Nebulon Horror (3 page)

"You'd better have a good long talk with your daughter, don't you think, Olive? What we witnessed just isn't natural for healthy young children. Olive?"

After an even longer silence Olive again said woodenly, "Yes, of course." Her hand mechanically lowered the phone to its cradle, trembling on it for a moment after putting it down. She turned away. She walked back into the bedroom and stood beside her daughter's bed, gazing down at the sleeper. Should she wake the child
and
question her? No, not after what had happened at the park. It would be too much for both of them.

With Elizabeth Peckham's charge still shrilling in her head, she undressed and put on her nightgown. In bed she lay motionless on her back and gazed unblinkingly at the ceiling while remembering the incident involving the frog.

Jerri Jansen's best friend, Teresa Crosser, was a child of tragedy. Seven years old now and living with a maiden aunt in a huge gray house behind the town library, the child had lost her father at the age of five when Ed Crosser drowned himself.

Ed had gone to West Palm Beach in his pickup truck to buy merchandise for his hardware store. His business concluded and the truck loaded, he drank a few beers in a West Palm bar before starting back to Nebulon. On, the way home he stopped at two other bars and had beer in each. After the second stop he lost control of the truck on a curve and it plunged off the road into one of the deep, dangerous canals that are so common in that part of Florida.

When the vehicle was discovered the next day and pulled from the water, Ed was still inside it. A bruise on his temple indicated he had lurched against the wheel or some other part of the cab with considerable force and probably had drowned while unconscious.

Ed's young wife Ellyn kept the hardware store going but it was hard. The establishment was in a poor location and had never made much money. She, moreover, was a girl who had always preferred to stay at home while Ed went to business, as she called it.

Not that she was lazy. At home she was nearly always briskly busy. She sewed. She kept the house spic and span. She made a hobby of cooking. She was a conscientious mother.

At the store she tried hard too, but it went steadily downhill despite her investment of energy. It would certainly have gone under eventually. Some in Nebulon were even unkind enough to suggest that the fire, which turned out to be the second major tragedy in little Teresa's brief life, was of Ellyn's own doing. For the insurance, they hinted. The truth was, neither the store nor its contents was insured for a cent. And had Ellyn not tried so desperately to put the fire out, she might not have been trapped by it.

It was probably caused by spontaneous combustion, Fire Chief Ankers said. Paints, thinners, turps, all kinds of dangerous products were improperly stored in a windowless back room. In the record-breaking heat of that August the room must have been a time bomb. No one knew when the fire broke out or even when Ellyn became aware of it and ran from her house next door to try to extinguish it. She didn't phone the fire station as she should have. Foolishly she tried to cope with the emergency herself.

The hardware store had few close neighbors. Ed Crosser had expected the town to grow out that way, but it hadn't. When at last someone down the road did call the fire station, the store was beyond saving. The firemen could only stand around and watch it become a heap of fiercely smoking rubble that choked them with a reek of bubbling paint and plastics. They didn't know Ellyn Crosser was inside until hours later when it cooled and they went poking amid the debris.

After this second tragedy little Teresa went to live with Ellyn's older sister, Elizabeth Peckham. In Nebulon, where most girls married soon after finishing high school, Elizabeth was regarded as an old maid. She was thirty-one. In charge of the town library for years, she lived just behind it in an ancient gray house left to her in his will the year before by old Gustave Nebulon. Gustave was the last of the pioneer clan, that had settled the town. He personally had donated the library. Before dying at ninety-three he had spent hours at the library almost every day, and when he left Elizabeth the house he had so long lived in, the town was certain he had been secretly in love with her.

Perhaps. If so, he was probably the only man who ever had loved her or would. Unlike her sister Ellyn, Elizabeth was a woman without warmth or beauty. Tall, thin, ruler straight, she seemed especially created to scowl and hiss at giggling children in a library. At a time when dresses were brief she wore hers below the knee. In Florida's summer heat when most women in Nebulon wore as little of anything as they decently could, she covered herself as much as possible and without question wore an equal weight of undergarments.

Unfailingly polite to all, Elizabeth was informally friendly to none. It was assumed that when she closed the library each evening and marched through the high hibiscus hedge to her huge, ancient house, she spent her evenings as she spent her days, with books.

This of course changed somewhat when little Teresa Crosser came to live with her. It was August. Not knowing how to entertain the youngster or even keep her occupied, Elizabeth called on Olive Jansen. "Teresa tells me your Jerri is her closest friend at school," she said. It was true. The two children had become companions in the first grade, seeking each other out at every opportunity. "Please," Elizabeth said, "do you suppose you could bring your daughter over now and then for an hour or two? My niece is so sad without her mother."

"Of course," Olive said without hesitation. Actually it would help her, for what to do with Jerri during school vacation was sometimes a problem. Olive worked at the Pink Swan from mid morning to late afternoon, the hours varying with the number of customers. When school was in session there was no great problem. Other tenants in the building had children. The kids trooped off to school together in the morning and returned together about three. Jerri simply played with some of them until Olive came home from work.

But now in August with no school it became awkward at times. She sometimes left the child with neighbors, repaying them by baby-sitting when they wanted to go out at night. Or she would drop Jerri off at her own parents' home on her way to work. Now and then when all else failed she even left the youngster with Vin at the Wilding Nursery, where Jerri happily trotted around at his heels trying to lend a hand in everything he did. Keith Wilding didn't mind.

She felt a little strange, calling on Elizabeth the first time. It was a Sunday morning. Most of the other people walking Nebulon's quiet, tree-shaded streets were obviously on their way to church. Those who knew her from the health spa or the Pink Swan spoke to her, some remarking what a beautiful child Jerri was. She didn't think they ought to say so in front of the child, but it pleased her all the same.

At Gustave Nebulon's old house she paused, holding Jerri's hand. She had never set foot inside the house, of course. Nor had anyone she knew. When old Gustave was alive, people wondered how he managed to live alone in such a huge place without even a housekeeper. They said he must be queer. But he didn't seem queer when you saw him shuffling through the supermarket, carefully peering at the price on each item before placing it in his basket. He just looked old.

She and Jerri had arrived right on time, ten O'clock, and the front door opened as they approached the long veranda. Elizabeth Peckham came to the top of the steps to greet them and shook Olive's hand, saying, "And this is Jerri? How do you do, Jerri? Teresa is looking forward so much to seeing you." Then she said, "Please come in," and led them into an enormous living room full of old dark furniture.

There were brown floor-length drapes at the windows, and the room was wonderfully cool for a hot August morning. Elizabeth's dress resembled the drapes, long and brown.
It's a good thing I didn't wear slacks as I was going to
, Olive thought.

"Do please make yourselves at home," Elizabeth said. "I'll go and call Teresa. She's in her room upstairs."

Left alone with Jerri, Olive sat in silence and looked around, filled with curiosity. There were not many houses like this left in Nebulon, she guessed. It was certainly an improvement over her cramped little apartment. She heard Elizabeth calling to Teresa, and then the sound of a child racing down a flight of stairs. A girl Jerri's age but thinner and a shade taller, with long, dark, silky hair, rushed into the room shouting Jerri's name. She and Jerri ran at each other and hugged each other.

Elizabeth came into the room and halted, looking at the children and smiling. "I'm so glad," she said. "And I'm so grateful to you, Mrs. Jansen." She sat down. "Now please tell me about yourself. We should be friends too, shouldn't we?"

Yes, it had been a strange visit. It lasted an hour. The children played with various toys and games that Teresa produced, while Olive talked with the librarian. In saying "do tell me about yourself" Elizabeth had not meant to pry into her personal affairs, Olive discovered. It was simply a figure of speech. She made no attempt to follow it up nor did she volunteer any information about herself. Mostly she talked about the house, seeming to take for granted that anyone unfamiliar with it would be eager to hear its history.

"Gustave's great-grandfather built it," she said. "It was a showplace in those days, you can be sure. There is a book in the library about the Nebulons. Gustave wrote and published it himself. It tells the whole fascinating story, how the first member of the family came here as a young man and went into business, and how. . ."

Possibly Elizabeth would have gone on to tell the whole story herself, but something the children were doing caused Olive to jump up and go to them, inter
rupting the narration. An argument had arisen over which of them should crayon a certain page in a coloring book, and in the struggle for possession they had torn the page.

She settled the dispute easily, and when she returned to her chair, Elizabeth said, "Of course, the house is much too large for my needs. I realize that. But I tell myself that Gustave lived here alone in his later years and managed very well by himself, so why shouldn't I be able to? I don't attempt to use the entire house. Some rooms I have just closed up."

"It must be quite a place," Olive said.

"Oh, it is. One day you must let me give you a tour."

"I'd like that."

It didn't happen, though. On future visits Elizabeth did not again bring up the subject of showing the house, and to date Olive had seen only two rooms other than the always cool, always dark living room. Once when she had been there at lunch time, Elizabeth had served sandwiches in the dining room. The four of them sat at a dark mahogany table surely large enough to accommodate a dozen or more. And in helping with the dishes afterward Olive had seen the kitchen, which was a strange blend of old and new. The old consisted of a white enameled sink with most of its enamel worn off, warped wooden counters, a worn linoleum floor covering. The new items were a gleaming stove and refrigerator and startlingly modern cupboards. Gustave had been in the process of doing the room over when he died, Elizabeth explained. Even at age ninety-three.

Olive had not gone to the old house often after the first few visits. There was no need. It was not a long walk from her apartment even for a child, and Jerri soon got into the habit of trotting over by herself when she wished to play with Teresa. Then when school began again, the girls both in second grade, Jerri began going home with her friend to play at the old house until she knew Olive would be through at the restaurant. Sometimes she would walk home from there. At other times by arrangement Olive would drive that way and pick her up.

Thus, while the friendship between the two children developed to the point of their being all but inseparable, in school or out, that between the two women remained static. They eventually arrived at calling each other by their first names, but they progressed no further.

And then yesterday. Yesterday and the frog.

It was a Saturday. Jerri had said she would be walking over to Teresa's and would Olive please pick her up on the way from work. Leaving the restaurant about five, Olive drove home that way to collect her.

Stopping her car at the curb, she saw the two children under one of the handsome live oak trees in the side yard. Dark-haired Teresa sat cross-legged on the ground, intent on something her hands were doing in her lap. Blond Jerri stood watching her with sturdy legs outspread and arms akimbo. Neither seemed aware of the car.

Tired after a busy day, anxious to get home to a shower and a rest, Olive did not want to talk to Elizabeth. She would be forced to if she blew the horn and the woman came out. Leaning across the car seat, she put her head out the window and called not too loudly, "Hey! I'm here!"

Her daughter turned to look at her, but with obvious reluctance and only briefly. Without even a wave of recognition the child swung back to continue watching her playmate.

Oh damn
, Olive thought, and got out of the car. "Jerri Jansen," she said as she went striding through the mottled shade of the yard toward them, "when I call you, I expect—"