Nebulon Horror (18 page)

She pretended not to have heard. Seated in the tub, she concentrated on watching Melanie's hands as they scooped the warm soapy water and let it run over her body.

"Did you want to burn it, Jerri?"

The child was deaf.

Keith noticed something else, then. Moving away from the bathroom wall against which he was leaning, he bent over Melanie, on her knees, and put his lips close to her ear. "Her eyes," he said for only her to hear. "Look at them."

"Yes," she said aloud. "I wonder if that touch of color has anything to do with special powers."

"Powers?"

"Such as a cat is supposed to have. Doesn't it seem strange to you that"—she frowned, obviously reaching for words Jerri would not understand—"that the objective was so easily and quickly reached despite the lack of illumination?"

"We don't know how long she was on the scene before I heard her."

"Well, yes, there's that." Melanie finished bathing the child and lifted her from the tub. "Now let's get you dry, baby."

"I've something to tell you, Jerri," Keith said. "The negative you came for is not in that envelope anymore."

The child refused to look at him.

"It isn't even in this house, so don't plan on coming here again for it. I gave it to Chief Lighthill today."

The head jerked up and the small naked body all at once became rigid. The oddly reddish eyes focused on Keith's face. "W—why?"

"The picture is going to be in the paper tomorrow. Today, that is. Sunday. The chief thinks it has something to do with the things that have been happening, and since you won't tell us what the diagram means, he's going to ask the people if they know."

The child's rigid body went limp. Slipping out of Melanie's hands, she slumped into a sitting position on the floor. Then she turned and, gripping the edge of the tub with both hands, laid her face on the backs of her wrists and began to sob.

She sobbed until every inch of her small frame shook with the violence of it. Even when Melanie pried her hands loose and put both arms around her and murmured words of comfort, the sobbing continued.

Keith said with a frown, "If only she would tell us what she's afraid of."

But Jerri would not. Though she eventually stopped crying, she only lapsed into an unnatural silence again. All the way through Nebulon's sleeping streets to her mother's apartment, she was silent.

The Sunday edition of the
Nebulon News
carried Keith's photograph of the diagram on its front page. Below it appeared the following statement:

Do you know what the above diagram represents, or what purpose it may serve? If so, please contact your police department at once. One of these diagrams was drawn in the school yard by Raymond Hostetter, who has disappeared. A second was drawn at the Keith Wilding Nursery by, the police think, another child to whom strange things have been happening. The police are of the opinion that this diagram or symbol is somehow connected with the unexplained recent events in Nebulon. If you know anything or have any suggestions, your cooperation is urgently requested.

17

O
live had planned to send her daughter to school again on Monday but now could not. Again she called Doc Broderick.

Doc examined the girl and asked questions. The questions were either versions of "What are you afraid of?" or roundabout attempts to obtain information without seeming to. He said, "Do you want to go to school, Jerri?"

"What would you like to do? Go out and play?"

"A walk in the park, maybe?"

"No. Please!"

"You can't stay indoors the whole day."

"I can, I can!"

Doc talked privately to Olive. The key to the child's fear seemed to be the diagram Keith Wilding had photographed in the nursery, he suggested. There was no safe way she could be forced to tell why it frightened her. However, the picture had been published in yesterday's paper and there was at least a chance that someone who could explain it would come forward. "Let's wait a couple of days anyway," Doc said. "Keep her home. Keep her quiet. I can't find anything physically wrong, but she needs to calm down."

For Olive it was a long day. Rain began to fall in the morning and continued through most of the afternoon. When it ceased, there was no alleviating sunlight. The sky remained almost black.

At times during the day Jerri slept. She appeared to dream a lot and uttered small sounds of apparent discomfort. She twitched and jerked spasmodically without waking herself. At other times she sat in the living room, looking at books or magazines.

Soon after the rain stopped she invented another diversion. She would get up and go to a window, would stand there with her hands on the sill and her face close to the glass while peering down at the yard. She went from one window to another, even to the one in the kitchen where she had to climb on a chair and lean across the sink.

"What do you think you're lookin' for?" Olive asked.

"Nothing."

Olive looked out, too. The apartment occupied an end of the building, running from front to back. Much of the yard was visible from its various windows.

Only a small portion of the yard was lawn. In years past, Nebulon's builders had left the landscape alone more than their counterparts did today. They left large trees standing for shade and used grass only to beautify bare space. The yard Olive looked down on, brooding under a black sky, consisted mostly of trees and large shrubs. It was a forest picture in a child's book of fairy tales, she thought. Watch out for the wolves.

Wolves? Don't be silly. But something.

She found herself going again and again to the windows in an effort to get rid of what was building up in her mind. But was it only in her mind? She had lived in this apartment since her divorce. She must have looked out these windows hundreds of times when the yard below was dark. And never before had she felt as she did now—that something was prowling about down there. Never.

"Jerri." She and the child stood side by side at a window. "Jerri, what's down there?"

"Nothing."

"What are you lookin' at, then?"

"Nothing."

"Well, what are you lookin' for?"

"I'm just watching it get dark. I wish it wouldn't."

Olive directed a frown at her daughter. "That's a funny thing to say. You've never been afraid of the dark." She hadn't. She had never even asked to have a night-light in her room.

But she was afraid now, Olive thought. Since starting to go from window to window, peering down at the yard, she had become tense. Her movements were too abrupt. That peculiar tint was in her eyes again.

"It's gettin' dark early on account of the weather," Olive said. Taking her daughter by the hand, she drew her away from the glass. "I'm gonna pull the shades, and then we better start fixin' some supper. Keith and Mel are comin' for supper, in case you've forgot. And Vin."

The child remained in the living room while she went about the apartment drawing the shades. From a bedroom window Olive peered down at the yard again.

Something moved among the trees. Yes, it did. It darted from a thick clump of half-wild Chinese Hat bushes to a banyan tree draped with the gnarled stems of an old Thunbergia vine. She focused her gaze on the tree and dared the thing to move again and reveal itself.

She stood there a minute, two minutes, and nothing happened. Almost nothing, anyway. In the heart of the vine two small dots of red appeared, seeming to return her stare. They could only be fire beetles. The shadowy human shape she had seen darting from cover to cover would not have bright red eyes.

She drew the shade and returned to the living room, where she took Jerri's hand again. "We don't need to cook a whole supper. Mel is bringin' some chicken from the fried-chicken place. What we'll do is fix a big, scrumptious salad to go with it. Okay?"

Now that's funny, she thought as the child looked at her and silently nodded. The tint in Jerri's eyes seemed to be getting brighter as evening came on.

Keith Wilding and Vin Otto left the nursery at closing time, picked up Melanie Skipworth at her shop, and arrived at Olive's soon afterward with the promised chicken. Olive and Jerri had made a salad and coffee and set up a table in the living room.

For a time any mention of Jerri's nocturnal visit to the nursery was carefully avoided. The talk was of the killings of Tom Ranney and the Ianuccis and the search for Raymond Hostetter. The same subjects were probably being discussed that evening in half the homes in Nebulon.

The Hostetter boy, Keith said, appeared to have vanished from the face of the earth. Not a soul had seen him since his departure from school on Wednesday. "Wednesday to Monday. It's uncanny."

As for the murders, the feeling throughout town was that some demented or drug-crazed vagrant must be responsible. "The truth is, we have many of that kind here in Florida," Vin said. "With our easy climate we attract drifters as flowers attract bees. Even when they are sick and destitute, survival is easy. They can sleep in the open. They can live on tropical fruit stolen from people's yards."

Olive said, "Has anyone come forward about the photo in the paper?"

No one knew. "But if anyone had, it seems to me Chief Lighthill would have been in touch," Melanie said. Smiling at Jerri, she added, "And what have you been doing all day, young lady? Counting raindrops?"

Olive said, "For the past couple of hours she's been watchin' the yard. Me too, I guess."

They looked at her, awaiting an explanation.

"I suppose it's my nerves, but I swear there's been someone prowlin' around down there."

Keith got up and went to a window, where he held the drawn shade away from the glass and peered out. "Can't see much; it's too dark. Are you sure?"

"Well, I thought I saw somethin'. And for an hour or more I've certainly had a feelin' there's somethin' down there. Jerri noticed it first."

"This could be serious," Keith said. "You realize if we do have a weirdo in town who's responsible for Raymond's disappearance, he could be stalking other kids too?"

Melanie's usually low voice was warningly sharp as she said, "Keith, not now!" and glanced at Jerri.

"No, listen." Vigorously he shook his head. "This is no time to be squeamish. Vin, why don't we just have a look around down there?"

"No!" Jerri cried.

"I know, I know." Keith went to her and rumpled her hair. "You're scared. But Vin and I are a mite bigger than you, baby. We'll be all right."

The child stared at them, apparently terrified.

"Look now," Vin said, rising from the table. "Don't you girls stand at the windows. We don't want him to know what's going on."

"Won't you need a flashlight?" Olive asked.

"Uh-uh. At the first blink of a light, he'd fade away."

The two women and the child sat at the table and waited. They pretended to eat their fried chicken and salad. The women kept glancing at the windows. The child was just as obviously tense and apprehensive but stared down at her food.

Olive said at last, with a loud exhalation of breath, "Jerri, damn it, you could put an end to all this by just tellin' us what you know. I swear I'm tempted to shake it out of you!"

"Olive, no," Mel said.

"Well, it's true, and I'm no saint. I have feelin's. She knows what she's scared of and won't tell us. You know and I know she's lyin' her head off about that other kid in the car at the nursery. We both know she herself tore up those plants and killed that kitten and drew that thing in the dirt. I don't see why we have to go through all this torment just because she won't tell us what's goin' on!"

Mel got up and put her hands on Olive's shoulders. She began to massage the shoulders as though to relieve them of pain. "Now, now, it's rough. We know it's rough. But you're oversimplifying it, Olive. There's more to it than just Jerri's refusing to talk."

Outside in the yard, Keith and Vin separated according to a plan agreed on while they were going down the stairs. Keith turned toward a clump of Chinese Hat bushes almost under one of Olive's bedroom windows. Vin made for a more distant part of the yard. In a moment Keith lost sight of his companion.

The yard was totally dark now. The warm air felt like a damp blanket, so smothering it seemed to muffle the engine noise of a car passing along the road. Keith went forward with caution, trying to make no sound. The wet ground sucked at his shoes. There were more than the usual number of light-producing insects floating about, he noticed. Fire beetles, apparently. At least, the glow they gave off seemed brighter and redder than the luminescence of ordinary fireflies. The rain must have brought them.

With his hands uplifted, he pushed into the clump of bushes and found himself in a miniature forest. Water from the disturbed leaves soaked him and he stopped for a moment, apprehensive. It was strange. He always enjoyed walking through his own place at night, breathing in the scents of unseen blossoms, but this yard gave him the creeps. He had no feeling of belonging here at all. He was an intruder. The fire beetles were alien eyes watching and mocking him. He was blind, but they could see.