Ed Gorman: Nightmare Child

When she turned around and brought over the chocolate, Clark could see how concerned Diane looked.

The chocolate served, Diane went over and stood next to the girl, taking one tiny hand in her own.

"Jenny, are you afraid?"

Nothing. Just the stare.

"Jenny, do you remember me?"

The same stare.

"Jenny, do you know that I'm your friend?"

Nothing.

Diane turned back to Clark. "Do you see what I mean?"

Clark nodded. "Has she seen her sister yet?"

"That's the odd thing. She won't. Every time I try to take her over there, she grabs my wrist and stops me." She rubbed her wrist. "She's a very strong little girl."

Clark walked over to Jenny. "Do you feel all right, Jenny?"

Once more, the stare.

"Would you like us to get you a doctor?"

No response.

"Are you afraid of your sister, Jenny?"

Nothing.

Setting down his chocolate, Clark said, "Why don't we walk out on the deck, Diane? I'm sure Jenny will be all right here for a while."

Diane nodded. She looked at Jenny. "Will you be all right, hon?"

But of course Jenny did not let on that she'd heard a word.

"God only knows what they did to her."

"The kidnappers?"

"Right."

Diane shuddered. "I don't even like to think about it."

They leaned on the deck, gazing up the hill at the scrub pine and the clear blue sky. Distantly, a train rumbled through the hills. Closer by, a blackbird cawed.

"I just wonder why Jenny acted so funny about Mindy."

"Makes me curious too." He leaned on his elbows and watched a hawk soar in a wide loop toward the sun.

"You've got a nice place to relax here, Diane." He smiled fondly. "You should try it sometime-relaxing, I mean."

"I'm afraid I've never been any good at that. I suppose that's why I was always so drawn to Jenny. She reminded me of myself at her age. There's always been an urgency about her. I suppose it's because of Mindy."

"What about Mindy?"

"Mindy's so…self-involved. I don't mean that critically, just as an observation. Her weight, her hair, her social calendar. There just hasn't ever been much time for poor little Jenny. And Mindy's had her for four years, ever since their parents were killed in a private-plane crash."

Clark shrugged. "Maybe that's why Jenny doesn't want to go back there. Maybe for right now she needs the warmth and reassurance of somebody who really cares about her."

Diane studied the hills. "I wonder where she's been all this time."

"Maybe she just escaped a while ago."

"She looks so…pale."

"It isn't her coloring that bothers me."

"No?"

"No. It's her eyes. At first I thought we might be dealing with a very severe case of traumatic shock. But now I don't know. I've never seen eyes quite like hers."

"Neither have I."

"It's like she's-" He shook his head, not wanting to say it.

"Like she's what?"

"You know, Diane. You know what I want to say."

"Not quite…conscious. Is that it?"

"Something like that."

"That's impossible, of course. But she does-" Diane paused. "She does give that impression, doesn't she?"

"I think you should call Dr. Moeller."

"I was wondering about that."

"I've worked with him a couple of times. As shrinks go, he's a pretty sensible guy."

She smiled. "Is that an anti-shrink attitude I detect?"

He smiled back. "I suppose so. I'm not real fond of the way they always try to excuse everything by bringing in somebody's past. And I don't like the way they try to complicate everything with all these theories. Moeller's pretty straight ahead."

They moved away from the edge of the deck, brushing up against each other as they did so.

"Sorry," Diane said.

"I enjoyed it," he said. Then he snapped his fingers. "There I go again."

"There you go again?"

"Right. Being pushy." He sighed. "I guess I may as well say it. I think I frightened you away a few months ago-by coming on too strong. I think that's why you suddenly stopped seeing me."

She laughed softly. "You'd make a good shrink, Robert."

"I would?"

"Sure. You're doing the same thing you accuse them of doing."

"I am?"

She nodded. "You're making things more complicated than they need to be."

"Oh."

"I quit seeing you because I was…afraid. I liked you more than I was ready to like you, if that makes any sense. I just needed…time alone, I guess."

"I'm glad you told me that. Maybe sometime I'll ask you out again."

"I'd like that." She paused. "Sometime." She pointed to the shadowy interior of the house. "Let's go in and see how my new houseguest is doing."

They were ten steps into the kitchen when Clark saw that the stool Jenny had been sitting on was empty.

Diane ran through the house, to the front door. "There she is!" she called to Clark.

"Where?" Clark said, running to meet Diane. "She's going across the lawn. To Mindy's house."

As Clark came abreast of Diane, he said, "Well, maybe she worked through whatever difficulty she was having. Maybe she understands that it's a good thing to go home after all."

But Diane's eyes clouded with worry as she watched the retreating figure of the frail blond girl. "I hope that's why she's going back," Diane said. "I hope that's why."

Ordinarily, Mindy did not drink liquor. Sophomore year in college she'd gone on a kegger with some other Tri-Delts and ended up, near midnight, lying alone on the edge of a sandpit, nude and covered with chigger bites. She had never found out what she'd done-or what had been done to her-but whatever it was she blamed it all on drink.

Today, seeing Jenny coming across the lawn, she got down a fifth of Old Grand-dad from the kitchen cupboard, poured herself a shaky finger-full in a wineglass, and slugged it back.

"Oh, God," she said to no one in particular. "I know I'm going to hyperventilate and get a nosebleed. I know it."

Just then the doorbell rang an explosion of chimes on the sullen, silent air.

Jenny. Her younger sister. The girl she'd killed-or thought she'd killed-months ago. At the front door.

She had one more equally shaky drink, this one causing her to cough, and then she walked to the front door with as much dignity and purpose as she could summon.

Peeking through the spy-hole, she peered down on the familiar form of her sister, Jenny.

Mindy made a squealing noise when she saw the shades, those hideous red heart-shaped sunglasses little Jenny had always been so inexplicably fond of, the sunglasses that made her look like a midget version of a movie goddess.

Mindy, throwing the door open, dropped to one knee and said, "Come here, Kitten! Come here!"

Mindy held her arms out for Kitten, urging Jenny to run into her embrace.

Only that was not what happened.

Jenny took one step over the threshold and then did something most surprising for a girl her age and size.

She reached out and clawed her right hand down the side of Mindy's neck. Deep, dark blood appeared in long, ragged rivulets.

Mindy screamed.

Jenny had come home.

During this time, only a cleaning woman named Iona caught even so much as a glimpse of Jenny. One day when Iona was cleaning the bathroom in a master bedroom (you'd think a forty-nine-year-old man would learn to flush, for God's sake), she glanced outside and there in the window of the house next door was little Jenny, austere in her KISS T-shirt and almost ominous in those red, heart-shaped sunglasses she'd worn the past three Summers.

Jenny and the McCays were the one ceaseless topic of conversation in Stoneridge, their situation being even far more fun to speculate on than who was sleeping with whom in Parish Heights, the closed enclave estates twenty miles north, where the people were younger and more daring.