Nebulon Horror (2 page)

The head-wagging became more emphatic.

"Well, that is something to be thankful for, I think." Vin exhaled heavily. "All right, little one. We are taking you home and we will soon be there. Please, just relax now."

T
he apartment house in which Jerri Jansen and her mother lived was not the best such building in the town of Nebulon. Still, in an aging, need-of-paint way it was respectable enough. The car stopped at the curb and Melanie Skipworth got out, drawing the child after her. Keith drove off again as the two went along the uneven red-brick walk.

Melanie pressed a button in the entrance cubicle and a buzzer sounded above in the Jansen apartment, where Olive Jansen stood at an ironing board in the small living room, pressing a dark green work shirt that belonged to Vin Otto. She didn't have to iron his work shirts, Vin kept telling her. But she insisted he had a job with a real future at the Wilding Nursery and ought to look neat.

Since her divorce Olive herself had worked as a waitress in the town's one really good restaurant. Before that she had helped her husband at a health spa he managed. She was a pretty, well-proportioned girl. At the spa she had worked hard but her real contribution had been simply being there where customers could look at her and yearn to be equally pretty and well proportioned. She was now twenty-six years old. Her hair was the same light yellow as her daughter's.

When the buzzer sounded she stopped ironing and glanced at the apartment door, puzzled because she was expecting only Vin and her daughter, and Vin had a key. He must have forgotten it tonight. He did sometimes.

Olive walked lightly across the worn green carpet to the door and pressed a button to release the lock downstairs. She did this without bothering to use the door-phone to ask who was there. Nebulon was that kind of town. With the door ajar she waited on the threshold to greet her daughter and husband-to-be, pleasantly anticipating a kiss from each. Though she looked a little tired, as she had earlier told Vin she was, she also had the appearance of a woman content with life and
^-
confident in her future. This was a distinct change from the way she had felt a year ago when struggling to make up her mind about leaving her husband.

She and Hayden Jansen had been sweethearts through high school. Even before that. Growing up together in Nebulon, where she was the prettiest girl in her high-school class and he the star athlete, they had seemed preordained to end up as man and wife. In fact, they had married less than a month after graduation when Hayden was offered a job at the spa. A young man with his looks and reputation would bring in customers, the owner felt.

That had been the trouble, of course. Women found him attractive, and he welcomed their attentions. At first Olive thought he would grow out of it. After all, he was only a boy just out of high school—not even an ordinary boy just out of high school but one who had been reading about himself all this time in the sports columns of the local paper.

But she was wrong. He did not grow out of it, even when he became a father. His work at the spa daily brought him into close contact with eager females under circumstances that made everything too easy. When the delighted owner made him manager, the marriage hadn't a chance.

She looked down the hall now to the head of the stairs, awaiting her first glimpse of Vin Otto as she heard the ascending footsteps. Being Vin's wife would be different. She was sure of it. Vin wasn't handsome. He hadn't a false sense of his own importance. In fact, having come to Florida only eighteen months before, when his father died in Boston, he still felt himself an outsider. But he was faithful, he was caring, he was considerate. Jerri already loved him more than she did her own father, Olive was certain.

But it was Melanie Skipworth, not Vin, who appeared with Jerri at the top of the stairs. At once Olive felt a touch of alarm that interfered with her breathing. Since her divorce with all its mental strain, unexpected events often frightened her. Running forward with one hand outthrust, she cried, "Where's Vin?"

"It's all right, Olive." In contrast to the other's always shrill voice, Melanie's was low and musical even under strain. "He's with Keith."

"But—"

"There was a slight accident. I'll tell you about it. Just to be on the safe side, they've gone over to Doc Broderick's." Knowing Olive well—having, in fact, been like a sister to her through the tensions of the divorce—Melanie put an arm around the other's waist now and walked her into the apartment. At the same time she carefully held little Jerri's hand. Only when they were safely inside, with the door shut, did she let the child go.

I ought to talk to Olive alone
, she thought. But how can I?
If I take her into the bedroom, Jerri may run away or something. If I ask her to send Jerri into the bedroom, the child may resent it and do some other strange thing.

She saw only one solution to the problem. "Sit down, Olive." And to the child: "You too, honey." Then, facing them both, she said, "Something happened to Jerri at the concert, Olive. She doesn't remember it, so it's no good asking her for an explanation. She—well, for no apparent reason she just suddenly turned on Vin and scratched him. Scratched his face."

"What?"

"Then she began screaming that he'd molested her."

"My God," Olive said. Woodenly she turned to stare at her daughter. "I can't believe . . ." Suddenly her voice became shrill. "What do you mean, he molested you?"

"Hold on," Melanie said. "That was my word, not hers. She called it 'touching,' I think. Something like that. Anyway, Vin denies it. And a little while ago after falling asleep in the car on the way here, she didn't even remember accusing him.
Or
scratching him."

"Oh, my God," Olive repeated almost inaudibly.

"You'll have to get the rest from Vin. I'm no good at this kind of thing. I'm only trying to tell you why he's gone to Doc's."

"You mean she really
scratched
him?"

Melanie nodded.

Olive turned to her daughter again, a woman staring angrily at a miniature of her own attractive self complete with golden hair, aquamarine eyes, even the same classical bow-shaped upper lip. "What do you mean, he touched you?" she demanded, all but spelling the words out.

Squirming on her chair, the child looked down at her clasped hands. "I don't remember, Mommy."

"You don't remember sayin' it?"

"No, Mommy."

"Did
he touch you?"

"I don't remember."

"Oh, my God," Olive said and looked at Melanie again. "What'll I do, Mel?"

"This hasn't happened before? Anything like this?"

"Course not!"

"I don't mean Vin touching her. I mean her turning on him, accusing him. You've always said she's crazy about him. If she has some secret feeling the other way, you'd better find out."

Olive Jansen only said, "How bad is Vin hurt? The truth, Mel."

"I can't say. I'm not a doctor."

"It can't be too bad. She's just a little girl."

They both looked again at Jerri, and the child sat there staring down at her hands. The hands, Melanie thought, that just a short while ago had made a horror of Vin Otto's face.

"Jerri," Olive said.

The child looked at her.

"You love
Vin?"

Jerri nodded. Tears glistened in her blue eyes and the little bow-shaped mouth trembled.

Olive seemed satisfied. "All right. It's time you went to bed. Go on now." When the youngster obediently slid from her chair, she herself stood up and turned toward the kitchen. "I'll make us some coffee," she said to Melanie over her shoulder.

It was quiet in the apartment then. The child undressed in the bedroom she shared with her mother, went to the bathroom, returned to the bedroom, and shut the door. In the kitchen the kettle came to a boil and whistled for a second, and Olive made small noises as she mixed two cups of instant coffee. In the living room Melanie sat on the sofa and took up a Pink Swan restaurant menu from a lamp table, glancing at it without interest. The Pink Swan was where Olive worked as a waitress every day but Sunday.

Bringing the cups of coffee from the kitchen; Olive handed one to Melanie and went across the room with the other and sat down. She was pale, Melanie noticed. Her hands shook so that her cup jiggled on its saucer. "I should have known it wouldn't last," she suddenly said.

"How do you mean?"

"With Vin and I. For the first time in my life I’ve been happy. You know? I was never happy with Hayden, even when we were just goin' steady in high school. I always had a scary feelin' about him. But Vin was different. With him I never felt scared. Now this."

"I'm wondering," Melanie said.

"What?"

"If possibly Jerri was asleep, lulled by the music, and had a
dream
that someone was touching her. If she didn't just wake up and react without knowing what she was doing."

Olive pondered the suggestion and seemed about to say something but suddenly reached out, put her coffee cup on a table, and slumped back in her chair with a heavy sigh. Her eyes closed. The silence that filled the room lasted a moment or two, and then was disturbed by the sound of a key turning in the door. The door opened. Vin Otto walked in followed by Keith Wilding.

Olive opened her eyes. Opened them wide and struggled to her feet. "Oh my God!" she whispered.

"Do not be upset now." Vin put his arms around her. "It is not so bad as it looks."

She pushed herself out of his embrace and stepped back and gazed at him. From his forehead to just above his mouth, his face was bandaged, with openings left for eyes and nostrils. Above and below the strips of bandage she could see the tops and bottoms of the gouges made by her daughter's fingers. "Oh, Vin!" she cried.

"I said it is all right. There is nothing to be alarmed about. The doctor says I may remove these bandages in the morning." He reached for her hand and held it, staring at her through the bandage slits as though desperately anxious to know what she was thinking. "How is Jerri?"

"She's in bed."

"Has she said anything more about what happened?"

"She doesn't remember what happened, Vin."

He seemed relieved. "Then she is all right? Whatever it was, she is over it?"

"I hope to God."

"Good, then. Look, Olive. I will drop Keith and Mel off at the park on my way home; their car is still there." Vin never stayed overnight at the Jansen apartment. His old-world parents had brought him up to believe one didn't sleep with a woman unless married to her. "Good night, sweetheart." He drew her gently into his arms again. "I will come by tomorrow after work."

"You won't be working tomorrow, you big ox," Keith said.

"But I will. We have that citrus to bud, remember?"

Keith looked at Melanie with a shake of his head that said, "What can you do with a guy like that?" Good nights were said to Olive, and the three of them departed.

Olive sat and finished her coffee, then went into the bedroom. There were two beds in the room. Her daughter was asleep in the small one, lying curled up with her hands clenched and an almost ferocious scowl on her face. She seemed to have achieved her present position only after much squirming. The top sheet was half on the floor, and the one she lay on was a mass of folds. Olive was drawing the top sheet back over her when the telephone rang.

She glanced in surprise at the clock on the dresser. Someone calling her at quarter to twelve on a Sunday night? It must be a wrong number. Annoyed, she went back into the living room and took up the phone.

"Hello?"

"Olive? This is Elizabeth Peckham. I hope I haven't got you out of bed. It's not a nice time to be calling."

"No, I wasn't in bed."

"It's important, believe me, or I wouldn’t. Olive, you recall that business with the frog, how shocked we both were?"

"Yes, of course," Olive said, feeling her insides tighten.

"Well, naturally I've been trying ever since to find out why, and just a few minutes ago Teresa broke down and told me. The fact is, Jerri put her up to it. I think you ought to know."

After seconds of silence Olive said faintly, "Jerri? My Jerri?"