Darkness. Part 29

"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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s only moments ago.

A coffin.

"Look," he whispered to Kelly. "See? Look how the gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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 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! She ain't dead any more'n my own little baby is!

But it was impossible. It had had to be impossible! She couldn't try to replace Jenny with Kelly Anderson! 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 alb.u.m 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 alb.u.m 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 alb.u.m 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 alb.u.m. 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 cafe. 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 ma.s.s.

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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed over the alb.u.m.

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 alb.u.m, 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.