The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane

by Laird Koenig

  Now both youths were making the kissing, sucking sound, when a voice yelled from the car. Suddenly they stopped, turned and fled to the machine, which roared off.

  At the curb a black and white police car slowed to stop.

  One of two officers in the front seat tapped on his window and motioned for Rynn to come to the car.

  When the window went down, Rynn saw the bottom half of the man’s heavy face working up and down as he chewed gum.

  "You live here in town?" His voice was surprisingly gentle.

  She shook her head. "No," she added, hoping the one word would be enough of an answer.

  Rynn told herself that she must think carefully, she must make no mistakes.

  "Actually, I’m visiting from England," she said.

  "They let little girls wander around at night like this in England?" The policeman’s eyes looked up into the girl’s and his jaw moved steadily.

  "No. You see what happened was, I was with my cousin—at the cinema—Walt Disney actually—but she ran into this boyfriend of hers, and I, well I didn’t want to tag along, you know?"

  The cop reached and opened the back door.

  "Before you freeze to death, get in. We’ll take you home."

  She moved to the door.

  "That’s awfully good of you. Thank you very much indeed...." She was halfway into the car when she drew back and looked at the officer. "This might sound strange, but I don’t have the address and I’m not at all sure I can tell how to get there. We always drive. Or take the bus." She smiled helplessly, and she added a shrug. "I guess all I really know is where to get off the bus."

  The officer looked at her. His expressionless face gave her no feeling that he either believed or disbelieved her.

  "I imagine," she said "that really does sound most awfully stupid...."

  How far you live from the bus stop?"

  “Just one short street."

  The man never stopped chewing. He turned to the other officer, a pale young man with close-cropped hair and a large Adam’s apple.

  "What time does the next bus come by?"

  "Two, three minutes."

  He turned back to Rynn. "Get in anyway. You can wait with us till it comes."

  For three minutes, until the officers signaled the bus to stop behind them, Rynn chattered gaily to the policemen, accepting a stick of Doublemint gum, telling them how much she was enjoying her visit to the States during her school holidays.

  When she dropped her coins into the fare box, the bus driver, a black man with an Afro and a scrawny moustache, eyed her from behind dark glasses and said, in a deliberately casual tone, "Pretty late isn’t it?"

  Without answering, Rynn moved as far from him as possible to sit in the long seat at the back of the empty bus. And even though she could not actually see the man’s eyes behind the sunglasses in the rearview mirror, she was certain he was watching her. Her imagination? She could no longer neglect any instinct, any feeling, any perception.

  "Pretty late isn’t it?" His soft voice echoed in her mind in much the same way as her language records. "Pretty late, isn’t it?" Of course it was pretty late. It was terribly late, and if she could have thought of any way to avoid going back to the house in the lane tonight, if she could put off hurrying up the dark lane full of blowing leaves and running alone into that black house she would not be alone on this bus, sitting here with cold hands, weak legs, haunted by an awful emptiness.

  Rynn pulled her duffle coat close, but she shivered in the molded plastic seat under the harsh, bright lights as the bus roared through the night.

  Everything frightened her now.

  The driver’s black glasses peered into the rearview mirror. He was looking at her.

  "Where do you want off?"

  "Two more stops," she said.

  She rose and moved slowly forward, timing her steps with the speeding bus, timing her arrival at the front door with the appearance of the landmark—the house with the iron deer on the lawn.

  "Pretty late," the driver said slowing his hurtling bus, till the wheels ground across roadside gravel.

  "Yeah, pretty late," he said again.

  Now that Rynn was about to leave, now that she knew the conversation could not last, she was suddenly bold.

  "What’s that supposed to mean?”

  "Means little lady," he spoke in his own private kind of rhythm, "that it’s pretty late."

  The front door exploded open with a hiss.

  "Little lady?"

  "Mm."

  "You got far to go?

  "I’ll be all right."

  “If you say so. Night, night."

  The door smacked shut behind her and the tires spun off over the loose gravel. The bus rumbled away, two red lights in the distance growing smaller.

  Rynn pulled her coat up around her ears and with her hands deep in her pockets, ran down the street toward the ocean. The drifts of leaves underfoot gave her feet an extra spring and she ran without stopping to gasp for breath for more than a block, though the cold air was giving her a headache. She reached the lane. The giant trunks of the elms stood black, pillars in a gothic cathedral, their swaying bare branches touching overhead like the ribs of a vault open to the clear night sky.

  The first time she had seen the lane it had been full of summer light, checkered shade, flowers. blazing in the gardens, insects buzzing, a dog barking.

  Leaves flew past her in the dark.

  Overhead the branches rattled together.

  The night, a living presence, was in constant motion, shifting itself, sighing, breathing. She wondered if perhaps it, too, was trying to get warm.

  She drove herself to run past the house of her nearest neighbor, the people who had gone to Florida for the winter. Their house stood black, the windowpanes glinting cold as ice in the night.

  The lane had never held terror for her before.

  If she ran, she told herself, she would be home in a few minutes. She almost came to a stop. She brushed a leaf from her face. It was true, she was almost home, and the thought filled her with trembling. Putting the key in the lock, pushing the door open into the hall, walking into the sitting room that no fire warmed, the room would seem even colder than the outdoors. There was nothing, nobody waiting for her there....

  She shook her head, and with hair flying, she ran. She must not, she must never allow herself to think these thoughts. That house was the only place on earth where she belonged. Suddenly, as if it were an omen, shining out to show her that she was right to think as she did, she saw the spotlight. Through the trees, there it was, bright and sharp and clear in the cold night. Her heart leaped with happiness and relief. Thank God, thank God, thank God, she had thought to turn the light on. This was her home, this was where she lived.

  She raced from the lane and across the front yard scattering the drifts of leaves. In one motion she turned the key in the lock, banged open the front door, and sought the light switches. At her touch every light in the hall and the sitting room sprang on. She slammed the door and locked out the night.

  The sitting room, though flooded with light, was empty and cold. She hurried to the hearth where the ashes lay white and gray. Too late to start a fire now, she thought. Her hand went to the mantelpiece and brought down her father’s book which she took with her as she let herself fall back onto the couch.

  Here, in the only place on earth where she belonged, she shivered.

  The fear would not leave her.

  She rose and went to the stairs, where she turned on the upstairs lights before reaching for the hall switch to plunge the downstairs into blackness.

  Without a look into the parlor, she raced up the stairs.

  Light spilled down the stairs into the hall and parlor. Then the pale glow from upstairs clicked off, shadows sprang forward and darkness swallowed the house. Only the front curtains, reflecting the spotlight, shone. Against this glow a shadow flickered.

  The outside light went out.

  20<
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  WITH NO FIRE crackling on the hearth, no Gordon rattling in his cage, nothing in the cold parlor lived, nothing moved. Except for the girl in the bed upstairs, the house was as black as a silhouette, as dark and empty as the house down the lane. The wind scraped a maple branch across the roof. Far off in the night the ocean roared.

  A key, unheard by the girl upstairs, clicked in the front door lock, a sound no louder than a blown leaf scratching at a window.

  The door opened silently and the sharp, white beam of a flashlight sprang into the hall. A figure moved from the paler dark of the night sky into the house, soundlessly shut the door. and locked it.

  The wedge of light stabbed into the black of the sitting room and shot to the gateleg table and down to the braided rug. In total darkness except for the flashlight’s beam, the figure moved into the room and almost noiselessly pulled the table from the rug. The rug was thrown back from the trap and the light found the hasp. A hand shoved the bolt back. The hinge on the door creaked, but that sound, like the others, was no more likely to arouse the girl upstairs than the tree branch clawing against the roof.

  The light shining down the cellar steps suddenly swung across the room to the kitchen counter. The beam found the telephone.

  The figure moved, grasped the instrument, carried it on its long cord to the cellar stairs and moved downward, the flashlight beam casting descending pools of light.

  The sitting room, almost black again, wavered in the faint light reflected from below. Sounds of footsteps and scrapings, covered by the wind would have gone undetected except for the telephone cord, that looped and caught on the trap, pulling the door shut with a slam.

  The door pushed up, light stabbed out and swept the black room. Silently the door lowered shutting off all light.

  Upstairs a light sprang on. Its glow spilled down the staircase where Rynn stood in bare feet, her white night gown shining.

  She stared into the dark. Her heart pounded, even though she told herself that, like the other sounds, the wind had made this one too. A broken branch had thudded against the house. That was it. Perhaps she had forgotten to lock the front door and it had blown open.

  But she knew she had shut the door. Maybe a picture had fallen from the wall. The woodbox! Had she left the lid up? But the lid on the box made a different sound. What she had just heard was a heavier slamming. She fought accepting what she knew in her beating heart. That sound. She would never forget the first time she had heard that sound.

  Noiselessly she ran down the stairs and across the hall to switch on the lights.

  Nothing in the hall was out of place.

  She dreaded looking into the parlor.

  There it was, the one thing she dreaded to see more than anything else in the world. The table stood to one side. The braided rug lay in a heap. There was the trapdoor.

  Her mind raced. If she could break the terror which seized her, if she could move her shaking knees, if she could reach the trapdoor, she could bend the hasp back into place and throw the bolt. She could trap whoever was down there. Then she would have time to plan her next move. Then she could find out who it was....

  If she could move.

  She fought the terror that held her locked. She fought to summon every ounce of effort.

  Survive!

  She broke her fear’s hold and took the first step.

  The second step followed. Too late. The hinges squeaked as the polished oak planks of the trapdoor before her began to rise.

  She froze where she stood. The house filled with her screams. The door pushed up, but no face appeared. Not even a hand was pushing up the trap. What was it, a stick? A cane. A black cane. As the door rose perpendicularly a black silk hat emerged, then a black cape, one arm of the cape covering the face.

  "Mario!’"

  Suddenly released, suddenly able to move, Rynn sprang on bare feet across the cold floor.

  "Oh, you bastard! You weren’t sick at all! You only got your uncle, your brother and sister to help you pretend to be in hospital." Tears of incredulity and relief choked her as the words tumbled out. "And gray makeup, too? All this trouble so you could do this biggest magic trick of all?"

  She laughed, a laugh that was out of control, but a laugh free from the rawness of cold fear.

  "Oh you scared me!"

  Her shoulders shook with silent laughter. She staggered toward the black cape rising from the steps, exultant in her release from terror, wild with joy. At the table she stopped, breathed deeply. She could play this game too, she could put on her act. With all the cold fury she was able to command, she shouted.

  "You bloody bastard!" But unable to smother her joy, she burst into giggles and ran forward.

  With the kind of wild theatrical gesture that capes and walking sticks inspire, the figure waited for the girl to run to his arms before he whirled around to face her.

  This was not Mario’s bright little face sparkling with black eyes and joyous smile, but the beefy red face and thick-lipped grin of Frank Hallet.

  The man chuckled, "Your bloody bastard."

  One pigskin hand pulled the trapdoor from the wall, and it dropped into place with a thud. The other held the telephone.

  "Get out!" The trembling girl managed to rasp out the command. Hallet pushed the telephone at her.

  "Call the police." His grin cut a deeper crease across his red face. The man held out the receiver to emphasize his offer. He shook his head feigning surprise. No? He was saying, you don’t want to use the telephone?

  "Why don’t you call your father?"

  Cape swirling, he passed the girl and dropped the telephone on the counter. He glanced. into the kitchen. "English and you’re not going to offer me the obligatory cup of tea?"

  "If you leave right now," Rynn said, her voice not much more than a whisper, "I won’t say a word."

  Hallet flourished his cape, enjoying its possibilities as if an amateur theatrical performance had presented him with the chance of new and more flamboyant personality. The cape responded wonderfully as he drew its length to his shoulder. With his other hand he tapped the cane on the floor.

  "I only dressed up like this so if Fat-Ass Officer Ron Miglioriti or anyone else saw me come by—naturally they’d assume I was your little friend." He took a couple of uneven steps. "I even limp. You see?"

  “Officer Miglioriti knows Mario’s in the hospital."

  He shrugged and rearranged the cape. "Ah—a slip up on my part. Fortunately there was no one to see me."

  "Officer Miglioriti just brought me home from the hospital. He said he’d wait outside in the car until I signaled everything was all right."

  "No more lies."

  "He did. He promised to drive by and keep an eye on the house."

  "Fat-Ass Ron Miglioriti is at his stupid raffle." Hallet looked annoyed as he gathered up a fold of black silk to brush away a smudge of white. "Dusty down cellar. Not just dust—what is it? Lye?" He scratched at the spot on his cape with a fingernail. "Down there, didn’t know what I’d find. Probably because I didn’t really know what I was looking for. Certainly not those dreary jelly glasses." Hallet flung back the black folds of the cape with a sweeping motion and held up a hand. Pinched between his thumb and forefinger was a small object which he thrust close to Rynn.

  "Hairpin," he said. He leaned toward the girl, eyes scanning the length of her loose golden-brown hair. "But you don’t wear hairpins, do you? Not in that pretty hair." He brought the tiny wire close for his own inspection. "Hairpin."

  "Could have been down there for years," the girl said.

  "But it would rust;" He sniffed the wire and smiled. He offered it to Rynn for examination, betraying no surprise when she shrank away.

  "Still smells of the perfume I gave her for Mother’s Day." He laughed, "Dear Mother," He unclosed his fist, displaying on the palm of his hand something even smaller than the hairpin.

  "And this. Broken fingernail would you say? Bright red. Not Dear Mother’s color at all
. And here we also have these bits of hair. Now who do you suppose they belong to?" No miser ever turned his treasure in his hand with more fascinated greed, more love for what he held. "In the dark they were all I could find. The police—with all their equipment—no telling what they’ll come up with." As if unwilling to part with his prizes, Hallet carefully placed them in a glass ashtray. He clapped his hands together, ready to take action.

  "Shall we move the rug and the table back?"

  He kicked the rug, shoving it over the trapdoor. With his foot he worked it, smoothing out the wrinkles, sliding it into place. He snapped his fingers at Rynn, and obediently she lifted one side of the table. With Hallet she carried the table back into place.

  The man went to the back window where he parted the curtains and shaded his eyes to look out into the dark grape arbor.

  "And how does your garden grow?"

  At the table Rynn was placing the two pewter candlesticks in line.

  "Out there," he said. "All that digging."

  "Tulips," the girl said.

  "Good. Dear Mother loves tulips." He let the curtains fall back into place. He pretended to be thinking aloud, but Rynn knew that just as he had indulged himself in the theatricality of the cape, hat and cane, he was playing to her now—a captive audience. "I suppose I should make an effort, but the truth is I don’t really miss her all that much. You suppose that’s very wicked of me? And as time goes on, I’m afraid I’m bound to feel even less of a sense of loss," He could not resist a grin as he slid chapstick across his lips. "No. I don’t miss her, but the police seem to...." He allowed his statement to trail off and hang; the words were spoken slowly, deliberately as like mist from his breath, in the cold air.

  With her nail Rynn chipped a bit of candlewax from the tabletop.

  "Remind me to think of her as I stand here—at this window—next spring at tulip time."

  Here. Next spring. The words were spoken slowly, deliberately as he went to stand behind Rynn, who continued to scrape the wax from the tabletop.

  "But I wouldn’t for the world want you to worry about her. That’s why I trudged over here." When Rynn would not face him, he circled her. Again she turned away.