Nightshade

CHAPTER 18

JOAN STOOD AT the back door, staring into the darkness that had swallowed up her son. Her first impulse was to go after him, but as she reached for the car keys that hung on a hook by the back door, she knew it would do no good. The second Matt saw the headlights — or even heard the engine — he would vanish into the woods as quickly as a wild animal, slipping silently along the paths that wound through the trees, leaving her to drive aimlessly through the night with no hope of finding him unless he wanted to be found.

Slowly, reluctantly, she closed the door.

Should she call Nancy back? Call Trip Wainwright?

Wait, she told herself. Don’t do anything — not yet. He’ll come back. When he calms down, he’ll come back. She picked up the plates from the table and scraped the untouched food into the garbage disposal. Clean up the kitchen, she told herself. Just do what you have to do, and he’ll come back. But as she tried to concentrate on her chore, she found herself looking out into the darkness.

And as she watched it, the darkness of the night began to creep into the house.

Creep in, and wrap itself around her.

Suddenly she felt exhausted, and the darkness around her seemed a comforting blanket. If only she could give in to it…

If only she could let herself sink into oblivion… If only she could forget…

… forget, and rest.

Yes… if only she could rest…

But there would be no rest, for now she could hear laughter.

Cynthia’s laughter.

The skin on her arms began to crawl, and the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

The house was not empty.

But of course it was empty! Matt had just left, and Bill was dead, and her mother was gone.

Yet the house was not empty.

Her fingers, still on the doorknob, tightened until the skin on her knuckles turned white, but she didn’t turn the knob, didn’t give in to the urge to jerk the door open and flee from the unseen presence in the house into the darkness of the night outside.

Instead, she made herself turn her back to the door.

There’s nothing here, she told herself as she gazed through the door leading from the mud room to the kitchen. But a moment later, as she forced herself to walk into the kitchen, her heart began to pound.

Though the kitchen looked exactly as it had a moment ago, it no longer felt the same; it was as if someone had come into the room — someone she could neither see nor hear, but could feel.

Cynthia.

As her sister’s name rose in her mind, Joan tried to reject it, to tell herself it was impossible. Yet even as she tried to reassure herself, the feeling grew stronger. Then she heard Cynthia’s voice.

“I’m here, Joanie-baby. You know I’m here. And you know exactly where to find me, don’t you?”

Joan froze. Her sister’s voice was as clear as if Cynthia were standing next to her. But she’s not standing next to me, Joan told herself. She’s dead! I saw her die!

The mocking laughter that answered her thoughts cut into Joan like a knife, and as the pain of it sliced through her, something inside of her snapped. Her fear forgotten, replaced in an instant with a burning anger that quickly built into rage, she left the kitchen, moving through the dining room to the base of the stairs.

“I’m not dead, Joanie-baby,” Cynthia’s voice taunted again. “You know where I am. Come on, Joanie-baby. Don’t you want to play with me?”

Joan charged up the stairs and burst through the open door to her sister’s room. As the door slammed against the wall, she stepped into the room, her eyes searching it as if she expected to find her sister sitting at her desk, or sprawled out on her bed.

But except for her sister’s things, the room was as empty as it had always been. Joan ventured deeper inside, until she was standing in front of her sister’s vanity table.

She heard her sister’s voice again, but now it had changed. The mocking tone was gone. Now the voice was soft, almost seductive. “That’s right, Joanie-baby,” Cynthia whispered. “You do want to play, don’t you? You always wanted to play. You always wanted to play Let’s Pretend, didn’t you? Let’s play it again… let’s play it now… let’s pretend you’re beautiful… let’s pretend you’re me… ”

As the words swirled around her, the rage that had driven Joan up the stairs drained away, and as if guided by some unseen force, she eased the stool out from Cynthia’s vanity and lowered herself onto it. Then, as her sister’s voice whispered to her, she reached for a jar of Cynthia’s makeup. But when she opened it, it was a memory that emerged.

* * *

SHE WAS FOUR.

She was sitting in front of the mirror.

Cynthia was next to her, working the magic that would make Joan beautiful.

“You’ll look just like me,” Cynthia promised her. “Maybe not your hair, but everything else.”

While Joan sat perfectly still, Cynthia carefully applied a layer of her own pale foundation, lightening Joan’s complexion, making her eyes appear even darker than they were. Then Cynthia began applying rouge to her cheeks, and shadow to her eyelids, lipstick.

A new face began to emerge — a face that wasn’t Joan’s, but wasn’t quite Cynthia’s either.

“But I don’t look like you,” she said when Cynthia was done and the two of them were peering into the mirror.

“It’s your clothes,” Cynthia decided. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

She sat perfectly still, staring at the image in the mirror. She knew that whatever Cynthia was planning, it wouldn’t work. No matter what they did — no matter how hard she tried — she would never be beautiful.

Never look like her wonderful sister.

Then Cynthia was back, and when Joan saw what she was holding, her eyes widened. It was her mother’s white fox stole. As long as she could remember, it had hung in her mother’s closet, carefully wrapped in a plastic bag.

Joan had never touched it.

Never even seen her mother wear it.

“Don’t,” she whispered as Cynthia laid it over her shoulders. “If Mommy catches us — ”

“She won’t,” Cynthia whispered to her. “Just feel it — feel how soft it is. Look how beautiful it makes you.”

Almost against her own will, Joan’s little fingers touched the fur. It was almost like touching a cloud, and when she tilted her head a moment later to feel the softness caressing her cheek, warmth flowed through her. And in the mirror, she almost did look beautiful. “I love it,” she whispered. “I wish…”

The words died on her lips as the mirror reflected a flicker of movement behind her. Her heart pounding, she turned to look up at her mother. Still wearing the winter coat and leather gloves she’d put on before leaving the house an hour ago, she now stood in the doorway, her eyes blazing with fury. “What are you doing?” she demanded. “What are you doing with my stole?”

“Cynthia — ” Joan began, but before she could utter another word her mother snatched the stole from around her shoulders with her one hand while raising the other, clenched into a fist.

The gloved fist seemed to hang in the air like a hawk preparing to drop on its prey, and then, as Joan’s eyes widened in terror and the leather-clad hand descended, a strange blackness began closing in on Joan.

By the time her mother’s fist crashed into her cheek, knocking her to the floor, Joan’s mind had already turned inward upon itself, escaping from the terrible pain of her mother’s fury.

Her fury, and her blows…

* * *

THE BLACKNESS AROUND Kelly Conroe was almost physical, wrapped around her like a thick quilt. But it gave none of the comfort of the quilt she slept under at home, didn’t make her feel safe and protected.

This quilt was heavy. Suffocating.

Inescapable.

And then there was the pain. Pain that suffused her body like some kind of poison. It was in her legs and her arms. Her neck. Her back. Everywhere. For a split-second she thought it might all be a dream, some terrible nightmare from which she would awaken to find herself in bed at home. But as she tried to move her aching limbs, she knew it wasn’t a dream — that what had happened was real.

Slowly, it came back to her. Just scraps at first. She’d been on her way home, and she stopped to see Matt. She was about to knock on the Hapgoods’ back door.

Suddenly those hands closed around her throat. Hands covered with some kind of strange gloves unlike anything she’d ever felt before. Yet there had also been something familiar about them, as if even though she didn’t know what they were made of, she should have known. Her body jerked reflexively as she tried to escape that terrible touch, those awful fingers closing around her throat, and a cry of agony erupted from her lungs as every bone and muscle in her body screamed out against the sudden movement.

But her cry was choked back by the tape that sealed her lips, and instead of exploding out through her mouth, it seemed to grow inside her head until it felt like her head itself might explode.

Suddenly she couldn’t breathe! The unuttered cry held her in its grip, her mouth filled with air, her lungs still trying to empty themselves, the pressure building as her panic grew. Then some instinct inside her took over, and she released the air through her nose. But then, with her lungs finally empty, she couldn’t catch her breath. Her heart began to pound, and panic rose inside her again, a panic even more frightening than the darkness that surrounded her.

Automatically, her body started to fight for breath, but this time she overcame her instincts. Think! she commanded herself. Steeling her mind against the panic, she forced herself to stop trying to breathe through her mouth, stop trying to suck great gulps of air into her lungs. Instead she drew air in through her nostrils, expanding her chest slowly, forcing herself to be patient.

As her lungs slowly filled, the panic receded.

And Kelly began to think. Where am I? There was no way of telling; the darkness around her was as impenetrable as great slabs of iron.

Once again she tried to move, but this time slowly, methodically, knowing that if she lashed out, began thrashing in the blackness, the pain would overwhelm her.

Her mouth was covered with some kind of tape. By curling her lips back over her teeth and forcing her tongue through, she could just feel — even taste — the adhesive.

Her hands were tied behind her back, her wrists bound together so tightly her fingers felt numb.

Her ankles were bound too.

And the darkness — the terrible darkness — a darkness so complete that it almost felt as if she’d been buried.

Buried alive!

As the thought rose in her mind, a terrible feeling of claustrophobia began to close around her. Another scream rose inside her, and her body fought once more against the cords that bound her. She thrashed, rolling first one way and then another, and it was finally the agony in her joints that cut through the panic and claustrophobia.

When the wave of abject, unreasoning terror finally broke and ebbed away, Kelly lay still again, her chest heaving as she tried to draw enough air through her nostrils to satisfy her body’s demands, knowing that if she gave into the panic again, she might black out.

Black out.

Part of her mind reached out, grasping at the thought, wanted to escape into the peace of sleep. But even as that temptation crept over her, seducing her, she began fighting against it as a moment ago she had fought the bindings on her wrists and ankles.

If she went to sleep, she would only wake up again; wake up to the terrors of the darkness, the pain in her body, the terror of not knowing where she was or why she was there. So she wouldn’t go to sleep, wouldn’t try to escape from the darkness around her to an even deeper one that might hold nightmares worse than the one she was living. Again she rose above the terror, refused to give in to the panic that had threatened to overwhelm her.

She was alive. That was all that counted. She was still alive, still able to breathe.

Still able to think.

She concentrated on her breathing, carefully taking one even breath after another until her lungs fell into a gentle rhythm.

She moved her legs in one direction, then another. When her feet touched nothing, the last of the claustrophobia drained away.

She wasn’t buried alive, wasn’t trapped in a grave.

She drew in another breath, and now her mind was clear enough to notice the odors filling the air.

Urine.

Her first thought was that she had wet herself, but a moment later she knew that wasn’t true.

But it wasn’t just urine she smelled — there was a musty odor as well, as if the air in the dark chamber was old and stale.

Then she heard a moan, so faint that for a second she wasn’t certain she’d heard it at all. Then it came again, and Kelly had to fight the urge to cry out herself, knowing that with the tape over her mouth the attempt would only bring on another attack of panic. So instead of crying out, she forced a long, low sound — almost a hum — from her nostrils.

Then she listened.

And heard nothing.

She hummed again, but again there was no response. Yet even in the silence that filled the darkness, she knew she hadn’t imagined it. She’d heard something — some sound — in the darkness.

But why was it silent now?

The silence itself became frightening as she imagined what might be lurking there in the darkness, creeping closer to her.

She closed her eyes, telling herself that by not seeing the darkness, it didn’t exist.

Light!

She would imagine light!

She focused her mind, thinking of the chandelier that hung over the dining room table at home, its crystals refracting the light into a brilliant rainbow of color that splashed into every corner of the room.

Slowly, deep in her mind, a pinpoint of light appeared, then began to expand until it seemed she was no longer in the dark chamber, but in the center of a great pool of light.

But then, as something scuttled over her legs, the light vanished and she was plunged back into darkness. And with the disappearance of light, her hope also began to fade away.

No one — not even herself — knew where she was.

No one — not even herself — knew what had happened to her.

Slowly, the truth dawned on her.

She was going to die.

Die alone.

Die in the darkness.

Exhausted, Kelly Conroe finally gave in to the terror and sobbed.

But no one heard her. No one, at least, who cared.

* * *

THE NEWS OF Kelly Conroe’s disappearance spread through Granite Falls like a virus, leaping from one house to another, transmitted partly over the telephone wires, but also by people — adults and teenagers alike — who darted out of their houses to dash next door, or down the block, or even a street or two away to tell their friends what had happened. As with all stories that spread through small towns, the facts, what few there were, were soon tainted with speculation, rumor, and gossip. The simple truth — that Kelly Conroe was late coming home and that her parents had so far been unable to locate her — was far too prosaic to be passed along unadorned. So with each telling of the tale, each iteration of the facts as the teller had heard them, a detail was expanded upon, a speculation added, an interpretation mixed in.

“She just vanished, right after school!” Sarah Balfour’s mother hadn’t intentionally misinterpreted her daughter’s report that Kelly had ignored her invitation to go for a Coke after song-leading practice. It was simply that Sarah was involved with so many things that Elaine Balfour had long ago come to think of “after school” as beginning at four-thirty or five, rather than ten past three.

“She didn’t speak to anyone all day!” Marge Carson, who heard the story from Elaine Balfour, had no idea that it was only at song-leading practice that Kelly’s friends had noticed she’d appeared distracted. She had no idea that Kelly had gone to song-leading practice at all.

“Everyone says Matt Moore had something to do with it!” That had started with Heather Pullman, who overheard her father’s side of the conversation when Gerry Conroe finally made good on his threat to call the police chief. “Mr. Conroe thinks Matt must have done something to her,” she’d whispered to Tiffany Vail, a chill running through her as she imagined what “something” might be. She hung up when she felt her father’s eyes on her, but it was too late.

“You know you’re never to repeat anything you hear me talking about,” he told her as he unplugged her telephone.

Though it was well-intended, Dan Pullman’s suspension of his daughter’s telephone privileges accomplished nothing, for the speculation on Matt Moore’s role in Kelly’s disappearance had begun even before Tiffany Vail passed it on to Sarah Balfour and all the rest of the song-leaders.

Gossip and the grapevine acted as prosecutor and jury, and as the story spread, the assumption that Matt Moore was involved pervaded everything.

“Everyone knows she broke up with him.”

“Everyone knows he was trying to get her back.”

“Everyone knows he killed his stepfather.”

Everyone knows… everyone knows… everyone knows…

An hour after Nancy Conroe began looking for Kelly, the disease had infected nearly everyone in Granite Falls, and nearly everyone agreed on what had happened.

Kelly Conroe had tried to break up with Matt Moore, and Matt refused to accept it. So after school he followed her, and when she refused even to speak to him, he’d “done something” to her.

No one would say he “killed” her, rather than “done something” to Kelly, but it didn’t matter. Everybody knew exactly what everybody else meant.

“Well, I don’t believe it,” Becky Adams announced. She’d been surprised when Eric Holmes came to the back door ten minutes earlier. Even though the Holmes family had lived next door for most of her life, and she and Eric grew up together, they’d never been friends.

Not like Matt and Kelly were friends, anyway.

Becky’s mother constantly speculated on how wonderful it would be if she eventually married the boy next door, but Becky knew it was never going to happen; Eric had always been part of a group that barely acknowledged her existence. So when he knocked at the back door, she’d been immediately suspicious, and as she listened to his version of Kelly’s disappearance, her suspicion coagulated into anger. “I don’t care what anybody says. Matt wouldn’t hurt Kelly. He wouldn’t hurt anybody!”

Eric rolled his eyes scornfully. “I was there the day he killed his dad, Becky!”

“Nobody even knows if he killed Mr. Hapgood,” Becky flared. “They don’t even know if it was Matt’s gun.”

“I’m telling you, I know what happened!” Eric shot back. “And what about his grandma?”

Becky’s expression hardened. “Nobody knows what happened to Mrs. Moore, so why are you and your friends saying Matt had something to do with it?”

“If he didn’t have anything to do with anything, how come he’s acting so weird?”

Becky’s fury grew. “How would you be acting if all your friends were treating you the way you’re treating Matt? I thought you were supposed to be his best friend! I thought — ” Before she could finish, Pete Arenson pushed through the hedge that separated the Adams’ backyard from Eric’s. “What do you want?” she demanded. “If you’re going to start talking about Matt, I don’t want to hear it.”

Pete barely even glanced at her. “You ready?” he asked Eric.

“Ready for what?” Becky asked.

“Pete and I are going to look for Kelly,” Eric told her.

Becky stared at the two boys she had known all her life and wondered why she’d ever wanted to be part of their crowd. But she knew why: because Matt was part of it. But not anymore. All the people Matt thought were his friends had turned their backs on him.

Suddenly Becky no longer wanted to be part of that group. “Jerks,” she said, not aware that she was speaking out loud.

“What?” Eric said. “What did you say?”

Becky flushed with embarrassment, but it quickly vanished. “I said you’re both jerks,” she repeated. “I thought you were Matt’s friends, but you’re not. If you were really his friends, you’d know he couldn’t have done any of the things you think he did. He couldn’t have hurt his dad or his grandmother, and there’s no way he could have done anything to Kelly!”

Eric Holmes stared balefully at Becky. “We may be jerks,” he said, “but at least we’re not stupid.” A moment later he and Pete Arneson were gone, disappearing into the night.