The Nightmarys - By Dan Poblocki Page 0,77

kissed his wife’s cheek.

She smiled and patted his head. “Whatever you like,” she answered.

When Emma Huppert came home from the beach, she threw her towel onto the back of a chair in the kitchen. Bill had left the mail on the table. Lying on top of the pile was a letter. Emma gasped when she noticed the return address. She hadn’t spoken to Zilpha Kindred in years. She quickly tore open the envelope. Inside was a newspaper clipping—the obituary of the prosecutor in her sister’s case, along with a brief note scrawled on a scrap of paper.

Emma, I thought you might find this to be of interest. Do with it what you will. Much love, Zilpha.

Tears welled in Emma’s eyes. Over the past couple of months, ever since Delia began appearing to her, she’d been meaning to call the one old friend back in New Starkham who might understand what the experience meant; however, she’d been too frightened to even speak of it to anyone at all.

But recently, Delia had suddenly stopped “visiting.”

Emma prayed every day that Delia was at peace now. She knew in her heart that her sister didn’t blame her for what had happened long ago. It had been none of their faults. And despite the horrific vision in the Wal-Mart dressing room, Emma still thought about her sister every time she put on her new bathing suit and stepped into the cold Atlantic to go for her now-daily swims. She wished, with her entire soul, that Delia could have joined her.

On a Tuesday morning at the beginning of May, Zilpha Kindred’s washing machine finally died. By that afternoon, two men had delivered a brand-new one. Three people were going to be living in the apartment from now on, and it would not do to simply keep repairing the old clunker. Zilpha was no longer willing to use the one in the basement.

Later that evening, with little Hepzibah at her feet, Zilpha decided to test out the contraption. The nightmare laundry experience of two months ago seemed like a dream, the memory of it fading even more quickly than Zilpha had hoped it would. Thank goodness.

As the old woman loaded the basket and poured in the detergent, she thought about Abigail and Timothy and how the surreal events of the past few weeks might linger in their memories, or grow, or change. Zilpha was surprised that the children had been able to get out of bed that week. She figured that children must have a natural resilience after these sorts of things. It’s later, she thought, after time and trouble and life itself have worn down our resistance and the ghosts come back to haunt, that we must find ways of tricking ourselves into finally subduing them. It was possible, she now knew.

Zilpha closed the lid with a bang and cranked the silver knob. The water ran and the machine began to hum. “Come on, Hep,” she said, heading down the hallway toward the kitchen. “This thing can take care of itself.”

49.

Timothy waited at the edge of the bridge, watching the traffic cross the river. Cars, packed with boxes, books, and small pieces of furniture, sped through the green light. Down the hill, on the campus, the ceremony wasn’t over yet, but the college students, underclassmen mostly, were already leaving New Starkham. It wasn’t fair. He wished his own classes ended at the beginning of May. If the past week had felt like a millennium, the month and a half left before summer break would be an eternity.

Mr. Crane hadn’t come back to school. Word had spread that he was “taking a sabbatical” for the remainder of the year. Timothy didn’t exactly understand what that meant. People said the man had had a nervous breakdown.

Timothy knew what had really happened, and though he knew it wasn’t his fault Mr. Crane had tried to break into his house a week ago, he felt strangely guilty about it. None of what happened had been Mr. Crane’s fault either. When he’d heard Randy and Brian making fun of their absent teacher during history class on Friday, Timothy had to keep his hands under his desk to refrain from whacking their skulls with his cast. If the boys knew what any of them had been through, they wouldn’t have snickered. However, they quickly changed the subject when the substitute entered the classroom and reminded the class that their museum projects were still due the next week.

Timothy had glanced at Abigail. They’d