Summer Of Fear (16 page)

The horror of the dream still clung to me. I lay quiet, breathing hard, trying to collect myself. It was at that moment that a thought occurred to me, a thought that seemed to come from nowhere and had nothing whatsoever to do with my nightmare.

Julia did have a friend who knew her before she came to Albuquerque! The friend had written her a letter that had arrived that very morning!

How was it that I had not reacted to this sooner! My heart began to pound with excitement. If Julia had not moved it, the letter lay right now on the bureau in the room where she was sleeping. All I had to do was go upstairs and get it and any information in it was mine!

Did I dare? Even as I asked myself the question I was sitting up and swinging my legs over the side of the bed. Bobby’s snores told me that he was so deeply asleep that he would not have reacted if a herd of elephants had come thundering by. I shoved aside the makeshift curtain and got out of bed and crossed the room and went down the hall to the stairs. My feet made no sound. I knew the house so well that there was no need for a light.

Once on the second floor, I glided soundlessly down the hall to the door of the room that had so recently been my own. It was not until my hand was actually on the knob that I began to feel frightened. What if Julia was not asleep?

She has to be, I told myself reassuringly. It’s almost dawn! It’s the time of night when people sleep the hardest! But Julia was not “people” in any ordinary sense of the word. Who could say which hours she might choose for her supernatural activities? Were spells that were cast during the hours of darkness more potent than those cast in the light of day? If so, this might be the very time when Julia was most likely to be awake.

Did I have a choice? No, I thought, none. If I was to get my hands on that letter it must be now. Breathing a silent prayer I turned the knob and shoved open the door.

This room was not as dark as Bobby’s had been, for it looked toward the east where the sky above the Sandia Mountains was beginning to lighten with the promise of a new day. I could see, very faintly, the outline of the twin beds with Julia’s form upon one of them. The shape on the bed had not stirred with the opening of the door and it did not now as I put a tentative foot into the room.

Slowly and carefully, feeling ahead along the carpet with each bare foot, I crossed the room and reached the chest of drawers at the far end. In the mirror above it I could see my own image, a blob of featureless black, moving against the lesser darkness of the east window. Would the letter still be there? Yes, it was. I could make out the square white shape of the envelope against the surface of the bureau. As I was reaching out my hand to pick it up, Julia gave an odd little moaning sound and changed her position on the bed. The sheets rustled and the springs creaked, and my hand froze in midair, poised above the letter.

For a long moment I stood there absolutely motionless, afraid even to breathe. The thud of my heart seemed to fill the entire room. I could not imagine that Julia could help but hear it. Apparently she did not, however, because she did not move again, and as time passed I began to relax a little. Once again I lowered my hand, and this time it closed upon the envelope.

The trip back across the room was as torturous as the first crossing, perhaps more so, for in the short time since I had entered the sky had become lighter. Or perhaps my eyes had become more accustomed to the darkness. For whatever reason, the feeling of concealment was gone, and the sound and movement from Julia had put my nerves at the cracking point. It was with a breath of relief that I stepped through the door and eased it closed behind me.

Moving more quickly, but as silently as possible, I slipped back down the hall and stairs to the hallway below. Once there I hesitated, undecided as to what to do next. I needed a reading light, something I would not have if I returned to Bobby’s bedroom. I was still too worried about detection to feel safe in turning on any of the lights in the downstairs living area. Finally I thought of the bathroom. I went inside and closed the door and pushed in the button in the center of the knob. At the reassuring click of the lock falling into place my knees went suddenly weak from release of tension. I flicked on the light and sank down gratefully on the edge of the tub.

I sat there a moment, letting my heart slow down, blinking my eyes to accustom them to the burst of brilliance. Then I turned my attention to the letter. I was surprised to see that it was still unopened.

How could she? I thought. It’s the first letter she’s received from anybody since she arrived here. I should have thought she would have been so glad to hear from one of her friends that she would have ripped it open at once.

How short a time ago it was that I would have recoiled in horror at the thought of opening a letter addressed to someone else! Now I did not even pause. Quickly I ran my thumb under the flap of the envelope and pulled it open.

The stationery was cute and informal, of the type that comes in multicolored pads with matching envelopes. At the top of the sheet in black block letters was printed “Memos From Mary.”

Mary’s handwriting was round and even and slanted slightly upward as it ran across the page. The letter was a short one:

Dear Julie—

How is your summer going? How come I haven’t heard from you about the house party? Will your mother and dad let you come? I do hope so! Without you and your guitar and silly jokes and all it just won’t be fun for anybody. I got a note from Gail and she can make it and so can Sharon and Tippy. Remember, it’s the third week in August and we can all go back to school together from here.

My brother Dick saw your picture in the yearbook and he wants to be the one to meet your plane! Write soon and tell me that you can make it for sure.

Love,

Mary

That was all.

All.

My disappointment was so acute that I actually felt physically ill. For this I had hoped and schemed and frightened myself to death sneaking into Julia’s bedroom, for this plain, ordinary, dull little note. Julia was invited to a house party and had evidently been planning to clear the matter with her parents. Of course, she had had no chance to do so. In all the turmoil of the accident and the subsequent move to Albuquerque she had undoubtedly forgotten all about something as trivial as a schoolmate’s party at the end of vacation.

What did the letter tell me about Julia? Absolutely nothing. In fact, it was hard to visualize Julia as the person to whom such a note might be written. A Julia who told “silly jokes” and planned get-togethers with girl friends was a far cry from the intense, plotting, calculating Julia who killed a little dog with a wax statue and put a kind old man in the hospital. And both of these were different from the Julia who put a motherly arm around Bobby when he was upset, who gave my mother a daughterly hand in the kitchen, who smiled up lovingly at my father and called him “Tom.” Was there really one girl named Julia, a definite and distinct personality, or were there a dozen Julias, all of them different?

Was Mary, as Julia’s friend and possibly even her roommate, aware of her supernatural talents? Would it be possible for her to have spent a couple of years living closely with Julia in the confines of a private boarding school, to have formed a close enough relationship so that a party “just won’t be fun for anybody” without Julia there, and not know that she was different from other people?

No, it wasn’t, I told myself. Mary must know a lot of things that she had no reason to refer to in this letter. If only I knew her, I thought helplessly. If I could just sit down and talk with her for a little while! I could ask about Julia’s relationship with her parents and what other students thought of her and what subject she was interested in. I could find out if there were any strange happenings, collapses and illnesses and cases of hives, among the student body while Julia was with them. I might even find out what it was Julia wanted, where she was headed. Girls who live closely together find out such things about each other rather quickly. They have to talk about something during the evenings when they are finished with studying and it isn’t yet time to go to bed. If I could talk with her—

Why not? The question came into my mind like a kind of explosion. Why don’t you talk with Mary Carncross? Haven’t you ever heard of an invention called a telephone?

Call her long distance? Ask her all my questions? Why in the world shouldn’t I? The one catch would be making the call with enough privacy so that I could talk freely. There were two telephone extensions in our home, one in the downstairs hallway and the other in the kitchen, and both were directly in the line of family traffic. I could almost count on the fact that any time of the day or evening I settled down to make a phone call enough family members would come wandering through so that the nature of my conversation was public knowledge.

The call would have to be made from some place outside our home unless—

And here again a solution leapt fullblown into my mind. Unless I made the call right now! The family was sleeping and would remain that way for at least another hour. I glanced at my watch. Five forty-five. There was a two-hour time difference between Albuquerque and the East Coast. That meant that in Boston it would be seven-forty-five, a little early for a call but not out of the question.

I’ll do it, I decided. It may not get me anywhere, but there’s nothing to lose by trying. At least, it’s better than sitting here doing nothing.

I decided to call from the kitchen since it was farther from the bedrooms than the extension in the hallway. There was also a door that I could close to muffle the sound of my voice. I got up from the edge of the bathtub and turned out the light and let myself out into the hallway. The house was no longer dark but gray and still with the pale half-light of dawn. I went soundlessly down the empty hall to the kitchen and pulled shut tike door and took the telephone receiver off the hook. I dialed the operator, squinting to make out the information in the upper left-hand corner of Mary Carncross’s envelope.

“I need a number,” I said. “I want to call the Carncross residence in Boston, Massachusetts. I don’t have the first name, but the address is 1572 Jackson Avenue.”

“Just a moment, please,” the operator said in a singsong voice. “I’ll contact information.”

There were a number of clicks and buzzes, and then a second voice came on, sounding strange and far away as though it were coming from another land. The two operators conversed for a moment and there was another click and silence.

Then, at the far end of the line, a phone began to ring. I clutched the receiver hard against my ear and was surprised to find that my hand was shaking.

“Hello?” a woman’s voice said. “Hello?”

“Hello.” My own voice came out unnaturally high and nervous. I tried to haul it down into a more normal tone. “Could I please speak to Mary?”

“She’s asleep,” the woman said. “This is too early to be calling her.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m calling from Albuquerque, New Mexico. It’s about the house party.”

“Oh.” The woman sounded slightly less irritated. “Well, in that case I’ll wake her. I know she’s been going crazy trying to get together with everybody. Just a moment, please.”

There was a wait that seemed to go on forever and then a girl’s voice, still dull with sleep, came on the line and said, “Hello. This is Mary.”

“Mary—” and now suddenly I did not know what to say. “I’m Rachel Bryant. My cousin Julia Grant is one of your classmates at boarding school.”

“You’re Julie’s cousin? From Pine Crest?”

“No,” I said. “From Albuquerque, New Mexico. There was a terrible accident back the beginning of June right after Julia got home for summer vacation. Both her parents were killed in an automobile wreck. Julia has come to live with us.”

“Her parents were killed?” The drowsiness was gone from the girl’s voice now. She sounded wide awake and sincerely distressed. “How awful! Why, they were such a close family! Julie just adored her parents, especially her mother! The poor thing! Can I talk to her?”

“No,” I said quickly. “She can’t—I mean, she’s so broken up she can’t face talking about it. Besides, she’s in bed right now. I’m calling because of your letter. It came yesterday. Julia had forgotten all about the party and I told her I’d call for her—to apologize to you for her not having written.”

“Oh, tell her I understand,” Mary said with such sincerity that I felt guilty about the deception. “Who could think about a party after a tragedy like that! Please tell her how bad I feel for her, and the other girls will too when they hear, Julie’s everybody’s favorite person. She is coming back to school in the fall, isn’t she?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It hasn’t been decided yet.”

“She just has to,” Mary said. “It won’t be the same if she’s not there. Julie’s the spark plug for everything. She’s class president and lead soprano in the choir and she’s in charge of the talent day program and—oh, there’s just no way any of us can go through senior year without Julie.”

“The choir?” I said, startled. “Julia sings in a choir?”

“In chapel every Sunday and at the Wednesday evening worship service. You know what a beautiful voice she has. How is she taking it? Is she holding up all right?”

“She’s adjusting well,” I said. “She’s bearing up much better than anybody would have thought.”

It was in my mind, the question I wanted to ask her. I could not bring it to my lips. Now that I actually had Mary Carncross on the telephone and had heard the very real concern and affection in her voice when she spoke of Julia, how could I ask it? How could I say, “Has anything ever occurred that has led you to believe that this dear friend of yours might be a practicing witch?”

I grasped instead for something less dramatic.

“Does Julia,” I asked, “like dogs?”

“Does she what?”

“Like dogs? Any kind of dogs?”

“I don’t know,” Mary said blankly. “I guess so. Doesn’t everybody?”

“Did you ever see her pet one?”