Babysitter, page 16
She moved with quick grace over to Marietta and kicked her hard on the side of the head, slamming her skull back against a two-by-four used on the wall behind.
Nikki knelt down, grabbed her wrist, and yanked her to her side. She opened the trapdoor. Unimaginably cold black air came up from the basement. The odors were nearly intolerable.
“Hedley!” she cried. “Hedley!”
“You want to see your daughter?” Nikki said. “The way I just saw my mother?”
Enraged with her own words, she dragged Marietta over to the opening and pushed her down. She clung to the opening with her fingers. Nikki stomped on her hand with her boot heel. She didn’t use the steps with her. She simply dropped her.
When the force of her falling body met the resistance of an earthen floor packed hard, Marietta screamed
Then she saw the door being closed and heard a padlock clicking into place.
She was in the darkness now, completely.
Knowing she needed to sit up, she got on her hands and knees, and tried to find out the source of the eerie glow.
Apparently, it came from beyond a wide bend shaped from the clay of the basement. The place reminded her of a cave. She crawled on her hands and knees around this bend and stopped.
“My God,” she said aloud in the sudden silence of the basement.
In the center of the glow were the upright bodies of two little girls: one that Marietta did not recognize and Hedley. Their eyes were closed and their hands clasped. A red bloodlike fluid was painted on the floor below them, completely encircling the three. In the center of it, and painted all over the walls of the cavernous basement, were symbols of some sort. Neither of the girls seemed to be conscious. Whatever ceremony was being performed had put them into some sort of reverie.
“You made a mistake coming here.”
When Marietta whirled to confront the speaker, she knew in that instant that the voice belonged to no living person.
Helen stood there in front of her, hands on hips.
“What did you do to my daughter and my granddaughter?” Helen smiled.
“Who are you?” Marietta said. “And what are you doing—”
For the first time, Helen showed anger, even rage. “The woman upstairs, the one you hired as a babysitter, is my granddaughter. And the woman that you killed, she was my daughter. She went on, talking quickly for the next two minutes, about what had been going on in Winthrop these past decades.
Marietta listened, numb.
Helen started moving toward Marietta. Moving very quickly.
Marietta began to edge backward. All she could think of was Hedley’s lifeless face as she was connected in some fashion to the ghost. The blood symbols painted on the floor . . .
Helen jumped at her just then, sending Marietta tumbling onto the hard earth beneath her, wedged tightly between the wall and a jutting boulder.
In the glow, Marietta could see straight through Helen’s body as if it were a cloud of some sort. But within that ghoul lie great strength, a power that Marietta felt could overcome her.
Marietta, having no doubt what was about to happen, screamed . . .
Chapter Seven
1
They had been walking for an hour now, around the periphery of the deep timber that encircled the chain of red clay hills that the locals called mountains. Because a good share of the timberland had been reclaimed by the state two decades earlier, there were dozens of mercury vapor lights to guide their way. Jody had gotten hoarse early on, calling Jenny’s name into the night as if she were firing up flares.
Nothing.
Slick with sweat, out of breath from climbing up the 45-degree hills, they moved over now to the part of the forest that ran parallel with the Huntington River. Cars roared by on the throughway, teenagers tossing out beer cans and curses, children with gigantic Dairy Queen cones that threatened to topple under their own weight, elderly couples locked tight within the air-conditioned confines of their carefully kept retirement cars.
It would be so nice to be a child sometimes, Jody thought. Or even an elderly person with a good life behind you, and something like contentment in your heart.
“You okay?” David asked.
She laughed softly, wiping sweat from her forehead. “You read me like radar, as an old boyfriend of mine used to say.”
David shrugged. “I grew up in a household where people didn’t communicate verbally very well. I learned to read faces.”
“That probably comes in handy.”
He smiled. “Sometimes I don’t like what I see.”
Jody was about to say something, but she stopped when they reached the crest of a hill and saw at its bottom a Quick Trip store. “Maybe we should stop and get a Coke or something.”
“You’re not going to hear me argue about that.”
They went down, another carload of teenagers and ugly horn sounds accompanying them. The closer they drew, the more the store reminded her of an optical illusion. There was nothing but timberland and a few scattered park benches out here. The store, almost lurid white and red in the gloom, looked faintly satanic, a lure devised to trap people like Jody and David Fairbain.
“This will give me a chance to call Sam, too,” Jody said.
“You think she’ll be awake?”
“She’s taken these pills before. They usually knock her out for about three or four hours. Then she wakes up.”
“Aren’t there stronger pills?”
“Unfortunately, she’s built up a tolerance to every kind of sleeping pill there is. If they give her stronger dosages, she may become a pill junkie.”
“The poor kid.”
Jody’s jaw tightened, all her parental guilt flooding back. If only I’d been a better mother—
There were a few teenagers playing Donkey Kong, an old man in fuchsia Bermuda shorts, a Chicago Cubs T-shirt, and flapping rubber sandals going for milk from the steamed-over glass milk case, and a coughing man at the counter buying a carton of Camel filters.
After the coughing man left, David went up to the counter and began asking the clerk questions.
Jody went over to the phone, deposited thirty-five cents and called Sam.
Sam answered on the first ring. “Yes?” she said almost breathlessly.
“It’s me, honey.”
“Did you find her?” Sam’s voice was a perfect fusion of dread and hope.
“Not yet, honey. But we’re going to. I promise.” Pause. “I was just checking to see if the police called.”
“No. Not yet.”
“How are you doing?”
“I just woke up about fifteen minutes ago.”
“Why not lie on the couch and try to get some more sleep? That way you can be next to the phone.”
“I’ll try . . .”
“I’m sorry, honey.”
“I know.”
“But we are going to find her.”
Sam sighed. “Where are you?”
Jody explained. While she talked, she angled her head to see what David was doing.
The chubby clerk in the zip-up Quick Trip jacket was just now handing him a piece of paper. The clerk then carefully told David about something and David just as carefully wrote it down. Given the long strokes, more like drawing than writing, Jody suspected David was drawing a map.
“When are you coming back?” Sam asked.
“Are you afraid to be alone?”
“I just don’t want you to wear yourself out, Mother. You’re not as—”
Jody laughed gently. “Don’t start that old lady routine with me again, all right?”
“I just meant—”
“I know, honey. But I’ll be fine.”
“It’s so hot. Heat can wear you down.”
“I’ll be fine.”
After she hung up, she went over to the counter where David waved the white piece of paper at her. She followed him out the front door where they stood in a noisy buzz of mosquitos and moths hurling themselves at the large red and white neon squares, and where the sharp odor of gas was almost intoxicating on such a hot night.
“The clerk in there is a backpacker,” David explained, showing her the map. “He knows this forest and these hills very well. He showed me a shortcut that will take us all the way to the hills.”
“I’d just like to get going.”
He slid his arm around her shoulder and kissed her on the forehead. “We’re going, we’re going,” he said.
Fifteen minutes later they found themselves on a narrow path so filled with low-hanging tree branches and chest-high undergrowth that Jody had the sense that they were lost already.
The other problem with the path was that it curved every fifty feet or so. You couldn’t get a look at what was ahead. There was always another sharp turn. This and the deep shadows of the forest enhanced Jody’s sense of claustrophobia. But whenever she felt a slight flutter of panic in her chest, she thought of Jenny. The image of Jenny kept her going.
At one point they reached a wide creek, silver in the moonlight shattered by the boughs of scrub pine. Rusty cans jutted up from the shallow water. A plump frog noted their passage by croaking three times in his best bass.
The clay hills rose before them, just beyond a windbreak of more scrub pine. Given their height and slender peaks, the hills really did look like mountains.
“You want to rest a little while?”
“I’d rather just keep on going.”
“Fine. But those hills are going to be difficult.”
“I’ll make it.”
“I didn’t mean to offend you, Jody.”
“You didn’t. I’m getting a small headache and that always makes me crabby. No big deal.”
They continued onward.
The hills were even more difficult to climb than David had predicted. Rains had left the clay surface muddy and difficult to dig into. Jody slipped backwards twice, covering herself in mud as she did so. The second time, fearing she was going to tumble all the way down into the shallow ravine below, she screamed.
2
Marietta touched a warm, slowly seeping wound near her temple. The sensation—blood has a texture—made her weak momentarily. But she knew where she was—the basement—and what she must do—
Escape.
Pushing herself to her feet, she saw Helen suddenly appear and lunge toward her with a sharp-edged spade.
Marietta scarcely had time to move out of the way as the spade came clanging down, her own shadow huge in the glow on the wall behind her.
The second time she sprang at Marietta, the older woman was ready, kicking a foot out at the precise instant Helen bent for better leverage with the shovel.
There was a flickering, a slight dimming of the glow as Helen lost cohesion, the spade clanging away and resting against a chunk of rock.
Marietta dove for the spade, gripping it so tight its wooden handle chewed into her soft palms.
Helen was rising from the floor, her head bobbing on her frail shoulders.
Marietta used the spade like a spear, driving it deep into her chest.
Helen, making a noise that was both pathetic and disgusting, fell backwards against the wall. It was more fear than any actual damage that drove her, since the spade sliced cleanly through her with no appreciable effect.
Marietta jerked the spade backward and drove forward once more. Helen, flailing, disappeared into the wall.
Holding the spade across her chest once again, Marietta twisted around completely and took four steps to the glow that held Hedley captive.
Bringing the spade down with all her fury, Marietta tried to sever the connection between girl and ghost by scratching out part of the symbol. But to no avail.
That was when Helen came up from the floor, startling Marietta.
Marietta screamed just before she once more swung the spade at Helen’s chest. This time, Helen had expended the last of her energy. She dissolved in a puff of glowing smoke.
When Nikki heard the scream, she was still upstairs.
She was about to take the medicine bottle into the basement. The wailing was starting again. It was time. She knew how she got.
But somehow she could not move.
She sat at the small, wobbly table staring down at the sprawled and broken form of her mother. The knife was still in her.
At the scream, she looked up. The sound was reasonably close.
People. Coming here.
She looked back at her mother. She had died trying to help these girls, trying to save them from the same fate that her own daughter, Mary, had suffered. That murderous witch would have been saved, too, if she’d just let them complete their work.
Without realizing it, she began to cry, abrupt sobs that threatened to choke her. She made a huge fist of her right hand and brought it down on the table, splitting the wood viciously.
Slowly, she pushed herself to her feet, the sobs still in her throat, and went to the screen door.
The scream in the hills had echoed for two minutes now, trapped in the tree branches and foliage and clay hills. She wondered who had screamed and why.
As she stood there, she realized that she did not have to wonder why any longer.
Two people, a man and a woman, appeared on the muddy slope of a small clay hill less than a quarter mile away. Both of them pointed at the cabin and began talking.
She knew she did not have much time.
In her pocket, the blood she had taken from the girl seemed almost searingly warm. Ready.
She went quickly to the trapdoor, unlocked the padlock, flung the door open, and started down the stairs.
She had gone seven steps down when she heard the panting sounds. She glanced over her shoulder quickly. In the glow from the symbols on the floor, she saw the girls.
They lay curled on the floor, seemingly asleep. They were no longer bound to her grandmother, no longer feeding her their strength.
Marietta raised the shovel once more and swung it at Nikki’s back, catching her sharply on the spine.
She jumped down, narrowly avoiding a lethal swing aimed at her head. The shovel made a metallic jarring sound as it banged against the metal ladder.
Facing the woman now, Nikki pulled from inside her belt the dagger she spent at least an hour a day sharpening. “You bitch,” she said.
She got the knife in her hand, balanced it for throwing, and prepared herself for the pleasure she would take from watching and hearing the knife tear into her white breast.
“You bitch,” she said again.
She at least had the intelligence to look scared, to understand that her shovel was no match for Nikki’s dagger.
3
“I didn’t know anything about this place,” David said at the same time that Nikki moved toward Marietta, as they moved through sun-baked buffalo grass toward the cabin. The moon was full and silver. “The first I’d ever heard of it was when the clerk back there mentioned it.”
“I remember it,” Jody said, “from when we used to play up here. There’s a really nasty old woman who lives there. When my cousin Allan was seven, the old woman grabbed him for trespassing and nearly choked him to death. She’s not very fond of people. She probably won’t be willing to help us at all.”
“I’m sure that once we explain—”
“Anybody who would choke a seven-year-old isn’t real likely to worry about lending a helping hand.”
“Maybe she’s mellowed some.” He smiled at her. “You have.”
It was then they heard the sound. Jody’s arms were chilled with gooseflesh immediately. Her stomach knotted. “My God,” she said. “What was that?”
“It almost sounds like an animal caught in a trap.”
“Where did it come from?”
“I’m not sure,” David said. “But I’ve got an idea.” He pointed straight ahead to the cabin.
4
She had never enjoyed this part of the task. Grandmother Helen was always furious when she returned. She screamed as though she were in some sort of agony. The passage from her world to ours must have been painful, must have caused some sort of madness.
“What is that, anyway?” asked Marietta. She’d tied her to a support post.
Nikki turned and looked at her. “You would not understand, you bitch.”
“Please, I just want to know what’s going on.” She could not take her eyes from her daughter, who still glowed faintly, whose eyes still had not opened.
So she told her.
Nikki explained how her father had abused her mother, in every way possible, and how she had finally worked up the nerve to kill him. The police had blamed Helen, though, and no amount of confessing would change their minds. She told Marietta about how her grandmother was sent to the electric chair, how Mary herself had suffered at the hands of mental hospital orderlies, and how she, Nikki, had been conceived.
She spoke of Dominique, the Haitian girl in the hospital who had taught her mother ways to communicate with the spirit of Helen, and how they had used those spells to bring her grandmother back, to draw the children to them, to bind the children – at least temporarily – to Helen.
Marietta could see what she was about to do. How she would pour the blood on the skull, which sat now at the center of the symbol on the floor. Sacrificial blood, she had called it.
Hedley’s eyes seemed now the size of small marbles. There was no expression in them whatsoever. Marietta sensed her daughter slipping, slipping away.
As she had been doing the past twenty minutes, Marietta encouraged Nikki to talk while she worked the ropes against the raw wood of the pillar. The ropes had begun to loosen.
The girl turned to her now in the soft glow, away from the two young girls seemingly asleep on the floor, and said, “She will want to kill you herself, bitch. For what you did to her daughter.”
