Black Creek Crossing

Chapter 7

ETH?” JANE BAKER CALLED, KNOCKING SHARPLY ON her son’s closed bedroom door. As she waited for a response she glanced at her watch, then tapped her foot nervously on the floor. They were due at the country club in twenty minutes, and it was a ten-minute drive.

And she’d told Seth to be ready ten minutes ago.

When he didn’t answer, she rapped again, harder this time, then turned the knob and pushed the door open. “Seth, we have to—” she began, and abruptly fell silent.

Seth was sitting at his desk, staring at the computer screen, still dressed in the same ratty jeans and stained shirt she’d told him to change when he came downstairs that morning. Not that he ever listened to her, which Jane supposed was her penance for having given birth to a boy, instead of the girl she’d been counting on.

“Really, Seth,” she said, making no attempt to hide her annoyance. “Didn’t I tell you what time we had to leave? And you haven’t even started getting ready yet!” Quickly turning off the monitor, Seth turned to look at her, and Jane could see by his expression that there was going to be an argument.

An argument she was in no mood for, given how badly her day had gone so far. First, she’d been late getting to the Gardening Club luncheon, and was certain from the moment she walked into the restaurant that the other women had been talking about her. Then the lunch itself had run late, and as the last to arrive, she hadn’t dared be the first to leave.

This, in turn, made her late to the Junior League Membership Committee meeting, which was to have been her first as chair of the committee. But when she arrived, LuciAnne Harmon had already begun conducting the meeting, and instead of sitting at the head of the table, Jane had to content herself with the only chair left — at the foot of the table.

And now she was going to have to contend with Seth.

“Why did you turn off the monitor?” she asked, her eyes narrowing. “Were you looking at something you shouldn’t have been?”

“I don’t—” Seth began, but his mother didn’t let him finish.

“Turn it back on,” she said. “Now. And don’t look at me that way, young man,” she added as Seth’s brows knit into a deep scowl.

Sighing heavily, he pushed the power button on the monitor, and a few seconds later the screen lit up. On it was a picture of the old house out on Black Creek Road by the Crossing where that man — Jane couldn’t remember his name — had murdered his wife and daughter.

“Where on earth did you get that?” she asked.

“I took it, Mom,” Seth said, closing the program with a quick mouse click.

Jane gazed at her son in puzzlement. Why couldn’t he be like the rest of the boys; why couldn’t he at least play tennis? There was a wonderful pro at the country club — she’d seen to that when she was on the Tennis Committee three years ago, and it was one of the few things the new members on the committee hadn’t tried to change. But even Rick Stacey hadn’t been able to get Seth to pick up a racket. “Can’t you find something better to do with your time?” she finally said. Before Seth could reply, she plunged on. “I want you to shut that computer off and change your clothes — you won’t have time to take a shower. We have to leave in—” She glanced at her watch. “—seven minutes, exactly.”

“Why do I have to go at all?” Seth asked. “Why can’t I just stay home?”

Jane felt another surge of annoyance. “Because it’s Saturday afternoon, and that’s when families get together at the club. You know that perfectly well!”

“But it’s just the Dunnes, isn’t it?” Seth complained.

“And Mel Dunne is just one of your father’s most important clients, isn’t he?” Jane countered, mimicking her son’s complaining tone almost perfectly.

“Mr. and Mrs. Dunne won’t care if I’m there or not.”

Jane lifted one of her carefully plucked eyebrows. “And what about Heather?”

Seth felt himself flushing, but could do nothing to stop it, and when he spoke, his voice was an unintelligible mumble.

“For heaven’s sake, Seth! Speak clearly!”

“I said, Heather doesn’t even like me!” Seth replied, his face burning now. “And none of her friends like me either.”

“And whose fault is that?” Jane shot back. “If you’d just make a little bit of an effort to—” Her words were cut off by her husband’s appearance at Seth’s door. Jane could see that Blake was even more annoyed than she was.

“What the hell is going on in here?” Blake Baker demanded. “Do either of you know what time it is? The last thing I need is—” Seeing how his son was dressed, his face darkened. “Goddamit, didn’t I tell you to be dressed and ready to go by three?”

Seth paled in the face of his father’s anger, but said nothing.

“Didn’t I?” Blake repeated, taking a step closer to Seth, who shrank back in his chair. When he still didn’t answer, Blake glanced at his wife. “Leave us alone, Jane,” he said in a tone that made Seth’s eyes widen.

He turned to his mother. “I’ll be ready in just a minute,” he said, finally getting up.

Jane shook her head. “Too late,” she said. “Maybe next time you’ll learn to keep track of time and do as you’re told.” Turning her back on her son, Jane left the room, pulling the door closed behind her. She didn’t want to know about her husband’s disciplinary methods. She’d turned her back on them before, and she knew she’d do it again.

“Turn around and drop your pants, Seth,” Blake Baker said. Though he spoke quietly, Seth began to tremble, and when his father unbuckled his belt, Seth’s eyes glistened with tears. “And don’t cry,” Blake added coldly. “For once in your life, be a man.”

Silently, Seth turned around, dropped his jeans and underwear around his ankles, and bent over.

A moment later he heard his father’s belt whistle as it lashed through the air, and felt the sting of the thick leather against his bare flesh. He clamped his jaw shut, stifling the scream of agony and allowing only a low grunt to betray the pain he was feeling.

Twice more his father’s belt lashed his backside, and though each lash sent a spasm of pain through him, Seth bore it in near silence, and let only a single tear slide down his cheek.

“Two minutes,” Blake Baker said as he slid his belt back through the loops of his pants. “Be dressed and downstairs, or we’ll go without you. And believe me when I tell you that you don’t want that to happen.”

Exactly 115 seconds later, Seth appeared at the bottom of the stairs, wearing a clean blue shirt stuffed into equally clean khaki pants. His bare feet had been shoved into the loafers he hated, but that his mother always insisted he wear when they went to the country club. The welts on his buttocks still stung and had already begun to swell, but at least they weren’t bleeding. In silence, he followed his parents out to the Lexus. He hesitated before getting into the backseat, but knew better than to stall too long.

Better to just get it over with.

Climbing into the car, he lowered himself gingerly onto the seat, and thought he would scream out loud as the pain radiated from his bruises. But no sound escaped his lips, and he held back his tears through the sheer force of his will. Ten minutes, he thought. I’ll just think about something else, and when we get there, I won’t have to sit down anymore at all.

Turning his mind away from the sting of the whipping his father had given him, he summoned up the image that had been on his computer screen.

The image of the house at Black Creek Crossing.

The image of the window on the second floor.

And the face — or at least something that looked like a face — that seemed to be peering out the window, watching as Mrs. Fletcher and the people she’d shown the house to drove away.

The face that had seemed so clear when he’d seen it in person that afternoon, yet showed up on his camera as nothing more than an indistinct blur, almost as if there was nothing there at all.