Darkness

18

Jenny Sheffield woke up as a car door slammed outside the open front window of the room in which she’d been sleeping. For a minute she wasn’t sure where she was, but as she rubbbed at her eyes and came fully awake, the doorbell chimed and she remembered. Kelly Anderson had gotten lost in the swamp, and, Jenny recalled, her father and brother had gone looking for her. Maybe they were back now.

She slid out of the bed and went to the back window, looking out at the dock, hoping to see their boat tied up there.

The dock was empty, and though she looked as far up and down the canal as she could see, it, too, was deserted.

Turning away, she scurried across the room to the other window, the one that overlooked the driveway, and peered down. There was a police car in the street in front of the house, its headlights on and a flashing light revolving on the roof. But if her father and Michael hadn’t come back yet, why were the police here?

Clad in one of Kelly’s pajama tops, she went to the door and opened it a crack, pressing her eye to the narrow gap. From where she was, she could barely see down the stairs to the front door. But she could hear voices in the living room, and then there was a muted scream.

“No!”

There was just the one word. For a split second Jenny thought someone had seen her and was telling her to shut the door. But before she could do anything, she heard another sound.

It sounded like someone crying. Pulling the door open, she tiptoed to the landing at the top of the stairs and looked down. Now she could see into the living room. Two policemen were standing near the coffee table, and her mother was sitting on the couch, with Kelly’s mother next to her.

It was her mother who was crying.

Frightened, Jenny ran down the stairs, then scuttled over to the couch, climbing up into her mother’s lap. “Mommy? What’s wrong?”

Barbara, wiping away the tears that had overwhelmed her when Tim Kitteridge had told her the news, hugged Jenny close.

“It’s nothing for you to worry about, sweetheart,” she said, not knowing whether she was trying to reassure her daughter or herself. “Michael just went off by himself while everyone was looking for Kelly, and now they can’t find him, either.”

Jenny gazed worriedly up into her mother’s face. “Are you scared?”

“No, darling, of course not,” Barbara lied. Forcing a tiny, shaky smile, she added, “Well, maybe a little.”

“But Michael knows all about the swamp,” Jenny told her. “He goes there all the time.”

“I know, honey,” Barbara sighed, sniffling and wiping her eyes with the Kleenex Mary Anderson had handed her. “I’m just being silly. Your daddy’s out looking for him, and by now they’re probably all together again.” She eased Jenny off her lap and stood up. “And if you don’t go back to bed, you’re not going to want to get up in the morning. Come on.” With an apology to the two officers, and a promise to be right back, she led Jenny back up to Kelly’s room and tucked her back in the bed. “Now I want you to go back to sleep,” she said, leaning over to kiss the little girl.

Jenny frowned up at her mother in the darkness. “Is something bad going to happen to Michael?”

“No,” Barbara insisted, putting a conviction into her voice that she wished she felt. “He just went the wrong way, and now Daddy has to look for him. That’s all.” Barbara kissed Jenny again and gave her a final tucking in. “Try to sleep, honey. All right?”

“All right,” Jenny replied, turning over and closing her eyes. But as soon as her mother was gone she sat up, slid out of the bed, and crept back out to the landing so she could hear whatever was going on downstairs.

“I don’t understand why you’re not out there with them,” she heard her mother saying.

“Mrs. Sheffield, there are still five men out there, but searching that swamp at night is like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

“But our children—” Mary Anderson began.

The police chief cut in. “Believe me, I know how you feel, Mrs. Anderson. And whether you believe it or not, we’re doing everything we can. By sunup Marty and I are going to have enough men out here to search the swamp inch by inch. But that takes some organization, and I can’t do that and be out there in a boat, too.”

“I know,” Barbara sighed, determined not to give in to the fear that was threatening to overwhelm her. “Just let us know what’s going on.”

“You can count on it. And try not to worry. Michael knows the swamp, and Kelly just might walk out anytime.” His gaze shifted to Mary Anderson. “If she was as mad as it sounds like, it seems to me there’s a pretty good chance that she doesn’t want to be found. I have an idea she might just know exactly where she is, and come back home once she cools down.”

“Or she might do something else,” Mary replied, her voice trembling. “If she believes her father thinks she’s crazy, she might try to kill herself again. But we can’t even find her to tell her that no one’s mad at her.” She shook her head sadly. “And even if we could, I don’t think she’d believe a word any adult said to her.”

Barbara managed a sorrowful, wry smile. “Maybe we sent the wrong people out to look for her,” she said. “Maybe Jenny and I should have gone.”

As her mother and the policemen started toward the front door, Jenny silently darted back into Kelly’s room, quietly closing the door behind her. But instead of getting back into bed, she pulled off the pajama top and began putting on her clothes. She put her underwear on backward in the darkness, but didn’t notice it, then got into her jeans and pulled her T-shirt over her head. Shoving her bare feet into her shoes, she fumbled with the laces, but finally got them tied.

As she carefully opened the outside door and stepped onto the landing, she felt a pang of fear.

What if she got lost, too?

She gazed apprehensively at the swamp in the distance and almost changed her mind. But then she saw the path along the edge of the canal, and the bright pools of light that flooded from the lamps that lined it every hundred feet. If she stayed on the path, nothing bad could happen to her. And she could call out to Kelly from there. And if she actually found Kelly—

She felt a surge of excitement. The last of her fear evaporated as she set out on her adventure.

• • •

Kelly felt as though she was drowning in a sea of blackness. It was all around her, pressing down on her, constricting her. She had to struggle, had to free herself from its grip. She tried to move, but it felt as if she was mired in quicksand. But then, far off, there was a faint glimmer of light. If she could reach it — bring it into focus — she’d be all right. But it was so far away, and she was so tired.

She moaned softly, and then felt her arms move.

The light brightened, and she realized her eyes were open.

The moon.

It was the bright crescent of the moon she saw, and, as she came slowly back to consciousness, she began to remember.

Running through the swamp, her terror growing every minute.

The alligator attacking her. The shot exploding only a few yards away from her.

The hands lifting her out of the mud, pulling her into the boat.

The face.

The swamp rat’s face.

Her breath caught in a gasp of sudden fear. Almost involuntarily her eyes shifted from the bright light of the moon to the face of the man who sat at the center of the boat.

Not a man.

A boy.

A boy she’d seen before. And then it came back to her.

“I know you,” she said. “I saw you the first night I was here. You were at the edge of the swamp.”

Jonas nodded. “I was watchin’ out for you.”

Kelly frowned. “But I was looking for you. I couldn’t find you.”

Jonas pulled at the oars, and the boat slid silently into a narrow passage between two islets. “Don’t matter. I was there, and made sure nothin’ happened to you. Like tonight.”

Kelly’s frown deepened. “You mean you were looking for me?”

“Didn’t have to look. I knowed where you was at.”

“But—”

“There’s lots of other folk lookin’ for you, too. But they didn’t know where you was.”

Kelly fell silent, studying the boy in the faint light of the moon. His clothes were little more than rags, and he looked half starved, with his hollow cheeks and sunken eyes.

If she’d seen him in Villejeune, she knew she would have been afraid of him.

And yet now, in the middle of the night, in the swamp, she felt no fear of him at all. Indeed, she felt as if she knew him.

“You’re one of them, aren’t you?” she asked.

Jonas gazed at her with his strange, empty eyes, but said nothing. Instead he silently kept rowing the boat, guiding it effortlessly through the tangle of waterways.

Lights began to glimmer here and there, the soft, warm glow of oil lanterns. They were passing the strange, stilted houses of the swamp rats now, but although the boy did not say a word, Kelly was certain that wherever they were going, it was not here.

It was somewhere else, somewhere even deeper in the swamp.

They moved on, Jonas handling the oars with such skill that not even the faintest splashing betrayed their presence. When they were gone, only the rippling of the water from the boat’s bow gave evidence that they had been there at all.

And only Amelie Coulton, sitting silently on her porch, saw them pass.

Something stirred inside her as she watched the small boat move slowly through the bayou, and she rose up from her sagging chair, then climbed down from the porch into the worn skiff that was tied up to one of the pilings.

There was just enough moonlight to let her follow the rippling trail of Jonas’s boat.

• • •

“Kelly?” Jenny called out, her voice barely more than a whisper. “Kelly, it’s me!” She paused, listening, but heard nothing except the chirping of the insects.

She wasn’t sure how far she’d come, but finally the paved path along the canal came to an end. Ahead of her lay a field, dotted with pines and choked with kudzu, with only a narrow trail edging the drainage channel. She had stopped, wondering if maybe she shouldn’t go back home, when she suddenly realized where she was.

Her own house was on the other side of the field and two blocks farther down. Though she’d never been on this side of the field before, she and her friends often played along the other edge, hiding in the vines, pretending they were in the jungle.

And there was a house right on the canal, halfway across the field, that she used to think was a scary place, where a witch lived. But her father had taken her there one day and told her that it wasn’t a witch’s house at all.

“A policeman lives there,” he’d told her. “And if you’re ever playing out here and see a stranger, or get lost, you go there and he’ll take care of you. There’s nothing in that house to be afraid of.”

She’d looked at the house, with all its paint worn off, and propped up on stilts that looked like they might fall down, and wondered how anyone but a witch could live in anything like it. But then her father had gone right up to the back door and knocked, and a man had opened it.

His name was Mr. Duval, and he wasn’t scary at all. He’d even told her he’d take her out and teach her how to fish sometime, if she wanted.

She still hesitated, searching in the darkness for a light in the house. From where she was, all she could see was the roof, barely visible through the trees.

But if Kelly was lost, maybe she knew to go to that house, too.

Resolutely, she started along the dirt trail, trying not to think about how far away the lights of the subdivision behind her were getting, or what might be hiding in the kudzu, waiting to jump out at her.

Off to her right she heard something move in the bushes, and she broke into a run.

And then she was there. The house stood at the edge of the canal, its front porch jutting out over the water just like she remembered it. She ran around to the back door and knocked loudly. “Mr. Duval?” she called out. “It’s me! It’s Jenny Sheffield!”

Her heart was still beating fast, and she listened hard, certain that whatever she’d heard in the bushes might be coming after her. But then she heard a sound from inside the house, and a second later the door opened a crack.

“Mr. Duval? It’s me. I’m looking for Kelly. She’s lost and I thought maybe she came here.”

Judd Duval gazed down at the little girl, his mind racing. When he’d first heard the pounding at the door, he’d been certain it was Kitteridge, come looking for him. But when he’d heard the little girl’s voice, an idea had suddenly come to him. He’d struggled to his feet, every joint aching now, and steadied himself with trembling hands for a moment before he’d been able to get to the back door. Now, as he looked down at Jenny, a surge of adrenaline energized him.

“She’s not here,” he said. “But I know where we can find her. Would you like me to take you there?”

Jenny nodded eagerly, and Judd Duval stepped out onto the back porch, pulling the door closed behind him. “We have to go in the car,” he explained.

Jenny frowned. The car? But Kelly was in the swamp. And there was something funny about his voice, too.

Then Judd turned and the light of the moon fell onto his face.

Jenny’s eyes widened as she stared at the wrinkles in his skin, and his deeply sunken eyes. He didn’t look anything like she remembered him at all.

He looked old and sick, and there was something about the way he was staring at her that frightened her.

Instinctively, she backed away, but Judd reached out and grasped her wrist. “Don’t run away, Jenny,” he said, his voice rasping.

Jenny struggled, trying to pull away from him, but Judd’s grip tightened. He picked her up, and carried her into the house. Fumbling in the dark, he found the nylon ties he carried instead of handcuffs, and, twisting Jenny’s arms around behind her back, bound her wrists.

“Stop that!” Jenny screamed. “I want to go home!”

Judd’s hand clamped over the little girl’s mouth, and he reached for a dish towel, tying it around her head as a makeshift gag. Thirty seconds later two more of the nylon ties bound her ankles together, immobilizing her. Picking her up again, ignoring her struggles, he took her out the back door and carried her the ten yards to his squad car, which was parked under one of the pine trees. He opened the trunk, put her inside, then closed the lid again.

Trembling more violently than before, he hurried around to the driver’s door, got in, and started the engine. Putting the car in gear, he made a U-turn and steered quickly up his rutted drive to the main road. He paused there for a moment, his own lights out, searching for any other cars. But the highway was deserted, and finally he turned on his headlights. He wasn’t too worried — his destination was in the opposite direction from the village. With any luck at all, he’d have the road completely to himself.

• • •

Warren Phillips switched on the porch light and looked through the window to see Judd Duval standing outside, his sunken eyes glowing maniacally in the light from the globe above the door. Unlocking the bolt, he opened the door and pulled Judd inside. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“My shot,” Judd croaked, his voice rattling in his throat. “I got to have my shot. Look at me! I’m dying.”

Phillips’s voice hardened. “I told you the price. I need children, Judd.”

“I got one,” Judd said, his lips twisting into an ugly grin.

Phillips’s eyes narrowed. “Who? There aren’t any—”

“Not a baby,” Judd interrupted. “But she’s young enough. She’s in the trunk of my car.”

Fury welled up in Phillips. “Are you out of your mind?” he demanded. “What have you done, Judd?”

“I got you what you wanted,” Judd insisted.

“Where?” Phillips spat. “Who is it? How did you get her?”

“Craig Sheffield’s kid,” Judd replied. “And I didn’t do anything. She came right up to my back door.”

“In the middle of the night?” Phillips demanded. “I’m not a fool, Judd.”

Duval’s lips curled into a malevolent smile. “She was lookin’ for the Anderson girl,” he explained. “There been people lookin’ for her all night, out in the swamp. And then this kid came up to my door, askin’ me if she was there. She was alone, Doc. I figure she musta snuck out.”

Phillips glared furiously at the other man. “And you don’t think anybody will miss her? For Christ’s sake, Judd!”

“So what if they miss her?” Judd whined. “All they can do is look in the swamp, and they can’t find what ain’t there. And you need her. You told me you need kids.”

Phillips’s mind raced. Jenny Sheffield was only six years old, and the magical gland inside her had barely begun to atrophy. But if they started searching the swamp for her and didn’t find her, they wouldn’t give up. Not until they either found Jenny or her body.

And then he realized there was a way.

If they found her body …

“All right,” he said. “Take the car around to the back and bring her in.”

Judd held his palsied hands up. His fingers were shriveled and curling in upon themselves, the nails cracking with age. “I don’t know if I can, Doc. I’m getting weaker.”

“Do it,” Phillips ordered him. “I’ll meet you in the back.”

Three minutes later Judd carried Jenny through the back door. She was still struggling, and incoherent screams, muffled by the gag in her mouth, rose from her throat.

“Put her down,” Phillips told Judd Duval, who immediately lowered the terrified child to the floor. Phillips knelt down and slid a hypodermic needle into the vein of Jenny’s forearm. Jenny’s eyes widened in fear as she watched him press the plunger on the needle, but a few seconds later she slumped to the floor, her eyes closing.

Phillips cut away the nylon straps that bound her wrists and ankles, then removed the gag from her mouth. Picking her up, he carried her into the library and laid her on the couch. Finally he went to one of the pictures that hung on the walls, swung it away, and opened a wall safe, from which he removed a small vial of clear fluid and another hypodermic needle. Filling the needle carefully, he slid it into Judd Duval’s arm and pressed the plunger. “Lie down,” he told Duval. “Get some sleep. By sunrise you’ll feel a lot better.”

Judd sank gratefully onto the sofa opposite the one on which Jenny lay, already feeling the rejuvenating effects of the shot. The aching in his joints was fading away, and the deathly raling in his lungs was easing. He could feel the years rolling away as the shot restored his youth, as it always did.

It was like emerging from quicksand, struggling back from the black paralysis of death to the full light and vigor of life.

Smiling, he drifted into a peaceful sleep.