The Unwanted (18 page)

“Look,” Cassie said quietly. “Look out there.”

Puzzled, Jennifer followed the older girl’s gaze, and then gasped with sudden alarm. “It’s Miranda,” she breathed. “Don’t look at her, Cassie.”

But Cassie seemed not to hear her. She took a step forward.

Sumi, who had followed them from the house and was now sitting quietly at her feet, suddenly leaped to his feet and darted ahead, his tail twitching.

Jennifer’s heart began to beat faster as she realized what Cassie had in mind.

“Cassie?” she called. “Cassie, what are you doing?”

Jennifer’s voice sounded to Cassie as if it was coming from far away. In her mind, Cassie could hear another voice—Miranda’s voice—calling to her.

She had to answer that call—she had to!

She took a step forward, then felt something tugging at her. Almost in a trance now, she looked down to see Jennifer clutching at her arm, trying to hold her back.

“I have to go out there,” she said softly. “She wants me.”

“No!” Jennifer protested. “You can’t go out there. It’s dangerous, and Miranda’s crazy, and—” She fell silent as she saw the strange faraway look that had come into Cassie’s eyes.

“She isn’t crazy,” Cassie breathed. “And you can’t keep me from going out there. Nobody can.”

With a short gasp, Jennifer dropped Cassie’s arm and backed away. “B-but you’ll get lost,” she whispered in a final attempt to change her halfsister’s mind.

Cassie only shook her head. “Sumi knows the way. He’ll show me. Look.” A few yards away the cat had stopped and turned around, his eyes fixing on Cassie. His tail twitched impatiently and he uttered a loud meow.

Jennifer backed farther away, her heart thumping now. Cassie took a step toward the frightened child, but when Jennifer shrank back from her, she turned away and began following Sumi along the beach. Jennifer stayed where she was, too afraid to follow, until Cassie was fifty yards away from her. Then her curiosity overcame her fear, and she timidly started after her halfsister.

Sumi angled across the beach, loping easily up the gentle rise of the low dune. He disappeared over the crest, but a moment later Cassie spotted him ranging back and forth at the very edge of the marsh, his tail once again twitching as if to signal her. She moved faster then. When she was within a
few feet of Sumi, the cat turned and bounded down one of the narrow paths that led into the tangle of tall grasses and reeds. Cassie hesitated only a second, then followed.

Jennifer stopped short at the edge of the marsh. She stared fearfully at the oozing black water. Visions of slithering snakes and huge spiders made her skin crawl.

“Cassie?” she called out, her voice sounding small and lost against the cries of the birds and the muffled roar of the surf. “Cassie, don’t …”

But Cassie was gone, already lost from Jennifer’s view. She paused for a moment, trying to decide what to do. Should she go home and tell her parents what Cassie was doing? But that was tattling, wasn’t it?

Then she had an idea. She wouldn’t go into the marsh, but at least she knew a place where she could watch. Her fear easing slightly, she turned and started running down the beach.

Lisa Chambers and Allayne Garvey walked along Oak Street, which skirted the marsh from Bay Street all the way to Cape Drive. It was one of the prettiest streets in False Harbor, for before the village had been laid out, Oak Street had been a cow path that wound along the edge of the wetlands. When the town fathers had laid out a more formal structure of streets, Oak Street’s route was allowed to follow the natural contours of the land, as the path had always done, instead of being forced into the puritan uniformity of the rigid grid upon which the rest of the village streets had been surveyed. On both sides of the gently curving road, rows of giant oaks had spread their branches wide. Near the end of the street a strip of the marsh had been reclaimed in the early part of the century to form a grassy park, dotted now with picnic tables, swings, and teeter-totters.

All the beauty of the street was lost on Lisa, however, for her mind was totally occupied with her fury toward Cassie Winslow.

“I don’t see why Eric wants to walk her to school every day,” she complained, kicking sullenly at an empty Coke can that lay next to one of the trash barrels. “Doesn’t he even care what people think?”

“What’s he supposed to do?” Allayne argued. “Cross the street every time he sees her?”

“Well, why shouldn’t he? She’s not part of our group, and she never will be.” She stopped in mid-step and turned to face Allayne. “Mom doesn’t think she has any class at all, and nobody even knows where her mother came from.”

Allayne’s eyes rolled, and she started tuning Lisa’s voice out. There wasn’t much she hadn’t already heard about Lisa’s own family, and how old it was, and how important. But Allayne knew perfectly well that outside of False Harbor nobody had ever heard of the Chamberses or the Smythes or the Maynards. Nor, for that matter, had they heard of the Garveys, either, and Allayne’s family had been around at least as long as any of the others. It was just that in her family, the kind of haughty pride the Chamberses displayed was known as arrogance. “Most of the founding fathers were a pretty sleazy bunch anyway,” her father always said. “Stealing the land from the Indians, then snooping on their neighbors all the time. And we all think that just because we haven’t had the gumption to get out of here, we’re something special. The only special person we have around here is Miranda Sikes, and nobody will even talk to her.”

“Including you,” Allayne had pointed out, but her father had only dismissed her words with a wave of his hand.

When Allayne had asked him what was special about Miranda Sikes, he’d shaken his head and replied, “If you want to find that out, maybe you ought to go out there and see.” Ever since, Allayne had thought about his words and wondered if he was really serious. She also wondered if she’d ever work up the courage to take up his challenge.

Now, as Lisa Chambers’s voice droned on, Allayne sighed and glanced at the park in the hopes of finding something that might divert Lisa from her monologue of complaints about Cassie Winslow. Almost immediately she found something. Standing on one of the picnic tables, staring into the marsh, she saw Jennifer Winslow. Allayne watched the little girl for a few seconds, and when she didn’t move, gently nudged Lisa. “Look,” she said quietly.

Lisa, annoyed at being interrupted, looked irritably toward Jennifer. “So what?” she asked.

“What’s she doing? There must be something in the marsh.”

“Birds,” Lisa said. “That’s all that’s ever in the marsh. Why don’t we go down to the drugstore and get a Coke?”

But Allayne ignored Lisa’s words. “I think she’s watching something,” she said. “Come on, let’s find out what it is.” She veered off the sidewalk into the park, and after a moment Lisa followed her. “Jennifer?” Allayne called.

Startled, Jennifer jumped, then turned to face them. She looked almost frightened, but as she recognized Allayne, who had been her favorite baby-sitter before Cassie arrived, her expression eased.

“Jen?” Allayne asked. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s Cassie,” Jennifer breathed. “Look.”

She pointed out into the marsh, and a second later Allayne and Lisa saw what the child had been watching.

Far out in the marsh, maybe two hundred and fifty yards away, they could see a figure moving quickly through the weeds.

“But what’s she doing out there?” Allayne asked. “Doesn’t she know it’s dangerous?”

“I told her,” Jennifer said solemnly. “But she wouldn’t listen to me.”

“She’s crazy,” Lisa Chambers pronounced. “She doesn’t know anything about the marsh.”

“She isn’t either crazy,” Jennifer shot back.

“Isn’t she?” Lisa taunted. “Well, if she isn’t, what’s she doing out there?”

“She’s going to see Miranda!” Jennifer exclaimed without thinking, then clamped both hands over her mouth as if she could take back her words.

Lisa and Allayne stared at the little girl for a moment, and then suddenly understood. They looked out over the marsh once more, but this time they ignored Cassie, searching instead the low rise on which Miranda Sikes’s cabin stood starkly silhouetted in its scraggly grove of trees.

On the porch of the tiny house, standing so still she might have been carved from stone, was Miranda.

A slow, cruel smile spread over Lisa Chambers’s face, and her eyes gleamed with malice. “I knew it,” she said quietly. “I told you so, didn’t I? She’s just as crazy as Miranda is!”

But Allayne, fascinated, said nothing, for in the wetlands
beyond the park even the birds had suddenly fallen silent as Cassie slowly approached the strange cabin in the marsh.

Cassie was barely inside the grove of spindly pines when the hawk on the roof of Miranda’s cabin suddenly came to life, raising its head from beneath its wing to peer out into the surrounding swamplands. Then, as its eyes found Cassie, it rose up onto its feet, its wings flapping noisily.

With a high-pitched scream of fury, the hawk rose up off the roof, its wings beating hard as it circled up into the cloudless blue of the sky.

Cassie watched as the bird flew higher and began to circle. She turned slowly, both fascinated and frightened by its graceful flight. Then, as she followed the bird’s path across the marsh, she saw the three figures in the park. For a split second she thought they were watching the hawk too. Suddenly, with a flash of anger, she realized that they weren’t staring at the hawk, but at her.

They were staring at her, and talking about her. She could almost hear the sneering words coming out of Lisa Chambers’s mouth. Her surge of anger grew, and for a moment she wished the hawk would see them, too, and know what they were saying, and stop them.

From high above her head another angry screech erupted from the hawk’s beak. Instantly, a flock of ducks burst from the reeds. Cassie froze, her heart suddenly beating faster as she remembered the terror she’d felt when she had first seen the bird rise from the roof in a frenzy of beating wings. But then she felt Miranda’s eyes upon her once more, and her fear began to abate.

Cassie braced herself, certain that the bird was about to plunge down to attack her.

Instead the white hawk shot away to the east, passing over Cassie’s head, blotting out the sun. As Cassie watched it, unable to move, it circled above the park. Then it dove downward.

Allayne looked up just as the hawk, screaming once again, burst through the budding branches of the oaks and chestnuts that circled the picnic table. Her eyes widened in shock as she realized what was happening, and she snatched
Jennifer off the table. “Run!” she shouted as she lowered the child to the ground. “Put your arms over your head and run!” Jennifer, a shriek of fright escaping her lips, obeyed instantly, but Lisa Chambers, too surprised by what had happened to move, was frozen to the spot, staring mutely at the attacking bird.

Only at the last instant did she manage to throw up an arm to fend off the hawk’s extended claws. A searing flash of pain shot through her forearm as its talons sliced through her skin and tore at her flesh, then she finally came to life as Allayne grabbed her other arm. Screaming with fear and agony, she stumbled after Allayne.

The attack was over as quickly as it began. The hawk rose once more into the air, caught the wind, and soared skyward without so much as a beat of its wings.

Cassie watched it all. She saw the bird dive, saw Allayne send Jennifer running from the park, saw the hawk slash viciously at Lisa’s arm then burst back out of the trees. But as Lisa and Allayne stumbled away, the hawk screamed once more. Cassie looked up into the sky.

This time the hawk was coming toward her.

Cassie felt herself begin to tremble, and her skin turned clammy with a cold sweat as the bird flew over the marsh, gained altitude, then hovered over the pines for a moment.

Then it closed its wings and dived.

Cassie couldn’t move. She remained where she was, paralyzed with fear. She closed her eyes and waited for the bird to strike.

At the last moment she heard a fluttering of feathers, then felt a weight on her shoulder. A moment later, something brushed her cheek, and when she finally managed to open her eyes again, the hawk was perched on her shoulder.

Sumi sat at her feet, his tail wrapped around her leg.

From the front porch of the cabin Miranda beckoned. “They are your friends,” she said softly. “They’ll always be your friends.”

Then, reaching her hand out to Cassie, the woman in black drew her inside the cabin.

“Why the hell would Cassie want to go out and see Miranda?” Keith asked. Though his tone was light, Rosemary knew by the expression on his face that he was really wondering why she’d wasted a whole night worrying about the words of an old woman the whole town knew was half crazy.

“I don’t know,” Rosemary repeated for the third time. Her lack of sleep was catching up with her, and she felt herself growing angry with Keith. Why was he insisting that she should have simply dismissed whatever Miranda had said to her? Wasn’t he even interested? “All I’m telling you is what happened yesterday, and that I think you ought to go out to the marsh and see if she’s there. Probably you’re right—she’s down at the beach with Jen and there’s nothing at all the matter. But I just wish you’d take a look. Is that so horrible of me, that I’m worried about your daughter?”

Keith’s eyes narrowed. “My daughter,” he repeated. “Is that what this is all about? She’s my daughter, and you don’t really have anything to do with her?”

Rosemary’s eyes brimmed with tears. “You know that’s not true,” she said, her voice quavering. “And I’d go myself, but it seems as though every time I try to talk to her, I say something wrong. If I go, she’ll think I’m … well, she’ll think I’m spying on her.”

“Which is what you want me to do, isn’t it?” Keith asked. “I have a lot to do today,” he went on, “and I’ll be damned if I’ll waste my time poking around in the marsh just
because Miranda was babbling to you yesterday. And if I were you—”

Before he could finish, the back door slammed open and Jennifer plunged into the kitchen, her frightened face stained with tears. Behind her, sobbing uncontrollably, was Lisa Chambers, her right arm bound up with a bloody scarf. At her side was Allayne Garvey. Keith froze in mid-sentence as Jennifer threw herself into his arms. While Lisa continued to sob hysterically, Allayne tried to explain what had happened in the park. Rosemary—her anger at Keith momentarily banished from her mind—carefully unwound the scarf from Lisa’s arm and gently rinsed the wound at the kitchen sink.