Darkness

22

Fred Childress picked up the large ring of keys he’d brought home with him from the mortuary that afternoon and glanced at his watch. Ten more minutes.

Midnight, Warren Phillips had told him.

Childress had known better than to argue with Phillips. He’d done that once, years ago, and though he hadn’t thought much of it at the time, the next week, when he’d gone for his shot, Phillips had refused to give it to him. Two days later, when he’d gotten up in the morning and seen himself in the mirror, he’d felt a cold wave of fear he never wanted to experience again. Overnight, he’d aged at least thirty years, and when he’d called Phillips, begging for the shot, Phillips had coolly replied that the mortician didn’t seem to understand the rules. “I’ll give you the shot,” he’d said. “But you’ll never argue with me again. Is that clear?” With the reflection of his own death mocking him from the mirror, Fred Childress had quickly agreed.

Now, at a few minutes before midnight, he got into his Cadillac and drove out to Judd Duval’s shack at the edge of the swamp.

Judd was sitting in front of the television, a can of beer in his hand, two empty ones sitting on the scarred table next to his chair.

“Are you drunk?” the mortician demanded.

Duval glared at him through bloodshot eyes. “Ain’t you that has to watch out for them kids every night,” he growled, lifting himself out of the chair and draining the beer in a single long pull. Leaving the television on, he followed Childress out to the car.

Childress said little on the way to the cemetery, nervously glancing in the mirror every few seconds, certain that unseen eyes were following every move the car made.

The deputy chuckled darkly. “What’s the problem, Fred? The way you’re actin’, anyone’d think you’d never even been in a graveyard before!” The chuckle turned into an ugly laugh as Childress glared at Duval, but he said nothing more until the undertaker had parked his dark blue Cadillac in the deep shadows of the dirt road that led around to the back gate of the cemetery. But before he got out of the car, Judd saw Childress glancing around yet again. “Shit, Fred, would you take it easy? There warn’t another car on the road. Now let’s just get this done, so’s you can go on home while I do the hard part, okay? Sometimes I don’t know why Phillips puts up with a chickenshit like you.”

Fred Childress’s temper flared. “For the same reason he puts up with an ignorant swamp rat like you,” he snapped. “He needs us.”

Duval’s lips curled derisively. “Yeah?” he drawled. “Well, I don’t know ’bout you, but I’d say we need him a hell of a lot more’n he needs us. Or are you startin’ to look forward to old age?”

Childress felt a vein on his forehead begin to throb as his anger rose. “Drop it, Duval,” he said. Getting out of the car, he went to the gate in the cemetery’s back fence and used one of the keys from the large ring to open it.

He hesitated before he actually stepped through the gate into the graveyard, his eyes scanning the limestone mausoleums, glowing eerily in the pale moonlight, in which lay the dead of Villejeune.

“I don’t like this, Judd,” Fred Childress said. “I don’t like this at all.” He glanced around, imagining eyes watching him in the darkness. “If anyone sees us—”

“No one’s gonna see us,” Duval growled. “If you’d just shut your mouth and get it over with, you could be back home in fifteen minutes.”

Childress steeled himself, and at last stepped into the cemetery, moving quickly to the mausoleum in which Jenny Sheffield’s body had been placed only that afternoon. He fumbled with the keys, finally inserting one into the keyhole in the crypt. Opening the door, he pulled the coffin halfway out. “Give me a hand with this, will you?”

Together, the two men pulled the casket free from the crypt and lowered it to the ground. Fred Childress opened the lid, and for a moment they both stared silently down at Jenny’s lifeless face. Finally Duval lifted her from the coffin and started back toward the gate.

Fred Childress, left alone in the graveyard, reclosed the coffin and raised it back up to the crypt, sliding it inside once more.

He had just closed the door of the crypt when he heard the sound.

A crack, as if someone had stepped on a twig, crushing it underfoot.

He froze, his whole body breaking out in a sweat.

He listened, but the sound didn’t come again, and finally he twisted the key in the crypt’s lock and hurried back to Duval, who was waiting by the car.

“What took you so long?” the deputy demanded.

Fred Childress glanced back toward the graveyard. “I heard something.”

Duval’s eyes narrowed. “You sure?”

Childress nodded silently. Now it was Judd Duval who gazed out into the cemetery. “I don’t—”

He cut off his own words.

He’d barely missed it; indeed, he still wasn’t sure he’d seen anything at all. Just the faintest flicker of movement in the shadows. “Stay here,” he whispered. “I’m gonna have a look around.”

• • •

“He heard me,” Kelly whispered, but immediately fell silent as Michael held a finger to his lips and motioned to her to follow him.

Moving quickly, he started back toward the front gate of the cemetery, slipping as silently as a cat through the deep shadows cast by the mausoleums. A few moments later he paused, and as Kelly crouched beside him, slid his head around the corner of the tomb behind which they were concealed. He saw nothing at first, but then a shadowy form stepped out onto the path fifty yards away, crossed, and disappeared again. Michael straightened up, glancing quickly around, then squatted down next to Kelly.

“We’re only twenty feet from the gate. He’s looking in the wrong place, so we can get out. Just follow me.”

He peered around the corner once more, saw nothing, and made his move. Staying low, he darted toward the gates, then dropped down behind the wall.

“Maybe we better go home,” Kelly whispered as she crouched beside him once more. But Michael shook his head.

“I want to know who it is. Come on.”

He started off again, staying close to the shelter of the low wall that surrounded the graveyard until he came to the unpaved road that led around to the back. Across the dirt track was a thick stand of pines, and Michael darted into it, stopping only as the deep shadows of the trees closed around him.

“What are we going to do?” Kelly asked.

“Wait,” Michael told her.

• • •

Judd Duval silently crisscrossed the cemetery, his eyes scanning the shadows for any sign of life. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a movement, but even before he could start toward it, the lithe form of a cat leaped off the roof of one of the stone buildings and disappeared into the darkness. Chuckling hollowly at his own nervousness, he went back to the car where Fred Childress was waiting.

“Nothin’,” he said as he slid into the car next to the mortician.

“There was something,” Childress insisted, starting the engine. “It wasn’t just the sound. I could feel someone watching me.”

Duval’s lips curled into a mocking sneer. “Are all grave diggers scared of ghosts, or is it just you?”

Childress’s prim lips tightened. He put the car in gear, but left the headlights off until they reached the main road. He paused once more, searching in both directions for any sign of another car.

Nothing.

At last he turned the headlights on and pulled out onto the pavement, pressing the accelerator. The Cadillac’s powerful engine surged, and the car shot away into the darkness.

With every yard he put between himself and the cemetery, Childress felt his sense of relief grow.

Perhaps, after all, he’d heard nothing.

• • •

“Did you see who it was?” Kelly asked as the car disappeared down the road and the two of them stepped out of the shelter of the pines.

Michael nodded, his mind racing. The driver had been Fred Childress. But there was someone else in the car with him, someone he hadn’t been able to see. “It was Mr. Childress,” he said. “He owns the funeral home. I couldn’t see the other one.”

“What would they be doing out here in the middle of the night?”

“And how come they didn’t turn on their lights?”

They crossed the dirt road again, and a minute later were back in the cemetery, making their way quickly along the paths that wound through the tombs, coming finally to the vault in which Jenny’s coffin had been placed that afternoon. Michael stepped close to it and tried to pull the door of the crypt open, but it held fast.

Looking down, he frowned, and stepped back.

Crouching low, he studied the close-cropped grass in front of the mausoleum. Though it was barely visible in the dim moonlight, he thought he could see the faint outline of something that had pressed down upon the grass only moments ago.

A coffin.

“Look,” he whispered to Kelly. “See? Look how the grass is pressed down here.”

Kelly dropped down next to Michael, her eyes scanning the area in front of the sepulcher. “Here?” she breathed.

Michael’s eyes followed her hand. “There was something sitting there not very long ago. Watch.” Using the palm of his own hand, he pressed down on the lawn, and when he lifted his hand away, its print remained clearly visible for a moment before the grass began to straighten up again, until, like the larger impression in front of the crypt, it was barely visible. Indeed, even as they watched, both of the faint impressions disappeared in the weak light of the moon.

Kelly looked up at him. “They took her, didn’t they?”

Michael nodded.

“What are we going to do?” Kelly asked as they both stood up, shivering despite the heat of the night.

The words came into Michael’s mind unbidden, as if they’d been there forever, waiting for the right moment to rise up into his consciousness. “Kill them,” he replied, his voice empty. “We’re going to kill them all.”

Abstractly, as if observing himself from afar, Michael wondered why he felt nothing as he uttered the words.

And then he remembered.

He felt nothing because he had no soul.

Long ago, right after he had been born, it had been stolen from him.

Now it was time to get it back.

• • •

Barbara Sheffield stared out the window at the silver crescent of the moon. Sleep would not come. She had lain awake for what seemed like hours, feeling the exhaustion of the day in every bone of her body, but her mind refused to let her rest.

Kelly’s words echoed in her mind. If I ever find out who my real mother is, I wish it could turn out to be you.

Then Amelie Coulton’s: She ain’t dead any more’n my own little baby is!

But it was impossible. It had to be impossible! She couldn’t try to replace Jenny with Kelly Anderson!

Yet the thought refused to be put aside. Barbara slipped out of bed. She went to Jenny’s room first, standing in the doorway, her vision blurring with tears as she looked once more at all of Jenny’s things.

Her stuffed animals, propped up on her bed the way Jenny always arranged them, were sitting against the wall so that they seemed to be staring at Barbara with their big sad eyes.

The closet door stood open, and Barbara could see the row of dresses hanging inside, and the shoes, set in neat pairs, beneath them.

Pictures covered the walls, the colorful scribblings that had always made Jenny so proud and which now made Barbara’s heart melt, knowing there would be no more.

A sob catching in her throat, Barbara turned out the light and went to the kitchen, where she put on a kettle of water to make herself a cup of coffee.

When she went to the living room and pulled the family picture album out of the bottom drawer of her mother’s antique sideboard, she told herself that she wanted nothing more than to look at some of the pictures of Jenny, to replace the haunting image of Jenny in her casket with one of her daughter when she’d been happy and full of life.

But a few minutes later, after she’d made her coffee and settled herself at the kitchen table, she found she couldn’t look at the pictures of Jenny — the wounds were still too fresh, the pain too sharp.

She paged slowly through the album and found herself stopping each time she came to a picture of Tisha.

She found herself studying the pictures of her niece carefully, comparing the images in the album to the one in her mind of Kelly Anderson.

Their resemblance was unquestionable.

The lips were the same, full and generously curved.

The same high cheekbones and arched brows.

And yet there were differences, too.

Tisha was much pudgier than Kelly, but then, her mother had always been heavier than Barbara.

And Tisha was short, like her father.

Still …

No! She was imagining it all, denying her grief by making up fantasies!

She turned the pages carefully back to the beginning of the album. But before she closed its cover, her eyes fell on the first picture she’d put into the book.

It was an eight-by-ten enlargement of a picture that had been taken at the Fourth of July picnic sixteen years earlier, which she’d captioned “Last Days of Freedom — Of course I can barely walk!” She smiled at the image of herself in the last days of her pregnancy with Sharon, sitting on the picnic table, Craig beside her.

They’d looked so young then, all of them.

She began looking at the people in the picture. Some of them had changed so much that she hardly recognized them.

There was Arlette Delong, wearing the same beehive hairdo then that she still wore today. Except in the picture, Arlette’s elaborate coiffure didn’t have the look of desperation about it that it had taken on lately. Back then Arlette had been a pretty young woman — now, sixteen years later, her figure had thickened, and her middle-aged features had hardened from the long hours in her café. But her hair had remained the same — teased and back-combed, then sprayed solid. The only thing missing in the picture was the pencil that Arlette was now in the habit of implanting in the platinum mass.

There, too, were Billy-Joe and Myrtle Hawkins, Myrtle almost as pregnant with Buddy as Barbara had been with Sharon. Billy-Joe’s handsome features had all but dissolved since then, his nose now puffy from the long years of drinking, his once-flat stomach having long ago given way to a beer belly.

Barbara frowned, her eyes coming to rest on Warren Phillips, who was standing with a group of other men under a pine tree to the left of the picnic table at which Barbara herself was sitting.

The doctor didn’t seem to have changed a bit. His strong chin was as well-defined now as it was in the picture, and his dark hair, shot through with gray, was unchanged as well.

Barbara paused, thinking.

Back then she had always thought of Dr. Phillips as being much older than she, but now, sixteen years later, they seemed to be closer to the same age.

But how old was he?

She studied the picture, finally getting a magnifying glass from the kitchen drawer.

If she’d had to guess, she’d have said he was around forty-five in the picture, fifty at the oldest.

Which would make him at least sixty-one now. Maybe older.

And yet he still looked forty-five.

She began looking at some of the other men in the group around Phillips.

Carl Anderson was instantly recognizable, for he, like Phillips, hadn’t changed at all in the last sixteen years.

Nor had Fred Childress, or Orrin Hatfield.

She found Judd Duval, lounging on a blanket.

He, too, looked exactly the same then as he did now.

She kept studying the picture, searching for more of the faces that seemed not to have changed in nearly two decades. She looked up as a shadow passed over the album.

Craig, his eyes worried, was looking down at her. “Honey? What is it?”

Barbara smiled wanly. “I couldn’t sleep,” she told him. “So I finally just gave up. Want a cup of coffee?”

Craig shook his head. “What are you looking at?”

“Pictures,” Barbara replied. “I–I just wanted to look at Jenny again. But I couldn’t.”

Craig reached over and closed the album, then pulled her up from the chair and held her close. “Things are going to be all right, honey,” he whispered into her ear. “I know it doesn’t seem like the pain will ever go away right now, but it will. I promise.”

Barbara let him lead her back to the bedroom, but as she tried once more to go to sleep, she knew he was wrong.

The pain of her loss was only going to get worse.

And yet, despite her grief, sleep finally came, and with sleep came dreams.

Dreams of searching for her lost daughters, who were calling out to her in the darkness.

She could hear them clearly, both Jenny and Sharon.

She followed their voices through the darkness, and at last, coming upon a circle of bright light, she found them.

They were together, smiling at her.

But when she ran to gather them in her arms and comfort them, then hold them away to look into their faces, something had changed.

Jenny — her beautiful Jenny — was the same as she had always been, smiling and laughing.

But Sharon had changed.

She wasn’t Sharon at all.

She was Kelly Anderson.

• • •

Carl Anderson was awake that night, too, lying in bed, a book open on his lap. He heard a sound, like a door closing, frowned, then put the book aside and got out of bed. Putting on a robe, he went out into the living room, leaving the lights off.

He checked the front door, then moved on to the doors to the patio.

Everything was locked.

So was the kitchen door, and the door to the garage.

At last Carl mounted the stairs to Kelly’s room and stood outside, listening. Hearing nothing, he opened the door a few inches and looked inside.

Kelly was in bed, the sheet covering her. She was lying on her side, facing the door, her eyes closed in sleep.

Carl frowned.

Was she really asleep, or had it been her door he’d heard closing?

He slipped into the room and moved closer to the bed.

Now he could hear the steady rhythm of her breathing.

“Kelly?” he whispered, reaching out to touch her.

As his fingers brushed against her skin, her eyes snapped open. “Grandpa?” she gazed up at him in the dim light and felt a chill of fear. In the dim moonlight he looked different — his eyes sunken, his face older. “I–I was asleep,” she said quickly, shrinking away from his touch and doing her best to conceal the fright that had seized her.

Carl straightened up. “I thought I heard a door,” he explained. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

Kelly forced a smile. “It’s okay. I was just dreaming.” She rolled over as if going back to sleep, and a moment later heard her grandfather leaving the room.

But even after he was gone, the memory of his eyes — the eyes of the man in her dreams — remained etched in her memory.

• • •

On the way back to his room Carl paused in the bathroom to relieve his bladder. But as he was about to switch off the light, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror.

His eyes had sunk into their sockets, and deep wrinkles were etched in his skin.

He gazed at his fingers and saw the beginnings of the telltale liver spots.

He thought quickly. How long had it been since his last shot?

Only a few days!

Then what was wrong?

He hurried back to his room, closed the door, picked up the phone and dialed Warren Phillips’s home number. On the seventh ring Phillips’s answering machine came on, inviting him to leave a message at the tone.

Carl swore softly, but then began speaking. “It’s Carl Anderson. I need another shot right away. Call me as soon as you get in.” He thought a moment, then spoke again. “No, don’t call me. It’ll wake up everyone else in the house, and I can’t let anyone see me until I’ve had my shot. I’ll be there in the morning, before it gets light.”

He hung up the phone and sank down onto the bed.

He looked at the clock.

One-thirty.

Four and a half hours before he could get to Phillips.

He picked up the phone again, redialing the same number. “I don’t think I can wait,” he said into the doctor’s answering machine. “I’ll call every half hour until I get hold of you.”

He lay back on the bed, knowing he wouldn’t sleep for the rest of the night.