Shelter (45 page)

    "One," he said. "They ate Patty. Now they want another one." Green-growing Gaia. I am not in this video I am not in this video I am not—Meredith forced down panic. Think. Think. He knew Patty was gone. What to say? "Honey, I'm sure the monsters didn't eat Patty. I'm sure she just got out of her cage and she's having wonderful adventures somewhere. If we get another mouse, we'll make sure she doesn't get out of her cage. We'll make sure we can keep her. But Patty—"

    "The monsters ate her," he said crossly. "I know, Mommy. I fed her to them."

    She stared at him. "You fed—"

    "How did you think she got out of the cage?" he demanded. "She didn't move the top herself She's too little." He scowled, and then said, "But you still love me, right?"

    "Of course." Meredith's head was throbbing. Stay calm. Yes, of course: that's why the top of the cage had been loose. "Nicholas, tell me how you fed Patty to the monsters." Maybe he was speaking metaphorically. Maybe he just meant that he'd let Patty go into the dark, where he thought the monsters lived. Except that the monsters lived in his head; he'd told her that much himself

    "She was going to get eaten by a snake!" he said fiercely. "The snake wouldn't pat her. It wouldn't give her a yummy apple. I was nice to Patty. I patted her. The monsters were hungry. You make friends with monsters by giving them something to eat."

    Think. Think. "Nicholas, couldn't you give the monsters an apple? Like you gave Patty?"

    "They don't like apples. They want things that wiggle."

    Back up, she thought frantically. Back up. You still don't know what, happened. You don't know what he's talking about. "Nicky, I'm confused. Will you tell me what happened? Every bit of it? From the beginning?"

    "We went to the pet store—"

    "Yes, honey, I know we went to the pet store. What happened after that?"

    "You said the beginning!"

    "I meant—I meant the beginning of what I don't know. Tell me what happened last night, Nick. Tell me why you let Patty out of her cage."

    "To feed her to the monsters."

    And around we go. Meredith closed her eyes. "Nicholas, tell me exactly what you did, okay? You lifted the top off the cage ... "

    He sighed, loudly, exasperated. "I climbed up on a stool and I took the top off the cage. And then I picked Patty up by her tail like you taught me. And then I went into the kitchen and got the knife we used to cut the apples. And then I took Patty into the bathroom and cut her up for the monsters. "

    Meredith swallowed, hard, willing herself not to be sick. How could she and Kevin not have heard anything? How could Nicholas have been so quiet? She must have been so sleep-deprived that nothing but Nicholas's screams would have woken her. Thank Gaia, Kevin hadn't woken up, either. He didn't know anything. She had to keep him from finding out. She had to—"Where's Patty now, Nicholas?"

    "On a plate under my bed. For the monsters to eat."

    "Show me."

    "If the monsters ate her, she's not there anymore, Mommy."

    Meredith closed her eyes again. She had no idea how to handle this. None. She didn't know what to do, and there was no one she could ask, because children were being brainwiped. She should have kept Nicholas on the meds. If she'd kept him on the meds, maybe this wouldn't have happened. But he hadn't been himself on the meds: he'd been a zombie.

    And he'd be a zombie if he were brainwiped. She remembered the question she'd asked herself when Raji died. How could you stand the idea of losing your child? You couldn't, that's how. She'd do anything to keep that from happening, which meant she had to stay calm. And think. "Let's go get the plate, Nicholas, okay?"

    "Okay," he said, and took her hand and led her into his room.

    The plate was white china, part of the set Gwyn and Dave had sent Merry and Kevin as a wedding gift. In the middle of it lay Patty, slit down the stomach, entrails neatly arranged around her. Oh, Goddess. Oh, sweet Gaia, help me. Meredith, knees weak, collapsed into a shaky crouch on the carpet, trying to push back images of Raji, Raji getting dissected by bats, Raji cut into—

    No. No. Stay in the present, Meredith. Think. Think.

    At least the plate was china, nonporous. It could be cleaned. At least there weren't any stains on the rug. The bathroom had looked clean that morning. Where was the knife? She stifled hysterical laughter and said, "Nicholas—"

    "They didn't eat her," he said, frowning. "Mommy, why didn't they eat her?"

    "Nicholas, it's wrong to kill animals. It's wrong. Patty never hurt you. She was a sweet little mouse."

    "She was going to get eaten by a snake, anyway! Snakes need to eat too! You said so! You told Grandma that!"

    Snakes are alive. Monsters aren't. How could she tell him that? The monsters were alive to him. They'd been keeping him awake for months. I need help, I need help, but I can't ask for help because they'll brainwipe him oh sweet Gaia my little boy, my baby. What am I going to do?

    She put her arms around him, around his small, solid body, and hugged very hard. "Honey, Nicholas sweetheart—"

    "If we had a snake," he said, "if we had a snake and we fed it a mouse it wouldn't be wrong, Mommy, right?"

    Right. But this is different. How could she explain it to him? Thank Goddess they didn't have interior security cameras, thank Goddess there was no permanent record of this. Thank you, sweet Goddess, he hadn't killed Patty outside, where the cameras would have recorded all of it. Where was the knife? She had to get the knife back. Breathe. Breathe. "That's right, Nicholas. If we had a snake it would be outside your head. It would be in the world. And then it would be okay to feed a mouse to the snake; the snake needs food that's in the world too. But the monsters aren't in the world; they're in your head. You have to feed them—you have to feed them in your head, honey, in your mind."

    "They didn't eat her," he said, frowning, staring down at the tiny dissected corpse.

    Meredith swallowed. "No. Not in the world, they didn't. But the dreams stopped, right? The monsters didn't bother you last night."

    "Because I fed them Patty. They promised me they wouldn't bother me if I fed them Patty. They told the truth, Mommy."

    Bile flooded Meredith's mouth. She swallowed again and said thickly, "They didn't need to eat her in the world. That's why she's still here. You fed them to her in your head too, because whatever your body's doing, your brain has to be thinking about it at the same time. That's why they left you alone. The part in your head—thinking about feeding them—that was enough, Nicholas. You didn't need to kill her."

    "But they told me to. And thinking about it before never made them go away, Mommy. I thought about it a lot. That never made them happy."

    Be calm be calm be calm. Meredith released the boy, held him at arm's length, and looked him straight in the eyes, as if her gaze could somehow bore into his head and remove whatever was hurting him so badly. "Nicholas, it's not okay. Do you hear me? You can't kill any more animals. We'll find some other way to make those monsters go away. We'll feed them something else, we'll find some other way to make them be quie but, baby, you can't kill anything else. That's murder, do you understan me? Murder's a soul crime, Nicholas. It's, it's a crime against the planet."

    "Not if you eat what you kill! Matt said so, Mommy!"

    He'd been talking to Matt? Oh, sweet Goddess. She reached out an grasped his shoulders again, squeezing until he flinched; she forced herse to let go, remembering Constance squeezing her just that way in Dr. Honoli's office, so many years ago. If I'd been able to have my own baby, this wouldn't be happening.

    No. He was her child, her very own child, her son. He was her child, no matter where he'd come from, because she loved him. She loved the good in him, the sweetness that lay under all this horror, that could conquer and transform the horror, surely, if only she could find some way to help him. Be calm. But she couldn't be calm as she asked, "When, Nicholas? When did Matt say that? Did you tell him about Patty?"

    "No, Mommy! We only got Patty yesterday. I saw Matt at Temple class. He told us about the people who lived here a long time ago and how they hunted animals and it was okay because they ate the animals, and they thanked the animals for feeding them. I thanked Patty, Mommy. I did. I thanked her for feeding the monsters."

    "Nicholas, did you like killing Patty? Did you enjoy it?"

    "No. It was yucky and she squeaked. She wiggled too much. But she's just food."

    Oh, Gaia. She wanted to slap him. She mustn't slap him, mustn't hurt a child. She clenched her fists together on her lap and said as steadily as she could, "Nicholas, she's not just food! She was alive and we loved her. She was part of our family, even if just for a little while. And she never hurt you, but it hurt her to be killed, Nicholas. That's why she squeaked and wiggled. The monsters hurt you. If you could kill the monsters instead, wouldn't that be better?"

    He started to cry. "I can't. I can't. They're bigger than I am and they're in my head and if they die then my head—"

    "Oh, baby." She reached out to hold him again, rocking him. "Don't you worry. I'm bigger than those monsters. I'll find a way to kill them, I will, I promise you. And then you won't have to kill any more sweet mice, Nicholas, okay?"

    He sniffied. "You can't. You can't see them. They're in my head."

    "Don't you worry. We'll get them out of there. We'll get them out of there and we'll kill them or maybe—maybe we won't have to. Maybe we can make them happy somehow. Maybe we can find them a home and they won't be monsters anymore, they'll be happy and they'll help you."

    "Oh. Can I have another mouse?"

    "No!" It came out as a scream. He flinched again, paling, and Meredith said more quietly, "No, Nicholas. Not until we take care of those monsters. It wouldn't be safe for another mouse here until the monsters are gone." She stood up, her arm around him, gingerly balancing the china plate in her free hand. What in the name of the Goddess were they going to do with Patty? Put her in the garbage or flush her down the john? Every bit of garbage in the city was monitored. If a mutilated animal showed up in the sewer, it would be traced. "We're going to bury Patty, Nicholas. We're going to give her a funeral, because she was a nice little mouse and she must have been so scared when she died, and dying must have hurt her so much, and we need to tell her we're sorry."

    "Okay," Nicholas said, subdued. "Where are we going to bury her, Mommy?"

    Good question. They couldn't do it outside: anything that happened on the grounds was archived by the security cameras. But they couldn't exactly have a mouse corpse rotting in the house, either. "Nicholas, you know the avocado pit we've been growing, the one in the glass of water in the kitchen? It has enough roots for us to plant it now. I think we should bury Patty in a great big flowerpot and plant the avocado in there too. That way she'll be helping the avocado grow. And then we can put the pot outside, and Patty and the avocado will get fresh air and sunlight. Okay?"

    "Okay."

    "Okay." She took a deep breath. "Sweetie, where's the knife? Where did you put it?"

    Nicholas looked down at his feet, scuffing his toes in the carpet. "It's dirty, Mommy."

    "I know, Nicholas. Where is it?"

    "I put it in my drawer. I wrapped it in a sock. Would you clean it for me."

    Sweet Goddess. She was going to have to do a count of all the knives from now on, hide anything sharp, and how was she going to explain all that to Kevin? And how would she ever use that knife in the kitchen again? She'd get sick. "Nicholas, you know what we're going to do? We're going to bury the knife and the sock in the flowerpot with Patty. To show that you're not going to kill any more animals, do you understand?" Kevin wouldn't miss one knife from the kitchen, and she'd watch the flowerpot to make sure Nicholas didn't dig it up.

    He put his thumb in his mouth, and said around it, "Okay, Mommy."

    Now the hard part. She took a very deep breath. Mustn't lie to a child. Mustn't teach children to lie. How could you stand the idea if losing your child? You couldn't. You did whatever was necessary, even if the child hadn't grown in your own womb, your maternal instinct growing as it did. That was how you proved that you were a good mother. That was how you proved you'd been right to adopt a baby about whom no one knew anything. "Okay Nicholas, another thing-honey, I don't want you to tell anybody about any of this, okay? It's very important."

    "Because I was bad."

    Yes. Exactly. "Because—because the monsters are bad, and I know the difference between you and the monsters, but other people might not. And they might get scared of you instead of the monsters, and that wouldn't be fair." And they'd brainwipe you.

    "I'm not a monster."

    "No," she said, her heart breaking. After Raji died, she'd thought her heart was as broken as it could get. She'd been wrong. "You aren't a monster. The monsters are monsters. You're Nicholas. Now let's go bury Patty, okay?"

    "Okay. What about Daddy?"

    Nicholas, she thought grimly, conspiracy comes entirely too easily to you. And to me too. Help me. Help me. "We'll just tell Daddy that we found Patty and she was dead and we buried her. Okay?" It wasn't even that big a lie. And somehow she'd have to keep Kevin from following through on his offer to get another mouse. Well, she'd tell him that the whole incident had been too traumatic; that wasn't that big a lie, either. She couldn't tell him what had really happened. If he reported Nicholas, the child would be brainwiped. Meredith would never forgive Kevin if that happened. She'd lose Kevin too. She couldn't lose both of them. And she couldn't ask Kevin to share the secret. She had to do this by herself

    "Can we use the flowerpot with the moon and stars on it, Mommy?"

    "Sure," she said, relieved. "Sure we can."