Darkling

by R. B. Chesterton

  I surveyed the room, the bat still hefted. There was no other place to hide, except under the bed. I walked slowly to the spot where I’d been sleeping only half an hour before. There was a ruffled duster around the bed and I knelt down and lifted it slowly. When I lowered my face to the floor, I was eye to eye with the nester. Saliva dripped from the pointed teeth that were blasphemy in Erin’s beautiful face.

  “Soon they’ll all be gone.” It blew rancid breath across my face.

  Despite my terror, I reached for the creature. It lunged at my hand, teeth snapping like a rabid dog. Spittle sprayed my hand and face and gagged me with the horrible odor.

  The creature giggled and slammed into me, knocking me onto my side. And then it was out from under the bed and at Erin’s window. With one final giggle, it leaped into the branches of the oak tree.

  I raced after it, still wielding the bat. It stopped on the branch, just out of reach, looking so much like Erin that my heart dropped at the sight of her perched so precariously on the tree limb, the ground at least twenty feet below her.

  The nester stared at me, smiling, nasty teeth glinting white in the moonlight. It lifted its arm up and with a viciousness I’d never seen, it bit. Blood spurted from its arm, from Erin’s arm. “Erin’s mine,” it said before it scampered along the limb to the tree trunk and ran down it like an animal.

  I stood in the window and watched it race across the yard, running on two legs and sometimes four. It disappeared into the woods and I knew if I went to look I would find only claw marks in the dirt.

  The bat slipped through my nerveless fingers and I sank onto Erin’s bed, wondering what I could possibly do to prevent further tragedy.

  I had to get Annie out of the house. Perhaps I would go to jail for killing Annie, but at least the children and Bob would be saved.

  For the rest of the night I sat outside my bedroom door, the bat across my lap, waiting. Guarding the door didn’t mean the creature couldn’t get in another way. With the nester, there were no guarantees. But while I sat, I planned the future. One way or the other, Annie would be gone from Belle Fleur before darkness fell again.

  54

  Jimmy Finch actually wore a trench coat and carried a manila envelope when he got out of his car and walked across the parking lot to where I sat on his steps. A cigarette dangled from his mouth and his eyes were tired.

  “Why didn’t you just break in again?” he asked.

  “Not necessary. You were coming, and the heat isn’t on in your office.” I followed him inside but kept my coat on. The place was freezing. I wondered if he was aggravated that I’d broken in, but there was only worry on his face.

  He handed me the papers he’d brought in. “Take a look at that.”

  I shook out the handwritten pages and scanned them.

  “Annie lived with a family in Natchez?” I couldn’t be certain what I was reading. Finch’s handwriting was atrocious.

  “Yeah. She was fostered by a rural family just outside of Natchez. They got her when she was six from a shelter home in Jackson. According to the state records, she was dropped in front of the shelter, obviously a victim of some kind of trauma. She didn’t speak for the first six years, and she was shifted from home to home for a while, until the Fultons near Natchez took her in. By all accounts from the family, she was happy there, though always distant. She ran away from the Fultons back in July. She was seen talking to an older woman in a shop where she’d gone to buy a new blouse. She never returned to the Fultons and no one has seen her since. Natchez police have her listed as a runaway, presumed dead.”

  “Are you positive?”

  He nodded. “Mr. and Mrs. Fulton identified her by a photo. It’s Annie all right. Annie Fulton. They gave her their last name because she couldn’t remember—or wouldn’t say—her own. They’ve been searching for her. They never gave up hope. They never dreamed she’d come to this area. She has no connection to Mobile that they knew of.”

  “Did they say what the older woman she was talking to in the shop looked like?”

  “You’re pretty astute,” Finch said. He sat on the edge of his desk.

  “It was my grandmother, wasn’t it?”

  “Can’t say for sure, but she fits the description. In her sixties or seventies, dressed in business clothes, drove a newer model Cadillac, blue.”

  “Cora’s car is blue.” I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t understand. Why would Cora go to Natchez, Mississippi—a five-hour drive one way—and encourage a teenage girl into running away from a family to show up in Coden? If Cora actually drove Annie across a state line, she had risked a kidnapping charge. “Were the Fultons abusing Annie?”

  “Not from what I could tell. They seemed like decent, compassionate people. Religious, but not crazy. They lived out from town, but Annie attended the local school. I checked with the middle-school authorities, and Annie was a good student, smart, if not well-adjusted. She caused no trouble. She had no friends and she didn’t talk except when asked a direct question. But there was no sign of abuse or unhappiness with her family situation.”

  “Did they say how they came to have Annie?”

  “The story they got from the caseworker at the state shelter was that she’d lost her family in a fire, and that the trauma had sent her into a depression that affected the way she interacted with others. She never spoke of her family or cried. They thought that was strange, but they were willing to accept what the caseworker told them—children react differently to such horrible loss. They didn’t press for details. I’ve got a call in to the Jackson shelter to see if more information is available, but what I understand is that she was found sitting on the front steps of the shelter. Abandoned. Now that I have a time period, I can do more checking on house fires, but I daresay your grandmother can fill in a lot of the blanks.”

  I didn’t know what to say. “Have you talked to Cora?”

  “Not yet.”

  “She’s a wreck because of Berta.”

  “I thought I’d wait until Monday. Give everyone a chance to recover a bit. I have to report this to the sheriff, though. He’ll probably want to talk to Cora immediately.”

  “Give me a chance to talk to her first. Please.”

  Finch tapped a forefinger on his thigh as he considered my request. “Okay. I’ll wait until noon. But it’s my duty to report this, Mimi. If your grandmother did something unethical, we have to tell the truth. If she was actively involved in Annie running away, it could be serious charges.”

  “Whatever Cora did, she did because she meant to help. I don’t understand this at all. She wouldn’t take a child from a loving home. But I have to ask her and give her a chance to explain.”

  “Do you know when services for Mrs. Henderson will be held?” he asked.

  “They had to do an autopsy.” I blinked back the tears. In twenty-four hours, I’d emotionally lost the woman I considered to be my mother and physically lost the woman I’d grown to love like a mother. “Bob and the children were given sedatives last night. I don’t know what’s going to happen at Belle Fleur.”

  “If I were Bob Henderson, I’d put that house on the market and get out of town as fast as possible.”

  I looked at Finch. “Why? It isn’t the fault of the house.”

  “They’ve had nothing but bad luck since they came. I never believed the stories about the house, but I swear, now, I’m reconsidering.”

  “What stories?”

  Finch shook his head slowly. “Once I started asking around about Belle Fleur, there are stories, actually different variations of the same story. Belle Fleur is supposedly haunted.”

  “By the ghost of Sigourney Desmarais?”

  “That would make sense, but that’s not what I’ve heard. It’s a young girl. Supposedly beautiful. Folks have seen her in the third floor windows staring out.”

  “Chloe?” Or worse, Annie. Had Annie become possessed by Chloe’s spirit? The idea was terrifying.

  He stood up. “It’s
local legend, Mimi. You’ve been living in the house. There’s no ghost.”

  Something was roaming the rooms and woods of Belle Fleur. But even as much as Jimmy Finch believed the things I told him, he would never believe me about the nester. I restacked his papers and put them in the manila envelope. When I started to leave, he stopped me.

  “I’ll get Martha to type up my report for you. She’s the only person who can really read my handwriting.”

  “Sure thing.” I gave his notes back.

  “You want to call me when you finish with Cora?”

  “I can do that. In fact, let me call the Hendersons and tell them where I am.”

  He waved me to the phone at his secretary’s desk. Instead of dialing the Hendersons, I thought better of it. I didn’t want to wake them, so I called Cora’s house on the off chance she’d gone home when she woke up. She was normally up with the sun, and it was nearly eight o’clock on a sunny day, the last Friday in November.

  When Cora answered her phone, I wasn’t surprised. “I have to talk with you,” I told her. “I know about Annie. I know she lived in Natchez.”

  “It’s a relief that you know,” she said. I’d never heard her voice so worn and without hope. “When I first brought Annie here, I thought it best for her to leave everything about her past behind. That was a mistake.”

  “Why did you do this, Cora?” I knew Cora didn’t see it the same way I did, but she’d betrayed me. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Finch in his private office going through some files.

  “Annie belongs here, in Coden,” Cora said. “Like you. I was only trying to bring it all back together, to fix it so that the past could be made whole.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “What do you know of Annie’s birth parents?” Cora’s voice was almost a whisper.

  “They died in a fire.” I hesitated. I saw it—the parallel. “Like mine.”

  “Annie is your sister, Mimi. The fire was an awful tragedy, and I took you, and Annie went into foster care. She was so young. She had a better chance to be adopted. You were so badly scarred by the fire, by what you’d seen. You forgot everything, even the fact that you had a sister.”

  Finch’s office was freezing, but a flush of heat ran from the telephone through my head and along my body. Sweat popped out on my forehead and cheeks. “She’s my what?”

  “Your younger sister. Look in the mirror. Really look. You’ll see it.”

  Finch’s secretary had a glass cover on her desk, and I could see a ghostly reflection in it. When I looked, for one split second, I saw Annie. My hair was lighter, more wave than curl. My eyes were hazel where hers were golden brown. But there was a hint of her in me.

  “Everything okay?” Finch called out.

  “Fine,” I answered automatically.

  “Where are you?” Cora asked.

  “In town. I have to talk to you.”

  “Yes, you do. There’s more for you to know, Mimi. A lot more.”

  “I’m headed to your house.” Silence filled the line, and unreasonable dread consumed me. “Cora! Cora!”

  “There’s someone in the edge of the woods,” Cora said. “I can barely make them out. My eyes aren’t what they used to be. But there’s someone standing out by the big magnolia tree on the edge of the woods.”

  “Who is it?” Holding the phone in Jimmy Finch’s office, I was totally helpless.

  “I can’t be certain.”

  “Is it Annie?” What would Annie do to Cora now that her secrets were being divulged?

  “No, it looks more like … why, it’s Erin. But she’s standing in the edge of the woods just watching my house. She’s acting peculiar. Let me get her inside and see what’s wrong with her.”

  “No!”

  “Mimi, I think she’s hurt.”

  “Do not let her inside. Lock the doors, Cora. Lock the doors and get in the bathroom. Lock that door, too!”

  “What’s wrong with you, Mimi?” She was frightened.

  “That isn’t Erin. It is something vile and evil. Get in the bathroom and barricade the door!”

  “I have to go, Mimi.” The line went dead.

  Finch heard my frantic orders and came into the front room. “What’s wrong?”

  “Someone is at Cora’s house and I think they mean to hurt her.” I pulled the car keys from my pocket. “I have to go.”

  “I’ll call the sheriff in Mobile. I’ll come with you.”

  “Call the sheriff and catch up with me,” I said and ran out the front door to the station wagon. It was only fifteen minutes to Cora’s house, but in that amount of time, the nester could do anything.

  55

  The sun climbed the morning sky, but I felt as if darkness surrounded me. I raced along Shore Road, oblivious to the gulls crying over the water or the fishing vessels out in the Sound. My world had narrowed to the gray strip of asphalt that led to Cora’s and the grass and trees that bordered the road. When I got to the turn to Cora’s house, I was traveling so fast I almost lost control, but I righted the car. I slid to a stop at the front of the house.

  Cora sat on the front porch in her favorite rocker. For a split second, I felt relief. Then I realized something was wrong. She wore a blue dress, one that she often chose for a workday, but her feet were spaced wide apart in a pose no lady of her generation would ever assume.

  “Cora!” I rushed up the steps. “Cora!”

  She didn’t move. Her neck was covered in vivid red that had seeped onto the book she held in her lap.

  “Cora!” I dropped to my knees beside her. The front of her dress was soaked in blood, and a gash sliced her throat. The blood bubbled at the wound, and I saw her eyes fixed on me. She was alive!

  I tried to stop the flow of blood by pressing my hands against it. A butcher knife was in her lap, and I picked it up and threw it into the yard.

  “Help!” I called out for anyone, but there was no one near enough to hear me. “Help me!” I tried to press the blood back into her. I could feel her breath bubbling beneath my fingers. I felt something else, too. Uniform, round pebbles. I looked more closely. Cora wore the pearl necklace, the one I’d last seen in Annie’s suitcase at Belle Fleur.

  I could feel Cora slipping away from me. Her body was growing limp, and as I watched, the flicker of life left her eyes. “No, Cora, no.” I rocked back and forth. “Don’t leave me. You’re all the family I have.”

  She’d claimed that Annie was my sister, but that had to be wrong. It had to be. How could she be?

  I heard the sirens blowing to the west as a sheriff’s deputy blasted toward Cora’s. Too late. Just like me. Too late to do anything to save my grandmother. A gust of wind grabbed at the pages of the book in Cora’s lap and I pushed it aside.

  The patrol car slewed into the yard and a deputy I didn’t know jumped out, his weapon drawn. “Step away from her,” he said.

  I heard him, but I didn’t understand. I picked up her lifeless hand and held it. “She’s my grandmother.”

  He saw the knife in the grass of the front yard and came toward me, gun drawn. “Move away from her,” he said again, his face white.

  I realized he thought I’d killed her. “I just got here. She was still breathing.” I help up my hands, her blood dripping from my fingertips. “I tried to stop the bleeding. She was still alive.”

  “Move away. Now.” He stepped closer, and I could see the fear in his eyes. If I did anything sudden, he might shoot me. “Okay.” I gently put her hand in her lap. Her eyes were flat and empty. I tried to ease to my feet, but the deputy yelled at me to stay on my knees. I carefully moved away from her toward the steps.

  Another car pulled into the yard, and I was relieved to see Jimmy Finch. He got out of his car and went toward the deputy. “That’s Mimi, the granddaughter,” he said. “She was in my office when her grandmother saw someone in her yard. Mimi came as quickly as she could. Obviously not fast enough, though.”

  The deputy wasn’t certain
if he should believe Finch or not. “Let me call this in,” he said.

  “Put your gun away. Mimi isn’t going anywhere and neither am I.”

  The deputy slowly lowered his weapon and eased to the car where he got his radio and called in Cora’s murder. This death could not be viewed as suicide or anything other than a vicious, brutal killing. The necklace would prove Annie had been here.

  Finch came up to the porch. “You okay?” he asked.

  I stared at him. I couldn’t answer. My grandmother had just been murdered. Her blood was all over me.

  “Any idea who might have done this?” Finch asked.

  “It was Annie.” In truth, it was likely the nester who’d sliced Cora’s throat, but the creature worked at the behest of Annie. If her hand hadn’t wielded the knife, it was her will that had caused it.

  “How can you be certain?” Finch asked.

  “The necklace. The pearl necklace. It’s Annie’s. I saw it in her suitcase in her room.”

  Finch walked over to Cora’s body. The deputy joined him. Finch kept his thoughts to himself, thank goodness.

  “The sheriff and the coroner are on the way,” the deputy said. “I have to secure the crime scene. Can you move the girl off the porch?”

  “How about I take her inside and let her wash up a little.”

  The deputy hesitated.

  “She was with me. I was ten minutes behind her. She couldn’t have done this.”

  “Okay.” He went to his car to open the trunk and get the tape used to mark off a crime scene.

  Finch assisted me to my feet and opened the door to Cora’s house. I let him lead me to the bathroom. He turned on the hot water and stood over me. I wondered if he was afraid I’d do something to myself.

  “I’m okay. Really. I want to wash up and use the bathroom.”

  He didn’t move.

  “I can’t do that if you’re standing here with me.”

  “Okay.” He backed out of the bathroom, his footsteps going into the living room.