House Of Reckoning Part 25

Where? She wondered. Where do I look? Where do I even start?

Then she heard a faint scratching sound from behind her, and instinctively whirled around, only to see Cooper, his head c.o.c.ked, standing at the foot of the stairs, looking at her. Sighing, she turned back to the filing cabinets.

And something had changed.

But this time she knew right away what it was: one of the drawers-the bottom one in the cabinet farthest to the left-was open.

Not by much-just a crack-but she was certain that a moment ago, before she'd turned around, it had been closed.

Behind her, Cooper growled softly.

Bettina reached out, her fingers trembling, and pulled the drawer open.

At first it seemed empty, but then, when she pulled the drawer all the way open, she saw them. Tucked away behind the metal slider designed to keep the files in front of it neatly upright, were a batch of large envelopes, perhaps thirty in all.

Bettina carefully lifted the first one out, opened it and slid the pages out, shining the flashlight onto the top sheet. The patient's name had been Tarbell: William G. Tarbell. All that was on that first sheet was a sort of time line, listing the date of admission and the various wards to which Tarbell had been a.s.signed. The man had seemingly been well enough to act as a groundskeeper at Shutters during the last four months the time line included. Bettina carefully turned the pages, scanning the handwritten notes as quickly as she could. Over the course of a decade, Tarbell had apparently married three young women and fathered five children; only the last wife and one of the children survived. Tarbell, according to the notes, had eaten eaten all the others. all the others.

Bettina was almost certain she remembered a similar story in the ancient ma.n.u.script. Taking all the envelopes from the drawer, and with Cooper at her heels, she went back upstairs to the light and warmth of the kitchen. She turned off the bas.e.m.e.nt lights, locked the door, and carefully laid all the envelopes on the big wooden kitchen table. She went to the studio then, retrieved the ma.n.u.script, and returned with it to the kitchen.

Twenty minutes later she had correlated most of the stories in the ma.n.u.script to the files, and discovered that they had three things in common.

Each of the inmates had been in service here at the house; some as cooks, others as gardeners or housekeepers or stable hands.

Each had committed truly horrendous acts of violence and shown absolutely no remorse.

And finally, not one of them had a date of death listed in their records, let alone a date of release.

Not that anyone committed to Shutters Lake in its early days was ever released, and in only a very few cases had relatives claimed bodies when someone died. But most of Shutters' inmates never left at all; when they died, they were buried in the property's own cemetery, their names, dates of interments, and the location of their graves carefully recorded in a large ledger that was still in her grandfather's study. "Just in case," he said when he showed her the ledger so many years ago. "If someone came looking for a relative, my grandfather always wanted to be able to show them where the grave was, and he told me to keep the book handy, just in case any of their descendants showed up."

Bettina got up, went to the study, and found the ledger.

Not one of the people whose case histories had been tucked in the back of an otherwise empty file drawer were listed in the cemetery register.

But if they weren't buried in the cemetery- The memory of Sarah Crane's first drawing rose in Bettina's mind, and suddenly she knew where those people were.

The bas.e.m.e.nt.

All of them were in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

Chapter Twenty-two.

Bettina was just about to take off her robe and crawl back into bed, which was already occupied by both dogs and all three cats, when Rocky stood up, stiffening as he went on point with his nose directed at the window. "What is it?" Bettina asked as she untied the belt. But the sweep of a pair of headlights across the ceiling answered her question even before Rocky-and then Cooper-began barking.

Someone had come up the driveway and was now stopping in front of the house.

Cooper's ears perked up and he stared at the bedroom door, waiting for the doorbell.

Bettina looked at the clock. Ten-thirty. Who would come at this time of night?

The voice on the phone.

The doorbell rang, the dogs began to bark, and Bettina opened the bedroom door to let them dash downstairs. She followed, more slowly, coming to a stop at the bottom of the stairs as an echo of last night's phone call rose out of her memory.

... I'll kill you ...

What was she thinking? It wasn't time to open the door-it was time for an alarm system!

Except that anyone who wanted to kill her wouldn't ring the doorbell first.

Would they?

The bell rang again, but instead of going to the front door, she de-toured into the study and picked up a heavy poker from the hearth. With it clutched tightly in her right hand, she finally approached the door, turned on the porch light, opened the small Judas door and peered out.

Lily Dunnigan stood on the porch, her face pale and her eyes darting nervously as she searched for anyone who might be hidden in the velvet darkness of the night.

Bettina dropped the poker into the umbrella stand, unlatched the dead bolts, and opened the door. "Lily?"

"Thank G.o.d you're here," Lily said as she slipped into the house and Bettina closed the door behind her. Then she noticed Bettina's bathrobe. "Did I get you out of bed?"

"Not even close," Bettina said. "I hadn't gotten my robe off yet." Then she saw the redness in Lily's eyes, and her tone turned serious. "Lily, what is it? What's happened?"

The dogs, apparently satisfied that whoever this was didn't mean their mistress any harm, sniffed eagerly around Lily's feet, and she reached down to give them each a scratch before blowing her nose on a well-used handkerchief. "It's Nick," she finally managed to say. "And Shep."

"Come into the kitchen," Bettina said. "I'll put on a fresh pot of tea."

Lily unb.u.t.toned her coat and followed her to the kitchen. "Nick doesn't seem to be getting any better, and I'm-" She hesitated, and Bettina knew that whatever was coming next was something Lily wished she didn't have to say. After taking a deep breath, Lily went on. "Shep says that if Nick doesn't start getting better, he's going to send him back to the hospital."

Bettina frowned as she filled the teakettle. Though Nick wasn't in any of her cla.s.ses this year, she'd seen him around the school, and he'd seemed all right, at least until he was jumped in the park. "Is he worse since he was beaten up?" she asked.

"It seems to come and go. We thought the new drug was working for his hallucinations, but now they're getting worse." Lily hesitated again, then: "And now he's calling them 'visions.'"

Bettina's frown deepened. "That doesn't sound good."

"I'm at my wit's end," Lily said, finally taking off her coat and dropping onto one of the chairs at the big oak table.

Now Bettina understood why Lily had come here in the dead of night. She put some tea in the pot, and while waiting for the water to boil, leaned against the counter, folded her arms across her chest, and waited on Lily Dunnigan. Whatever Lily wanted, she would have to ask for it.

It didn't take long.

"I-I've heard ..." Lily began hesitantly. "Well, I've heard that you can do things ..."

She looked so embarra.s.sed that Bettina almost laughed out loud, but Lily also looked so miserable that she almost went over and hugged her. "Despite what you might have heard," she said gently, "I don't cast spells or tell fortunes or anything like that."

Now Lily looked like she wanted to fall through the floor. "I-I just wondered if there was anything-anything at all-you could do that might help Nick."

The kettle began to whistle, and Bettina poured water into the teapot, then took the pot and two mugs to the table. "I'm not a witch," she said.

"Oh, no, no, I'd never-"

Bettina smiled. "Come on, Lily-don't tell me you haven't heard the rumors." Lily reddened, answering her question. "Look, we both know I don't really fit into this town. I'm an artist-maybe not much of one-and I'm interested in all kinds of things. Herbs and natural medicines and things like that. That may make me a kook around here, but it doesn't make me a witch."

"I know," Lily insisted. "But I've heard you've given people things-"

"I've given a couple of people homeopathic remedies and mixed up a few herbal teas, and that's about it, Lily. But for problems like Nick's, I wouldn't have any idea what to do." Bettina poured tea into the mugs and pushed one of them across to Lily.

Lily eyed the mug suspiciously.

"It's nothing more than a little lemongra.s.s, green tea, chamomile, and ginger," Bettina told her. "If I mixed it right, it should calm you down."

Lily hesitated, tasted the tea, then took a swallow, followed by another. She set the mug down and managed a smile, the color in her face already healthier. "I just don't know what to do," she sighed.

"Maybe Shep's right," Bettina offered. "I mean, I'm sure Nick's doctors are competent."

"But his drugs aren't working anymore. In the hospital, he had the most terrible terrible hallucination-" hallucination-"

"Hospital?" Bettina said.

"After he was beaten up," Lily said. "They beat him up the day before yesterday, really badly. Cracked his ribs and gave him a concussion."

"Who did it?"

Lilly shook her head. "If he even knows, he's not saying. He says they attacked him from behind, and he never got a look at them."

Which told Bettina that Conner West went after Nick after blaming Nick and Sarah for his dog's death, and Nick was afraid that if he told on them, they'd just beat him up worse. Which, unfortunately, was probably true, given that Conner's father ran what pa.s.sed for a police force in Warwick.

"Anyway," Lily went on, "Nick had a hallucination of his room in the hospital burning. He thought his bed was on fire and that he was going to be burned alive."

Bettina's mind raced. That was the night Sarah Crane had been here, drawing.

Drawing fire.

Drawing it at the same time Nick Dunnigan was seeing it?

Had it happened again? Did Nick see what Sarah was drawing, as Sarah told her he had when she'd drawn the butchered dog?

Lily took another swallow from her mug of tea. "The thing is, Nick's calling them visions now. He says they mean something, but he doesn't know what. Or at least he can't tell me what." She gazed bleakly at Bettina. "I'm sorry-I shouldn't have come. I don't know what I was thinking."

"You're just trying to help your son," Bettina told her. "Isn't that what mothers are supposed to do?"

Lily nodded. "I just feel so helpless, and Nick's so frightened. If he could just calm down-" Her expression abruptly brightened and she looked down at her mug. "Maybe this tea!"

"Lily, it's nothing but a few herbs. It-"

But Lily was suddenly excited. "You said it would calm me down, and it did. Why wouldn't it do the same for Nick?"

"I don't-"

"Isn't it at least worth a try? I'll pay you for it!"

Bettina laughed. "You don't need to pay me. I can put it together in about five minutes, and I'll put some in a Baggie for you. But be careful: if Dan West stops you, he'll think it's marijuana."

Lily hesitated, her eyes widening. "It isn't, is it?"

"Of course not! Do you know what they'd do to me if I gave gra.s.s to a student?" Then her expression turned serious. "But don't tell anyone about this, all right? There are enough people in this town trying to get me fired already, and if they could accuse me of practicing medicine without a license, that might just do it."

"Would that be better or worse than witchcraft?" Lily asked, her voice as flat as her expression was deadpan. Then she giggled. "Probably worse-at least with witchcraft they could get the minister to pray for them."

As Lily poured herself another cup of the brew, Bettina set about mixing the tea and herbs. It might not do a thing for Nick, she thought, but at least giving it to him would make Lily feel better. As for Nick, whatever he was having, it wasn't visions.

It was communication.

Communication between him and Sarah Crane.

And whatever it was that was in this house.

Chapter Twenty-three.

It seemed like the longest morning of Sarah's life. When she emerged I from the Garveys' house a few minutes after seven-thirty, she'd started toward the corner as fast as she could, certain that Nick Dunnigan would be waiting for her. But there was no sign of Nick, not on the corner or anywhere else, and by the time she was half a block from the school, her mind was churning. He wasn't in the hospital-she was sure of that. And the last time she'd talked to him before the cell phone battery died, he said he was only going to be out for one day. But where was he? Why hadn't he been waiting for her?

By the time she reached the foot of the steps leading up to the school's front doors, she was so worried about Nick that she didn't even notice the way people were looking at her, but by the time she got inside and started making her way through the crowded hall toward her locker, she couldn't miss it. She couldn't miss the looks, and she couldn't miss the whispers, especially when the whisperers made sure they whispered loud enough so she could hear.

"... heard she was putting out for Conner West..."

"... so nutty Nick tried to kick West's ..."

"... Jolinda said she was doing three guys ..."

"... I can't imagine even one guy wanting to do it with her. I mean, she's crip-"

Sarah stopped listening then, and for the rest of the morning, through the first four cla.s.ses, she'd done her best to look at no one, to hear nothing. Let them talk, she told herself over and over again. Just ignore them. All of them.

Once, between second and third period, she caught a glimpse of Nick at the far end of the hall, but he hadn't seen her, and just as she started toward him, the bell rang. But at least she knew he was there.

Now, at last, the clock was ticking down to the end of fourth period, and when the bell finally rang, she didn't stay in her seat the way she usually did, waiting for the crowd to thin out. Today she stood up, picked up her backpack, stuffed her history text into it and- A hard shove knocked her back into her chair, and she looked up to see Jolene Parsons rolling her eyes. "Can't you wait until the rest of us are gone?" she hissed, keeping her voice low enough so only Sarah could hear her. "Why should we all have to wait just because you can't keep up?" Without waiting for an answer, Jolene turned away, and a few seconds later one of Jolene's friends looked back at her, snickering.

When the room was finally empty of everyone except the teacher, Sarah stood up again and walked out into the corridor. Looking at no one, refusing to hear anything, she clutched her backpack close to her chest and headed toward the cafeteria.