Dead Voices (37 page)

You’re getting paranoid, old buddy
, he thought, but there was no pushing aside the nagging thought of how upset, how outright pissed Elizabeth had sounded when she accused him of following her. Did she have anything to hide? And if she wasn’t involved, then what the hell was she doing out here this late at night?

All the while, Elizabeth’s car sat immobile at the entrance to the cemetery. Its engine idled smoothly, the cones of light from its headlights illuminating the dirt shoulder of the road in crisp detail.

“So what are you gonna do, babe?” Frank wondered aloud as he stared down at the car. “Come on, do
something! Anything!
”

He wished to hell the cruiser wasn’t so visible on the crest of the hill, but he knew he couldn’t start it up and back out without being discovered. If Elizabeth hadn’t already spotted him, she would as soon as she drove into the cemetery. Frank had no doubt which grave site she would go to if she did. Was this simply a late-night visit to her daughter’s grave ... or something far worse?

The night pressed in on Frank. He prayed that Elizabeth would pull back onto the road and drive away. She hadn’t seen him yet, and — for now — he wanted to keep it that way. Even if she was responsible, he just wasn’t ready to deal with it tonight. He knew he had to keep his edge on this, and if Elizabeth got any more suspicious of him, he wasn’t going to get any further. When — or if — the shit came down, he wanted to be able to help her out any way he could. Everything that had happened out at the graveyard had occurred between ten o’clock and midnight, so one thing he decided — unless it all came down in the next few minutes — was that from now on, when he patrolled, he would stake out the cemetery for a few hours every night ... just to see what the hell else was going on.

It had been almost five minutes since Elizabeth first parked down by the gate, and still she hadn’t done anything. Choking fumes of exhaust drifted up the hill and stung Frank’s nose, masking the fresh smell of the night air. Frank strained to see but couldn’t detect any hint of motion inside the car. For a moment he wondered if the car was empty; maybe Elizabeth had — somehow — gotten out without his noticing and had gone for a walk. Maybe she was creeping up behind him ... Whatever the answer, it sure as hell looked as though there was no one sitting behind the steering wheel.

“Come on, man, stop it with those crazy thoughts,” Frank said to himself. “This whole thing is making you nuts.”

Without warning, the car’s engine started racing as the driver revved it up. The car strained with each whining roar, but still it didn’t move forward. Exhaust billowed out into the night, rising like a sheeted ghost before dispersing.

“Leave, Goddamn yah! Leave!” Frank hissed in the direction of Elizabeth’s car. “Go on! Get the fuck out of here!” The palm of his hand was aching from the grip he had on his revolver.

He knew damned well he wanted to see Elizabeth drive off instead of pull around and start up the cemetery road. Had she just been waiting to see if the coast was clear and was now going to come up the hill? If she did, she sure as hell was going to notice him sooner or later.

“Go on! Get the fuck out of here!” Frank said, almost loud enough for her to hear if her window was open.

From below, Frank heard a loud
clunk
as the car shifted into gear. He almost whooped out loud with joy when he saw Elizabeth’s car pull back onto the road and disappear around the curve, leaving behind nothing except the lingering smell of exhaust.

Straightening up in his seat, Frank let his withheld breath out in a long, shuddering sigh. He released the pistol’s grip and rotated his arm to relieve the knotted tension in his shoulder. He knew that not much had changed. Whatever reason Elizabeth had had for stopping by the cemetery tonight — even if it was only an attempted visit to the grave of her daughter — there was still a murderer on the loose somewhere. If the murderer wasn’t Elizabeth, and if it wasn’t just a matter of time before she was arrested, then Frank knew, sure as shit, that she was the next most likely victim!

4.

It was well past midnight when Elizabeth got home after her drive out to the accident site and her second failed attempt to go into Oak Grove to visit Caroline’s grave. Her parents were already asleep, so after changing into her nightie and opening the bedroom window to allow the gentle night air to circulate into her room, she settled down in bed. Sleep came slowly, creeping up on her like a black panther in the night, coiling and hunching, but it didn’t strike. Elizabeth had too many things to think about.

As she tossed and turned in bed, she sifted through a barrage of thoughts and impressions, trying to make sense of them. Some — like that withered, white hand she had seen reaching up over the edge of the road, clawing toward the light — were very clear ...
too
clear, actually. She knew that had to have been the product of her stressed-out imagination, but others-like the overpowering swells of loneliness and grief, and her sudden mistrust and anger at Aunt Junia for arranging the appointment with Eldon Cody were real enough. They reverberated in her memory like distant echoes fading into a deep well of blackness ... gone but certainly still strong enough to leave a stinging last impression. The white hand could not have been real! Her overwrought imagination had taken something, perhaps a twisted tuft of grass or a fallen tree branch, and magnified it into something horrible. Or even if by some horrible chance there really had been someone lying there on the side of the road either injured or dead, that was still no reason for her to think that it had been
Caroline’s
hand or had anything to do with Caroline.

No, she told herself repeatedly, as she shut her eyes tightly and begged for sleep to come, she was letting her grief manifest itself; she was taking purely innocent things and twisting them into horrible, scary images. Like seeing the hand, she knew she had convinced herself that she had actually heard Caroline’s voice at Claire’ s house. It was nothing more than an echoing memory; it
couldn’t
have been real!

“
Help! ... Mommy! ... “

And everything else-from the time she first realized she was heading out to the accident site right up until she pulled away from the cemetery gates, unable to force herself to go up to her daughter’s grave — was nothing more than twisted, dark imaginings. Graydon might throw out some fancy clinical term for it, such as “guilt projection” or “hallucination,” and even that was scary enough, to think that she might actually be losing her mind.

“But I’m
not
!” she whispered, her face buried in the well of her pillow. “I’m
not
losing my mind! I’m
stronger
than that!”

Rolling over onto her side, she opened her eyes and stared blankly at the moonlit curtains framing her bedroom window. The night air had a warm, earthy aroma to it, reminding her of the freshly turned soil ...

... Of a recently dug grave!

Elizabeth shivered and, turning onto her back, pulled the blankets up tightly under her chin. As she did, she felt a drag on the blankets, almost as if something was on the bed, pinning the blankets down. Her first thought was a pleasant memory, of when she was younger, and her cat, Friskie, had slept on her bed. He had always resented any movement under the blankets once he was settled down for the night. and he would claw the bedspread whenever Elizabeth rolled over in bed.

But Friskie was long since dead, buried out behind the barn under the apple tree. As far as Elizabeth could remember, there was nothing on her bed that would pin down her blankets, unless she had tucked them in wrong. Sighing with frustration, she sat up to straighten them out. When she saw what was lying in bed beside her. Her breath froze in her chest, stifling any sound she tried to make.

No
! her mind screamed.
This can’t be real!

She stared in horror at the dark shape that was stretched out on the bed beside her. The hazy moonlight cast an indistinct glow in the room — enough to see by but certainly not enough to make out any details. All Elizabeth could see was a small, dark, human figure, its features lost in shadow, lying curled up beside her on the covers. It could have been either a very old woman or a young girl. On the hazy white of the pillow rested a dark, oval that looked like a person’s head!

It’s just a trick of the light
, she told herself, even as panic flooded her mind. She must have left her nightgown on the bed, and it now looked like the rough outline of a person in bed with her. The circle on the pillow was just the depression where her head had been.

But then why can I feel the weight on my bed
? she wondered. Her blood was chilled, and her muscles were frozen. The tendons in her neck strained as she tried unsuccessfully to turn her head and get a better look at what was there beside her.

It certainly isn’t someone! Not a person
! her mind screamed.
How could it be?

But as she watched with steadily mounting horror, the shape on the bed moved subtly, like dark ice melting in a hot, tropical night. The sheets rustled and the bedsprings creaked, as the weight — not her own — shifted. Elizabeth’s throat closed off in terror as she watched the rounded dark head rise slowly up from the pillow. An indistinct nimbus of frizzy gray hair framed the face as it turned and looked at her with eyes that glowed like hot coals. A dimmed, red fire stared at Elizabeth from the darkness.

“ ... No ... “

The shape sat up. The figure, pitch black against the dark bedroom wall, continued to twist and rise until it was floating off the bed, hovering above Elizabeth like a heavy column of curling, black smoke. Every muscle in Elizabeth’s body twisted and screamed as she tried to shake off the paralyzing terror that pinned her helplessly to the mattress. Drifting above her, the black shape leaned forward and down, pouring a wash of cold air over Elizabeth’s face. The angry red glow in the eyes grew steadily brighter as the dark face came closer and closer to her. Even when it was no more than six inches from her, Elizabeth couldn’t make out the slightest detail other than the angry, blazing eyes. It was as if she was looking into the very heart of space — a cold, black vacuum with no shape and no content other than those two heated pits of flame.

In a single, roaring
whoosh
, the head leaning over her burst into flames. Blades of searing orange and yellow fire tore at Elizabeth’s face, and she was engulfed by a hundred blades of roaring flame that sliced her, reached for her, tried to pull her in. Wave after wave of heat hammered against her like solidly placed punches.

“ ... No ... “ she said, her voice nothing more than a whimper.

The head had become a rapidly diminishing black ball framed by coiling white hair floating in the middle of the withering sphere of heat and light. As Elizabeth’s stinging eyes adjusted to the sudden glare, she could see a person’s features underlit by the raging fire. She found herself staring, eye to eye, into the grinning face of her dead daughter!

“ ... No! ... “

The word ripped from Elizabeth’s chest with a force that felt as though it had shredded flesh and splintered ribs. Her hands reached feebly to her throat, and she was deadly certain she would feel the warm wash of fresh blood flowing down over her chest. Not a single muscle in her body would obey the commands of her brain. The pressure in her head increased until she was certain she was about to explode, consumed by the heat and flame; but then, with a roaring intake of breath, her body jerked into a sitting position on the bed. She let out a single, gravelly growl — more a pained whimper than a scream as she slammed her hands against her head and pressed them tightly against her throbbing temples.

“
... No! ... Goddamn it, NO
!” she wailed out loud.

In that instant. her awareness snapped, and she found herself panting as she stared in almost total shock down at her bed. There was not the slightest hint of any dark shape lying on top of the covers or hovering above her near the ceiling. No face staring at her. No raging flames. The flesh of her throat and chest was solid and whole, and there was no outpouring of blood and exploded lungs and ribs.

Tears of relief and agony flooded Elizabeth’s eyes.

THIRTEEN

White Noise

1.

“Mr. Cody — ? Your wife told me I’d find you out here,” Elizabeth called out as she walked across the wide stretch of field toward the man working along the fence-post line. She kept her eyes on him, but he, after giving her a curt nod, turned away and resumed his work.

Several hundred yards across the sloping field, a thin slice of the Saco River glimmered silver in the sun. The grass was nothing more than a tangled yellow mat left over from winter, but between the tufts new green was thrusting upward. Overhead, the sky arched a bright blue without a single puff of cloud. The air was tangy with the smell of new growth. As nervous as she was about meeting this man — and as much as she had considered not even coming out here — Elizabeth couldn’t not respond to the beauty and peace of such a Sunday afternoon.

“My name’s Elizabeth Myers. I was supposed to meet with you this afternoon, Mr. Cody,” Elizabeth said, once she was standing beside him. She felt as though she should shake hands with him, but saw no opportunity.

“Yup, but y’can call me Eldon,” the man said, without even a glance back at her. He had a pinch bar in one hand and, levering it with his shoulder, was pulling a string of barbed wire as tight as he could while wielding his hammer to nail the wire to the rough-cut fence post. “You any good at poundin’ nails?” he asked, grunting with effort.

Elizabeth smiled thinly and nodded at the grizzled old man. “Sure,” she replied.

Without another word, Eldon gave her the hammer and a nail and then, stepping to one side, gripped the pinch bar with both hands and pulled back until the wire was taut.

“There yah go. Give it a whack!” he said. His face flushed red with strain ... as Elizabeth placed the small, horseshoe-shaped nail up against the barb and drove it in with two solid, accurate blows. When Eldon released the tension on the wire and saw that it was going to hold, he smiled, wiping his forehead on the sleeve of his frayed plaid work shirt.