The Dark: A Collection (Point Horror) (33 page)

She whimpered as he
stroked her hair, oh so softly. Bianca remembered. Oh, how she
remembered!

He toyed with her
locks. He ran his finger down her face and down her neck to her
bosom. He removed her jacket. He unzipped her dress underneath the
blanket. She sat in her bra with her dress down around her waist.

"In a very
important way you really did kill me that night, Bianca."

"I didn't want to
kill anybody. I didn't!"

"My sweet little
Bianca turned into a murderer," he whispered in her ear as he
nuzzled it with his nose.

"No! No! No!"

"The female is
deadlier than the male. Despite my brains, you overcame me and did me
in. You ruined my reputation. I can no longer use that name, Doc
Ernie McCollough, in the United States. I'll be able to use it in
Rio — and only there. You've put me into permanent exile from my
home in Georgia."

"Please don't say
that!" Tears practically blinded her.

"I saw my parents
when I was Dr. Byron Kingsley. I saw my brother and sister. Could I
announce myself to them? No way! I was a stranger meeting them at a
party. I can never again talk to them as Doc Ernie McCollough. They
wouldn't know me if I tried. My face is different."

Bianca wept.

"My face. . ." He
sighed as he toyed with her breasts. "That's something else I
have to live with. Every morning when I look in the mirror I see the
face of a stranger. Not my face. Not the one I grew up with. Not the
one in my high-school yearbook. It's not the one you carry around
in your purse as a remembrance of me, is it?

He grabbed her
handbag, forgotten beside her feet. He took out her wallet and leafed
through the plastic windows past the pictures of Harry, Little Katie,
the Shipleys and Byron Kingsley.

Concealed at the very
bottom, he came to the picture that he had given her over a year ago,
before she had met Harry, the one with his signature on it. She had
been his patient. He had been her medical adviser. Bianca had adored
him as only a seventeen-year-old could.

"That face is gone
for ever, Bianca." He held it up to his new face. "You'll never
see that old face as long as you live." He held it to her nose.
"You killed it."

She shook her head
violently.

Wild images from the
past flashed through her brain. She remembered Doc in the medical
library a year ago with his arms around her. He parted her lips with
his tongue and taught her body new sensations. She remembered those
nights in the motels. She recalled him in the hospital only two
months ago, kissing her lips and urging her to get well. Now his
voice was telling her that she had destroyed him.

"I believe you,
Bianca. Harry put you under his evil influence. You didn't mean
to."

"I didn't! I
didn't!"

She remembered Doc on
the Shipleys' stairway. He was grappling with Harry tied up in
ropes. She threw open the front door. The moonlight illuminated the
scene. Her hand was clutching the pistol that Doc had given her. Doc
was trying to persuade her to shoot Harry. The gun discharged without
any conscious will of her own. Her shot hit Doc's foot. He tumbled
to what she thought was his death.

She pleaded. "I
would rather die than shoot you, Doc."

He unhooked her bra.

"You would never
have done that to me by yourself. Just as you wouldn't have
deprived me of my brilliant career without that Harry scum. I believe
that was your own phrase, my dear — my brilliant career."

She recalled
attending a lecture a year ago. Doc was the guest speaker. She was so
proud of him then that her heart had swelled. She'd told everyone
seated around her that he was her best friend. She'd blushed,
knowing that he was something much more than that.

She saw herself
riding around the island in Doc's car a year ago. He took her
everywhere. They were inseparable. He dropped her off at school. He
picked her up. They sat together at the doctor's office where he
took her to get treatment for her fear of the dark.

A ghastly image
thrust itself upon her consciousness. Bianca stood there at Doc's
funeral dressed in black, with black veils, weeping. She watched
while they lowered Doc's coffin into the ground and started to
cover the urn of ashes over with dirt. She stood there long after
everyone else was gone — until it was dark.

"Don't you think
you owe me a little, Bianca? If I can't win the Nobel prize for
medicine, if I can't publish books under my own name, if I can't
earn millions of dollars from seeing rich patients, what can you do
for me?"

Doc's fingers moved
from her breasts down past her belly button.

"What can you do
for me before the darkness closes in around me and you for good, and
we're really both dead?" he asked in his soft, purring tone.
"Open your eyes, Bianca. The darkness presses in close like the
velvet liner of a coffin."

It was black all
around. There was not a single light anywhere. She could not see her
hand before her face. All she could feel was his breath on her neck
and the pressure of his fingers working their art on her.

The darkness was too
much for her. It made her head whirl around. It made it hard for her
to breathe. It was pressing down on her like the lid of a coffin.

"Oh, Doc!" She
threw her arms around his neck. "Help me! Forgive me. I didn't
mean to do it."

"I'll help you.
You'll help me. That's why we belong together for ever as man and
wife."

"I love you. I've
always loved you." She raised her lips to his. "Never anyone
else."

He tugged one of her
turquoise earrings. "I love you, my sweet. I'll love you until we
die — and long after that."

He molded her body to
his as he kissed her, her lover come back from the grave. They came
together at last. Only then did she see the light like fire sparking
at the end of a long, dark tunnel. She grasped it, reaching for it
with both hands.

Blackness closed in
around her on every side as she grew groggy. Her eyes did not want to
stay open. She snuggled against his chest with her arms around his
waist.

Doc kept on
whispering to her, caressing her ear with his breath. He told her
about her future life as his wife in Rio. She would be a lady with
lots of servants and fancy clothes. He would shower her with gifts.
He would pay back the money he had borrowed ten times over. They
would have children. Bianca could have her own little daughter. She
wouldn't miss Little Katie.

"All you have to do
is promise to be mine alone."

Doc's voice ceased.
She tried to hold on to him. It did no good. He did not seem to be
there. She could feel herself falling. She couldn't catch on to
anything as she fell faster. Soon she could see that she was
plummeting through the sky toward the sea, just as in her dream the
night before she had left St. Simons Island.

Bianca hit the water
and woke up.

Chapter 13

Bianca was slumped in
her seat when she opened her eyes. Doc had been sleeping against her
shoulder. He had woken her by sitting up and switching on the
overhead light. Someone was leaning over their seat whispering to
him.

It was the Harry
look-alike. "The pilot seems to be off course somehow." His eyes
looked bleary. His clothes seemed wrinkled and crumpled, as if he had
just woken up himself.

Doc buttoned his
white shirt and threw his blanket as well as his pillow on top of
Bianca. He stood up as he tucked in his shirt tail and adjusted his
necktie.

"We should be over
the southern Atlantic by now, heading south along the coast of South
America. We should be landing in Rio shortly."

Bianca buttoned her
dress jacket as she wondered what was happening.

Doc and the Harry
look-alike leaned across some vacant first-class seats and peered out
the window into the darkness.

"We're headed
back toward the Georgia coast, where we took off yesterday evening,"
the look-alike said in a voice that didn't sound like Harry's.
"You can tell by the lights down there."

There was silence for
a long moment. Bianca could hear her wristwatch ticking. Sensing
trouble, she leaped up. Little Katie was stirring in her own sleeping
bag, clutching her bears. She snatched the child into her arms.

Doc burst out in
curses. "I don't understand it. I gave explicit directions. I
even have Rick Roscoe stationed up there with Manuel."

Doc switched on some
more lights and pounded on the cockpit door. "What's going on in
there? Where are we?"

No response.

Doc pounded more
loudly. "Are you both asleep at the controls? Manuel, Roscoe, what
airport are we approaching? I demand an answer."

Doc tried to force
the cockpit door. "What the hell is going on?" Doc thundered,
finding it locked. "Who is in charge here, anyway?"

"We should be
landing in Jacksonville, Florida, in about half an hour." A voice
came over the public-address system. It didn't sound like Manuel,
the Brazilian pilot. "We've started our descent."

That voice sounded
familiar. Bianca knew that pilot for sure!

"Harry!" she
called.

"How the hell did
you get up there, Fellini!" Doc kicked the door.

"I surprised Manuel
at the controls yesterday afternoon and tied him up before you
arrived at Smith's Airfield. He'd been having one too many
drinks," Harry boasted. "I jumped Roscoe as soon as he entered
the cockpit. I tied him up before he got to make a peep."

"How did you get
out of jail? I called the police the day before we left to tell them
that you'd escaped and were harassing Bianca on the phone. They put
you back behind bars to stay."

"The police
wouldn't believe that you were a threat. After all, you were a
respected intern. I argued that so was Doc. They said it couldn't
happen twice. So I made another jailbreak and followed you here. I
was betting that you would fly to someplace other than London. I was
right. Manuel confessed that you were headed for Rio. So all the
Shipleys' money spent training me in police and surveillance work
is paying off big time, including the pilot instruction."

"How did you get to
Smith's Airfield, Fellini? You couldn't have discovered the
location ahead of time. I didn't tell Manuel where to land his
plane until we'd left my apartment."

"I was driving the
black car that was giving you a hard time on the interstate. I wanted
to give Roscoe a big scare. Maybe that was taking a risk. I couldn't
resist. I got ahead of you after I guessed where the airstrip was. I
had a map of all the airstrips in the region. Smith's Airfield
seemed the only likely candidate."

"Give me Roscoe."

"Roscoe's sitting
here with a gag over his mouth, his wrists and ankles bound. He's
looking at me stupidly, waiting to be arrested as soon as we land —
like the rest of you would-be kidnappers."

Bianca wondered if
Rick Roscoe had suspected who had been driving the black car. Was
that why he had woven in and out of traffic in the suburban shopping
mall area when the black car wasn't visible? Harry had spooked him.
Harry had made him think he was there when he had been way ahead of
them.

"Give me Manuel."

"Yesterday I
loosened his gag so that he could talk to you. I held a gun to his
head."

The rest of the crew
had caught on to what was happening. Marianna raced up to the
first-class section without her high-heel shoes. She was buttoning
her uniform as she stood there gaping at the closed and bolted
cockpit door.

Doc stood outside the
cockpit door like a hovering vulture, unable to come in for the final
kill. He was waiting for his prey to come out, the prey that was
eluding him.

"Why didn't you
call the police as soon as you'd jumped the pilot and Roscoe? Why
did you take off from Smith's Airfield?" Doc questioned Harry.

"At that point you
could still have made a good case for saying that you were flying to London. You could
claim you were Dr. Byron Kingsley. You'd done nothing to
incriminate yourself yet. Last night you did. I have everything you
confessed to Bianca recorded on tape in the cockpit. You admit to the
murders. You say you're kidnapping Katie. You claim you're Doc. I
couldn't have hoped for more."

"Oh, Harry!"
Bianca couldn't restrain her tears. Had he done this for her after
the way she'd treated him? She couldn't believe that anybody
could be so heroic!

Doc quelled her with
a look.

Harry had confessed
his suspicions at the Cloister Hotel. He had picked up on the
smallest details. No one else had believed him. Harry had stuck to
his guns.

"C'mon!" Doc
motioned to the Harry look-alike and Marianna. "Let's break down
the door."

They ran against it
with their shoulders. They tried to use the drink cart.

Harry assured them
over the loudspeaker. "I have myself pretty well barricaded. I
worked on it yesterday after Roscoe entered the cockpit. It's
something they taught us in pilot training. The Shipleys paid to have
me learn to protect Little Katie. That's what I'm doing."

Doc called for the
tool chest that he'd brought with him. He tried to take off the
door screw by screw, bolt by bolt. He kneeled down on the floor to
work on the bottom screws.

It didn't work, no
matter how hard Doc tried. Doc gave up and threw the screwdriver
aside.

"Isn't there
something important you're forgetting, Fellini?" Doc challenged
him. "I've got Little Katie and Bianca. You might have saved your
own neck. But you won't be of much use to them."

Harry did not answer
right away. "I thought we'd be back to the Jacksonville Airport
before you caught on. That's why I flew out over the Atlantic and
didn't return until everybody was asleep. I hoped you'd wake up
in Jacksonville with the police standing over you the next morning."