John Saul - The Right Hand of Evil

But that was silly! It was nothing more than the jack-o'-lanterns on the porches and the stories that had been tumbling through her mind that were spooking her. Still, the sense of someone watching remained. Cautiously, she looked around into the gathering darkness.

Was that a flicker of movement, over near the carriage house?

Sandy strained her eyes, peering into the shadows that surrounded the building, but she could see nothing.

Every shadow seemed to hold some unseen menace. Suddenly, all she wanted was to be safely inside the house. Then, just as she reached for the bell again, Kim opened the door. Relief flooding over her, Sandy quickly stepped inside.

Jake Cumberland waited in the shadows until the door closed behind Sandy Engstrom. Then he began his nightly ritual…

The first surprise came as Sandy peered into the huge entry hall. A great gleaming brass chandelier hung from the soaring ceiling, flooding the space with enough light to drive every shadow away. The floor, intricately inlaid with half a dozen different kinds of wood, looked as if it had been installed only a few days ago, instead of more than a century earlier. The space was freshly painted in a bright off-white, and she gazed in wonder at the soaring staircase at the far end of the hall.

"It's really beautiful," she said in an awed whisper, looking around in wonder. "Is it all like this?"

Kim shook her head. "It's just getting started. Some of the rooms upstairs are still really creepy."

The eager light in Sandy's eyes faded. She glanced around uneasily. "Where's Jared?" she asked.

"He's not here," Kim said. "Dad gave him enough money so he and Luke could go to the movies, and told him not to come home until at least eleven. Want to see the living room?" Concealing her disappointment at Jared's banishment to the movies, Sandy followed Kim toward the set of doors leading to the living room. As they were crossing the entry hall, Kim's parents came down the stairs.

"We'll be with Sandy's folks," Janet said, "and we should be home by ten-thirty. Molly's sound asleep, and I don't think she'll wake up. But if she does-"

"I'll give her a bottle of juice," Kim finished. She looked anxiously at her father. "You told Jared he can't bring Luke home, didn't you?"

"I told him he couldn't bring Luke home unless we were here," her father told her. "But I couldn't very well forbid him to bring his friend home at all, could I?"

Kim shrugged in reluctant acquiescence. "I guess."

"Okay. And remember, if you need anything, just call us at Sandy's house."

A minute later they were gone, and with the departure of the adults, Sandy's carefully controlled fears threatened to break free of the restraints she'd barely managed to put on them. At Kim's next words, her nerves frayed even more.

"Let's go upstairs," her friend said. "I'll show you some of the rooms."

Kim led Sandy up the stairs, but before taking her into any of the ruined rooms her father hadn't yet gotten to, she took her to her own room, which looked nothing like it had a few weeks earlier. Kim explained how her dad had stripped the rotting wallpaper away, repaired the plaster, and put on new paper in a bright flowered pattern that matched the bedspread on the huge four-poster bed as well as the curtains. A thick carpet covered the floor, and a chandelier, glittering with crystal, was suspended from a gilded medallion in the center of the ceiling.

"It's really nice." In the bright light of Kim's bedroom, Sandy's fears began to ease. "Are all the rooms like this?"

"Dad's going to make them all different," Kim said. She led her friend down the hall toward the room two doors down. But ten feet away, Sandy stopped short.

Something-some image she couldn't quite make out-seemed to have flickered in front of the door for an instant. She rubbed her arms as a chill came over her.

"I don't want to go in there," she announced.

Kim eyed her curiously, her head cocked. "It's just a room."

Sandy shook her head. "It doesn't feel right," she insisted.

"What do you mean?" Now, as she remembered the terrors she'd experienced a few nights before, her own heart began beating faster. But her terrors had been caused by nothing more than nightmares. "How does it feel?"

Sandy hesitated. The chill had passed as quickly as it had come. The door looked just like all the other doors that opened off the mezzanine. "I-I don't know," she stammered. "I just thought-" She stopped, embarrassed. "I'm okay," she said.

Kim opened the door and they stepped into a room lit only by the glow of moonlight coming in through the window. Even in the shadowy light, Sandy could see that it had once been a nursery. An ancient-looking crib stood near the window, and though the wallpaper was faded, she could still make out a pattern of teddy bears dancing across the walls. But the room felt strange.

Unlived-in.

She remembered the story she'd heard so many times while she was growing up, of the baby that George Conway's wife had given birth to, but who had never been found.

And then Sandy knew.

This was the room intended for that baby.

Sandy heard a sound, but it was so faint that for a second she wasn't sure she'd heard it at all. "Listen!" she said, her voice low. "What was that?"

"What was what?" Kim asked.

"Shhh!" Sandy hissed. "I heard something! Just listen!"

Both girls were silent, then Sandy heard it again. A baby crying! "There!" she exclaimed. "Didn't you hear that?" Kim shook her head. "It was a baby! I heard a baby crying!"

"Maybe it was Molly," Kim suggested.

Relief made Sandy's knees go weak. Of course it was Molly! How stupid could she get? If she wasn't such a fraidy cat, she would have known right away that it had to be Kirn's baby sister crying. She followed Kim into the little room that adjoined the master bedroom, where a soft nightlight glowed next to Molly's crib. The two girls leaned over the crib and peered down at the sleeping child. Sandy started to speak, but Kim held her finger to her lips. "If she wakes up, she'll never go back to sleep," she whispered. They tiptoed back out, and Kim gently closed the door behind her. "Well, I guess whatever you heard wasn't Molly."

A tendril of panic flicked out and tried to grasp Sandy, but this time she refused to let herself give in to it. "It probably wasn't anything. Let's go down and watch the movies we rented. Then at least I'll really have something to be scared about." As they started down the stairs, Sandy glanced once more at the closed door to the old nursery. No matter what Kim said, she'd heard something.

She'd heard a baby, and the baby had been crying.

And it had been in that room.

Sandy wished she hadn't come over here at all.

Janet Conway felt as if she'd somehow slipped into another world. A parallel world that looked, sounded, and felt so perfectly familiar that it was hard to believe it wasn't the same world in which she'd been living her entire life. In the two hours since she and Ted had arrived at the Engstroms' it seemed she'd skidded into the Twilight Zone as she listened to Marge's summary of the rumors flying through the town over the last few weeks-tales involving the killing of babies and the seduction and slaying of a servant girl. It wasn't as if she'd never heard the rumors before-in the few weeks since the first time they had been to the Engstroms' for dinner, she must have heard every one of them. But tonight, hearing all the threads woven together, they took on a surreal quality. Janet was barely able to believe people would repeat such things, let alone accept them as true.

There had apparently even been whispers of Devil worship.

Devil worship?

In her family?

"Where on earth could such stories be coming from?" she wanted to know, her voice shaking with outrage. She searched her mind for something to explain the terrible stories, but there was nothing. Nothing any of them had done. There'd been the problem with Jared being late getting back from lunch, but the school had dealt with that. Then she remembered a moment in the cemetery, at Aunt Cora's funeral, and she heard Ted saying, "I just don't hold with religion," despite her own silent wish that he would keep his opinion to himself. But he hadn't: "Never have. I don't mind my kids going to your school, but don't count on any of us showing up for church on Sundays."