“Well, it’s fine by me,” Mary declared. “I don’t know what’s happened since we came here, but Kelly seems happier. She still hardly talks to us at all, but at least she’s not out running around all night long.”
They watched the children for a few minutes, and suddenly Kelly, as if feeling their gaze, looked up and waved. Mary waved back, but then frowned. “If that isn’t the strangest thing,” she said.
Barbara looked at her inquiringly.
“Just now, when she looked up, Kelly looked just like you!”
Barbara felt a chill run through her, and Jenny’s words of a few days ago echoed in her mind.
It was the same thing that Barbara herself had thought when she’d lost her little girl sixteen years ago. She, like Amelie, had been unable to accept her loss.
She’d denied it completely, until Dr. Phillips had put Michael in her arms, and the tiny boy had instantly filled the great yawning chasm that had opened inside her.
Now all those memories surged up in her once again. Before she thought about it, she heard herself speaking.
“Mary, where did Kelly come from?”
Mary, startled not only by the question, but by the odd tone of Barbara’s voice, turned to face her, and instantly understood the thought that had come into the other woman’s mind.
“Oh, no, Barb,” she said quietly. “I certainly didn’t mean to put a thought like that into your head. It’s — well, it’s just a startling coincidence, that’s all.”
Though she said no more about the strange idea that had popped into her head in the kitchen, Barbara could not keep from studying Kelly all through the rest of the evening.
And each time she looked at the girl, she thought the resemblance between Kelly Anderson and her sister’s daughter was more and more remarkable.
• • •
Judd Duval got up from his chair and moved to the doorway of his shack at the edge of the swamp for at least the tenth time since darkness had fallen two hours ago.
He was imagining things.
He knew it, had told himself over and over again that none of the sounds he kept hearing was real. Still, each time he thought he sensed something approaching the cabin, he pulled himself up from his battered recliner and went out to look.
Each time it was the same.
He stepped out onto the porch, and the darkness closed around him. It was a frightening darkness, a blackness that reached out to him, as if it wanted to swallow him.
Deciding it was the lights of the cabin that made the surrounding blackness so impenetrable, he at last switched off the lights, leaving nothing to illuminate the interior of the cabin except the flickering gray light of his black-and-white television set.
After his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he searched the shadows once more. Somewhere out there, hidden in the tall saw grass, or concealed behind a clump of palmetto, they were watching him.
The children, fixing him with their empty eyes, saying nothing.
Bullshit! he told himself each time.
It was nothing.
So each time he returned to the television, staring at the screen, but paying no attention to the images on the set, his mind filled with images of his own.
This time he was sure he heard the soft splash of an oar dipping into the water.
He flicked off the lights once more, then waited in the darkness.
He heard a rustling sound off to the right and froze.
Then he saw the eyes.
Bright, glowing eyes, staring at him.
Another pair, just to the right of the first.
Then another, and another.
His heart began to pound as he watched the semicircle of staring eyes.
Were they coming closer?
He couldn’t tell.
Moving slowly, barely lifting his feet from the splintering planks of his front porch, he stepped backward, feeling for the door with his right hand.
He touched the wood of its frame and steadied himself.
Then he was inside, closing the door behind him and throwing the bolt.
He paused again, listening.
He could hear nothing, but could sense them moving closer to the house, surrounding him.
His breath catching in his throat, he crossed to the television and switched it off, plunging the cabin into total darkness, broken only by the slightly lighter areas where windows were cut into the walls.
He moved toward one of them, almost more afraid to look out than not to. His heart pounding, he peered out into the marshlands.
The eyes were still there, watching him, fixed on him.
A sound.
A soft, scratching sound, as if someone had crept onto his front porch.
He froze, the icy chill of panic creeping up his back.
It was Jonas.
Judd had been waiting for him for days now, ever since the boy had fixed him with those evil eyes and sworn to tear his life out of his body.
And tonight it was going to happen.
He could sense the boy’s presence on the porch, and then heard a scratching at the door.
His gun.
He had to get his gun.
He thought furiously.
The table, next to the bed. That’s where it was — he remembered putting it there when he’d come home from work this afternoon.
He crept soundlessly through the darkness, feeling his way. Finally, his hands closed on the revolver. Feeling for the safety, he flipped it off, then ran his fingers over the chambers in the drum.
Each of them held a cartridge.
He turned back to the front door.
Once again he heard the faint scratching sounds, as if whoever was out there was searching for a way to get in.
Judd moved to the door, pressing his ear against it. For a moment he heard nothing, then felt a slight bump as if whoever was outside had tested the latch and bolt.
The gun held tightly in his right hand, its hammer cocked, Judd felt for the bolt and carefully, silently, drew it back.
He stepped back, tensing.
Finally he reached out, turned the latch, and jerked the door open.
A form rose up in front of him, and Judd raised the gun and fired. There was a screech of agony as the slug ripped through skin and muscle, and then the dark form dropped to the porch, where it lay still.
Judd reached out and flipped on the light switch.
A raccoon, its fur soaked with blood from the gaping wound in its chest, lay on the pine boards of the porch.
Judd stared at it in disbelief for a moment, then swore under his breath. Still holding the gun, he kicked the dead animal off the porch into the water. It floated lazily for a moment, but then the water swirled, and an alligator appeared to snatch the dead animal up, disappearing back into the darkness with a flick of its huge tail.
