John Saul - Comes the Blind Fury

“They’re all ugly,” Michelle protested.

“So that narrows the list down still more,” June reasoned. “Now you wanted a name that’s ‘old-fashioned’ but not ‘ugly,’ and if you start with the A’s, as most of us do, about the first one you come to is—”

“—Amanda.” Michelle finished, grinning, “And I thought it had just come to me,” she muttered.

“Well, in a way, it did,” June said. “The mind works so fast, you didn’t even realize you’d gone through all that reasoning. And that, my love, is how ghost stories are born — coincidence! Now off to bed, or you’ll fall asleep at school tomorrow.”

Michelle pulled herself to her feet, and went to her father. Her arms slid around his neck, and she hugged him.

“I’m really dumb sometimes, aren’t I?” she said.

“No more than the rest of us, princess.” He kissed her gently, then smacked her bottom. “Off to bed with you.”

He listened as Michelle went upstairs, then looked fondly at his wife.

“How do you do it?” he asked admiringly.

“Do what?” June replied absently.

“Think up logical explanations for things that don’t seem logical.”

“Talent,” June replied. “Just talent. Besides, if I’ d let you think up an explanation, we’d have been up all night, and wound up all believing in ghosts.”

She got to her feet, and poked at the fire, settling it low on the grate, while Cal turned off the lights. Then, hand in hand, they, too, climbed the stairs.

Michelle lay in bed, listening to the sounds of the night — the surf pounding on the beach below, the last crickets of summer chirping happily in the darkness, the light breeze soughing in the trees around the house. She thought about what her mother had said. It made sense. And yet — and yet it seemed as though there was something wrong with tibie explanation. There should be something else. That’s silly, she told herself. There isn’t anything else. But even as the nightsounds lulled her to sleep, Michelle had the feeling that there was something else.

Something ominous.

Maybe she shouldn’t have named the doll Amanda at all.…

The nightsounds had stopped when Michelle awoke. She lay still in bed, listening. Around her, the silence was almost palpable.

And then she felt it.

Something was watching her.

Something in her room.

She wanted to pull the covers up over her face and hide from whatever had come to her, but she knew she couldn’t.

Whatever it was, she had to look at it.

Slowly, Michelle sat up in bed, her eyes, wide and frightened, searching out the dark corners of the bedroom.

By the window.

It was in the corner by the window — a black shape, something standing there, standing still, watching her.

And then, as she watched, it began coming toward her.

It moved out into the room, into the moonlight that was shining silver through the window.

It was a little girl, no older than herself.

Inexplicably, the fear began to drain from Michelle, and was replaced by curiosity. Who was she? What did she want?

The child moved closer to her, and Michelle could see that she was dressed strangely — her dress was black, and fell close to the floor, with large puffed sleeves that ended in tight cuffs at her wrists. On her head, nearly hiding her face, she wore a black bonnet.

Michelle watched, transfixed, as the strange figure approached her. In the moonlight, the girl turned her head, and Michelle saw her face.

It was a soft face, with a cupid’s mouth, and a small, upturned nose.

Then Michelle saw the eyes.

Milky white, and shimmering faintly in the moonlight, they gazed sightlessly at Michelle, and as the sightless eyes fixed on her, the little girl raised one arm, and pointed at Michelle.

Her fear flooding over her once again, Michelle began to scream.

Her own screams woke her up.

Terrified, she stared around the empty bedroom, looking for the strange black figure that had been there only a second before.

The room was empty.

Around her, the nightsounds still droned on, the surf pounding steadily below, the breeze still plucking at the pines.

Then the door to her room opened, and her father was there.

“Princess? Princess, are you all right?” He was sitting on her bed, his arms around her, comforting her.

“It was a nightmare, Daddy,” Michelle whispered. “It was awful, Daddy, and so real. There was someone here. Right here, in the room …”

“No, baby, no,” Cal soothed her. “There’s nobody here but me. Just you and me, and your mother. It was only a dream, sweetheart.”

Cal sat with her for a long time, talking to her, calming her. Finally, near dawn, he kissed her softly and told her to go back to sleep. He left her door open.

Michelle lay still for a while, trying to forget the terrifying dream. Unable to fall asleep, she got out of bed and went to the window seat. Picking up the doll, she sat in the window, staring out into the darkness of the last moments of night. As the fog began to lift, Michelle suddenly thought she saw something — a figure, standing on the bluff to the north, near the old cemetery.

She looked again, straining her eyes, but the mists swirled in the wind, and she could see nothing.

Taking the antique doll with her, Michelle returned to her bed. As the first gray of dawn crept into the sky, she fell asleep once more.

Beside her, its head resting on the pillow, the sightless doll gazed blankly upward.

When he left Michelle’s room, Cal did not go straight back to bed. Instead, he put on a robe, fished his pipe and tobacco off the dresser, and went downstairs.

He wandered through the house aimlessly for a while, then settled finally in the little formal parlor at the front of the first floor. He lit his pipe, propped his feet up, and let his mind drift.

He was back in Boston, the night that boy had died — the night his life had changed.

He couldn’t even remember the boy’s name now.

Couldn’t, or wouldn’t.

That was part of the problem. There were too many whose names he couldn’t remember, and who had died.

How many of them had died because of him?

The last one, the boy from Paradise Point, he was sure of. But there might have been others. How many others? Well, there wouldn’t be any more.

His mind kept coming back to that boy.

Alan Hanley. That was his name. Cal could remember the day Alan Hanley had been brought to Boston General.

The ambulance had arrived late in the afternoon, with Alan Hanley unconscious, and Josiah Carson tending him. The boy had fallen from a roof.

This roof, Cal knew now, but at the time it had made no difference.

Josiah Carson had done what he could, but when he realized that the boy’s injuries were too serious to be handled in the Paradise Point Clinic, he had brought him to Boston.

And Calvin Pendleton had attended him.

It seemed, at first, like a fairly simple case — a few broken bones, and possible cranial damage. Cal had done his best, setting the breaks, and checking for internal injuries. That was when he had found what he thought was a blood clot building up inside the boy’s head. It had seemed to him to be an emergency, and so, with Josiah Carson at his side, looking on, he had operated.

Alan Hanley died on the operating table.

And there had been no blood clot, no reason to operate.

The incident had shaken Cal badly, shaken him more than any other single event of his life.

It was not, he knew, the first time he had misdiagnosed something. Nearly all doctors misdiagnose now and then. But for Cal, Alan Hanley’s death was a turning point.

From that moment, he had never stopped wondering if he was going to make another mistake, and if another child was going to die because of him.