Darkness. Part 15

Jonas sank into a sullen silence, not speaking until they were back at the dock. But as he got into his boat, Jonas's eyes fixed on Judd once more and his pale, empty gaze made Judd shudder.

His words chilled Judd's very soul.

"Mebbe he'll turn me on you, Judd," he said. "Mebbe he'll turn me on you, just like he turned me on George."

Getting into his boat, he untied it, then looked up at Judd once more as he grasped the oars in his strong, callused hands.

"I'm gonna rip it out of you, Judd," he said softly. "I'm gonna reach inside'a you, and rip your life out. See if I don't."

Judd, frozen by the ice-cold words, stood where he was long after Jonas had disappeared back into the swamp.

12.

Amelie Coulton looked up as the door to her room opened, but when she saw who it was, her eyes s.h.i.+fted immediately back to the open window that looked out onto the garden outside.

"How are you doing this morning, Amelie?" Warren Phillips asked. When the girl in the bed made no reply, he picked up her wrist, quickly checking her pulse. "You know," he went on, "there's no reason for you to stay here, Amelie. If you want, you can go home this afternoon."

Amelie turned to glare darkly at the doctor. "I ain't leavin' 'thout I got my baby," she said.

Phillips sighed heavily and lowered himself into the chair next to the bed. "Amelie, you know what happened."

"I don't know what happened," Amelie replied. "All's I know is I woke up last night and my baby was cryin'."

"It was a dream, Amelie," Phillips told her. "Believe me, I understand how you feel-"

Amelie's voice rose. "No you don't. Ain't no way you kin tell what I'm feelin'! An' my baby ain't dead! I'm his mama, an' if'n he was dead, don't you think I'd know?"

This was the part of his practice that Phillips hated most. But when a mother lost a child, he was always there to talk to her, and listen to her. "Amelie, let me try to explain what happened-" he began, pressing the girl's hand comfortingly.

Amelie s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand away as if his touch had burned her. "I know know what happened," she told him. "You decided I wasn't a fittin' ma, and gave my baby to someone else!" Her eyes met his now, and he could see her anger glowing brightly in them. "That's it, ain't it? You think I be just a dumb swamp rat, but I hears things, too. You took my baby. You think just 'cause I ain't got no schoolin' and don't live in some fancy house in town I ain't a fittin' ma!" what happened," she told him. "You decided I wasn't a fittin' ma, and gave my baby to someone else!" Her eyes met his now, and he could see her anger glowing brightly in them. "That's it, ain't it? You think I be just a dumb swamp rat, but I hears things, too. You took my baby. You think just 'cause I ain't got no schoolin' and don't live in some fancy house in town I ain't a fittin' ma!"

"Now, Amelie, you know that isn't true," Phillips replied. "Why would I want to give your baby away?"

"Money!" Amelie spat. "You think I don't know there's women who'll pay for babies? An' I bet nice blue-eyed, blond-haired ones fetch a real good price, don't they? Ain't that what everyone wants? Pretty blue-eyed blond babies? Well, I got blue eyes and blond hair, and so'd my baby's daddy!"

Phillips took a deep breath, wondering how to argue with the bereaved mother, who was little more than a child herself. "Amelie, think about it. Didn't I spent a lot of time talking to you about taking care of your baby? Didn't we talk about what to feed it, and what to do if it got sick? Now, why would I have done that if I were planning to steal your baby?"

Amelie's jaw set stubbornly. "You was just foolin' with me, so I wouldn't figure out what happened." She faced Phillips once more. "I let you take care'a me, an' I came in here to have my baby 'cause I trusted you." Her voice began to rise, crackling with emotion. "An' you stolt him! You just took him away, thinkin' I'd believe whatever you told me. Well, I don't believe it! I don't believe you, and I want my baby!"

Her hand came up as if to slap him, but Phillips's fingers closed on her wrist, bringing her arm back down to the bed. At the same time, he pressed a buzzer on the bedside table. Jolene Mayhew appeared at the door.

"Amelie?" she began, but then recognized Warren Phillips as he turned to glance at her. "Dr. P! What is it? Is something wrong?"

"Get Amelie some Thorazine," he said. "Fifty milligrams." As Jolene hurried out of the room, he spoke to Amelie again. "I'm going to give you something to make you sleep, Amelie," he told her. "I know it's a terrible thing to lose your baby, and I know how much you're hurting right now. But after a while it will get better. You're young, Amelie, and you'll have more babies. It's going to be all right." Jolene came back into the room and handed a cup containing a pill to Phillips, then poured a gla.s.s of water for Amelie. "I want you to swallow this pill, Amelie," he went on. "Just wash it down with a little water, and in a few minutes you'll fall asleep. And when you wake up, you'll feel much better."

Amelie regarded Phillips with suspicious eyes, but finally took the cup and put the pill in her mouth. Accepting the gla.s.s from Jolene, she took several swallows of water, then laid her head back down on the pillow.

"That's my girl," Phillips said, pulling the sheet up and tucking it around Amelie's shoulders. "Now you just go to sleep, and when you wake up, we'll talk about sending you home again. Once you're home, you'll feel a lot better."

Amelie made no reply, but a sigh escaped her lips and she closed her eyes. Phillips signaled to Jolene, and the two of them left the room. "Keep an eye on her," Phillips told the nurse as they walked back toward the reception area. "She's come up with the idea that we stole her baby and sold it, and she was pretty hysterical for a few minutes there."

Jolene clucked her tongue sympathetically. "Oh, Lord. Maybe I better call Barbara Sheffield and ask her to come down again. Last night she was able to get Amelie right off to sleep."

Phillips nodded. "Good idea. At least it will give Amelie someone to talk to when she wakes up." He smiled wryly as a thought came to him. "Unless she's decided Barbara's part of our nefarious scheme, too." He glanced at his watch. It was eleven-thirty. "Anything on the books for the next couple of hours?"

Jolene shook her head. "Nothing till after lunch. Then you've got Judge Villiers, and Fred Childress, and that's it for the day."

"Then I'll see you after lunch." He left the hospital, got into his car and started home, glancing once more at his watch. It would be close, but there was time.

As soon as Phillips and Jolene Mayhew left her room, Amelie Coulton sat up and spit the pill they'd given her into her hand. She stared at it for a second, then got out of bed, went to the bathroom, and dropped it in the toilet.

How dumb did they think she was? Thinking they could talk her out of what she knew and put her to sleep by giving her a pill. Well, they were wrong. She'd had a dream last night, and she knew what dreams were. Everyone in the swamp did.

You could see all kinds of things in dreams.

Sometimes you could talk to dead people, people you thought you'd never get to see again.

Sometimes you could go places. Places you'd never get to go in real life. Amelie had had lots of dreams like that. She'd been to New Orleans, and Paris, and all kinds of places.

And sometimes you could see the future.

Amelie had had lots of those, too. She'd had dreams where she was a lot older than she was now, and had lots of children around her.

And last night, when she'd dreamed about her baby and woken up knowing he needed her, she'd known what that dream meant, too.

It meant her baby wasn't dead at all. It was still alive, and it was crying out for her.

Well, she wasn't going to hang around the hospital, that was for sure. Whatever they'd done with her baby, no one around here was going to give it back to her.

She found her clothes in the closet and pulled them on, then started for the door.

But what was she going to do? Just walk out there and tell Jolene Mayhew she was leaving? What if Jolene tried to stop her?

But Dr. Phillips had said she could go home today. That's what he'd been talking about when he first came in.

Except then he'd given her the pill, and she was supposed to be asleep right now.

She made up her mind, and turned away from the door, heading for the window instead. She unlatched the screen, pushed it out, and climbed out into the garden.

And suddenly felt weak.

She leaned against the wall for a moment, catching her breath and waiting for the dizziness to pa.s.s. Then, glancing both ways to make sure no one was watching her, she darted away from the building, across the parking lot, into the thicket beyond the asphalt. As the palmettos and saw gra.s.s closed around her, she began to relax a little. She wasn't back in the swamp yet, but at least she was out of the hospital.

She could get back to the swamp even without a boat.

And once there, she would start hunting for her baby-the baby Amelie believed with all her heart still lived.

"Well, what do you think?"

Kelly gazed into the mirror. She could barely recognize the image that stared back at her.

Her features hadn't changed, but she looked like a different person. Barbara Sheffield had trimmed her hair as well as changed its color, and it was much shorter now, no longer hanging around her face the way it used to. Instead it was brushed back and seemed to have taken on a glow all its own. The new color, a light honey shade with a few darker streaks in it, didn't look dyed at all, and made her skin look healthier and her eyes bluer. She reached out for the earrings that she'd piled on the ledge above the sink before they'd started the project, then hesitated.

"What's wrong?" Barbara asked, frowning. Then she thought she understood. "Oh, dear, you don't like it, do you?"

"No!" Kelly protested. "I like it fine. It's just..." Her voice trailed off. The truth was that she did did like her hair, but now all of a sudden her clothes looked wrong, and so did her jewelry. like her hair, but now all of a sudden her clothes looked wrong, and so did her jewelry.

"It's what?" Barbara urged. "I think you look very pretty. Doesn't she, Jenny?"

Jenny, who had been kibitzing through the whole session, bobbed her head enthusiastically. "She looks just like cousin Tisha."

Kelly frowned. "Who's cousin Tisha?"

"My sister's daughter," Barbara replied. "They live in Tallaha.s.see." She c.o.c.ked her head. "Jenny's right-you do look a lot like Tisha. I think I must have subconsciously cut your hair like hers, because she's my favorite niece." When Kelly made no reply, Barbara sighed. "Well, I guess this wasn't such a good idea after all. I'll tell you what-as soon as it grows out a bit, we'll put it back the way it was."

Kelly shook her head. "But I do like it," she said at last. "What I don't like is my clothes and stuff. W-Would you help me go shopping sometime? I mean, just to help me pick out the right things?"

Barbara felt her eyes dampen slightly. "Well, I don't know," she said, feeling uncertain. "What about your mother? Wouldn't she like to take you shopping?"

Kelly took a deep breath. "I don't like to go shopping with her," she said. "She never likes what I like, and always wants to choose everything herself. And now-" She hesitated, not sure how much Michael's mother might know about her. "Well, she acts real nervous all the time. Now, if I said I liked something, she'd say it was wonderful, even if she hated it."

Barbara, standing behind Kelly, laid a hand on her shoulder. "That's probably because of what happened last month," she said softly. "She'll get over it."

Kelly stiffened. "You know about that?" she asked.

Barbara shrugged. "Yes, Kelly, I know. But I also know you're going to be fine."

For a moment, neither of them spoke. Even irrepressible Jenny, sensing something happening between her mother and this girl, was silent. Finally, hesitating, Kelly asked, "You mean you don't think I'm crazy?"

Barbara took a deep breath. "No, I don't," she said. Her hand remained rea.s.suringly on Kelly's shoulder. "Do you think you're crazy?"

Kelly considered her answer for a long time before she turned and faced Barbara. "I don't know," she admitted for the first time, to anyone. "Sometimes I'm afraid I might be."

Barbara slipped her arms around Kelly and gave her a gentle hug. "Sometimes, Kelly, we're all afraid we're crazy," she told her. "But you don't seem crazy to me. You just seem like a sixteen-year-old girl who isn't quite sure who she is yet, and is spending entirely too much time worrying about it. And," she added with a wide smile, "I'd love to go shopping with you sometime, and I promise you I'll tell you exactly what I think of everything."

But as she gazed at Kelly's reflection in the mirror, a thought came into Barbara's mind: This is what Sharon would have looked like. If she'd lived, this is how old she'd be, and this is how she'd look.

As quickly as the thought rose, she tried to put it aside. Kelly was someone else's daughter, not her own. Her own daughter was long dead, her body locked in a crypt in the family's mausoleum in the cemetery.

Yet even an hour later, after Kelly had left, the thought still clung to Barbara's consciousness, flitting around the edges of her mind like a persistent bee, impossible to get rid of.

As she waited for the water on the stove to heat to exactly the right temperature-hot enough to feel warm when she dipped her finger into it, but not hot enough to scald her-Lavinia Carter looked admiringly around the kitchen. She never tired of it, even after two years. Like the rest of the house, it was so different from where she'd grown up that she still marveled at all the wonderful things it contained. At home in the swamp there'd been nothing but the squat little stove in the corner, which her parents had always insisted she keep lit, even when finding wood dry enough to b.u.m was almost impossible. Worse, no matter how low she kept the fire behind the sooty iron door, the stove kept the house so hot it was unbearable most of the time.

House.

It hadn't been a house at all, except that until she'd come here, she hadn't really known it was any different from anything else, because until she was fifteen, she'd never been out of the swamp at all.

Her parents had kept her at home, and she'd always known what her life would be like. She would help her mother raise her sisters and brothers-some of whom her mother had birthed herself, and some of whom had come from the Dark Man, brought to her mother by Clarey Lambert.

Lavinia herself had been brought by Clarey Lambert, when she was so small she couldn't remember it. But as she'd grown up, her mother had told her she was special-that she was one of the Dark Man's children, and that someday she would marry another one of his children.

"You and the rest of his kids be different," her mother had explained to her. "The day you was born, the Dark Man chose you. You be special, and there's things the Dark Man can do for you."

But she hadn't felt special.

She hadn't felt anything at all, really.

She'd just grown up, doing as she was told.

And on some nights, when she felt the silent call summoning her, she'd gone out into the swamp and stood in the Circle with the rest of the children watching the ceremonies.

Watching the weddings.

Witnessing the inductions of the babies into the Circle.

And giving the gift.

Unconsciously she fingered the mark on her chest, the scar that bore witness to the gift she'd given, and the needles that had painlessly penetrated her body so many times when she was a little girl.

Then, two years ago, the Dark Man had singled her out for a special ceremony.

She had been dressed all in white that night, and when she'd been called to the altar, she had at first thought she was going to be married.

But that wasn't possible, for she wasn't pregnant yet. Indeed, the Dark Man had not even selected a boy for her to live with.

But she had obeyed the summons-as all the children obeyed the Dark Man-and gone to the altar, where the Dark Man had spoken only to her, his voice reaching into her mind, putting her slowly to sleep.

When she had awakened, her life had changed.

She was no longer in the swamp.

She was here, in this house where she'd been ever since.

And she could no longer speak.

During the ceremony, her voice had been taken from her.

The Dark Man had explained it to her, telling her that of all the children, she was the most special. Out of all of the children, he had chosen her to look after the babies.

Lavinia had accepted the loss of her voice as she accepted all things.