Babysitter, page 15
She turned around and drew him near enough to hug. She did not want to start crying again. Not now. “Good,” she said. “I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t offered.”
A minute later they were in his car and headed for the section of the city called High Rock.
5
Once she had not been fat. Once her hair had not been gray. Once men looked at her with lust rather than loathing. That was a long time ago and time did not heal all wounds like they said.
She had spent years inside their hospital, years at the mercy of the white-coated ones, the ones with hands that hurt and words that cut deep. She had been only eleven when she entered; a mere child. She was fourteen when she got and by then she was a woman, with a child. She had never wanted a child, never asked for the things that were done to her.
But inside the hospital, they owned you. They owned every single part of you. Every thought, every action belonged to them. They controlled it. They controlled you.
The man came to her every night, touching, hurting. He wasn’t bold enough to take her. He touched at first, stealing little bits of her at a time. But he grew bolder with each passing week and soon there was no holding him back. She tried screaming, once. It resulted in her being drugged and unspeakable things being done to her.
Blessedly, she could remember none of them.
And as time passed, the man brought friends. They took their turns. She learned to lock her eyes on the high corner of the ceiling and think of other things. Eventually, their seed took hold and Mary began to grow fat with child. They let her stay until the baby was born. Then they cast her out into the cold.
It was in the hospital that Mary had met Dominique. She was dark of skin, but not as dark as the black ladies who walked up the hill every day to work in the big houses. She was smart and beautiful and smiled easily. It was a smile that told the world that Dominique knew things they didn’t.
Dominique taught her things. She taught her the words and the symbol. She taught her how to bring life to the dead and death to the living.
That’s when Mary started drawing the symbols. She traced them all over the walls and floors and even the sheets. She would draw them with whatever she had – pencil, paint, pudding, blood. And when she drew them, her mother came.
Her mother, Helen, spoke to her in the night. It started as a buzzing in her head and gradually turned into words. After a year and thousands of symbols, Helen appeared to Mary and the two hatched their plot.
Mary thought she would never get out of the hospital. Getting pregnant was, in a way, the best thing to ever happen to her. Those men couldn’t hide the baby, could no longer hide what they had done. So, they were forced to release her.
Once she was free, Mary headed straight for home. She took the baby, Nikki, and made straight for Winthrop. Along the way, she drew the symbols and recited the chant. She spoke to her mother and her mother told her what to do.
There was a cabin far off in the woods. It had stood for many years and would offer a shelter to Mary and Nikki. Helen told her how to get there and what to do when she did.
The townsfolk cast away all manner of things when they were done with them. Mary picked up these things and made a home for herself and Nikki. There were actual curtains on the windows, made from old sheets and shirts that the townsfolk had thrown away. She hooked rugs from found yarn and strips of fabric. And she dug the basement.
The ground was hard-packed clay and rock and the digging had been hard. It had taken her a long time to dig that small basement. But when she was done, her mother was pleased.
Nikki grew and learned. Helen taught them both.
And when Nikki was old enough, they had put their plan into action.
It was Nikki’s job to go to the girls’ houses and draw the symbols beneath their beds. The symbol established a connection between the girls and Helen. It called them forth from their homes in the dark of night and brought them to Helen in the basement. The girls’ blood allowed Helen to stay with them. Nikki took vials of it to the cemetery and performed the ritual.
They weren’t doing anything wrong, Helen told them. They were saving these girls from horrible, abusive parents. If someone had come to save Mary, she told them, Mary wouldn’t have had to kill her father.
And so, if the parents were decent people, no harm came to anyone, except the drawing of a little blood. But if the parents were evil, Helen would see this through her connection with the girls. Then she would take over. Then she would kill them.
It was Mary’s job to watch for the girls and to guide them into the basement when they came. Nikki wasn’t strong enough to do it. She was a small woman and not as strong as she needed to be in any way that mattered.
All these long years later, she sat now on the porch of the cabin and watched for the girl. Downstairs, the wailing sound as well as the cries of the other little girl had ceased and Mary knew that Nikki’s work had been complete. Helen was at work in the basement and everything would be all right.
Swigging from the Jim Beam, she kept her shining brown eyes alert as the young girl walked up to the cabin. “Evening, honey,” Mary said.
The girl was probably about seven, Mary decided. Her white pajamas were soaked with sweat and blood, stained with green from where she’d apparently fallen.
The girl’s eyes were dull and you could tell by the way she cocked her head, as if listening to distant music, that she was hearing the buzzing sound that Helen always filled their ears with.
“What’s your name, honey?”
At first, the girl looked at her uncomprehendingly. Licking dry lips, the girl finally said, “Hedley.”
Mary snorted. “Hedley? That’s a funny name.” But Mary knew it was also another kind of name—the kind of name that belonged to a rich young white girl. Mary’s eyes narrowed. “You know why you came here, honey?”
Hedley nodded. She seemed to be on the verge of tears. “The thing is, don’t give her any trouble. You understand?”
Again Hedley nodded.
“You give her any trouble, she’ll give you trouble. You know what I’m talking about?”
For only the second time, the frail young girl spoke. “I’m afraid.”
“They all are, honey,” Mary laughed, starting to resent this rich young white girl all over again. The Jim Beam had just kicked in on a much higher level. “Now, I’m going to take you inside and you’ll go downstairs. All right?”
“All right.”
“And you ain’t going to give me no problems?”
Hedley shook her straight auburn hair. You could see where dirt had smudged her forehead. She reminded Mary of a sentimental painting of a waif.
Mary held out her bottle. “You want some? Maybe it’ll help.”
Hedley stared at the bottle. “No thank you.”
Mary laughed again. “Guess you are a little young.” She stood up and said, “Come on.”
Mary had turned around and started to open the door. She sensed that the girl had not moved. When Mary turned around again, she discovered that she was right.
Mary had to fight what she felt just then. Hedley looked so lost and vulnerable, that not even her fear of mother could keep Mary from feeling sorry for her. She momentarily considered the idea of letting Hedley go, but then she thought of the one time she’d considered such a course—how she’d awakened later in the night to find that her mother had come upstairs to pay her a visit. She would never forget the threat that Helen had telepathically put into her head—You are to help me or I will make you like them. By “them,” the creature obviously meant the young girls.
Leaning against the door, wiping spilled whiskey from her hand on to her red peasant skirt, Mary said, “I’d help you if I could, honey, but I can’t. Now you get up here, all right?”
Still Hedley didn’t move.
“Honey, we got to go. We got to move it.”
Already the wailing had begun in the basement. Helen knew Hedley was out here. Helen was ready. Angry now.
“Please, I don’t want to do this. Really I don’t. But it’s my fault that all this happened to her and I don’t have any choice. Now, come on.”
When Hedley still did not move, Mary shoved the uncapped pint in the elastic band of her skirt and proceeded down the steps, where she took Hedley crossly by a thin shoulder and pushed her toward the porch. “You’re gonna make this hard for yourself, honey. It’s just what I told you that you don’t want to do.”
She gave Hedley another shove. Hedley tripped, sprawling over the porch.
“Damn,” Mary said. “I didn’t want that to happen. I really didn’t.”
She went up to Hedley, helped the girl to her feet. She tried not to notice the girl’s silent tears or the fear in her eyes. Much as she tried, she couldn’t be angry with this little girl.
Mary sighed and put out her hand. “Sometimes this helps. Sometimes I hold their hands till they disappear down the ladder. All right?”
Hedley nodded.
Mary led her gently inside, past the smells of fried potatoes and the two sour cots on which Mary and Nikki had long slept separately and the tiny eleven-inch Sears color TV set.
Mary always got winded whenever she had to bend over and pull up the trapdoor. When you weighed what she did, any kind of exaggerated movement was difficult.
But she got the door open fine, standing back quickly as always because of the cold and the smell of decay that had been flash frozen in the chill. Even the air from the basement seemed blacker than normal night air.
When Hedley went through, one of her pajama sleeves got caught on the door catch and tore.
Mary felt sorry for her. She put out her hand again and said, “I’m afraid it’s time, honey. I’m afraid it’s time.”
6
Forty-five minutes earlier, Marietta Stover had struck her head against a low-hanging tree branch, raising a painful knob on her forehead. The blow was enough to make her lose sight of her daughter, whom she’d glimpsed in the moonlight, cresting a hill, perhaps a quarter mile away.
After being briefly disoriented, Marietta resumed her search, cutting through timberland alive with animal life she couldn’t see. Mud from the recent rain smelled acrid in her nostrils and stuck like flypaper on the soles of her shoes. She suffered every kind of bite imaginable, from mosquitos to chiggers, but she scarcely noticed them. All she could recall were the twin images now stamped forever in her memory—that of her husband lying on the landing disemboweled and that of her daughter Hedley with a hand covered in her own father’s blood and entrails.
She pushed on. There was nothing else to do. The mud grew deeper, the bites more nasty, the night darker and darker as she penetrated the clay hills and the deep forest surrounding them. Somewhere ahead was Hedley. Somewhere.
By the time she reached the hill that overlooked a steep clay incline, she was almost nauseated from her headache. She did not see the cabin at first. It blended too well with the shadows to be seen easily. But as she stood there, her eyes trying to adjust to the sweep below, she began to recognize the shape of a ragged cabin made of leftover lumber and tin scraps.
Perhaps someone in the cabin had seen Hedley pass by
The incline was even steeper than she’d thought at first and cost her several more bumps and bruises from the hard rutted clay. In all, it took over ten minutes and her headache was now virtually blinding.
She could smell the cabin long before she drew abreast of it. The odors were sickening—rotting food, a chemical toilet, a pile of indeterminate junk to the west of the slanting structure. And something else, too—something almost exotic in its putrescence. To approach the cabin further, she had to cover her mouth and nose with her hand.
When she walked up on the porch, the whole cabin pitched leftward. She had the momentary impression that it would quickly capsize, like a fragile boat in rough waters. She had raised her hand to knock when the large woman appeared.
Marietta could never recall being physically afraid of a woman before. Men, yes, but no woman had ever seemed especially threatening to her. But this one was different. Her ragged clothes, the odors that accompanied her, the pint bottle she took from the band of her peasant skirt, the wild gray hair that stuck out from her head like electrified dreadlocks—she was absolutely terrifying.
“What the hell do you want?” the woman demanded.
“I’m looking for my daughter,” Marietta said.
“What the hell would your daughter be doing here?”
“I don’t mean she came here. I thought you might have seen her pass by. She’s very pretty and little. She’s six years old.” Marietta’s voice rose near the end of this. You could hear hysteria building inside her.
“I didn’t see her.”
“Could anybody else in the house have seen her?”
“House?” the Indian woman sneered. “You think this is a house? Why don’t you try shanty. That’s the word you want. House.” This time when she pronounced the word, she spat off the side of the porch.
Watching the woman spit, Marietta drew within herself: Everything was out of skew. Nothing tonight made sense. Her husband lying sprawled on the floor. Her daughter standing in front of her with bloody, talon-like hands. But it was obvious this bitter, drunken woman was going to be no help to her.
Marietta grimaced, sighed, and turned to go, when she saw something lying on the floor that seemed out of place. A piece of white material.
Before the woman knew what Marietta was doing, or could stop her, Marietta took four long strides on the porch and jerked the material free of the latch. Horrible recognition filled her—panic set her heart to a painful pounding. She saw the piece of material torn from Hedley’s pajama cuff. There was no doubt it was Hedley’s. Her white pajamas were monogrammed on chest and sleeve cuffs: HS.
Almost in shock, Marietta said, “She’s here, isn’t she?”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about.”
“She’s here. My daughter’s here.”
“You get the hell off my property.”
Marietta, knowing she would have to get inside the cabin to learn the real truth, snapped back the door and took one step across the threshold. The odors of the place overwhelmed her. Nausea made her wobbly.
She saw a shack of two cots, a kerosene stove, a jumble of chairs, and boxes of canned food goods. But no sign of her daughter.
She turned back to the woman whom she could feel right behind her. “Where is she? Where is my daughter!” By now, Marietta was shrieking. She did not care.
Then she heard the noise. A wailing sound, it came from below. When Marietta looked at the woman again, she saw that for the first time the woman seemed anxious. Apparently the wailing sound was significant.
“Where’s the basement door?” Marietta demanded. When, after ten seconds, the woman had not spoken, Marietta shouted, “Where’s the basement door?”
She fell to her hands and knees there in the smelly gloom of the tiny cabin. Obviously she was searching for some kind of trapdoor. Within half a minute, she found the outlines of such a door hidden beneath a hooked rug.
She had just put her hand inside the ring that would pick the door up when the woman grabbed her with the force of a wrestling bear. The woman got Marietta in a choke hold and jerked her to her feet. She hurled Marietta across the floor into a cot. Then Mary rushed over and hit Marietta on the face. Her punch had the strength of a man’s.
Mary leaned in and began choking Marietta there on the cot. Her hands were huge and powerful. Marietta had no idea what to do. She took the heel of her hand and placed it against the jut of the woman’s jaw and pushed. Then she took her foot and placed it against the woman’s abdomen and kicked. While both these moves had some effect on the woman, neither was strong enough to unlock the woman’s hands.
Marietta began to understand through her heaving breath and spinning vision that she would soon be unconscious, and soon after that dead.
Letting her body begin to slide off the cot, Marietta got in position to do more damage with her feet. She knew she would have no more than one chance, so she had to make it good. When she had slid halfway to the floor, she brought her right foot up high and hard, catching Mary squarely on the jaw. The choke hold opened. Marietta quickly jumped to her feet.
A few minutes earlier, she had noticed a butcher knife over by a tin bucket used as a sink. She went for it now, keeping her back to it so the woman, who was cursing drunkenly and trying to reorient herself, would not know what Marietta was doing.
As Mary lunged at her again, Marietta’s fingers found the knife and quickly brought it around in front of her, just in time to impale the other woman deeply on the upraised knife.
The woman screamed, blood blooming in an already widening pool on the chest of her gray peasant blouse. She tottered in front of Marietta for a moment, as if she could not yet believe what Marietta had done to her, at once accusing, and at the same time pitiful at the end of her life. Then she fell over backwards, blood beginning to bubble from her mouth. Marietta had no doubt she was dead. The butcher knife still rode her heart.
Marietta scrambled for the trapdoor. Somewhere down there was Hedley. She knew it.
On her hands and knees, her hand once again in the door ring, she had just started to pull the trapdoor up when, behind her, she heard the screen door open.
There, silhouetted, stood Nikki. She glanced quickly around the room and saw what had happened. As she stood there, she began to twitch.
Finally, as if breaking through her initial nightmare reaction, she went to the woman on the floor and took her in her arms, embracing her as if she were the most precious infant on the earth.
All Marietta could do was watch. She knew better than to make a move.
The girl began sobbing once she realized that there was no life in the body she held. She raised her eyes to Marietta. Her gaze was more frightening than any weapon she had ever seen.
“So you want to know what’s in the basement,” she said. She spoke slowly, carefully, as if she were desperate to be understood. Gently, she laid the dead woman back on the floor. Carefully, she rose to her feet. Easily, she took from the package nearby what appeared to be a small medicine bottle. “Now you’ll see, woman. Now you’ll see what’s in the basement.”
