In Shadows (11 page)

IERCE PLACED THE CLOTHES HE’D CHOSEN
for the day onhis dresser and turned to take his mother’s hand when she tapped him on the shoulder.

What do you want for breakfast?
Mandi signed into his palm.

You home?

Saturday!

Pierce smiled and asked for pancakes.

By the time the first batch of silver dollars were stacked on a platter, Pierce was sitting at the table. Mandi placed a glass of milk near his hand, waited until he found it, and filled his plate with pancakes. He dug in heartily, barely catching the syrup off his chin with a napkin.

“You’ve got an appetite this morning,” she said, smiling.

Even with the defects nature and man had given him, even though he remained small for his thirteen years, he was still perfect in her eyes. But she wondered for the millionth time if there wasn’t more she could do for him. Maybe she
had
been wrong to shelter him so closely. He had no friends
his own age. He had been forced to grow up in the company of adults. But he never seemed to mind.

She sipped her coffee, glancing out the window into the woods. What depressing weather. If the steady rain kept up, the grass would be over their heads before she could mow it again. She needed something to keep her busy. When she and Pierce had finished their breakfast she tapped his hand, and he offered her his palm again.

Your plans?
she signed.

Tinkering. What’s up?

I’m going to clean house. Then later I thought we’d drive to Arcos for ice cream.

Pierce smiled and nodded vigorously.

All right
, signed Mandi.
Keep yourself occupied for a while.

Pierce deposited his plate and glass in the sink and turned on the water, but Mandi signed to him.

It’s all right. I’ll do them.

As he pattered away down the hall she washed the dishes in silence. It was always silent in the house.

She shook her head and laughed at herself. It wasn’t any quieter now than it had ever been. If Rich was here right now he’d be cleaning one of his guns or passed out drunk. Rich had never been a husband. He’d been a boarder with a hard-on. What in the world had she been thinking?

She’d been thinking that her son needed a father, and she’d panicked. That was what. Hindsight was twenty-twenty. At least she’d gotten rid of Rich. But she should have gotten the restraining order
before
Pierce got hurt.

Not that it would have helped.

She dried the dishes, put them away, and wiped the table and stove clean. Then she slipped into Pierce’s room and stripped his bed while he sat at his work table, his fingers tickling a small circuit board. She straightened his braille
magazines, dusted his dresser, and then brought the vacuum from the hall closet. When she turned on the machine Pierce sensed the vibration and turned for just a moment, then went back to work.

She vacuumed the bedroom, then the kitchen, the living room, and the downstairs bath. Then she dragged the heavy canister up into her sleeping loft. Resting the machine against the wall, she turned and looked down the stairs at the wide gray spot on the tired old beige carpet, just as she had a million times in the past, and just as she had each time, she felt the heat surging in her chest.

Ernie had repaired the broken spindle on the rail. Now she had to count them in order to remember which one had dislocated Pierce’s shoulder. But the bloodstain was still there at the foot of the stairs. She had knelt for hours, scrubbing until her fingers were raw and tears soaked the carpet along with the soapy water. She’d refused to replace the rug—knowing Pierce couldn’t see it—as a reminder to herself that she was her son’s only protection. Sometimes she wished that Rich would come back one last time, that she could somehow induce him to stand on the landing, right where she was standing, so she could slip up behind him and give him a good push. Pierce seemed able to forgive, or at least forget.

She never could.

She plugged in the vacuum and went at the floor hard, banging the powerhead against the wall and the old iron bedstead. Finally, when the heat in her breast became unbearable, when she pictured herself standing over Rich’s broken corpse, she dropped to her knees beside the bed and flipped off the vacuum. Steepling her fingers, she bowed her head and prayed.

“Dear God, dear sweet Jesus. Please forgive me . . .”

ARBARA
S
TEARN
—that was her stage name, her real name was Ethel Mundy, and practically everyone in Crowley knew it—checked her coif in the full-length mirror beside her bed one last time and adjusted her silk blouse. The single strand of pearls she wore this morning was real, but the diamond brooch was as false as her teeth. Her corgi, Oswald, lay like another fat throw pillow on the bed.

“Mama will be back soon, dear,” she said, stroking the dog’s head before kissing its wet snout. “I have to run some errands. You’ll be good, won’t you, Sweetums?”

The dog gave her a bored look, and she kissed him again. When she glanced out across her side porch where the lawn sloped down to the creek, thick rain blanketed the air and rivulets of water streamed through the grass, disappearing into the trees. Nasty weather. Not like Hollywood.

The thought of California still saddened her. Her career had been real enough, regardless of what the local hicks wanted to believe. She’d been a star. Well, not a big star, but she was in the movies right enough. And she’d married a
producer. She only wished that Stephan had been a little more successful and not so attracted to Las Vegas showgirls and the stock market. When he suffered his fatal heart attack he’d left her barely enough money to fix up her mother’s old house and pay the bills. At least she’d never had to work nine to five like the hoi polloi.

She checked her makeup one more time and patted Oswald again, but when she reached the front hall a noise stopped her. The sound was faint, like a radio left on in some other room, but she hardly ever listened to the radio. The music for the past fifty years had been atrocious. The sound seemed to come from behind her, vague and indefinable yet mesmerizing, like the murmuring of a stream. It wafted through the semidarkened library—an old bedroom she had lined with unfinished pine bookcases overflowing with paperback romance novels.

She followed the sound through the library—across a frayed Persian rug that covered most of the hardwood floor—and into the passageway leading to the storage shed. As she entered the near-total gloom, the murmuring took on the darker tone of an overzealous undertaker whispering beside a deathbed. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, but she couldn’t turn away now. The noise seemed to be slipping under and through the rotten barnwood door that opened into the shed.

It occurred to her then that old Albert had lived alone just like her. Lord knew what the valley was coming to. She rested her shaking hand on the rusted doorknob and wondered if she shouldn’t just grab Oswald, climb in the car, and go get the sheriff.

But she wasn’t going to be chased out of her own home. Certainly not by a bunch of whispering. It was probably just wind under the eaves.

She twisted the knob and jerked the door aside. The shed
smelled of dust and gasoline. One dirty window let in a minimum of light. Ancient beams were visible through the cracks between the rotten pine floorboards. A rusting rototiller sat dejectedly in the far corner gathering cobwebs, along with an assortment of rakes, hoes, and a lawn mower with one cockeyed wheel. The sound was louder here, audible over the rain pounding on the tin roof, but it certainly wasn’t coming from inside.

Barbara didn’t trust the old pine floorboards at all. They creaked as she tiptoed toward the far wall, placing her feet where she could see rusty nailheads so that her weight would be directly over the beams below. But when she reached the door, she realized she’d made a mistake. The latch on the outside was bolted. Of course it was. The Murphy boy didn’t traipse through the house when he came to mow her lawn.

The murmuring seemed to be coming from just the other side of the door. She placed her head directly against the wood, and the sound reverberated in her ears. She slipped over to the window, rubbing hard at the grit on the glass in the paint-encrusted, six-paneled frame, and peered out into the rain. Something dark and hulking seemed to waft along the edge of the looming forest. She leaned closer to the window, but the sound and the light shifted, and the shadow disappeared. Water pouring off the roof splattered on the sill. She’d have to go back to her bedroom window to see if she could spot the thing in the woods again.

She spun on her heel, took two quick steps, and her leg snapped through a floorboard. Reaching to catch herself, she slammed her hand against the floor, twisting her wrist. Her other hand punched through another floorboard. Her head struck something solid, and she blacked out.

When she came to, her nose ached, and she tasted blood as she breathed noisily through her mouth. She could raise
her arms, but they were swollen and terribly painful below the elbow, and she could barely move her fingers. Her legs seemed to be trapped in the floor by jagged splinters of wood. She couldn’t feel anything beneath her feet, and she tried to remember what was underneath the shed. Was it a basement down there, or just an old crawl space?

Neither possibility made her particularly happy. If she was suspended over a basement it might be a long way down to the floor, and if it was a dirt crawl space no telling what kinds of creatures were creeping around her legs right now.

The thought that she had surely ruined her stockings bothered her, but she couldn’t dwell on it. She had to find a way out. But every time she moved, the floor gave a little more, making terrible noises, as though the beams supporting the boards were ready to crack, as well. She tried wiggling her trapped legs, but when she felt splinters stinging muscle she stopped.

No one but Pam or Ernie ever visited, and if she didn’t show up for church tomorrow her absence probably wouldn’t be noticed because she was an on-again, off-again Christian anyway. She got no mail other than catalogs, and when they piled up the postmistress would more than likely just assume she’d gone out of town for a few days. By the time anyone got around to checking, she’d be a withered mummy.

She tried kicking again. Pain shot up her thigh and seized her torso, and she gasped for breath. She felt a warm trickling down around her toes, and she wondered how long it took to bleed to death.

ANDI SLIPPED HER RAINCOAT
out of the hall closet and carried Pierce’s to his room. She was surprised to find him waiting quietly, facing the door. She took his hand.

Ready to go for ice cream?

He nodded distractedly.

Hearing something again?

He shook his head.

What’s up then?

Pierce shrugged.

Mandi frowned, studying his face. Pierce was never uncommunicative. Inside his silent, dark world he was always eager to make contact. He seemed all right, just preoccupied.

Let’s go
, she signed. But he wouldn’t release her hand.

Jake is nice
, he spelled.

Yes.

He’s scared.

Did he tell you that?

She couldn’t think of any reason Jake would frighten Pierce with a revelation like that.

The boy shook his head.
I just know.

What would he be afraid of?

I think he’s afraid of what’s here.

Mandi had to withdraw her hand for a second. But she still couldn’t read his face. When she took his hand again hers was steady once more.

Nothing’s here but us
, she signed.

Not in our house. There’s something in the valley.

Like what?

Pierce turned toward the window and frowned.

He squeezed her hand as though he wanted her to think about every word.
I get scared when you’re gone.

Why didn’t you tell me?
she signed, feeling the familiar weight of guilt tugging at her heart. When Pierce had turned twelve he’d announced that he was way too old for a babysitter, and Mandi had very reluctantly agreed. She’d had a hard time coming up with the money to begin with, and a good sitter had always been difficult to find. Even so, the transition had been tough for her, knowing Pierce was home alone and unprotected. Very tough. She thought about him all day for weeks, hurrying home during lunch, hugging him when she got there, checking and rechecking the locks. Now she knew her instincts had been right.

I can feel it sometimes, at my window.

Everyone has that feeling. It’s just your imagination.

I think it wants something.

She sighed.
What does it want?

I don’t know. I can’t figure it out.

That Pierce was special went without saying. His talent for fixing things he couldn’t see bordered on the supernatural. That he might sense something she couldn’t stretched her credulity, but not to the point of breaking. She had heard
enough old wives’ tales attributing Jake’s mother’s death not to Jake’s father but to the Crowley curse, and she was sure after Albert’s murder people’s tongues were wagging again. But
she
didn’t believe in any curse, and she didn’t want Pierce believing in some unseen presence in the valley, either.

Nothing will ever hurt you as long as I’m around
, she promised him again, praying she’d always be able to fulfill her pledge.