Comes The Blind Fury Part 8

Mich.e.l.le watched, transfixed, as the strange figure approached her. In the moonlight, the girl turned her head, and Mich.e.l.le saw her face.

It was a soft face, with a cupid's mouth, and a small, upturned nose.

Then Mich.e.l.le saw the eyes.

Milky white, and s.h.i.+mmering faintly in the moonlight, they gazed sightlessly at Mich.e.l.le, and as the sightless eyes fixed on her, the little girl raised one arm, and pointed at Mich.e.l.le.

Her fear flooding over her once again, Mich.e.l.le began to scream.

Her own screams woke her up.

Terrified, she stared around the empty bedroom, looking for the strange black figure that had been there only a second before.

The room was empty.

Around her, the nightsounds still droned on, the surf pounding steadily below, the breeze still plucking at the pines.

Then the door to her room opened, and her father was there.

"Princess? Princess, are you all right?" He was sitting on her bed, his arms around her, comforting her.

"It was a nightmare, Daddy," Mich.e.l.le whispered. "It was awful, Daddy, and so real. There was someone here. Right here, in the room..."

"No, baby, no," Cal soothed her. "There's n.o.body here but me. Just you and me, and your mother. It was only a dream, sweetheart."

Cal sat with her for a long time, talking to her, calming her. Finally, near dawn, he kissed her softly and told her to go back to sleep. He left her door open.

Mich.e.l.le lay still for a while, trying to forget the terrifying dream. Unable to fall asleep, she got out of bed and went to the window seat. Picking up the doll, she sat in the window, staring out into the darkness of the last moments of night. As the fog began to lift, Mich.e.l.le suddenly thought she saw something-a figure, standing on the bluff to the north, near the old cemetery.

She looked again, straining her eyes, but the mists swirled in the wind, and she could see nothing.

Taking the antique doll with her, Mich.e.l.le returned to her bed. As the first gray of dawn crept into the sky, she fell asleep once more.

Beside her, its head resting on the pillow, the sightless doll gazed blankly upward.

When he left Mich.e.l.le's room, Cal did not go straight back to bed. Instead, he put on a robe, fished his pipe and tobacco off the dresser, and went downstairs.

He wandered through the house aimlessly for a while, then settled finally in the little formal parlor at the front of the first floor. He lit his pipe, propped his feet up, and let his mind drift.

He was back in Boston, the night that boy had died-the night his life had changed.

He couldn't even remember the boy's name now.

Couldn't, or wouldn't.

That was part of the problem. There were too many whose names he couldn't remember, and who had died.

How many of them had died because of him?

The last one, the boy from Paradise Point, he was sure of. But there might have been others. How many others? Well, there wouldn't be any more.

His mind kept coming back to that boy.

Alan Hanley. That was his name. Cal could remember the day Alan Hanley had been brought to Boston General.

The ambulance had arrived late in the afternoon, with Alan Hanley unconscious, and Josiah Carson tending him. The boy had fallen from a roof.

This roof, Cal knew now, but at the time it had made no difference.

Josiah Carson had done what he could, but when he realized that the boy's injuries were too serious to be handled in the Paradise Point Clinic, he had brought him to Boston.

And Calvin Pendleton had attended him.

It seemed, at first, like a fairly simple case-a few broken bones, and possible cranial damage. Cal had done his best, setting the breaks, and checking for internal injuries. That was when he had found what he thought was a blood clot building up inside the boy's head. It had seemed to him to be an emergency, and so, with Josiah Carson at his side, looking on, he had operated.

Alan Hanley died on the operating table.

And there had been no blood clot, no reason to operate.

The incident had shaken Cal badly, shaken him more than any other single event of his life.

It was not, he knew, the first time he had misdiagnosed something. Nearly all doctors misdiagnose now and then. But for Cal, Alan Hanley's death was a turning point.

From that moment, he had never stopped wondering if he was going to make another mistake, and if another child was going to die because of him.

Everyone at the hospital told him he was taking it too seriously, but the child's death continued to haunt him.

Finally he had taken a day off, and driven out to Paradise Point to talk to Josiah Carson about Alan Hanley....

Josiah Carson greeted him coolly, and at first Cal thought he was wasting his time. Carson blamed him for Alan Hanley's death; he could see it in the old man's piercing blue eyes. But as they talked, something in Carson began to change. Cal was sure the old doctor was telling him things he had told no one else.

"Have you ever lived by yourself?" Carson suddenly asked him. But before he could make any reply, Carson began talking again. "I've been living alone for years, taking care of the people out here, and keeping pretty much to myself. I guess I should have kept it that way, kept on trying to do all the repairs to the house myself. But I'm getting old, and I thought...well, never mind what I thought."

Cal s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably, and wondered what the old man was trying to tell him. "What happened that day?" he asked. "Before you brought Alan Hanley to Boston, I mean."

"It's hard to say," Carson replied, his voice low. "I'd been having trouble with the roof, and some of the slates needed replacing. I was going to do it myself, but then I changed my mind. Thought maybe it would be better to get someone a little younger." His voice faded to little more than a whisper. "But Alan was too young. I should have known-maybe I did know. He was only twelve.... Well, anyway, I let him go up there."

"And what happened?"

Carson stared at him, his eyes empty, his face sagging with tiredness.

"What happened in the operating room?" he asked.

Cal squirmed. "I don't know. Everything seemed to be going so well. And then he died. I don't know what happened."

Carson nodded. "And that's what happened on the roof. I was watching him, and everything seemed to be going well. And then he fell." There was a long silence, broken by Carson: "I wish you'd saved him."

Again, Cal squirmed, but suddenly Carson smiled at him.

"It's not your fault," he said. "It's not your fault, and it's not my fault. But I suppose you could say that, together, it's our our fault. There's a bond between us now, Dr. Pendleton. What do you suggest we do?" fault. There's a bond between us now, Dr. Pendleton. What do you suggest we do?"

Cal had no answers. Josiah Carson's words had numbed him.

And then, as if understanding the problems that had been plaguing Cal since the day Alan Hanley had died, Josiah had made a suggestion. Perhaps Cal should consider giving up his practice in Boston.

"And do what?" Cal asked hollowly.

"Come out here. Take over a small, undemanding practice from a tired old doctor. Get away from the pressure of Boston General. You're scared now, Dr. Pendleton-"

"My name's Cal."

"Cal, then. At any rate you're scared. You made a mistake, and you think you'll make more. And if you stay at Boston General, you will. The fear itself will force you to. But if you come out here, I can help you. And you can help me. I want out, Cal. I want out of my practice, and I want out of my house. And I want to sell it all to you. Believe me, I'll make it worth your while."

To Cal, it all made sense. A slow practice, in which not much happened.

And not much could go wrong.

Not much room to make mistakes.

Plenty of time to think about every case, and make sure he handled it right.

And no one around to realize that he no longer felt competent to be a doctor. No one except Josiah Carson, who understood him, and sympathized with him.

So they had come to Paradise Point, though initially June had been against it. Cal remembered her words when he had explained the idea to her.

"But why the house? I can understand why he wants to sell his practice, but why is he insisting we take the house, too? It's too big for us-we don't need all that room!"

"I don't know," Cal replied. "But he's selling it to us cheap, and it's a d.a.m.ned good deal. I think we should consider ourselves lucky."

"But it doesn't make any sense," June complained, "In fact, it's almost morbid. I'm sure he wants out of that house because of what happened to Alan Hanley. Why is he so anxious to have us in it? All it can do is constantly remind you you of that boy, too. It's crazy, Cal. He wants something from you. I don't know what it is, but you mark my words. Something is going to happen." of that boy, too. It's crazy, Cal. He wants something from you. I don't know what it is, but you mark my words. Something is going to happen."

But so far, not much had had happened. happened.

A bad moment with Sally Carstairs, but he'd gotten through it.

And now, his daughter was starting to have nightmares.

CHAPTER 6.

June stood at her easel, trying to concentrate on her work. It was difficult. It wasn't the painting that was bothering her-indeed, she was pleased with what she had accomplished: a seascape was emerging, somewhat abstract, but nevertheless recognizable as the view from her studio. No, it wasn't the work that was the problem.

The problem was Mich.e.l.le, but she still hadn't quite been able to put her finger on why she was worried. It wasn't as if last night's nightmare had been the first. Mich.e.l.le certainly had had her normal share of bad dreams. But when Cal had come back to bed just before dawn, and told her about Mich.e.l.le's dream, she'd had an uneasy feeling. It had stayed with her even when she went back to sleep; it was still with her now.

With a sigh of frustration, June laid her brushes aside, and sank onto the stool, her favorite perch.

Her eyes wandered restlessly over the studio. She was pleased with what she had accomplished in so short a time-the last of the old debris was gone, the walls had been scrubbed and repainted, and the bright green trim had been restored to its original cheerfulness. Her supplies were stored away neatly under the countertop, and in the closet she had installed a rack to hold her canvases upright and separated. Now all she had to do was stop worrying and start painting.

She was about to make one more stab at it when there was a flicker of movement outside the single small window on the inland side of the building, then a light tap at the door.

"h.e.l.lo?" The voice was a woman's, tentative, almost timid, as if whoever had come to the door had nearly gone away again without announcing herself at all.

June started to get up to open the door, then changed her mind. "Come in," she called. "It's open."

There was a slight pause, then the door opened and a small woman, her hair wrapped neatly in a bun and her dress covered with a flowered ap.r.o.n, stepped hesitantly into the studio.

"Oh, are you working?" the woman asked, starting to back out tibe door again. "I'm terribly sorry-I didn't mean to disturb you."

"No, no," June protested, getting to her feet "Please come in. I'm afraid I was really only daydreaming."

A strange look crossed the woman's face-was it disapproval?-then quickly disappeared. She advanced into the room a foot or two.

"I'm Constance Benson," she said. "Jeff's mother. From next door?"

"Of course!" June replied warmly. "I really should have come over to see you before, but I'm afraid I-" she broke off her sentence, glancing ruefully down at her pregnant midsection. "But that's really no excuse, is it? I mean, I really should be walking huge numbers of miles every day, and instead I just sit here and daydream. Well, three more weeks and the baby should be here. Won't you sit down?" She gestured toward a chaise longue that had been rescued from the attic of the house, but Mrs. Benson made no move toward it. Instead, she gazed around the studio with unconcealed curiosity.

"You've certainly done wonders with this, haven't you?" she observed.

"Mostly just cleaning, and a little paint," June said. Then she saw Mrs. Benson staring at the floor. "And of course I still have to get that stain out," she added, half-apologetically.

"Don't count on it," Constance Benson told her. "You wouldn't be the first that's tried, and you wouldn't be the last that'll fail, either."

"I beg your pardon?" June said blankly.

"That stain'll be there as long as this building is here," Mrs. Benson said emphatically.

"But it's mostly gone already," June protested. "My husband chipped most of it off, and it seems to be scrubbing up fairly well."

Constance Benson shook her head doubtfully. "I don't know," she said. "Maybe now that there's no Carsons here...." Her voice trailed off, but the frown on her face remained.

"I don't understand," June said lamely. "What is the stain? Is it blood?"

"Maybe," Constance Benson replied. "Don't think anyone can say for sure, not after all these years. But if anybody knows, Doc Carson would be the one to ask."

"I see," June said, not really seeing at all. "I suppose I should ask him, then, shouldn't I?"

"Actually, it's those girls I came to see you about," Mrs. Benson announced. Her eyes were now firmly fixed on June. There was something almost accusatory in them, and June wondered if Mich.e.l.le and Sally had somehow offended Constance Benson.

"You mean Mich.e.l.le and Sally Carstairs?" At the expression of concern on June's face, Mrs. Benson smiled slightly, the first warmth she had displayed since coming into the studio. Her face was suddenly almost pretty.

"Oh, don't worry," she said hurriedly. "They haven't done anything wrong. I just wanted to warn you."

"Warn me?" June repeated, now totally baffled.