Darkness

  “That’s my girl,” Phillips said, pulling the sheet up and tucking it around Amelie’s shoulders. “Now you just go to sleep, and when you wake up, we’ll talk about sending you home again. Once you’re home, you’ll feel a lot better.”

  Amelie made no reply, but a sigh escaped her lips and she closed her eyes. Phillips signaled to Jolene, and the two of them left the room. “Keep an eye on her,” Phillips told the nurse as they walked back toward the reception area. “She’s come up with the idea that we stole her baby and sold it, and she was pretty hysterical for a few minutes there.”

  Jolene clucked her tongue sympathetically. “Oh, Lord. Maybe I better call Barbara Sheffield and ask her to come down again. Last night she was able to get Amelie right off to sleep.”

  Phillips nodded. “Good idea. At least it will give Amelie someone to talk to when she wakes up.” He smiled wryly as a thought came to him. “Unless she’s decided Barbara’s part of our nefarious scheme, too.” He glanced at his watch. It was eleven-thirty. “Anything on the books for the next couple of hours?”

  Jolene shook her head. “Nothing till after lunch. Then you’ve got Judge Villiers, and Fred Childress, and that’s it for the day.”

  “Then I’ll see you after lunch.” He left the hospital, got into his car and started home, glancing once more at his watch. It would be close, but there was time.

  As soon as Phillips and Jolene Mayhew left her room, Amelie Coulton sat up and spit the pill they’d given her into her hand. She stared at it for a second, then got out of bed, went to the bathroom, and dropped it in the toilet.

  How dumb did they think she was? Thinking they could talk her out of what she knew and put her to sleep by giving her a pill. Well, they were wrong. She’d had a dream last night, and she knew what dreams were. Everyone in the swamp did.

  You could see all kinds of things in dreams.

  Sometimes you could talk to dead people, people you thought you’d never get to see again.

  Sometimes you could go places. Places you’d never get to go in real life. Amelie had had lots of dreams like that. She’d been to New Orleans, and Paris, and all kinds of places.

  And sometimes you could see the future.

  Amelie had had lots of those, too. She’d had dreams where she was a lot older than she was now, and had lots of children around her.

  And last night, when she’d dreamed about her baby and woken up knowing he needed her, she’d known what that dream meant, too.

  It meant her baby wasn’t dead at all. It was still alive, and it was crying out for her.

  Well, she wasn’t going to hang around the hospital, that was for sure. Whatever they’d done with her baby, no one around here was going to give it back to her.

  She found her clothes in the closet and pulled them on, then started for the door.

  But what was she going to do? Just walk out there and tell Jolene Mayhew she was leaving? What if Jolene tried to stop her?

  But Dr. Phillips had said she could go home today. That’s what he’d been talking about when he first came in.

  Except then he’d given her the pill, and she was supposed to be asleep right now.

  She made up her mind, and turned away from the door, heading for the window instead. She unlatched the screen, pushed it out, and climbed out into the garden.

  And suddenly felt weak.

  She leaned against the wall for a moment, catching her breath and waiting for the dizziness to pass. Then, glancing both ways to make sure no one was watching her, she darted away from the building, across the parking lot, into the thicket beyond the asphalt. As the palmettos and saw grass closed around her, she began to relax a little. She wasn’t back in the swamp yet, but at least she was out of the hospital.

  She could get back to the swamp even without a boat.

  And once there, she would start hunting for her baby—the baby Amelie believed with all her heart still lived.

  “Well, what do you think?”

  Kelly gazed into the mirror. She could barely recognize the image that stared back at her.

  Her features hadn’t changed, but she looked like a different person. Barbara Sheffield had trimmed her hair as well as changed its color, and it was much shorter now, no longer hanging around her face the way it used to. Instead it was brushed back and seemed to have taken on a glow all its own. The new color, a light honey shade with a few darker streaks in it, didn’t look dyed at all, and made her skin look healthier and her eyes bluer. She reached out for the earrings that she’d piled on the ledge above the sink before they’d started the project, then hesitated.

  “What’s wrong?” Barbara asked, frowning. Then she thought she understood. “Oh, dear, you don’t like it, do you?”

  “No!” Kelly protested. “I like it fine. It’s just …” Her voice trailed off. The truth was that she did like her hair, but now all of a sudden her clothes looked wrong, and so did her jewelry.

  “It’s what?” Barbara urged. “I think you look very pretty. Doesn’t she, Jenny?”

  Jenny, who had been kibitzing through the whole session, bobbed her head enthusiastically. “She looks just like cousin Tisha.”

  Kelly frowned. “Who’s cousin Tisha?”

  “My sister’s daughter,” Barbara replied. “They live in Tallahassee.” She cocked her head. “Jenny’s right—you do look a lot like Tisha. I think I must have subconsciously cut your hair like hers, because she’s my favorite niece.” When Kelly made no reply, Barbara sighed. “Well, I guess this wasn’t such a good idea after all. I’ll tell you what—as soon as it grows out a bit, we’ll put it back the way it was.”

  Kelly shook her head. “But I do like it,” she said at last. “What I don’t like is my clothes and stuff. W-Would you help me go shopping sometime? I mean, just to help me pick out the right things?”

  Barbara felt her eyes dampen slightly. “Well, I don’t know,” she said, feeling uncertain. “What about your mother? Wouldn’t she like to take you shopping?”

  Kelly took a deep breath. “I don’t like to go shopping with her,” she said. “She never likes what I like, and always wants to choose everything herself. And now—” She hesitated, not sure how much Michael’s mother might know about her. “Well, she acts real nervous all the time. Now, if I said I liked something, she’d say it was wonderful, even if she hated it.”

  Barbara, standing behind Kelly, laid a hand on her shoulder. “That’s probably because of what happened last month,” she said softly. “She’ll get over it.”

  Kelly stiffened. “You know about that?” she asked.

  Barbara shrugged. “Yes, Kelly, I know. But I also know you’re going to be fine.”

  For a moment, neither of them spoke. Even irrepressible Jenny, sensing something happening between her mother and this girl, was silent. Finally, hesitating, Kelly asked, “You mean you don’t think I’m crazy?”

  Barbara took a deep breath. “No, I don’t,” she said. Her hand remained reassuringly on Kelly’s shoulder. “Do you think you’re crazy?”

  Kelly considered her answer for a long time before she turned and faced Barbara. “I don’t know,” she admitted for the first time, to anyone. “Sometimes I’m afraid I might be.”

  Barbara slipped her arms around Kelly and gave her a gentle hug. “Sometimes, Kelly, we’re all afraid we’re crazy,” she told her. “But you don’t seem crazy to me. You just seem like a sixteen-year-old girl who isn’t quite sure who she is yet, and is spending entirely too much time worrying about it. And,” she added with a wide smile, “I’d love to go shopping with you sometime, and I promise you I’ll tell you exactly what I think of everything.”

  But as she gazed at Kelly’s reflection in the mirror, a thought came into Barbara’s mind: This is what Sharon would have looked like. If she’d lived, this is how old she’d be, and this is how she’d look.

  As quickly as the thought rose, she tried to put it aside. Kelly was someone else’s daughter, not her own. Her own daughter was
long dead, her body locked in a crypt in the family’s mausoleum in the cemetery.

  Yet even an hour later, after Kelly had left, the thought still clung to Barbara’s consciousness, flitting around the edges of her mind like a persistent bee, impossible to get rid of.

  As she waited for the water on the stove to heat to exactly the right temperature—hot enough to feel warm when she dipped her finger into it, but not hot enough to scald her—Lavinia Carter looked admiringly around the kitchen. She never tired of it, even after two years. Like the rest of the house, it was so different from where she’d grown up that she still marveled at all the wonderful things it contained. At home in the swamp there’d been nothing but the squat little stove in the corner, which her parents had always insisted she keep lit, even when finding wood dry enough to bum was almost impossible. Worse, no matter how low she kept the fire behind the sooty iron door, the stove kept the house so hot it was unbearable most of the time.

  House.

  It hadn’t been a house at all, except that until she’d come here, she hadn’t really known it was any different from anything else, because until she was fifteen, she’d never been out of the swamp at all.

  Her parents had kept her at home, and she’d always known what her life would be like. She would help her mother raise her sisters and brothers—some of whom her mother had birthed herself, and some of whom had come from the Dark Man, brought to her mother by Clarey Lambert.

  Lavinia herself had been brought by Clarey Lambert, when she was so small she couldn’t remember it. But as she’d grown up, her mother had told her she was special—that she was one of the Dark Man’s children, and that someday she would marry another one of his children.

  “You and the rest of his kids be different,” her mother had explained to her. “The day you was born, the Dark Man chose you. You be special, and there’s things the Dark Man can do for you.”

  But she hadn’t felt special.

  She hadn’t felt anything at all, really.

  She’d just grown up, doing as she was told.

  And on some nights, when she felt the silent call summoning her, she’d gone out into the swamp and stood in the Circle with the rest of the children watching the ceremonies.

  Watching the weddings.

  Witnessing the inductions of the babies into the Circle.

  And giving the gift.

  Unconsciously she fingered the mark on her chest, the scar that bore witness to the gift she’d given, and the needles that had painlessly penetrated her body so many times when she was a little girl.

  Then, two years ago, the Dark Man had singled her out for a special ceremony.

  She had been dressed all in white that night, and when she’d been called to the altar, she had at first thought she was going to be married.

  But that wasn’t possible, for she wasn’t pregnant yet. Indeed, the Dark Man had not even selected a boy for her to live with.

  But she had obeyed the summons—as all the children obeyed the Dark Man—and gone to the altar, where the Dark Man had spoken only to her, his voice reaching into her mind, putting her slowly to sleep.

  When she had awakened, her life had changed.

  She was no longer in the swamp.

  She was here, in this house where she’d been ever since.

  And she could no longer speak.

  During the ceremony, her voice had been taken from her.

  The Dark Man had explained it to her, telling her that of all the children, she was the most special. Out of all of the children, he had chosen her to look after the babies.

  Lavinia had accepted the loss of her voice as she accepted all things.

  She hadn’t cried, but like the rest of the Dark Man’s children, she had never cried in her life.

  Soon she had realized that it didn’t really matter that she could no longer speak, for there was no one to speak to anyway. Most of the time she stayed in the house, looking after the babies, and the Dark Man, too.

  And the house was wonderful.

  In all her life she’d never seen anything like it.

  Upstairs, there were six rooms on the main floor—beautiful rooms, with walls covered with polished wood and fuzzy paper. One of the rooms was lined with shelf after shelf of books, and though Lavinia couldn’t read, she still loved to go into that room and touch the books, smell the aroma of their leather bindings and wonder what the words on the pages might say.

  But most of her time was spent in the rooms under the house, taking care of the babies.

  As the water came to the right temperature, Lavinia put a bottle filled with formula into the pan, then went into the nursery. It was a windowless room, painted white, containing a dozen cribs.

  Four of them were occupied; the rest were empty.

  She leaned over Tammy-Jo and Quint Millard’s little son, and tickled him under the chin. His eyes opened sleepily and his arms began to wave around, his fingers finally grasping the tube that led from the needle in his chest to the bottle hanging from an IV rack next to the crib. Gently, Lavinia pried his fingers loose from the tube, slipping a rattle into his hands instead. Distracted, he fingered the rattle clumsily, finally inserting its handle into his mouth. Lavinia smiled—as long as he wasn’t playing with the tube, trying to pull it loose, she wouldn’t have to strap him down.

  Two of the other babies—children who had been here almost a year now, and who would soon be going back to the swamp—were sound asleep, and as Lavinia hovered over them, she wished she could still speak, for she would have liked to be able to sing one of the lullabies she knew to them. Instead, she contented herself with tucking a blanket gently around one of them, and replacing the teddy bear that had slipped from the arms of the other. The sleeping baby stirred only slightly, then wrapped its arms around the stuffed animal before dropping back into a deep sleep.

  Finally Lavinia went to the crib containing the newest baby, the one the Dark Man had brought to her only last night. She carefully detached the tube from the needle in its chest, then picked the baby up, carrying him with her back to the kitchen.

  Testing the bottle against the skin of her wrist, she sat at the kitchen table, the baby in her lap, and held the nipple to its mouth. The baby tried to push the nipple away at first, but Lavinia gently insisted, and finally the child accepted it. As the infant began sucking the formula from the bottle, Lavinia cradled him against her breast, wondering if the time would ever come when she would have a baby of her own.

  She suspected not.

  Though there was no one to talk to about it, she was almost certain that she would spend the rest of her life here, tending to other people’s babies, while having none of her own. But if that was the Dark Man’s will, she had no choice but to obey.

  Indeed, it had never really occurred to Lavinia even to think about disobeying him.

  Suddenly, as she heard footsteps on the stairs, she stiffened, and her eyes automatically went to the clock on the wall.

  Early.

  It wasn’t nearly time for him to come.

  Yet she knew whose footsteps she heard, for not only did no one but she and the Dark Man ever come down here, but his tread was so familiar she would have recognized it even in her sleep.

  A moment later the door opened and the Dark Man stepped inside. He stopped short, his eyes boring into her. In the bright light of the kitchen, they gleamed like polished stones.

  “Put the baby back in the nursery,” Dr. Warren Phillips ordered.

  Lavinia, her face ashen, hurried to obey her master, and Phillips smiled as he left, pleased—as always—at her instant compliance with his wishes. Of all his children, only Lavinia had ever seen his face, had ever seen the man who lived behind the Dark Man’s black mask. And she would never tell what she had seen, for he had removed her vocal cords during the ceremony in which he had called her to care for the babies in the nursery.

  Except that there weren’t enough babies.

  As he started toward the nursery, the D
ark Man’s eyes automatically scanned the floor for leaks. The rooms beneath his house were carved out of the limestone bedrock itself, and though they had been sealed years earlier against the constant seepage from the nearby swamp, the pumps still seemed always to be running. Nevertheless, the chambers beneath his house served their purpose.

  A few miles beyond Villejeune, the house was hidden in a dense wilderness that protected it well from casual visitors. And those few visitors he had saw nothing of the soundproofed complex that lay below the house, the chambers where he prepared for the ceremonies that took place in the swamp, the laboratories where Phillips worked alone, or the nursery where the babies were kept.

  He stepped into the nursery just as Lavinia Carter was reattaching the plastic tube to the needle in the chest of Amelie Coulton’s baby. Lavinia glanced fearfully at him as he came in, but he ignored her, moving quickly among the cribs, detaching the filled bottles that hung from the IV racks, replacing them with empty ones.

  At last he came back to the crib where Amelie Coulton’s baby lay on his back once more, his tiny arms held immobile by nylon straps, the needle still fixed to his chest.

  The tube attached to the needle steadily dripped liquid—faintly brown, and viscous—into the collecting bottle on the rack.

  Phillips gazed at the level in the bottle.

  Not enough. Not nearly enough.

  He glanced around the rest of the nursery, at the eight empty cribs.

  They should have been full.

  Always, until recently, he’d been able to keep the cribs full.

  But for the last few years it hadn’t been possible.

  Too many babies had been born dead in the swamp, and too many fathers had insisted on being in the delivery room in town.

  It had been easy before, working with only a nurse who paid most of her attention to the mother.

  But the fathers paid attention only to their babies, never letting them out of their sight even for a moment, taking them from him almost at the moment he delivered them.

  Still, last night Amelie had delivered her child, and already the baby had produced nearly ten cc’s of the precious fluid. For the next several months, there would be nearly as much each day.