Gallows Hill

by Lois Duncan

  “No,” Kyra told her. “It was Eric. He just wanted to chat.” She paused and then, pained by the disappointment on her mother’s face, offered her a consolation gift. “Guess what happened today to Rosemary Zoltanne? She dumped red-hot tomato sauce all over herself.”

  “Can’t that woman cook?” Sheila responded contemptuously.

  “Obviously not if she can’t hang on to a cook pot.”

  “Was she injured badly?”

  “It was bad enough so that Dad had to take her to Urgent Care.”

  “I know I should say ‘Poor thing!’ or something of that sort,” Sheila said. “It’s the Christian thing to be sorry when people get hurt, and you know how important it is to me to live by Christian values. But I’m only human. It’s impossible to feel sorry for a woman who takes advantage of an argument between husband and wife to deliberately break up a happy family.”

  “I know,” Kyra said. She sat down on the arm of the recliner and slipped her arm around her mother’s shoulders. “Hang in there, Mom, we’re not beaten yet. Dad will come back. He always has before.”

  “But this time it’s different,” her mother said. “This time there’s that woman!”

  “She won’t last,” Kyra said reassuringly. “This is his home, and we’re his family. He’s not going to leave us.”

  “What does he see in her? Is she pretty?”

  “Not as pretty as you are.”

  “Does she have a career?”

  “She did, but she doesn’t now. Nobody here will hire a woman like that.”

  “Your father wants a homemaker. That’s terribly important to him; he wants to find everything perfect when he comes home from work. He didn’t object to my working part-time at the church, but when I told him I wanted to apply for that job as a legal secretary in Bridleville—”

  “Rosemary is a lousy homemaker,” Kyra said quickly in an effort to quell the recitation before the tears came. “She serves weird food—like artichokes.”

  “Do you think your father still loves me?” her mother asked in a little-girl voice filled with pleading.

  “Of course,” Kyra said with certainty. “If Rosemary Zoltanne hadn’t jumped into the picture, he’d be here right now. This isn’t going to last, Mom, I promise.”

  “You’re such a comfort,” her mother said, reaching up to cover Kyra’s hand with her own. She paused and then asked, “How did Eric learn about the tomato sauce? He doesn’t go over there, does he? He hasn’t made a friend of that girl?”

  “Of course not,” Kyra said. “I guess he just heard it somewhere.”

  In bed that night, too stressed out to sleep, Sarah opened the library book Charlie had given her. If she hadn’t known otherwise, she would have thought she was reading fiction:

  In Salem Village, Massachusetts, in 1692, nine-year-old Betty Parris, the daughter of the town minister, and her eleven-year-old cousin, Abigail, would sit in the kitchen of the Parris rectory and listen to Tituba, a slave from the Spanish West Indies, tell stories about magic. Although Tituba had converted to Christianity, she still had charms for everything. She even taught the children how to see their future husbands by breaking an egg into a glass of water and finding pictures in the swirls.

  Fun was a scarce commodity in this tiny Puritan community, where lives were devoted to work and religious observance. Dancing and games were forbidden, toys were regarded as time-wasters, and little girls weren’t even permitted to have dolls.

  When word began to circulate about the entertainment taking place in the kitchen at the rectory, Betty and Abigail were joined by a group of older girls. The leader of this group was a twelve-year-old girl named Ann Putnam.

  In Salem Village, anything involving magic was considered evil, and the older girls began to worry that they would be found out. Since Betty was the youngest and inclined to be a chatterbox, they threatened her with terrible punishment if she told what they were doing. Betty, who was an impressionable child, became too nervous to eat and started having nightmares and screaming in her sleep. Her father grew concerned and took her to a doctor, who, finding nothing physically wrong with her, determined that her problems must be caused by witchcraft.

  When the older girls heard this, they became more frightened than ever that Betty would talk and that they would be blamed for her condition. Then Ann Putnam got the idea that if she claimed to be bewitched also, she might be able to escape punishment. Timing her performance to take place in the minister’s presence, she screamed and hurled herself to the floor as if struck down by evil forces. The other girls caught on and entered into the drama, shouting that they saw hideous figures and were being pinched by invisible hands.

  What a horrid bunch of children, Sarah thought, laying the book aside. I can’t believe anyone could take all their crazy talk seriously.

  But no matter how silly the story was, she was grateful to have something to think about other than the terrible scene that had occurred in her own kitchen.

  Chapter

  SEVEN

  ERIC INSERTED THE KEY into the lock of the ground-floor apartment, opened the door, and groped around in the darkness in search of a switch. After a moment he found it, and the interior of the room was flooded with overhead light. He set down his backpack and Sarah’s CD player and went around quickly pulling down window shades.

  “We don’t want the neighbors reporting that they saw lights,” he said.

  “So this is his apartment.” Sarah placed the paperweight on an end table and glanced about her with reluctant curiosity. The living room was exactly as she would have pictured it. As colorless and unimaginative as Ted Thompson himself, it was carpeted in beige and furnished with the routine sofa, armchairs, coffee table, and end tables, and a set of empty bookshelves.

  “It looks like the places he’s rented before,” Eric commented. “Typical no-frills digs for a guy paying child support. Is he chipping in on your mom’s rent, or is she carrying it herself?”

  “I think they’re splitting it,” Sarah said. “But my mother’s share comes out of her savings, since she hasn’t found a job yet. What do you mean, it’s like the other places he’s rented? Have he and Kyra’s mother been separated before?”

  “A couple of times,” Eric said. “It’s sort of like a power play. She doesn’t stand up to him often, but if she does, he puts her in her place by packing up and walking out. Then he gets his own place for a while until he starts missing the comforts of home and decides to give her another chance. They make up, and everything’s rosy until it happens again.”

  “So you think he’ll go back to her?” Sarah asked hopefully.

  “Maybe not this time, because he has your mother.” Eric was clearly bored by the subject. “So, on with the show! Let’s figure out the best place for you to set up shop.”

  Together they toured the apartment, which didn’t take long, as it consisted only of the living room, kitchenette, and two small bedrooms, one of which contained nothing but a bureau, the two single beds having been transferred to Sarah’s bedroom at the house on Windsor Street.

  “Terrific!” Eric said. “We can use this one as the séance room. If there were beds, it would ruin the effect.”

  “We’re not having a séance,” Sarah protested. “That’s what they call it when mediums call up spirits of the dead. All I’m going to pretend to do is tell fortunes.”

  “ ‘The Crystal Room,’ then,” Eric said lightly. “I like that, don’t you? That sounds like a room in the White House. Why don’t you go get changed, and I’ll set things up.”

  He made a quick trip back to the living room to retrieve the portable CD player and the backpack, out of which he extracted a K Mart sack, which he handed to Sarah. When she opened it, she was startled to find not the Gypsy costume she expected but a witch costume, with a black cape and peaked black hat.

  “What’s this?” she exclaimed. “I thought I was going to wear the same outfit I wore at the carnival!”

  “I couldn�
��t get it back from the Drama Club prop room without explaining why I wanted it,” Eric said. “What I ended up doing was hitting the discount counter at K Mart, but most of the Halloween costumes were already sold.”

  “I don’t like it,” Sarah objected. “The other costume was funky and fun, but this one’s creepy.”

  “Sorry,” Eric said. “It was either this or a skeleton, and I figured you wouldn’t want your bones showing. Now, seriously, we’ve got to get a move on. Your first client, Jennifer Albritton, is due here at eight. Her boyfriend, Danny Adams, will be coming with her, but you’ll read for each of them separately. The third will be Debbie Rice. I’ve scheduled them for fifteen-minute sessions separated by five-minute breaks. That way you’ll have time to prep yourself between readings. Here’s a packet of information, courtesy of our research lady.”

  He thrust a sheaf of papers into her hand and turned his attention to setting up the CD player.

  Reluctantly Sarah went into the bathroom to change into the witch costume. It was immediately obvious that it was meant for somebody much smaller, but then, how many girls her age went trick-or-treating? She consoled herself with the thought that she would be seated behind a table and nobody would see that the skirt hit her just below the knees. The problem came with getting her arms into the sleeves, and the soreness of her right arm and shoulder muscles made her sharply aware of the fact that they had received an unaccustomed workout that morning. Throwing a paper from the passenger seat of a station wagon involved more of an athletic effort than she had anticipated.

  Pulling the cloak around her shoulders (there was no way she was going to put on the ridiculous hat), she peered at herself in the mirror over the sink. The glass was smudged in places and spattered here and there with toothpaste, as if somebody had rinsed out his mouth and spat too hard. The sink had little hairs in it, the residue from an electric razor. This was Ted Thompson’s mirror, his sink, his bathroom, his apartment. No matter how seldom he used the place, she had no business being here. Her mother would have a fit if she knew about it.

  For a moment she experienced a twinge of guilt at the memory of Rosemary as she had seen her last, lying on the living-room couch, doped up on pain pills and loaded with antibiotics, while Ted and Kyra sat at a card table and played gin rummy. She ought to be home with her mother when she was feeling miserable, but what good would it do if she were? Rosemary had Ted to look after her and had actually seemed pleased when Sarah announced she was going out with Eric. In Rosemary’s eyes, Eric Garrett could do no wrong, and both she and Ted were openly delighted that Sarah was finally starting to “get out and do things.”

  Well, it was too late to change her mind now, even if she wanted to, which she wasn’t sure she did. After all, she rationalized, Ted Thompson had taken over her home, so what was so terrible about spending a few hours in his?

  Turning away from the mirror, Sarah unfolded Kyra’s notes. The top sheet was on Jennifer Albritton and contained the same sort of information that Kyra had provided for her at the carnival:

  Jennifer’s dad sells insurance; her mom works in a stationery store. She has a little sister named Amy—you did a reading on her at the carnival, she’s the one with the Big Bird night-light. Jennifer pretends to be a vegetarian, but every couple of days she sneaks off and gets a burger. She and Danny have been hot and heavy since Christmas.

  Sarah left the bathroom and went back out into the bedroom. During the time she had been gone, Eric had managed to manufacture a mood of mystery. He had brought an end table in from the living room and covered it with a black cloth for the paperweight to rest on. The overhead light was now off, and the room was illuminated by a row of candles lined up on the bureau top.

  He turned to give Sarah a critical inspection.

  “How about more eye makeup?” he suggested.

  “I don’t want to look like Vampira,” Sarah said.

  “Nobody as pretty as you could look like Vampira,” Eric said. I just thought some dark shadows might make you a little more mystical-looking.” He reached over to lay a gentle finger against the side of her face. “How about a smile?”

  “Witches don’t smile,” Sarah said.

  “Not for your clients—for me. I don’t like to see you so solemn, pretty witch lady. This isn’t the Inquisition, we’re here to have fun!”

  The sound of the doorbell shattered the brief moment of intimacy.

  “I guess that means there’s no time for more makeup,” Eric said. “I don’t suppose it really matters with the candlelight. I’ve got the CD player plugged in over there in the corner. I’ll give you a couple of minutes, and then I’ll bring in your client.”

  He left, closing the door behind him and leaving Sarah alone in the candlelit bedroom.

  Taking one of her collection of meditation CDs out of her purse, she slipped it into the player and turned the volume down almost as far as it would go. Then she took her seat at the table that held the crystal ball. The atmosphere here was quite different from that of the carnival. There she had felt linked to the activity going on outside the tent, and the shouts and laughter and conversation from the carnival participants had bled in through the loose-hanging curtains. Here there were no such distractions, only the soft background music of strings and woodwinds and the dubbed-in cry of a loon by a moonlit lake.

  She peered into the globe, and in the flickering light of the candles it seemed less like a paperweight than it ever had. It seemed in fact to hold an iridescent light of its own.

  She became aware of the sound of voices outside the bedroom door. Then the door swung open, and Eric ushered in the first client and closed the door again.

  Jennifer Albritton stood staring at Sarah in apparent bewilderment, as if she didn’t know what to make of her.

  “Are you the same girl who did the readings at the carnival?” she asked doubtfully. “I thought she was dressed like a Gypsy.”

  “I am the same person,” Sarah told her, assuming her fortune-teller persona. “I am Madam Zoltanne. Sometimes I present one image and sometimes another. The outer shell is of no importance; the only thing meaningful is what appears in the glass.”

  She motioned to the chair across from her.

  Jennifer giggled self-consciously as she sat down.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she said. “My folks would kill me. You won’t tell anybody, will you?”

  “Everything that occurs in this room is sacred,” Sarah assured her. “This is a place where secrets of the soul are revealed.”

  “This is totally far out!” Jennifer said. “Can you really do this? Do you really see things in that ball?”

  Sarah stared into the globe in silence for a moment. Then she said quietly, “I see a young girl who looks up to you. You are her idol. She seems like a happy child, but at heart she is frightened. The darkness brings out the fear in her. A large yellow bird watches over her.”

  “That’s my sister, Amy,” Jennifer said. “She told Mom you said that at the carnival, and Mom didn’t like it. She said yellow birds are supposed to be familiars of witches.”

  “I see duplicity,” Sarah said quickly, changing the subject. “I see a two-sided coin, a two-sided soul within the person who sits before me. On one hand, she has made a commitment never to bring the flesh of an animal to her lips. Yet there are times—times when she cannot control herself, times when her carnal desires grow too powerful to resist. There are times of shame. …” She paused.

  “It’s not often,” Jennifer said nervously. “Just once in a while. And then it’s just chicken.”

  “That’s not what the glass tells me,” Sarah said, leaning closer to the paperweight. She wished that Eric could be there to enjoy her performance and to see that she was not always as serious as she appeared to be. There was a quicksilver sparkle about Eric that brought out the fun in her—a reckless, devil-may-care quality that reminded her of Jon, when he skimmed the top of a cresting wave on his surfboard. She was tempted
to tell Jennifer, “I see something big and four-footed that says ‘Moo,’ ” but decided that that might be overdoing it. Instead she said, “The beast that I see in the glass does not appear to have wings. But—quickly this image fades—too quickly for me to be certain.”

  Jennifer gave an audible gasp of relief.

  “And now I see Christmas,” Sarah said. “What a joyous holiday! Something wonderful happened at Christmastime. Your heart began singing.”

  “Yes!” Jennifer exclaimed. “That’s when I started going out with Danny! We got together at the tree-trimming party at the church. He was just so cute! He came over to where I was standing and whispered in my ear, ‘I wish you had a bow on you, ’cause then I could unwrap you.’ Wasn’t that an adorable way to come on to me!”

  At which point Jennifer took full control of the session, rhapsodizing in detail about her romance with Danny Adams, who was scheduled to be Sarah’s next client. So when Danny came in for his reading, she had learned so much about him from his girlfriend that she didn’t have to use much that was in Kyra’s notes.

  For the third client, though, it was different, because she knew almost nothing about Debbie Rice except that she was regarded as a femme fatale and, according to Leanne Bush, had a 38-D bust. After Danny left the room, Sarah snatched at the fragment of time she had before Debbie entered to start the CD over and study the information Kyra had provided. It was evident that Kyra had no warm feelings for this girl, for her notes about her were vicious:

  Debbie’s a slut who comes on to every guy that breathes. She’s even made a play for Eric. She’s president of the Drama Club and also a cheerleader. The cheerleader bunch sticks together, so they act like they love her, but underneath they’re all scared she’s going to snag their boyfriends. Her older sister, Grace, is no better. She’ll put out for anybody. If you want to send Debbie into orbit, mention her sister and a bodybuilder type named Buzz Tyson. Debbie had her eye on Buzz, and Grace snatched him away from her. Now Debbie’s trying to get him back.