Nightshade

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.

His eyes shifted from the building itself to a group of his friends who were clustered on the lawn — Eric Holmes was there, talking to Pete Arneson and Brett Haynes. When Eric glanced his way, Matt raised his arm to wave.

Eric turned away as if Matt had suddenly become invisible.

He won’t even wave to me. If Eric won’t even wave to me, what’s everyone else going to do?

The nervousness and apprehension that had been gnawing at Matt as he walked to school congealed into a nearly irresistible urge to turn away from the school, as Eric had turned away from him. If everyone treated him like Eric had —

The echo of his mother’s words broke through his thoughts: “Face them… show them you’re not afraid of anything they might say, because you didn’t do anything.”

Dropping the hand he’d raised to greet Eric Holmes, Matt stepped off the curb and crossed the street.

But it wasn’t just the facade of the building that had changed since Friday afternoon. Everything about the school now felt foreign, as if he’d wandered into a place he’d never seen been.

And a place where he wasn’t wanted.

It was worse than his stepfather’s funeral, for at the funeral he hadn’t felt as totally alone.

His mother had been beside him, and people — at least some people — had spoken to him.

This morning, though, as he made his way through the crowded halls to his locker, no one slapped him on the back, no one stopped him, no one asked him how he was. He told himself that they just didn’t know what to say, but he knew it was more than that. Wherever he went, the other kids fell silent, and though they were careful never to meet his eyes or even look directly at him, he could feel their eyes on his back, sense the whispered conversations he couldn’t quite hear.

When he entered a classroom, the hum of conversation instantly quieted, and when he took his seat, no one acknowledged his presence.

Even the teachers seemed no longer to see him. When he raised his hand three times in his advanced algebra class — twice to offer a solution to the equation scrawled on the old slate blackboard, once to ask a question — Mrs. Tokheim’s gaze passed right over him as if he didn’t exist.

At lunch he went through the cafeteria line and automatically headed toward the table he’d always shared with Eric Holmes, Pete Arneson, and — the last few months, anyway — Kelly Conroe. But today his usual seat between Eric and Kelly was already occupied by Mark Ryerson.

Nor had any of the other seats at the table been left empty.

He knew it wasn’t a coincidence — as long as he’d been in high school, one of the chairs at that table had always been his. So they’d done it deliberately. They’d shut him out. A wave of anger rose in him, and his jaw tightened. Maybe he should just go over and dump his tray on the whole bunch of them!

No — that was the last thing he should do. If they knew they’d gotten to him, it would just get worse. Struggling to keep his emotions from showing, he searched the cafeteria for someplace else to sit. Half a dozen tables had empty seats, but the people at every one of them looked away as soon as he turned in their direction. His appetite deserting him as the hard knot of fury expanded inside him, Matt finally dropped his tray — and everything on it — into one of the trash bins, and walked out of the cafeteria.

The rage building inside him kept him from noticing Becky Adams gesturing for him to come and sit at the table where she, on most days, sat feeling as alone as Matt felt today.

By quarter past two, when he was making his way toward the computer room for his last class, he knew what to expect, so he was almost able to ignore it when the low hum in the room died away as he entered.

He glanced around at the tables. They were all there. Eric Holmes and Pete Arneson were huddled with two other football players. And Mark Ryerson and Brett Haynes were pretending they were engrossed in a game on the screen in front of them.

But Matt had seen all of them look at him when he came in.

Well, the hell with all of them. He wouldn’t sit with them now even if they invited him!

He looked for an empty niche where he could be by himself and ignore all the people who were so carefully ignoring him. Spotting a vacant seat in front of one of the computer carrels, with empty chairs on either side, he sat down, tucked his book bag under the table, and logged onto the computer.

He’d start by searching for a site that might offer him the answer to the algebra question Mrs. Tokheim hadn’t let him ask. But a fraction of a second after the log-on screen disappeared and the navigation program booted, a message popped up on the screen:

The words slashed at Matt, and without thinking he began to type in a furious denial. But before he’d finished the first word, another message flashed onto the screen:

He could feel eyes watching him as he read the second message, and he spun around in time to catch Mark Ryerson and Brett Haynes signaling to someone else, whom he couldn’t see. Then another message jumped up on the screen in front of him:

Something inside Matt snapped, and he leaped to his feet, his chair crashing to the floor behind him. “I didn’t do it!” he shouted, the pent-up fury that had been building inside him all day suddenly erupting. “I didn’t do anything!” Grabbing his book bag, he stormed out of the classroom, racing down the corridor toward the front door. Bursting outside, he paused at the top of the steps and sucked air deep into his lungs, struggling to hold back the tears that seared his eyes. Then, behind him, he heard a voice.

“Matt? What’s going on? What happened?” Matt spun around to see Jack Carruthers, the computer teacher, looking worriedly at him. As the teacher moved closer, Matt backed away. “Tell me what’s wrong, Matt,” Carruthers went on. “Tell me what I can do to help.”

“What’s wrong?” Matt echoed, his voice rising sharply. “What’s wrong? My dad’s dead, and my grandmother’s missing, and everyone thinks I did it! That’s what’s wrong!”

Spinning away from the teacher, he charged down the steps and away from the school, but even as he sprinted down Prospect Street, the words he’d seen on the computer screen taunted him.

What does it feel like to kill someone?

Did you shoot the deer first, or your dad?

What does it feel like to kill someone?

What does it feel like?

He kept running until he could go no farther, but there was no escape from the terrible words, and deep in his heart he knew there never would be.

But even worse than that was the fear that kept growing inside him.

The fear that maybe — just maybe — everyone was right.

* * *

NO MORE, JOAN prayed silently. Please, god, no more.

But as she watched Matt coming up the driveway, she knew that her silent prayer was not going to be answered, for on any other day Matt wouldn’t have been home from school before five.

Today it wasn’t even quarter past three, though from the way she felt, it should have been later. Much, much later.

All day long she’d moved back and forth between the house and the pool at the foot of the falls. She’d barely even felt the chill of the steady drizzle as she waited while a diver searched the depths of the pool, then began working his way downstream until the river widened out a mile below the falls and became so shallow that there was no possibility of the water hiding —

Joan had shuddered at the image that had risen in her mind of her mother’s lifeless body caught in a crevice under a boulder, her hands reaching toward the surface as if seeking help.

She had only been able to escape the vision by returning home, but a few minutes later she was drawn back to the bank of the stream again. One of Dan Pullman’s deputies had brought his dog — a gentle German shepherd named Sheba — but the dog had been unable to pick up a trail. “Not surprising, with this rain and all,” Pullman told her. Sometime in the middle of the morning they’d brought the dog to the house, but the animal was no more successful picking up a scent there than on the paths by the stream.

As the hours passed, Joan felt the hope of finding her mother slipping away, and knew that soon — if not today, then tomorrow or the day after — the men Dan Pullman had sent into the forest would have to stop looking, just as the shallows had stopped the diver. But not yet. She wouldn’t give up yet.

Nancy Conroe had come over around noon, but Joan was unable to eat more than a bite of the salad Nancy brought, and in less than an hour Joan had sent her away, saying, “You have better things to do than sit and watch me worry.”

“But you shouldn’t be alone,” Nancy replied. “With everything that’s happened, just the idea of you being in this house all by yourself makes me shudder. Maybe you and Matt ought to go somewhere else, even if it’s just for a little while.”

Joan shook her head. “I can’t. Not until we find Mother.” She turned to gaze out the rain-streaked window. “If she’s out there somewhere… if she somehow finds her way back…” Her voice trailed off, and neither woman was willing to voice what they both knew: if the temperature should suddenly drop — if the rain should suddenly turn to sleet or snow — Emily Moore couldn’t possibly survive more than a few hours in nothing more substantial than a thin nightgown.

“I’ll call you,” Joan promised as she walked Nancy out to her car, wrapping herself against the rain in one of Bill’s parkas. “And thanks for coming out. I really do appreciate it. But right now, I think I just need to be by myself.”

Three times she’d gone back to the stream, each time allowing herself to hope that some trace of her mother would have turned up.

Three times she’d come home, her hopes momentarily dashed.

It was as she was leaving the house for the fourth time that she saw Matt walking up the driveway. Even if he hadn’t been getting home far too early, everything about him — his posture, the shuffle in his step, the way his hands were shoved deep in his pockets — told her that something had gone terribly wrong at school.

Ten minutes later, after she dragged the truth out of him about what had happened, he at last looked directly into her eyes. “What if it’s true?” he whispered. “What if what they’re saying is true?” Joan reached for his hands, but he pulled away from her. “I had a dream last night, Mom,” he said.

Slowly, his tone reflecting the pain and fear it had caused him, he told her about the terrible vision that had come to him in the night. “And Aunt Cynthia was there,” he finished, at last lifting his eyes to meet hers. “She kept telling me to do it. To do what I wanted to do.” Even as he spoke the words, Joan could see the terror coming into his eyes once again. “I was pissed off at Dad on my birthday,” he went on. “And I was mad at Gram night before last. What if it’s true? What if I — ”

Joan clamped her hand over his mouth, refusing to let him even utter the terrible words. “You didn’t,” she said. “You didn’t do anything.” Recalling the accusations that Matt had told her he’d seen on the computer monitor, her sympathy for her son hardened into anger toward his tormentors. “Go up and change your clothes,” she told him. “I’ll fix you something to eat. You hardly touched your breakfast, and without lunch you must be starving.”

“But I’m not hungry,” Matt protested.

“Maybe you will be by the time you get back downstairs,” Joan replied.

As soon as Matt was gone, she picked up the phone and called the school.

“I wish I knew how kids can be so cruel,” Burt Wing sighed after hearing Joan out. “Jack Carruthers told me about Matt leaving early, but Matt didn’t tell him what had happened.” He was silent for a moment, then: “Joan, I wish I could tell you it won’t happen again, but — ”

“Then what is Matt supposed to do?” Joan asked. “By the time he got home, he was starting to wonder if maybe what they were saying was — ” She cut herself short, and when she spoke again, managed to keep most of the anger out of her voice. “You’re Matt’s counselor. I’m just asking you to talk to him, Burt. And maybe to the rest of the kids in that class too. Matt should be able to go to school without having to hear that kind of garbage, shouldn’t he?”

“Of course he should,” Burt Wing agreed. “Nothing like that should happen to any child. But these days — well, you know how kids can be.”

“I do,” Joan sighed. “I just don’t want them making Matt’s life any more difficult than it already is. And Burt? Don’t tell Matt I called, all right?”

For the first time since he’d picked up the phone, Burt Wing chuckled. “Don’t worry. The last thing any kid needs to know is that his mother called his counselor. Believe me, he won’t ever hear it from me. And I’ll talk to him first thing in the morning.”

As she hung up the phone, it occurred to Joan that morning was a long time away.

* * *

THE VOICE WHISPERED her name so softly that at first Joan wasn’t certain she’d heard it at all.

When it came again, slithering out of the silence and creeping around the fringes of her consciousness as if it didn’t want to be heard at all, she told herself it was just the wind. Though the rain had stopped and a breeze had come up, water still dripped from the leaves that clung to the branches of the huge maple just outside her bedroom window. Surely all she heard was the soughing of that breeze.

But then she heard the sound again, her name breathed in a long, drawn-out sigh:

“Jo-oan…”

She tried to shut it out, tried to tell herself once again that it was only the wind, or something in her imagination. But even as she tried to close her mind to it, the voice called out again.

“Jo-oan… Joanie… Joanie-baby…”

Cynthia!

Only Cynthia had ever called her Joanie-baby.

It came again, and now the voice of her sister was unmistakable. “Come on, Joanie-baby… come and play with me.”

“No!” Joan whispered, unaware she had spoken aloud. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real.

Now she heard a tinkle of laughter, and then, once again, her sister’s voice. “Come, Joanie-baby… come and see.”

Joan tried to resist the voice, but even as she told herself again that whatever she was hearing could be nothing more than an illusion, she found herself getting out of bed, slipping her arms into the sleeves of Bill’s worn woolen robe, and moving to the closed door of the bedroom.

She paused, listening.

Nothing.

But now, though the house was once again silent, she could feel something.

Something in the hall, just outside her door.

Her heart quickened, and her fingers went to the key in the lock just below the doorknob. “Matt?” she whispered, so softly that even she could barely hear her words. “Matt, is that you?”

Nothing.

She wanted to lock the door to her bedroom, wanted to go back to her bed and wrap herself in the comfort of the down quilt. But as if held in thrall by some force she could neither see nor feel, she turned the doorknob and pulled the door open.

The corridor was dimly lit by a night-light; both its ends lost in shadows. Clutching the lapels of the robe tight around her throat, Joan slipped out into the hallway.

Though she knew it could be no more than an illusion, the corridor seemed to stretch away forever in both directions.

Every door was closed.

Yet she still felt the presence of someone — or something — lurking close by.

Very close by.

“M-Mother?” she stammered, her voice trembling. “Mother, is that you?” But even as she uttered the words she knew her mother was nowhere in the house, and when once more the tinkle of laughter pierced the silence, it stung her like a thousand needles jabbing at her skin.

Cynthia!

It was Cynthia’s laugh!

The same laugh Joan had heard hundreds of times — thousands of times — when she was a child.

Steeling herself, she moved down the corridor until she stood in front of the door to Cynthia’s room.

No! Not Cynthia’s room!

Her room! In her house! It was nothing more than a guest room in which her mother had stored her sister’s things!

She reached out and gripped the knob, but still she hesitated.

Why? What was she afraid of?

She was just tired — exhausted from everything she’d been through in the last few days. And her mind felt as exhausted as her body — her grief, her lack of sleep, all of it had taken its toll. Why wouldn’t she be imagining things? Hearing voices? Feeling things that weren’t there?

The laughter came again, and Joan shuddered as a chill rolled over her.

Go back, she told herself. Go back to bed, and go to sleep.

But even as her mind spoke the order, her hand turned the doorknob and pushed open the door to Cynthia’s room.

She felt for the light switch; turned it on.

And saw her sister staring at her.

A scream rose in Joan’s throat, but as quickly as it came, she stifled it. It wasn’t Cynthia she was seeing at all, only the portrait that hung on the wall. Furious at her own reaction to the picture, she moved deeper into the room, her eyes locking on the image of her sister.

Cynthia’s eyes seemed to come alive, holding Joan’s gaze; her smile twisted into a mocking smirk.

“What do you want?” Joan demanded. Though she heard nothing, Cynthia’s eyes continued to grip her.

Grip her as they had when she was a child, and Cynthia was about to tell their mother a lie, warning Joan with nothing more than a look to say nothing.

An image leaped from the depths of Joan’s subconscious…

* * *

SHE WAS FIVE years old, sprawled out on the floor in the living room, poring over one of her books. Cynthia was stretched out on the sofa, leafing through a movie magazine. The phone rang, and as Joan scrambled to her feet, Cynthia reached behind her without looking and picked up the receiver. As she pulled it to her ear, the cord caught on their mother’s favorite vase and it crashed to the floor. When their mother rushed into the room a few seconds later, Joan was still staring at the scattered shards. Then she heard Cynthia telling their mother what had happened.

“She didn’t mean to do it, Mama. She was just trying to answer the phone, and she knocked it off the table.”

As the words — and the certain knowledge of what would happen next — sank into Joan’s mind, she tore her eyes away from the shattered remains of the vase. Her mother was glowering down at her, her hand already raised to punish her clumsiness.

Behind her stood Cynthia.

Her eyes warning Joan to keep silent, Cynthia’s lips twisted into a smile so cold that it froze the younger girl.

In silence, she had borne the punishment that should have gone to Cynthia, and that night, when they were both in their beds, Cynthia asked her how she could have been so clumsy.

“But I didn’t do it,” Joan protested. “You broke Mommy’s vase!”

“Me?” Cynthia said. “But Joanie-baby, you were the one that tried to answer the phone. Don’t you remember? As soon as it rang, you jumped up to answer it and knocked over the vase!”

“No, I didn’t,” Joan objected. “It was you!”

But Cynthia had gone over it again and again, and finally Joan decided her sister must be right — she herself must have been so afraid of what her mother might do that she’d wanted it to be Cynthia’s fault. “But it wasn’t my fault, Joanie-baby,” Cynthia explained. “It was your fault. It was all your fault.”

* * *

AS THE LONG-BURIED memory blazed in her mind another memory stirred in her. The memory of the strange story Matt had told about what had happened the night before last, when his grandmother disappeared from her room.

And she remembered the terrible nightmare Matt had told her about just this afternoon.

“What are you doing?” she whispered in the darkness. “Are you trying to blame Matt this time? Are you trying to blame him for what you’ve done?” Her eyes still fixed on the image of Cynthia, she backed out of the room. “Well, I won’t let you! Do you hear? I won’t let you!” Snapping off the light, Joan pulled the door closed behind her, then twisted the key in the lock, jerked it out of the door, and dropped it in the pocket of her robe. Only then — with the door securely locked behind her — did she rest against the wall for a moment while her racing heart slowed.

And once again, she heard her sister’s laugh.