Nightshade (19 page)

Pullman glanced at Joan, then at the lawyer. It was obvious that neither of them had heard this before.

“Someone else?” Pullman urged. “Someone you knew?”

Matt’s eyes darted as if he were once again seeking escape, but at last he nodded. “It was my aunt,” he said. “My aunt Cynthia.”

Pullman’s eyes narrowed. “Your aunt Cynthia,” he repeated, his brow furrowing. “Now come on, Matt, you know — ”

“I
know
she’s dead,” Matt broke in, his words suddenly coming in a rush. “That’s why I thought it was a dream! And after I saw Aunt Cynthia, Gram came out of her room, and she was calling Aunt Cynthia. Then Gram followed her downstairs!” Quickly, he recounted the rest of it: being so shocked by what he’d seen that he couldn’t move, then finally going to the head of the stairs and looking down.

Looking down, and seeing nothing.

“And that’s it?” Pullman asked when Matt was finished. “You didn’t see anything, so you just went back to bed? You didn’t even go downstairs to check on your grandmother?”

A look of panic came into Matt’s eyes. “I didn’t know what to do — I thought — oh, God, I don’t know what I thought.” His eyes shifted from Pullman to his mother. “I thought it was a dream, Mom.”

Joan slipped a protective arm around her son. “It’s all right,” she said. “We’re going to find Gram. We’re going to find her, and she’s going to be all right.” But even as she said it, Joan could see in the chief’s eyes that Pullman didn’t believe it would happen that way.

CHAPTER
13

THE AIR SPARKLED with the shimmering of a million flecks of gold, making the woods glow with a light Matt had never seen before.
Dust,
he told himself.
It’s just dust.
But it didn’t seem like dust; it seemed like magic, suffusing everything it touched with a luminescence that made his spirit soar.

He wasn’t certain where he was, or exactly how long he’d been wandering through the trees, sometimes following a trail or path, but mostly following his urges wherever they led him. He paused, partly to try to get his bearings, but even more for the sheer enjoyment of the perfect morning. He sucked in his breath, filling his lungs with the cool forest air. As he was letting it out again he saw a flicker of movement out of the corner of his left eye. His hand tightening on the rifle that was slung over his shoulder with a leather strap, he searched the forest. At first he saw nothing, but a moment later caught the movement again, and this time knew what it was right away.

A deer — a large buck — standing still, but flicking its ears in search of any lurking danger.

It was no more than fifty yards away, perhaps less.

Feeling a twinge of excitement at the sight, Matt froze too. A rush of adrenaline heated his blood as his senses peaked in synchronization with the stag’s. A faint breeze on his face told him he was downwind of the animal, and as he took a step forward, his tread was so light that there was no crackling underfoot.

He took a second step, then a third.

The buck was staring straight at him, its head high, its ears still flicking. It waited until Matt was within twenty yards, then slowly — almost languidly — turned away and moved silently through the trees. When it had once more placed itself some fifty yards from Matt, it stopped again, and turned back to look.

Almost as if it were expecting him to follow.

As if it
wanted
him to follow.

Matt moved forward again, and again the deer waited until he was only fifteen or twenty yards away before retreating. The cat and mouse game continued, the buck leading him deeper and deeper into the woods. But after a while the forest took on a more familiar cast. The deer was in a thicket now, visible, but indistinct. Again it turned to face him, its ears still flicking as it tracked his progress, and Matt edged closer until his view was clear.

He raised his rifle, pressing its butt firmly against his right shoulder, laying his cheek on the smooth walnut of the stock as his right eye lined up with the telescopic sight.

The deer’s head appeared in the crosshairs.

Matt’s finger curled around the trigger, and he felt an almost physical surge of strength flow into him, as if the power of the gun had become a part of him.

Then, as he concentrated on the image in the scope, the deer’s head began to change. Its antlers faded away and its muzzle contracted.

Its wide-set eyes drew closer together, and as the muzzle turned into a nose, the lips also began to transform.

Now, through the scope, Matt was looking at a human face.

His stepfather’s face.

The heat in his blood drained away, and a terrible cold fell over him. He began to shiver, and tried to pull his finger away from the trigger for fear the palsied trembling that had overcome him might inadvertently fire the weapon. But his finger seemed frozen to the metal now, and when he tried to lower the gun, his arm refused to obey the demands of his mind.

The gun held steady on the face of his father.

Then he heard the voice.

“You know what you have to do, Matthew.”

A faint memory stirred deep within Matt’s consciousness. “No,” he whispered. “No . . .”

“Do it, Matthew,”
the voice whispered.
“Do it for me. . . .”

“No,” he whispered again. But even as he uttered the plea, he felt his finger tightening around the trigger.

“Do it,”
the voice whispered once more.
“Do it.”

Matt felt the gun recoil against his shoulder, but heard nothing at all.

In the sight, his father staggered.

He felt the gun recoil again.

His father spun away.

The gun recoiled a third time.

His father fell.

The light changed, the golden glow fading. As Matt walked toward the spot where his father had fallen, the cold in his body seemed to seep out into the world around him. He shivered as if fall had suddenly given way to winter. At last he came to the spot where his father had fallen.

Only the corpse of the deer lay on the ground. Blood oozed from the three wounds Matt’s bullets had caused: two in its chest, the third in the center of its head, directly between its eyes.

He gazed in horror at the body of the animal that had led him so trustingly through the forest.

Why? Why had he shot it?

Then the voice spoke again, this time from somewhere beyond the deer. “You killed him because you wanted to, Matt.”

He looked up. Standing a few feet away was the white-clad figure of a woman.

Blond hair flowed over her shoulders.

His aunt Cynthia gazed steadily at him. “You killed him because you wanted to,” she said again. Her eyes shifted from Matt to the corpse that lay at his feet, and a moment later, as if under some kind of spell, Matt too looked down.

He was staring at the body of his father.

He gasped, tore his eyes away, and once more looked at his aunt.

She spoke again, her voice soft, seductive. “You always do what you want to do, Matt. Always.” Once again her gaze shifted.

Once again, Matt looked down.

Now he was staring into the open eyes of his grandmother.

Open, and lifeless.

“No,” Matt whispered. Then he screamed it, bellowing out his denial of what his eyes — and his aunt — had told him. “NOOOOooo . . .”

It was that final scream that tore him from the nightmare. His body convulsed as he howled out the word, and a split-second later he was wide-awake. But the images of the dream hung against the black canvas of the night, as clear as if they were illuminated from within. He lay in bed, trembling from the memory, his mind still crying out the denial he’d bellowed a moment before.

It couldn’t be true. It
couldn’t
!

Could it?

But as he lay awake in the darkness the rest of the night, the images — and his aunt’s voice — stayed with him.

Taunting him . . .

Torturing him . . .

*                                     *                                     *

THE MOMENT MATT came into the kitchen that morning, Joan knew he’d slept no better than she. His face looked almost as gray as the clouds that hung in the sky, dropping a steady drizzle whose chill seemed to have come right through the walls of the house. But Joan could see that it was something more than lack of sleep that had brought the pallor to Matt’s face and the dark circles to his eyes.

Something inside him had changed.

Though he still looked like the son she’d raised, there was something in his eyes that she’d never seen before. Or, more exactly, something that she’d always seen before was suddenly gone. Where always before Matt’s eyes had been clear and bright and full of eagerness, now the life seemed to have gone out of them, and even when he faced her, his gaze didn’t quite meet her own. He’s tired, she told herself. And why wouldn’t he be? All through the long hours of the previous day, he continued to search for his grandmother, moving in ever-widening circles around the area where they’d found her slippers and the scrap of cloth from her nightgown. Only when it was too dark had he finally given up and come back to the house with her.

The house — empty now, but for the two of them. Except it hadn’t felt empty, and in the hours before they went to bed to try to sleep, both Joan and Matt found themselves moving restlessly from one room to another.

Though neither admitted it aloud, they were both feeling the same thing.

Cynthia.

She’s dead, Joan kept reminding herself. But all night, as she lay in bed trying to sleep, the feeling persisted that though neither Bill nor her mother were there anymore, she and Matt were not alone.

As the hours crept by and sleep refused to offer her its solace, she had felt something — some presence — lurking just beyond her door. Three times she had left her bed and stepped out into the corridor.

Cynthia’s room.

It was coming from Cynthia’s room.

It was as if somehow her mother had brought her sister’s spirit into the house. But though her mother had seemingly simply vanished — the searing pain of the loss of her husband was still far too great to let Joan even imagine that her mother might also be dead — Cynthia had not.

Joan could still feel her.

And so, she was certain, could Matt, for even after a night in which he should have been able to rest, he still looked —

A word popped into her mind.

Haunted.

He looked haunted.

“You didn’t see her, darling,” she said quietly. Though they hadn’t spoken of the strange experience Matt had recounted to Dan Pullman yesterday, he knew immediately what she was talking about. “You couldn’t have seen her — it’s simply not possible.” But even as she spoke, Joan wondered if the words sounded as hollow to Matt as they did to her.

Matt only nodded, sank into his chair, and looked disinterestedly at the plate of food Joan placed before him. “I — I’m not really hungry,” he finally said. “Maybe I’ll just go back to bed.”

He started to get up, and for a moment Joan was tempted to say nothing, to let him retreat back to his room. But then she heard Bill’s voice in her head, as clearly as if he’d spoken aloud:
Don’t let him.
He has to deal with what’s happened. He has to deal with it head on.

“No!” she said so sharply that Matt jumped. Joan took a deep breath and began again. “I don’t think you should go back to bed. I think you need to go to school today.”

Matt’s eyes changed again. Joan saw fear in them now, and knew the words she’d spoken so sharply to him were the right ones. If he didn’t go back to school today, it would only be harder tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that.

“I think you’ve been away from school long enough.” She went to him and put her hands on his shoulders. “The funeral was two days ago, Matt. You should have gone back to school yesterday.”

“But Gram — ” Matt began.

Joan laid a finger over his lips to stop him. “We don’t know what’s happened to your grandmother. But you looked for her all day yesterday and didn’t find her. You can’t do it again today.” She put her arms around him, hugging him close. “I know you want to look for her, darling. But sometimes we can’t do what we want to do. So today I want you to go back to school.” She felt Matt stiffen in her arms.

“Everyone thinks — ” he began, but once again she didn’t let him finish.

“What everyone thinks doesn’t matter,” she told him. “And the only way people are going to stop talking about you is if you face them and show them you’re not afraid of anything they might say, because you didn’t do anything. So this morning you’re going back to school, and face all your friends, and start living again.” She stepped back so she could look into his eyes, but her hands still gripped his shoulders. “You can’t hide here forever. Neither of us can. So I want you to go to school today. I’ll take care of everything else.”

The nightmare from last night flashed back into Matt’s mind, and he saw his father’s bleeding wounds and his grandmother’s dead eyes.

He recalled his aunt whispering to him.
“Do it . . . do what you want to do. . . .”

But even as he remembered, he knew what would happen if he went back upstairs to try to sleep.

The nightmare would come again.

And again.

Surely whatever might happen at school could be no worse than the terrors that plagued him whenever he slept.

*                                     *                                     *

MATT TURNED THE corner onto Prospect Street. The school was only half a block away, and he found himself slowing, finally coming to a dead stop just as he should have been stepping off the curb to cross the street. How many mornings had he been here before? Hundreds. And on every one of those mornings, he’d looked forward to the day — looked forward to his classes, to eating lunch in the cafeteria with his friends, to going out for football practice as soon as his last class was over. But this morning it had all changed.

Was it really possible that less than a week had passed since he’d been here? How could the facade of the main building look so different? But it did — the brick walls had taken on a foreboding cast that the white-painted shutters and trim did nothing to soften.