The Right Hand of Evil

CHAPTER 7

You guys really gonna live here?" The voice startled Jared so much he dropped his end of the mattress he and Kim were wrestling out of the rented U-Haul, eliciting a howl of outrage from his sister. As she struggled to get a grip on the mattress, she looked up in annoyance at the boy who had just spoken. He looked to be about the same age as Jared, but was a couple of inches shorter, wiry almost to the point of scrawniness, and had a thatch of light brown hair falling over his forehead. The boy grinned at her and grabbed one corner of the unwieldy object. He was wearing torn jeans and a sweatshirt that had had the sleeves torn off. "I'm Luke Roberts," he said. "You want me to help you get this up on the porch?"

"How about all the way up to my room?" Jared countered. When Luke cast a quick glance at the house before answering, Jared asked, "What's wrong? You're not scared, are you?"

" 'Course I'm not," Luke replied a little too quickly.

"You ever been inside the house?"

Again Luke glanced at the looming shape of the huge Victorian. He shook his head. "I got an uncle who says he was in it once," he offered.

"You want to see it?" Jared put just enough of a challenge in his voice to be certain Luke would be unable to refuse.

"Sure," the other boy replied.

Together, the three teenagers wrestled the mattress up to the second floor, where they dropped it onto the box spring that Kim and Jared had already brought up.

"How many rooms does it have?" Luke asked.

Jared shrugged. "I don't know-maybe twenty, I guess. We're going to turn it into a hotel."

They were back out on the landing, and Luke gazed down into the vast entry hall below. "Who'd want to stay here?"

"Well, it's not going to look like this," Kim replied. "Dad says it won't be ready for at least six months."

"I still bet nobody'll stay," Luke said. "Not after everything that's happened." Jared and Kim eyed each other uneasily, reading each other's thoughts: Do we really want to hear? But before either of them could reply, Luke was already telling them, "Sometimes you can hear a baby crying. And lots of people have seen that guy who hung himself."

"That was my dad's uncle," Jared said.

If Luke heard the hint of warning in Jared's voice, he chose to ignore it. "They say he's still here. Looking for the baby."

Kim and Jared exchanged another quick glance, both of them remembering the words they'd overheard at the funeral that morning. "Father MacNeill says nobody knows if it was even true that my dad's aunt was pregnant."

Luke Roberts rolled his eyes scornfully. "Father Mack wouldn't even admit his own mother was ever pregnant! And he sure wouldn't ever believe a woman would kill her own baby."

Kim's fingers flew involuntarily to the cross that hung from her neck, clutching it tightly. "How do you know Aunt Cora did that?" she asked.

"Everybody knows it," Luke Roberts replied. "Just because they never found the baby-"

The cross suddenly felt hot, and Kim jerked her hand away. "If they never found it, how does anyone know she killed it? How does anyone know there even was a baby?"

For the first time, a look of uncertainty clouded Luke's face, but he answered: "If there wasn't a baby, how come you can hear it cry at night? And how come it cries if its ma didn't kill it? I'm telling you, everybody knows what happened. My uncle says-"

Kim felt a surge of anger. How could this boy know what had happened here? He hadn't been here! And how come he kept saying "everybody knows"? "I bet none of it happened," she cut in before Luke could repeat whatever his uncle had said. "What have you ever seen yourself? What have you actually heard? And if you were close enough to see or hear anything, what were you doing? Just because nobody was living here doesn't mean it wasn't private property!" Luke Roberts's face flushed scarlet, and Kim could see his right hand clench into a fist. "What are you going to do, hit me?" she asked, her eyes locking onto his as if daring him to raise his fist.

Luke, shocked into silence by Kim's outburst, lurched back against the balustrade, lost his balance, and tumbled over. As he screamed with terror, the fingers of his right hand grabbed on to the railing. For a second he hung suspended from one arm, his left hand groping wildly before closing on one of the posts that supported the banister, but he quickly began to lose his grip, and for an instant that seemed to stretch into an eternity, his eyes-glazed with fear-fastened on Kim.

She knew that if he fell, the image of his eyes, terrified and accusing, would be burned into her memory forever. The horror of the moment paralyzed her, but in her mind she screamed out to Jared to help Luke.

As if he'd heard her, Jared darted to the railing, his own strong hands closing on Luke's wrists before the other boy's grip gave way. Then he hauled Luke back over the balustrade.

"I-I'm sorry," Kim stammered. "I didn't mean-"

But now that he was safe, Luke's terror was transmuting into anger. "What the hell did I do? I was just telling you what I heard! Christ-I coulda broken my neck!" As he started down the stairs, he glowered back at Kim. "Maybe your aunt wasn't the only crazy one around here."

Before Kim could reply, he had slammed the front door behind him.