Legacy Of Terror

offer her.
    Jerry continued the argument for the existence of a ghost. “Then, it was about a year after the murders that we began to hear the wailing of a child, late at night. It carried through the house, into most every room.”
    “Gordon and Dennis were children then.”
    “This wasn't like that,” Bess said. “It was an eerie wailing, not like a baby wanting water or comfort. It was one of the dead children calling out to us, is what it was.”
    A little fresh air. Yes, that would be all she needed.
    And some light, of course.
    “And then the cards,” Jerry said. “The cards told us that the ghost would come back some day.”
    “Cards?” Elaine asked. She hoped that, by hurrying them along, she would be able to leave sooner.
    “Jerry and I went to a reader in Pittsburgh,” Bess said. “Janey Moses was her name. You heard of her?”
    “No.”
    Jerry said, “She was one of the most famous readers in the East, and maybe the most famous. Her mother and father were gypsies. Her mother was an Albanian, and her father was Polish. Her mother's mother was a white witch who cured ailments to earn a living after her husband died. And her brother Leroy was the seventh son of a seventh son-and he died in Janey's arms.”
    Bess wanted to tell some of it. She twisted in her chair and said, “Janey Moses was only part of her name, the easiest part to say. She laid out the cards and read them to us, and she said that the knife hadn't been hidden at all. She said that the ghost of Amelia Matherly, when it rose from her dead body, had carried the knife away. And she said that was a sure omen that the ghost meant to return some day. And she was right. It has returned.”
    “After all these years,” Jerry agreed.
    Some light, away from these shadows…
    A little air…
    That was all she needed.
    “Excuse me,” she said. “I really ought to check in on Jacob and see how he's doing. It's really past time for that.”
    The time had not passed, really, but the excuse worked well enough. A moment later, she was hurriedly descending the stairs to the lawn. She rushed back toward the kitchen door of the main house.
    She stopped on the threshold, however, suddenly aware that the house was no better a place than the darkened living room of the old couple's apartment.
    Bobo lay dead in that kitchen.
    And, somewhere in the great house, the knife which Amelia Matherly had used on the children lay hidden where her bloodied fingers had placed it just before her death…
    Elaine turned away and hurried out into the sunshine that spilled across the well-tended lawn. She was not certain where she was going, but she knew she had to be alone for a while, to think this thing out.

Chapter 13
    Elaine found a large, tabletop formation of limestone at the edge of the largest copse of pine trees on the Matherly property, and she sat there in the full light of the morning sun, letting the heat bake some of the confusion and fear out of her. Only when she felt relaxed and in control of herself again did she begin to consider what she had been through, what it all meant, and what she might be forced to go through before this nightmare was all over.
    She could not quit and leave without notice, though the notion had occurred to her. She simply could not afford that extravagance. When she had come to the Matherly house a few days ago, all she owned in this world had been packed into the Volkswagen: her clothes and a very few mementos of her childhood and the years she had spent at the University Hospital. Her wallet contained only seventy dollars; she had no bank account and no hidden funds. Even the car, five years old now, was not worth a great deal. Lee Matherly's kind advance of money against her salary had been more than welcome and made her feel secure as she had never been in her life. If she quit without notice, she would, in all good conscience, have to return the check he had given her. Then she would be without a job-and, worse, without a good reference to obtain another job. She would not even have enough to rent a room for more than a month or so, while she tried to find a job, and she would probably have to take a position waiting tables or some such, while her training as a nurse went to waste. No, she could not quit; she would almost rather die than accept the insecurity of unemployment.
    But there were other considerations besides finances. For one thing, it was against her professional code to leave a patient untended. Certainly, with the salary they