Black Creek Crossing

“Beth Baker,” the other girl answered.

“Oh, like he’s even going to go to the dance!” Heather said, giggling. “What would he go as? A fairy princess?”

“What are you going as?” the other girl said after the laughter died away.

“The Queen of Hearts,” Heather declared. Then: “And you could be the White Rabbit.” There was a short pause, then Heather said: “I know! Why don’t you go as Alice?”

“I love it!” the other girl said. “But where am I going to get a costume?”

“It’ll be easy,” Heather said. “I’ve already got most of it from last year, and we can just pin it to fit you instead of me! At least you won’t look as stupid as Angel Sullivan when she shows up without any costume at all!”

There was a flurry from the next stall as the girls left, and Angel barely breathed as she prayed none of them had noticed her in the store. Five minutes later, just as she was wondering if it was safe to leave the dressing room, she heard her mother’s voice.

“Angel? What’s wrong? If the dress doesn’t fit, I’m sure they have it in a larger size.”

With the dress in her hand, Angel came out of the dressing room. “It doesn’t matter if it fits or not,” she said. “It’s a costume party.”

Myra looked blank. “It’s what?”

“A costume party,” Angel repeated. “I heard Heather Dunne and some other girl talking about it. She’s going as the Queen of Hearts, and the girl she was with is going as Alice.”

Myra frowned uncertainly. “Then I suppose we’ll have to find you a costume.”

Angel shook her head. “I already have one,” she said. “And it’ll be perfect!”

Myra knew even before she and Angel walked into the house that Marty had been drinking. It wasn’t just that the leaves she’d asked him to rake while they were in town were still scattered over the lawn and the rake she had left on the front step, where he couldn’t miss it, hadn’t been moved. Those things only reinforced the dark sense of apprehension that came over her as she moved toward the front door. She had lived with Marty long enough so that she knew yesterday’s bender was still going on, and today she was certain that Angel also knew what was waiting for them inside the house. For a moment she was tempted to turn around and just walk away. She and Angel could get lunch at the drugstore and then maybe go visit Joni.

Except she couldn’t afford lunch at the drugstore, or anywhere else, and Joni — along with Ed and Zack — was already at the country club. The country club that only this morning Marty had declared he’d never set foot in.

“You were the one who wanted to go,” Myra had said when he’d announced his decision while she was fixing breakfast.

Marty only shrugged. “So I changed my mind.”

“It’s Family Day,” Myra began. “Joni said—”

“ ‘Joni said, Joni said,’ ” Marty mocked. “What do I care what your snotty sister said? I’m not going, okay? So just don’t bother me with it.”

Myra had hoped that by the time they got back from shopping he’d have quit drinking and changed his mind yet again, but even as she opened the front door, she knew he had done neither. Just as she expected, Marty was sprawled in his chair, a beer in his hand and three empty bottles on the floor next to him. He peered balefully at her through eyes that were already bleary, even though it was barely lunchtime. “Figured you’d be at that fancy- ass country club by now,” he said, his words slurring.

Myra’s expression tightened. “You don’t have to talk like—”

“I’ll talk any way I want to! This is my house, and—”

“Angel, why don’t you see if you can find something for lunch?” Myra cut in. Only after her daughter had left the room did she turn to her husband again. “I don’t want to have a fight,” she said, her voice quiet but her eyes hard. “But—”

Marty rose out of his chair and towered over her. “You don’t want to have a fight?” he asked, his voice as low as Myra’s but carrying a dangerous edge. The fingers of his right hand gripped the beer bottle so tightly that his knuckles turned white, and he raised it up so it was hovering in the air above Myra’s head. “Well, guess what, sweetheart?” he spat. “This is my house, and you’re my wife, and I’ll do any damned thing I please, and you’ll do any damned thing I say. And I say that if I don’t want to—”

Suddenly his words choked off and his eyes widened.

The hand holding the bottle began to shake, and Myra saw his face turn pale.

Was he having a heart attack? Or a stroke?

“Marty?” she said, reaching out.

“Get it away!” Marty said, taking a step backward.

Get it away? What was he talking about? For a moment Myra thought she must have misunderstood Marty’s slurred words, and then she realized that he wasn’t even looking at her. His eyes, now utterly terrified, were looking past her, as if there were something behind her.

Then she heard it.

A hissing sound, so soft it was barely audible, but carrying a note of menace that made Myra’s blood run cold.

Marty took another step backward, and the beer bottle dropped from his hand, clattering to the floor. “No,” he whispered, his voice suddenly sounding stone sober. “Get it away from me — get it away!”

The hissing sound came again, a low angry sibilance that sent another chill through Myra.

A snake?

Myra had never even seen anything but a garter snake, and even though she’d heard that every now and then someone came across a timber rattler, she didn’t know anyone who had actually seen one.

The hissing came again, and now Marty had backed all the way to the wall. His face was still ashen and there was a sheen of sweat on his forehead. Her heart pounding, Myra turned to see exactly what had so terrified her husband.

A cat!

A black cat with a white blaze on its chest. It was crouched low on the floor, its twitching tail stretched straight out behind it, and it was creeping slowly forward as if stalking prey that might sense the impending danger at any second and flee to safety.

The cat’s golden eyes seemed to glow with a fire from within, and they were fixed on Marty.

Myra gazed at the cat for a moment, then quickly moved toward it, stamping her foot and waving her hands. “Shoo! Scat!”

The cat seemed not even to be aware of her, let alone frightened or startled.

“Shoo!” Myra said again, and once more moved toward the cat.

This time the cat moved. But instead of darting out of the room, it shot past Myra in a dark blur, and a second later she heard Marty utter a choking scream. Spinning around, she took a step toward him, then stopped in her tracks.

Instead of a cat, she saw a figure clad in an old-fashioned black dress and a bonnet. The figure’s back was toward her, and its arm was raised as a moment ago Marty Sullivan’s own arm had been raised.

But instead of a beer bottle, the black-clad figure held a knife with a stiletto-sharp blade that glinted even in the shadowed light of the living room.

The blade was stained red, and over the figure’s shoulder Myra could see a bloody slash across Marty’s cheek.

The figure turned, and for an instant Myra got a glimpse of a young girl — perhaps a little younger than Angel — with a cameo brooch pinned to the breast of her black dress.

As Myra gazed at the vision — for surely that was what it had to be — the face changed. Its flesh began to dissolve, skin and muscle falling away to leave nothing but a skull.

A skull with sharply pointed teeth jutting from its jaws, and golden embers glowing deep in the empty eye sockets.

An instant later, so quickly that Myra wasn’t sure she’d seen it at all, the horrible apparition vanished.

Marty was on the floor now, his back against the wall, his knees drawn up. He held his hands to his face and