Black Creek Crossing

Chapter 30

O YOU BELIEVE THAT?” HEATHER DUNNE SAID, nudging Sarah Harmon and whispering softly enough so only she could hear her. “What’s she doing here?”

They were in their favorite store — Meryl’s, Of Course — and Heather had tried on at least a dozen sweaters but wasn’t even close to finding one she wanted to buy. Now, with a blue cashmere cardigan over her arm that Sarah Harmon was sure was going to be the eventual winner of this round of what she always thought of as “Heather’s Shopping Derby,” Heather tipped her head toward a rack in the far corner. When Sarah followed her gaze, she knew right away who Heather was talking about: Angel Sullivan was going through the rack with a tall, thin woman whom Sarah was certain had to be her mother, given what her own mother had told her after she’d had lunch the other day with Zack’s mother and aunt. “Myra Sullivan’s nothing like Joni Fletcher at all,” her mother had said. “She’s scrawny and mousy and has no sense of humor, and I think she’s some kind of religious fanatic.” Then her mother had brightened, adding, “Well, at least if Joni and Ed put them up for the club, we can blackball them!”

“Shouldn’t she be going to that fat girl’s shop at the outlet mall?” Heather asked, pulling Sarah out of her reverie. “How’s she think she’s going to fit into anything here?”

As they watched, the woman with Angel pulled a pink dress off the rack, one with a full skirt and lots of frills around the bodice. Heather had been laughing about it only half an hour ago. Angel took the pink dress and headed for the dressing room.

“Do you believe she’s looking at party dresses?” Heather whispered. “Who’d invite her to—” Then the light dawned and she stared at Sarah. “I bet she’s going to the country club tonight,” she breathed.

Sarah rolled her eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding!”

“Where else would she wear that dress?” Heather asked.

“Nobody else would wear it at all!” Sarah said.

But Heather was no longer listening. Instead, her eyes were following Angel as she disappeared through the curtains that hung at the door to the dressing room area, and Sarah Harmon could tell just by the look on Heather’s face that an idea was forming in her head. A moment later Heather turned back to Sarah, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “Here’s what we’re going to do…” she said.

Sarah listened as Heather laid out her plan, and less than a minute after Angel had walked through the curtains, they did too.

Only one of the three dressing rooms was occupied. Holding a finger to her lips, Heather led Sarah into the one next to Angel’s.

Angel gazed despondently at the dress.

Everything about it was wrong. Even with it still on the hanger, she could tell it wasn’t going to fit, and even if it did fit, it would only make her look fatter.

“The bodice is modest, and the skirt will give you some shape,” her mother had told her when she’d found the dress a few minutes ago. Like anyone was even going to be looking at the breasts that were just barely beginning to show, and the full skirt—

She didn’t even want to think about how it would look.

And she certainly didn’t want to be here. What she wanted to do was talk to Seth. She’d hardly slept last night. Instead, she’d lain awake in bed, recalling her father’s words.

… a cat… black … with a white mark on its chest …

Of course, it wasn’t possible — her father was drunk, after all, and probably hadn’t seen a cat at all.

And yet…

She remembered the strange feeling that had come over her after she drank the watery broth left at the bottom of the kettle after it had boiled for almost two hours.

The awful knot of grief that had gripped her the moment she’d found Houdini’s body in her locker was completely gone. So completely gone, in fact, that she’d had to keep reminding herself that he wasn’t going to come bounding out of nowhere to rub up against her legs and beg to have his ears scratched.

And she’d kept thinking about the strange verse that had been the recipe they’d followed when they made up the broth:

Mix lover’s blood drawn by knife/Symmer long to bring back life.

A bit of earth from loved’s grave/The blur of grief will help to save.

One fragment of it had echoed all through the long hours of the night:

… symmer long to bring back life…

When morning had finally come and she went downstairs, she’d wanted to call Seth, to tell him what her father had said, and see what he thought.

And maybe even go back out to the cabin and…

But the minute she’d picked up the phone, her father demanded to know who she was calling. And when she turned to her mother for support, her mother shook her head. “Nice girls don’t call up boys,” she’d pronounced. “Nice girls wait for boys to call them. And besides,” she added, “we’re going to go shopping this morning. We’re getting you a brand new dress for the dance tonight.”

So here she was, in a dressing room with the worst dress she’d ever seen, and her mother waiting for her to come out and model it. Knowing there was no point in trying to postpone the inevitable, Angel began taking off her jeans and sweatshirt.

She was just hanging the sweatshirt on a hook when she heard a familiar voice from the dressing room next door.

“So what are you wearing tonight?” Heather Dunne asked.

“I hate costume parties,” someone replied. It was a voice Angel didn’t recognize.

“Oh, come on,” Heather said. “It’ll be fun. Besides, if you don’t wear a costume, you’ll be the only one, and then how will you feel?”

“I’d feel like Angel Sullivan,” the other girl said. Then: “Are you sure no one told her it’s a costume dance?”

Angel felt her face begin to burn.

“Who would?” Heather said, snickering. “I mean, who even speaks to her?”

“Beth Baker,” the other girl answered.

“Oh, like he’s even going to go to the dance!” Heather said, giggling. “What would he go as? A fairy princess?”

“What are you going as?” the other girl said after the laughter died away.

“The Queen of Hearts,” Heather declared. Then: “And you could be the White Rabbit.” There was a short pause, then Heather said: “I know! Why don’t you go as Alice?”

“I love it!” the other girl said. “But where am I going to get a costume?”

“It’ll be easy,” Heather said. “I’ve already got most of it from last year, and we can just pin it to fit you instead of me! At least you won’t look as stupid as Angel Sullivan when she shows up without any costume at all!”

There was a flurry from the next stall as the girls left, and Angel barely breathed as she prayed none of them had noticed her in the store. Five minutes later, just as she was wondering if it was safe to leave the dressing room, she heard her mother’s voice.

“Angel? What’s wrong? If the dress doesn’t fit, I’m sure they have it in a larger size.”

With the dress in her hand, Angel came out of the dressing room. “It doesn’t matter if it fits or not,” she said. “It’s a costume party.”

Myra looked blank. “It’s what?”

“A costume party,” Angel repeated. “I heard Heather Dunne and some other girl talking about it. She’s going as the Queen of Hearts, and the girl she was with is going as Alice.”

Myra frowned uncertainly. “Then I suppose we’ll have to find you a costume.”

Angel shook her head. “I already have one,” she said. “And it’ll be perfect!”

Myra knew even before she and Angel walked into the house that Marty had been drinking. It wasn’t just that the leaves she’d asked him to rake while they were in town were still scattered over the lawn and the rake she had left on the front step, where he couldn’t miss it, hadn’t been moved. Those things only reinforced the dark sense of apprehension that came over her as she moved toward the front door. She had lived with Marty long enough so that she knew yesterday’s bender was still going on, and today she was certain that Angel also knew what was waiting for them inside the house. For a moment she was tempted to turn around and just walk away. She and Angel could get lunch at the drugstore and then maybe go visit Joni.

Except she couldn’t afford lunch at the drugstore, or anywhere else, and Joni — along with Ed and Zack — was already at the country club. The country club that only this morning Marty had declared he’d never set foot in.

“You were the one who wanted to go,” Myra had said when he’d announced his decision while she was fixing breakfast.

Marty only shrugged. “So I changed my mind.”

“It’s Family Day,” Myra began. “Joni said—”

“ ‘Joni said, Joni said,’ ” Marty mocked. “What do I care what your snotty sister said? I’m not going, okay? So just don’t bother me with it.”

Myra had hoped that by the time they got back from shopping he’d have quit drinking and changed his mind yet again, but even as she opened the front door, she knew he had done neither. Just as she expected, Marty was sprawled in his chair, a beer in his hand and three empty bottles on the floor next to him. He peered balefully at her through eyes that were already bleary, even though it was barely lunchtime. “Figured you’d be at that fancy-ass country club by now,” he said, his words slurring.

Myra’s expression tightened. “You don’t have to talk like—”

“I’ll talk any way I want to! This is my house, and—”

“Angel, why don’t you see if you can find something for lunch?” Myra cut in. Only after her daughter had left the room did she turn to her husband again. “I don’t want to have a fight,” she said, her voice quiet but her eyes hard. “But—”

Marty rose out of his chair and towered over her. “You don’t want to have a fight?” he asked, his voice as low as Myra’s but carrying a dangerous edge. The fingers of his right hand gripped the beer bottle so tightly that his knuckles turned white, and he raised it up so it was hovering in the air above Myra’s head. “Well, guess what, sweetheart?” he spat. “This is my house, and you’re my wife, and I’ll do any damned thing I please, and you’ll do any damned thing I say. And I say that if I don’t want to—”

Suddenly his words choked off and his eyes widened.

The hand holding the bottle began to shake, and Myra saw his face turn pale.

Was he having a heart attack? Or a stroke?

“Marty?” she said, reaching out.

“Get it away!” Marty said, taking a step backward.

Get it away? What was he talking about? For a moment Myra thought she must have misunderstood Marty’s slurred words, and then she realized that he wasn’t even looking at her. His eyes, now utterly terrified, were looking past her, as if there were something behind her.

Then she heard it.

A hissing sound, so soft it was barely audible, but carrying a note of menace that made Myra’s blood run cold.

Marty took another step backward, and the beer bottle dropped from his hand, clattering to the floor. “No,” he whispered, his voice suddenly sounding stone sober. “Get it away from me — get it away!”

The hissing sound came again, a low angry sibilance that sent another chill through Myra.

A snake?

Myra had never even seen anything but a garter snake, and even though she’d heard that every now and then someone came across a timber rattler, she didn’t know anyone who had actually seen one.

The hissing came again, and now Marty had backed all the way to the wall. His face was still ashen and there was a sheen of sweat on his forehead. Her heart pounding, Myra turned to see exactly what had so terrified her husband.

A cat!

A black cat with a white blaze on its chest. It was crouched low on the floor, its twitching tail stretched straight out behind it, and it was creeping slowly forward as if stalking prey that might sense the impending danger at any second and flee to safety.

The cat’s golden eyes seemed to glow with a fire from within, and they were fixed on Marty.

Myra gazed at the cat for a moment, then quickly moved toward it, stamping her foot and waving her hands. “Shoo! Scat!”

The cat seemed not even to be aware of her, let alone frightened or startled.

“Shoo!” Myra said again, and once more moved toward the cat.

This time the cat moved. But instead of darting out of the room, it shot past Myra in a dark blur, and a second later she heard Marty utter a choking scream. Spinning around, she took a step toward him, then stopped in her tracks.

Instead of a cat, she saw a figure clad in an old-fashioned black dress and a bonnet. The figure’s back was toward her, and its arm was raised as a moment ago Marty Sullivan’s own arm had been raised.

But instead of a beer bottle, the black-clad figure held a knife with a stiletto-sharp blade that glinted even in the shadowed light of the living room.

The blade was stained red, and over the figure’s shoulder Myra could see a bloody slash across Marty’s cheek.

The figure turned, and for an instant Myra got a glimpse of a young girl — perhaps a little younger than Angel — with a cameo brooch pinned to the breast of her black dress.

As Myra gazed at the vision — for surely that was what it had to be — the face changed. Its flesh began to dissolve, skin and muscle falling away to leave nothing but a skull.

A skull with sharply pointed teeth jutting from its jaws, and golden embers glowing deep in the empty eye sockets.

An instant later, so quickly that Myra wasn’t sure she’d seen it at all, the horrible apparition vanished.

Marty was on the floor now, his back against the wall, his knees drawn up. He held his hands to his face and was whimpering. “No… please… get it away from me… ”

Stunned by what she’d seen, Myra remained rooted for a moment, her mind reeling as she tried to make sense of the apparition. But there was no sense to be made of it — the images that churned in her mind wouldn’t fit together.

A cat—

A girl—

A skeleton—

And now nothing! No trace anywhere in the room of the cat, or the girl, or the knife the girl had held. But a moment later, when Marty dropped his hands away from his face and looked up at her, she saw the deep slash in his cheek — a slash that began just beneath his eye and ran all the way down to his jaw — and she knew that no matter how impossible it had been, she had indeed seen something.

But what?

Then, from behind her, she heard a strangled voice and whirled around to see Angel standing in the door to the kitchen, her face as ashen as Marty’s, her eyes wide. It took no more than that single glance to understand that whatever it was she’d seen, her daughter had seen it too.

Mother and daughter gazed at each other, and the silence between them seemed to stretch to eternity. It was Angel who finally broke the silence, her eyes shifting from her mother to her father. “Is — Is Dad okay?”

Before Myra could say anything, Marty lurched to his feet. “That cat,” he rasped. “It tried to kill me.” His eyes fixed furiously on Myra. “And you saw it too, so don’t tell me it didn’t happen!”

“I–I saw something,” Myra breathed, her mind still reeling.

“It tried to kill me!” Marty repeated, wiping away the blood that was streaming from his wound.

And it kept you from killing me, Myra thought, remembering the look in Marty’s eye and the fury in his voice as he’d stood above her only a few moments ago, the beer bottle raised high, poised to come crashing down into her face. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “I don’t know what I saw.”

I know what you saw, Angel thought as her mother began tending to her father’s wound. You saw Houdini. And you saw Forbearance.

And they are the same…