“But I want to use this one,” Jenny complained. “It’s not just yours. It’s both of ours, and I have just as much right to—”
“Fine,” Michael said. “There’s the toilet. Go ahead and use it while I finish combing my hair. I don’t care.”
Jenny’s eyes widened with outrage. “I’m going to tell Mom what you said!”
Michael moved to the door, lifted his sister up and put her down in the hall, then closed the door in her face, locking it. As he went back to the sink, Jenny began pounding on the door, wailing indignantly.
Michael, ignoring the pounding and the shouts, gazed into the mirror once again.
The strange image was gone. All that he saw now was his own reflection.
But where had the image come from? Had it really been there at all?
He wasn’t sure.
But it wasn’t the first time he’d seen it.
Indeed, he couldn’t really remember when he’d first seen it. For a long time, it had happened so rarely that often he’d forgotten all about it. But now it seemed to be happening more frequently.
Sometimes he’d barely catch a glimpse of the face; it would be no more than a flicker in the mirror.
Other times he’d see it in his dreams, and wake up frightened.
Recently, he’d begun seeing the face more clearly, and more often.
For a while he’d tried to convince himself the house was haunted. Once, he’d even talked to his mother about it. She’d listened to him, but in the end she’d laughed it off.
“As far as I know, new houses don’t get haunted. First you have to have someone die — preferably get murdered. And unless you’ve killed someone and not told me about it, that hasn’t happened here.”
He’d argued with her a little, but not much, because the more he’d talked about it, the more stupid the whole thing had sounded. And yet, the face seemed to be coming to him more and more lately.
He studied the mirror for a few seconds, now consciously willing the image to reappear, as if to convince himself that the specter existed only in his own imagination. But except for his own face, the mirror reflected only white, shiny tile.
Leaving the bathroom to Jenny, he hurried down the stairs and out into the heat of the morning. But as he started toward the garage and his motorcycle, he glanced back at the house.
What was the truth of the face he’d seen in the mirror?
Was it in the house, or was it in his own mind?
As he mounted his bike and rode away, he decided that he didn’t really want to know the answer to his own question, for one answer was as frightening as the other.
3
Kelly Anderson sat silently in the backseat of the Chrysler, staring unseeingly out the window. Though the scenery had slowly changed from the red earth and pine trees of Georgia to the marshy flatland of Florida, Kelly had been unaware of it. Her thoughts had been turned inward, remembering the two weeks she’d spent in the hospital.
She hadn’t needed to be there — her wounds had healed quickly, and even the stitches in her stomach had been removed after only a week. What they’d really been trying to do was to figure out if she was crazy. She’d convinced them she wasn’t, although she herself wasn’t at all sure it was true. But the idea of being locked up in a hospital somewhere had terrified her even more than the image of the old man that she’d seen in the bathroom mirror the night she’d tried to kill herself, so instead of telling the psychiatrist about it, she’d made up a story. And the story wasn’t really a lie, because she had been worried about her father not working, and she had felt she could never do anything right. So when she told them she’d just decided that maybe it would be easier for everyone if she weren’t around anymore, they’d believed her.
She hadn’t told them about the nightmare man — she knew better than that.
She’d talked her way out of telling Dr. Hartman about thinking she was pregnant, too. That hadn’t been too hard — she just said she’d been feeling really bad lately, and when she missed her period, she automatically thought she must be pregnant. She even claimed she’d been drinking with some friends one night, didn’t remember what had happened, and just assumed she must have gone to bed with someone. That part hadn’t been true at all — she hated the taste of liquor — but they’d believed her.
And they hadn’t locked her up.
They sent her home instead, and a week later her mother told her they were moving to Villejeune.
There’d been a long story about the job her grandfather had found for her father, but Kelly knew it wasn’t true. Or even if it was, it still wasn’t the real reason they were moving.
What they really wanted to do was get her out of Atlanta, and away from her friends.
Her friends, she thought hollowly. It was kind of funny, really, since she never thought of the kids in her crowd as friends. They were just other kids, people to hang out with so she wouldn’t have to be by herself all the time. She never really talked to any of them very much.
If she had, they might have found out how crazy she really was.
Maybe she should have let them lock her up after all. At least that way her mother wouldn’t have had to move back to Villejeune. She recalled her mother’s words, last week: “I always hated it. It always felt like everyone there was just waiting to die. Nothing ever changed, nothing ever happened. And it wasn’t just me. A lot of the other kids felt the same way. Most of us could hardly wait to get out, and a lot of us did. There wasn’t any reason to stay — Villejeune was just like all those other little towns on the edge of the swamp. Nobody had any ambition, nobody had any dreams.” Then, as Kelly watched, her mother’s eyes had wandered over the fading wallpaper in their living room, taking in the worn furniture they’d never been able to replace. She’d sighed, and smiled wanly at Kelly. “Well, I guess my dreams never came true, did they? And your father says the town’s changed, so maybe it’s time I gave it another chance.” She’d fallen silent, as if trying to convince herself that she believed what she was saying, and then she brightened, though Kelly had seen her force the smile onto her lips. “Anyway, it’s time for you to have a change, isn’t it? Meet some new people, make new friends! It’ll be fun.” The words had struck Kelly like tiny knives. An overwhelming sense of guilt had descended on her.
It was her fault that her mother had to go back.
“Well, for heaven’s sake, will you look at that?”
The words from the front seat startled Kelly out of her reverie. She sat up, focusing for the first time on the landscape beyond the confines of the car, as her father slowed the Chrysler. Ahead of them on the highway was a large billboard, featuring a panoramic vista of a golf course and marina, dotted with houses and condominium units. In bold letters above and below the scene, the legend proclaimed:
VILLEJEUNE LINKS ESTATES
ANOTHER PROJECT FOR GRACIOUS LIVING
FROM ANDERSON & ANDERSON
Kelly stared at the sign, uncertain what it meant. Then she heard her father’s voice.
“Do you believe it? He never said a word. He just said to keep an eye out for a new project he was starting.”
“But—” Mary began, her words instantly drowned out by Ted’s delighted laugh.
“He went all the way! He didn’t just give me a job. He made me his partner!” He stepped hard on the gas pedal, and the car lunged forward. And when her mother turned to look back at the sign through the rear window, her eyes fell on Kelly.
She winked.
“Maybe this is going to work out after all,” she said. “It’s starting to look like Villejeune might not be quite the town I remember.”