The Dark: A Collection (Point Horror) Read Free Page A

life, you
grappled with a bloody murderer and didn't run away. You are the
sole surviving witness — besides Little Katie who's much too
young to remember anything — to one of the most brutal slayings
this island has ever known."
    "You've got the
wrong person!" Bianca had felt protest surge through her body as
she had shrunk back in her bed. "I — I wasn't there. I — I
didn't see anything. I'm not brave."
    "Shock and denial
is a common reaction," Doc had announced in a supremely confident
tone from another corner of the hospital room.
    "Doc" Ernie
McCollough lived in the same subdivision Bianca did, Churchyard Oaks.
It was next to the Christ's Church Graveyard, overhung with live
oaks dripping with Spanish moss. He lived on the other side of the
street, the richer side, beside the Shipleys.
    He'd been the
senior class valedictorian when he graduated two years early from
high school, at sixteen. He had been one of the most brilliant
students ever, with perfect SAT scores and a National Merit Finalist
ranking. He'd had a complete academic scholarship to attend
Northern Florida University in Jacksonville, from which he had
graduated in only three years at age nineteen.
    Though his father was
a history professor and his mother was descended from one of the
island's oldest families, though no one in his family had gone into
the profession before, Doc had decided to attend medical school. He
had been in his third year that day, assigned to her ward at
Brunswick Memorial Hospital. He'd taken an interest in Bianca's
case from the beginning.
    "Your brain denies
something too horrible to remember. It's a way of protecting
yourself," Doc had explained to Bianca.
    He was a short guy,
not much taller than Bianca. He looked younger than his age,
twenty-two. He had a big presence with those thick, horn-rimmed
glasses. His dark brown hair was cut straight around his head as if a
bowl had been placed over it.
    "We can prove you
were there, Miss Winters," the police chief had asserted. "We've
got tissue, hair, fingerprint and fiber evidence of you all over the
house. We could write the script and say first you did this and then
you did that. We can number the locations where you were in the
house, from the time you were watching the TV to the time you went up
the stairs, grabbed Little Katie from her crib, met the murderer on
the stairs, stumbled over Mrs. Ingersoll's body, and ran screaming
down the street."
    Bianca had gaped at
the police in wonderment.
    "What we can't
write into the script is the identity of the killer. He was clever
enough not to leave any hair or fiber evidence. He must have been
wearing gloves. There were no fingerprints. We have no way of tracing
him unless you can remember him — what he was wearing, what he
looked like, his voice. Something!"
    "Honey," her
mother had gripped Bianca's hand as if her life had depended upon
it, and asked again, "can't you remember anything!"
    "I tell you it
wasn't me. It wasn't!" Bianca hadn't wanted to be a hero.
    "It's no use
trying to force Bianca." Doc had paced about the room as he
lectured them. "She'll remember in her own good time, or she
won't remember at all. The sole witness to a murder often takes the
identity of the killer to the grave. Or she might remember in fifty
years. She may put on a dress someday. Voila! The killer was wearing
clothing of the same color. Or she'll be stirring a stew ten years
from now. She'll suddenly see the killer's face in the stew. The
aroma of the stew will remind her that it's the same thing that she
was cooking on the night of the murder. The human brain's a strange
thing. We have to respect it and play by its rules. It won't play
by ours."
    "We'll have to
ask the grown-ups then," the police chief had said. "What exactly
do any of you remember?"
    "Mr. and Mrs.
Shipley were driving up the street coming back from a dinner dance at
the Cloister Hotel last night. They said they heard somebody
screaming, racing down the road toward them,"