Darkness. Part 28

At last he reached down to touch her, resting his hand on her own much smaller ones, which were folded on her breast, holding a flower.

He squeezed her hands gently and was about to withdraw his fingers from her when he thought he felt a movement.

He froze, his hand remaining where it was, waiting for it to come again.

But no.

He'd only imagined it.

And yet as he, too, turned away from the coffin, he still couldn't bring himself to believe that Jenny was really gone, that he'd never see her again.

Something inside him, something he didn't quite understand, told him that she was still alive, that she wasn't dead at all, that she was still a part of his life.

"I feel the same way," his father had told him last night when he'd finally confessed the strange feeling he had. "We all feel like that. It's so hard to accept the finality of death, especially with someone like Jenny. I still expect her to come running in, climb into my lap, and plant one of those wet kisses on my cheek. Sometimes I wake up in the night and think I hear her crying. It's part of mourning, Michael. I know it all seems impossible, but it's happened. We have to accept it."

But for Michael it was different. Each morning, when he woke up, the feeling that Jenny was alive was stronger.

It was as if she was reaching out to him, calling to him, crying out for him to help her.

He moved down the aisle, searching the crowd for Kelly Anderson, and finally spotted her sitting with her parents and grandfather. As their eyes met, she nodded at him, not in greeting, but as if they shared some unspoken secret.

He understood.

She had the same feeling he had.

She had it, and recognized it in him.

Barbara watched in silence as Jenny's coffin was placed in the crypt, a cold chill pa.s.sing over her as the door closed and her daughter's body was sealed into the stone chamber. Almost involuntarily, her eyes shifted to the crypt next to Jenny's, and she read the inscription on its door.

SHARON SHEFFIELDJULY 26, 1975TAKEN HOME BY THE LORD THE SAME DAY.

For Sharon, there had been no funeral. Her tiny body had simply been taken from the hospital to Childress's, then interred here.

On the first Sunday that Barbara had felt well enough, there had been a prayer said for her at church.

And that was all.

She'd never seen her, never once held that first little girl in her arms.

Suddenly she sensed a movement behind her, and turned to see Amelie Coulton pushing her way through the small gathering in the cemetery. Her lifeless blond hair, unwashed, hung limply around her face, and she was clad in a shapeless dress whose color had long ago faded into a mottled off-white.

But it was Amelie's eyes that riveted Barbara's attention, for they burned feverishly with an inner light that reached out to Barbara, seizing her.

"She ain't dead!" Amelie said, her voice quavering. "She ain't dead any more'n my own little baby is!"

Barbara's heart lurched as the words struck her. What was Amelie saying? She'd seen seen Jenny. Jenny.

Not Jenny.

Sharon!

Was she talking about Sharon?

"Ask Clarey Lambert!" Amelie went on. "She knows! She knows it all!"

Suddenly two men appeared at Amelie's side, taking her arms. Amelie tried to shake them off, but they held her tight, keeping her from coming any closer to Barbara.

"I ain't lyin'," Amelie went on, her voice breaking now. "You got to believe me, Miz Sheffield. You was nice to me-I wouldn't lie to you!"

Barbara said nothing for a moment, her mind swimming.

"It's all right, Barbara," she heard someone saying. "We'll get her out-"

"No," Barbara said, her voice suddenly coming back to her. "Let her go. Please. She's all right."

The men hesitated, but finally released Amelie, who stayed where she was for a second, then came forward to put her hand gently on Barbara's arm. "I ain't wrong," she said. "If'n your baby'd died, you'd know. A mama knows them things." She seemed about to say something else, but then apparently changed her mind. Turning away, she disappeared through the crowd as quickly as she'd come.

But her words stuck in Barbara's mind, echoing there, festering.

Could it be true?

No!

But as the graveside service finally came to an end a few minutes later, Barbara's eyes fell on Kelly Anderson.

Kelly, who looked so much like her niece Tisha.

Kelly, who was the same age Sharon would have been had she lived.

Kelly, who was adopted.

Kelly was approaching her now, her eyes serious, her face pale beneath the simple makeup she was wearing.

"I'm so sorry, Mrs. Sheffield," she said. "I-I don't know what-"

Barbara put her arms around the girl and pulled her close. "You don't have to say anything, Kelly," she whispered. "I'm just so glad you're here. Sometimes, when I look at you, I can almost imagine I haven't lost both my little girls. I can almost believe that maybe Sharon didn't die at all, and grew up to be you." She felt Kelly stiffen in her arms, and immediately regretted her words. "I'm sorry," she said, releasing Kelly from the embrace and dabbing at her suddenly tear-filled eyes. "I had no right to say that. I-"

But before she could go on, Kelly stopped her. "It's all right, Mrs. Sheffield," she said so softly that Barbara could barely make out the words. "If I ever find out who my real mother is, I wish it could turn out to be you."

Their eyes met for a moment, neither of them speaking. Finally Kelly turned away, but as she rejoined her parents and grandfather, Barbara kept watching her.

Who is she? she thought. Where did she come from?

Suddenly, with an intensity she'd rarely felt before, she knew she had to find out.

Kelly and Michael were sitting on the dock behind the Sheffield house. Above them, on the lawn, they could hear the buzz of conversation, as people talked quietly among themselves. The reception had been going on for an hour, and people were finally beginning to drift away, but Michael was certain that some of them-his parents' closest friends-would stay on into the evening, unwilling to leave his mother alone.

"I don't know why they don't just go away," he said, glancing over his shoulder. "It's not like they can do anything."

"I know," Kelly agreed. "I guess it's just what people do at funerals." She was silent for a moment, and when she spoke again, she didn't look at Michael. "Do you think Jenny's really dead?"

Michael stiffened, knowing instantly what she was talking about. "No. I don't know what happened. But when Judd Duval told me how he found her, I didn't believe him." He shifted position, his brows knitting into a deep frown. "I just don't feel feel like she's dead. It's really weird-but I keep feeling like she's still alive and needs me to help her." like she's dead. It's really weird-but I keep feeling like she's still alive and needs me to help her."

Kelly finally looked at him. "I know. I keep getting the same feeling. Last night I dreamed about Jenny. And in the dream, I saw that old man, too. Only he was trying to get Jenny, not me."

"But-"

"We have to find out, Michael. And it's not just about Jenny, either." Michael c.o.c.ked his head curiously. "I keep thinking about what Amelie said, too."

Michael's frown deepened. "She said to ask Clarey. She said that Clarey knows."

They were silent for a few minutes, and then Kelly said, "There's a way we can find out."

Michael looked at her intently. "I know. I've been thinking about it, too." He was silent for a moment, then: "Tonight?"

Kelly hesitated, then nodded.

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. "s.h.i.t, 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 chickens.h.i.t 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 h.e.l.l 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.