Second Child Part 19

"Then what happened?" Phyllis asked, her voice taking on a patronizing tone, as if she were talking to a five-year-old.

"I-I don't know," Melissa whispered, her eyes darting around the attic, searching for something, anything, that might prove what she'd seen.

"Well, then, since you don't seem to know what happened," Phyllis went on, starting back toward the stairs, "why don't I tell you. You had a bad dream, that's all."

"But it wasn't a dream," Melissa insisted, her eyes instinctively going to Teri for support. "I heard footsteps up here and came to see what they were. I-I thought it was you. I thought you were playing a trick on me."

Teri shrugged, shaking her head. "It wasn't me," she said. "I was asleep. I only woke up when you screamed."

"But-"

"But nothing," Phyllis declared. "You've been up here-you've seen that there's nothing here. If you were up here before and really saw what you say you saw, then you must have been walking in your sleep again."

The words battered at Melissa's mind. Was it possible her mother was right? Could she have been sleepwalking again, and only dreamed the sounds she'd heard and the things she'd seen?

It didn't seem possible.

She stared once more at the pearls still clutched in her hand. "But I found these-" she began.

Her mother cut her off. "You brought those in hoping to convince me you were telling the truth. But it won't work. You're going back to bed, and this time you'll stay there."

Melissa felt a chill as she heard the words, for she was certain she knew exactly what her mother was talking about. And when they got back to the second floor, her mother's next words confirmed her fears.

"Why don't you go on down to the kitchen, Teri?" she suggested. "Put on some milk for cocoa, and I'll be down in a minute." She paused, her eyes fixing on her daughter. "As soon as I get Melissa settled into her bed," she finished. But instead of going with Melissa to the room at the end of the hall, she sent her daughter ahead.

When she came into Melissa's room a minute or so later, the girl flinched as she saw the straps in her mother's hands.

"I don't like these any more than you do," Phyllis said as she began fastening the leather cuffs around Melissa's arms and legs. "But I just don't know what else to do. You can't just wander around the house at night, can you?"

Melissa made no answer, for the moment she had seen the dreaded straps in her mother's hands, she had called out to D'Arcy to come and help her.

And D'Arcy had responded, sending Melissa instantly to sleep while she herself stayed awake to endure the terror of the bondage.

Half an hour later Teri came back upstairs with Phyllis, kissed her stepmother good night, and returned to her room. She waited until she heard the door to the master suite close, then crossed to the bathroom door, unlocked it, and moved through the bathroom itself to Melissa's door. She paused, listening, and heard nothing.

Finally, she opened the door and slipped through it into the darkness of Melissa's room. Her bare feet padding silently across the floor, she went to the bed and looked down into her half sister's face.

Melissa lay on her back, her eyes open, staring, at the ceiling.

"Melissa?" Teri whispered. "Are you awake?"

There was no answer.

Teri smiled in the darkness, her lips curving upward in an expression of hard cruelty. "They're going to think you're crazy," she whispered. "They're all going to think you're crazy, and they're going to lock you up."

Laughing silently to herself, she returned to her room and quickly drifted into a deep and dreamless sleep.

CHAPTER 15.

Teri awoke a second or two before the alarm on her nightstand went off, her hand clamping over the little clock before its soft buzzing reached full volume. She peered at the clock's dimly glowing hands; it was four-thirty, and outside her window the sky was still black. She lay in bed for a few minutes, listening to the night sounds, but there was nothing out of the ordinary; only the chirping of crickets and frogs against the backdrop of gentle surf lapping at the beach.

The house itself was silent.

She slipped out of bed, pulled her robe on, and went to the window. Beyond the pool, Cora Peterson's house was no more than a shadow against the dark ma.s.s of the woods at whose edge it sat.

Next she crept into the bathroom, where she listened at Melissa's door for a moment. But Melissa wasn't a problem, for Teri knew that she had at least a couple of hours before Phyllis would come in to take the restraints off her half sister.

And all she needed was a few minutes.

Going back into her own room, she dressed as quickly as she could, fumbling only a little bit in the darkness. At last she found her sneakers, exactly where she'd placed them last night, right next to the night table. She slipped her bare feet into them, pulled the laces tight and tied them.

She crept to her door, listening once more before she opened it, but the house was still as silent as a tomb. A tiny smile of satisfaction curving the corners of her mouth, she pulled her door open, slipped through it and shut it silently behind her.

She crossed the broad landing around the head of the staircase, brushed past her stepmother's door, then turned right into the guest wing.

At the end of the hallway she came to the closed door of the servants' stairs.

She opened the door, stepped through it into the pitch-black shaft and pulled it shut behind her. Now, blinded by the total darkness, she was operating only by her memory of her earlier climb up these stairs, when she had been carrying Blackie's corpse up to the attic. The moon had still been up then, and there had been enough light coming in the skylight at the top of the stairwell to see the turns in the stairs. Now, though, she had to feel her way along, carefully counting the steps as she went.

If she stumbled on the way down...

She put the thought out of her mind. So far, almost everything had worked perfectly.

The only bad moment had been when Melissa, instead of running screaming from the attic the moment she saw Blackie, had taken the pearls from his neck first. She hadn't counted on that happening. She'd a.s.sumed that the sight of the dead dog would be enough to send her half sister into hysterics. But Melissa had crossed the attic, almost as if she didn't believe what she was seeing.

And then she'd taken the pearls.

Teri, hidden behind a trunk a few feet away, had almost panicked when that happened. But even as Melissa had run screaming back to the stairs, she'd figured out what to do. Untying Blackie's body, she'd stuffed it into one of the trunks, then hurried back down the servants' stairs to the second floor. By then Melissa was already in her mother's room, blubbering out her story, and Teri had slipped by unnoticed in the darkness of the hallway.

She'd unlocked her room and gone through the bathroom into Melissa's room. Melissa's pearls were exactly where Teri had found them a few days before, and she'd been back in her own room, the pearls hidden away in her own chest, long before Phyllis and Melissa had started up to the attic.

The whole thing had worked perfectly.

She came to the top of the stairs and pushed the door open. Its unoiled hinges squealed in protest, and Teri froze, but then reminded herself that she was at the other side of the house. No one could possibly have heard the faint squeaking noise.

She began threading her way through the attic, groping in the darkness, until finally she came to the trunk in which Blackie's body lay. She opened it, lifted the dog's dead weight out onto the floor, then eased the lid back down.

Five minutes later, the corpse heavy in her arms, Teri emerged into the kitchen. She went out the back door, making her way across the lawn to the shelter of the pool house. A faint glimmer of light was showing on the eastern horizon now, and above her the night sky was losing its inky blackness.

Taking a deep breath, her arms already beginning to ache from the weight of Blackie's corpse, she started across the patio around the pool.

And froze.

From somewhere in the darkness, eyes were watching her.

But it was impossible-the house was dark; everyone was asleep.

She turned, scanning the house once more. The windows were all dark and everything seemed peaceful. But then, as she turned away once more, a flicker of movement-barely visible-caught her eye.

The attic.

Had someone been at the small dormer window in the attic, looking out at her?

She paused for a moment, thinking, her eyes fixed to the window. But as the sky began to brighten further, she decided she'd been mistaken. There was nothing there; no eyes were watching her.

She was safe.

She skirted the pool house, then paused once again, gazing intently at Cora's house before crossing the lawn toward the old pottingshed behind the garage.

"But what's it for?" she'd asked Melissa only a few days ago, when they'd come across the crumbling lean-to while her half sister was giving her a tour of the grounds.

"It's where the gardeners used to grow flowers. They'd plant the seeds in pots in here, so when they went into the garden they were already blooming. But n.o.body's used it for years."

"Why don't they tear it down?" Teri had asked, gazing at the sagging walls. "It looks like it's about to collapse."

Melissa giggled. "It is. But every time Daddy says he's going to have someone pull it down, Mom tells him she's going to use it for something. Once it was going to be an art studio, and another time she was going to do ceramics. But she never does. She never even comes near it."

Which was why Teri had thought of it tonight.

Dropping Blackie's corpse to the ground she pulled the door open. Inside, just as she remembered when she'd peered into the shed before, were the loose floorboards. It only took her a moment to lift three of them free.

She went back outside, picked Blackie up for the last time, and carried him up the steps.

Less than a minute later it was over. The floorboards were back in place and the crumbling shack was exactly as she'd found it.

Except that now it concealed Blackie's body in the s.p.a.ce beneath its floor.

It's all right, D'Arcy's voice whispered. D'Arcy's voice whispered. I'm going away now, and it's all right for you to wake up. I'm going away now, and it's all right for you to wake up.

Melissa came awake slowly, her eyes fluttering for a moment, finally opening as Phyllis loosened the last of the straps that held her to the bed. She felt a flash of panic as she saw the restraints, but a moment later her mind cleared and she realized the night was over. It was morning, and a stream of bright sunlight was pouring through the window. "What time is it?" she asked.

Phyllis's brows rose slightly. "Oh, so you've finally decided to speak to me?" Melissa gazed blankly up at her. "Oh, please, Melissa. Why do you always do that?"

"D-Do what, Mama?" Melissa asked, her voice wary. Was it possible she'd already done something wrong this morning? But she'd just awakened a second ago!

And then the memory of the scene in the attic last night came flooding back to her. Was her mother still angry about that? But it wasn't fair.

She had had seen Blackie up there, and- seen Blackie up there, and- Phyllis's sharp voice broke into her thoughts. "Do you think I don't notice?" her mother demanded. "You don't fool me, young lady. I know you're always awake when I come in."

Awake? What was her mother talking about? "But I wasn't," she began.

Her mother silenced her with an angry look. "Don't lie to me, Melissa. I know you hate the restraints, but they're for your own good. How do you think it makes me feel when I come in in the morning and you just stare at the ceiling, then pretend to be asleep when I start taking them off? If you don't want to say good morning to me, fine. But don't insult my intelligence by pretending to be asleep."

Suddenly Melissa understood.

It wasn't she who had been awake when her mother came in.

It had been D'Arcy, watching over her, letting her sleep through the night. She shuddered slightly, wondering how D'Arcy could stand it, remembering the panic she herself always felt when her mother came in with the horrible straps. But D'Arcy didn't seem to mind them at all.

"I-I'm sorry, Mama," Melissa murmured. "I just-I guess maybe I wasn't quite awake yet."

Phyllis, slightly mollified by her daughter's apology, nodded. "All right," she said. "It's almost eight. Teri and I have already had breakfast, and we're going to the club."

Melissa nodded automatically, and a moment later her mother was gone. Melissa went into the bathroom, stripped off her pajamas, and took a shower. As she was pulling on her favorite pair of faded jeans a few minutes later, she heard Tag's voice drifting in through the open window.

"Blackie! Here boy! Come on, Blackie!"

Melissa's heart leaped. She must have been wrong last night after all. If Tag was calling Blackie- But then she remembered the pearls. Instantly, her eyes went to her nightstand, where she'd put them last night.

They were still lying there, exactly as she'd left them.

She pulled a T-shirt on over her head and ran to the window. Tag was moving along the edge of the lawn that bordered on the woods, calling out to the dog every few yards. She watched him for a moment, her throat constricting as she realized what she had to do.

She shoved her feet into a pair of sandals and hurried downstairs. Cora, alone in the kitchen, smiled at her, tilting her head toward a gla.s.s of orange juice on the counter. "Your mama and Teri are already gone," she said. "I saved you some juice, and I've got some bacon in the oven. And I could fix some eggs."

Melissa shook her head at the offer, and Cora looked sharply at her. "Is something wrong, honey? You look-"

"Blackie's gone, isn't he?" Melissa asked.

Cora caught her breath. "Well, now, I'm not sure you could say that, but-"

"But he is, isn't he?" Melissa insisted, reading the truth in Cora's expression.

"Well, he didn't come in last night," she admitted. "But like I told Tag this morning, that's right normal for a dog. I mean, all it'd take is one female in heat, and you have to expect him..." Her words trailed off as Melissa dashed out the back door, running across the lawn toward Tag, already calling out to him.

"Tag? Tag!"

He was just about to go into the woods when Melissa's words stopped him. He turned around to see her trotting toward him. A few seconds later she was beside him.

"He's gone, isn't he?" she asked, her breath coming in quick pants.

Tag's brow furrowed slightly. "How'd you know?"

Melissa hesitated, remembering once more the look on her mother's face last night when she'd told her about seeing Blackie's body hanging from a rafter in the attic. Would Tag look at her that way, too? "I-I saw him last night," she said. "Anyway, I think I did."

Tag c.o.c.ked his head uncertainly. "What do you mean, you think think you saw him?" you saw him?"

"Well, I don't know," know," Melissa went on. "Mama said I had a nightmare, or made the whole thing up. But I didn't." Slowly, she told him the whole story, starting from when she'd awakened and heard the footsteps in the attic. When she was finished, Tag's frown deepened. Melissa went on. "Mama said I had a nightmare, or made the whole thing up. But I didn't." Slowly, she told him the whole story, starting from when she'd awakened and heard the footsteps in the attic. When she was finished, Tag's frown deepened.

"And there wasn't anything there at all when your mom took you back up?"

Melissa shook her head. "Nothing but a dumb old mannequin with a dress on it," she told him.