Nebulon Horror (21 page)

Melanie said, "If those are children, their parents are bound to wonder why they don't come home, Keith. Won't they call the police?"

"That won't bring the police here."

"Well, it might eventually. They know we were attacked last night."

"I feel like a kid myself," Keith said bitterly. "Helpless. And with two cars sitting out there."

Melanie said, "Even if we could get to the cars and get away, what about the house? They might wreck it."

He nodded.

"Are you sure you don't want something to eat, hon?"

"No. I want to keep an eye on them. God knows what they'll think of next."

"A cup of coffee, then?"

"Well, all right. Coffee."

Melanie went into the kitchen. Olive gazed angrily at Jerri whimpering on the chair, and after a while went to her and tried to soothe her. Just as Melanie came from the kitchen with coffee mugs on a tray, the room suddenly burst into brightness. From one end to the other it lit up in a blaze of crimson.

Melanie froze in her tracks. Her hands began shaking and she stared at the front windows and said in a plaintive voice, "Oh no, oh no . . ." A mug of coffee slid from the tray and crashed on the tiled floor.

Keith swore as he ran to one of the now crimson windows. Heedless of the risk of being cut by flying glass if a stone came through, he stood with his hands clenched, looking out. The two cars in the road were bonfires hurling furious columns of flame and smoke high into the night. Everything near them was bright as day.

He could see the greenhouse reflecting the fires' red
ness, its broken panes staring darkly back at him like empty eye sockets. He could see motionless children at the edge of the light, peering expectantly toward the house. Nearer, he saw shadows gliding closer among the trees, seemingly waiting for him to come charging out so they could cut him off and rush their objective.

But what was their objective? What did they want?

20

O
n leaving the nursery cottage after his examination of Jerri Jansen, Doc Broderick glanced at the watch on his wrist.
What the hell
, he thought,
it's early yet. If I'm going to beard old Yambor in his den, I might as well do it now.

Doc never drove slowly. Some twenty minutes later he turned his car into the driveway of a large, handsome old white house and parked it beside a large, ugly old black-and-gilt sign. The sign read: VICTOR YAMBOR M.D.

Dr. Yambor, frail and white-haired, stood on the front veranda and leaned forward as Doc approached him. He looked, Doc decided, like an ancient long-necked chicken about to peck at a worm.

"Norman Broderick, isn't it?"

"That's right, Victor."

"Damned disgrace, driving a car as expensive as that. Don't you know it makes all of us look bad in the eyes of the public?"

"Bought it secondhand," Doc lied with mock gravity. "Always wanted to look as successful as you, even if I'm not."

"You look like a walking protest against barbershops. Why don't you get a haircut?"

"I had it in mind to do just that this afternoon
but decided to come here and sit at the feet of wisdom instead."

They shook hands and the older man led Doc inside to a cool, spacious sitting room. He said, "Sit," and
disappeared for a few moments, leaving Doc to look around. It was at least four years since Doc had called on Victor Yambor. The house was unchanged. Apparently nothing had changed the man either, or ever would.

Dr. Yambor returned with a tray on which were two long-stemmed glasses and a bottle of Madeira. He set the tray on a table between Doc's chair and the one he obviously intended to occupy. Before seating himself, he filled the two glasses and handed one to his guest.

"Now then," he said, making himself comfortable with the other glass, "what's stumping you?"

"I couldn't be here just to say hello?"

"Of course you couldn't. You young squirts never come to see me unless you want something."

"I've got some youngsters with pink eyes."

Yambor sipped his wine and leaned forward, frowning. "Have you? Now that's interesting. You mean
pink eyes that can't be squeezed into any ordinary diagnosis, of course. Otherwise a man like you wouldn't be here."

"Thanks. You know what's been happening in Nebulon, I suppose."

"The mayor's son disappearing? The murders? Yes."

"The kids I'm talking about are involved somehow. At least, I think they are. The mayor's boy was one
of them. Fact is, they've all been hanging around together at the home of a patient of yours."

"Elizabeth Peckham."

Victor Yambor emptied his glass and refilled it. He
put the full glass on the tray. He was already scowling but tugged his mouth into a deeper scowl by pulling at his jowls. "Elizabeth Peckham. There's a strange woman, Norman."

"I know. She used to be my patient. Remember?"

"I wish she still were."

"Thanks for nothing. But about these kids and their eyes . . . the redness comes and goes without any apparent reason. Now you see it, now you don't. There's no inflammatory aftereffect. No nothing. I've a strong hunch, though, there's a pronounced heightening of nighttime vision while the condition is there."

"Nice big words," Yambor said, crookedly grinning. "You mean they can see in the dark? You can't be serious."

"I'm serious, Victor. I'm not the only one who's noticed it."

Dr. Yambor folded his bony hands across his stomach and leaned back in his chair. His eyes closed. He spoke with them closed. He said, "Odd, your coming to me with a thing about eyes involving Elizabeth Peckham. Did you know old Gustave Nebulon?"

"Just to nod to."

"She was his girl friend. You know that?"

"I've guessed at it. That's all you're doing too, I suspect."

"No, I know. He told me." Yambor opened his eyes, gazed at the old high ceiling for a moment, and then lowered his gaze to Doc's face. "Old Gustave was almost blind when he died. You didn't know that, I'll bet."

"Uh-uh." Doc was truly surprised and let his face show it.

"Blind and bitter. Bitter as gall. Toward the end he was too nearly blind to leave the house, and I
called on him maybe twice a week. He'd have the front door open for me. The
old
codger wouldn't have a housekeeper, you know. But I'd always find him upstairs in what he called his study. There he'd be at his desk, blinking at me like a half-blind toad, with a magnifying glass in his hand and a book in front of him. Maybe half a dozen books. He had a thing about life after death. Wouldn't accept the fact of dying. No, sir, that wasn't for the last of the Nebulons. 'You finally got here, did you?' he'd growl at me in that guttural accent of his. 'Sit down!' Then for half an hour I'd have to sit there while bitterness poured out of him like sewage. My God he was bitter. The town didn't appreciate what his family'd done for it, he'd snarl at me. It was a 'slough of ingradidude'—one of his favorite expressions. Why, there wasn't even a statue with the name Nebulon on it. Even the park hadn't been given his name. On and on he'd go, hating the town and everyone in it. Then he'd get after me for not curing his blindness."

Old Yambor stopped long enough to permit an interruption, and Doc Broderick said, "How in the world could Peckham have been the girl friend of such a man?"

"She must have guessed he wouldn't last long."

"And would leave her well off, hey?"

"That's my hunch."

"Victor, the Madeira warms my heart, and listening to you has always been a weakness of mine. But what about the red eyes on those kids?"

Yambor leaned back in his chair again. After a while he said, fiercely scowling, "They can't see in the dark, of course. Not unless Hans Christian Andersen sired the lot of them. Maybe they can see a little better in the dark than you or I."

"But the redness. The
glowing."

"Can you bring one of these kids to me, Norman?" Doc thought of Jerri Jansen and nodded.

"Why don't we wait until you do that, then? Have some Madeira."

"No," Doc said. "I'd better run along." He stood up and they shook hands. "I'll come tomorrow with a youngster, maybe."

On the way back to Nebulon he thought about what Dr. Yambor had told him, especially about Gustave Nebulon's near blindness. Then he began pondering the string of mysterious happenings in the town that had been named for the blind man's family.

That queerly ugly business of Jerri Jansen, Teresa Crosser, the frog, and the sharpened nail.

The finding of old Tom Ranney with his eyes gouged out.

The discovery of the bodies of Nino and Anna Ianucci with their eyes removed.

Eyes, eyes, eyes. What was it with the eyes?

It was dark when Doc reached home. He parked his car in the garage and went into the house through a connecting door. Striding through the professional lower floor, he climbed the stairs to his living quarters. He was prodigal with lights and turned them on as he went, so that when he reached upstairs the whole house was ablaze.

What am I going to have for supper, Doc asked himself. He decided on eggs; they were easy. "You know," he said aloud, "You're as bad as old Gustave. You need a housekeeper." Just last week, when the girl who did his laundry had failed to show up, he had gone to a do-it-yourself laundry and done it himself. For some reason nothing had come out quite clean.

The phone was ringing and he answered it. While
listening to Mrs. Boland tell him her son had not come home from school, he ran his fingers through his hair and agreed with old Yambor that he ought to have it cut. "Mrs. Boland," he said, "it's after seven o'clock. Why are you calling me? I'm a doctor. If Carl is missing, why don't you call the police?"

He was even talking like Yambor, he thought. That must be a sign of respect.

Ten minutes later, while he was in the kitchen waiting for the eggs to hard-boil, his phone rang again. It was Trudy Ensinger's mother this time. Trudy had not come home from school either.

"Call the police, Mrs. Ensinger."

What was going on?

Three more times in the next half hour his phone rang. He began to understand that a whole lot of kids had failed to show up at their homes after leaving school. Something definitely was happening. Some of the parents had already called the police but were calling him too because he was their family doctor. A family doctor was some sort of spiritual advisor, it seemed. He was flattered but also puzzled.

While eating his hard-boiled eggs and two slices of toast, and drinking a cup of coffee and sipping a small brandy, he thought about it. It occurred to him that the kids who were being reported missing were the ones whose names he had given to Police Chief Lorin Lighthill. The ones who played around Elizabeth Peckham's house. The red-eyed ones.

Jerri Jansen was one of that group.

He lit one of his allotted five cigarettes and picked up the telephone and dialed the cottage at the Wilding Nursery. There was no answer. In fact, there was not even the sound of the phone ringing. Something was wrong, he decided.

He telephoned the police station and asked for
Lorin Lighthill. But before he could even begin to explain what he was calling about, Chief Lighthill said, "Doc? For God's sake, what's going on? Half the parents in town have been calling me about missing kids!"

"I don't know what's going on," Doc said. "But I have a hunch something is wrong at the Wilding Nursery. I was there earlier. Olive Jansen and her daughter are staying there after what happened at their apartment last night. Now I can't get an answer when I ring them. Their phone's dead, or something. I think you ought to investigate, Chief."

"I
am
investigating," Lighthill said. "I've got the whole damned force out, looking for those kids."

"I mean I think you ought to check on the nursery."

"All right," Lighthill said wearily. "I'll do it, just in case."

W
ith its fleet of six cars and two motorcycles scattered all over town in search of the missing children, Nebulon's small police force was spread thin. And as yet, no one knew how many children were missing. The chief knew only how many parents had called him.