Amulet of Doom (6 page)

Marilyn was silent for a moment. She knew Kyle had just trusted her with a secret he wouldn't tell his best friends, not even Geoff.

“I know what you mean,” she said at last. “At least, I think I do,” she added quickly. She glanced up at him. He seemed to be waiting for her to go on. “I want to be a singer. Not just with a rock group. I want … I want to be on Broadway.”

There. It was out. A confidence for a confidence. He had trusted her, and she was responding in the only way she could think of—by trusting him, too.

But something inside her was waiting for him to laugh.

“I think you can do it,” he said solemnly.

She looked at him in surprise.

“I've listened to you.” He smiled at the blank look that crept into her features. “It was hard not to. You're always practicing in your room while Geoff and I are playing chess.”

“You heard me?” she cried in horror. Blushing, but also smiling, she turned her head away. “I can't believe you could hear me.”

“I
liked
hearing you,” insisted Kyle. “I wouldn't just say that, because I know how hard it is to get the truth. But I like the way you sing. And I know a little about show music, because my old man is crazy for it and plays it all the time. So I think you can do it. And I want you to read a story I wrote,” he continued breathlessly, “because maybe you'll tell me if you
don't
like it, which is something almost no one will do, and it would be great to have someone I could trust to tell me when something I do stinks. And …” And here he paused, taking a break in the flow of words that had been carrying him away.

She waited patiently.

“And I've been meaning to tell you,” he said at last. “I really like you.”

Marilyn's first surge of delight was replaced almost instantly by a flood of panic and the desperate thought,
What do I do now?

Kyle reached for her hand. His own was warm and strong, and it made her feel safe.

She stopped worrying about what to do next. They walked home in a comfortable silence, feeling safe with each other's secrets. They lingered for a while on the front porch, then Kyle headed for home, and Marilyn slipped into the house.

Her sense of safety ended as soon as she entered and crossed the threshold.

Something was wrong.

She had no idea what it was … or even why she was so sure of it, other than a prickling at the back of her scalp that made her want to turn and run.

She stood in the front hallway and listened. She could hear her mother singing to herself in the kitchen while she prepared dinner. It was a nice, homey sound that should have made her feel better.

It didn't.

The feeling persisted. Something was wrong.

Marilyn remembered a time when she was little and there had been a fire in the house's wiring. She had had the same vague sensation of fear then. As her parents had put it together later, she had smelled the smoke but hadn't known she was smelling it, because the odor was too weak to register at a conscious level. She had only known that something was wrong and had wandered around the house acting nervous and distracted for hours, complaining to her parents that she was frightened.

They had tried to calm her for a while, then finally they grew angry and told her to stop being foolish.

Ten minutes later the fire broke out in earnest.

She had the same kind of feeling now, an unmistakable sense that something was really wrong. She couldn't put her finger on what it was, because it was registering somewhere below the level of consciousness.

But it was there.

And she was frightened.

She went into the kitchen. Her mother was standing at the counter, peeling onions. “Grab a knife!” she said, tears streaming down her face. “It'll give you a good excuse to cry.”

Mrs. Sparks believed that crying was good for the soul. Marilyn tended to think so, too, although she had not been able to cry over Zenobia—not since she had heard her voice. She was sure her mother was worried that she was “repressing her emotions,” which had become one of her favorite phrases since she had heard a talk show about it a few months earlier.

Marilyn rummaged in a drawer by the sink and pulled out a paring knife. She picked up an onion.

“I don't know how your father does it,” said her mother. “He's wonderful about sharing the work, but somehow he always manages to arrange the cooking schedule so that I do all the onions.”

Marilyn smiled. But the vague feeling of uneasiness persisted.

When supper was in the oven, she headed for her room. As she reached the top of the stairs she could feel her apprehension increasing.

She was beginning to feel seriously frightened. What was causing this? Was it like the fire in the wiring? Was there something real, registering in her subconscious, warning her that something was wrong? Or was the feeling merely a reaction to everything that had happened in the last few days?

She stepped into her room. A little cry of fear broke from her lips and a thrill of horror shuddered down her spine. Every inch of her skin rose in goose bumps.

Someone had left her a message—scrawled it in dripping, blood-red letters on the mirror over her dresser:

GIVE IT BACK!

Marilyn lifted the back of her hand to her mouth and bit back a scream. For a moment she stood as if frozen.

Suddenly a welcome thought eased her tension. “It's a joke,” she said out loud. “Stupid. But a joke.”

She could see it now. Somehow Geoff had found out about the amulet and decided to give her a little scare. “He's the one Mom should be worrying about,” she said to herself. “I don't know if he's ‘repressing his emotions,' but I think he's getting a little too weird for normal people to deal with.”

She walked toward the mirror, to see what Geoff had used to put the letters on with, wondering how much trouble it was going to be to clean them off.

She felt a little chill. Not only did they not smear when she ran her fingers over them,
she couldn't feel them at all!
The smooth surface of the glass was unmarked.

So how had Geoff put the message on? Suddenly Marilyn gave a cry of surprise and pulled her hand back as if she had been burned.

Watching in amazement, she saw the jagged, dripping letters fade from view. Within a few seconds the words were gone, the mirror as clear as if they had never been there.

All she saw when she looked into it now was her own face, staring back at her with eyes that were pools of fear.

A light rain pattered against the windshield of the car as the Sparks family drove to Flannigan's Funeral Parlor. Marilyn sat huddled in the backseat, still shaken by the incident with the mirror, uncertain whether the message had really been there or if she was simply losing her mind—and wondering which was more frightening.

They arrived in advance of the regular calling hours, and Mr. Flannigan ushered them into a long room. At one end of the room was Zenobia's coffin, surrounded by a startling number of floral arrangements. The bright profusion of gladiolus, roses, carnations, daisies, and lilies (not to mention at least a dozen varieties that Marilyn couldn't name) seemed an odd contrast to the solemn purpose of their visit.

Marilyn and her mother approached the coffin together. Marilyn was astonished when she saw Zenobia's body. Her aunt didn't look natural, or peaceful, or any of the other things her mother had told her people would say. She just looked infinitely better than she had the night she died. Marilyn wondered how the Flannigans had done that, then decided she didn't want to know.

She was surprised at how little she actually felt. Was it because she was numb, emotionally exhausted? Or was it because someplace deep inside of her she did not yet really believe that Zenobia was truly dead? That might explain the weird things that had happened in the last few days, including this afternoon's crazy experience with the mirror. Her mind was refusing to accept Zenobia's death; rather than deal with reality, it was playing tricks on her.

She felt an urge to reach out and touch her aunt in order to make the fact of her death more real, more understandable. She held back, more out of fear of what her mother might say than fear of actually touching the body.

Marilyn was so focused on trying to comprehend the fact of her aunt's death that it took her a moment to realize Zenobia was wearing the amulet. Several thoughts raced through her mind at once: How had it gotten here? Should she try to get it back? What would her mother say if she asked about it?

She settled them all with the thought that, given what Aunt Zenobia had said in her letter, perhaps the best thing to do with the amulet was bury it with her. At least then it would be in a place where it couldn't cause any more trouble.

She followed her mother back to the seats. Soon after, Mr. Flannigan opened the door and the visitors began to arrive, armed with condolences and curiosity.

Marilyn had already been introduced to a seemingly endless stream of cousins, aunts, uncles, and assorted shirttail relations when Kyle came in, looking very adult in his sport coat and tie. Marilyn was impressed; she had rarely seen him wear anything but T-shirts and jeans.

She watched him go to the coffin and stare morosely into it. When he came over to say hello to the family, Marilyn caught a nod from her mother that temporarily excused her from the receiving line. Enormously grateful, she went to sit with Kyle.

Back at home, alone in her room, Marilyn slipped the cast recording of
Carousel
into her CD player. She flopped onto her bed and said, to no one in particular, “I never knew saying hello to long-lost relatives would be so tiring.”

She kicked off her shoes and rolled onto her back. Brick jumped onto the bed and stared at her. Terrified that he was about to speak to her again, she moved to push him to the floor. She stopped herself, turning what was going to be a shove into a caress.

Don't punish the cat because
you're
a nervous wreck
, she told herself severely.

As if to prove she had nothing to fear, Brick snuggled up next to her and began to purr.

On the disc the characters Julie Jordan and Billy Bigelow were singing her favorite romantic ballad: “If I Loved You.” It was about two people trying hard to pretend not to be in love, and it always made her think of how she acted around Kyle.

She wondered if he ever felt that way, too.

She sighed.

The rest of the house was quiet.

Finally she began to drift toward sleep.

The dream began simply enough: She was in her bedroom. But she was outside herself, in the way you can be in dreams, watching herself sleep.

The dream-Marilyn tossed and turned fitfully, as if something were bothering her. Her hair was plastered to her forehead by an unhealthy sweat. She muttered constantly, words and thoughts that had no connection to one another.

Suddenly she knew, without knowing
how
she knew, that she was seeing the night of Zenobia's death.

What she saw next made her want to wake up.

Only when she tried, she found she couldn't. She was trapped in the dream, which was rapidly turning into a nightmare, and there was no way to get out of it.

“No,” she murmured.
“No!”

Her protest did no good. The dream continued. A helpless observer, she saw her dream-self roll onto its side, kicking at the covers. Then, her stomach knotting in fear, she watched one corner of her pillow lift itself up, moving as if pulled by an invisible hand.

Zenobia's amulet came sliding out from under the pillow.

The dream-Marilyn thrashed about on her bed, her sleep growing more restless.

The amulet floated across the room. Then the door opened, and the amulet was gone.

The scene of the dream changed abruptly, and she found herself in Zenobia's room.

Not merely in Zenobia's room. She was
in
Zenobia, seeing through Zenobia's eyes.

Her heart—Zenobia's heart—was pounding with terror.

It was the same night. The night of Zenobia's death.

Zenobia, and Marilyn with her, sat in bed, waiting. Somehow she knew something dreadful was approaching.

Before long, it arrived.

As Marilyn/Zenobia watched, body rigid, hands clamped like vises against her thighs, the door swung slowly open. And now, looking through Zenobia's eyes, Marilyn saw what she could not have seen with her eyes alone.

She saw the creature that had taken the amulet.

Skin crawling, she recoiled in horror from the monstrosity that approached the bed. It walked with a shuffling crouch, now like an ape, now like a man. Oddly, the claws of its feet made no sound on the hardwood floor.

The amulet dangled from its scaly fingers.

“Take it!” rasped the creature.

He extended a scaly, four-clawed hand. The amulet, catching a fragment of light from a nearby streetlamp, glittered in the darkness of the room.

“Take it!” he repeated. “You tried to thwart me, to hide it. It won't work. Take the amulet—so you can give it to
me!”

Zenobia's hand reached forward and snatched the amulet from the creature.

“Now give it back!”

Marilyn would never have believed her aunt could be so frightened. But then, she would never have believed the world contained anything this frightful.

Zenobia's body trembled like a leaf in the wind. The creature leaned over her, its eyes blazing.

“Give me the amulet.
Give it to me!”

In her dream Marilyn could feel Zenobia's heart—or was it her own?—pounding like a long-distance runner's.

The creature leaned closer. Its eyes were yellow and red, flickering like the fires of hell. Scaly skin, a dark red tinged with black, covered a body rippling with powerful muscles. Where its nose should have been were two pointed slits, a fringe of membrane rustling at their edges. Its snout jutted forward, curved fangs thrusting up from the lower jaw.