Nathaniel

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

Janet awoke with a start, her heart pounding. The dream had come again, the nightmare in which she stood helplessly by and watched as flames consumed the house she'd grown up in. Only this time, the dream was different. This time, as she cowered in the night, transfixed by the smoke and flames, it wasn't her brother who was calling to her.

This time, the voice she heard was Michael's, and the face she saw at the upstairs window was Mark's.

And in the background, barely audible, was another voice, a voice she recognized as that of her unborn child.

This time it wasn't her parents and her brother who were dying. This time it was her children and her husband.

She shook off the remnants of the dream and lay in the gloom, listening to the throbbing pulse of her heart, staring at the ceiling where strange shadows were cast by the soft glow of her nightlight. Inside her, she could feel the baby stirring-that was good, for as long as the baby moved it still lived, and for a while during the past twenty-four hours, she was sure she had lost it. Then, as her pulse slowly returned to normal, she shifted her attention, listening to the sounds of the house. Voices drifted up from downstairs. Though she couldn't make out the words, the murmuring itself was comforting to Janet.

She knew who was downstairs: her mother-in-law, her son. and Ione Simpson.

Earlier in the day, when she'd first mentioned that Ione had volunteered to stay with them and look after them, she had expected Anna to object. But she'd been wrong. Anna, without Amos and without her chair, had literally changed overnight.

"She has a level head," Anna had said of Ione. "And I don't feel like talking tonight. With Laura, I'd have to talk. But with lone, I can just sit and think. I need to think, Janet," she'd added in a tone that had almost frightened the younger woman. "I need to think about a lot of things." And then, sounding more like her usual self, she'd glanced pointedly at Janet's belly. "Aren't you supposed to be staying in bed?"

Janet nodded. "But I feel so useless up there. And the baby's all right. The doctor said-"

Anna's eyes flashed with sudden anger. "Doctors are fools! Never believe what they say. Never! I believed Charles Potter once."

The force of Anna's words struck Janet almost physically. She sank back against the cushions of the sofa. "Anna, what are you saying? He was your doctor for years-"

"Amos's. He was Amos's doctor, Janet. To me, he was-" Suddenly she fell silent, but Janet had the distinct feeling there was something the older woman wanted to talk about.

"He was what, Anna?"

Anna's eyes suddenly shifted away from Janet, and she appeared to be trying to come to a decision. Finally, her empty eyes met Janet's. "I don't know what he was," she said at last. "I don't know what's the truth, anymore, and I don't know who lied to me all my life. I don't know anything anymore, Janet. For twenty years, I sat in a wheelchair, but at least I thought I knew why I was there. I thought it was Amos's fault. I thought he'd done something to me when my last baby was born, thought somehow he or Charles Potter had hurt me when they killed my baby."

"Anna," Janet pleaded, "don't say that."

"Wait," Anna said quietly. "I'm not saying what I believe, Janet. I'm only telling you what I thought." Suddenly she seemed to straighten up. She took a deep breath. Then she said: "Ben Findley was the father of my last child."

Janet stared at her mother-in-law, unable to make any reply at all.

"It's true. Ben was different then. Not like he is now. In some ways he was very like Amos-like all that family- except there was nothing of Amos's cruelty about him. Amos was cruel. He beat the children, and he beat me. And he was absolutely convinced that some awful curse had been placed on his family. It all went back to Abby Randolph, and Nathaniel, and the child that survived."

"But you said-"

"I know what I said." Anna sighed, then went on talking. "I think Amos killed two of my children. I don't know anymore. Not after last night. But what's important is that I believed he did. That's one of the reasons I fell in love with Ben Findley. I blamed Amos for so much, and in Ben I found the parts of Amos I was attracted to, without the parts I hated. Can you understand that?" She paused, but Janet made no reply. "Anyway, I fell in love with him, and I got pregnant by him. And Amos knew." Slowly, her voice trembling with the pain she felt at reliving the story, Anna told Janet what had happened twenty years ago, when her last child had been born. "He had sworn he'd kill it," she finished. "He'd said he'd kill it, but then, when it came, he told me it was stillborn. He told me, and Charles Potter told me. But I didn't believe them. I believed they killed it, just as I believed Amos had killed my other children. I believed they killed it. And later on, I believed they killed Laura's children."

"But if that's what you believed-"

"Why did I stay? Because Amos was my punishment, and I deserved to be punished for my…" Her voice faltered. "For my sins. I stayed out of my own guilt, Janet. I hated Amos, but I stayed."

Janet felt sick. Sick and betrayed. "And you didn't warn me, either," she said, her voice suddenly bitter. Her eyes turned angry. "What about Michael? Did he beat Michael, too? And would you have stood by when my baby came, even though you thought Amos might kill it?"

Anna shook her head helplessly. "I don't know," she whispered. "I just don't know. But it's over now, Janet. Nathaniel-" She fell suddenly silent.

"Nathaniel!" Janet demanded. "What about Nathaniel? That's only a ghost story."

"Is it?" Anna broke in. Then her body seemed to droop. "Maybe it is, at that. But Michael doesn't think so. Nor do I. Nathaniel is real, at least in some ways. For me, he's real, and he's bringing me an odd kind of peace." She fell silent, then smiled softly. "I'm going to have another grandchild, Janet. I'm going to see Mark's second son, and Amos isn't going to kill him. It will be almost like having my own son back."

Janet had gone upstairs then, trying to puzzle out the meaning of all that Anna had told her. She had fallen asleep for a while, then awakened. Now, as she listened to the calming drone of voices from below, Anna's words seemed to fade from her mind. Perhaps, as Anna had said, everything would be all right now.

And then came the scream.

Anna jerked out of the half sleep she'd fallen into, and stared at the contorted face of her grandson. Shadow, his tail twitching nervously, was licking at Michael's face, but the boy didn't seem to notice. "What is it?" Anna asked, her eyes leaving the screaming boy and fixing on Ione Simpson. "My Lord, what's wrong with him?" Ione had been sitting on the floor studying the chessboard between herself and Michael, but was now crouched beside the boy, cradling him in her arms. "It's all right," she told Anna. "It's going to be all right."

Michael's screams subsided, and as he calmed down, so did Shadow. Finally, his weight still resting against Ione's breast, his eyes opened and he looked up into his grandmother's face.

"He killed him," he whispered. "It happened just now. He killed him."

"Who?" Ione asked. "Who killed someone, Michael?"

"Nathaniel," Michael whispered. "I saw it. Just now. I saw him in the barn, and he was hiding. And then Mr. Findley came in. And-and Nathaniel killed him."

Instinctively, Ione glanced toward the window, but the rapidly gathering darkness revealed nothing of what lay beyond the glass. Whatever Michael was talking about, he hadn't seen it with his eyes.

"All right," Ione said, automatically reverting to the soothing voice she'd cultivated during her years of nursing. "Tell us what happened. Tell me what you saw, and how you saw it. Can you do that?"

Michael gazed up at her for a moment, then his eyes shifted back to his grandmother.

"It's all right," she assured him. "Whatever you tell us, we'll believe you. Just tell us what happened."

Michael swallowed. "I was looking at the board," he said. "I was trying to decide whether or not to move my bishop, and then all of a sudden I got a headache. And I heard Nathaniel's voice." Ione frowned and started to say something, but Anna silenced her with a gesture.

"Only he wasn't talking to me," Michael went on. "He was talking to Mr. Findley. He was asking about the children. He wanted to know where the children were, and Mr. Findley wouldn't tell him. So Nathaniel killed him."

"How?" Anna asked. "How did Nathaniel kill him?"

Michael's voice shook. "The way Grandpa killed Dad," he said softly. "With a pitchfork."

Suddenly, from the doorway, they heard a low moan, and both Ione and Anna turned to see Janet, her face pale, leaning heavily against the doorframe. "I can't stand it," Janet whispered. "I just can't stand it."

"lone, help her," Anna said, but the words were unnecessary: Ione was already on her feet, offering Janet a supporting arm. But Janet brushed her aside, her eyes fixed on Michael.

"It isn't possible, Michael," she said. "You couldn't have seen anything like that." Hysteria began to edge her voice. "You were sitting right here. You couldn't have seen anything. You couldn't!"

Michael stared at his mother, his eyes wide and frightened. "I did, Mama," he said. "I know what I saw."

"No!" Janet screamed. "You're imagining things, Michael! Can't you understand?" Her eyes, wide with distress and confusion, flicked from Michael to Anna, then to Ione. "Can't any of you understand? He's imagining things! He's imagining things, and he needs help!" She broke down, her sobs coming in great heaving gulps, and now she let herself collapse into Ione's arms. "Oh, God, help him. Please help him!"

"It's all right, Janet," Ione soothed. "Everything's going to be all right. But you have to go back up to bed. You have to rest." Without waiting for her to reply, Ione began guiding her back up the stairs.

Suddenly alone with his grandmother, Michael looked fretfully at the old woman. His hands played over Shadow's thick coat, as if he were seeking comfort from the dog. "Why doesn't she believe me?" he asked. "Why doesn't she believe I saw what I did?"

"Maybe she does," Anna told him. "Maybe she does, but just doesn't want to admit it to herself. Sometimes it's easier to pretend things aren't happening, even when you know they are. Can you understand that?"

Michael hesitated, then nodded. "I-I think so."

"All right. Now, would you do something for me?"

"Wh-what?"

"I want you to call Aunt Laura and ask her to come out here. And have her bring Buck and Ryan, too." Michael's brow knitted into a worried frown. "Why?"

"To help Mrs. Simpson take care of your mother. You and I and your Uncle Buck are going to go over and have a look at Ben Findley's barn."

The enormous barn door stood slightly ajar, and an ominous silence seemed to hang over the unkempt farm like a funeral pall. The little group stopped in the center of the barnyard, Michael on one side of Anna, Buck Shields on the other, supporting her with his arm. Shadow, his tail between his legs, whined softly.

"He's gone," Michael whispered. "Nathaniel's gone."

"There's no such person as Nathaniel," Buck Shields said, his voice angry. Anna silenced him with a glance, then switched on the flashlight she held in one hand, playing its beam over the walls, of the barn. Nothing showed, nothing moved.

"Stay here with your grandmother," Buck said. "I'll go have a look inside."

"No!" Anna's voice crackled in the darkness. "We'll all go inside. Whatever's there, Michael's already seen it. And whatever's there, I want to see it."

They started toward the barn, and suddenly Shadow stiffened, then a growl rumbled up from the depths of his throat.

"Someone's there," Michael whispered. "Someone's inside the barn."

As if in response, Shadow whimpered, then leaped forward into the darkness, disappearing into the building. There was a scuffling sound, and Shadow began barking. Then his barking subsided into a steady snarl, and Buck Shields moved forward, taking the light from Anna Hall's hands.

He slipped through the door, then paused. Shadow's snarling was louder, coming from the far end of the barn. Buck made his way slowly along the inside of the door, then felt on the wall for a light switch.

The blackness of the barn's interior was suddenly washed away with a brilliant white light from three overhead fixtures. Buck blinked, and shaded his eyes with one hand.

Sixty feet away, at the far end of the barn, he could see Ben Findley, his eyes still open, his clothes covered with blood, held upright only by the pitchfork that impaled his throat, pinning him to the wall. Buck stared at the dead man for a few seconds, trying to control the churning in his stomach that threatened to overwhelm him. Then his eye was caught by a flicker of movement.

Slowly, Buck started down the center aisle of the barn, approaching Ben Findley as if he were some grotesque religious icon hovering above an altar.

Like a supplicant at Ben Findley's feet, Shadow was crouched low to the ground, his tail sweeping the floor in slow movements, his eyes fixed on the dead man's face.

Nathaniel lay in Potter's Field, his eyes fixed on the barn. Light glimmered through the cracks in the barn's siding, and it almost looked as if the building were on fire.

He knew he should get up and move. Soon, he was sure, people would come looking for him, and when they found him-

Not yet. They couldn't find him yet.

Even though the three of them were dead now-the one who had wanted to kill him when he was born, and the two who had kept him a prisoner all his life-there was still something he had to do.

He had to go home. His eyes turned away from the barn, and focused on the little house where he'd been born.

With his mind, he reached out to it, exploring it.

There were people in it tonight. His sister-Laura-was there, and Michael's mother was there. And someone else, a stranger. So he couldn't go there tonight. Tonight, he must hide, and stay hidden until it was safe. Softly, inaudibly, he sent out an urgent signal.

In the barn, Shadow suddenly rose from his position at Ben Findley's feet and trotted out into the night.