Bloodchild (36 page)

"Yes," Audra said, but Colleen thought her smile softened. "Take my hand, Colleen," she said, offering her hand. "Be with me."

"No!" Colleen retreated another step.

"Just for a little while. You must have faith. If you have faith, you can help me. I need your faith. Please. Help me," she pleaded. There was something so appealing in her voice, Colleen couldn't help herself. Audra's hand drew closer.

"I'm afraid," Colleen said.

"Don't be. Believe in the power of goodness. Colleen, help me," Audra pleaded again. Colleen couldn't keep her hand from going out to her friend. She looked at her arm as if it were not connected to her, as if it had a mind of its own. She saw her hand close in on Audra's, and then she felt her fingers touch her.

Audra's fingers were cold, hard. Their grasp was quick, powerful. She jerked her arm to pull it back, but it was too late. Audra's hand was frozen to hers. She sensed that she would have to tear away from her own skin to pull her arm back now.

"Be with me," Audra said. "Your faith will be enough for both of us. Please, help me."

Colleen felt herself soften. She took one step, and then another, until she was right beside Audra. This close to her, she was able to see the thin capillaries in her eyes, which had become gray and dull. Her skin looked chalky and her hair was stiff, the color fading.

"Don't pay any attention to my body," Audra said. "It's not my body any longer. It's my prison. Come, be with me," she said again, and led Colleen deeper into the darkness. Colleen gasped. The odor of death and decay was so strong, she nearly swooned, but she felt a desperate need to maintain her consciousness.

In the deeper darkness, Audra's eyes were luminescent, her breathing heavy. She sounded like someone with asthma. Colleen stopped, hoping to retreat, but Audra pulled her forward.

"Have faith," she repeated. "Be with me."

"Audra, no—"

"I need your faith," Audra said. "The goodness in you was strong enough before, it will be strong enough now."

"But I'm afraid," Colleen repeated.

Suddenly Audra pushed open the door to the outside. The daylight rushed into the basement and Audra screamed. Yet her grip of Colleen's hand remained firm, secure. She started to bend over and stepped away as if the sunlight were water flooding in, pushing her back; but she resisted, and, with Colleen's hand in hers, forced herself forward into the light.

They both stepped out into the yard, the basement door closing behind them. Audra suddenly straightened up.

"Walk with me," she said in a raspy voice. "My friend," she added and took a few steps forward. Her grip loosened on Colleen's hand, but Colleen did not pull away. She and her friend moved away from the house. She felt Audra weakening until finally, she went to her knees.

"Audra," she said. "How can I help you?"

"You already have," Audra said and turned to her, smiling. This time, her smile did not reveal the sharpened teeth. "God bless you," she said and fell back on the tall grass.

Colleen knelt over her, still holding her hand.

Harlan stopped his car beside Teddy's and got out. Teddy opened his eyes and sat up abruptly as Harlan opened the car door and got in.

"Where the hell is she?" Harlan demanded.

"Just a little way up the road. I'll take you there," he said, moving quickly to start his car and put it into gear.

"We're taking her right to the hospital," Harlan said. "Right to the hospital. I can't have her in the same house with Dana. Not until she's definitely cured of all this."

"I understand," Teddy said.

Harlan turned to him. "You did the right thing in calling me."

"I hope so. I know she's going to hate me for it, but I thought it was better you were here." He turned off the road into the driveway and downshifted.

"What the hell…" Harlan said when he saw the house ahead. "She thought Nurse Patio brought Dana here to see a doctor? No one's lived here for years. Any fool can see that."

"I know," Teddy said. "That's why I called. I couldn't imagine—"

"Jesus, she
is
sick."

"There's her car."

"What the hell is she doing in that shack?"

They pulled up beside her car and got out.

Harlan contemplated the house. "
Colleen
!" he shouted. They both waited. "
Colleen, get out here, dammit
!" After a moment he started for the front door, Teddy right beside him. Harlan looked down at the porch's cracked floorboards. "Watch yourself," he said. "It's dangerous just entering this rattrap." He walked through the doorway and looked around. "
Colleen
!"

"Why doesn't she answer?" Teddy asked.

"Maybe she's hiding somewhere, embarrassed. I don't know." Harlan went farther in, looked into the living room, and continued on through the house.

Teddy went ahead of him and into the kitchen. "She's not in here," he said when Harlan arrived. "Where is she?"

"Dammit!
Colleen
!"

"
Colleen
!" Teddy shouted as well. They both waited but heard nothing. "What do we do now?" Teddy asked.

Harlan shook his head, his face tightening with frustration and anger. "I hate to go upstairs in this place. We'll probably fall through the floor." He started to turn and then stopped. "What's that door?" he asked, nodding toward the pantry.

Teddy peered into it. "Looks like a pantry or storage area. Wait, there's an open door in here." Harlan joined him and they both looked down the stairway. "It's the basement," Teddy said.

"Colleen, are you down there?" Harlan called. They waited a moment, but there was no response. "Jesus. All right, let's look," he said, and started down the stairs. Teddy followed right behind him. They both paused at the foot of it. When they turned to their right, they stared in confusion.

The kerosene lantern, still lit, was resting on the dirt floor just to the left of the coffins. It cast enough illumination for them to see most of the basement.

"What the hell is this?" Harlan said. "They look like…"

Teddy started for the coffins first. "God, how it stinks in here," he said. He paused and looked into the first one. "Holy shit," he said. Harlan was at his side.

"What is this?" Harlan asked, looking around. "Some old burying place? Someone turned this basement into a tomb."

Teddy looked into the other coffins, covering his nose and his mouth with his hands as he did so. "Corpses in both," he said. He looked back toward the stairway. "So where the hell is Colleen?"

Harlan went to the kerosene lamp and lifted it, directing the light toward the darkest areas of the basement. There was no sign of her. He caught sight of the outside doorway. "Maybe she went out this way," he said. "Come on."

Teddy joined him quickly, and they moved across the basement to the door.

It was Colleen, tears streaming down her face.

"My God," Harlan said, looking down at Audra's corpse. "What happened to her?"

"The same thing that happened to Jillian," Colleen said. "They made her one of them. But it was different for Audra. She was too pure, she was too good," Colleen said, looking down at her dead friend.

"Those corpses in the coffins…"

"I did that," she said. "I put the crosses on them. They were vampires. Such things exist. As Audra's mother said, the devil can take many forms. He simply seeks out our own darkest fears and crystallizes them."

Harlan nodded, thinking about Nurse Patio. There was a dark part of him that she had appealed to; there were fears in him that she had crystallized.

He looked back at the house and then at Colleen, the full realization of what went on and what was still going on coming to him. "She did bring Dana here last night," he said, "didn't she?"

Colleen nodded. "It's the baby," she said. "He's one of them."

"Oh, God. Oh, no. Is it too late for Dana?"

"I don't know," she said.

He backed away from the scene, shaking his head. "I've got to get home. I've got to get back." He turned and ran around the house to Colleen's car.

"We'll be right there," Teddy shouted after him. He reached down to help Colleen stand. She started to rise and then stopped, opened her pocketbook, and took out one of Audra's crosses. She placed the chain carefully in Audra's fingers, taking care not to touch her body with the cross.

"She was special," she said softly. "Too special, even for them." Teddy nodded and helped her stand. They both looked down at Audra's body. "We can't do any more for her," she said. "Let's hurry. Maybe there's still something we can do for Dana."

They started away, walking quickly to his car. Harlan was already down the driveway and on his way home.

The moment he entered, he sensed a different sort of stillness in his house. Something heavy and dark was gone. Shadows that had been oppressing, that had loomed like spies ready to report even his thoughts to his enemies, were no longer there in the same form. His home had been unfriendly to him. He had felt betrayed by every creak in the floor, reporting his whereabouts whenever he moved from room to room. Every time he had approached the stairs that led up to what had become Nurse Patio's domain, he felt threatened. He usually lumbered up, his legs feeling heavy, his eyes directed down, not even looking side to side, moving like a man wearing blinders, afraid to look, afraid to see and to realize what was going on around him.

But these changes he now sensed did not encourage him. He was not sure that the emptiness he felt did not portend disaster.

He had come too late. Dana's very soul had been stolen from her, right beneath his eyes.

This time he rushed up the stairs, screaming Dana's name. Despite the vacuous feeling he had sensed when he had first entered the house, he still expected to confront Nurse Patio at the top of the stairs. He imagined her standing there, her body more formidable and threatening than ever, and he feared that he did not have the strength and the power to get past her in time. When he reached the landing, he clenched his fists and looked around madly. Seeing no one, he charged forward into his bedroom and found Dana, lying in bed, her right arm over the side, her head back, her mouth open.

"Dana!"

He rushed to her side and took her hand into his.

"Dana, Dana." He reached down and embraced her, lifting her body to him and rocking back and forth with her on the bed. Her body was cold, but he felt a subtle movement. Her eyelids fluttered against his cheek. "Oh, God!"

He scooped her body into his arms, and with a strength he never realized he had, he carried her out of the bedroom and down the stairs. Teddy and Colleen arrived just as he reached the door.

"Quickly. She's still alive!" he said.

They helped him get her into his car. They put her in the backseat, and Colleen got in beside her.

The initial examination at the hospital emergency room revealed her blood pressure was so low, it was amazing her heart was still beating. They began blood transfusions immediately.

"She must have a leak somewhere," the emergency-room doctor told Harlan, and he and Colleen nearly laughed.

"There's no leak," Harlan said with a confidence that astounded the young physician. "Just keep building up her blood. I'm the same type, so let me donate immediately," he added.

Colleen stopped him just before the doctor led him off. "What about—"

"I heard no one there. Don't do anything until I'm ready to go back with you. I'll call Lieutenant Reis myself and tell him what's up at the deserted house and then have him accompany us home," he said.

She nodded, and she and Teddy waited in the emergency room until Harlan was finished and the doctor reported that Dana was rallying.

Lieutenant Reis and two patrolmen met them in the hospital parking lot. The look on his face told them he had already visited the old farmhouse and discovered everything Harlan had described to him, especially poor Audra.

"All right," he said, "let's start from the beginning."

"I'll ride with you back to our house," Colleen said, "and tell you all that I know."

Reis looked at Harlan.

"And this time you had better listen to her," Harlan said.

Lieutenant Reis nodded. She got into his car with him, and then she began her story.

Neither Harlan nor Colleen expected that Nurse Patio or the baby would be at the house when they arrived from the hospital. On the way Lieutenant Reis listened attentively to Colleen's story. However, despite Dana's condition, what he had found in the basement of the deserted farmhouse, what had happened to poor Audra, and what allegedly had happened to Jillian, he struggled to find other explanations.

"It's not that I don't believe you," he told Colleen. "I do. My guess is this was all part of one of these off-the-wall cults. You know what I mean?"

"Believe what you want," she said. She was tired of trying to convince people, and anyway, it didn't matter anymore. Audra and Jillian were dead, the baby and Nurse Patio were gone, and Dana was on her way to recovery. There wasn't anything she could change.

At the house, Lieutenant Reis took descriptions of Nurse Patio and the baby. Harlan turned over the papers from the lawyer, Garson Lawrence, and Colleen and Teddy told him of their futile search for such a man. He said he would check on the owners of the old farmhouse. Sometime later he would phone to tell them there was literally no trace of the Niccolos. Harlan thanked him for calling and told him it was nothing they hadn't expected. He told Colleen he thought Lieutenant Reis was a little annoyed by his attitude.

"He was hoping to locate them and fit all this into a safe, acceptable explanation," Harlan said. Colleen nodded. She understood the detective's need to do so. The nightmares, the visions, and the images still lingered. Sometimes at night she would awake, thinking she had heard Audra's raspy voice. The wind at her window, a shadow cast by a street light, the barking of a dog—all of it, any of it, would send her reeling back through a tunnel of horrible memories. She didn't need the psychologist to tell her it would take time.