John Saul - Darkness

“Barbara, honey,” Craig began as he stood up again, but Barbara cut him off.

“It’s Sharon,” Barbara told him. “Something’s wrong, Craig! Sharon’s not dead! Dr. Phillips took Sharon when she was born and did something to her. Then he arranged for her to be adopted by Mary and Ted Anderson.”

Craig stared at her in shock. What was she talking about? The whole idea of it was so bizarre …

“I know it sounds crazy, Craig,” Barbara went on as if she’d read the thoughts spinning through his mind. “But just listen to me. Just give me five minutes.”

She told him about the pictures she’d looked at, first in her own album, then in Mary Anderson’s. But it wasn’t until she told him about the phone call to the hospital in Orlando that she saw the disbelief in his eyes begin to give way to a worried frown. “You can call them yourself,” she said, handing him the birth certificate once more. “In fact, I wish you would. Maybe the woman I talked to made a mistake. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe …” She floundered for a moment, trying to sort through her conflicting emotions, but finally gave up, leaning tiredly back in the chair. “I don’t know what I think.”

Craig picked up the phone and made the call, but as he spoke to the woman in Orlando, his eyes fixed on the signature at the bottom of the birth certificate. He’d seen Warren Phillips’s signature hundreds of times over the years, and he knew Barbara was right. Despite the fact that the name was different, it was still clearly only a variation on the doctor’s distinctive scrawl. Even so, when the phone call was finished, he tried to think of some other meaning for the anomaly. “It doesn’t mean Kelly is Sharon,” he said. “It could be some kind of coincidence—”

Barbara cut him off. “I thought of that,” she told him. “I’ve tried to think of everything. But we never saw Sharon, Craig. Neither of us. Not after she was born. Not at the funeral. We simply believed what we were told.” Her voice held a note of self-condemnation that tore at Craig’s heart.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked, and for the first time there was no challenge in his voice.

“We have to open the crypt,” Barbara told him. “We have to find out if Sharon is really dead. If we don’t, I think I’m going to go crazy. I can’t stand it anymore, Craig. Ever since I met Kelly, I’ve had the feeling that she’s Sharon. I can’t explain all of it, and I know her resemblance to Tisha could just be a coincidence, but I just can’t get over the feeling that she’s our daughter.”

Craig felt as if he was standing at the lip of a great yawning abyss, and that if he weren’t very, very careful, he might slip over the edge and be swallowed up by the emptiness below. If the baby they’d both looked forward to so much, and then lost even before they’d seen it — if that baby were still alive …

He wasn’t sure he could bring himself to finish the thought, consumed as he was by a great wave of black fury that had risen inside him and threatened to sweep all reason away from him.

“Mary,” he said, turning away from the dark thoughts. “What did Mary say?”

Barbara closed her eyes for a moment, wishing there were some way of avoiding what Kelly’s mother had told her. But she couldn’t. “She — She says she wants to know, too. She says there’s always been something about Kelly she couldn’t understand, as if something inside her is missing.” She hesitated, then went on. “She’s always thought it was her fault, that she’d failed Kelly. But if Phillips did something to her—”

Craig grasped at the straw. “What?” he demanded. “What possible motive would Phillips have? My God, he’s a doctor! Doctors don’t steal babies from their mothers.”

“There’s something else,” Barbara said, her voice sending a chill through Craig. She opened her purse and took a picture out of it, handing it to her husband. “Remember when that picture was taken? Just before Sharon was born?”

Craig gazed down at the picture, nodding. “I don’t see—”

“Look at some of the men in that picture, Craig. Warren Phillips and Carl Anderson. Orrin Hatfield and Fred Childress. Judd Duval.”

Craig’s eyes scanned the picture, quickly picking out the men Barbara had named. “They haven’t changed much, have they?” he said. When Barbara said nothing for several long seconds, he looked up and found her staring at him.

“They haven’t changed at all, Craig. Not one of them has aged a day in the last sixteen years. And I keep thinking about that. Orrin Hatfield is the county coroner. He signed the death certificates for Sharon and for Jenny. Fred Childress buried them both. Judd Duval found Jenny in the swamp. And Carl Anderson is Kelly’s grandfather.”

Craig didn’t want to look at the picture that was coming together in his own mind, didn’t want to accept what his wife was suggesting. And yet he couldn’t deny her words.

“They’re doing something,” Barbara said. “They’re doing something with our children, and it’s keeping them young. They’re taking something from them, Craig. I don’t understand it, and I can’t prove it, but I know it’s true. They stole our daughters, Craig!”

Craig felt himself slipping over into the abyss. “We don’t know that,” he said, his voice desperate.

“And what about Michael?” Barbara asked.

Craig looked at her numbly, but understood instantly what she was asking. He got up, went to the safe, and a moment later found what he was looking for. After studying it for a moment, a cold knot of fear forming in his stomach, he handed Michael’s birth certificate to Barbara.

She felt an odd dispassion as she stared at the document, as if it merely proved what she already knew.

The same hospital.

The same signature.

“Barbara, it’s all supposition—” Craig began.

“Don’t you think I know that? Don’t you think I hope I’m wrong? That I’m just refusing to adjust to Jenny’s death? But what if she’s not dead, either, Craig? What if I’m not wrong? There’s only one way we can find out.”

Craig said nothing for a long moment, but at last he took a deep breath and met her eyes. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go see what we can do.”

Kelly looked fearfully at Tim Kitteridge. “It wasn’t anybody’s fault,” she insisted. She’d done her best to repeat to the police chief exactly what had happened, but with her father’s eyes on her, she still felt oddly guilty, as if somehow she’d let him down again.

“And you told Phil Stubbs that the man who took the baby was your grandfather?” Kitteridge asked.

Kelly’s eyes flicked once more toward her father. He was watching her, his eyes boring into her. If she said the wrong thing … But she couldn’t lie, couldn’t pretend she might have been mistaken.

Because she wasn’t mistaken. The man in the swamp had been her grandfather, even though he’d looked much worse than he had when she’d seen him early this morning, when he left the house. Finally she nodded. “It was him,” she breathed. “He — He looked different from the way he usually does, but it was him.”

Ted Anderson started to say something, but Kitteridge silenced him with a look. “How, Kelly?” he asked. “How did he look different?”

Kelly hesitated. If she told them the truth, they were going to think she was crazy. But there were other people who had seen her grandfather, and even though they didn’t know who he was, they knew what he looked like. “He — He looked sick,” she finally said, her voice trembling. “I mean — well, it was like he’d gotten old. I mean, really old, like he was going to die or something.” She paused, anticipating her father’s accusation that she was lying, but when her father said nothing, she went on. “It was really weird. I saw him this morning, when he went to work, and he looked funny then, too. But in the swamp it was worse. His hair was falling out, and his face was all covered with wrinkles. And his eyes were all sunken in.”