Ghost Moon (32 page)

CHAPTER 50

SHE REMEMBERED. SHE REMEMBERED. SHE REMEMBERED being carried like this before, wrapped up like a mummy, unable to move, barely able to breathe. She remembered the terror, icy-cold terror that tasted like medicine in her mouth and sent tremors chasing each other down her spine. She remembered being jostled, remembered the sounds of the night penetrating faintly through whatever it was that was wrapped around her head, remembered the sounds of a man’s heavy breathing.

She remembered. Oh, God, she remembered.

This had happened to her before, long ago, when she was a little girl, younger than Sara. Someone had come into her room in the middle of the night, and grabbed her when she was asleep in bed, shoving a wet, smelly rag into her face. It had knocked her unconscious, and when she had come to, a woman had been screaming.

Her mother had been screaming. In her mind, Olivia could hear her mother screaming as plainly as if it were all happening again, right this very minute. She’d been little, and she’d been lying on the ground inside some sort of cloth bag, and she’d woken up to hear her mother screaming. She crawled out of the bag, to see her mother and a man struggling by the shore of the lake. Ghost Lake. The moon had been shining, painting a line of white across the water like a stripe along a skunk’s back. The night had been hot, and muggy, and the insects had been singing and the tree frogs had been piping and fog had been rising like bony fingers stretching up from the water.

She tried to stand up, to go to her mother, to help her, but her knees were wobbly and wouldn’t hold her, and her head felt really weird and her stomach heaved like she had to throw up.

Then her mother stopped screaming, just like that, like something had cut off the sound. She lifted her head, looked up, and saw that her mother was in the water now, in up to about her waist, and the man was pushing her face down, holding it under the water so that her mother’s dark hair floated like oil on the surface.

He was hurting her mother
.

She had to save her mother. She got to her feet, grabbing on to the trees for support, just as her mother’s face came up, just as her mother choked and gasped and seemed to break free of the man and turned, arms outstretched, trying to make it back to shore.

Her mother saw her then, standing there under the trees, and screamed at her.
Run away, Olivia! Run! Run
away! Run away!
And then the man caught her mother around the waist and dragged her back out into the lake, and her mother’s scream turned into a gurgle as he pushed her face down beneath the water again.

Run away! Run! Run away!
Her mother’s scream echoed in her ears, and she turned and ran, lurched really, from tree to tree until she got to the path and then she turned back to look.

Her mother was in the middle of the lake, her face turned toward shore, her eyes wide and terrified, her mouth open as she screamed. She wore her white nightgown, the one with the lace straps that Olivia thought was so pretty, and she stretched her arms out toward shore as she fought to escape the water. Then the man surfaced behind her, grabbing her around the waist, disappearing under the surface with her, forcing her down.

The last thing Olivia saw was her mother’s hand stretching skyward above the surface of Ghost Lake. Then the hand, too, disappeared.

Olivia turned and stumbled along the path through the woods, heading toward the Big House, dizzy and sick and so, so scared. He was coming after her, she knew he was. He would get her; the lake would get her. . . .

He was behind her, soaking wet and panting and reaching out for her. Olivia could hear his slogging footsteps, hear his labored breathing, and hear, too, voices coming from ahead of her, from the direction of the house. She screamed, only it came out sounding more like a squeak. Then something slammed hard into the back of her head.

When she’d awakened again, it was days later, her mother was dead, and her uncle Charlie was treating her for shock and talking her through the terrible nightmares that plagued her.

And after she’d gotten up, gotten well, life at LaAngelle Plantation had gone on. Day in, day out, for weeks and months and years. She’d had no memory of that night. She had buried it deep inside her mind as too terrible to remember. And gradually, even her subconscious had forgotten, until coming back to LaAngelle Plantation had stirred the memories again.

How was it possible that it was happening to her a second time? As the dream coalesced into memory, and the memory solidified enough to be shoved aside so that her mind could function, Olivia realized that what she was experiencing now was no flashback, no dream. She had been drugged, taken from her bed, and was now bound and gagged and wrapped in folds of cloth that prevented her from moving. Blinded by whatever swathed her face, she had to use her other senses. She was being carried over someone’s shoulder. She could feel the squishy musculature of the shoulder pressing into her abdomen. A man, from the size and shape of him. Her head was hanging down his back, bobbing slightly as he walked. His arms were clamped over her thighs and the backs of her knees. He was struggling under her weight. She could feel his labored breathing, hear him panting, sense his steps slowing. His smell—she got a faint whiff of sweat, something medicinal, all mixed up with the lush scent of the night. He stepped from gravel to grass, and the sound changed from a crunch to a soft swish.

Where was he taking her?

Bound and wrapped as she was, she knew she had no chance of escape even if she tried to struggle. She forced herself to remain limp, to feign continued unconsciousness.

Then a horrible thought occurred to her: Oh, God, would he throw her into the lake?

It was all she could do not to panic, not to fight, to lie still and quiet and keep her breathing calm. If he suspected she was conscious, he would knock her out again, she was sure, and there would go her last hope, her only hope, of survival.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Keep muscles relaxed.

She heard the faint rasp of metal on metal, and then he turned sideways with her, as if he was having trouble fitting through an opening or a doorway. The side of her head smacked into something hard without warning, and she couldn’t help it, she made a sound, a small sound, but he heard.

‘‘So you’re awake,’’ he said, and the voice was familiar, shockingly familiar, so familiar she couldn’t, wouldn’t believe it until he dumped her down without warning on a hard, slick surface and pulled some of the wrapping away from her face.

CHAPTER 51

SETH WAS TIRED. SO TIRED HE COULD BARELY climb the stairs. It was an effort just dragging his feet from one step to the next. If he hadn’t known Olivia was waiting for him in her nice warm bed on the second floor, he thought with a faint glimmer of humor, he would have sacked out on the couch in the den.

But the knowledge that Olivia was waiting for him was a powerful incentive. It got his feet up the rest of the stairs.

He would go to her room, strip, fall into bed beside her, wrap his arms around her, and sleep until morning. It was a terrible thought that tonight he was too tired to make love, but he just might be. The events of the last two weeks must be catching up with him, he decided, because he felt totally whacked.

His mother’s death was a blow from which he was never going to recover. The pain of it would be with him until he died. If it hadn’t been for Olivia, he didn’t think he would have slept a wink since the night she died.

Olivia was his port in a storm-tossed sea. His shelter on a cold winter’s night. And all those other poetic things he might think but would never actually be so sappy as to say out loud.

Now it looked like Big John was going to go, too. He’d always thought the old man was too damned stubborn to die. Tonight’s crisis had been some kind of mix-up with the medicines, caught by the new doctor David had insisted take over the case. It was not immediately life-threatening, since it had been reversed in time. Charlie hadn’t liked the idea of somebody else taking over. He was nowhere to be seen at the hospital tonight. But if he was going to make mistakes with medicine, then he needed to be replaced.

Losing Big John would be a huge blow, especially coming, as it seemed likely to, on top of losing his mother.

The only way he was going to get through it was just to grab Livvy, and hold on tight.

He reached her room, turned the doorknob, let himself in. The upstairs was black as pitch, as always, but he could just faintly see her bed by the greenish glow from her clock.

The clock read 1:59 A.M. The bed looked empty.

‘‘Livvy?’’ he said softly. No answer.

Waking up fast, Seth groped around on the wall for the switch and turned on the overhead light.

The bed was empty, although it had obviously been slept in. The room was empty. The French windows were closed.

‘‘Livvy?’’ His voice was louder now.

Of course, she must be with Sara.

He turned on his heel and went next door. There was a lamp on in Sara’s room, a little night-light that Olivia allowed to burn all night. By its light, even before he switched on the overhead fixture, Seth saw that Sara’s bed was empty, too.

Her covers had been tossed onto the floor, like somebody had thrown them aside in a hurry. It didn’t look like something Olivia, or Sara herself, would do.

The kitten, her gray kitten, he couldn’t remember its name, came running in from the hall, and leaped onto the bed.

Sara always slept with that kitten. He remembered seeing it on her bed earlier when he had come to tell Olivia that he was going to drive in to Baton Rouge.

Seth’s blood ran cold. Even before he awakened Martha, even before he awakened Chloe, even before he rousted Keith from the garçonnière behind the house, he knew something was wrong.

Terribly wrong.

While Martha and Chloe huddled in the den, and Keith ran from room to room in the huge pile of a house turning on light after light after light, Seth got on the phone to Ira. He wanted the sheriff and his deputies out at LaAngelle Plantation, right now.

CHAPTER 52

UNCLE CHARLIE . OLIVIA COULDN’T TALK, OF course, with the gag in her mouth, but her mind shouted his name. She knew him instantly, even through the tan mesh of the stocking he had pulled down over his face. He grimaced beneath the mask and peeled it off, stuffing it in the pocket of the black trench coat he wore, looking down at her almost sorrowfully.

‘‘Well, now, Olivia, you’ve gotten us both in a fine mess,’’ he said. She was in a bag, a white canvas bag, and he began pulling it off her, easing it down over her shoulders, wiggling it out from under her hips. The shiny silver metal surface she was lying on felt slick and cold against her skin. It was outfitted with straps, inch-wide black mesh straps that he fastened across her waist, securing her to the metal surface. She was bound with duct tape, she saw. The silvery bands were wrapped around her ankles and knees over her pink nightgown, and bound her arms to her body from just above her elbows to her wrists.

Without the bag to shield her from it, the air smelled foul, and Olivia wrinkled her nose instinctively, glancing around to see what could be causing such a stench.

‘‘Yes, it does smell a little ripe in here, doesn’t it?’’ Charlie said, as if he could read her mind. ‘‘Next time I come, I think I’ll bring some air freshener.’’

He was busy rolling up the canvas bag, and tending to other things down near her feet. Olivia was so horrified by her surroundings that she paid him little mind.

They were in a crypt. The Archer family crypt, to be precise. She knew it was, because of the inscriptions on the four tray-sized brass plaques set into the marble walls. The plaques commemorated Colonel Robert John Archer, his wife, Lavinia, and two infants. They were only slightly tarnished, and she wondered if they had been coated with something years ago to keep them bright. Each plaque was engraved with a name and dates of birth and death, with several sentences in a flowing script underneath that Olivia could not read, although she was close enough to the plaques to see her own wavery reflection in them.

The reflections provided the first horror. They showed her that she was lying on her back on a make-shift tabletop of bright silver metal with scooped-out channels along the sides that looked as though they were designed to catch liquids. Olivia immediately thought of autopsy tables and blood, and shuddered. The tabletop had been secured with straps to the tops of two adult-sized stone coffins that most likely contained the remains of the colonel and his wife.

But the real horror looked at her from the corners. Olivia’s eyes widened as her gaze moved from one to the other. Four of them. Life-size mannequins of four little girls, each of them dressed with exquisite care, their hair—medium brown, blond, red—such beautiful red hair!—and black—lovingly curled. They were standing upright, their arms slightly bent and held a little away from their bodies. Their skin was the only false note. It had a leathery, thick texture. Their eyes gleamed faintly in the light of the battery-operated camp lantern Charlie had set down on the tabletop near her feet. Olivia thought, hoped, guessed, that the eyes were of glass. They looked all too real.

‘‘Are you admiring my girls?’’ Charlie plucked the wadded rag from her mouth so suddenly that Olivia felt as if half the skin of her lips and tongue had been torn away with it. She tried to swallow, but couldn’t because her throat was too dry. She coughed, choked, tried again. This time she succeeded, and she used her newly moist tongue to wet her parched lips.

‘‘Are they—mannequins?’’ she croaked. Charlie shook his head at her reproachfully.

‘‘No, dear, they’re just what they look like. Little girls, well preserved. Meet Becca, Maggie, Kathleen, and Savannah. I’m particularly proud of Savannah. She was Little Miss Rice, you know.’’

‘‘Oh, my God.’’ Olivia’s stomach heaved. She felt sick, horribly sick to her stomach, and dizzy, too. They were
children,
or they had once been, and her uncle Charlie, her kindly doctor uncle had—had . . . ‘‘You
killed
them.’’

‘‘Yes, well, unfortunately that’s part of the process.

You were almost number five, you know. I chose
you
to come after Savannah, but your mother . . . your mother . . .’’ His face darkened.

‘‘You drowned my mother, didn’t you?’’

There was a narrow metal cabinet against one marble wall near her head, and Charlie was busy extracting something from it as he talked. He looked at her over his shoulder.

‘‘I knew you would remember, sooner or later.’’ His voice was resigned. ‘‘I had no choice, you know. I don’t know how—she was the only mommy who ever did— but she heard me that night. Selena heard me. Or she saw me. I never did know. But she came running after me as I was walking away from the house, and she wanted to know what was in my bag. Well, it was you, of course, but I couldn’t tell her that. So I slugged her, and chloroformed her, and carried her and you away from the house. It was a difficult trip, as you may imagine. The pair of you were extremely heavy! But she woke up and started to fight me down by the lake, so I had to drop you and deal with her. By the time I got finished with her—she was a scrapper, your mother!— you were hightailing it back toward the house. I knocked you unconscious, but I didn’t have time to do anything with you before Big John was on the scene. By the time I got finished dragging Selena out of the lake and doing my bit with CPR, you had managed to get back to the house. I kept an eye on you for a while after that, but except for a few nightmares you didn’t seem to remember anything. I don’t know if it was because I hit you so hard on the head, or because you had hysterical amnesia. I’m inclined to go with hysterical amnesia, but that’s just an opinion. Of course, when you came to me this morning, and told me you wanted to go see a psychiatrist, and a hypnotist, of all things, I had no choice. I knew you would remember, sooner or later.’’

Olivia took a deep breath. It was hot in the crypt, and the smell was getting to her. Sweat was breaking out on her forehead, and her body was beginning to stick clammily to the metal on which she lay. But she had to keep her mind clear, had to think. Otherwise, she knew, she was going to die.

Sara. Seth. Their names were almost a scream in her mind. She didn’t want to leave them. Not now. Not like this.

But she would not think of them. Could not, if she wanted to stay calm.

‘‘I always thought Big John suspected something,’’ Charlie continued conversationally. ‘‘I was already soaking wet, you know, when the two of us went into the water after Selena. I never knew if he noticed or not. But he questioned me pretty sharply afterward. Made me nervous. Turns out that Belinda had thought I was having an affair with your mother, because I was hanging around the Big House so much at night—waiting for my chance to grab you, don’t you know—and confided in her father.’’ He chuckled. ‘‘I was able to shoot that one down. But I still thought he suspected that something was wrong about Selena’s death. I quit collecting after that, you know, and moved my girls up here, just in case Big John was suspicious enough to really start looking into things. But he never did. I thought he’d put the whole matter out of his mind. Then when he saw you again, and had that heart attack, I knew. Guilty conscience got him, for not speaking up all those years ago. But he started to babble about Selena to the nurses in the hospital, and I was afraid of what was going to come out. I had to calm the old boy down. Tonight, when I get done here, I’m going to have to take care of him for good. It’s a shame. I’ve always liked him. Just like I like you, Olivia. I wouldn’t be doing this if you’d given me any other choice.’’

He took something else out of the cabinet, and closed the door.

‘‘Are you planning to turn
me
into—one of them?’’ With a nod she gestured at the preserved body of the little girl with the red hair.

Charlie shook his head. ‘‘Oh, no. No. You’re going to drown yourself in the lake, like your mother. Despondent, I imagine, because you’re in love with Seth— Phillip told me that he saw you kissing him, so that will bear that theory out—and he’s going to marry Mallory.’’

‘‘But—but he and Mallory broke their engagement. Yesterday.’’ Olivia was grasping at straws, trying to latch on to anything that might change his mind.

Charlie shrugged. ‘‘Doesn’t matter. Who knows what might drive a troubled young woman to kill herself? After all, you’ve been having nightmares about your mother drowning herself in the lake, and just today you came to me and asked me for the name of a psychiatrist. You were quite depressed, too. I’ll swear to it.’’

He smiled kindly at her, and held up his hand. Olivia was horrified to see that it held a syringe half filled with a golden liquid.

‘‘You needn’t be afraid that it’s going to hurt. I never hurt anyone. For my girls, when I’m ready for them to go—I like to play with them for a while first, but all good things must come to an end—I inject them with five grams of sodium Pentothal to put them to sleep, then give them fifty ccs of pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes all their muscles except the heart, then finish up with 50 ccs of potassium chloride to stop the heart muscle itself. They never feel a thing. For you, tonight, I’m going to put you to sleep with the sodium Pentothal, then throw you into the lake. You’ll die from drowning. The signs will be unmistakable. You’ll even have lake water in your lungs. And since I’ll be signing the death certificate, we won’t have to worry about little things like toxicology reports. But you don’t have to be afraid. You won’t feel one minute’s pain.’’

‘‘Uncle Charlie—please . . .’’ Pleading with him was useless, Olivia knew. If the man had an ounce of compassion anywhere in his body, she would not now be staring at the near-mummified remains of four little girls. But she had to try. She had to. She wanted to live. . . .

A mewling sound from somewhere behind her head made Olivia’s eyes widen.

‘‘Oh, now you’ve woken Sara,’’ Charlie said reproachfully. ‘‘She’s going to be my number five girl, you know. Wait just a minute while I put her in her cage.’’