Mercy (14 page)

Da-DUM
.

Da-DUM
.

This time the sound didn't just tease at the edge of her hearing. This time it was loud, heavy, rhythmic pounding, and it sounded to Haley as if it would never stop.

Sunny sat down beside her, wagged her tail, and panted happily into Haley's face.

Stupid dog. Haley shoved herself to her feet, grabbed the leash, and ran.

At the gate she stopped, pulling Sunny close. The sound had faded, left behind at Mercy's grave.

Gritting her teeth, Haley turned. But there was nothing behind her. Nothing had chased her; nothing was reaching out
to grab her. Nothing but her own fear, which clutched her in long, icy fingers.

What was
happening
to her? Was she being haunted? Was she being—she took a few shaky steps to put her back against the cemetery fence—
hunted
?

They'd said that Mercy would not stay dead. They'd said that her heart, beating within her corpse, had sucked the life from her own family.

Haley had thought it was nothing but a quaint old New England tradition. She had called it ignorance and superstition and fear. But Mercy's family and friends and neighbors—could they actually have been right?

And was somebody walking down the driveway of Aunt Brown's house?

Haley blinked and looked again. The light was fading fast now and there were no streetlights on this road, so she couldn't see details. But the long skirt, the straight back, the quick steps that seemed to cover more ground than they should—she knew them.

Aunt Brown? That was impossible.

Sunny pulled back hard on the leash, yanking Haley off balance. Retreating, the dog tugged Haley into the shadow of a large monument. Under the shadow of a stone angel's wings, Sunny crowded against Haley, almost sitting on her feet, and whimpered. Without thinking, Haley knelt to pull the dog close and clamp one hand around her muzzle. Somehow she felt it would be a bad idea to make any noise right now.

“Shhh,” she whispered. “Shhh, it's okay . . . ”

Hugging Sunny, she peered back around the monument.

The figure in the long skirt was now walking briskly down the road. Haley could see more clearly now—the long hair brushed smoothly back to a knot on the back of the head, the cardigan over the white blouse. It was Aunt Brown, and she
walked as if she knew exactly where she was going and was in a hurry to get there.

Haley gritted her teeth. Beside her, Sunny whined. There was no sense huddling here in a graveyard. It was just Aunt Brown, after all, and if she were out for a walk, that was weird, maybe, but not exactly scary.

So stop being scared
, Haley ordered herself.
Stand up
.

After a little while, she did. She peered around the stone angel. Nothing.

Nothing? How could there be nothing?

There was no sign of the quickly moving figure in the long skirt. The road ran long and straight past the cemetery, and there was not a single person on it. But nobody could have moved that fast. Certainly not an old lady who hadn't left her house in Haley's lifetime.

Who everybody
thought
hadn't left the house.

Haley stood up cautiously, holding Sunny's leash.

What should she do? She had no idea. Go rushing home to her dad and Elaine, telling them . . . what? That a dead woman had written messages on a television screen? That she'd seen a face on her camera's screen and heard a heart beating in a grave? They'd have her talking to a psychiatrist so fast her head wouldn't have
time
to spin.

Should she call Mel? But it would be the same problem. The same pity. The same sweet and sympathetic disbelief.

There was only one person who'd always listened to her. Haley tied Sunny's leash to the handlebars of her bike and set off down the street as fast as the dog could run.

Her dad and Elaine would be expecting her back for dinner, but she could call them from Jake's.

Haley was panting as hard as Sunny by the time she reached Jake's street, and the last of the light had faded from the sky. The cold, dry air hurt her lungs and made her cough.

She had her own key to the front door of Jake's apartment building. Sunny flopped down on the cold concrete of the front walk to rest as Haley shook the key free from the others on her ring and slipped it into the lock.

But as she turned the key, Sunny suddenly jumped up and yelped, yanking Haley's arm. The keys dropped to the doormat with a muffled clank.

“Sunny! What—? Ow, quit it!” Haley bent down to pick up the keys and the dog nearly pulled her over. She was barking now, loudly. “
Stop
it!” Haley insisted, giving the leash a good pull to bring Sunny back to her side. “Hold still—come on, quit making this so hard.” She grabbed Sunny's collar with her left hand, using all her strength to keep the dog from moving, and turned the key in the lock with her right.

Sunny resisted as Haley dragged her into the lobby, and redoubled her barking. Oh, great. Neighbors were going to be looking out of the doors any minute now to see what was up. Jake might even appear, laughing as Haley wrestled the dog down the hallway, claws scrabbling and slipping on the linoleum.

At least Jake's apartment was on the ground floor. She wouldn't have to drag Sunny up the stairs.

In front of Jake's door, she clung to Sunny with one hand and shook out her key ring with the other, trying to find the right key. But then Sunny growled, and the sound was so fierce that Haley dropped her collar and actually flinched away. She'd never heard Sunny make a sound like that.

Sunny's upper lip was pulling away from her teeth, the fur on the back of her neck was bristling, and suddenly she seemed to change her mind about not wanting to go near Jake's apartment. With a single-minded ferocity, she lunged for the door.

Haley, expecting to see her bounce off the wood, was caught off guard when the door crashed open. The leash, still
looped around her wrist, went taut, and Haley was dragged inside.

The room was dark, not a light on anywhere. A rug slid under Sunny's feet and nearly tripped Haley. The leash went slack for a moment and slipped over Haley's hand. Sunny's barking was a torrent of sound, battering the walls of the little room, battering the thoughts out of Haley's head.

She couldn't think, but she could still see.

The only light in the room came from the window, spilling in from the streetlight outside. Jake's armchair was by that window. Haley could see his shape outlined in it, as if he'd fallen asleep there, his legs stretched out, his head leaning back.

Something straightened up, something that had been bending over him. For half a second Haley saw it, outlined against the dimly lit rectangle of the window. A thin, upright figure. Hair smooth against the skull, a long dress. Her mind took the picture like her camera took a photo.
Click
.

And the figure vanished from the window, gone like a shred of mist snatched by the wind. Something slammed into Haley, something as heavy and solid as iron. She didn't feel herself falling; she only felt herself hitting the floor. It almost felt like the floor hitting her, a thump that knocked the breath out of her.

A gust of clammy air blew in her face, a smell choked her—clay, earth, something foul, rotten, buried deep. A vision sparked in Haley's mind, lit up as if with a flash on a dark night—white maggots, pallid and damp, crawling blindly over something black and crumbling, writhing, squirming, eating hungrily—

Icy fingers grabbed hold of Haley's face. Something stung her cheek, a thin, distant pain. Haley forced a breath into her lungs and shrieked Jake's name just as a siren screamed outside and a red blade of light stabbed into the room.

One of the neighbors, it turned out, had heard Sunny's frantic barking, had seen the door to Jake's apartment swinging
open, and had called the police. That much Haley understood later, when the room was full of light and noise and people. Police officers in uniforms, a couple of neighbors, two EMTs who put a bandage on a bloody cut on Jake's neck, just under the corner of the jaw.

Maybe a knife, one of the policemen had said, coming over to look and take a photograph of the wound before the bandage was taped down. Although the knife must have been pretty blunt, she added, to make a cut as ragged as that.

“You should see your doctor for a tetanus shot,” the EMT said as she smoothed the gauze into place. “If you're sure you don't want to come to the ER now?”

“I'm sure.” Jake's face looked sickly pale, but his voice was steady.

“Miss?” A policeman holding a notebook turned his attention to Haley. Haley had been told his name and had promptly forgotten it. “You can't add anything to your description? Hair color? Eyes?”

“The light was off. It was dark.” Haley hugged her arms across her chest. Her voice was less steady than Jake's.

“Height? She was standing against the window, you said. How high did she come up?”

Haley measured a spot on the window frame with her hand. “About to here, I think.”

The police officer quirked a slightly skeptical eyebrow. “But strong, you said?”

That force slamming into her, that hand on her face, those fingers like cold iron—Haley touched the sore spots on her jaw gently. “Yes. Strong.”

She knew why the officer had lifted his eyebrow. The spot she'd touched on the window frame would make Jake's attacker only a few inches over five feet. She'd already described her as a
woman, thin, slightly built. How could somebody like that have hit her with such force?

“Well, addicts looking for a fix—they can surprise you.” The officer shrugged. Haley stared at a mole, a dark blotch near the corner of his eye, as if it had hypnotized her. “We'll talk to the neighbors, see if anybody saw her on the streets. And we'll be back in a few days to see you both again. Meanwhile, don't fall asleep again without locking the door. Medications can bring a good price on the streets.”

“I thought I—well. Obviously I didn't. Lock it. I will.” Jake rubbed a hand over his face. The EMT who'd put the bandage on glanced at him, frowning a little. Then she looked at Haley.

“What's that on your face?”

Haley blinked and put her hand up to her cheek. She stared in surprise at the blood on her fingertips and looked down to see a few small spots of red sprinkled over the front of her white T-shirt.

There was the sharp sting of alcohol as the EMT cleaned the scratch, then smeared it with a sticky ointment and stuck a bandage over it. The room emptied out, neighbors telling Jake to call if he needed anything, the EMT reminding him of a tetanus shot. When they had all gone, Haley shut the door behind them, locked it, and turned the dead bolt. Its heavy, satisfying metallic clunk was the sound of safety.

Except that Jake thought he'd locked the door before . . .

Jake was leaning back in his chair, eyes half closed. The white bandage didn't stand out as it should have against his skin.

“You okay?” he asked.

Haley nodded. She couldn't be sure he'd seen her, so she put it into words. “I'm fine.”

“Liar.”

“Yeah.” Haley's nerves were twitching and jumping, her body fizzing with adrenaline and shock. That hand on her face. That
stench. And later, when she'd slapped the lights on, Jake sitting up, staring blankly at her as if he didn't know who she was, with blood running down his neck.

“I'm staying,” Haley said firmly. She called home, told her father and Elaine what had happened, told them she and Jake were both fine. The big Band-Aid the EMT had stuck over her face tugged at her skin and her jaw ached with talking before she'd explained it all, and they'd agreed that since it was a Friday and there was no school the next day, she could stay overnight.

When she hung up the phone, Jake was asleep in his chair.

Haley pulled him up by one arm and steered him over to the bed. She knelt to pull his shoes off and heard a long, drawn-out whine from under the bed.

“Sunny?” Haley bent down to look and Sunny poked her head out, a wisp of dust clinging to her nose. She huddled against the floor, as if hoping to melt into the wood. Even her fur seemed limp, and her ears dropped against her head.

“What a guard dog.” Jake's voice was faint. “Defending her master against all danger . . . ”

By the time Haley had coaxed Sunny out into the room, Jake was nearly asleep again. The dog nosed frantically at his hand, lying limp on top of the sheets, and he stirred enough to rub her ears.

“S'okay, mutt, you're not a Doberman or anything.”

“Jake?” Haley, still sitting on the floor, looked up.

“Mmmm?”

“Are you sure you don't want to go to the hospital? You look . . . ”

“I've really spent enough time in hospitals, Haley.”

“Listen, there's something—” Haley faltered. But Jake waited patiently, not moving or speaking, for her to go on. “I think maybe something weird is going on. I don't know. Can I tell you? Do you promise not to laugh or—”

Jake's quiet, deep breathing was her only answer. Haley sighed. She covered him with a blanket and took the one folded at the foot of his bed for herself. Curled up in Jake's armchair, her feet tucked under her, the blanket wrapped around her shoulders, she found that her eyes wouldn't close. She didn't know how long she stayed awake, staring into the dark.