Mercy (17 page)

“And Maia said you have nightmares. Jake, what do you dream about?”

“About—” Jake didn't turn around. In the mirror, his face was even whiter than normal. “Something—holding me down. Crushing me. I can't breathe. Something standing over me, and then—” He stopped.

“And Sunny!” Haley went on, eagerly. Jake was about to believe her, she could tell. He was so close to listening, to understanding. “Sunny went
crazy
last night. Your neighbors say she was barking, right? That's part of why you wanted me to
take her. You never heard her, but they said she was barking at night. Right? Jake?”

“No, Haley.”

Jake didn't move. He didn't turn around. But he met Haley's eyes in the mirror, and he shook his head.

“Jake!”

“This can't be it. It can't be true. I'm sorry, Haley.” He put the cigarette to his mouth with a hand that trembled. He breathed in hard. Smoke came out of his mouth with his next words. “I can handle dying. I'm kind of used to it. But I can't—I just can't think about—something like this.”

Haley left him standing there. She shut the apartment door gently behind her and locked it carefully. She knew better than to leave something like that for Jake to do.

He didn't believe her.

She walked stiffly down the hallway, as if her knees didn't quite remember how to bend.

Well. Well, that was—fine. Jake didn't believe her, and that was fine. She'd just have to—

—she'd just have to—

—what would she have to do?

Haley opened the door to the street. A gust of cold wind blew around her. Her jacket was hanging open.

Haley had no idea what to do.

She'd thought Jake would help her. That they'd figure out a plan together.

Now she'd have to do something all on her own. At the thought, cold fear gripped her so tightly that she could barely breathe.

All on her own. Without anybody to help. Without Jake.

Maybe, maybe, maybe Jake was right. Had she made all of this up? Made it up because she was so scared about Jake going away and leaving her that she'd rather believe anything else?

Would she rather go crazy, Haley wondered; would she rather be insane than be alone?

“Haley?”

Haley stared blankly at the battered blue car that had pulled up by the curb. The window rolled down and a concerned face looked out at her.

“What's wrong?” asked Alan O'Neil.

L
uckily Elaine liked to cook with a lot of garlic. Haley had one whole clove in her jacket pocket, another for Alan. She'd made the stakes by splitting firewood with her dad's hatchet, whittling them into sharp points with a kitchen knife. The cross she'd gotten at her first communion was around her neck.

She was having a lot of trouble getting used to the idea that Alan O'Neil believed in ghosts.

In other things, too, apparently. In angels and spirits and monsters and everything Jake had just told her was crazy.

And the thing was, he wouldn't stop talking about it.

“I told you about my great-great-uncle, right?”

“Uh. No.”

Alan's rattly little car bounced down the street. He had to talk loudly for Haley to hear him over the noise of the engine.

“He dropped dead of a heart attack in the barn one morning. This was back in Ireland. Every morning after that he'd still go out to milk the cows. My great-great-aunt got so used to seeing him, she'd just wave.”

“This isn't ghosts.”

“Right, right, I know.” Alan's fingers tapped on the steering wheel as he drove. “I'm just saying, things happen. All the time. This world, it's weirder than anyone wants to admit. People get all comfortable in their safe little shells and they don't want to even
think
that things could be different. Like your cousin. I mean, he should at least have listened to you, right?”

“It was a crazy story.” Haley bristled. “Nobody would have believed it.”

Alan looked at her sideways.

“Watch the road!”

He jammed on the brakes for a stop sign. A woman in a green SUV gave them an irritated look as she drove through the intersection.

Haley had no idea why she was being so cold to Alan. She ought to be grateful. He'd been worried enough to stop and pick her up. He'd been patient enough to listen to the whole insane story that, to Haley's disbelief, had come tumbling out of her mouth. And without a moment of hesitation, he'd announced that he was driving her out to her aunt's house so that they could see for themselves. He even had a bulb of garlic in his jacket pocket.

And now he was rattling on about his cousin, who'd worked at a haunted B&B one summer in Providence.

It was just that he was talking so much. It was just that he seemed so excited, as if this were some big adventure.

It was just that he wasn't Jake.

She'd never thought Jake would abandon her. Leave her all on her own.

But she wasn't on her own now, was she? Alan was here, stepping hard on the brakes again as a rusty old pickup truck turned out of the Chestnut Hill Cemetery and onto the road in front of them. And if Haley was a halfway decent person—which,
apparently, she wasn't—she'd be grateful for that. Instead of really, really wishing he would just shut up and let her think.

“And there was this time my brother and me, we were at this vacation house my parents rented, and we heard these footsteps on the floor above. Over and over, you know? And there was nobody in the house but us.”

“Yeah?” Haley stared out through the windshield. There was a small backhoe perched on the bed of the pickup truck. A shower of fresh dirt fell from the shovel.

“Only when my dad went up there, he found this squirrel that had gotten in the window, so that probably doesn't count. But still—”

The truck ahead of them picked up speed and Alan stopped talking at last as he turned off the road and had to concentrate on coaxing his car up the steep slope of Aunt Brown's driveway. He stopped and shifted into reverse a couple of times when the wheels spun helplessly in muddy patches. The engine whined as if frustrated and Haley winced at the noise. It wasn't exactly a subtle approach.

But nothing stirred as they got out of the car and climbed the sagging steps of the front porch. The sound of the pickup truck had faded in the distance. There was not enough wind even to send a dry leaf skittering across the grass. Everything was bright, and quiet, and still.

Alan put out a hand to knock on the door. Haley stopped him.

“Let's just—” She hesitated. They'd said they were coming out here to “check” if the story were true. What did that mean, exactly? How did you go about checking to see if somebody was a vampire?

“Let's look around a little, first.” Her voice wasn't much above a whisper. She slipped her cell phone out of her pocket and turned it off. The last thing she needed was for that to ring,
breaking the silence and letting Aunt Brown know they were poking around in her house.

Alan nodded. He did the same with his phone.

“And thanks,” Haley added. She owed him that. “For coming with me.”

“Wouldn't miss it,” said Alan cheerfully. “Vampire hunting in Exeter, Rhode Island? This'll be the best creepy story ever.”

It's not a story; it's my family!
Haley wanted to snap at him. But she didn't. Instead, she closed her hand over the doorknob. Even in the sunlight, it felt as cold as if it were coated with frost. She turned it and pushed the door open.

The hallway was exactly as Haley remembered it from her last visit. Sunlight from the door lay in a sheet of light across the floor, blocked by Haley's shadow. Then Alan's shadow joined it. He stood at Haley's shoulder.

Together they stepped into the house.

Chilly and dim. Filtered through shades and curtains, light couldn't fill up the rooms, which loomed like caves, the old-fashioned furniture half lost in shadow.

“Whoa.” Alan looked around appreciatively. “Very atmospheric. Very Stephen King.”

Everywhere, the familiar earthy smell teased at her nose. Cold and heavy and damp. The smell of wet clay—the smell of the grave. It seemed to cling to the air.

And no one was there.

Hallway, living room, dining room—all were empty. She'd never realized before how
loud
most houses were. A refrigerator humming, a furnace rumbling to life, pipes clanking, a floorboard creaking, a loose window rattling in its frame. None of that here. Haley could hear the air moving in and out of her nose. She could hear Alan breathing at her elbow. She could hear herself swallow.

Alan pushed open a swinging door in the pantry. After a moment his voice broke the silence. Even his low murmur seemed shockingly loud. Haley wanted to scream at him to shut up. She nearly clamped a hand over her own mouth to keep herself from doing it.

“Haley, look.”

For a change, he sounded serious.

Haley came to look over his shoulder. The kitchen. A bare wooden table, scrubbed clean, stood in the center of the room. The cupboards were closed, the counters empty.

A cold breeze seemed to wreathe itself around Haley, caressing her neck, whispering down her spine.

“See?”

“See what?” The room looked perfectly normal to Haley. Well, oddly clean, definitely. Even unused. But empty, that was the main point. Where was Aunt Brown?

“There's no refrigerator.” Alan took a few steps into the room to open some of the cupboards. Bowls and plates. Cups and saucers. All clean and chilly and white. Haley couldn't help thinking of bones, gnawed clean and stacked tidily away.

Alan turned back to look at Haley. “No food. There's no food anywhere.”

Suddenly he didn't seem to think that vampire hunting was so much fun after all. Haley shuddered. Strangely, the bare kitchen seemed more scary than anything else—than the dark figure in Jake's apartment, than the message in the dust, than the heartbeat from the grave. It was so—real. So ordinary. So everyday. So wrong.

“Come on,” she insisted. “We have to keep looking.”

And what were they going to do if they found something? Haley wondered about that as they climbed the stairs. If they discovered Aunt Brown in an upstairs bedroom or in the attic, what would they do? Say, “Aunt Brown, we think you're a
vampire. We think you attacked Eddie. We think you're killing Jake. Come over here so we can stake you”?

Talk about terminal embarrassment.

They'd try to lure her outside, that's what they'd do, Haley decided. Coax her near the front door, the one they'd left open. Pull her outside by force if they had to. There, in the sunlight, they'd see—whatever they'd see. They'd find out if they were both crazy, or if insanity was true.

Haley looked up to the landing and saw the flicker of a gray skirt as it disappeared around the turn in the staircase.

She should have called out, should have shouted, “Aunt Brown!” She should have acted innocent. It would be easier to lure Aunt Brown downstairs, close to the open door, if she acted as if she and Alan had every right to be here.

But she couldn't. The silence in the house crushed the words in her throat.

Instead she ran up to the landing, clutching the newel post to spin herself around. Behind her she heard Alan call, “Haley, wait!”

She stopped, looking up the rest of the stairs to the second-floor hallway. It ran straight ahead from the staircase, three closed doors on the left, three on the right.

And someone standing between them.

Alan nearly ran into Haley. He was gasping for breath. “What're you—”

He didn't finish the sentence.

The stake dropped out of Haley's hand and rolled, bouncing down the stairs. Haley hardly noticed. She found her voice, faint and wavering. “Do you see—her?”

In the half-second that passed between her question and Alan's answer, she had time to think,
Please. Please say yes. Please tell me I'm not alone
.