by John Saul
Except her friend wasn’t the real D’Arcy, of course. Her friend was just someone she’d made up, someone the same age as she was.
Someone she could talk to about all the things she couldn’t talk to anyone else about.
But now, after she’d been dumb enough to run away, everyone was going to think she was nuts. Why had she done it? Why hadn’t she just made a joke of it? After all, when she’d been the last one on the volleyball court, fighting it out with Jerry Chalmers, she’d thought the whole thing was as funny as everyone else had. It hadn’t been a joke on her. It had just been a joke, and for once she’d been a part of it.
But now she’d wrecked it by being stupid again.
All she’d had to do was go along with it. There were all kinds of stories she could have made up.
She could have told them she knew who D’Arcy was going to come for at the August Moon Ball.
Then she thought of something even better—maybe she should have told them that D’Arcy had found her hand and was going to leave it on the bed of her victim the night before the ball.
The sob that had threatened to overwhelm her only a few minutes earlier suddenly gave way to a giggle and then a sigh.
If the kids were going to laugh at her again, it was her own fault, not Teri’s. And there wasn’t anything she could do about it tonight.
As she got up and started home, she almost wished that D’Arcy were real. And if she were …
She tried to put the thought out of her mind, but as she neared the house she found herself giggling again. What would the kids do if they actually saw D’Arcy? she wondered.
But they wouldn’t, of course, for there was no D’Arcy, except for the friend who existed only in her own mind.
She paused as she neared the house. In the library all the lights were on, and she could see her mother sitting in front of the television set. If she went in the front door, Phyllis would surely hear her, and then the questions would start.
“Why are you home so early?”
“Why didn’t Teri come with you?”
“Is the bonfire over?”
She glanced back. In the distance the fire was burning brighter now. Someone must have thrown more wood on it, and even from here she could see the silhouettes of the rest of the kids, some of them sitting on logs, some of them standing near the fire, toasting marshmallows.
Her mother would see them, too, and the questions would get worse.
“What did you do?”
“Were you rude to your friends again?”
“Did you do something stupid?”
“Did you?”
She backed away from the front of the house, then skirted around it, losing herself in the deep shadows. From the back the house was dark, and as she approached the kitchen door she began to relax. If she could just slip inside without her mother hearing her.
And then, out of the darkness, a great shadow leaped at her, and a moment later Blackie, his tail wagging furiously, rose up to put his big forepaws on her chest as his tongue licked eagerly at her face.
“Blackie!” Melissa said, doing her best to keep her voice as soft as possible. “Will you get down?”
Obediently, the dog dropped back to the ground, and Melissa knelt next to him for a moment, scratching his ears and rubbing his back. Wriggling with pleasure, the big Labrador pressed against her, his tongue lapping affectionately at her arms.
“All right,” she whispered, rising once more to her feet and glancing nervously toward the house to be sure no new lights had come on. “Now go home. Do you hear me? Go home!”
She moved up the steps to the back door. The dog, after hesitating only a moment, scrambled after her.
“No!” she hissed. “You can’t come in!”
She felt around for the key that Cora always kept hidden in the large terra-cotta planter to the right of the door, found it and slipped it into the lock.
There was a loud click as the bolt slid free, and Melissa froze for a moment. But then, hearing nothing, she returned the key to its hiding place and slipped through the door.
As soon as she closed it behind her. Blackie began anxiously scratching at it, a disappointed whine issuing from his throat.
As the whine grew louder, Melissa uttered a silent prayer that he wouldn’t actually bark.
As she held her breath, Blackie uttered a single sharp yelp.
Instantly, Melissa opened the door again, grasping the dog’s collar as he slipped eagerly through the gap. “All right,” Melissa whispered. “You can come in, but you have to be quiet, and you can’t stay all night.”
The big dog cocked his head and peered up at her exactly as if he’d understood every word she’d said.
Her hand still clamped on to Blackie’s thick leather collar, Melissa scuttled across the kitchen to the seldom-used servants’ stairs. Opening the door to the stairwell slowly, praying that there would be no creak, she led the dog through.
A minute later she was finally safe in her room. She’d paused at the top of the stairs, peeping down into the foyer beneath, half expecting to see her mother’s accusing eyes glaring back at her, but the foyer had been empty, and she could only dimly hear the sound of the television drifting up from the library. Closing the door to her room, she released Blackie, who promptly bounded onto the bed and curled up on her pillows. She glared at the dog. “Isn’t it bad enough that you managed to get in here?” she asked. “If you mess up my bed, Mama will kill us both.”
Blackie’s tail thumped happily against the headboard, and he made no movement to get off the bed. Instead he rolled over, his legs in the air, then stared at her, his huge brown eyes pleading to have his belly rubbed.
Feigning a lot more exasperation with the dog than she really felt, Melissa flopped onto the bed herself and began scratching Blackie’s belly. Then, from the open window, she heard Tag’s voice.
“Blackie! Blackie, come!”
Instantly, the big dog rolled over, scrambled off the bed and ran to the window. As Tag called out again, Blackie reared up, placed his forepaws on the windowsill and began barking loudly.
Melissa rolled off the bed and scuttled over to the dog. “No!” she said sharply, trying to clamp her hands around the dog’s mouth. Blackie wriggled free of her hands and once more began baying loudly as Tag called to him yet again.
“Tag!” Melissa called out the window as loudly as she dared. “He’s up here! Stop calling him!”
And then, behind her, Melissa heard her mother’s voice, and the lights in her room suddenly went on.
“Melissa? What on earth?” Phyllis fell silent when she saw Blackie, who had spun around and was now crouched at Melissa’s feet, a warning growl rumbling up from his throat. Instinctively, Phyllis took a step backward, but her eyes flashed with anger. “What is that dog doing in here?” she demanded.
“I—I’m sorry, Mama,” Melissa stammered. “I—He—When I opened the back door, he just sort of came in.”
Phyllis’s eyes narrowed. “Came in?” she repeated. “Dogs do not simply come into houses. People let them in.”
Melissa nodded. “I’ll put him out,” she said quickly. “Right now.”
Grasping Blackie’s collar again, she attempted to slip past her mother, but Phyllis’s hand closed around her arm.
“And why are you home?” she demanded. “Why aren’t you still at the bonfire with your friends?”
“I—I didn’t feel very good,” Melissa lied.
“But you felt good enough to bring that dog up here so you could play with it, didn’t you?”
Melissa, trapped, nodded glumly. “Y-Yes.”
Her eyes still blazing with anger, Phyllis marched Melissa down the back stairs and watched in silence as her daughter opened the kitchen door and sent Blackie out into the night. But as Melissa started back toward the stairs, Phyllis stopped her.
“Look,” she commanded.
Melissa stared at the floor at which her mother was pointing, and her heart s
ank.
Across the linoleum, leading from the kitchen door to the foot of the servants’ stairs, were Blackie’s muddy pawprints. Gasping, Melissa looked at her shirt.
It, too, was covered with brown smudges. Fearfully, she looked once more at her mother.
“Scrub the floor,” Phyllis said, her tone of voice leaving no room for argument. “And while you scrub it, think about why you left the party early. And don’t tell me you felt sick—I can see perfectly well that you aren’t. I’ll want you to tell me the truth, and then I’ll decide what needs to be done.”
Phyllis turned and walked out of the kitchen. This time, as Melissa filled a bucket with soapy water and fished the mop out of the depths of the broom closet, she didn’t fight the sob that rose in her throat. As she began scrubbing the kitchen floor clean of every trace of dirt that Blackie had tracked in, she knew that this was the best part of what was likely to happen tonight.
The worst would be upstairs, where her mother would be waiting for her in her room.
A cool breeze wafted in from the sea, and the dying flames of the bonfire leaped back to life, orange fingers reaching upward into the darkness as if seeking something to feed on. Teri, sitting next to Brett Van Arsdale now, his arm resting gently across her shoulders, gazed into the blaze. An image of another fire briefly rose out of her memory, and for a few seconds she could hear once more the crackling roar and the screams of her mother.
She shivered slightly and put the memory out of her mind, snuggling closer to Brett. Then, as the moon began to drop below the horizon, she glanced at the watch on her wrist.
It was nearly midnight.
“I guess maybe I’d better be going home,” she said, reluctantly getting to her feet.
“Want me to walk you?” Brett asked, scrambling up from the sand.
Teri shrugged. “You don’t need to.”
“Oh, I don’t know—you wouldn’t want D’Arcy to catch you out alone at night, would you?”
Teri said nothing until they’d started down the beach, when she slipped her hand into his. “No one really believes that story, do they?”
“Which part?” Brett countered.
Teri glanced sideways at him in the dark. “Well, all of it.”
“I don’t know if anyone really believes D’Arcy’s still around,” he replied, then snickered softly. “Except maybe Melissa.” Then his voice turned serious. “But most of the story’s true. My great-grandparents were at the dance when it happened. Half the people around here used to keep diaries. And they all wrote the same thing. There must have been fifty people who saw what happened.”
“Maybe they made it up,” Teri suggested.
Brett peered at her in the darkness. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I don’t know, but it just seems like maybe they all got together and decided it would be fun to start a ghost story.”
Brett chuckled. “You’d better come over to my house sometime and take a look at the portraits. One look at my great-grandfather and you know he never made up a story in his life. I mean, he was a lawyer, and some kind of big deal in the church we go to in New York. And my grandma says she can’t remember either of her parents ever laughing. Besides, I’ll bet if you ask your dad, he’ll tell you all about it.”
Teri shrugged. “Well, even if it’s true, I can’t believe anyone really thinks she’s still around. I mean, it’s just an old story, isn’t it? And I’ll bet it’s always someone else who saw her.” She turned to face Brett. “I mean, did you ever see D’Arcy? Or did anyone you know?”
Brett shrugged. “No. But so what? There’s lots of people who’ve seen her.”
“Name one,” Teri challenged.
Brett stared at her for a moment, then started laughing. “I can’t believe it,” he moaned. “Are we actually arguing about a ghost? It was only a story.”
They were approaching Maplecrest now, and the house was dark except for a light in the master suite on the second floor. “Want to come in for a Coke or something?”
Brett nodded, grinning. “Sure. And then you can walk me home, so D’Arcy doesn’t get me, and then I can walk you home, and we can go back and forth all night.”
“Forget it,” Teri said. “You get a Coke, and then you walk home by yourself. If a ghost gets you, tough.”
They started across the lawn, then froze as a low growl drifted out of the darkness. “What the hell?” Brett said.
“It’s just Blackie,” Teri told him. “He’s so stupid … Blackie! Go home!”
She reached down and picked up a stick, then threw it in the direction from which the growl had come.
There was a yelp, and then Blackie began barking, shattering the quiet of the night. A moment later, from upstairs, they heard Phyllis Holloway’s voice.
“Tag! You get that dog inside! I will not have him disturbing the neighbors all night!”
Brett glanced uneasily at Teri. “I think I’ll skip the Coke,” he said. “She sounds pretty pissed off.”
“It’s okay,” Teri protested. “She really likes you.”
But Brett shook his head. “I think I’ll just skip it. It’s pretty late.”
Phyllis yelled at Blackie once more, and then Tag, too, shouted at the dog. After one last bark at Teri and Brett, Blackie trotted off around the corner of the house. A moment later, on the front porch, Brett gave Teri a quick kiss before starting toward the path that would eventually take him home.
Teri let herself in the front door and went through the dining room and butler’s pantry into the kitchen to find a Coke for herself. But as she opened the kitchen door, the acrid smell of Lysol filled her nostrils, and when she turned on the light, she saw that the floor was still damp, as if someone had washed it that night.
Cora?
It couldn’t have been—Cora always left right after supper.
Besides, Cora wouldn’t have left it wet.
She fished a Coke out of the refrigerator, opened it, then went back the way she’d come, mounting the main stairs to the second floor. When she got to the landing, she heard Phyllis calling out to her.
“Teri? Is that you, dear?”
She went to the master suite, whose door was ajar, and tapped softly.
“Come in,” Phyllis said. Teri pushed the door open, and saw her stepmother propped up in bed, a magazine resting on her lap. Phyllis patted the wide expanse of the bed. “Come sit down and tell me all about it.”
Fifteen minutes later Phyllis smiled happily. “I’m so glad you had a good time,” she said, reaching out to take Teri’s hand. “And though I suppose it’s really rather unkind of me, given what happened, I want you to know how happy I am to have you back here again. I’ve always thought you belonged here. You’re—Well, I guess sometimes I used to feel like you should have been my own daughter. Is that terrible of me?”
Teri smiled gently at her stepmother. “I don’t think so,” she said. “But you already have Melissa.”
Phyllis’s smile faded. “Yes,” she said, “I do, don’t I? But Melissa isn’t like you. Oh, I don’t mean I love her any the less for it, but she just doesn’t have your—well, your ability to get along. I do my best, of course, but sometimes I’m not sure she really cares about the things that count. I mean, like tonight,” she went on, her voice taking on a rough edge of annoyance. “What must the other children have thought of her, leaving the party just because she ‘didn’t feel good’? Everyone has times when they don’t feel good, but you don’t simply leave a party because—” Her words trailed off as she saw an oddly uncertain look come into her stepdaughter’s eyes. “That was why she left the bonfire, wasn’t it?”
Teri, her body tingling as she sensed an opportunity, ran her tongue nervously over her lower lip as if she were reluctant to say anything, but finally shook her head. “It—It was the ghost story,” she said at last. “Brett was telling us the story of D’Arcy, and it scared Melissa.”
Phyllis groaned out loud. “Are you telling me she ran away
over a silly ghost story?”
Teri shrugged helplessly. “Well, it was pretty scary. And nobody really minded.” She cast her eyes carefully downward. “But I suppose I should have gone with her, just to make sure she was all right.”
“Don’t be silly,” Phyllis retorted, her anger at Melissa’s childishness still burning within her. “The only way Melissa is going to learn anything is by having an example.” She smiled fondly at Teri. “And I can’t think of a better one than you. Besides, there’s no reason in the world why your good time should have been spoiled by her childishness.”
“Then you’re not mad at me?” Teri asked, looking shyly at Phyllis once more.
“Mad at you? Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t think I could ever be mad at you.” She squeezed Teri’s hand, then offered her cheek. “Now give me a kiss, and run along.”
A few minutes later, in the bathroom between their bedrooms, Teri pressed her ear against Melissa’s door. She heard nothing, and finally opened the door to slip into Melissa’s room.
As before, Melissa was lying on her back, her eyes open, staring fixedly at the ceiling. Teri stood by the bed for a few minutes, gazing down at her half sister. Finally, her voice all but inaudible, she spoke.
“Melissa?”
No response.
“Melissa, are you awake?”
Once again, no response.
Teri pulled the sheet back. There, fastened securely to Melissa’s wrists and ankles, were the restraints that held her to the bed.
Teri hesitated, and then an idea came to her. “D’Arcy?”
Melissa’s eyes shifted away from the ceiling and came to rest on Teri.
“D’Arcy, can you hear me?”
There was a moment of silence, and then Melissa’s lips moved. “Yes, I can hear you.” A slight chill coursed through Teri as she heard the voice issuing from Melissa’s lips, for though it was recognizable, it had changed somehow. There was a flatness to it, a toneless quality.
Almost, Teri found herself thinking, as if a dead person had spoken.
“Do you know who I am?”
Melissa’s head moved, and then D’Arcy’s odd voice spoke again. “You’re Teri. Melissa told me about you.”