MOON FALL (21 page)

"Let me in! Let me in!"

John could hear the old woman calling to him through the
heavy closed door. She sounded worried, but still he was too
afraid of her to let her in.

"Let me in! Let me in!"

"Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin!" he yelled, in a
voice that trembled as much as his hands.

"You're no child anymore, John Lawson, don't talk like
one!" Minerva Payne called back sternly. "You have to let me
in!"

''No. Go away!"

''You can't hide from your fears anymore. Your own child
is in danger. Let me in!"

"What did you do to him?" he called, approaching the door
.

"Nothing, you fool. But he'll die if you don't find enough
courage to let me in! I'm here to help you save him. Open the
door!"

His hand clasped the doorknob. It was black iron and icy
cold to the touch, frosted with cold. Startled, he jerked away,
staring at it, at the heavy metal around it. Light shone through
the old-fashioned keyhole just below the knob, blinding at first,
then dimming, turning pink, then crimson, then turning to dark
blood oozing through the lock, drizzling down the metal onto
the heavy wood and down onto the floor, where more blood
seeped in over the threshold.

"Open the door, John. It's the only way."

He was standing in a puddle of blood. ''Oh, God," he whispered,
as the cold of the doorknob seeped into his flesh, into
his bones.

"It's the only way. You
must
let me in. You
must
listen to
what I have to tell you. You have to save your son.
"

He looked at the blood that was seeping coldly into the sole
s
of his shoes. She's never hurt me, he thought, and Mark likes
her. There's nothing to be afraid of
...
except the blood
...
the blood.

It oozed up to his ankles now and it was going to fill his
dark little house. Frantically he glanced around. No windows,
no other doors, just this one that led to blood. And the old
witch.

He swallowed his fear and tried to tu
rn
the knob. It wouldn't
budge; it was frozen in place. "I can't do it!" he called.

"Yes, you can. Try harder."

He twisted with all his might, but it did no good. ''Help
me!" he called. "It won't turn."

''I can't help you until you open the door, John. You have
to do that. Believe you can. Know you can, and you will!"

Blood oozed halfway up his shins as he grabbed the knob
in both hands and put all his weight into turning it. The blood
was around his knees and rising fast. He'd drown in it if he
couldn't open the door.

He got afresh grip. "Whose blood is this?" he grunted, as
he bore down on the knob.

''It's Lawson blood," Minerva called. ''It's Moonfall blood."

The doorknob groaned and gave a fraction
of
an inch. The
blood was up to his hips, his waist. He felt it like cold sludge,
chilling his gut
-
climbing slowly, irrevocably, toward his
heart
-
and he knew that it would drown his very soul. He
yelled with effort and the doorknob turned another fraction of
an inch. "Minerva?" he cried. "Minerva? Where are you?"

"John?"

He came awake with a start, his legs jerking off the desk,
pushing him back in the precariously tilted chair. He leapt to
his feet as the wooden chair toppled behind him, and, breathing
hard, came out of a crouch and looked up into Jeff Thurman's
shocked face, then down at his own feet and legs. There was
no blood, but he could still feel the chill.

"John? You all right?"

"Yeah. I had a whopper of a nightmare."

"I guess so."

John followed his deputy's gaze to his chair. It lay in a
tumb
le
of wood slats on the floor. "Well, it wasn't too comfortable,
anyway," he said, aware that Thurman was staring at him again.
He took a deep breath, willed his voice and hands to stop
shaking. The clock on the wall said five-thirty ... almost dawn.
"How about helping me carry this out to the trash, Jeff? I'll
go down to the city and buy a new one after the stores open."

''Sure. What were you doing here, anyway?" Thurman asked
as he picked up the base and John gathered the slats.

''Couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd do a little work." He forced
a smile. ''Guess the sandman visited after all. I just wish he
hadn't
.
"

Saturday had been lost to Sara. She spent the day resting in
her room, sleeping, reading, and picking at the light meals the
nuns brought her. There were no more ghostly visitations and
her dreams were pleasant. At one point, Dr. Dashwood stopped
by. For one brief moment, the sight of him made her anxious,
but the panic quickly passed, especially when he gave her the
news that the biopsy was negative and apologized for putting
her through the procedure. After that, he listened to her heart
and lungs and shined a penlight in her eyes, then declared that
she would be fine before she knew it. The only "medicine"
he'd brought were two chocolate truffles. When he gave them
to her, his hand lingered on hers for a few seconds and his
touch brought unexpected tingles of excitement.

By evening she felt rested and nearly went down for dinner,
then decided against it, realizing that she should enjoy her last
certain hours of peace and quiet. Also, until she went back to
see if Sheriff Lawson had discovered anything about Jenny
Blaine's death, she wanted to talk to the sisters as little as
possible, just in case she slipped and unknowingly said something
she shouldn't.

Today, Sunday morning, she awoke feeling completely herself,
perhaps even a little better than usual. She'd overslept
;
her
watch said it was nearly nine A.M.
,
but in the dark
windowless
room, she'd at first thought it was early morning.

Taking a shower was an unnerving experience. No one else
was in the lavatory, which ordinarily would have pleased her,
but as she stood in a stall, shampooing her hair, she couldn't
help wondering whether she'd really seen the ghost, or just
imagined it in the steamy mist. If it had been a ghost, which
she doubted now, it couldn't have been Jenny, not with the way
its face had changed from a suggestion of her friend's into
something horrible and demonic. Worried, she had hurried
through her shower, but nothing had happened, nothing at all.

By the time she toweled herself dry, her confidence had
grown. Vaguely she remembered how she'd gotten dizzy and
lost consciousness during Dashwood's exam. Until then, she'd
suspected she'd been drugged, but after the uneventful shower,
she began to think that the doctor had been right when he later
told her she'd simply had an anxiety attack brought on by all
the stress of her arrival. And since he didn't have a clue as to
just how much stress she was truly under, it seemed all the
more plausible.

She had wrapped herself in her thick blue terrycloth robe
and hurried back to her room, where she dressed casually in
black jeans, a red turtleneck, and a houndstooth blazer. After
slipping into her black penny loafers, she dried and brushed
her hair and applied a trace of lipstick, then slung her purse
over her shoulder and headed downstairs.

The dorm was relatively quiet, with only occasional voices
of the students wafting softly from some of the open doors; no
music was allowed in the rooms, nor were televisions, and then,
as now, that made it seem like the sisters of St. Gertrude's
wanted to keep their charges ignorant of the world outside the
abbey.

The only adult s
he spied was Sister Bibiana, busy
keeping
tabs on the girls in their rooms. There were many, she realized,
passing the open doors: evidently as few attended chapel services
today as in her time. The nun glanced up as Sara opened
one of the entry doors, so she waved and smiled and stepped
outside before Bibi could stop her and ask where she was going.

Happily, she saw no one as she walked along the back of
the school building toward the main entrance of the garage,
but she could faintly hear eerie feminine voices singing some
sort of mass inside the chapel. She peered toward the old stone
building, her eyes drawn to the gargoyles perched like vultures
on the comers and gables of the building. There was even one
crouched atop the cross above the doors. She didn't remember
ever noticing the oddly placed creature before, but then, she
hadn't looked very often. On the occasions when she had studied
them, they seemed to have multiplied.
Maybe there
are
more
of them.
She was sure she'd have noticed the one on the cross.
Or maybe you're
just losing your mind.
She made herself look
at the cross-sitting gargoyle again and for an instant thought
she saw the stone head move, just a fraction of an inch.
Maybe
you need more rest. You're seeing things again ...

Shaking off her fear, she turned briskly away from the chapel
and walked across the perfect green lawn to the huge garage.
She took her keys from her purse as she walked into the wide
doorway of the old wooden building and headed for her car,
parked in a stall halfway down.

Walking along the center of the old stable, she saw an aging
but lustrous black Cadillac, a wood-sided station wagon, circa
1970, a Geo only a few years old, a black BMW, an ancient
pickup truck, and a fairly new one.
T
he stalls on the other side
contained lawnmowers, both hand and riding, a small tractor,
and a plethora of other gardening tools, fertilizers, and chemicals.
She came to the stall where she'd parked the Sentra and
stopped. It was still there, but there were several sacks of
manure on the hood, plus a spade, two rakes, and a broom
leaning against it and a Rotot
iller blocking it. "What the-
?
Damn!"

She approached the sacks of manure and saw that one was
leaking brown crumbs from a rip in the plastic. "Damn." She
couldn't possibly move them herself and remain presentable."Is anyone here?'' she called, her voice echoing down the long
dark building. "Anyone?"

No one replied, and she quickly walked to the far end of the
garage, where light seeped in around a man-sized door. It
opened and she walked outside. To the north was the school
building, to the northeast, the kitchen and dormitory. Beyond
the wide expanse of lawn in all other directions was the forest,
dark and looming, held back by a manicured privet hedge. To
her relief, a few hundred feet away, a handful of gardeners
were manicuring the hedge with pruning shears.

Sara rapidly traversed the lawn. "Hello," she called as she
approached the green-clad men. Several turned to eye her suspiciously,
but one stared at her, then lay his shears down and
walked forward to meet her, a smile growing on his
round, cherubic
face. "Sara?" he asked hesitantly, amazement in his
eyes.

"Carlos!" she cried. How could she have forgotten Carlos
Montoya, senior gardener, and one of her few
old
friends? Memories
flooded her as they hugged. She used to volunteer to do
yard
work just so she'd have an excuse to talk to him.
What
did we talk about?

''How are you?" she asked, as they stepped apart and looked
one another up and down. He was older and a little heavier,
and there was a sadness in his eyes despite his smile.

"I'm fine, Sara. But what are you doing here?''

"You don't sound happy to see me," she responded, remembering
now how he'd taught her to prune bushes and roses,
how he'd told her stories of growing up in a farming family
in Mexico. She'd loved those stories, the warmth and love they
carried, and she had loved Carlos's calm assurances that she
would have her own family some day. Had that been all? No.
She smiled, remembering how he joked about the nuns with
her. She'd loved that most of all.

"Of course I'm happy to see you, Sara." He removed a
baseball cap and wiped sweat from his brow. His black hair
was peppered with gray now. ''But what are you doing here?''

"I'm a teacher. Starting tomorrow."

"But why
here?"

''I applied."

His brow furrowed. "But why here?"

"Because of Jenny."

He studied her a long time. "Jenny. Jenny Blaine?"

She nodded.

"We can't talk here," he said, glancing toward the main
buildings.

"In the garage?" she asked. "Someone piled fertilizer on
my car and I need help moving it."

''On your car?" he asked. He scratched his head, then
replaced the cap. "Go back inside. I'll be there in a minute."

He trotted toward the other gardeners and Sara returned to
the garage, leaving the door ajar to let the sunlight in. In a
moment Carlos joined her.

"Where's the car?"

''This way." She led him to the stall and he stared at it,
rubbing his chin. "My boys all swore they didn't do this," he
s
aid, as he hefted a manure bag as if it weighed nothing. He
repeated the process as Sara moved the long-handled tools.

"I was thinking," Sara began. "Maybe Basil-Bob did this?"

Carlos pushed the Rototiller out of the way before replying
with a shrug. He glanced down the garage toward the big, open
doors, then picked up the rake and hoe. "Just a minute," he
s
aid, then carried the implements with him, looking back and
forth into all the stalls until he reached the big doors. There,
he disappeared into the first stall, then reappeared without the
gardening tools. He peered around just as carefully as he
returned and joined Sara by her car. He leaned against the
wooden half-wall beside her. ''Be careful what you say, Sara.
And where you say it."

''You mean what I said about Basil-Bob?"

"About many things. You shouldn't be here. It's not a good
place."

"But you've worked here all these years. If it's so bad, why?
There are other jobs."

''None that will pay as well all year long." He paused, then
added darkly, ''And the sisters did me a favor a long tim
e
ago."

She sensed he didn't want to elaborate. "But
why
should I
leave?"

A rafter creaked and Carlos glanced around nervously. ''You
just should. It's not healthy, especially if you're thinking of
digging up the past."
_

''Carlos," she began, ''I went to see the sheriff, and he
couldn't find a record of Jenny Blaine's death. I need a witness.
Do you think you could go with me and tell the sheriff it
happened? That she died? I need to give him some proof."

"I ... " Montoya stared at her, his dark eyes tortured. "I
can't, Sara, and you have to forget about it."

"Why? You know something happened to Jenny."

"She killed herself."

"No, she didn't. She was murdered."

"Who was murdered?" Basil-Bob Boullan appeared out of
the shadows so suddenly that Sara jumped. Even in the shadows,
she could see that Carlos Montoya's face had drained to chalky
whiteness. Basil-Bob turned his grin on the gardener. "Wh
o
was murdered?"

''No-nobody," he stammered. ''Miss Hawthorne was just
asking about some of our ghost stories." He turned pleading
eyes on Sara.

''That's right," she said, forcing herself to smile at the leering
old man. "I love a good ghost story, don't you?"

''More than you might imagine," Basil-Bob replied
smoothly.

"I've got to get back outside. Several of my men are new
and I have to supervise them closely," Carlos announced.

''Thank you for clearing the things off the car for me."

''You're welcome." Carlos stepped forward, opened the Sentra's
door for her, and waited while she got in. He stared at
her until she realized he wanted her to start the car: he didn't
want to leave her alone with Boullan, and gratefully she turned
the key in the ignition. Carlos stepped back and she pulled
forward a few feet.

"Where are you going?" Basil-Bob asked.

''Into town," she replied calmly. ''To buy an alarm clock."

She
pulled forward and headed slowly out of the garage,
relieved when she saw a
rectangle of light far behind her as
Carlos opened the small door to return to his work. She didn't
like to think of him alone with Boullan, either.

As she followed the dirt road behind the chapel and grave
yard
she caught a flash of blue and white clothing and a
glim
pse of red hair disappearing into the woods beyond.
Kelly Reed was on the loose again.
Good for you, kid. Just
don't get caught
...