staggered back a step. She straightened, eyes fixed on the pinwheeling, expanding dot. The television screen was smeared with globs of whiteness then shadow, and Claire thought, Now …
And now became the future as she saw… A mouth and eyes. The mouth is wrapped around a terrible scream and the eyes are screaming too. A child screams, flies and floats and twists so slowly through depths of air, flying and floating and screaming.
The child is… All mouth and eyes… I cannot see. Who… She… This little girt so terrified… I feel her fear…
I cannot see!
I cannot see but somehow I know and this is my grandchild, the child of my child…
But Kim? Or Marcy? I hear the scream and I feel the fright but so dark this vision, I cannot see her face…
Cannot see!
The scream ends with the thudding brutality of the pain-enveloped fall, the impact on the ground, the darkness…
Claire Wynkoop blinked. It was finished.
Shivering, she exhaled and then nodded, her decision definite. She had to call. Beth would laugh and try to pretend there was no reason to be upset. But you’ve learned, haven’t you, my dear? One of the children, Marcy or Kim, was in danger, or would be.
And this time, oh please this time, let the awareness of danger-to-be prevent it coming to pass!
Claire dialed her daughter’s number. Circuits hissed and crackled and then there was a ringing.
Sixty miles north, in Park Estates, Beth Louden answered the telephone. “Michael?”
“It’s…”
“Oh. Mom.”
Claire squeezed shut her eyes. She heard it in Beth’s voice. Something was wrong—now.
“The children… Are they all right?”
“Of course, Mom,” Beth said. “Home from camp today. They’re fine.”
“I saw something, Beth.”
Beth’s sigh was a breathy dismissal. “Not now, Mom. I’m just not in the mood, okay?”
“Beth…”
“Mom,” Beth curtly interrupted, “the girls are all right, I’m all right. Michael’s all right and that’s it.”
“Then what’s bothering you?” Claire demanded, because Beth’s words thrummed with tension.
“Nothing I feel like talking about, okay I’ll give you a call tomorrow.”
“All right, then,” Claire said quietly. There was nothing else she could do now except worry.
Before she hung up, Beth assured her mother yet again that everything was all right.
No, Claire Wynkoop silently responded, it was not.
Nor would it be.
“Dad’s here!” In a Camp PineTop T shirt and raggedy-kneed jeans, Kim shot down the stairs. Smiling, Marcy trailed her younger sister.
Eight-year-old Kim was solid and chunky, able to belt a softball farther than most boys her age. With the short, brutally blunt haircut she’d insisted on before camp—she was then in one of her “I hate Marcy” periods and didn’t want anyone saying they looked like sisters—her ‘round face sunburned and peeling, and two missing lower teeth, Kim was straddling the borderline between cute and homely.
Not so Marcy, so lovely that people frequently commented that she ought to model or do TV commercials. Summer sun had lightened the blond hair that tumbled onto the ten-year-old’s shoulders. Her oval face was delicately featured and her lip line was finely sculptured so that her mouth didn’t have the poutiness common to many children. In green, white-trimmed jogging shorts and a sleeveless yellow top, Marcy radiated the graceful, yet unmannered poise of a ballerina born to the dance.
In the foyer, Michael braced himself for the children’s rush. Squatting, his arms encircling the girls, he kissed them and then, with a grin said, “Don’t get the idea we missed you brats. It was so nice and quiet around here, Mom and I were thinking of leaving you at camp for the next ten years.”
“Oh, Daddy,” Marcy whimpered, clinging to his neck.
Oh, Daddy! Michael thought. Marcy was a beautiful mouse who usually responded to his teasing with a helpless “Oh, Daddy”—unless she failed to realize he was
And now became the future as she saw… A mouth and eyes. The mouth is wrapped around a terrible scream and the eyes are screaming too. A child screams, flies and floats and twists so slowly through depths of air, flying and floating and screaming.
The child is… All mouth and eyes… I cannot see. Who… She… This little girt so terrified… I feel her fear…
I cannot see!
I cannot see but somehow I know and this is my grandchild, the child of my child…
But Kim? Or Marcy? I hear the scream and I feel the fright but so dark this vision, I cannot see her face…
Cannot see!
The scream ends with the thudding brutality of the pain-enveloped fall, the impact on the ground, the darkness…
Claire Wynkoop blinked. It was finished.
Shivering, she exhaled and then nodded, her decision definite. She had to call. Beth would laugh and try to pretend there was no reason to be upset. But you’ve learned, haven’t you, my dear? One of the children, Marcy or Kim, was in danger, or would be.
And this time, oh please this time, let the awareness of danger-to-be prevent it coming to pass!
Claire dialed her daughter’s number. Circuits hissed and crackled and then there was a ringing.
Sixty miles north, in Park Estates, Beth Louden answered the telephone. “Michael?”
“It’s…”
“Oh. Mom.”
Claire squeezed shut her eyes. She heard it in Beth’s voice. Something was wrong—now.
“The children… Are they all right?”
“Of course, Mom,” Beth said. “Home from camp today. They’re fine.”
“I saw something, Beth.”
Beth’s sigh was a breathy dismissal. “Not now, Mom. I’m just not in the mood, okay?”
“Beth…”
“Mom,” Beth curtly interrupted, “the girls are all right, I’m all right. Michael’s all right and that’s it.”
“Then what’s bothering you?” Claire demanded, because Beth’s words thrummed with tension.
“Nothing I feel like talking about, okay I’ll give you a call tomorrow.”
“All right, then,” Claire said quietly. There was nothing else she could do now except worry.
Before she hung up, Beth assured her mother yet again that everything was all right.
No, Claire Wynkoop silently responded, it was not.
Nor would it be.
“Dad’s here!” In a Camp PineTop T shirt and raggedy-kneed jeans, Kim shot down the stairs. Smiling, Marcy trailed her younger sister.
Eight-year-old Kim was solid and chunky, able to belt a softball farther than most boys her age. With the short, brutally blunt haircut she’d insisted on before camp—she was then in one of her “I hate Marcy” periods and didn’t want anyone saying they looked like sisters—her ‘round face sunburned and peeling, and two missing lower teeth, Kim was straddling the borderline between cute and homely.
Not so Marcy, so lovely that people frequently commented that she ought to model or do TV commercials. Summer sun had lightened the blond hair that tumbled onto the ten-year-old’s shoulders. Her oval face was delicately featured and her lip line was finely sculptured so that her mouth didn’t have the poutiness common to many children. In green, white-trimmed jogging shorts and a sleeveless yellow top, Marcy radiated the graceful, yet unmannered poise of a ballerina born to the dance.
In the foyer, Michael braced himself for the children’s rush. Squatting, his arms encircling the girls, he kissed them and then, with a grin said, “Don’t get the idea we missed you brats. It was so nice and quiet around here, Mom and I were thinking of leaving you at camp for the next ten years.”
“Oh, Daddy,” Marcy whimpered, clinging to his neck.
Oh, Daddy! Michael thought. Marcy was a beautiful mouse who usually responded to his teasing with a helpless “Oh, Daddy”—unless she failed to realize he was
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