Bloodchild (17 page)

Jillian's door was still closed. Colleen stopped by it and listened, but she didn't hear a sound. She hurried down the stairs and out to her car. She couldn't help feeling sorry for Harlan and all he was going through, but at this point she didn't know what else she could do. She backed out of the driveway quickly and turned to go up Highland Avenue, but she had just started to accelerate when she stopped, put the car into park, and got out.

She went up the sidewalk and picked up the slipper, studying it for a moment. Then she looked back at the house quickly. It made no sense, but she was positive this was Jillian's slipper. She got into her car and backed into the driveway, shutting off the engine and returning to the house. Harlan was still sitting at the table.

"Forgot something?"

"No. Harlan, I just pulled out and saw this on the sidewalk," she said, holding up the slipper. He shook his head, not understanding the significance. "It's Jillian's slipper. She wears them with that turquoise robe."

"Why was it outside?"

"I don't know. She didn't come down?"

"Not yet." He didn't move.

"Well, Harlan, we've got to ask her about it. What do you think?"

"I don't know," he repeated.

"I'll go knock on her door," she said, and hurried out and up the stairs. Harlan followed slowly. Colleen had just opened Jillian's bedroom door when he reached the stairway. He was nearly all the way up by the time she returned to the top of the stairway.

"What is it?" he said, seeing the confused look on her face.

"She's not in there and she's not in the bathroom. She's not anywhere up here."

"Where could she be? She's not downstairs."

"I don't know," Colleen said, looking down at the slipper as if the answer were written on the inside.

"Maybe she got up real early and went somewhere, huh?"

Colleen shrugged.

"It's weird," she said. She looked toward her bedroom doorway. "Harlan, come look at. the crib sheet. I want you to see it."

"What's the point, I—"

"Just come," she said. Reluctantly he followed her into her bedroom and watched her go to the foot of her closet. She lifted the carton off the folded sheet and pulled the sheet out, bringing it to her bed. He came farther into the room to watch as she unfolded it.

She did so and then turned it over quickly.

She turned it over again.

Then she looked up at him. He smiled in confusion. She turned it over again.

"I don't understand," she said. She was nearly in tears. There was no bloodstain on the sheet.

"Maybe in your haste you grabbed the wrong crib sheet out of the pile of linen," Harlan said. Colleen looked at him, the possibility bringing hope into her eyes. He smiled and shrugged. While she went down to see, Harlan looked in on Dana and saw that she was still asleep. He went downstairs, and by the time he reached the kitchen, Colleen was emerging from the laundry room, the dazed expression on her face revealing that she hadn't found another sheet with a bloodstain on it.

"I don't understand," she said. "I saw it."

"Well, you might have wanted to see it so much that—"

"Harlan"—her face twisted in frustration—"I saw it. Why would I bring a clean sheet up into my room and hide it?"

"I don't know, Collie."

She looked at him. Sometimes he called her Collie, a nickname her father had given her years ago, but Harlan was usually hesitant to use it, not wanting to bring up the memories. They stared at each other for a moment. "I'm not going to school," she said, sitting down petulantly. "I'd better not go anywhere until Jillian returns."

"Come on. I can't let you do that. I'll call in and cancel my nine-o'clock."

"It's all right. I won't be able to concentrate on much, anyway," she said. "Damn," she added, looking at the wall clock over the stove. "Teddy's waiting for me at the diner. He's going to be furious. I'd better call there and let him know I'm not coming."

"Are you sure you don't want to go to school?"

"Positive," she said with clear determination. He saw there was no sense in arguing, and since she was such a good student, anyway, he had no worries about her making up the work.

"Well… I can't imagine where Jillian would go off to this early in the morning."

"Maybe she went to get some Danish or some rolls for breakfast," Colleen suggested.

"Yeah. That's possible. All right," he said. "I'll call you in an hour or so. If there are any problems, I'll cancel my classes and come right home, okay?"

"Right," she said. She went to the cabinet near the refrigerator and dug the telephone book out of a drawer. After she found the number for the diner she called and asked to speak to Teddy Becker. Harlan left as she was waiting for Teddy to come to the phone. She didn't want to get into the business with the bloodstained crib sheet, and she didn't even mention Jillian's absence. She simply told Teddy she wasn't feeling well.

"I'll call you lunchtime," he said, his disappointment so heavy, she could feel it flowing through the line. "We've got our big practice today. Tomorrow's the league championship game," he added, as if he needed to remind her. She knew he was just trying to emphasize how much he felt neglected.

"I know," she said. "If I feel better, maybe I'll be able to see you tonight," she offered. He took it as the consolation it was, and they ended their conversation.

Now that she wasn't going to meet him at the diner, she thought she would make herself some breakfast, but when it came down to it, she couldn't eat more than a piece of toast. Sitting there, chewing slowly and reviewing the events around the bloodstained sheet, she didn't notice just how much time had passed. When she looked up at the clock, she finally realized that nearly an hour had gone by, and still Jillian had not returned.

She went to the front door and looked up the sidewalk. If one wanted to walk to the stores from Highland Avenue, one would have to go nearly three blocks east. It was at least a good twenty or twenty-five-minute walk, but she and Harlan had been up nearly an hour before realizing Jillian was gone. She would have had plenty of time to go and return. Where could she be?

Colleen retreated to Jillian's room to see if there were any clues. She found her light green leather jacket still hanging in the closet with the rest of her clothes. Of course, she could have packed another fall jacket, Colleen thought. She noted that Jillian's shoes were all neatly laid out at the bottom of the closet floor. It didn't look like any pairs were missing, yet Colleen wondered what had happened to Jillian's other slipper. What did finding her slipper out there mean, anyway?

Jillian was usually so meticulous about her things. In fact, that was what struck Colleen as most odd about the situation as she looked around the room. Jillian was not one to leave her room this messy. The bed was still unmade, and her blouse and bra were draped over a chair. It was all very puzzling. Colleen was about to leave the room when the sound of a dog barking below drew her to the window. She looked to her left and saw Trish Lewis's dog, Buster, hurrying down the street to join another dog that was on their property. Imagining how Dana would be if she were awakened by them, Colleen hurried downstairs and out to chase them off.

Both dogs had gone toward the rear of the house. She recognized the Irish setter as belonging to the Jensens, a family who lived toward the end of the block but who were the constant targets of complaints because of the lackadaisical way they handled their dog. Usually he was loose and on other people's property. Everyone threatened to turn him in to the dogcatcher, but no one actually made the call. Generally the Lewises had better control of their dog, though, Colleen thought. When she went around the back, however, she saw that Buster had torn his leash. Something had drawn him intensely from his doghouse.

Buster joined the Jensens' dog at the door to Harlan's toolshed. It was a small wooden building, four by eight, that Harlan had bought only a year or so ago. He wasn't much of a handyman when it came to work around the house, and Dana was always kidding him about being all thumbs. Either out of guilt or a secret ambition, he'd invested in more tools and equipment and then bought the small building to house them. Since then he had done a little painting, patched a hole in the foundation, and made grandiose plans to expand the rear deck.

The dogs were digging at the ground just under the shed door. Their barking became shrill and intense, and for the first time Colleen wondered if she could be in any danger approaching them this way. She looked around for something with which to drive them away and realized that now that they had this shed, everything had been stored neatly in it. Nevertheless, with some hesitation, she walked toward the animals until she got their attention.

Both dogs cowered when she shouted at them but didn't retreat from the property. They settled a dozen feet from the shed and continued to bark. She looked for a stone to heave at them and then wondered just what it was that made them so intent. She imagined that it was some small animal—a wood-chuck or a gopher or whatever, which had made the shed its headquarters.

"Get out of here," she said to the dogs, and waved her hands at them. They moved farther away but still did not run off. She looked at the upstairs windows to see if Dana had been awakened. All the shades were still drawn, there was no sign of Dana, but if the dogs continued barking, it wouldn't be long before there was, she thought. "Damn," she said, and decided she would open the shed and get out a rake or a shovel and drive them off with that.

Harlan never locked the shed, even though there was a lock. They never had had any problems with vandalism or thievery on this quiet residential street. Most other people had developed urban paranoia and installed security systems and locked all their doors. She pressed down on the handle and opened the door. Because the rear of the shed faced east, there wasn't much light. She stepped forward hesitantly and peered in, looking from side to side for the appropriate weapon.

She was greeted by the terrible stench she had smelled the first night Dana had stayed awake with the baby. Her stomach churned as the juice, coffee, and toast she had just eaten began to return up her throat. So that's why the dogs were barking, she thought. Some animal had died in there. She gagged and started to close the shed door when something to her right caught her eye.

After Harlan had left for work and she had had time to sit alone in the kitchen and think, Colleen had come to the conclusion that her mind had been playing tricks on her. The apparently nonexistent drop of blood between the baby's lips, and then the bloodstain on the sheet, were, she decided, products of her imagination. Often people saw things that were not really there, she thought. Why she should have seen these things was a puzzle, but there was probably some logic to her imagining a bloodstain after she had imagined the drop of blood in the baby's mouth, followed by the incident in which the baby had made a small puncture in her finger.

So her first thought now was that things were not what they at first seemed to be. She nearly closed the door, laughing at herself.
I'm a fruitcake, all right
, she thought, and then opened the door farther and took a second look.

The blood drained from her face so quickly, she felt the cold numbness climb up her neck to replace it. Her head spun, and the food that had threatened to back up did so with a vengeance. A mixture of coffee, juice, and toast rushed into her mouth. She bent over immediately, clutching her stomach, and opened her mouth to permit the release.

Despite this reaction, she couldn't prevent herself from looking in and to the right once again. She had to confirm the horror; she had to guarantee herself that this was not a product of an overworked imagination. She nearly reached out to touch it, for it truly had become an
it
in her mind.

It was certainly not Jillian. How could this… thing, hanging on a hook, ever have resembled a human being, especially an attractive, vibrant one? It looked like some kind of stage prop, a costume, a replica of a person to be worn by another person who wanted to impersonate her.

Its hair hung down the sides of what looked like a shrunken face. The strands were now gray and as dry as thread. The skin of her face sagged like an empty stocking loosely attached to the base of her skull. The skin was bleached gray and filled with wrinkles. All the oil and moisture was gone from the surface of her face.

Below her closed eyes and to the sides were thin, yellowish stains over the creased and folded skin. Something had oozed out of her eyes and dried there. Because the face sagged so, the lower lip had dropped into a deep
U
and revealed the now pale white lower teeth, housed in gray gums. The upper lip draped over the upper teeth, nearly hiding them completely.

Her arms hung stiffly at her sides, the hands extended and the fingers locked straight. The turquoise robe that Colleen had always admired on Jillian now looked sizes too big. It had fallen from her shoulders and lay in a large fold around her back and below her flattened and depleted breasts.

Colleen gasped, fighting to regain her breath. She clutched her sides and took one more look at the thing on the wall. It was then that she saw the gash on the right side of Jillian's neck. It wasn't more than an inch or two, but the blood had dried in a rim around it, making it appear longer and wider.

"Jillian?" she uttered. Instantly the eyes flew open. They were as dry and as colorless as granite, and they looked as though they would fall out at any moment.

Colleen fell back. Her legs wouldn't obey, so she found herself sitting on the lawn. She screamed—or at least she thought she did, because she couldn't hear herself. It was as though her vocal cords had been cut. She turned over on the grass and fought her way back to a kneeling position.

The dogs, seeing her radical movement and behavior, began to bark more furiously. Yapping madly, they circled closer and closer, driving Colleen into greater panic. She crawled forward, tearing at the grass. Now she could hear herself. Her screams were so shrill, they drove a thin, almost electric vibration down the back of her spine and into the backs of her legs. She fell forward once before finally getting to her feet. Then she raced away from the shed, the dogs barking after her.