Monday's Child (18 page)

Forty-Three

Abner Cosgrove was beginning to regret whatever rash and foolish impulse had led him to agree to see Georgia Baker this afternoon. It was a sweep of the minute hand away from five o’clock and the woman had been talking without pause for almost an hour now.

He’d been taking notes all along, nodding when she looked to him for a response, and grunting when it seemed to be called for.

The tea his housekeeper had made for them no doubt was tepid in the pot and totally undrinkable.

Once or twice he had tried to suggest that perhaps she was ahead of herself, worrying about things like division of property and responsibility for debt at what was really only the first inning of the game.

Nothing he’d said appeared to get through to her, and he’d given up for the time being.

It was a common reaction to filing for divorce, this verbal diarrhea. Women in particular suffered from it, probably, he supposed, because in most bad marriages communication was one of the first things to go, and they’d had no one to listen to them for a while.

Cosgrove was sympathetic, but sympathy only went so far.

His dinner would be served promptly at five-thirty, and he intended to have a hot, proper meal. His roast beef and steamed vegetables would not go the way of the tea.

To that end, he cleared his throat loudly, and with some authority.

She’d been pacing throughout her diatribe, but she stopped and looked at him as if she’d forgotten he was in the room.

“Mrs. Baker,” he said, “I can see that you’re upset, but I think I’ve got enough here to have my secretary start on the paperwork first thing in the morning.”

“Yes, if you would.”

“If I might just go over the high points,” he said, and referred to his notes. “Baker versus Baker. You wish a divorce on the grounds of irreconcilable differences in a marriage of some thirteen years. There is one child, a girl, who was legally adopted by you and your soon-to-be former husband approximately six years ago. You are requesting that custody of the child be awarded to you, and agree to reasonable visitation rights.”

“Including two weeks in the summer if he wants. I don’t think he will.”

“We’ll see. You also agree to forego spousal support, but request child support in the amount of two hundred and fifty dollars a month. You request that Mr. Baker continue to provide adequate health insurance for the child, and that he contribute equally to her education should she wish to go to college.”

“Yes, and the property—”

“I think we’ll need to talk about the property further; it’s a good deal more complex than the rest of this.”

“I know, but—”

“Let me finish with the routine matters.” At her nod, he continued: “Regarding the joint indebtedness, you propose that all open accounts, exclusive of those for real estate, be paid on an equal basis. You will retain possession and ownership of one of the two family vehicles; he will keep the other. Each party will be responsible for the payments for their vehicle.”

“That’s fair, isn’t it?” she asked a bit anxiously. “I mean, there’s more money owing on his Blazer, but it’s worth more, too.”

“Yes, Mrs. Baker, it’s quite fair.” He took off his reading glasses and frowned at her. “Why don’t you sit down? You look a little pale.”

“I’m fine. About the property?”

Cosgrove sighed. Persistence, thy name is woman. “Very well. You are proposing that you be allowed to have sole claim to your pending inheritance from your late father, despite a written agreement that you would invest those funds in the family restaurant, for which concession you are willing to relinquish any claim to certain community property assets, including equity in your house and co-ownership in the business, and profit from the sale of the same.”

“Right.”

“Before I’ll let you agree to these last matters, I think we’ll need to have appraisals done on both properties. You may be giving away the farm, Mrs. Baker.”

“I need the cash now. You told me that my father’s estate could be settled within a week.”

“That’s very true.” He refrained from mentioning that had she not been so stubborn, the estate could have been settled months ago.

Sometimes his restraint amazed him.

“I want to be free to make a new life for my daughter and myself.”

That was also a common theme in divorce. “New lives aren’t always for the better,” he said. “Take my word for it, Mrs. Baker, I know.”

“Our lives will be.”

“Hmm.” He placed his pencil on the pad and leaned back in his chair, steepling his hands and regarding her over his fingertips. For a woman on the verge of a better life, she looked almost ill.

“Well,” she said, “I’ve taken up enough of your time.”

“Indeed. My secretary will call you to let you know when to come in and sign the papers.”

“Thank you, Mr. Cosgrove. For everything.”

“There’ll be time enough for that after I’ve done something,” he said, “like keep you from making a foolish mistake.”

She smiled and started towards him, her hand outstretched as if to shake his when, without warning, all the color left her face, and she pitched forward.

Cosgrove wasn’t spry enough to catch her, but he rounded the desk and knelt by her side where she lay on the floor. He placed his hand against her throat and felt a strong pulse.

Thank God for that.

He got up and went to the door, called down the hall for his housekeeper, then returned to her side, cradling her head in his lap.

“Mercy me, Mr. Cosgrove,” the housekeeper said. “What’s happened to the poor woman?”

“I’ll be damned if I know. Get me a cold cloth and I’ll see if I can bring her around.”

“Yes sir,” the housekeeper said, and bustled off.

But a few seconds later her eyelashes fluttered open and she looked at him.

“It’s Jill,” she whispered.

He hadn’t a notion as to what she was talking about and was about to ask when the room started to shake.

“My God, Jill.”

Forty-Four

The destruction began at Meadowbrook Elementary, where Roland Barry had gone, as he did every Sunday, for the express purpose of avoiding his in-laws.

It had been a mistake to agree to live within a thousand miles of the wife’s family, a mistake he’d paid for dearly with the invasion of his home each and every Sunday by “the folks.”

His father-in-law wasn’t a bad sort, but the old woman had never heard a comment she wouldn’t argue to the death. Her tongue was razor fine, honed from decades of use, and she wielded it with the skill of a master swordsman, most often against him.

Triple-chinned but fierce, the snap of that woman’s jaws would put the fear of God into any man.

So he excused himself by pleading unfinished work and came down to the school where he largely did nothing more than wander the empty halls passing time.

The old woman had long since bitten off, chewed, and spit out whatever backbone her own husband had once had, and she never would dream of fussing at her “little girl,” that precious bundle of joy who was now flirting with the two hundred pound indicator on the bathroom scale.

If he wasn’t home, the old woman got bored at having no one to bitch at, and finally would leave.

Then he could go home.

For now, he amused himself in the kindergarten room, spelling out a few choice words with the alphabet blocks.

The floor beneath him began to shake.

Earthquake, he thought, and imagined the squeals of the children if school were in session.

The floor kept shaking, so he mixed the blocks up—it wouldn’t do for the kiddies to come back to school after vacation and find a message from the principal—and turned to walk calmly to the doorway.

By the time he’d taken four steps, he was ready to take a dive toward the door.

The beautiful wooden floor was breaking up, planks cracking and splintering like dry kindling. The concrete beneath had crumbled and sent up a cloud of choking dust, and the ground bucked and heaved.

Mr. Barry saw at once that the doorway wasn’t going to be protection enough; the entire building was at risk. Of all the fates he’d seen for himself, being trapped under a ton of rubble was not one he’d care to meet.

He landed hard on his knees, and his left shin was pierced by a huge splinter. He rolled over onto his back—the floor bucking beneath him—and bent his knee, bringing his leg up within reach.

There wasn’t time for proper first-aid measures and he just grabbed the jagged chunk of wood and yanked it out of his flesh.

He was bleeding.

It sickened him, but he knew this was not the time or place to worry about it. If he got out, he could wrap a handkerchief or something around his calf to stem the flow of blood. If he
didn’t
get out of here, he was likely to die beneath a collapsed ceiling joist.

But don’t think of that, he told himself sternly, fighting his way onto his hands and knees and beginning to crawl into the hallway.

All around him, ceiling tiles were falling and dust was swirling. The overhead light fixtures were breaking free of their braces and the long fluorescent bulbs were popping and disintegrating into a shower of glass.

He kept his head down and concentrated on the front doors which were now only about ten feet away.

Opposite him, the door to the girls’ bathroom was flung open by some unseen force, and he saw that the pipes had burst, with water spraying everywhere. His principal’s eye noted that the paper towel dispenser beside the sinks was empty.

No wonder the children had so many colds in this school; the kids didn’t wash their hands because they couldn’t dry them.

The mirror above the sinks had cracked and now a huge triangular section of it fell away. It hit the edge of the sink and broke into wickedly sharp fragments.

“Seven years of bad luck,” he mumbled.

The doors were now almost within reach of his hand and now he recalled that he’d locked them from the inside, and would have to find the key.

As he dug into his pocket with a shaking hand, he envisioned rescuers finding his crushed and mangled body huddled at the door.

Finally he found the keys and inserted the correct key in the lock at approximately the same moment he realized that he smelled smoke.

Barry glanced over his shoulder, saw the flames, and in his haste to pull the door open, hit himself in the head. Hard. He actually heard the sound of his skin splitting open.

Blood splashed into his eyes.

But after coming so far, he would not be denied. He forced the door open against the rubble and squeezed his body through.

Immediately he was soaked through to the skin by a pounding, icy rain, and the shock was such that he nearly turned to go back inside.

An ominous groan from within the building removed that temptation, and he turned, wiped the blood and rain from his face, and looked out across his domain. For a second his eyes refused to believe what he saw.

The landscape around the school might have been a special effect from one of those end-of-the-world movies. Not a house in view had been left unscathed. Most were burning, even in this downpour, but some had been reduced by the shaking to a mound of wood, stucco, shingles, and broken glass.

There were people running everywhere. A woman dressed only in a black teddy stood in the middle of what had been the street, waving her arms up and down as if trying to lift off and fly.

Down at the corner, two or more cars had collided, and one of them was billowing black smoke from under its badly crumpled hood. Even at a distance, he could see that there was someone still in the car, and several men were trying to wrench the door open.

They were crazy, he thought. Any idiot could see that the car was going to blow.

The principal staggered down the steps and crossed the circular drive to the lawn. As he reached it, he felt a
whoosh
of air behind him and it picked him up and flung him to the ground.

His face skidded across the wet grass. His lower lip peeled back and his teeth collected the weeds.

Lying splayed out on the lawn, his body was pelted by bits of Meadowbrook Elementary along with the rain.

He closed his eyes just as the bell began to ring.

When it seemed that the worst of it was over, Barry sat up, picked some of the turf out of his teeth, and looked at what remained of his school.

It was much worse than he’d imagined.

There wasn’t even a mound. The building had been flattened as if a giant steamroller had driven it into the ground. There was not a single identifiable
anything
that he could see.

Not a desk, not a blackboard, not a metal locker or wooden cubbyhole . . . not a blasted thing.

Totaled.

Behind him, there was an odd sound, strangely familiar and yet he couldn’t place it. A creak, a clang, somehow metallic, and yet?

Barry turned to look a split second before the flagpole—the last thing standing—collapsed and struck him dead.

Forty-Five

Houston had been forced by the upheaval to abandon the car, with Cheryl Appleton still in it—and set out on foot for the Baker house.

He ran through the rain with his head down, dodging the worst of the holes in the road, and staying well clear of the structures which might give way. The people he saw looked dazed and bloodied, and none seemed aware of him as he ran by.

Overhead, the thick dark clouds were almost low enough to touch, and they churned continuously, lit here and there by lightning, and still spilling rain.

His breath vaporized and joined the clouds.

Almost there.

Houston rounded a corner and came upon a huge crater in the road. The bottom was filled with water and sewage from busted pipes, and there was, he saw, someone floating face down in the muck.

“Damn it, Jill,” he swore.

He skirted the edge of the crater and continued on. There was a stitch in his side from running, and a careless step had left him with a turned knee, but he forced himself to keep going.

He had to stop her before she finished, or they’d all be lost.

Finally he reached the street, which was oddly quiet and displayed none of the destruction he’d seen elsewhere, except for an old oak tree that had burned to a blackened hulk.

As he neared the Baker house, he saw a little girl huddling under the overhang in front of the garage. She wore overalls and a white t-shirt, but her feet were bare and she looked miserable and cold.

Her hair was plastered to her head, and she pushed it out of her face, rising to her feet as he approached.

“It’s not magic,” she said, and sniffed.

Houston took off his jacket and put it around her. “What’s going on inside?”

“I don’t know.”

He sat on his heels so that he could look in her face. “How can I get in the house?”

“I don’t know,” she repeated through chattering teeth.

“Come on, now. You have to help me. Where is Jill?”

For a moment he thought she might not answer, but she drew a breath and said, “In the living room.”

“Okay, good. How did you get out here? The front door?”

“No. The kitchen. There’s a porch.”

“Is the door unlocked? Can I get in?”

She gave him an incredulous look. “Why do you want to go in there?”

“I want to stop her.”

The girl shook her head grimly. “You can’t.”

“Maybe not, but I have to try.” He straightened and glanced across the street at his own house, which was dark but appeared intact. “You can’t stay here in the rain. Take my keys and go to the house,” he said and pointed.

“What are you going to do?”

He didn’t answer. Given what he’d seen on the way, he wondered if he could do anything, or if she would destroy him as she had the town.

“Go now,” he said, and gave her a gentle push in that direction.

The girl took a half-dozen steps and then stopped, turning to face him. “This is real, isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so.”

When she turned again he started around the corner of the garage toward the backyard.

He needn’t have worried about having to break into the house; the back door was standing open. He hurried to it and stepped inside, closing it after him.

In contrast to the sounds of wind and rain, it was almost unnaturally quiet in the house. Even the drops of water from his clothes made no noise as they fell to the kitchen floor.

The air felt thick and had an acrid smell. It burned his eyes.

He noticed the wall phone was unusable but since he doubted any of the phone lines in town were working, it made little difference.

Who would he call, anyway?

Houston walked as quietly as he could to the kitchen door and pushed it open. He stood and listened.

Whatever she was doing, it wasn’t making any noise.

He withdrew the capped syringe from his pants pocket, positioned it in his hand so that it wouldn’t be visible, and slipped through the door.

When he turned into the hall, his eyes were drawn to the living room. At this angle, he could only see a corner of it, but he felt a jolt of surprise. He hadn’t known what to expect, but certainly not this.

The town of Winslow was laid out before him, and like the real one, it was in ruins.

He took a step closer, and closer, until he stood in the doorway and could see it all.

With the exception of a few houses on the very outskirts of town and a few in this neighborhood, nothing had been left standing. He didn’t know the layout well enough to identify some of the buildings, but clearly the hospital was gone, as was the octagonal Senior Center he’d passed when driving Cheryl to her home.

Even the crater in the road was represented, down to the bubbling effluent.

The only details not in the model were the people.

“How do you like it?” a voice asked.

Houston saw her then, sitting Indian-style on the floor at the edge of her creation.

She was smiling.

Wisps of smoke flowed over her naked body, and he saw that there was a black cord, a monstrous umbilical cord, which attached at her navel.

It writhed and pulsed with a life of its own, but he did not see the terminus.

“Have you come to cut me free again?” she said, and her voice echoed inside his brain.

“What are you?”

She did not answer, but made a motion with her hand, and one of the standing houses began to crumble.

As it did, he heard the screams of terror, a child’s voice cut off mid-cry, and he stared at Jill, watching the play of some emotion—satisfaction? elation?—across her pale face.

“Where’s Miss Appleton?” she asked when that building was demolished. “Did she stay at home? Too bad. I doubt she could get out in time, do you think?”

“No.”

“Ah well, she hadn’t many students left, anyway. A few survived, but they won’t be going to school for a long time, I suppose.”

His mind struggled to make sense of this. “Stop it,” he said, and knew he sounded foolish. “You’ve done enough.”

The child seemed to consider that, her gray-green eyes surveying what she’d done. The tip of her tongue moistened her lips and then she smiled.

“Very well. If it pleases you.”

“It would please me if you’d undo this.” He gestured at the ravaged miniature town.

Her expression was amused. “Even you must know that I can’t do that.”

His hand tightened around the syringe.

“Don’t bother,” she said.

Against his will, his hand was forced open and the syringe dropped to the floor.

“You doctors have delusions of power, you think you hold the key to life and death, but nothing that you have in your medical arsenal can touch me.”

She opened her eyes fractionally wider, and it felt as if a hand were on his chest, pushing him back into the wall.

“Get away,” she said, dismissively. “Before I decide to let you have a taste of what you intended for me. Would you like that?”

The pressure on his chest increased and he shook his head.

“I thought not. It doesn’t seem a pleasant way to die. Unable to move, unable to breathe, but still alert enough to know what’s happening to you. A horrible thing to do to a child, Dr. Houston.”

“You’re not a child,” he whispered.

“Am I not? You delivered me, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know what the hell you are.”

“No?”

“Or why you needed me to—”

“Bring me forth? We can’t cross over without a human hand. That’s why you’re here now, and why I let you live. You have to deliver me once again, Doctor, to my next form. This—” she indicated her body “—is the larval stage.”

“God—”

“Has nothing to do with it. It’s almost time, I think. You will do it, won’t you?”

“If I say no?”

She merely smiled. “Come now.” She extended her hand to him.

He had no choice but to take it.

Around him, the Baker house faded away.

Houston was in a place he knew somehow was distant and yet familiar.

It was very dark, and he had to hold onto its hand, which no longer felt like a hand, but something soft and boneless.

There was absolutely no sound, and the silence seemed to press against his ear drums, deadening even the quickened beat of his pulse.

Gradually he realized that it was no longer cold, and indeed was becoming uncomfortably warm and humid. There was a smell, too, that he understood to be a brood smell, damp and cloying.

The child led him to a low platform on which were the rudimentary tools of delivery. There she let go of his hand, and in the dim light he could see that there was movement of some kind under her skin which had thinned to the point of being transparent.

At first he stood there, uncertain of what was expected of him, but after a moment, his instincts took over.

There were two lengths of a glossy black material which he used to tie off the umbilical cord. It took every ounce of strength he had to pull them tight, but he was afraid of what might flow from the cord when he cut it if the ligatures weren’t taut.

The child’s eyes were watching him.

His fingers closed around a silver knife.
Do I plunge it into her heart?

He thought of the devastation she’d caused, the lost lives, the human misery, and the pain, and his hand clenched as he raised it, holding it like a dagger.

Why wasn’t she stopping him?

Why did she just lie there?

Now,
he thought,
now.

It was as if he were being sucked through a wind tunnel, battered by a great thundering roar and the feel of air bracing his skin. All was darkness and violent motion, and it went on and on until he despaired of it ever coming to an end.

Something wet forced its way up his nostrils and he felt the pressure build behind his eyes.

His lungs ached to take a breath, but he could not, and then the darkness was within him, swelling in his throat, threatening to choke him and he knew nothing more for a time.

He came to on the floor of the Baker living room.

“Are you alive?” a voice asked.

With effort, Houston lifted his head off the floor. A few feet away, sitting on the couch, was the other little girl.

The real one.

“I think so,” he said.

“Where’s Jill?”

He swallowed; his throat ached. “She’s gone.”

“Did you kill her?”

“No,” he whispered. “No.”