Black Creek Crossing

  Fingers reached out of the darkness and began unfastening the buttons of her pajama tops.

  Angel clenched her jaw against the scream rising in her throat, and her body stiffened as she tried to prepare herself for the terrible thing that was about to happen.

  She felt the heat of the hand poised just above her left breast.

  Then, just as she felt the rough skin of a heavily callused hand brush against her nipple, Angel heard a hissing sound.

  The hand on her breast was jerked away.

  For a few interminably long seconds there was an eerie stillness in the room.

  Angel lay perfectly still, too frightened even to breathe now.

  More seconds passed—more eternities—but still she didn’t take a breath. And in the stillness and the darkness, she felt the unseen hand moving toward her once again, like a viper slithering silently through deep grass, moving invisibly toward its prey.

  Her skin crawled as she felt the hand grow nearer.

  Then, out of the darkness, the hissing sound came again, followed by a crash and a brief grunt of pain. A moment later she heard the sound of her bedroom door opening and closing.

  Angel lay still for a moment, her heart pounding.

  The house had gone silent, but from outside she could once more hear the faint sounds of the night—the hooting of an owl.

  She switched on the lamp that stood on her night table, the bright glare momentarily blinding her. As her eyes slowly adjusted to the light, she looked around, at first seeing nothing. Then, on the floor next to her dresser, she saw her piggy bank—a heavy bronze one that she’d been given on her first birthday, and into which she always deposited a little bit of her allowance, even if it was only a penny. How had it gotten there? It was always on top of her dresser, watched over by her teddy bear, who was still leaning against the mirror, just where she’d put him.

  But now the piggy bank was lying on its side on the floor.

  For several long seconds she stayed in her bed, staring at the object on the floor.

  How had it gotten there?

  Then, as she tried to remember exactly what had happened, she understood.

  Houdini!

  Somehow, the cat must have gotten into the room and been on the dresser. And when her father came in—

  The cat had leaped at him! Leaped off the dresser, knocking the piggy bank off.

  Getting out of bed, she picked up the piggy bank and put it back on the dresser where it belonged. She was about to go back to bed when something in the mirror caught her eye. Her heart suddenly racing again, she whirled around to face whatever was behind her.

  And saw nothing.

  But there had been something in the mirror—she knew there had!

  The cat?

  Once again she scanned the room, searching for some sign of the black animal that had appeared the day they moved into the house. “Houdini?” she called out, keeping her voice low enough so it wouldn’t carry beyond the walls of her room. “Here, kitty, kitty. Come on, Houdini—I know you’re in here somewhere.”

  Nothing.

  She crouched down and looked under the bed, then behind her desk.

  Finally she went to the closet and pulled the door open.

  The smell of smoke almost overwhelmed her. Gasping, she staggered back and turned away.

  Her eyes fell once more on the mirror, and once again she froze. For right behind her, clearly reflected in the mirror, she saw it.

  A face.

  The face of a girl, about her own age.

  Her heart racing, she whirled around again.

  And found herself staring into the empty closet.

  The smell of smoke was gone.

  No, she told herself. I didn’t imagine it! I smelled smoke, and I saw a face!

  Steeling herself, Angel stepped into the closet. Except for her clothes and a few boxes on the shelf, it was empty.

  And the smell of smoke—the acrid aroma so strong a moment ago that it had almost choked her—was completely gone.

  Now she smelled nothing except the faint aroma of the cedar that lined one wall of the closet.

  Closing the closet door, she leaned against it for a moment, staring across the room at her teddy bear and piggy bank. They were sitting on her dresser, the bear seemingly watching over the piggy bank, just as they had always been.

  Her head swimming with confusion, Angel went back to her bed, sat down, and stared for a long time at the teddy bear and the piggy bank.

  The cat.

  It had to have been the cat!

  But where was it?

  And what had she smelled, and seen?

  What if she’d simply dreamed the whole thing, like she dreamed about the house being on fire the other night?

  Wrestling with the confusion, she slid back into the bed and pulled the covers tight around her neck.

  Resolutely, Angel turned off the light; the room plunged back into darkness. For a long time she lay awake, staring into the darkness, trying to decide whether any of it had been real or if she had simply dreamed it. It was a dream, she told herself. It was just a dream, and Daddy wasn’t in here at all, and nothing happened, and I’m all right. Soon, with the night holding her in its embrace, she drifted once again into the same fitful sleep from which she had awakened so short a time ago.

  Chapter 17

  NGEL?” MYRA SAID. “ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?”

  Angel nodded automatically, though she barely heard the question.

  “You’re sure?” her mother fretted, eyeing her critically. “You look a little peaked. Do you feel like you have a temperature?”

  “I’m fine, Mom,” Angel said, digging resolutely into the almost untouched bowl of fast-cooling oatmeal her mother had put in front of her five minutes ago. But despite her words, she wasn’t fine at all, and hadn’t been fine since she’d awakened. Almost as soon as she opened her eyes, the memories of last night came streaming back.

  The creaking of the floorboards.

  Her father coming into her room.

  The touch of his hands on—

  She’d shuddered as that memory came flooding back, tried to shut it out, and failed.

  Then, as the rest of it came back, she decided that nothing had happened—it had been nothing more than a dream. It had to be, didn’t it? Her piggy bank hadn’t flown off the dresser all by itself, and she hadn’t seen anything in the closet. She couldn’t have smelled the acrid aroma of smoke, since there hadn’t been a fire in the fireplace last night, and the house certainly hadn’t caught on fire.

  So if all that had been a dream, her father coming into the room must have been a dream too.

  But then as she got out of bed it all changed.

  First she saw the marks on the mirror—a drawing, scrawled smearily in what looked like blood.

  There was a stick figure, like one she might have drawn in kindergarten, and a jagged line that almost looked like stairs. In fact, it almost looked like the stick figure was going down the stairs.

  And under the jagged line was something else—something that looked like a small square.

  For several long minutes Angel had stared at the strange marks, her heart racing. Where could they have come from? Then, as she started to get out of bed, she saw that it wasn’t just the mirror that bore the bloodred smears.

  Her sheets were stained as well.

  And the forefinger of her right hand! She instinctively put the finger to her mouth, as if she’d cut it. But instead of the almost coppery taste of blood, she felt something else on her tongue.

  Lipstick!

  She’d pulled her finger out of her mouth and stared at it for a moment. How . . . ? Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw something lying on the table by her bed.

  The lipstick from the vampire kit—the same one she and Seth were experimenting with yesterday afternoon! Its cap was off and most of it was gone. She felt almost dizzy now as her eyes moved from the ruined lipstick to the marks on the mirror to the s
tains on her sheets and on her finger.

  Had she done it herself? She must have! Then why didn’t she remember?

  A wave of panic rose inside her, and she almost called out for her mother. But what would she say to her mother? She had no idea how the markings had gotten on the mirror. And what about everything else? The things that seemed like memories but must have been dreams?

  The memories, or dreams, or whatever they were, began churning in her mind, mixing in with the images on the mirror.

  She turned to the dresser. The piggy bank was exactly where it should have been.

  But the teddy bear was no longer in its regular spot, leaning against the mirror, watching over the piggy bank. Now it was at the end of the dresser, lying facedown.

  She was mired in confusion again, and all she wanted was for things to look right—to look the way they had last night, when she’d gone to bed.

  She moved the teddy bear back to its regular place, then grabbed some Kleenex from the box on the dresser and began rubbing at the markings on the mirror.

  A moment later the stick figure and the other markings had vanished, leaving only a reddish smudge.

  A second handful of Kleenex wiped even that away.

  Wadding up the tissues, Angel was about to throw them in the wastebasket when she changed her mind. Taking them into the bathroom, she flushed the whole mess down the toilet. Then she scrubbed her hands until every trace of lipstick was gone.

  Back in her room, she stared at the lipstick-smeared sheets and pillowcase. A moment later it all vanished beneath the bedspread—this afternoon, when she got home from school, she would wash them. By the time she was dressed, everything was almost as it had been when she went to bed last night.

  Except that everything had changed, and the minute she’d come downstairs, her mother knew that something was wrong. And now, even though she’d already said she was fine, her mother was giving her one of those penetrating looks that always made Angel feel as if she couldn’t hide anything, no matter how hard she tried.

  Then her father came into the room, and Angel felt a terrible chill pass over her. There was a bandage on his left cheek, high up near the temple. Though she wanted to look away—look anywhere but at the bandage—she couldn’t tear her eyes from it. As the seconds ticked slowly away, her father’s eyes finally fixed on her, and when he spoke, his voice was as dark as his expression.

  “What you looking at?”

  “N-Nothing,” Angel stammered, at last managing to pull her eyes away from the bandage. But even as she looked back down at her oatmeal, she could feel her father’s eyes still fixed on her, and felt her skin begin to crawl as it had last night when she’d felt the presence of someone in her room and heard the floorboards creak as he came close to the bed.

  Came close, and bent down, and—

  “Gotta go.” Her father’s voice jerked Angel back into the present, and a second later she reflexively jerked away as his lips brushed her cheek. “What’s with you? Too old to kiss your daddy?”

  Then he was gone, but it wasn’t until she heard the old Chevelle roar away that Angel finally tried to eat again.

  Tried, and failed.

  “Maybe you’d better not go to school today,” her mother fretted. “You look tired.”

  “I’m okay,” Angel insisted. “I—I just had a lot of homework to do.”

  Her mother frowned. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  Angel looked up at her mother, and once more her mother’s words from a few days ago echoed in her head: Your father loves you . . . he’d never do anything to hurt you. And he hadn’t hurt her, really. He’d scared her, and she was terrified of what might happen if he came into her room again, but he hadn’t really hurt her. And after he got cut, maybe he wouldn’t come back at all.

  “Well?” her mother pressed. “What is it? You’d better tell me.”

  Angel felt her resolve to say nothing about what had happened last night weaken. But even if she told her mother, how would she start? The answer rose as quickly as the question: “D-Did Dad tell you how he cut himself?”

  Myra, caught off guard by the question, cocked her head. “What does that have to do with anything?” she asked.

  “Did he?” Angel pressed.

  “He cut himself shaving.” Now Myra lowered herself into the chair across from Angel. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Why are you so interested in a shaving cut?”

  Suddenly, her fear and the exhaustion from the nearly sleepless night overwhelmed Angel, and the whole strange story—everything except the marks she’d found on the mirror this morning—came pouring out. She tried to make sense of it as she told it, but even as she spoke, she knew it sounded even stranger out loud than it had when she’d pieced it together this morning.

  And when she saw her mother’s expression, she knew she’d made a mistake telling her anything at all.

  “How dare you?” Myra Sullivan said, her voice hard. “Your father loves you, and takes care of you, and would never do anything to hurt you! And what are his thanks? To have you come to me with terrible stories? You must have been dreaming! How could you even make up such vile things?”

  Angel’s mouth opened as if to say something, but before she could utter even a single word, Myra’s hand snaked across the table and slapped her hard across the cheek.

  “Filth!” her mother shouted. “That’s all it is! Filth! And you will not speak it in my house! After school today you will go to church, and you will confess your sins to Father Mike! All of them!” Myra’s eyes narrowed to angry slits. “It’s that boy you had in the house yesterday, isn’t it? That’s really what this is about. Your guilty conscience!”

  Seeing the fury in her mother’s eyes, Angel knew better than to argue. The house felt like it was closing in around her, and all she wanted was to escape, to get away both from the terrors of the night and her mother’s rage. Leaving her oatmeal half finished, she stood up. “I better hurry,” she said softly. “I’ll be late.”

  “Yes,” Myra Sullivan said coldly. “You’d better hurry. And you’d better think twice before you tell me any more lies about your father!” As Angel picked up her backpack, Myra said, “Aren’t you going to give me a kiss?”

  Angel hesitated, then gave her mother a quick peck on the cheek and fled from the house into the crisp sunshine of the fall morning.

  Skirting around the house, she cut across the front yard and headed along the road toward town, but before she went around the curve that would cut the house off from her view, she turned to look back at it once more. In the bright morning light it looked just as it had the first time she’d seen it—a small white house with a peaked roof, nothing out of the ordinary.

  And there was no sign at all of the black cat.

  So her mother must be right—she must have dreamed it all.

  But then she remembered the pictures Seth Baker had showed her yesterday, with flames billowing from her window in one of them, and something that looked like it might be the shadowed image of a face peering out of another.

  Chapter 18

  ITH THE MEMORIES OF THE NIGHT DOGGING HER every step, Angel dragged herself through the morning. By the time the bell signaling the lunch break rang, she wasn’t sure she could get through the rest of the day. She made her way to the cafeteria, looked around until she spotted Seth Baker sitting alone at the same table as yesterday, and bringing her lunch over, sank into the chair opposite him. He looked up, a smile starting to spread across his face, but as he gazed at Angel, his smile faded.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  Her eyes darted nervously around the cafeteria. Zack Fletcher and Heather Dunne were sitting at the same table as yesterday. Angel hesitated about saying anything, then couldn’t keep it inside any longer, and words began tumbling from her mouth. She poured out every detail about what had happened—or what she thought had happened—and Seth listened to it all, not interrupting. He was so engrossed in what she was
saying that he didn’t even notice Chad Jackson and Jared Woods ease themselves into two chairs at the table directly behind him, their backs to the table at which Angel and he were sitting.

  “And the worst part of it is I don’t even know how much of it was a dream and how much of it was real! I mean, things don’t just fly off the dresser! And how could I have made a drawing on the mirror and not even remember it?”

  When Angel at last fell silent, Seth sat quietly for a while, trying to sort it all out in his mind. But none of it made any more sense to him than it had to Angel. Unless . . .

  “What if you didn’t draw on the mirror?” he finally suggested. “What if it all happened just like you remember it? And what if you don’t remember some of the stuff because you didn’t do it?”

  Angel stared at him. “But if I didn’t do it, who did?”

  Before Seth could respond, a sound erupted from the table behind him—the same loud, mock sucking and kissing sounds he’d heard yesterday afternoon as he passed Chad and Jared on his way home. His jaw clenching, Seth tried to shut the sounds out.

  Then, while Jared kept making the kissing sounds, Chad stood up and turned around, his eyes glittering with malice. “Maybe it was Beth,” he said, his voice as scornful as the sneer on his lips. “Maybe Beth sneaked into your room last night to play with your lipstick!”

  Angel gazed uncertainly at Chad. Beth? Who was Beth? What was he talking about? But a second later, as she saw Seth’s face paling, she understood.

  Chad shifted his attack. “Except who would want to sneak into your room in the middle of the night?” he said to Angel. “Even Beth can’t be that hard-up!”

  Jared Woods, bursting into laughter that was even uglier than the sounds he’d been making, stood up too. “Come on,” he told Chad. “Let’s get out of here before we catch whatever they’ve got!”

  Picking up his tray, Chad shoved hard on Seth’s chair. Seth winced as the table dug deep into his stomach, but he managed to stifle the yelp of pain that rose in his throat. Neither he nor Angel said a word until they saw Chad and Jared drop into a couple of chairs at the table next to the one across the cafeteria where Zack and Heather were sitting.