Nightshade

CHAPTER 25

THE HOUSE CLOSED around Matt, making him feel like a trapped animal. He moved restlessly from room to room, but wherever he went the voice followed him.

Suddenly, he felt an overwhelming urge to escape, to free himself from the confines of the walls around him, and the terrors they contained. He started toward the front door, then paused. Where would he go? Where would he be safe?

He had no friends — no one except Becky Adams.

No family, except for his mother.

Nowhere — no one — to turn to.

Turning away from the front door, he went into the living room, then into the den.

His eyes fell on his stepfather’s desk. In an instant he was a little boy again — only five years old — and it was the day he’d come to live in this house. It was so big it frightened him, but his stepfather took his hand and led him through all the rooms, showing him everything, encouraging him to open every closet, every drawer, so he’d know what was inside. By the time they went through the house, he hadn’t been frightened anymore.

But there was one drawer — the bottom drawer on the right-hand side of his stepfather’s desk — that hadn’t opened. He tried, but it was locked.

When he asked about it, his stepfather smiled at him. “Everybody has to have a few secrets,” he said, winking mysteriously. “And that drawer contains mine.”

From then on Matt had wondered what might be hidden in that bottom drawer, but his stepfather had never told him. “You’ll find out someday. When the time’s right, I’ll show you everything that’s in that drawer.”

Then, last week, his stepfather had said something else. They’d been talking about his birthday, and his stepfather grinned at him. “Maybe I’ll give you something really special,” he said, and Matt had wondered if his dad was going to come home. But that dream had lasted no more than a second. “Maybe I’ll finally show you what’s in my secret drawer,” his father went on, his expression turning serious.

Matt didn’t tell him that he’d stopped wondering about the drawer years ago, when he decided there probably wasn’t anything in it at all — at least nothing really wonderful. Probably just a bunch of old papers.

But now, as he gazed at the drawer, the memory of his aunt’s words came back to him, “He’s mine… he’s always been mine.” And he wondered if there might actually be something in the drawer.

Something about him.

Now Gerry Conroe’s shouted words came back to him. “Who is he? Who is Matt? Tell me the truth!”

Was that what his stepfather had hidden in the drawer? The truth? His pulse quickening, Matt knelt down and pulled at the drawer.

It was locked.

He pulled open the other drawers, searching for a key, but there was none. But the lock looked simple — very much like the lock on his own desk upstairs.

A lock that had never had a key, but that he’d figured out how to pick when he was only ten years old. All it took was a paper clip — one of the big ones, that wouldn’t bend easily.

He rummaged through the top drawer of the desk again and quickly found what he was looking for, almost lost in a jumble of rubber bands so old they were crumbling. Straightening the paper clip, he carefully inserted about three-eighths of an inch of its end into the crack between one of the drawers and the desk’s frame, then bent it ninety degrees. Inserting the bent end into the lock, he rotated it one way and then the other, feeling for the familiar resistance of the locking device. When the end of the pick caught, he tested it a couple of times, then gave the paper clip a quick twist.

The lock clicked open.

Matt pulled the drawer open, not knowing what to expect.

What he found was a file folder.

Still on his knees, he set it on top of the desk and opened it.

Photographs.

Photographs of himself.

In two of them he couldn’t have been more than two or three years old. Then there was one in which he looked to be about five, and in the others he was a little older.

But something wasn’t right. He looked more closely at the photos, and in an instant he knew: they weren’t of him. He didn’t recognize the backgrounds in any of them, or the other people who appeared in two of them. And now that he looked more closely, the boy looked most like him in those in which he was youngest. In the last one, where the boy looked to be about the same age as Matt was now, the resemblance was still strong, but it was clear that whoever the boy was, it wasn’t him.

Then who? Matt wondered. Where had the pictures come from? What did they mean?

He was going through them again, examining them even more closely, when he smelled it: his aunt’s perfume, filling his nostrils with its musky scent. He froze. He could feel her now — she was right behind him!

But that was impossible! She wasn’t real! She was dead! But as the scent in his nostrils grew stronger, he turned around.

His eyes widened in shock as he stared up at the figure that loomed above him. She looked almost exactly like the portrait of his aunt that hung in the guest room upstairs. Her hair — her makeup — everything about her looked the same. “Aunt Cynth — ” But before he could finish, the figure spoke.

“I’m not your aunt! I’m your mother! And I’ll never let you go! Never!”

Only now did Matt see the fireplace poker raised high and arcing down toward his head.

“You’re mine,” he heard. “You’ll always be mine.”

The weapon struck, and Matt crumpled to the floor.

* * *

BECKY ADAMS READ the page of her history text for what seemed the hundredth time, but it made no more sense to her now than it had an hour ago, when she first slammed the door of her room — not quite in her mother’s face, but almost — and flopped down on her bed to study. Except she hadn’t been studying at all; she’d been seeing the words, but the meaning hadn’t registered. Finally giving up, she tossed the book aside, skootched farther down on the bed, and stared up at the ceiling. The plaster was spiderwebbed with a network of cracks that, over the years, had provided her with hours of lonely entertainment as she searched for new pictures or traced new routes through an imaginary maze. But this afternoon even the patterns on the ceiling couldn’t lift her spirits.

And she’d felt so good when she came in after Matt walked her home from school, the warmth of his kiss still on her lips. But that good feeling hadn’t lasted after she closed the front door behind her.

“You come in here right this minute, Rebecca Anne!” her mother had commanded from the living room.

Her mother’s use of both her names told Becky she was angry. Then she saw the small glass of sherry on the table next to her mother’s chair and understood. She tried to pull her eyes away from the nearly empty glass, but it was too late.

“Don’t you get that look on your face, young lady,” Phyllis Adams said, the edge in her voice telling Becky this wasn’t her mother’s first glass of wine. “If I want to have a little treat for myself in the afternoon, it’s nobody’s business but my own.”

“I didn’t say anything — ” Becky began.

“You didn’t have to! Don’t you think I can see?” Before Becky could answer, she plunged on. “I can see far better than you think I can.” Her eyes fixed accusingly on her daughter. “I saw you kissing that boy.” She spat the last word out as if it tasted bad.

“What do you mean, ‘that boy?’ ” Becky protested, mimicking her mother’s tone, and realizing her mistake too late to avoid it. “It was Matt Moore. You like Matt! You’ve always liked him!”

“Don’t you sass me, Rebecca Anne.” Phyllis had pulled back the curtain over the front window just far enough to peer out, as if to make certain Matt was no longer there. “Everybody knows what Matt did to his father and grandmother. And now poor Kelly Conroe’s missing — I feel so bad for Nancy Conroe, I can hardly bear it.” Her eyes glistened with sudden tears, and she picked up the decanter that stood next to her glass, pouring enough to raise the level in the glass past the halfway point. “How could you kiss him?” she asked. “If he gets the wrong idea about you — ” She shuddered, unable even to bring herself to articulate what might happen to her daughter.

But Becky had had enough. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about, Mother.”

“Don’t you take that tone with me, young lady.”

“Then don’t talk about things you don’t know anything about! Especially not when you’ve been drinking.”

Even now, Becky could remember the look of outrage that came over her mother’s face, a look so seemingly genuine that if Becky hadn’t seen it a hundred times before — when her mother had been so drunk she could hardly stand up — she might have believed it.

“How dare you?” Phyllis raged. “Just because I might have a little sip every now and then doesn’t mean — ”

“Fine, Mother,” Becky said, holding up her hands as if to stop the denials she knew might well go on for several minutes. “But you’re still wrong about Matt. He’s — ”

“He’s a killer, and a rapist, and God only knows what else! And when your father gets home — ”

That was when Becky had gone to her room, slammed the door, and flopped down onto the bed to study. Why bother to listen to it anymore? She knew what would happen when her father got home. He’d hear her mother out, let her ramble on until she ran out of steam, then come in and try to gloss over the whole thing, managing to apologize to his daughter without quite condemning his wife. “Your mother’s a little high-strung sometimes,” he’d say. “You just have to try not to upset her.”

Now, still sprawled out on her bed, Becky heard her father’s car pull into the driveway. She heard its door slam, the back door open and close, and her father call out to her mother. Then she heard the murmur of voices drifting in from the living room. She could practically count the seconds until she’d hear the soft knock that meant it was time for her father’s not-quite-apology for her mother. Except that when it finally came, it wasn’t a soft knock at all. It was a sharp rap, followed immediately by her father opening the door and stepping into her room.

“Your mother tells me you were with Matt Moore this afternoon,” Frank Adams began, his forehead creased with deep worry lines.

Becky’s jaw almost dropped open in surprise, and she sat up, swinging around to face her father. As the anticipation of his apology faded, she felt the anger that had been simmering for the last hour surge to a boil. “I don’t believe it! You’ve always liked Matt — in fact, you’ve always wanted to know why I don’t go out with him!”

Frank Adams’s eyes narrowed defensively. “That was before — ” he said, but his daughter was on her feet now.

“Before what?” she demanded, her voice rising. “Before everybody decided he did all kinds of horrible things? Well, if he did them all, how come he hasn’t been arrested?” The memory of the misery in Matt’s face and voice as they’d stood on the sidewalk while he confessed his own doubts rose to the forefront of Becky’s mind. “He didn’t do anything, Daddy! If he had, he’d have told — ” She cut her words off abruptly, but it was too late.

“Told who?” her father asked. “Told you? Why would he do that? And if he didn’t do anything, then what happened to Bill Hapgood? He was there when Bill got shot! He was standing right there, and he shot a deer that was between him and Bill! It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. I’m not saying he did anything to Emily Moore — God knows she might have just wandered off. But what about Kelly Conroe? She wasn’t the kind of girl who’d just take off, so something must have happened to her. And Matt is the only person that makes sense!”

Becky’s eyes glittered with fury. “It does not!” she insisted. “Maybe Matt did shoot his dad. But even if he did, it was just an accident! And anybody could have picked up Kelly — if she was walking home by herself, anyone could have come along and picked her up!”

“That’s not what happened,” Frank Adams insisted.

Becky’s temper snapped. “How would you know what happened?” she shot back. “You don’t even know what happens in your own house! You don’t even know that Mom’s drunk all the time! All she has to do is deny it — just claim she had a ‘bad day’ or something — and you make every excuse you can think of for her! But not for Matt! Even though you’ve known him all his life, and always told me he’s exactly the kind of boy I should marry. Well, guess what, Daddy? I’m not going to marry Matt, because he’s never going to ask me! Why would he, with the kind of parents I have?”

When she stormed out of the house, neither of her parents made a move to stop her. Her father was too stunned by her outburst to do anything but watch her go. Her mother was too drunk even to know she’d gone.

Her fury still raging, Becky set off down the street. If she was the only friend Matt still had, he was also the only friend she had.

* * *

CYNTHIA MOORE MOVED slowly through the house, carefully examining each of the rooms, deciding what she would keep and what must be changed. Some of the pieces were really quite good — she recognized them as family heirlooms that had undoubtedly been in the Hapgood family for generations. But others — both the Queen Anne chair in the living room, which was obviously a reproduction, and the not-quite-Chippendale sideboard that stood gracelessly in the dining room — would have to go. Not that she was surprised to find the less than perfect furnishings: Joan had never had any taste, and undoubtedly had never noticed that the pieces she’d put in the house simply weren’t up to standard. What she did find surprising was that Bill Hapgood had allowed Joan’s taste to taint the house so badly.

When she finished her tour of the downstairs rooms, she returned to the second floor. First she went to the master suite, into which she would move her things this very day. Going to the closet, she pulled a large suitcase off the top shelf — second rate, like everything else Joan had surrounded herself with — and began filling it with the contents of Joan’s dresser. Not all of it had to go, of course. There were a few things — some lingerie, a few silk blouses, and some very good cashmere sweaters — that she recognized as having been gifts from Bill Hapgood. But the things Joan herself had bought all disappeared into the suitcase, just as Joan herself had vanished a little more than an hour ago, when Cynthia had finally come to the end of her patience and decided to take over completely. Having made room for her things in the dresser, Cynthia started back to the guest room to deal with the mess Joan had made. Her hand was on the knob when she heard the front doorbell chime softly from below. For a moment she was tempted not to answer it at all — the house was hardly in condition for her to receive visitors yet. But when the doorbell rang a second time, she sighed, went downstairs, carefully put on her most gracious smile, and opened the door.

The girl standing on the porch was about Matt’s age, and struck her as unfortunately plain, her hair as badly done as Joan’s had always been. She wore clothing Cynthia considered drab, the kind of clothing she had always hated. She was about to close the door, but before she did, she decided to retrieve a name for the girl from Joan’s memory and talk to her, if only for a moment.

Becky.

Becky Adams.

She opened the door a little wider, adjusting her smile to project a degree of cordiality, if not quite friendliness. The girl, after all, was not the sort of person toward whom Cynthia Moore would ever have been more than polite.

Becky Adams looked uncertainly at Joan Hapgood. Though she recognized her immediately, she appeared different to Becky than the last time she’d seen her, at Mr. Hapgood’s funeral. She had changed the way she did her hair, putting it up in a French twist, and her makeup was different too. It almost looked like she wasn’t wearing any, except that her cheekbones seemed a little higher, and her eyes looked wider apart.

Though Becky had always thought Matt’s mother was pretty, she now seemed truly beautiful. Even the way she stood made her look different, and left Becky feeling self-conscious about her own plain features and slumping posture.

“What is it, Becky?”

Becky frowned uncertainly. Even Mrs. Hapgood’s voice sounded different — low, and sort of throaty. “Is — I was wondering if Matt’s home,” she said, her voice faltering.

Cynthia hesitated, then pulled the door further open and stepped back. “I’m afraid he’s upstairs in the shower, but I’m sure he’ll want to see you. Won’t you come in?”

Becky remained where she was for a moment. It almost seemed to her that the woman inviting her into the house wasn’t Mrs. Hapgood at all. But of course she could see that it was. She stepped inside.

“Perhaps you’d like to wait in here,” Cynthia said, guiding her through the wide archway that led to the spacious living room. She gestured Becky into one of the wingbacked chairs that flanked the fireplace, and lowered herself onto the edge of the one opposite it. “I’m sure Matt won’t be more than a few minutes,” she went on, her eyes fixing on Becky.

Becky fidgeted under her gaze. “Maybe I should come back some other time,” she said, starting to get up. “Or you could just have Matt call me.”

Cynthia leaned forward, holding out her hand as if to stop Becky. “Oh, no,” she insisted. “You mustn’t go — you just got here, and I know Matt wouldn’t want to miss you.”

Uncertain what to do, Becky nervously eased herself back into the chair. Then the demeanor of the woman sitting opposite her changed.

“You’re in love with my son, aren’t you?” Cynthia Moore asked, her eyes hardening, her voice suddenly cold.

“No!” Becky protested. “I — ”

“Of course you are. It shows all over you. But it won’t do you any good. He belongs to me!”

Becky’s stomach suddenly felt hollow, and a chill ran through her. What was Mrs. Hapgood talking about? In a cold sweat that made her body feel clammy, Becky stood up. She was so frightened, her legs would barely support her. “I better go home,” she said, her voice quavering.

Opposite her, Mrs. Hapgood rose from her chair, her eyes still fixed on her, but it semed to Becky that she was seeing something, or someone, else.

“Joan wanted him,” she said, “and Bill wanted him, and that terrible Conroe girl. They all wanted Matt, but none of them could have him.” Her eyes bored into Becky, who was trembling now. “You can’t have him either, you pathetic child. He’s mine, and he always will be.”

Becky tried to back away, tried to turn and run to the front door, but her body refused to obey her. It wasn’t until Mrs. Hapgood moved toward her, her hands reaching out, that Becky finally came back to life and wheeled away. But her foot caught on the thick Oriental rug and she fell, sprawling facedown. She tried to scramble to her feet, but by then Mrs. Hapgood was on top of her, sitting astride her, pinning her to the floor.

Then she felt the woman’s hands clutching at her hair, pulling her head up.

“Do you understand?” Cynthia screamed. “You can’t have him!” She slammed Becky’s head onto the floor, then raised it. “I won’t let you have him!”

Again she slammed Becky’s face into the carpet, and a howl of pain and terror erupted from the girl’s throat.

“No one can have him!”

She smashed Becky’s head against the floor again.

“He’s mine… he’ll always be mine… I’ll never let anyone take him away again.”

When Cynthia’s fury was finally spent, Becky Adams lay still on the carpet.