opening up a little.

“Yes, at the medical center. I’m filling in for Dr. Kamins today.”

“Is he sick?”

“No. He’s attending a funeral.”

“Oh.”

Lucy touched Patricia’s neck gently. The woman flinched as the doctor eased her collar down, revealing large purple welts on her neck. Lucy frowned and was unable to suppress a glance at Old Lady Bartlett.

“Who did this?” Lucy asked her patient softly.

Patricia averted her eyes.

“You can tell me.”

It was then that Old Lady Bartlett said, “I think you better go now. Dr. Lynskey.”

With surprising strength, the old woman took hold of Lucy’s forearm and steered her toward the front door. In her other hand she held the doctor’s coat and bag, which the old woman thrust at her as the storm door was closing behind them.

Standing on the rickety front porch and blocking the way back into the house, Old Lady Bartlett said, “You don’t know who my daughter is, do you?”

Lucy looked at the old woman with an air of defiance. “Yes, I do, Mrs. Bartlett. And she still needs medical treatment. How did she get those marks?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“But it
is
my business, Mrs. Bartlett. It’s exactly my business. If your daughter were a minor, it would be my duty to report those bruises to the police, and in that case the child-welfare authorities might act. But since she’s an adult . . .”

“You have no idea what you’re dealing with,” the old woman said.

“I know what my eyes tell me,” Lucy replied.

“I can’t tell you how she got hurt,” the woman said. “All I can say is it’s not true what they say about her. Patricia has been a model citizen since her release.”

Lucy nodded in reluctant acceptance of the fact that she was powerless to act in this situation. As a gesture, she said, “It can’t have been easy for you.”

“Thank you for understanding, Doctor,” Old Lady Bartlett said before disappearing back into the house.

It was nighttime, and unlike the night before when the storm and the rain roared and hissed all night, right now the only sound in the Lynskey house was Ray’s rowing machine. Wearing only boxer shorts decorated with pictures of bulldogs, Ray Lynskey rowed while a small TV silently showed
American Gladiators.
Lucy sat in bed, propped up on several fluffy pillows, reading a book entitled
Killer Couples;
the sensationalist photos on the dust jacket showed the real-life Bonnie and Clyde as well as the fictional protagonists of
Natural Born Killers.

“Didn’t you ever see anyone who was completely helpless?” Lucy asked, looking up from her book.

“All the time,” Ray said, without breaking his rhythm. “There was this fat guy who got stuck in the leg-press machine this afternoon. It took four men from the fire-department rescue squad to pry him out.”

“You know I’m talking about the young Bartlett woman,” Lucy said, a hint of irritation in her voice.

“She’s a murderer,” Ray replied.

“I feel sorry for her. She looked so sad.”

“Lucy, she killed twelve people.”

“And helpless,” Lucy continued.

“Twelve people died at her hands.”

“It was never proven that Patricia Bartlett was actually involved,” Lucy said, poking her finger at a page in her book. “She just fell in love with the wrong guy.

“It can happen to anyone,” she continued dryly. “If she was sending her husband a message, he clearly didn’t get it.”

She held up the book and twisted it around to show him the photo on the page she was reading. “Look at this,” she said, but he merely glanced over his shoulder without breaking his rhythm. The photo showed a grinning, twenty-two-year-old man, attractive looking but with a satanic gleam in his eyes. The caption below the photo read:
Johnny Bradley, on the day of his execution. His last words: “I got me a score of twelve! Top that!”

Ray said, “She was there with him for each of those twelve murders. They should have fried her when they fried Bradley.”

Lucy turned the book back toward herself, then scrutinized a photo of a young Patricia being led out of court by her mother. “She was fifteen years old,” she said. “How smart were you when you were fifteen?”

Ray sighed. Lucy shut the book.

“I don’t think she’s been allowed out of that house in forty years,” Lucy said.

“What do they do for food? Order in pizza?” Ray stopped the rowing machine and stood, sweat glistening on his well-muscled chest.

“The old woman said she cut her fingers chopping vegetables, but I wonder.”

“Yeah, me, too. I wonder if that murdering Patricia Bartlett didn’t use the knife trying to cut her mom’s head off,” Ray said.

He stretched and then struck a pose in the mirror, showing off his muscles to, he hoped, an awestruck wife. But Lucy was still looking in the book.

“I don’t believe Patricia Bartlett is capable of harming a fly,” she said.

“Not a fly, maybe, but
people
she can kill by the dozens. An even dozen, anyway. Her and her boyfriend. I don’t see what you think is so appealing about her.”

“She looked sad,” Lucy insisted.

“Yeah, sad that she only has twelve corpses to her credit,” Ray said.

Lucy frowned at her musclehead husband and thought how easy it was for a girl to choose the wrong guy. Ray had seemed like he had so many prospects when they met as undergraduates. He was a terrific athlete, all-college wrestler, and a standout soccer player, with a strong desire to go into sports medicine. They married with the plan that they both would go to medical school and, someday, start a practice together. She would concentrate on family medicine, he on sports medicine and orthopedics.

But, like so many things in life, it didn’t work out. While Lucy sailed through med school and her internship, Ray languished. His grades weren’t good enough for medical school. He tried a master’s-degree program in physical education, but couldn’t stick with it. Not even able to qualify as a high-school gym teacher and coach, Ray got a job in a local gym and seemed content to spend his life as a fitness nut and personal trainer. Sometimes it seemed to Lucy that he was just happy being the husband of a doctor—and enjoying the chance to spend her income on fancy hedges and designer lawns.

“Can we talk about something else beyond the Bartletts?” he asked.

“Like what?” she asked with a sigh.

“Like how amazingly well I did at work today.”

“I’m happy for you. What happened?”

“Guess who’s asked me to be his personal trainer?” He crawled onto the bed like a panther, flexing every muscle he could.

“Who?” she asked, trying to sound interested.

“Sheriff Perry,” he replied proudly.

“That doesn’t sound like a training job, that sounds like a rescue job. The man is morbidly obese.”

“So he’s a little on the heavy side.”

“Honey, an elephant is a little on the heavy side. Walker Perry is fat.”

“I won’t tell him you said that,” Ray replied.

“I wish you would tell him. Tell him that before he starts working out, he should come in to have his blood pressure checked and have a stress test. An EKG wouldn’t hurt either. You don’t want the man dropping dead in your gym, would you?”

“Aw, you’re a worrier. All the guy needs is to work up a little sweat.” Ray lay alongside her and slapped the bedcover between them with the palm of his hand. “Come over here, honey. I’ve got a friend who wants to meet you.”

Lucy put her book aside and let Ray pull her down into an embrace. Nuzzling her neck, he said, “I made reservations at Bellisimo’s. Our favorite table . . . remember? Tuesday?”

Ray suddenly paused and looked down in irritation as he plucked a business card from the folds of the bedclothes. “What the hell is this doing here?”

It was Frank Bannister’s business card, now back in one piece. Lucy glanced at it disinterestedly, then shrugged.

Ray was puzzled. “This is the creep who dug up the lawn this morning. I told you about him.”

“Oh. Is he fixing it?”

“He will or I’ll fix him. But hey, I tore up this card. Did he come back to the house?”

“Who is this, now?”

“Frank Bannister, the moron who took out the hedge,” Ray said again, angrier this time.

“What’s he do? What does it say on his card?”

“You mean he wasn’t here today?”

“Not as far as I know. You were the one who talked to him.”

“He’s a psychic investigator, whatever that means. But I know I ripped up his card, and here it is in one piece again.”

“Maybe he gave you two and you forgot the other one,” Lucy said, trying to be helpful.

“Hey, a man finds another man’s business card in his wife’s bed, he has to think . . .”

Lucy didn’t have time to be offended by this remark. For as soon as the words left Ray’s mouth, the bedclothes flew into the air like a magic carpet, tossing him onto the floor between the bed and the rowing machine. They hovered four feet above an astonished Lucy, gently billowing around the edges.

She screamed.

“Holy shit,” Ray yelled, in a panic.

“What’s happening, Ray?” she yelled back, suddenly alone in her nightgown atop the bed.

The hovering bedclothes began to rotate then, slowly at first and then faster. Lucy and Ray watched, too frightened to speak for a time. Then the bedding suddenly shot across the room and slammed into the wall.

Ray grabbed Lucy and pulled her to the floor as the bedclothes, balled up this time, zoomed over their heads and darted around the room like a trapped fly.

“I had this chickadee that got trapped in my Camaro once,” Ray stammered.

Then the bedclothes suddenly lost power and dropped onto Ray and Lucy’s huddled figures. The falling fabric spread out at the last minute, draping the horrified spectators. From below the blankets, Ray stammered, “Tor . . . nado. Some kind of localized air current.”

Lucy jumped to her feet, throwing the bedclothes away. She looked around the room and, seeing that nothing else was disturbed, said, “a mini-tornado that doesn’t touch anything else, only the blankets?”

“I . . . I dunno.”

She backed away from the bunched-up bedclothes, rigid with fear, collapsing on the bed. Trembling, she said, “Our windows are shut. How can it be an air current?”

At that moment the bed itself lurched into the air. Lucy screamed and clung to it as it spun around slowly, four feet off the ground.

“Oh, my God,” Ray swore.

Lucy cried out, “Ray! Help me! Get me off!”

He hurled himself onto the bed, grabbing his wife, pulling her off. They both crashed onto the floor, where they huddled in horror for several minutes while their bed rotated above them. Sometimes it moved fast, sometimes it rotated slowly. Occasionally it wafted all the way up to the ceiling and stuck there, as if glued. Then, without warning, as if unseen hands dropped it, the bed crashed to the floor and collapsed into a heap of jumbled mattress and shattered frame.