Ed Gorman: Nightmare Child

"I remember that, Jenny. Please don't let yourself get so upset."

"Oh, there's no reason to be upset, Aunt Diane. Just because the person I love most in the world thinks I'm a murderer-or worse."

Diane stood up, crossed over to the tub, knelt down. Taking Jenny's small, pretty face in her hands, Diane kissed the girl on the forehead, right where a splotch of bubbles lay. "I love you, Jenny. Don't you understand that?"

The girl calmed visibly. "I'm sorry, Aunt Diane."

"We're always going to be together," Diane said.

And then Jenny reached up through the soapsuds and grasped Diane's slender wrist. "Do you mean that, Aunt Diane?"

"Of course I do, honey. Of course I do."

Twenty minutes later, Diane tucked Jenny into bed, pulling the covers up high so they would reach her neck. Jenny yawned, kissed Diane good-night, and fell asleep almost immediately in the silver moonlight.

"Cream?"

"Please," Robert said. This was forty-five minutes later.

They were in the kitchen, which still smelled of dinner: meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie. They were at the butcher-block table, drinking Sanka from large gray-ceramic cups.

Robert nodded toward the upstairs. "She asleep?"

"Yes."

"Good. Then we can talk."

She reached across and touched his hand. "I want to talk, Robert, but not about Jenny."

"But I thought-"

"Don't you see? It's been pushing us apart, talking about her. Can't the three of us just learn to love one another and forget the past?"

Robert frowned. "I wish it was that easy, Diane."

"Can't it be that easy, Robert?"

He shook his head. "She needs help. At least a few sessions with a shrink. This book I told you about-"

"I don't care about the book, Robert. I don't care at all. Can't you see that? I just want peace and quiet and for the three of us-"

He drew his hand away from hers. "On the way out here, I made up my mind about something, Diane."

"About what?"

From his suit coat pocket, he took a single cigarette, set it in his mouth; and lighted it.

"You told me you'd quit," she said.

"Tonight I started again."

"Oh, Robert," she said, and in that terrible instant she knew it was not going to work for them. He would always be suspicious. Always remember that night.

"I'm going to the city council tomorrow morning and tell them I falsified that report." He exhaled heavily.

"You'll lose your job."

"If I don't tell them the truth, I'll lose my self-respect. Losing that's a lot worse than losing a job, Diane. You should know that."

"Don't talk down to me, Robert."

He had some more of his cigarette. "When I first met you, you were the most warm, caring, honest person I'd ever met. I loved you so deeply. But now-"

He shook his head.

"Now what, Robert?"

He looked up sorrowfully at her. "Now, Diane, you've given yourself over to that little girl entirely. You lie, evade, cover up-and it doesn't seem to bother you at all."

She had started crying. Softly, nothing dramatic, but deeply. "I wish you'd leave."

He stood up and put his hand on her shoulder. "All the way out here, I kept hoping it would work, hoping I could figure out some way that I wouldn't have to do my duty." Now he sounded as if he wanted to cry. "But I've got to tell people what happened. After I read that book I realized for sure that Jenny isn't a normal little girl. She's-" He sighed. "Well, you know what she is, Diane. I don't have to tell you. You know what she is and that's why you're so protective of her."

Now Diane's gentle tears had started to turn into sobbing. She touched the hand he'd put on her shoulder. "Please leave, Robert. Please."

"She's got you trapped, Diane, and you don't see that. Escape while you still can."

She put her head down on the table, shaking with her tears.

Robert left.

He had driven six miles along the icy road on his way back to town when he heard a noise in the backseat.

He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw her there. "I expected you," he said, and took out his service revolver.

Staring at him in the rearview mirror, she said, "You know what I am. You should know a gun won't help you."

Jenny leaned over in the seat. He didn't have time to fire a single shot.

In the spring they took a trip together. Jenny didn't tell Diane that the cabin in which they stayed was near the site where Mindy and Jeff had buried the little girl. She didn't want to ruin their vacation.

For three days and nights they swam and rode horses and played tennis and listened to campfire songs and slept in late, each in one of the comfortable single beds that the vacation ground provided.

On the fourth night, Jenny, curious, drifted into the woods and found the place where she'd been buried.

In the moonlit darkness, she sat on a rock and stared and stared at the slight incline of earth where her crude burial mound had been.

After a time, floating through the night air and the chill scent of pines, she heard Aunt Diane calling for her. Aunt Diane sounded upset, even terrified.

"Jenny!" she cried.

"Over here!" Jenny said.

Aunt Diane, seeing her, swept down upon her with relief and warm hands. "I was so frightened! I couldn't find you anywhere!"

She sat next to the quiet little girl, her breath coming in spasms.

She saw that Jenny's eyes were fixed on the swell of earth.

"What's so interesting?" Aunt Diane asked.

"This place."

"Why?"

"It's where they buried me. Mindy and Jeff."

Aunt Diane hugged her. "Oh, honey, I thought we agreed to not talk about the past anymore."

"They killed me."

"Now, honey, you know they didn't kill you. If they had, you wouldn't be alive today."

What would it take for Aunt Diane to understand? Robert Clark had repeatedly tried to tell her. So had Jenny, in her way.

"Aunt Diane, you know the truth but you won't admit it." She leaned over and put her head on Aunt Diane's shoulder. "I'm not alive today."

"Please don't ever say that again," Aunt Diane said, sounding young and scared.

"You know I killed Mindy and Jeff."

"No, please-"

"And you know I killed Robert. I waited for him in his car and-"

Aunt Diane jumped up suddenly and ran up the hill, stumbling several times.

Silhouetted against the full silver moon, Aunt Diane raised her folded hands in prayer.

Jenny did not go up the hill for a long time.

She just let Aunt Diane fall to the ground and cry and cry.

Finally, though, Jenny rose and went up the hill and knelt down and took Diane in her arms and said, "Please don't cry, Aunt Diane. Please."

"Then don't ever say that again, Jenny. You didn't kill Mindy and you didn't kill Jeff and you didn't kill Robert and you're not dead, you're alive. And you're a perfectly normal little girl. Won't you please believe that, honey? Won't you please believe that?"

Jenny listened to the vast night, the birds and grass and stones and water and stars and bones and flesh of this night. Jenny wanted to tell Aunt Diane of her great sadness for not being a part of this night, for being something despised and feared on this plane of existence.

But that was not what Aunt Diane wanted to hear, of course.

Jenny leaned over and kissed Aunt Diane tenderly on the cheek. "That's what I am, Aunt Diane," Jenny said, "a perfectly normal little girl."

After a time they went back to the cabin, where Aunt Diane made buttery popcorn and began laughing once more, the way she used to.