Grave Intent (26 page)

The floorboards in the dining room creaked
softly, and Janet peered nervously over her shoulder.

She saw nothing but old furniture.

Jesus, is it ever time to go home!

With one ear cocked and on weird noise
patrol, Janet quickly vacuumed cereal. The old upright pinged and
whined, but soon the last brown puff disappeared. Satisfied with
good enough, she turned on the stove light, turned off the main
kitchen light, stored the vacuum, then went upstairs.

More floorboards creaked as Janet tiptoed to
Ellie’s room and peeked inside. The girls were asleep, just as
she’d left them. A little surprised that neither had even stirred
from the noise in the kitchen, she crept in for a closer look.

Both faces peaceful, both small chests rising
and falling evenly.

Content with what she saw, Janet crept out of
the room and closed the door behind her. She went into the bathroom
and turned on the sink’s faucet to wash her face. While waiting for
the water to warm, she cupped the edge of the vanity and lowered
her head.

Thoughts of Michael weaved through her mind.
She hoped he was okay, wondered where he was, prayed he was safe,
wished he was here. After a day like today, she needed to feel the
security of his arms around her.

Blowing out a breath of exhaustion, Janet
flicked a finger through the steaming water and looked up at the
mirror. Mist clouded the glass, obscuring her reflection. She
zigzagged a trail through the condensation with a finger, then
began to wipe it away with her palm. As her hand traveled back and
forth, revealing her tired face inch by inch, something more came
into view. Behind her stood a woman with sad, dark eyes and black
hair parted down the center of a long widow’speak.

With a gasp, Janet spun about., but all that
confronted her was the shower curtain. She’d recognized the woman
as the one she’d met near the water fountain at the funeral
home—Anna Stevenson. But how could that be? Janet’s eyes searched
desperately about the small bathroom but found no hint the woman
had ever been there. When she finally turned to face the mirror
again, only her own frightened eyes peered back. She considered
them for only a second before instinct made Janet bolt for Ellie’s
room.

The short distance between bath and bed felt
like miles as she stumbled and slipped across it, all the while
remembering Anna’s warning to her. “
Watch over her closely.”
When Janet finally reached the bedroom door, she threw it open, and
flipped on the light.

Ellie and Heather were still in bed, asleep.
Neither even flinched from the sudden brightness. Janet pressed a
hand to her chest and stood there for a moment, gulping and
grateful. She’d half expected to find Anna in here. Realistically,
she knew that wasn’t possible. If Anna had truly been in the
bathroom, the woman would’ve had to move at the speed of light to
make it into the girls’ room that fast. Janet tried to convince
herself that seeing her had just been the result of too much
stress, only her over-plagued mind playing tricks. Sure, she could
go along with that. But why had it chosen Anna Stevenson to scare
the shit out of her?

Not sure of what to think anymore, Janet
crept over to Ellie’s closet and looked inside.

All clear.

She peeked under the beds.

Nothing more sinister than dust bunnies.

Finally, she went to the door and scanned the
room as a whole one last time. Although she didn’t see anything out
of place, she couldn’t shake the feeling that everything was
tumbling out of place. Not the furniture, not the knickknacks, but
something in the air itself.

Janet wet her lips and hesitantly stepped out
into the hall. To ease her own mind, she wanted to check through
the rest of the house, but some piercing intuition demanded that
she not leave the girls upstairs alone.

Just as she was debating on whether or not to
inspect the master bedroom, which was only one door away, she heard
something behind her. A shuffling sound, like someone in slippers
hurrying along. She turned on her heels, hands held out in
defense.

No slippers. No shuffling. Nothing.

Janet barely had time to register confusion
when the sound of shattering glass from the family room sent her
spinning in the opposite direction. She raced to the staircase
landing and peered over the rails, but couldn’t see into the family
room because of the support wall.

She forced herself around the railing and
began to descend the steps slowly. Her teeth chattered with
fear.

Halfway down the stairs, when she could
finally see past the wall into the family room, Janet’s jaw dropped
in disbelief.Shards of glass and mangled pieces of picture frame
were strewn across the floor. The ship-at-sea picture, which
normally hung over the mantel, looked like it had exploded. Strips
of canvas lay everywhere.

Janet took another tentative step down, her
eyes whipping from left to right, searching, watching, her body
shaking with terror.

“Aunt Janet!”

The shrill, frightened cry startled Janet,
and she had to grab onto the banister to keep from falling over.
Once rebalanced, she bounded back up the stairs two at a time. Four
steps short of the top, she tripped and rammed her left knee
against the edge of a step. She cried out, struggling back to her
feet. Pain, like knife blades slicing through her kneecap,
threatened to drop her again.

“Aunt Janet!”

With teeth clenched, Janet hobbled as fast as
she could up the remaining steps and down the hall. Finally, after
what seemed like a decade, she burst through Ellie’s bedroom
door—and blinked.

Heather was sitting up in bed with her
blanket gripped up to her chin. Her terror-widened eyes were glued
to Ellie, who sat cross-legged on the other bed, her face covered
in blood.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Michael peered through the rain-smeared
windshield and cursed again. In the last two hours he’d only
managed a little over a hundred miles. Most of it had been on
Interstate 10, where it seemed every eighteen wheeler in the
country had decided to line up one behind the other and add road
spray to the already heavy rains. When traffic finally slowed to a
crawl, he’d detoured onto Highway 28, thinking he’d make better
time. He had. Until now.

Just ahead, orange cones ran at an angle
across the road, shoving two lanes of traffic into one skinny,
slow-moving thoroughfare. A flashing orange sign on the shoulder
warned: CONSTRUCTION NEXT FIVE MILES. Michael lifted the windshield
wiper lever, hoping to speed up the blades so he could get a
clearer view. All he got was more smear.

He hunched his shoulders closer to the
steering wheel as though it would shove traffic out of the way.
“Come on, come on,” he grumbled, looking for another detour.

Shadowy tangles of oaks, pines, and willows
bordered the right shoulder of the road, and the Cadillac’s
headlights revealed no side street between them for as far as he
could see. To his left, shimmering circles of light from southbound
traffic threw a silvery glow over a wide, flooded median. He had no
other choice but to link into the string of traffic.

Immediately having to slow the sedan down to
fifteen miles an hour, Michael slammed a fist against the door
panel, then reached for the cell phone. The last call he’d made was
to Shirley Woods, the dispatcher for Brusley’s police department.
The connection had been choppy, twangy, as if her words were being
filtered through a vibrating, metal guide wire. From what he’d been
able to piece together, she still hadn’t reached the sheriff’s
office in Grant parish or anyone else for that matter beyond a
ten-mile radius of Brusley. As she’d attempted to theorize why, the
cell phone went silent, and its small, dimly lit screen promptly
read: NO SERVICE.

The same two words faced Michael now, but he
dialed the number to the cabin anyway. All he got for the effort
was three short beeps, then silence. He laid the phone down beside
him and fidgeted in his seat, trying to temper the feelings of
inadequacy and anger that threatened to overwhelm him.

He wished he were stronger, faster, smarter.
His wife and daughter needed him, and all he had to offer was this
crippled response, this moving inch by inch. He wanted to lash out
at someone, and his list of possible targets grew longer as traffic
slowed even more. There was the Louisiana highway department for
choosing this road and this time to begin construction. Then came
the airlines, for not offering direct flights into Carlton and for
deciding to cancel what service they did offer into a larger,
neighboring town due to inclement weather. Even God wasn’t exempt.
What good was omniscience or omnipotence if the two most important
people in his life weren’t spared from danger? At the top of the
to-be-attacked heap, stood Michael’s father. If it hadn’t been for
Wilson taking the gold piece in the first place, none of this would
be happening.

Taillights brightened ahead, and Michael
braked again. “Goddammit, move!” he shouted. “I can fucking walk
faster than this!”

He lowered the driver’s window a little,
ignoring the splash of rain against his face. He had to breathe,
had to get rid of the scent of Old Spice, Marlboro cigarettes, and
worn leather, the coalesced redolence of Wilson.

How could his father disappear like that,
knowing that at least one of the Stevensons knew about the coin and
wanted it back? Was Wilson just sticking to old protocol and
leaving his son to clean up his mess?

Michael glanced over at the cracked, burgundy
leather seat beside him. What if his father had figured out that
Ellie had found the gold piece? Could he be on his way to Carlton
even now to retrieve it? But if so, in what?—since Michael was
driving his car. The windshield wipers gave an extra long squeak as
though to confirm this was so.

Nearing a standstill, Michael pounded against
the horn. It let out a low, pitiful noise, like that of a muzzled
sheep being led to slaughter. Something about the sound made
Michael stiffen. He’d been so fixated on his father’s usual antics,
creating chaos and hauling ass, he hadn’t taken the time to
consider other possibilities for his disappearance.

What if the Stevensons had found him? What if
the old man they’d seen in the funeral home had made good on his
promise? What if the investors his father had been so nervous about
had shown up to collect their money?

Michael rubbed his throbbing forehead. He
couldn’t worry about his father now. His attention had to stay
fixed on Janet and Ellie. He
had
to get to them.

Not normally a praying man, Michael made a
rapid and awkward sign of the cross. “God, please let them be okay.
When I get to Carlton, let Ellie and Heather be asleep in their
beds, and Janet curled up somewhere with a book. Give me the chance
to hug and kiss them again, to tell each one of them how much
they’re loved.” Michael hesitated a moment. “And, God . . . I . . .
if you take good care of them, I promise I’ll do anything you want.
Just please, let them be all right. Amen.” Another wobbly sign of
the cross.

Worrying about whether he’d given clear
enough instructions to the Almighty, Michael raised the window. The
cell phone rang, and he quickly scooped it up.NO SERVICE was still
illuminated on the screen.

Puzzled, Michael said, “Hello?”

A whispery voice answered, “Daddy.”

Recognizing Ellie’s voice, Michael slammed on
the brakes. A horn blared angrily behind him.

“Ellie . . .” Michael thought about what Anna
Stevenson had told him, about Ellie calling to him from her mind.
But his daughter’s voice sounded so clear now, so close. It had
none of the static from her earlier call. “Ellie—Ellie are you
okay? Where—”

“Shhh. You got to be quiet, Daddy. They’re
gonna hear you.”

Fear fogged Michael’s eyesight. “Who? Ellie,
who’s there? Where are you? Are you okay? Where’s Mommy?” A
symphony of horns blasted outside, startling him. Michael threw a
hand over the phone’s mouthpiece, looked over his shoulder at the
glare of lights behind him, and shouted, “Shut the fuck up!” He
released the brake, and allowed the sedan to coast up a foot.
Removing his hand from the phone, he said firmly, “Ellie, put Mommy
on the phone right now. Do you hear?”

“Daddy. . . you gotta hurry, please. I’m
afraid. The bad man’s here He’s so mad. The lady’s here, too. She’s
trying to stop him, but he’s too big.” Michael heard her take a
deep, trembling breath before a buzz of static filled his ear.

Michael’s sweaty palm slipped off the
steering wheel. “Ellie!”

“Daddy, hu—now—be—”

Just as they had been with her first call,
Ellie’s words became nonsensical syllables, and Michael pressed the
phone closer to his ear. He grabbed the steering wheel again.
“Ellie, listen to me. Listen carefully. Put Mama on the phone,
right now. Do you understand? Put her on the phone.”

“I—don—can’t—de—” A sudden scream cut off the
syllables, but it wasn’t the scream of a child. It was deep and
hoarse, and sounded more like an outcry of anger than one of
fear.

Michael gripped the steering wheel until his
fingers burned with pain. “Ellie! Ellie, can you get to Mama?
Where’s Mama?”

Through the static, Michael heard sobbing,
then a hollow, resonating voice simply said, “She’s dead.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Don’t panic,
Janet told herself, and
hobbled over to Ellie’s bed.
Slow—slow and easy.

Ellie rubbed the right side of her face,
inadvertently smearing blood all the way up to her forehead. Her
cousin whimpered.

“Is she gonna die, Aunt Janet?” Heather
asked, her voice quivering.