Hear the Children Cry

By Ruby Jean Jensen

Ginger truly loved Robert, but how could she commit to marriage? You see, she had never resolved her feelings for Ross, the man that her own spoiled sister Bonnie had snatched away from her. Despite her heartbreak, Ginger had felt obliged to return home when her mother lay on her death bed. But after the funeral she vowed never to return. Six long years later she received Ross’s letter begging her to return. Robert argued to no avail against her impulsive decision to drop everything and return. Upon arriving back at her childhood Idaho home, Ginger was immediately alarmed at the deteriorated condition of both her sister and the farm. She also slowly became aware of inconsistencies in the stories of how Bonnie’s three daughters had died, especially the twin’s drowning. Was there a more sinister explanation? If there was a murderer on the loose, was anyone safe? She reluctantly became immersed in the ongoing crisis at the farm. She had little time to think about Robert, and felt that her own life was indefinitely on hold. How would she ever find her way back to the safe, secure, relationship with Robert?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ruby Jean Jensen
• Release date: Apr 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781951580001

Ruby Jean Jensen

Ruby Jean Jensen (1927 – 2010) authored more than 30 novels and over 200 short stories. Her passion for writing developed at an early age, and she worked for many years to develop her writing skills. After having many short stories published, in 1974 the novel The House that Samael Built was accepted for publication. She then quickly established herself as a professional author, with representation by a Literary Agent from New York. She subsequently sold 29 more novels to several New York publishing houses. After four Gothic Romance, three Occult and then three Horror novels, MaMa was published by Zebra books in 1983. With Zebra, Ruby Jean completed nineteen more novels in the Horror genre.Ruby was involved with creative writing groups for many years, and she often took the time to encourage young authors and to reply to fan mail.

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Prologue

At first the cries seemed part of her dream, her nightmare, and the darkness that smothered her, that kept her from moving so naturally toward those crying voices of her children, was part of her continuing nightmare. Then she realized she was no longer asleep. The darkness was the darkness of deep night. The warmth beside her cold and terrified body was the warmth of her sleeping husband. The cries of her babies, her two-year-old twins, were not products of her mind. They were real. They were insistent. They were calling for help in their wordless and far-away screams.

She couldn’t move. Her own terror held her paralyzed.

Her voice broke through in a whisper of sobs, drowned beneath the cries that reverberated in her mind. Ross! Ross—the twins—they have fallen into the well— How had they gotten to the well in this dark, this terrible night?

Her husband muttered in his disturbed sleep and stirred beside her. She moved stiffly and was sitting up, staring ahead into the dark room, but seeing in her mind the old deep-dug well in the back yard with the circular stone wall built protectively around the black hole, and the heavy plank lid that no child could lift. And yet the hinged lid was open, and her babies were in the well. That narrow, dark hole with the cold and stagnant water that was so deep, so deep . . .

Her husband’s hands gripped her arms. Bonnie! Don’t, Bonnie!

She turned toward him, and his face was only a formless, pale blur in the dark. Help them, Ross, my God help them!

Bonnie. His fingers pinched into the flesh of her arms as he shook her, at first gently, but then savagely and desperately. Bonnie! Wake up, it’s another dream, Bonnie, only a dream—

Can’t you hear them? she screamed as the water-strangled cries echoed through the terrifying depths of her mind, even now beginning to be choked to stillness by the enveloping black water in the Well. Can’t you do something? Ross! Get my babies! Her fingers seemed possessed of a terrible rage as they clutched at him, clawing through the thin material of his pajamas.

He pulled away from her. He moved, quickly, and in his haste knocked over the lamp on the bedside table. In the dark, on his knees beside the bed, he fumbled for and found the lamp. Under Bonnie’s screams he muttered to himself, What happened to the damned night light? Dark as hell’s dungeon in here. He turned the lamp on before he set it back on the table. When he turned to look at Bonnie she was staring at him with the wide horror-filled eyes that he could not get used to. She seemed now to be holding her breath; her screams ended with the flicking on of the light. But she was not seeing him. She was listening. Always listening to the cries only her ears heard.

He put his arms around her and drew her sleep-tousled head down upon his shoulder. Bonnie, oh Bonnie! Is it all right now? Are you all right? She was beginning to sob, quietly, hopelessly. I heard them, Ross. I heard them. And it’s too late, isn’t it?

The well is gone, Bonnie. It’s been filled in, remember?

She drew back and looked at him, staring, seeing now. But you can’t. You can’t do that! The twins, my babies, are in there. Can’t you hear them, Ross?

He said nothing. He looked at her face, the round, changed eyes, the full lower lip drooping. The soft curve of the cheek. Her responsibilities had come at too early an age, for she was more child than woman.

He left the bed and the room and went down the hall to a bathroom. He drew a glass of water and took a capsule from a hidden vial. When he returned to her he found she hadn’t moved. She still sat upright, her arms braced on each side of her. He could see by the tilt of her head that she was still listening.

She took the capsule cooperatively, and within minutes her eyelids drooped and he eased her down upon her pillow. He waited until she was asleep before he went downstairs.

In the den he sat at the desk and with pen and paper began a letter he had always known he would someday write.

Chapter One

Ginger sat looking at her reflection in the dressing room mirror, makeup finished, and deftly flipped the back of her hair into a bun and pinned it. Once her hair was in order, smooth rolls of brown-gold perfection, she stopped seeing her own image and Robert’s took over. His was a smoothly handsome face, and for two years she had been wondering how a man so attractive could be so lacking in the egotism that seemed a natural part of a handsome man.

He was gentle and sweet and seemingly guileless. Like a little boy in some ways. Maybe that was because he had been born into a family that did not really know deprivation. He had never known what it was to get out there and fight, except on the football field, and in the courtroom.

She admired him, she liked him, so why couldn’t she fall in love with him? In another year she would be thirty years old, and she did want a husband and children of her own. Why did she keep dragging her feet in this business of marriage? Sometimes she felt as though something vital within her had died, or at least had lain down for a long sleep.

The doorbell rang and she glanced at the small, jeweled clock on her table. Three? It had become a habit that Robert came on Saturday afternoons precisely at three-thirty. They would then spend three hours driving in the country or sitting in their favorite bar, talking and sipping a cocktail, to finally follow it up with dinner somewhere before they came back to her apartment for another drink and long hours alone.

The doorbell rang again and she got up, adding another cautionary pin to her hair, and went out into the hall and to the door. A small sense of worry touched her. What could have happened to nudge Robert out of his rigid schedule? The peephole, though, showed a postal delivery man. With a sense of relief she opened the door.

A registered letter for Ginger Meadway.

Yes, I’m Ginger Meadway.

She took it, signed the pad, and closed the door. Curious. Who would be sending her a registered letter? It was a plain white envelope, letter size.

Ross Sanford. And the postmark . . . Idaho.

She put her hand hard against her stomach, feeling for a moment as if she wouldn’t be able to breathe. Her heart pounded smotheringly, come alive with a vengeance after so many still years. She slowly drew a deep, long breath to still her racing heart, closed her eyes and took another breath that was less painful and less difficult. Without looking again at the envelope she lay it on the table in the hall and went back to her mirror in the dressing room.

But the image in her mind had changed from the tanned and all-American healthy image of Robert to the dark, slightly asymmetrical face of Ross Sanford. With heat rising to her throat she could feel again the pressure of those unyielding lips, and feel the strength of his long arms and square, almost bony, shoulders. Sharp and piercing too was the memory of the pain when his dark eyes had gone beyond her to the seductive little sister who had always reached out and taken whatever she wanted.

And now, six long years later, what did Ross Sanford want with her that would prompt him to send a registered letter? It must have something to do with Bonnie . . .she could be sick, or . . .

No! No, no, no! They could not call her back now. She had put them out of her life over six years ago and she would not let them live again in her heart. Never again.

She realized she was putting pins into her hair again, and threw them onto the table. She got up and left the small room that was pleasingly feminine in its gold and white decor, and went into the living room of her apartment where she could open the draperies and look out over the misty city of San Francisco.

Minutes passed slowly. She turned on the radio, then turned it off again. She looked at her watch and marveled that time could stop when it wanted to. Could one minute pass so slowly? Why, for God’s sake, couldn’t Robert come early for once!

She went to the telephone, her hand poised over it, ready to pick it up and dial Robert to hurry and come on. But then she withdrew. He would want to know why, and she didn’t want to talk about it.

She went into the hall then and from there into the tiny kitchen that tried with bright splashes of orange to make up for its lack of window light. A cup of tea . . . hot tea . . . could take some time, and put some warmth back into her body, too.

Finally, and precisely at three-thirty, the doorbell rang again. She was standing in the hallway with her white cape already draped warmly across her shoulders.

She opened the door and stepped smiling into the outside hall.

As always he put both hands on her shoulders and pushed her slightly back so that he could look at her. The surprise, small though it was, always came in the words and the variation in phrasing. Today he said, The most beautiful woman in town.

That was too much. Softly, and with tenderness, she said, Liar. Let’s go. Bonnie—it was Bonnie who was the beautiful one. But then he had never known Bonnie, had he? I’ve been waiting hours for you.

His eyebrows were lifting. Really? You mean you’re getting so you’re actually eager for me to come around? I wish I had known you were waiting for me all that time, burning with eagerness for my company. You, the untouchable, the unreachable—

Oh, you must be kidding! She laughed, for of course he was, as always. She was never sure when he wasn’t kidding. She picked lightly at his sleeve and he tucked her hand under his arm.

She felt that he was looking down at her, and after a moment, as they waited in silence for the elevator, she felt his light, brief kiss on the top of her hair.

The afternoon was not as enjoyable as usual. Although she tried to hide her increasing nervousness, she succeeded only in drinking more than usual.

What’s wrong with you this afternoon, Ginger? he asked once.

Not a thing, darling. But she saw his eyes, oddly grave and watchful. Are you trying to read my mind? she asked, keeping her voice light. Then on sudden impulse, Why don’t we go on to dinner? And then, if you don’t mind, I’d like to cut the whole evening short. I don’t think I feel so well.

That’s what I thought, he instantly replied. You’re coming down with something. Too much damp weather, maybe.

Undoubtedly. All of San Francisco seems to be having that problem.

He grinned. I was trying to be serious, Ginger.

Oh, really? Well, in that case, perhaps you’re right. A cold in the head, maybe. Or smallpox.

One cop-out was as good as another. She hugged her cape around her shoulders, glad to get out of the bar.

She was glad to get out of the restaurant too, but there was no pleasure in going back to her apartment. The moment her door closed behind them she wished they had gone on somewhere else.

I, he said as he took her cape, am going to mix you a hot toddy with lots of whiskey and spices, and then I’m leaving you to tuck yourself into bed and stay there until I call you tomorrow morning. All right?

That’s not really what I want, she admitted, but I guess it will have to do. Maybe I can read a book.

And maybe you had just better sleep instead. What’s this?

She turned to see he had picked up the letter. A registered letter, he said, and you haven’t even opened it?

Oh! Why had she left it there? It came just before you did, and I forgot it. Liar, liar, she thought, in your developed strengths has come a new weakness.

He looked at her, and she stared wide-eyed back at him.

You forgot a registered letter? Where’s your curiosity, Ginger? Who’s it from? Do you know someone in Idaho?

Yes, she finally admitted. The letter is from my brother-in-law.

Brother-in-law, he repeated thoughtfully. That means you must have a sister. I must have misunderstood you when I thought you said you had no living family.

She went into the living room. Even though she couldn’t hear his steps on the thick carpet she knew he was following her, and that he probably still held the letter.

You didn’t misunderstand, she said, sitting down and drawing her feet up. She removed her shoes, avoiding his eyes with her own. I told you I had no family. There didn’t seem any reason to change the original story.

Unfortunately for that occasion her furniture was grouped for conversation. He sat down on a matching divan across the coffee table with his elbows on his knees, and the letter held loosely between his fingers as if he had forgotten it.

Would I be intruding on your privacy, he said, if I asked why?

Oh don’t be so formal, Rob. Of course you wouldn’t, you know that.

Ginger, damn it, I’ve known you for almost two years. I’ve asked you to marry me once a week for the past six months. I thought I knew you, but now I wonder. You told me your folks are dead. All of them gone, you said. Didn’t you?

Yes. And they are.

Your sister too? he asked quietly.

I don’t know. I don’t know anything about Bonnie anymore. I haven’t heard from her in six years. I haven’t tried to reach her. I don’t even know how he got my address unless . . . She paused, caressing her small nyloned feet unconsciously.

Go on, I’m listening.

Unless it was the Christmas cards I used to exchange with an old friend. But I had even stopped that when I decided to put the past—all of it—entirely behind me. She paused, adding, Of course, I did send another one last Christmas. I’d forgotten that. It was just an impulse thing. I had extra cards— She was making excuses, but to whom? Robert, or herself?

In a voice warm with sympathy, he asked, Now why would you want to put your past entirely behind you? I always felt that you had been terribly hurt once upon a time. Was that why?

At the time I was, but it no longer bothers me.

What no longer bothers you?

That my baby sister—that my fiancé jilted me for my younger sister.

It was hard to say. Even now it was painful to put into words. In the silence her heart beat hard in her breast, so that it seemed she could hear its protest: Why bring it up? Why bring it up!

So, he said as if the devils in his own mind had been put to rest and all was clear now. That’s the reason you would never marry me.

Aloud she protested, No. No, why should that . . .

You said you loved me, but. Always but what? Why didn’t you just say you still loved— He paused to look again at the letter. —still loved Ross Sanford.

But I don’t.

You don’t love him anymore. You couldn’t care less about him. So that’s why you won’t open his letter. Because you don’t care for him.

She leaned forward and snatched the envelope out of his hand. Oh, give it here, and I’ll prove to you that it doesn’t bother me to read whatever he has to say. But she couldn’t stop the trembling that began in her fingers. She ripped the letter out and held it tightly, her hands steadied against her knees.

She remembered the handwriting, the large and elaborate scrolls that seemed to have no purpose but were always a part of anything he wrote. And it came out at her like a ghost from the past that was, after all, still there?

---

Dear Ginger,

I don’t know what to say except, simply, come home.

We need you. Bonnie needs you, I need you. I need you desperately. I have a decision to make, and I don‘t know how to make it without you, as it concerns Bonnie. There is no one else on this earth I can turn to at this point. Ginger, come home. My love,

---

Ross.

---

Ginger dropped the letter on the coffee table as if it were flaming in her fingers. And then she sat staring at it. She had forgotten Robert until his voice broke into her unformed thoughts.

Can you tell me what it is? Or am I prying too much when I ask?

Ginger stood up and went to the wide windows and drew the draperies aside. She looked down at the lights that blurred through the mist.

Read it if you want to.

She waited for his opinion. When it came, it only pushed her further into confusion.

Does he sound desperate, or does he always sound that way when he wants something?

He sounds desperate.

Do you have any idea what he wants?

No. She turned, her decision suddenly and impulsively made. But I have to go, Robert.

But why? You said you wanted to—put them behind you, something like that.

It is behind me. But my sister may be sick, and I have to go, you know that. I can put her out of my life only so long as she doesn’t need me. I was six years old when she was born, and I worshipped that baby. I didn’t see that she was spoiled, and was growing into a selfish and demanding little girl who wanted whatever I had. I gave to her, willingly and with great pleasure. When you love someone, you do.

Even your fiancé.

Well . . . in that case what could I do? It was his choice also.

The man was crazy.

You don’t know Bonnie.

No, but I know you. Don’t go, Ginger. No good will come of this if you do.

I have to, Robert. He wouldn’t ask if it weren’t urgent. I have to go.

He didn’t answer her, and she turned away from the hurt in his eyes and pulled the curtains again. Walking briskly, she rounded the sofa and went toward her bedroom door. Her actions were deliberately impulsive because she knew if she stopped to think it over she would reconsider and not go at all. They had pushed her out once, with no thought of her feelings, so why call her back now?

His voice came from the doorway as she pulled underwear out of a drawer and threw it onto her bed.

Not tonight, he said. You can’t think of going tonight. What about how you were feeling? Remember yourself, Ginger. Remember me. Are you just dumping me?

Oh, Robot! Don’t pull the little boy stuff on me.

Sorry, he said after a long moment in which she realized she had hurt his feelings again. As one is hurt, so will one hurt another, it seemed. But the urgency was building up in her and she hadn’t the time to stop and ask his forgiveness. And perhaps, in the long run, it would be better if he forgot her. For he had been right . . . Ross was still there, capable of pulling her from wherever she ran to.

I’ll be back, Robert, she said softly, knowing she might not. She brought the empty pieces of luggage from her closet.

When? his voice sounded dull with acceptance, and far away, as if he had read ho thoughts.

She covered her face for a brief moment with her hands, feeling a strange loneliness. I don’t know. I just don’t know, Robert.

Let me go with you.

I can’t do that. Something is wrong there, they wouldn’t appreciate a guest at this time.

She hurried on with the packing, throwing in the kind of clothes she would be most likely to wear on an Idaho ranch. She saw him come to stand at the foot of her bed.

I’m asking you again not to go, Ginger, please. Would you think me silly if I said I’m afraid for you to go?

No, she said, but there’s no practical reason for you to worry about me. I’ll be all right. Still, she felt a coldness move over her arms. She shivered, and he noticed.

See! You’re getting a cold, or flu, or something. You’ll be sick, Ginger. You said earlier you weren’t feeling well. Don’t go tonight. Call them tomorrow. Call them tonight, if you wish.

There’s no phone at the ranch. And about earlier this evening, Rob—don’t you know why I said I wasn’t feeling well? The letter came before I left, you know.

Then what about your job?

I have sick leave coming, plus a vacation. I’ll send them a message tomorrow and tell them my family needs me at this time. No problem there.

His sigh was deep and filled with resignment again. That’s what I was afraid of. I believe I’m seeing another side of the girl I love.

She gave him a quick smile. You’ll probably be deciding I’m not the girl you thought I was and be glad I left so suddenly.

Is that what you’re hoping? he asked seriously.

There you go with the little boy pleading in your voice again. But she had to stand on her toes to kiss his unrelenting chin. I do love you, little boy, big boy, all the things you are. And I’ll write to you, okay?

He relented, and for a long moment she relaxed in the protection of his arms, but then the other face burrowed into her mind’s eye, bringing with it the call for help, and she pulled away.

Now just think what I’d have to do if you weren’t here, she said, trying to keep her voice cheerful. I’d have to struggle with those three heavy pieces of luggage down to the car all by myself.

True, he said, and loaded up. He looked her down and up with a half-critical, half-admiring eye. Are you going in that?

She looked down at her after-dinner dress and shrugged. Why not? Who knows, I might want to go to an old tavern for a beer somewhere on the way.

Well, if you do, cover the dress with a pair of pants and a baggy shirt, please, so the guys will think you’re just another guy.

Do you think that would do it?

For answer he just looked at her, a sliding glance that made her know if she intended to start tonight she had better get out of the apartment. She got her wrap off the hall table and put it around her shoulders and unlocked the door.

Later she would think of the many things she should have done before leaving her apartment, before leaving town, but for now she didn’t dare stop to think.

The last she saw of Robert was a silhouette against the background of the garage as she pulled out and drove into the street. After that she didn’t look back. Not once did she look back, even in thought. She wound through streets crowded with traffic and pulled up, finally, onto a freeway and headed north. The snow would still be in the mountains, probably, but with spring newly arrived the roads would have been cleared and easy to drive.

She drove throughout the night, stopping often to relieve the tension of night driving with cups of hot coffee. In the late afternoon she became, at long last, too sleepy to drive, and stopped at a motel. She set the alarm for four a.m. and was on her way again by four-thirty.

She smelled the pungent sweetness of the sage brush before she saw it, and it brought back memories of a childhood that had not been unhappy. She drove more and more slowly as time slipped back in her mind. Bonnie’s daddy hadn’t really been her own, but she couldn’t remember her own father, and had hardly known the difference. Only when he died and his will left his large ranch to his wife and his only daughter, Bonnie, did Ginger realize that he had given