The Unwanted (2 page)

The little girl hesitated, then followed.

The slope dropped away, and in a few seconds the little girl caught up with the little boy. He stopped walking and turned to stare at her, but didn’t say anything. Instead his eyes watched her gravely.

She reached out and put her hand in his. Then, following the skittering kitten, the two of them started toward the Bad Place.

Suddenly there was no more of the warm dry sand that felt so good between her toes.

Instead there was an icky sticky feeling, and she could feel something cold oozing around her feet. She stopped and looked down.

Mud.

Thick and black, it squished around her feet, and there was an odor about it that made her wrinkle her nose and make a face. But the kitten didn’t seem to notice it at all, and neither did the little boy.

The little girl took another step, pulling her foot loose from the muck and wiping it carefully on her other leg before putting it back down into the ooze.

But there was a path into the Bad Place, and if there was a path, it must be all right.

Now there was tall grass on both sides of her, and it almost felt as though she was in a jungle.

And there were sounds all around her, sounds she had never heard before.

At first she didn’t know whether she should be frightened or not.

Then she remembered the sounds she’d heard in her room on the nights when the “monsters” had come for her, and she’d started screaming until her daddy had come in and turned on the lights and told her that there weren’t any monsters.

But she knew there
were
monsters, and as she walked along in the Bad Place, holding on to the little boy’s hand, she knew that the monsters were all around her, even if she couldn’t see them.

It was the monsters that were making the sounds.

She had a crawly feeling in her tummy now, and her skin felt all tingly.

And in her chest, her heart was beginning to thump loudly.

If the monsters heard her heart, they would know where she was and come after her.

A tiny whimper of fear escaped her lips, and her eyes burned with tears.

She wanted to call to her mother—wanted her mother to
come and get her, although she was afraid of what would happen to her if her mother found her in the Bad Place.

She tugged at the little boy’s hand and he stopped. His thumb still in his mouth, he gazed at her uncomprehendingly.

“M-monster—” the little girl managed to say. “There!” She pointed at the jungle that was all around them, but the little boy shook his head.

“Kitty.”

Then, pulling at her arm, he toddled along the path toward the kitten that they never seemed to be able to catch up with.

She didn’t know how far into the Bad Place they had gone, but she was crying now, her heart pounding so hard she knew the monsters had to hear her soon.

They were all around her, making low moaning sounds, and she could hear them rustling softly as they searched for her.

Her crying got worse, and she let go of the little boy’s hand and started running as fast as she could, trying to catch up with the kitty. But the muck seemed to grab her feet, slowing her down, and the harder she tried to run, the slower she seemed to go.

Just like in the middle of the night, when she had to run away from the monsters but couldn’t.…

The jungle was reaching out for her, trying to trap her in its writhing green arms, trying to wrap her in a web and pin her down so the monsters could come and eat her.…

It wasn’t grass and vines around her now. It was snakes, coiling up and striking out at her, hissing angrily as she fled past them.

And then, so suddenly the little girl didn’t realize it was happening, the jungle opened up to one side and there was a big sandy place that looked just like the beach down by the water.

She was safe!

She was out of the Bad Place, and there was sand, and she was safe!

The kitten was still a few yards away, but it had stopped again and was sitting in the path, watching her. The child’s heart was pounding a little less now, and she stumbled out
onto the sand, out of the sucking muck, away from the terrors of the jungle that had threatened to suffocate her.

The sand gave way beneath her feet.

She screamed now, a full-throated howl of terror that echoed around her and made even the jungle monsters fall silent.

She screamed again, then tried to pull her legs free from the sand that was suddenly knee deep.

Knee deep and cold and oozing like the mud in the jungle.

The little boy tottered out of the jungle and stopped, staring at her.

She screamed again, then lost her balance and fell into the cold, wet quicksand.

The little boy took a step toward her, then another.

First his right foot then his left sank into the bottomless depth of the sand.

The little girl knew why it was the Bad Place now.

It was the place where all the monsters of her nightmares lived, and as she thrashed in the quicksand, she could feel them coming closer, creeping out of the jungle, coming to get her.

She could hear her heart pounding, and her screams grew even louder, but even in her panic she knew her daddy wouldn’t come for her.

She wasn’t in her room, and it wasn’t night, and her daddy couldn’t hear her.

Even her mother couldn’t hear her.

This time the monsters were going to get her.

She knew they were going to get her, because always before, when they had come for her in the night, her daddy had been there.

But now it wasn’t night, and her daddy was nowhere near, and there was nothing but the monsters.

The monsters and the little boy.

He was coming closer to her now, but she knew the monsters were going to get him too. And even as she watched—his image blurred through the tears that streamed from her eyes—he stumbled in the sand and fell.

The quicksand closed over him for a moment, then his head reappeared and his screams were added to her own.

And the monsters grew ever closer.…

Night came suddenly, a cold dark night that closed around the child, cutting off her screams, blocking out the sound of the monsters as well as the light.

Her chest felt as though it was going to burst, and she struggled against the chill weight of the darkness, struggled to breathe against the watery night.

Now she couldn’t even scream anymore, couldn’t fight the monsters anymore, couldn’t escape the black abyss of the Bad Place.…

She opened her eyes, a scream welling in her throat.

The blackness was gone.

Hands were touching her. Warm hands.

But not her daddy’s hands.

She blinked, the scream dying in her throat.

Warmth was all around her, and she felt herself being held close to the softness of a body.

When she looked up, there was a face above her.

Not her mother’s face.

A face she had never seen before, but a woman’s face.

And then she heard the voice, a low, crooning voice.

“You are mine now. You’ve come to me, and now you will belong to me. Forevermore you will belong to me.”

Cassie Winslow stood quietly in the heat of the April afternoon, doing her best to focus her mind on the casket suspended over the open grave. The machinery that would lower it into the ground in a few more minutes was only partially concealed by the flowers that her mother’s friends had sent, and even the largest bouquet—the one from her father—looked tiny in its position of honor on top of the coffin. There was a numbness in Cassie’s mind—the same numbness that had settled over her three days ago when the police had arrived at the little apartment in North Hollywood she and her mother had shared to tell her that her mother wouldn’t be coming home. Now, no matter how often she reminded herself that it was her mother they were about to bury, she couldn’t bring herself to accept the idea. Indeed, she half expected to feel her mother’s elbow nudging her ribs and hear her mother’s voice admonishing her to stand up straight and pay attention.

I’m almost sixteen! Why can’t she leave me alone?

She felt herself flush guiltily at the thought, and glanced around to see if anyone was staring at her. But who would there be to stare? Except for the minister and herself, the only other person who had come to the funeral was the lawyer who had arrived the day after her mother had died to tell her that he was taking care of everything; the day after the funeral—tomorrow—she would be flying to Boston, where her father would pick her up.

Pick her up in Boston! If her father really cared about her, why hadn’t he come out for the funeral?

But Cassie knew the answer to that—her father was too busy taking care of his new family to bother about the one he’d dumped almost the minute she was born. So why would he fly all the way to California just for a funeral? As if she were still alive, her mother’s voice rang in Cassie’s ears:
“He’s no good! None of them is any good—your father, your stepfather—none of them! In the end they always run out on you. Never trust a man, Cassie! Never trust any of them!”

Cassie decided her mother had been right, for her stepfather, who had always made such a big deal about how much he loved her, hadn’t shown up at the funeral either. In fact she hadn’t heard from him since the day he’d walked out of the apartment almost five years ago.

It had been almost that long since she’d heard anything from her father.

The minister’s voice droned on, uttering the words of prayers Cassie hadn’t heard since the last time she’d gone to church—about ten years ago, she thought, before her mother had gotten mad at the minister. Her attention drifted away from the gravesite, and she looked out over the broad expanse of the San Fernando Valley. Her home had been here for so long that she couldn’t remember anything else. It was a clear day, and on the far side of the Valley, the barren mountains were etched sharply against a deep blue sky. It was the kind of day when everyone always said, “This is why I came to California. Isn’t it great?” By tomorrow the smog would close in again and the mountains would disappear behind the brown stinging morass that would choke the Valley all summer long.

As the machine began whirring softly, and the coffin was slowly lowered into the ground, Cassie Winslow wondered if they had smog on Cape Cod.

Then the funeral was over and the lawyer was leading her down the hill to put her into the limousine the funeral home had provided. As they drove out of the huge cemetery that seemed to roll over mile after mile of carefully watered green hills, Cassie wondered if she would ever come back here again.

She knew that a lot of people went to cemeteries to visit their dead parents, but somehow she didn’t think she would.

For as long as she could remember, she’d always had a fantasy that perhaps her mother wasn’t really her mother at all. Sometimes, late at night in the dark security of her bedroom, she’d let herself dream of another woman—a woman she saw only in her mind—who never yelled at her, never corrected her, never soured her with bitter words. Never—

She shut the thought out of her mind, unwilling even to remember the other things her mother had done to her.

She concentrated once more on the woman in the fantasy. This woman—the woman she wished were her mother—always understood her, even when she didn’t understand herself.

But that wasn’t the woman they had just buried, and in the deepest place within her heart, Cassie knew she would never return here. But would she ever find that other woman, the woman who existed only in her dreams, who would truly be her mother?

Eric Cavanaugh watched the ball hurtle toward him, tensed his grip on the bat, squinted slightly into the afternoon sun, then swung.

Crack!

The wood connected with the horsehide of the baseball, and Eric swore softly as he felt the bat itself splitting in his hands. Then, as the ball arced off toward right field, he dropped the bat and began sprinting toward first base. If the bat hadn’t splintered, it would have been a home run for sure. As it was, he’d still get a base out of it, unless Jeff Maynard managed to snag it.

There was little chance that Jeff would make the catch. That was the reason Eric had hit it to him in the first place. He rounded first easily and, fifteen feet before he got to second base, he plunged headfirst into a slide and felt his uniform tear away at the shoulder.

“You’re gonna break your neck doing that someday,” he heard Kevin Smythe say, and knew from the second baseman’s tone that he’d made it. Safe! Grinning, he got to his feet, and began scraping mud from his torn jersey. But then, as his eyes swept the field, his smile faded.

Beyond the fence, parked by the curb on Bay Street, was the old white pickup truck with
CAVANAUGH FISH
emblazoned in cobalt blue on its side. Leaning against the truck was his father, his arms folded over his chest, his head shaking slowly as he muttered something to the coach, who nodded in apparent agreement from his place just inside the fence.

Eric’s heart sank. Why couldn’t his father have shown up half an hour before, when he’d put the ball over the left field fence? But that was the way it always seemed to happen: if he was going to make a mistake, his father was going to see it, and over dinner tonight Ed Cavanaugh would want to talk about it. Since this mistake had come on the baseball diamond, it meant that after dinner he and his father would be back here on the high school diamond, going through batting practice until the light got so bad neither of them could see. Even then Ed would insist on “just a couple more,” so Eric wouldn’t be able to get to his homework until after eight o’clock.

Unless his father got drunk. That was always a possibility. But when his father was drunk, things were always even worse than when his father was sober.

The coach’s whistle signaled an end to the practice session, and Eric, after waiting for Jeff Maynard to catch up with him, started toward the locker room, wondering if he should skip the four-thirty student council meeting. If he weren’t the president of the council, he wouldn’t even be thinking twice about it. The council, he knew, didn’t really mean anything at all. Being on it just gave him one more opportunity to have his picture in the yearbook, and gave his father one more thing to brag about when he was out getting drunk. But Eric
was
the president, and if he didn’t go, his dad would be sure to hear about it. Coach Simms would make sure of that. Then there would be a long speech about “living up to what I expect of you” to go with the extra batting practice.