Black Creek Crossing

sweatpants over her naked torso, she saw her father standing in the doorway.

“Daddy!” she cried. “What are you doing in here? I’m not even dressed!” For a moment her father’s eyes remained fixed on her, and then he backed out and pulled the door closed.

“Sorry,” he called out. “I–I thought you were in the other room.”

Still clutching the sweatpants against her body, Angel went to the door and locked it. But even knowing it was locked, she couldn’t get the image of her father out of her mind, of him looking at her before he left the room. There had been something strange in his expression, something she’d never seen before as he gazed at her.

Gazed at her nakedness, with a look in his eyes—

But that was crazy! He was her father! He’d never looked at her like that before. He wouldn’t!

She was wrong. She had to be!

Suddenly, the room was filled with a blinding light, and Angel whirled around as an explosion of thunder shook the house. Angel shrank back against the closed door as the storm howled outside. Another bolt of lightning flashed, and the house trembled again as the second thunderclap struck. As it died away, Angel remembered the cat.

It was no longer there.

“Kitty?” she called, as she pulled on her dry clothes and scanned the corners of the room.

Nothing.

Crouching down, Angel peered under the bed.

Nothing.

The closet?

The door was still ajar, and Angel pulled it wide.

No sign of the cat at all.

Angel searched the room again, then gave up. However the cat had gotten in, it must have gotten out the same way. “Houdini,” she said softly, as rain slashed against the window. “If you ever show up again, that’s going to be your name.” With one last glance around the room, she went back downstairs.

Her mother was unpacking boxes in the kitchen, a kettle of water was coming to a boil on the stove, and there were three mugs on the table, along with a box of hot chocolate mix.

“I thought a cup of cocoa might do us all some good,” Myra said, offering Angel a wan smile that didn’t quite cover the nervousness the storm was causing her. She glanced out the window. “They certainly didn’t say anything like this was going to happen on the weather reports.” Another bolt of lightning struck, and Myra winced as the thunderclap immediately followed. “Go tell your father his hot chocolate will be ready in another couple of minutes.”

The memory of what had happened upstairs flooded back to Angel, and she hesitated. Should she tell her mother? But what had happened, really? Her father thought she was in the other room, that’s all.

And nothing had happened.

So there was nothing to tell her mother.

Nothing at all.

Chapter 11

HE SOUND WAS SO LOW THAT AT FIRST ANGEL WASN’T sure she heard it at all. She was sitting in her bedroom in the new house, looking out the window. Across the road she saw a tree, a huge maple, whose limbs seemed to be reaching toward the house — toward Angel herself. At first the branches appeared friendly, as if they wanted to cradle her, and she felt an urge to go out into the night and climb the tree, disappearing into its foliage — able to see out, but knowing that no one could see in. But then the branches took on a threatening look, as if the giant maple wanted to reach across the road and through the window and pluck her from the safety of her room. Though she told herself that it was only a tree — that it couldn’t hurt her — she’d still been unable to tear her eyes away from it.

Until the sound came.

Its first faint whisper wasn’t enough to penetrate Angel’s consciousness. The sound grew, though, almost imperceptibly, so that when she finally became conscious of it, it didn’t seem out of place.

Rather, it seemed just one more of the sounds that filled the night — the chirping and whirring noises of insects, the soft croaking of frogs, and the muted hooting of owls. Yet as the sound crept out of the background and grew, it began to take on form as well.

By the time Angel recognized it as being apart from the rest of the sounds of the night, she also realized what it sounded like.

A girl.

A girl her age.

A girl crying.

Her attention torn from the tree beyond the window, Angel turned, half expecting to see the crying girl behind her. But except for herself, the room was empty.

Herself and the shadows, deep and dark, that filled the corners, for there was barely a moon tonight, and even its faint light kept fading as clouds scudded across it.

Yet she could still hear the crying, and she no longer felt alone in the room.

She squinted, straining her eyes to see where the girl might be hidden.

The crying grew louder, and finally Angel left the window and moved into the center of the room. At first the crying seemed to be coming from everywhere, echoing off the walls and ceiling and even the bare floor. It grew louder, until Angel was certain her mother or father would wake up and hear it.

Then she realized that it wasn’t coming from inside the room at all.

It was coming from the closet.

The crying became harsher, as if the girl was in some kind of pain.

A ray of light, barely visible, crept from under the closet door, then brightened, turning from a faint orange to a brighter yellow. Angel stared at the light, and it began pulsating, mesmerizing her.

Meanwhile, the sound grew, until Angel could feel it as well as hear it.

Yet somehow she didn’t feel frightened.

Instead, she felt herself being drawn toward the closet door.

Slowly, she moved toward it, her eyes fixed on the yellow light pulsing from the gap beneath the closet door, her ears filled with the now-howling sound of the girl’s cries.

She reached for the door. Heat seemed to radiate from it, yet still Angel felt no fear.

Her fingers tightened on the knob, and she turned it and pulled the door open.

To her amazement, the closet was filled with flames, and in the midst of the flames stood a figure, its back to her. As Angel stood rooted to the spot, the figure turned.

The face of the girl was gone, its flesh burned away. But the empty sockets where the girl’s eyes had been stared straight at Angel.

The girl raised her right arm and reached toward Angel in eerie imitation of the branches of the tree she’d been staring at moments earlier.

Just before the fingers touched her face, Angel stepped back and slammed the closet door.

And as the door slammed shut, she jerked awake, sitting bolt upright in her bed.

Her heart was pounding and she was covered with a sheen of sweat that felt hot but quickly turned cold and clammy. She was gasping for breath and her lungs hurt.

Hurt almost as if they’d been burned.

Angel sat perfectly still, waiting for the terror of the nightmare to pass, but even as her breathing returned to normal and her heartbeat calmed, the image of the girl, her flesh burned away by the raging flames, remained vivid in her mind. Finally, when even the sweat that covered her skin had dried, she lay back down and pulled the