Chapter Twenty One
Andrea woke up in her tiny bedroom as the power blinked off again and the noise of the heating fan whirred to a stop. The howling of the wind and the hiss of the blowing snow came through the thin walls of the economy apartment she lived in with her mother. Not again! I need to get some sleep! That is, if I can even get to work in the morning. This snow is just not stopping for anything, and what little news we get when the cable is working isn't good for the sun to come out anytime soon.
She burrowed back under her covers. I wonder how Jane and Daria are doing with that stuff I told them? I wish I could have helped them more. Jane is cool, and Daria isn't too bad, though that sister of hers is a bit strange. The one time I ever talked to her, she was all desperate for some plastic surgery, and was practically begging people in the hallway at school to give her money for it. She even asked me for money, talking about solidarity. I still remember saying "Aren't you even a little worried that there may be a hell?" Though Stacy was never all that bad. I always wondered how she fit into that group. Somebody for the other three to boss around, I guess. I wonder if anybody will find those four? Car probably cracked up somewhere, and they got buried under a snowdrift. It's not like this is the middle of the Andes or the Himalayas, after all. If this storm ever stops, that is.
Andrea laid there, her eyes open. But it feels, I don't know, different. Almost alive. I'm not into some supernatural stuff as much as some of my friends are. But this storm, you can almost hear words in the wind, see shapes in the blowing snow.
Her last glimpse of Sandi Griffin came back to her. Those eyes of hers still creep me out. I've heard some rumors around town that she's shown up at the hospital a couple of times with bad bruises. Is she being molested or abused? You wouldn't think on of those uptown type families would have those kind of problems. Those brothers of hers are bad news, and I've almost never seen her Mom except a few times on KSBC. Sandi Griffin spending Halloween night in a graveyard? A fancy costume ball maybe, but not a graveyard by herself. What did she get herself into there?
Just like there are good people and bad people everywhere, there are good and bad spirits in the world. Just what would a hurt, confused Sandi Griffin do to get back at somebody? This is making my head hurt! Thinking of the stuck up Queen of the Fashion Club as hurt, or needing help. I guess no matter what you have, you can still be hurt. I know how it feels to lose someone close to you. We lost Dad in that car accident five years ago, and it still hurts. Mom still cries in the night every now and then about it.
The apartment building shook as another gust of wind hit it.
All this is, so, what's that word? Primal. Primitive. Nature against Man. Is Man really on top of everything? Or do we just think we are? What do we really know about this world, anyway? I've seen all kind of horror and disaster movies. I've heard about earthquakes knocking down whole cities, tidal waves doing the same thing. There are all those diseases out there, and new ones almost every day.
I remember that Y2K party I went to, and the way everybody waited breathlessly at the countdown. When nothing happened, it almost seemed a let down. I wondered why then. Did we all think something bad needed to happen? Do we think we deserve it? Do we deserve it?
Andrea laid awake the rest of the night, listening to the snow.
Daria stood there for a moment, staring at the knob on Quinn's bedroom door. It was pure white from the frost sparkling on it. An intense cold radiated from the knob and the wooden panel of the door. She stared at it in mingled fear, and a growing rage. Again! Her parents were withering from all this stress, Quinn was still missing, and now all this supernatural stuff! Daria abruptly turned, and ran into her own bedroom door which was just down the hall. Looking around her room, she spied her heavy Doc Marten boots sitting by her bed, and hurriedly slipped her feet into them, lacing them up tightly. Daria ran back out of her room, and up the short distance of the hall to her sisters bedroom door. The frost tinkled in the dim light, mocking her, daring her to pierce its secret.
Daria was normally a quiet, studious girl, who expressed herself in her writing, and an occasional witty, venomous remark. But the sheer frustration of all that had been happening, of their family bonds being ripped apart, just at a time when she had expected to be relaxing with friends and family tore at her. She braced herself on the hall wall, raised her leg, and slammed the heel of her boot into the door with a resounding crash that echoed through the quiet house. She kicked and kicked, deep racking sobs coming out of her chest, but no tears ran down her face.
Helen started awake in her king sized bed, while Jake snored next to her. A pounding came through the bedroom door which Helen had left slightly ajar, almost like somebody was trying to get in. She nudged her husbands shoulder, frowned when she got no response, then made a fist and punched him.
"OW! Son of a ... "
"Jake! Wake up! Something is making that noise! What if somebody's found Quinn and they're trying to let us know!"
Jake crawled clumsily out of bed while Helen grabbed her robe, and they hurried out of the room, only to see Daria kicking at Quinn's door with her heavy black boots.
"My God! Daria! Stop it! What do you think you're doing!" Her mother Helen said as she hurried down the hall, wrapping her gown around her, the belt dangling, shuffling in her house slippers. Her father Jake was right behind her, dressed only in his pajamas and his feet bare.
"Hey, kiddo, what's wrong? Are you having a nightmare or something? Oh my gosh! Helen, I think she's sleep walking!"
Daria stopped her kicking and spun to face her sleepy, bewildered parents.
"No, I'm not sleepwalking! It's happening again, Mom! Right now! It's in Quinn's room, just like the bathroom mirror at City Hall! We've got to get in there and find out what's happening!"
Helen's face paled.
"No, Daria, I can't face it again! Why are you doing this?"
Daria's rage turned into shock.
"Mom? You can't believe I would do something like this? Not now? This isn't a trick! Dammit, Quinn is my sister! My pretty bratty little baby sister! We might fight like cats and dogs when we're together, but I'd never really hurt her, and I sure as hell would not do something like this to anybody, not even Linda Griffin!"
Mother and daughter stared at each other for a long moment. Both women were breathing loudly. Helen stood with one hand against the wall for support, the other holding her robe closed. Her hair was still rumpled from sleep, her face pale except for the dark circles under her eyes.
Daria stood there panting, her loose night shirt billowing around her slender frame, fists clenched, her eyes wide, a look of desperate anger on her delicate features, her shoulder length auburn hair flying wildly about her head.
Her voice took on a note of pleading.
"Mom? Please help me? For Quinn's sake? I want her back as much as you do! I want her to see me graduate, and get married, and listen to her gripe about her husband, and her job, and . . . and ... !"
Daria sank to her knees, sniffling, her voice heaving with the emotion.
"I, I don't want to have to visit her, guh, grave once a year, just to bring a bunch of damn flowers, and, and . . . !"
Helen rushed forward, kneeling beside her daughter as Daria buried her face in Helen's robe, bawling like a baby. Helen wrapped her arms tightly around her oldest child, weeping herself, as Jake stood above them bewilderedly shivering in the cold hall.
Finally, Helen looked up at Quinn's door, and shouted in her best command, top dog corporate lawyer tone, "Jake! I don't care what you have to do, but I want that door open now!"
The confused man snapped to attention, shouted "Sir! Yes, sir!" in a brief flashback to his Buxton Ridge Military Academy days and dashed back up the hallway, presumably to get some tools.
"For Heaven's sake, Jake! Just knock it down!"
"Dammit, Helen, make up your mind!" he shouted back as he spun on his heels and ran back down the hall, squeezing past the two kneeling women. He yelped and jumped back when his hand touched the doorknob.
"Dad, don't touch the knob! Just hit it with your shoulder, like a football tackle!" Daria shouted.
Jake looked at Daria's white, tortured face, then set his shoulders and hit it midway up with everything he had. The door cracked and sagged. Jake braced himself, and slammed into the door again, and it broke completely. He stumbled into Quinn's room, swearing as his bare feet hit the ice cold carpeting, followed by a gasp, and then silence. Dead silence.
"Dad?" "Jake?" Daria and Helen said at the same time, staring at the black pit that was the doorway to Quinn's bedroom. The only answer was the hiss of blowing snow from outside. The hum of the house heater clicked off as the power died again and the dim glow of the lights clicked out. Mother and daughter clutched each other tightly alone in the darkness.
Quinn lay numbly on the floor where she had collapsed. The howl of the wind through the bare trees outside was almost soothing, now. The hiss of the snow outside was natural. The dim firelight flickering around the cabin highlighted different things. The wooden walls, the bare rafters. The unconscious Sandi on the other side of the barrel stove, though mercifully, her moving belly was mostly blocked.
The bitter sweet metallic taste of Tiffany's blood still coated her mouth It had tasted, good. She had licked her friends blood off a dirty, wooden floor, and she had liked it. She didn't understand what had made her do that. Her mind was so fuzzy, it was so hard to think. She was a fastidious dieter, eating cheese-less pizza, and carrot and celery sticks. Was what had happened to Sandi happening to her? Mr. DeMartino's paper on the Donner Party tragedy flared into her mind. How long had they been lost? Quinn couldn't remember any more. Sandi had bitten into Tiffany's neck. Now she had lapped up Tiffany's blood like an animal. Where was Stacy? Did she really care anymore? She was so hungry! She stared over at Tiffany's unconscious form The slender Vietnamese girl was laying on her side, her pale face toward Quinn, her eyes closed. Her dream floated back into her mind, the choice Daria had offered her. She didn't want to die! But Tiffany was her friend! Modern people didn't eat each other just to stay alive!
Did they?
The Donner Part had to do it, in the winter of 1846.
Sailors adrift in small boats as late as the 19th century had done it.
Those Uruguayan rugby players marooned in a plane crash in the Andes mountains in 1972 had to do it.
"It tastes like aged beef," one of them had been quoted as saying.
"There is always a Price."
Sandi's ghostly words came back to her.
"You a have a bright future, you know, but it could all end right now."
Daria's plea now sounded.
"All you have to do is take one small bite, just a taste, and the future is still yours," Stacy continued, offering a small bite of meat on her fork. "You still want to go to college, don't you?"
"Yes," Quinn moaned, "but not like this. I want to talk to all of you on the phone, teasing each other about our dates and grades, hearing about all the things each of us are doing. I want to fuss with Sandi about fashion, study with Stacy, even laugh with Tiffany. I don't want to murder one of my best friends!"
Quinn hadn't realized that she had been muttering her thoughts out loud until she saw Tiffany's eyes blink open, gazing directly into her own. The two girls stared at each other for a long minute. Tiffany finally sighed, and closed her eyes again with a faint smile on her face, perfectly trusting in Quinn to watch over her. Quinn stared at her, slow tears leaking out of her eyes and running down to the rough wooden floor.
She trusts me. Tiffany isn't the smartest person alive, but she trusts me. She trusts me with her life. She doesn't know what I've done, what I've been thinking about. That there is nothing so much on earth I want to do now, but lick her blood off her skin. And maybe, just maybe, take a little ... bite? And if I ever even started to do that, I might not stop? God help me, please, oh God help me ...
A vague errant image of Tad and Tricia Gupty drifted into her mind's eye. Quiet, cute, respectable kids she had enjoyed babysitting. They were holding hands, dancing around, singing a nursery rhyme:
Crazy Lady, Cannibal Quinn!
Don't ever let her catch you!
Crazy Lady, Cannibal Quinn!
She'll eat you if she gets you!
Was that going to be her epitaph? The monster in a children's rhyme? Locked up in a straitjacket, with a gag in her mouth, so she wouldn't bite her keepers, howling at the ceiling of a padded room, like the one she had always teased Daria about living in? Would Sandi be in the next room screaming back at her? While Stacy haunted the night winds forever alone in the snow? And would be rescuers gathered up Tiffany's scattered, gnawed bones for a decent burial?
Bones she and Sandi had gnawed? Why was all this happening? What was making it happen?
Quinn weakly held her hand up between her eyes and the flickering firelight, saw the thin glow through her flesh outlined around the core of her bones. Flesh and bones, a little bit of flesh, that's all she was. Once you took away the flesh, just dry, bare bones, that soon crumbled, and then?
Quinn's thoughts faded away, as darkness overtook her.