The Right Hand of Evil

CHAPTER 25

Sandy Engstrom felt her nerve slipping away when she was still a block away from the Conway house. All week, ever since Kim had invited her to sleep over tonight, all the stories she'd heard while she was growing up had been creeping back out of her memory. Nor had it helped that most of the other kids she knew thought she was crazy even to think about spending a night in the Conway house. Jolene Simmons hadn't even bothered to try and be polite. "You'll be lucky if you don't get killed!" she said. "Everyone knows all the Conways are crazy! That's why Father Mack's going to make sure they can't open a hotel. In fact, I hear he's planning to make them move right out of town!"

"How's he going to do that?" Sandy countered. She put on her bravest face, but knew she sounded more anxious than scornful.

"Well, if you didn't spend all your time with that Kim person, you'd know, wouldn't you?" Jolene glanced around to see who might be listening, and her voice dropped. "There's going to be a meeting on Saturday night, and Father Mack's going to make sure they don't give Mr. Conway a permit. He's going to make sure everybody from St. Ignatius is there, and everyone's going to tell your father he can't give Mr. Conway the permit."

"It's not my dad who decides," Sandy said. "It's the whole council."

Jolene groaned. "Well, whatever. It won't make any difference who decides, because everybody in town is going to talk against Mr. Conway. I mean, everybody knows all the things that have happened in that house!"

"Nobody knows anything," Sandy protested, but even she could hear the uncertainty in her voice. After the conversation with Jolene, she told her mother she'd changed her mind about the sleep-over, but her mother shook her head.

"If you don't go to Kim's Friday night, everyone will think we believe all that dreadful gossip. And that won't be good for your father at the meeting on Saturday. He intends to help Ted Conway get his permits."

And that, Sandy knew, was that. The Engstroms would put up a solid front, no matter how Sandy might feel. Sandy had almost demanded to know why what she did would make any difference, but she already knew. As long as she could remember, she'd lived by a single rule: whatever she did reflected on her father; therefore it was most important never to embarrass him in public, or contradict him. And that meant that no matter how frightened of the Conway house she might be, there was no way to cancel the sleep-over.

And, of course, it was Jared's house, too. Sandy had been very, very careful not to mention her crush on Jared to anyone, but all through the week, the thought of Jared's gorgeous blue eyes sent small, delicious shivers of excitement racing through her.

Now, though, as she turned onto Pontchartrain Street, all the fears rushed back. It's just because it's almost Halloween, she told herself, but as she glanced around at the glowing jack-o'-lanterns that grinned and leered from every porch, she felt no reassurance.

Her step slowed. She could see the house at the far end of the street, off by itself, looming against the starry sky, casting an enormous shadow in the moonlight. She felt a chill. Most of the second floor was dark, and even on the first floor, only a few lights were lit. The porch lights were on, one on each of the columns that flanked the front door, but even they looked dim, as if the house were swallowing up the light itself. Too late to go back home. Reluctantly, she stepped onto the broad porch and rang the bell. But as she waited for the door to open, she felt eyes-unseen eyes-watching her.

But that was silly! It was nothing more than the jack-o'-lanterns on the porches and the stories that had been tumbling through her mind that were spooking her. Still, the sense of someone watching remained. Cautiously, she looked around into the gathering darkness.

Was that a flicker of movement, over near the carriage house?

Sandy strained her eyes, peering into the shadows that surrounded the building, but she could see nothing.

Every shadow seemed to hold some unseen menace. Suddenly, all she wanted was to be safely inside the house. Then, just as she reached for the bell again, Kim opened the door. Relief flooding over her, Sandy quickly stepped inside.

Jake Cumberland waited in the shadows until the door closed behind Sandy Engstrom. Then he began his nightly ritual…

The first surprise came as Sandy peered into the huge entry hall. A great gleaming brass chandelier hung from the soaring ceiling, flooding the space with enough light to drive every shadow away. The floor, intricately inlaid with half a dozen different kinds of wood, looked as if it had been installed only a few days ago, instead of more than a century earlier. The space was freshly painted in a bright off-white, and she gazed in wonder at the soaring staircase at the far end of the hall.

"It's really beautiful," she said in an awed whisper, looking around in wonder. "Is it all like this?"

Kim shook her head. "It's just getting started. Some of the rooms upstairs are still really creepy."

The eager light in Sandy's eyes faded. She glanced around uneasily. "Where's Jared?" she asked.

"He's not here," Kim said. "Dad gave him enough money so he and Luke could go to the movies, and told him not to come home until at least eleven. Want to see the living room?" Concealing her disappointment at Jared's banishment to the movies, Sandy followed Kim toward the set of doors leading to the living room. As they were crossing the entry hall, Kim's parents came down the stairs.

"We'll be with Sandy's folks," Janet said, "and we should be home by ten-thirty. Molly's sound asleep, and I don't think she'll wake up. But if she does-"

"I'll give her a bottle of juice," Kim finished. She looked anxiously at her father. "You told Jared he can't bring Luke home, didn't you?"

"I told him he couldn't bring Luke home unless we were here," her father told her. "But I couldn't very well forbid him to bring his friend home at all, could I?"

Kim shrugged in reluctant acquiescence. "I guess."

"Okay. And remember, if you need anything, just call us at Sandy's house."

A minute later they were gone, and with the departure of the adults, Sandy's carefully controlled fears threatened to break free of the restraints she'd barely managed to put on them. At Kim's next words, her nerves frayed even more.

"Let's go upstairs," her friend said. "I'll show you some of the rooms."

Kim led Sandy up the stairs, but before taking her into any of the ruined rooms her father hadn't yet gotten to, she took her to her own room, which looked nothing like it had a few weeks earlier. Kim explained how her dad had stripped the rotting wallpaper away, repaired the plaster, and put on new paper in a bright flowered pattern that matched the bedspread on the huge four-poster bed as well as the curtains. A thick carpet covered the floor, and a chandelier, glittering with crystal, was suspended from a gilded medallion in the center of the ceiling.

"It's really nice." In the bright light of Kim's bedroom, Sandy's fears began to ease. "Are all the rooms like this?"

"Dad's going to make them all different," Kim said. She led her friend down the hall toward the room two doors down. But ten feet away, Sandy stopped short.

Something-some image she couldn't quite make out-seemed to have flickered in front of the door for an instant. She rubbed her arms as a chill came over her.

"I don't want to go in there," she announced.

Kim eyed her curiously, her head cocked. "It's just a room."

Sandy shook her head. "It doesn't feel right," she insisted.

"What do you mean?" Now, as she remembered the terrors she'd experienced a few nights before, her own heart began beating faster. But her terrors had been caused by nothing more than nightmares. "How does it feel?"

Sandy hesitated. The chill had passed as quickly as it had come. The door looked just like all the other doors that opened off the mezzanine. "I-I don't know," she stammered. "I just thought-" She stopped, embarrassed. "I'm okay," she said.

Kim opened the door and they stepped into a room lit only by the glow of moonlight coming in through the window. Even in the shadowy light, Sandy could see that it had once been a nursery. An ancient-looking crib stood near the window, and though the wallpaper was faded, she could still make out a pattern of teddy bears dancing across the walls. But the room felt strange.

Unlived-in.

She remembered the story she'd heard so many times while she was growing up, of the baby that George Conway's wife had given birth to, but who had never been found.

And then Sandy knew.

This was the room intended for that baby.

Sandy heard a sound, but it was so faint that for a second she wasn't sure she'd heard it at all. "Listen!" she said, her voice low. "What was that?"

"What was what?" Kim asked.

"Shhh!" Sandy hissed. "I heard something! Just listen!"

Both girls were silent, then Sandy heard it again. A baby crying! "There!" she exclaimed. "Didn't you hear that?" Kim shook her head. "It was a baby! I heard a baby crying!"

"Maybe it was Molly," Kim suggested.

Relief made Sandy's knees go weak. Of course it was Molly! How stupid could she get? If she wasn't such a fraidy cat, she would have known right away that it had to be Kirn's baby sister crying. She followed Kim into the little room that adjoined the master bedroom, where a soft nightlight glowed next to Molly's crib. The two girls leaned over the crib and peered down at the sleeping child. Sandy started to speak, but Kim held her finger to her lips. "If she wakes up, she'll never go back to sleep," she whispered. They tiptoed back out, and Kim gently closed the door behind her. "Well, I guess whatever you heard wasn't Molly."

A tendril of panic flicked out and tried to grasp Sandy, but this time she refused to let herself give in to it. "It probably wasn't anything. Let's go down and watch the movies we rented. Then at least I'll really have something to be scared about." As they started down the stairs, Sandy glanced once more at the closed door to the old nursery. No matter what Kim said, she'd heard something.

She'd heard a baby, and the baby had been crying.

And it had been in that room.

Sandy wished she hadn't come over here at all.

Janet Conway felt as if she'd somehow slipped into another world. A parallel world that looked, sounded, and felt so perfectly familiar that it was hard to believe it wasn't the same world in which she'd been living her entire life. In the two hours since she and Ted had arrived at the Engstroms' it seemed she'd skidded into the Twilight Zone as she listened to Marge's summary of the rumors flying through the town over the last few weeks-tales involving the killing of babies and the seduction and slaying of a servant girl. It wasn't as if she'd never heard the rumors before-in the few weeks since the first time they had been to the Engstroms' for dinner, she must have heard every one of them. But tonight, hearing all the threads woven together, they took on a surreal quality. Janet was barely able to believe people would repeat such things, let alone accept them as true.

There had apparently even been whispers of Devil worship.

Devil worship?

In her family?

"Where on earth could such stories be coming from?" she wanted to know, her voice shaking with outrage. She searched her mind for something to explain the terrible stories, but there was nothing. Nothing any of them had done. There'd been the problem with Jared being late getting back from lunch, but the school had dealt with that. Then she remembered a moment in the cemetery, at Aunt Cora's funeral, and she heard Ted saying, "I just don't hold with religion," despite her own silent wish that he would keep his opinion to himself. But he hadn't: "Never have. I don't mind my kids going to your school, but don't count on any of us showing up for church on Sundays."

Father MacNeill? But could that brief conversation have been enough to make the priest try to drive them out of town?

"Might just be," Phil Engstrom mused when she repeated the incident. "Father Mack don't take lightly to people not holdin' with his religion. Don't take lightly to it at all." His eyes shifted from Janet to Ted, then back to Janet. "Anything else happen that day? If we're gonna beat this opposition tomorrow night, I better know exactly what we're up agin'."

Janet, about to shake her head, was stopped by another memory rising up like a cobra uncoiling. "Jake Cumberland," she said. "He was there, too. He just stood outside the fence, glowering at us." There had been something strange, even eerie, about the man, and Janet shuddered, recalling his mute, angry stare. Then she herself grew angry that their hope for a new life was threatened by something so trivial as rumors spread by an angry priest and the antipathy of a slightly deranged trapper who apparently held Ted responsible for something that might have happened to his mother forty years earlier.

"There has to be something we can do," she said, still searching for a solution as the evening came to an end. "Maybe we should sue Father MacNeill, or-"

"We're not going to sue anyone," Ted interrupted.

Janet sighed. "But it just seems so unfair-"

"It is unfair," Ted agreed. "But we'll get through it. We'll just have to go to the meeting tomorrow, and convince everyone that even if everything they've heard is true, it doesn't have anything to do with us. I'll just have to bring them around, that's all."

As they were driving home later, Janet found herself looking at the houses they passed. On most of the porches, the jack-o'-lanterns were still flickering, as if winking mockingly at her. Hadn't she read somewhere about a movement to ban Halloween on the grounds that the celebration might have some connection to Satanism? A month or two ago, the notion would have struck her as ludicrous. Now, as she looked at the leering faces of the carved pumpkins, she found herself wondering how many of the people behind those jack-o'-lanterns had been listening to the rumors about Ted's family, believing them, and passing them on.

Hypocrites! she thought bitterly. They're all a bunch of hypocrites.

"Looks so peaceful, you'd never know what's going on, doesn't it?" Ted asked, seeming to read her mind.

She reached over and slipped her hand into his. "Do you really think it will all blow over?"

"Sure it will." Ted braked the car to a stop. "Maybe when people find out tomorrow that nothing terrible happened to Sandy when she spent the night at our place, things will start dying down." He grinned. "I mean, wouldn't you think if we were such monsters-or even if the house really is haunted-that something awful would happen to her?"

"Don't say that," Janet protested, shuddering. "Don't even think it!"

Yet the words were already spoken, hanging in the air. As she put her key in the lock of the front door, Janet had a terrible premonition about what she might find inside the house.

She pushed the door open and stepped inside, Ted right behind her.

The lights in the entry hall were off.

The house was silent.

Then she heard something.

A door, creaking open.

Her pulse quickened, and a chill passed through her.

Then, as the unseen door creaked once more, the quiet of the house was shattered by a scream.

"Kim?" Janet shouted, switching on the chandelier and flooding the entry hall with light. "KIM!"

There was a silence-a terrifying silence that froze Janet's blood-until she heard her daughter's voice.

"In the library!" Kim called out. "We're watching a movie."

From behind her, Janet heard Ted snicker, and turned to glare at him. "Don't you tell her," she warned. "Not a single word."

"Please?" Ted begged. "You looked so scared."

"And you weren't?" Janet countered.

Ted hesitated, then nodded. "Well, maybe just a little bit," he agreed. "Come on, let's go take a head count and make sure the right number of bodies are here."

Together, they went into the library, where the two girls were stretched out on the floor watching a movie. On the screen, a masked figure held one of the nastiestlooking knives Janet had ever seen, about to plunge it into a terrified victim. "How can you watch that?" she asked. "I'd be scared out of my wits."

"It's fun," Kim told her.

"It's creepy," Sandy declared.

Kim rolled her eyes at her friend's nervousness. "It's only a movie. We can shut it off anytime we want."

Janet glanced pointedly at the clock. "Well, just make sure it's off by midnight, okay?"

Ten minutes later Janet and Ted were in their room. Molly was still sound asleep in her crib, and there'd been no sign of Jared all evening. "See? I told you there was nothing to worry about," Ted said as he slid into bed. "Now, why don't you come join me?"

"Ted! Kim and Sandy are right downstairs!"

"They won't hear a thing," Ted assured her. "Come here."

As Ted wrapped his arms around her and began covering her with kisses, Janet felt the tension of the evening finally slipping away.

"It'll be all right," Ted whispered in her ear. "Don't worry, sweetheart, I'll make it all right."

Then his mouth covered hers, and she gratefully gave in to the pleasures of their bodies.