Amulet of Doom Read online

  He walked away too quickly for Alicia to think of a comeback to his short joke. Marilyn watched him go, a dreamy expression on her face.

  “I don’t know what you see in that jerk,” growled Alicia.

  Marilyn laughed. “He’s adorable!”

  “So are teddy bears … and they keep their mouths shut!”

  Supper was a disaster. Instead of being fascinating and witty, Zenobia was cranky and out of sorts. Marilyn had never seen her aunt this way before, and she wondered if she was ill.

  Kyle, sitting next to Zenobia, tried desperately to draw her into telling a story until finally she snapped at him. He withdrew like a whipped puppy for the rest of the meal, and Marilyn wanted nothing so much as to reach out and cuddle him and make him feel better.

  As soon as they could politely manage it, Kyle and Geoff excused themselves and went off to shoot baskets, leaving Marilyn alone with Zenobia and her parents. After a while Marilyn headed for her room, preferring isolation to the tension that hung over the living room.

  She sat on her bed, staring at the amulet, which she had taken from her dresser drawer. It had occupied her thoughts all day anyway. The funny thing was, now that she could really examine it, she didn’t know what she was looking for.

  Brick sprawled on her lap, purring loudly. Every once in a while he would bat lazily at the amulet, making it twist on the end of the golden chain. The first time he struck at it, Marilyn feared he would get a shock, as she had the night before. When he didn’t seem to feel anything, she gathered her courage and touched the jewel again. She was almost disappointed to find that it felt completely normal.

  She heard voices downstairs and wondered what was going on. In her usual imaginative fashion she pictured a dreadful fight between Zenobia and her parents. The talking stopped. She was still trying to imagine her aunt’s triumphant final remark—her imagination was wild, but not wild enough to conceive of her parents winning an encounter with Zenobia—when someone tapped on her door.

  Brick sprang up and bounded off her lap.

  “Idiot,” said Marilyn fondly. Then she called, “Come in!”

  It was Zenobia. When she saw the amulet in Marilyn’s fingers, she smiled in relief.

  “I just wanted to make sure nothing had happened to it,” she said. Crossing to the bed, she sat down and took the amulet from Marilyn, letting it dangle from her fingers. The soft burnish of the gold chain gleamed dully in the lamplight. The red jewel winked and sparkled. “Pretty, isn’t it?” she whispered.

  Marilyn reached for the amulet, and Zenobia dropped it into her hand. She held it up, letting it dangle between them like an unanswered question. “It’s beautiful,” she agreed. “But it makes me nervous.”

  Zenobia raised an eyebrow.

  “It’s that stone in the center,” said Marilyn, feeling silly. “It’s almost like an eye.” She shrugged. “I’m being foolish, I suppose.”

  “Not really,” said Zenobia.

  Marilyn started to tell her aunt about the amulet shocking her the night before, but couldn’t bring herself to say the words. It just seemed too ridiculous. In fact, she was beginning to wonder if she had imagined it.

  “Why do you want me to keep it, anyway?” she asked. “What could possibly happen to it here in Kennituck Falls?”

  Zenobia pushed at Marilyn’s hand. “It’s just safer with you right now, that’s all.” She turned to the corner where Brick was lurking and made a little noise with her tongue.

  Marilyn was astonished to see the cat, who usually hated strangers, come bounding over to her.

  “Cats are very important,” said Zenobia, scratching Brick behind his ears. “Take good care of him.”

  “I do. But you didn’t really answer my question.”

  Zenobia sighed. “You make me feel like a hypocrite.”

  Marilyn blinked in surprise.

  “Listen,” said the old woman. “I’ve never been one to believe that ignorance is bliss. And I’m certainly the last who can advise against curiosity. But in this case—well, I think the less you know the better.”

  “Thanks a lot!”

  Zenobia laughed. “You’re too much like me for your own good. I’ll tell you what. Once I solve this mess, I’ll tell you the whole story. Will that be a fair trade for my silence now?”

  “I guess so,” said Marilyn reluctantly.

  “Good. Now, why don’t you put the thing away. You look like you could use a decent night’s sleep.”

  She rose from the bed and left the room as quickly as she had entered.

  Brick yowled as Zenobia closed the door behind her, sounding as though he had just lost his best friend.

  Marilyn sighed and tucked the amulet under her pillow.

  A few minutes later she was asleep.

  * * *

  The dream started innocently enough. She and Kyle were bicycling down a country lane, with a picnic lunch stowed in their backpacks.

  She was wearing the amulet around her neck.

  They found a beautiful tree-shaded spot beside a little stream and settled down to have lunch. The day was warm and sunny, the air sweet and clean. But suddenly everything went dark.

  “Give me the amulet!” said a hoarse voice.

  “I can’t!” Marilyn cried. “It’s not mine. It belongs to my aunt!”

  “No, it doesn’t,” said the voice. “It belongs to me.”

  The sun had disappeared completely. The air was cold and smelled of something terrible and unclean. She leaned against Kyle, but he felt funny. She turned to look at him, and his face began to change, change into something horrible.

  “The amulet!” he said, and his voice was the same voice that had come out of nowhere a moment earlier. “Give me the amulet!”

  “No!’ she screamed. “I can’t!”

  She tried to draw away from him, but his arms were tight about her, hot and scaly and smelling of death. She beat at his chest and her hands sank right into it.

  They burned.

  “The amulet,” he said again. His eyes were pits of fire now, his nose an upturned horror with ragged nostrils in the middle of his scaly face. He opened his mouth and a forked tongue flickered between yellow fangs. “Give me the amulet!”

  When she refused, he lowered his head toward her neck. She could feel hot breath, and the drip of burn ing saliva.…

  Marilyn sat up, her body covered with a cold sweat. Brick stood hissing at the end of the bed, back arched and fur raised as though he had just spotted a dog.

  Marilyn fought back tears. “It was only a dream,” she whispered. “Only a dream.”

  Then, prompted by a suspicion she couldn’t explain, she thrust her hand under the pillow.

  The amulet was gone.

  4

  THE TOUCH OF DEATH

  Marilyn sat in the small pool of light cast by her bed lamp, body rigid with fright.

  Zenobia, she thought, when the fear released its grip on her brain enough for her to think at all. I’ve got to get Aunt Zenobia.

  Yet for a moment she was unable to climb out of bed. The nightmare was too fresh in her memory, the fear too strong. The bed itself seemed like the only island of safety in a dark world of hidden horrors.

  Brick jumped to the floor. The thump of his landing sent her heart leaping into her throat, and she let out a gasp of fear. The cat looked up at her. She could have sworn he was afraid, too. She cursed herself for being overimaginative.

  Overimaginative or not, the amulet was gone. She had been trusted with it, and now it was missing.

  Taking a deep breath, she climbed out of her bed. But when she reached the door, she stopped. Before she went to get Zenobia, she should make sure the thing was really missing. She’d look like a real jerk rousing her aunt and then finding that the amulet had only slipped to the floor while she was sleeping.

  She shook herself and smiled. Of course that was what had happened! The amulet was still under her pillow, just in a slightly different place. That nightmar
e must have really rattled her brains, for her to panic this way.

  Though it was a wonderful solution, unfortunately it turned out to be wrong. When Marilyn returned to her bed and pulled aside her pillow, she found nothing but an expanse of white linen.

  Frantic again, she dropped to the floor and reached under her bed, hoping perhaps the amulet had slid over the top of the mattress and landed among the dust kitties.

  As she groped in the darkness she felt something grab her hand. Her heart, already in her throat and with no place left to go, seemed to stop for a moment. Then she felt the familiar jab of a sharp little tooth and crumpled against the bed in relief.

  “Brick! Get out of there, you idiot!”

  She dragged the cat, who went limp in protest, from under the bed. Then she lifted the edge of the sheet and looked into the darkness where he had been lurking.

  The bed lamp wasn’t bright enough. She needed more light.

  Sliding open the drawer in her nightstand, she fumbled around for the little flashlight she kept there. It was a habit she had developed more than ten years ago, to help her through her occasional bouts of fear of the dark. They didn’t come often, but when they did they were overwhelming.

  Right now she was too worried about the missing amulet to be afraid. She simply needed the flashlight to see better.

  Lying flat on her stomach, she cast its beam under her bed and looked anxiously for the dull gleam of gold.

  She saw three socks and a great deal of dust, but no amulet.

  Cursing to herself, she got back to her knees. She looked at the bed. Maybe the amulet had gotten caught in the sheets, or between the top of the mattress and the headboard.

  Five minutes later the bed had been stripped to the mattress pad, and the mattress itself pulled a half foot back from the headboard.

  The amulet was nowhere to be found.

  Which left her right back where she had started. She had to get Zenobia.

  Marilyn hesitated. How could she tell her aunt she had lost the amulet?

  “But I didn’t lose it,” she protested out loud, causing Brick, who had been playing in the pile of sheets, to skittle under a chair. “I couldn’t have lost it. It was there when I went to sleep.”

  That was when she realized that the alternative was just as bad: If she hadn’t lost it, someone must have taken it. Someone had come into her room while she slept, reached under her pillow, and stolen the amulet.

  She shivered, thinking of what else the unknown thief could have done.

  But who was it? Who besides Zenobia even knew she had the thing?

  She had to get her aunt.

  Marilyn took a moment to brace herself. She was not looking forward to breaking the news to Zenobia. Finally she took a deep breath and headed into the hallway. She had her flashlight in one hand, and Brick tucked under her arm. She was taking the cat along for comfort. She would have preferred to have taken him for protection, but she was well aware he would be useless in any kind of emergency.

  The floor was cold. She wished she had thought to put on slippers.

  The silence seemed to beat at her. It was the silence of an old house, filled with memories, filled with the days and nights of the people who had lived here, a silence that was not quite silence, and not quite safe. At least, that was how it seemed to Marilyn in her overwrought condition.

  She reached Zenobia’s door and knocked softly, then waited, shifting nervously from one foot to the other.

  No answer.

  She knocked again.

  Still no answer.

  “Aunt Zenobia?”

  She knocked a third time, more loudly still, then dropped Brick to the floor and gently turned the knob.

  The cat let out a bloodcurdling yowl and disappeared down the hallway. Marilyn jumped, almost dropping the flashlight, and cursed under her breath.

  “Aunt Zenobia!” she hissed. “It’s me—Marilyn. I have to talk to you.”

  Still no answer. She pushed the door open a little farther and shone her light into the room. The feeble beam fell on something that gleamed a dull yellow—a golden chain. Shifting the flashlight just slightly, she felt relief surge through her. The amulet was dangling from Zenobia’s fingers, its great central jewel sparkling in the beam of the flashlight. Zenobia must have come into her room while she slept and retrieved the thing.

  But why?

  “Aunt Zenobia?”

  She stepped into the room, overcome with curiosity. Her aunt had been willing to wake her the night before. Surely she would not complain if Marilyn did the same thing now.

  “Aunt Zenobia!” she said more loudly. At the same time she moved the beam of her flashlight up the bed.

  It clattered to the floor, and she clasped her hands over her mouth as a wave of cold horror flooded her body. She felt herself sway. Afraid she was going to faint, she dropped to her knees and leaned forward, resting her forehead against the floor.

  For a long time she could not force herself to move.

  That Zenobia was dead there was no question. But Marilyn had seen dead people before. The sight, while unpleasant, was not enough to drive her to her knees.

  Part of what was hitting her so hard right now was shock, of course. But beyond that, and far more appalling than death itself, was the rictus of fear that had contorted Zenobia’s face in her last moments. It was her open, staring eyes and what could only be a scream of horror frozen on her face that made Marilyn’s insides churn.

  How long she stayed that way, her body quaking, her head pressed against the floor, she could not have said.

  What finally forced her to move was the tiniest bit of doubt. What if her aunt was not dead? What if she had had a heart attack and was still alive, just barely, needing help, needing someone …

  Marilyn forced herself to raise her head from the floor. Zenobia’s arm, dangling over the edge of the bed, the golden chain of the amulet tangled in her fingers, was close enough to touch.

  Slowly she reached forward.

  The flesh of the wrist was still warm.

  But there was not the slightest sign of a pulse.

  Marilyn was silent for a moment, grief engulfing her. She couldn’t bear to look at her aunt. But the image of that contorted face, glimpsed during one brief instant of horror, still burned in her mind.

  She leaned her face against Zenobia’s hand and wept.

  Her tears fell on the amulet. When they touched it, a rough voice, seeming to come from nowhere, growled, “Give that amulet to me!”

  Then, even more terrifying, Marilyn felt her aunt’s fingers tighten around the mysterious ornament. At the same time she sensed power in the room, a crackle that was almost electric.

  As suddenly as it had come, it vanished. For a moment Zenobia’s hand, soft and smelling of spice, rested itself against her cheek.

  And then Zenobia’s voice, kind and calm, spoke in her mind: Be brave, Marilyn. Be brave, because I am going to need your help.

  The joy Marilyn felt at hearing her aunt’s voice vanished with her next words, for even after death Zenobia’s voice quivered with horror when she spoke them.

  Be careful, Marilyn. Be careful … and beware of Guptas!

  The hand went limp. Zenobia’s presence vanished.

  As if a spell had been broken, Marilyn’s voice returned, and she began to scream.

  5

  A LETTER FROM ZENOBIA

  Marilyn sat in the kitchen, drinking a cup of hot chocolate. She had a dark blue blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Her mother stood behind her, rubbing her neck.

  Upstairs they could hear the men from the ambulance service poking around in Zenobia’s room.

  “Why were you in there, anyway?” asked Mrs. Sparks softly.

  Marilyn sighed. She had already answered the question twice. Wearily she told about the missing amulet for the third time. “I was worried about it, because I figured it was very valuable. And I thought Aunt Zenobia might still be awake. Sometimes she writes …”
she stopped, corrected herself. “She used to write in the middle of the night, sometimes.”

  “I know,” said Mrs. Sparks. Her voice carried the old note of disapproval. “She used to keep me awake.”

  Let it rest! thought Marilyn. The woman is dead. Can’t you finally stop resenting her?

  Her father appeared at the doorway. “Well, they’re gone,” he said. He walked to the table and dropped heavily into one of the creaky chairs.

  Geoff came in after him, looking glum. He had not been nearly as fond of Zenobia as Marilyn was. Even so, her death had struck him deeply.

  “What happens now?” asked Marilyn. Her voice had a tiny quaver in it.

  “They’ll take her to Flannigan’s,” said Mr. Sparks wearily, as if he knew the routine all too well. “She’ll be embalmed. Tomorrow we’ll go and pick out a coffin. There’ll be viewing hours. Relatives we haven’t seen in years will show up, expecting to be fed and sheltered.”

  “Don’t be cynical, Harvey,” said Mrs. Sparks. “There’ll be plenty of people bringing food.”

  “Don’t forget the reporters,” said Geoff.

  Mrs. Sparks looked startled. “What?”

  “Reporters,” repeated Geoff. “Aunt Zenobia was famous. Plus she had that new book coming out next month. Her publisher was pushing it as her best ever. This is going to be big news.”

  “Oh, God,” moaned his mother. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Will they be able to fix her face?” asked Marilyn suddenly.

  “What?”

  “Her face,” she repeated impatiently. “It looked awful. Will they be able to fix it?”

  Mr. Sparks actually chuckled. “Of course they will, sweetheart. It’s not that unusual to have facial contortions with a heart attack. They’ll just—”

  “I don’t want to know how!” said Marilyn vehemently. “I just wanted to make sure they could do it. Aunt Zenobia was beautiful and people should remember her that way.”

  They sat for another hour, talking quietly in the way that people do when the presence of death has been brought to their minds. The night was still dark when they made their way back to their separate rooms, their separate fears.