Mercy (18 page)

Alan's voice, low in her ear. “I see her.”

It wasn't Aunt Brown Haley had glimpsed on the staircase.

A slender, pale young woman, about Haley's height, stood at the top of the stairs. Dark brown hair was pulled into a coil of braids on the back of her head. Heavy bangs framed a face that would have been plain except for the wide, dark eyes. She wore a long gray dress with a full skirt an inch or two off the floor and a small silver locket around her neck.

Only a stray sunbeam or two crept between the curtains of the window at the far end of the hallway, but every detail of the woman's clothes and face was clear, as if she stood in her own light.

And at the same time, Haley could see
through
her. She could make out the hallway behind her, the branching cracks on the bare plaster walls, the panels on the doors.

The woman's mouth moved. She was saying something. Maybe she realized that they couldn't hear her. She repeated herself, despair welling up in those dark eyes, and gestured, reaching out one pale hand and drawing it back toward herself.

That was clear, at least.
Follow me
.

Then she turned aside, so that Haley saw her in profile. Again, she stretched out one hand. This time her wrist twisted as if she were turning a doorknob. She walked through the nearest door and vanished.

Haley was suddenly aware of her heart thumping against her ribs, hard enough, it seemed, to shake her whole body. She felt as if she'd run a marathon standing still.

“That was—” Alan's voice sounded as rattled as she felt. “Um. Unexpected?”

“She wants us to follow her.” Haley stared up the staircase at the hallway, the closed door through which the woman had disappeared. Plain, solid wood with a handle of porcelain that had once been white, now dingy gray. It looked exactly the
same as the other doors. Nothing to show that someone had just walked through it.

“Yeah. Are we going to?”

The glove, the message on the TV screen, the sound of the heartbeat, the face in Haley's camera. For weeks now, someone had been trying to tell Haley something. Mercy had been trying to tell her something.

Maybe all she had to do was listen.

“We have to,” Haley answered Alan. But it still took a determined effort of will for her to lift her foot and set it on the next stair. Clutching the banister tightly, she walked up and into the narrow hallway. If she stretched her arms out, her hands would brush the walls on either side. Alan stayed close behind her.

When they got to the doorway, Haley didn't give herself a second to hesitate. She reached out for the knob, cool and slick beneath her fingers, turned it, and opened the door.

She stepped through it into night.

T
here was no shade or curtain on the single window in the room. The sky outside was black, sprinkled with faint stars. And it was icy, as if she'd walked from November into January. There was a single bed against one wall, a rocking chair beside it. A candle in a pewter candlestick sat on the floor, casting a circle of light.

Someone was sitting in the rocking chair, a bright patchwork quilt wrapped around her. It was the woman Haley and Alan had seen in the hall.

Haley whispered her name. “Mercy?”

She couldn't hear her own voice.

And anyway, Mercy was asleep. Her head had fallen back against the chair; her eyes were closed.

She was not the only sleeper in the room.

Someone lay on the bed as well. A quilt sewn in soft browns and grays covered her up to her chin, and the face looked something like Mercy's—the same heavy, dark eyebrows and thick lashes that lay smoothly on her cheeks. But the sleeper's face was thinner than Mercy's, her cheeks pale and sunken, her lips dry and cracked. She looked worn-out and sick.

Haley reached behind her, feeling for Alan, wanting to touch his arm or grab his hand. But her fingers felt nothing but air. She turned. The door was closed behind her; she didn't remember closing it. And Alan wasn't there. Why hadn't he followed her?

Mercy sighed and stirred a little in her chair. The quilt wrapped around her slipped off one shoulder. Haley couldn't help feeling sorry for her. She found herself wanting to step forward and wake her, tell her to go to bed. Tell her that she, Haley, would watch at this sickbed. Because that's surely what Mercy was doing. It must be her sister, lying there ill. Her older sister, Grace, the one who'd died too.

Mercy sighed again. But the figure on the bed didn't stir. Haley stepped closer. Her feet made no sound against the floorboards. There was a light rime of frost on the quilt that covered the sleeper. Haley found herself watching for a breath that would lift the quilt ever so slightly. But none came.

That's when Haley knew. Mercy wasn't watching over a sickbed. She was watching over a deathbed.

Grace had died, quietly, while her sister slept.

Haley felt tears stinging behind her eyes. But why had Mercy brought her here to see this? Haley already knew that Grace had died of the same disease that had killed her mother, would later kill her sister and her brother. What was Mercy trying to tell her by showing her this?

The woman on the bed opened her eyes.

If Haley screamed, she didn't hear the sound. She found herself on the other side of the room, as far from the bed as she could get, without a memory of moving. Grace threw the quilt from her and climbed out of bed. Dark hair slipped from her loose braid to spill around her shoulders. She was wearing only a long sleeveless gown of white linen, trimmed with lace; her feet were bare. The room was freezing, but she didn't seem to notice.

She didn't seem to notice Haley either. Haley might have been invisible. A ghost. Like Mercy.

Had Haley been wrong? Had Grace just been sleeping? But no, Haley was sure that the still figure on the bed had not been breathing. No air stirred in those lungs. No heart pumped blood through veins and arteries beneath that chalky white skin.

Grace smiled slowly. She spread her fingers wide and looked at them closely in the candlelight. She ran her hands slowly up and down her arms and touched her cheeks, her eyelids, her lips, as if her own body were a marvel she had never seen or felt before.

Then she turned to look at her sister, asleep in the rocking chair.

But Grace
died
, Haley's mind insisted, frantic. Grace died and was buried. Her gravestone is right next to Mercy's. Grace can't have—she can't be—this can't be Grace.

Grace hadn't been Mercy's only sister.

Mercy had turned her head a little to one side. Gently, with fingers as pale and light as snowflakes, her sister reached out. She hesitated for a moment. Her hand moved as if she wanted to stroke the soft skin of Mercy's throat. But instead, delicately, she moved aside the locket that hung around her sister's neck.

Haley could see a swirly
M
engraved on the locket's surface.

Grace—no, it wasn't Grace—bent over her sister. As she did so, something slipped loose from the neckline of her shift. A locket swung on its silver chain, identical—except for the
P
engraved on it—to Mercy's.

Grace hadn't been Mercy's only sister. There had been one more. The only one of the four siblings who'd survived. The only one without a tombstone in the cemetery.

Patience.

Maybe she
hadn't
survived. Maybe she'd died, quietly, in the night, with her younger sister watching by her bed. She'd died
after all, but no one had known. No one had known because she had refused to stay dead.

Haley saw Patience's mouth open. There were no fangs. A red tongue gently caressed the front teeth, in eagerness.

Mercy stirred a little and whimpered in her sleep. But she didn't wake as her sister bit into her neck. Haley saw the muscles in Patience's throat move as she swallowed.

Haley shouted in terror and outrage. She threw herself forward. And the scene vanished like a reflection in still water when a stone is thrown in.

The candlelight was gone. Darkness closed over Haley's head, bringing with it a foul smell. Sound burst over her. Someone was kicking a door, yanking the doorknob, rattling the wood in its frame. And shouting.

“Haley! Are you okay? Are you in there?
Answer
me!”

“Okay!” Haley shouted back. She ran to the door. It was latched on the inside. How could that have happened? She flipped the latch up and Alan almost fell into the room. He grabbed Haley's arm.

“Are you all right? What happened?”

“Mercy. She showed me. I know who she is. She's—”

“That woman was there, I saw her, and then you—I swear, Haley, you went
through
the door after her and I couldn't open it—”

“Mercy's sister. Patience. She died—I mean, she didn't—I mean, she's still—”

“That
smell
. What's that smell?”

Haley and Alan both stopped talking and took stock of where they were.

“This was Patience's room,” Haley said slowly, looking around. “Mercy's sister. The older one.” The room was nearly as dark as it had been in Mercy's time, with no candle burning to
lighten the blackness. Haley groped her way to the window and pulled the heavy curtains aside.

The room hadn't changed. The bed still stood by the wall, the rocking chair near its head. Both were empty.

On an old dresser near the window, there was a hairbrush, a comb, and a small silver locket without its chain, an elaborate
P
engraved on its surface.

The smell seemed strongest by the bed. Swallowing hard, Haley walked toward it. The dull brown quilt that had covered Patience's body was gone, replaced by a plain blanket of iron-gray wool.

Reluctantly, her fingers twitching, Haley reached out to touch the blanket. She pulled it back.

Stains covered the sheets beneath and splotched the pillowcase. Most were old and brown, a few rusty red.

The stench rose up and hit Haley in the face. It was like a living thing, trying to smother her. She dropped the blanket. Her stomach heaved.

Then Alan grabbed her arm and pulled her back, out into the hall, and slammed the door behind them.

“Come on, Haley. Let's go.”

“We can't! We have to—”

“We have to
leave
.” Alan was still holding her arm, so hard it hurt. “This is crazy, this is dangerous, and we have to get out of here.”

“You knew it was dangerous before!” Haley protested. “You said you wouldn't miss it!”

“Yeah, well, now it's dangerous
and
real,” Alan said flatly. And Haley knew he was right.

They had stakes and garlic and crosses. All that stuff that worked in the movies. But now, after seeing what Mercy had shown her—that avid hunger in Patience's eyes, that cool eagerness with which she'd turned down her sister's collar and
moved aside that lock of hair—Haley knew she didn't want to face the vampire. She didn't want to see her. Ever.

Haley didn't care if Alan was a coward. She didn't care if she was one too. She nodded to show him she agreed.

But he wasn't looking at her. He was staring over her shoulder, looking at the staircase down the hall.

“What?”

“Your friend's here again.”

His hand on her arm turned her around.

Mercy was standing at the top of the stairs, that same look of urgency in her eyes. She gestured again, drawing her hand toward herself.
Follow me
.

The she turned and walked quickly down the stairs. Haley distinctly saw her gray skirt swirl through the rods of the banister.

Haley was still staring after her when she heard a soft footstep close behind her. She turned just in time to see Aunt Brown put out a thin, frail hand and push Alan down the stairs.

Haley simply stood and watched him fall. She was stuck, trapped, her muscles frozen, her bones turned to stone. She was appalled at how long it took him to fall. At how still he lay when he'd reached the bottom.