Second Child.

by John Saul.

CHAPTER 1.

When Polly MacIver awoke just before dawn that morning, she had not the slightest presentiment that she was about to die. As her mind swam lazily in the ebbing tide of sleep, she found herself giggling silently at the memory of the dream that had just roused her. It had been Thanksgiving Day in the dream, and the house was filled with people. Some of them were familiar to her. Tom was sprawled out on the floor, his big frame stretched in front of the fireplace as he studied a chessboard on which Teri had apparently trapped his queen. Teri herself was sitting cross-legged on the carpet, grinning impudently at her father's predicament. There were others scattered around the living room-more, indeed, than Polly would have thought the room could hold. But the dream had had a logic of its own, and it hadn't seemed to matter how many people, strange and familiar, had come in-the room seemed magically to expand for them. It was a happy occasion filled with good cheer until Polly had gone to the kitchen to inspect the dinner. There, disaster awaited her. She must have turned the oven too high, for curls of smoke were drifting up from the corners of the door. But as she bent over to open the oven door, she was not concerned, for exactly the same thing had happened too many times before. For Polly, cooking was an art she had never come close to mastering. She opened the door and, sure enough, thick smoke poured out into the kitchen, engulfing her, then rolling on through the small dining room and into the living room, where the coughing of her guests and the impatient yowl of her daughter finally jarred her awake.

The memory of the dream began to fade from her mind, and Polly stretched languidly, then rolled over to snuggle against the warmth of Tom's body. Outside, a summer storm was building, and just as she was about to drift back into sleep, a bolt of lightning slashed through the faint grayness of dawn, instantly followed by a thunderclap that jerked her fully awake. She sat straight up in bed, gasping in shock at the sharp retort.

Instantly, she was seized by a fit of coughing as smoke filled her lungs.

Her eyes widened with sudden fear. The smoke was real, not a vestige of the dream.

A split second later she heard the crackling of flames.

Throwing the covers back, Polly grabbed her husband's shoulder and shook him violently. "Tom! Tom!"

With what seemed like agonizing slowness, Tom rolled over, moaned, then reached out to her. She twisted away from him, fumbling for the lamp on her nightstand before she found the switch.

Nothing happened.

"Tom!" she screamed, her voice rising with the panic building inside her. "Wake up! The house is on fire!"

Tom came awake, instantly rising and shoving his arms into the sleeves of his bathrobe.

Polly, wearing nothing but her thin nylon negligee, ran to the door and grasped the k.n.o.b, only to jerk her hand reflexively away from its searing heat. "Teri!" she moaned, her voice breaking as she spoke her daughter's name. "Oh, G.o.d, Tom. We have to get Teri out."

But Tom was already pushing her aside. Wrapped in one of the wool blankets from the bed, he covered the bra.s.s doork.n.o.b with one of its corners before trying to turn it. Finally he pulled the door open an inch.

Smoke poured through the gap, a penetrating cloud of searing fog that reached toward them with angry fingers, clutching at them, trying to draw them into its suffocating grasp.

Buried in the formless body of smoke was the glowing soul of the fire itself. Polly instinctively shrank away from the monster that had engulfed her home, and when Tom spoke to her, his shouted words seemed to echo dimly from afar.

"I'll get Teri. Go out the window!"

Frozen with terror, Polly saw the door open wider; a split second later her husband disappeared into the maw of the beast that had invaded her home.

The door slammed shut.

Polly wanted to go after him, to follow Tom into the fire, to hold on to him as they went after her daughter. Without thinking, she moved toward the door, but then his words resounded in her mind.

"Go out the window!"

A helpless moan strangling in her throat, she dragged herself across the room to the window and pulled it open. She breathed the fresh air outside, then looked down.

Fifteen feet below her lay the concrete driveway that connected the street in front to the garage behind the house. There was no ledge, no tree, not even a drainpipe to hang on to. If she jumped, surely she would break her legs.

She shrank back from the window and turned to the door once more. She had started across the smoke-filled room when her foot touched something soft.

The bedspread, lying in a heap at the foot of the bed. She s.n.a.t.c.hed it up, wrapping it around her body, then, like Tom a few minutes earlier, used one of its corners to protect her fingers from the searing heat of the door. Drawing her breath in slowly, filtering the smoke through the thick padding of the spread, she filled her lungs with air.

At last, battling with the fear that threatened to overwhelm her, she pulled the door open.

The fire in the hall, instantly sucking in the fresh air from the open window, rose up in front of her, its crackle building into a vicious roar.

Time seemed to slow down, each second dragging itself out for an eternity.

Flames reached out to her, and Polly was helpless to pull herself away as panic clasped her in its paralyzing grip. She felt the burning heat against her face, even felt the blisters begin to form wherever her skin was exposed.

She heard a strange, soft sound, like the sizzling of oil in a hot skillet, and instinctively reached up to touch her hair.

Her hair was gone, devoured by the hungry fire, and she stared blankly for a moment at the ashy residue on her fingertips. What had been a thick ma.s.s of dark blond hair only a moment ago was now only an oddly greasy smudge on the blistered skin of her hand.

Her mind began closing down, rejecting what she saw, denying the searing heat that all but overwhelmed her.

She staggered backward, the bedspread tangling around her feet as if it had joined forces with the fire to destroy her.

Faintly, as if in the distance somewhere impossibly far beyond the confines of the house, she heard Tom's voice, calling out to Teri.

She heard vague thumpings, as if he might be pounding on a door somewhere.

Then nothing.

Nothing but the hiss and chatter of the flames, dancing before her, hypnotizing her.

Backing away, stumbling and tripping, she retreated from the fury of the fire.

She b.u.mped into something, something hard and ungiving, and though her eyes remained fixed on the inferno that was already invading the bedroom, her hand groped behind her.

And felt nothing.

Panic seized her again, for suddenly the familiar s.p.a.ce of the bedroom seemed to vanish, leaving her alone with the consuming flames.

Slowly, her mind a.s.sembling information piece by piece, she realized that she had reached the open window.

Whimpering, she sat down on the ledge and began to swing her legs through the gap between the sill and the open cas.e.m.e.nt; her right leg first, then her left.

At last she was able to turn her back on the fire. Gripping the window frame, she stared out into the faintly graying dawn for a moment, then let her gaze shift downward toward the concrete below.

She steeled herself, and clinging to the bedspread, let herself slip over the ledge.

Just as she began to drop away from the window, the corner of the bedspread still inside the room caught on something. Polly felt the pull, found herself unreasonably speculating on what might have snagged it.

The handle of the radiator?

A stray nail that had worked loose from the floor molding?

Falling! Suddenly she was upside down, slipping out of the shroud of the bedspread.

Her fingers grasped at the material; it slipped away as if coated with oil.

She dropped toward the concrete headfirst, only beginning to raise her arms to break her fall as her skull crashed against the driveway.

She felt nothing; no pain at all.

There was only a momentary sense of surprise, and a small cracking sound from within her neck as her vertebrae shattered and crushed her spinal cord.

It had been no more than three minutes since she had awakened, laughing quietly, from her dream.

Now the quiet laughter was over, and Polly MacIver was dead.

Teri MacIver stood rooted on the lawn in front of the house, her right hand clutching at the lapels of her thin terry-cloth bathrobe with all the modesty of her nearly fifteen years. Her eyes were fixed on the blaze that now engulfed the small two-story house which had been her home for the last ten years. It was an old house, built fifty years earlier, when San Fernando had still been a small farming town in the California valley of the same name. Built entirely of wood, the house had baked in the sun for half a century, its wood slowly turning into tinder, and tonight, when the fire started, it had raced through the rooms with a speed that stunned Teri. It was as if one moment the house had been whole, and the next it had been swallowed by flames.

Teri was only vaguely aware of what was going on around her. In the distance a siren wailed, growing steadily louder, but she barely heard it. Her mind was filled with the roar of the fire and the crackling of the siding as it curled back upon itself and began to fall away from the framework of the house, venting the interior to the fresh air that fed the raging flames.

Her parents...

Where were they? Had they gotten out? Forcing her eyes away from the oddly hypnotic inferno, she glanced around. Down the block, someone was running toward her, but the figure was no more than a shadow in the breaking dawn.

Voices began to penetrate her consciousness then, people shouting to each other, asking what had happened.

Then, over the roar of the fire and the babble of voices, she heard a scream. It came from the house, seemingly unm.u.f.fled by the already crumbling walls. The sharp sound released Teri from her paralysis, and she ran around to the driveway, her eyes wide as she stared up to the second floor and her parents' bedroom.

She saw her mother, a dark silhouette against the glow of the fire. She was wrapped in something-a blanket, perhaps, or the bedspread. Teri watched as her mother's legs came over the windowsill, and a second later she saw her jump...then turn in the air as the bedspread tightened around her legs.

Her mother seemed to hang for a moment, suspended in midair. A scream built in Teri's throat, only to be cut off a second later as her mother slid free from the swaddles and plunged headfirst to the driveway below.

Had she heard the sound as her mother's head struck the concrete, or did she imagine it?

Teri began running then, but as if her feet were mired in mud, it seemed to take forever before she reached the spot where her mother lay crumpled and still on the driveway, one arm flung out as if reaching out to her daughter, as if even in death she were grasping for life.

"M-Mom?" Teri stammered, her hand falling away from her robe to tentatively touch her mother. Then her voice rose to an anguished wail. "M-o-m!" "M-o-m!"

There was no response, and as Teri became aware of someone running up the sidewalk, she threw herself on Polly's body, cradling her mother's head in her lap, stroking the blistered cheek of the woman who only a few hours ago had stroked her own before kissing her good night. "No," she whimpered, her eyes flooding with tears. "Oh, no. Please, G.o.d, don't let Mommy die." But even as she uttered the words, Teri already knew somewhere deep inside her that it was too late, that her mother was already gone.

She felt gentle hands on her shoulders and slowly looked up to see Lucy Barrow, from across the street. "She's dead." Teri's voice broke as she spoke the words. The admission seemed to release a tide of emotion that had been locked inside her. Covering her face with her hands, she began to sob, her body shaking.

Lucy, her own mind all but numbed by the sight of Polly MacIver's seared and broken body, pulled Teri to her feet and began leading her back down the driveway. "Your father..." she said. "Where's your father? Did he get out?"

Teri's hands dropped away from her face. For a moment her shocked eyes flickered with puzzlement. She started to speak, but before the words emerged from her mouth there was a sharp crack, followed instantly by a crash.

Lucy Barrow grasped Teri's arm tightly, pulling her down the driveway as the roof of the house collapsed into the fire and the flames shot up into the brightening sky.

Three fire trucks clogged the street in front of the MacIvers' house, and a tangle of hoses snaked along the sidewalk to the hydrant on the corner. An ambulance had taken Polly's body away more than an hour before, but as more and more neighbors arrived to gape in dazed horror at the smoldering ruins of the house, others would point with macabre fascination to the spot where Teri's mother had plunged to her death. The newcomers would stare at the driveway for a few seconds, visualizing the corpse and imagining, with a shudder, the panic Polly must have felt as she died.

Did she know, at least, that her daughter had survived the fire?

No, of course not.

Heads shook sadly; tongues clucked with sympathy. Then the attention of the crowd shifted back to the smoking wreckage. Most of the beams still stood, and parts of the second floor had remained intact even when the roof collapsed. Now, as sunlight cast the ruins into sharp relief, the house looked like a desiccated, blackened skeleton.

Teri, who had spent the last two hours sitting mutely in the Barrows' living room, unable to pull her eyes away from the spectacle of the fire, finally emerged onto the porch. Next to her, Lucy Barrow hovered protectively, her voice trembling as she tried to convince Teri to go back inside.

"I can't," whispered Teri. "I have to find my father. He-He's-" Her voice broke off, but her eyes returned to the ruins across the street.

Lucy Barrow unconsciously bit her lip, as if to take some of Teri's pain onto herself. "He might have gotten out," she ventured, her quavering voice belying her words.

Teri said nothing, but started once more across the street, still clad in the bathrobe she'd worn when she escaped the inferno. An eerie silence fell over the block, the murmurs of the bystanders dying away as she moved steadily through the crowd, which parted silently to let her pa.s.s.

At last Teri came to the front yard of what had been her home. She stood still, staring at the charred wood of the house's framework and the blackened bricks of its still-standing chimney. She took a tentative step toward the remains of the front porch, then felt a firm hand on her arm.

"You can't go in there, miss."

Teri's breath caught, but she turned to look into the kindly gray eyes of one of the firemen. "M-My father-" she began.

"We're going in now," the fireman said. "If he's in there, we'll find him."

Without a word, Teri watched as two firefighters, clad in heavily padded overcoats, their hands protected by thick gloves, worked their way carefully into the wreckage. The front door had been chopped away, and inside, the base of the stairway was clearly visible. The men started up, testing each step before trusting it to hold their weight. After what seemed an eternity, they finally reached the second floor. They moved through the house, visible first through one window, then another. From one of the rooms an entire wall, along with most of the floor, had burned away. As the firemen gingerly moved from beam to beam, they appeared to be balanced on some kind of blackened scaffolding. At last they moved out of Teri's sight as they carefully worked their way toward her room at the back of the house.

Ten minutes later the fireman with the kind, gray eyes emerged from the front door and approached Teri, who stood waiting, her eyes fixed on him.

"I'm sorry," he said, his voice made gruff by the memory of the charred remains of Tom MacIver, which he had found in front of the still-closed door to Teri's bedroom at the back of the house. "He was trying to get you out. He didn't know you'd already gotten away." His large hand rested rea.s.suringly on Teri's shoulder for a moment, but then he turned away and began issuing the orders for Tom MacIver's body to be removed from the ruins.

Teri stood where she was for a few more seconds. Her eyes remained fixed on the house as if she were still uncertain of the truth of what she had just been told. Finally Lucy Barrow's voice penetrated her thoughts.

"We have to call someone for you," Lucy said. "We have to call your family."

Teri turned away from the smoldering rubble. She stared blankly at Lucy. For a moment Lucy wasn't certain Teri had heard her, but then Teri spoke.

"My father," she breathed. "Will someone please call my father?"

Dear Lord, Lucy thought. She doesn't understand. She hasn't grasped what happened. She slipped her arms around Teri and held her close. "Oh, darling," she whispered. "He didn't get out. That's what the fireman was telling you. I-I'm sorry," she finished, wondering at the helpless inadequacy of the words. "I'm just so sorry."

Teri was motionless in her arms for a second, then pulled away, shaking her head.

"N-Not him," she said. "We need to call my real father." She wrenched away from Lucy's protective embrace, her gaze returning to the house, where three men were already working to retrieve Tom MacIver's body. "He was my stepfather," Teri said. "He adopted me when I was only four. Now we have to call my real father."