Louise seemed to swell darkly. “You do like I say or I’ll fix you! I’ll follow you around all day an’ I’ll bite you an’ I’ll hit you an’ I’ll kick you and I’ll tell all the kids nasty stories about you!”
“I want my mama’s necklace!” The tearful blue eyes were frightened. The small lips pouted stubbornly.
“You can’t have it till you do as I say.”
“P-p-please, Louise!”
“Come on. When we get up there to my playhouse I’ll really truly give it to you. Come on. Hurry up.”
The blonde child followed reluctantly as they trotted through the hot dust to the irrigation canal that crossed the fields behind the houses. The canal banks were covered with water willows, silver-leafed in the sun, white-flowered, lacy yarrow, water grass, and silky milkweed. In stagnant pools cattails raised pithy spikes. Except for the path it was a secretive, impenetrable wilderness.
The children followed the tunnel-like opening and the grasses closed vibrantly over their heads. They came out of the thick vegetation onto the concrete abutments of the headgate that controlled the flow of water into the smaller ditches. In the wide spillway the water ran swift and dark as it poured in a thick greenish torrent into the deep pool below. The water moved silently except for an oily lapping against the rough walls of the spillway. Dimpled whirlpools formed on its surface and vanished with sucking gurgles. Things moved in the greenish depths — swirls of moss, flickering shadows, sibilant things.
“Look here,” Louise cried, standing close to the edge.
“No,” Rosellen sniffed, drawing back. Her small face was pale beneath the sweat and tears. “I’m scared. I want to go home. I bet you haven’t got any ole playhouse. I want my mama’s necklace.”
“Don’t be a baby. Come look.”
“L-l-look at what?”
“There’s a turtle. A big yellow one with red eyes. Come look, then you can go home. I promise.”
“You’ll give me Mama’s necklace?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
The oath was a fearful one. Rosellen edged closer to the dark water. She stretched her slender neck. Her yellow braids fell forward over her small shoulders. “Where’s the turtle? I don’t see any ole turtle.”
“Right there,” said Louise, pointing downward. “You watch. He’ll come up again in a minute.”
Around the children rose moist hot air, thick with the smells of slimy mud and decay. Blue dragonflies hovered on silken wings above the green water.
“See. Here he comes.” Louise held the jewel against her skinny chest. Her fingers caressed its carved edges.
“Where? I don’t see any ole turtle!” Rosellen leaned forward.
Louise put her free hand against the small warm back — and pushed.
There wasn’t much splash and only a choked scream. The struggling child came to the surface once. Her small hands reached out toward Louise. Her eyes were round and black with terror. Her mouth opened and closed soundlessly.
Louise, still leaning a little forward, watched impassively, her left hand still clenched around the blood-red stone that seemed to throb like a living thing.
A whirling current seized Rosellen and pulled her under. The checked pinafore and the blue-ribboned braids vanished in the greenish depths.
Louise straightened. She had put the paper-doll box on the ground and now she picked it up and threw it into the water. It drifted like a small flat boat across the pool and then capsized and sank, slowly turning. The paper dolls floated down the stream. They might have been gay flowers on a peaceful lily pond.
Louise sat on the bank and drew the necklace from its hiding place. The crimson lights leaped and danced in her hand. She held the stone to her eye and lay back on the grass.
Quickly and effortlessly a crimson, silken softness came up about her and carried her away to a small room where a dinner party was in progress. It was a wonderfully rich room with deep-red velvet carpets and red silk wall hangings. Everything was jeweled with gold and diamonds, and soft lights glowed from crystal chandeliers. She was there inside herself, feeling all the delicious things, and yet she was watching herself with all-seeing eyes.
She was more beautiful than ever. Her dress was of glittering cloth of gold, and rubies covered her wrists and neck. Rubies smoldered in her high-piled black hair. People with smiling mouths and admiring eyes crowded around her. She lifted a golden cup and drank sweet red wine that tasted better than the smell of perfume and the touch of soft feathers. Her whole body tingled with a rapturous delight. Her pulses throbbed with a dizzying ecstasy. She seemed to be floating in a world of brilliant, gilded, crimson light and high, clear, ringing sounds that were unbelievably beautiful.
Then the vision, despite her best efforts to sustain it, began to grow dull. The melodies faded, and a strident something was pulling her down, down into a dark pit.
“Louise! Louise!” It was her mother’s angry voice. “Where are you? Come here this instant!”
The girl sat up on the bank. She drew a deep breath. She felt weak and languidly spent. She smiled slowly and dropped the pendant back inside her shirt and buttoned the collar high around her throat.
She stood up and peered into the water. Then she turned and began to run and scream.
She burst through the tall grass shrieking hysterically, “Help! Help! Mama, come quick! Rosellen fell in!”
III: The Sound of Women Weeping
The houses faced each other across the dingy street; one was weathered, white-painted, two-storied, the other squat, drab-brown with a wide veranda and a screened-in side porch. They seemed to regard each other with suspicious eyes — the two-story one from narrow windows pinched beneath a high, white-walled forehead, and the squat one from beneath the beetling veranda roof that projected like a thick, dark brow. The pale and wintry light of the late afternoon sun made barred shadows across the dead lawns. The street was quiet. Only an occasional car scuttled by, crisping through the fallen leaves.
Ed Crossman stood behind his front windows and gazed with somber gray eyes across the street at the brown house. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a gentle and deep-lined face. The black suit he was wearing was too small for him and smelled faintly of moth spray. He drew his hand over his face with a gesture of inarticulate grief and turned from the window to the stairs.
At the bottom of the steps he leaned against the banister and listened to the silence of the old house. In the kitchen the refrigerator hummed monotonously; beneath the floor some timbers creaked faintly; against the outside wall the thin cold wind drove a branch with a stealthy tapping — all the sounds seemed to intensify the hollow emptiness of the rooms. The house seemed to be waiting, listening — for the gay laughter and skipping feet that would never come again.
Since that night of horror, Ed Crossman had never been alone to think of the future, to plan the things that must be done. Doctor Miller had come first and then the police and the ambulance crew. Later the neighbors had appeared, and the relatives with their tears and their shocked faces, and inevitably the reporters with their notebooks and cameras, and finally the curious with their prying eyes and pointing fingers. Carloads of them had come, staring and whispering under the bare-limbed elms that lined the street.
It was over now — the unbelievable, the unbearable thing that had happened; and he and Ellie must face the long darkness that lay ahead. Ed Crossman straightened his shoulders and climbed the stairs. He tapped at the door of the front bedroom, and when there was no answer he pushed open the paneled door.
His wife lay motionless on the big fourposter bed. She hadn’t changed her dress after the funeral and the limp, black silk made her small body look shrunken and shapeless. Her eyes were closed and her hands folded inertly on her breasts. She lay so quietly that the man hurried to her side with a sudden cold fear. He touched her cheek and felt the burning dryness of her skin. She opened her eyes and stared dully up at him.