The Right Hand of Evil

CHAPTER 23

It was nearly six when the back door opened and Jared entered the kitchen. Janet looked up from the salad she was making, wondering what he would say about his lateness. Until recently, she wouldn't have wondered about it-Jared would have told her. But recently, especially since he'd moved into the basement room, he'd been disappearing downstairs as soon as he came home from school, and staying there until supper-time. And after supper, unless he went off to meet Luke somewhere, he'd vanish back downstairs.

"What's he doing down there?" she'd asked Ted a few days ago.

"It's all right, Janet. Let him have his space," Ted told her. "He's growing up. And no matter what the politically correct view might be, boys and girls are different. You can't expect Jared to be like you." A mischievous sparkle lit his eyes. "Of course, we don't want him to be quite like me, either, do we?"

"Lord, no," Janet replied without thinking, and then old habit had brought up her defenses as she waited for him to bristle at what she'd implied. But he only smiled at her.

"Every day I thank my lucky stars that you put up with it as long as you did. And don't worry-whatever Jared's doing down there, I'm sure he's not drinking. Believe me, I've had enough experience, so I'd know. I'd see it in him even faster than you'd see it in me if I fell off the wagon."

"But why does he need a lock on his door?" she pressed. "Kim certainly doesn't seem to need one."

"Territorialism," Ted had told her. "It's like an animal marking the boundaries of its hunting grounds."

Janet sighed. "Well, I guess a lock on the door is better than that." But nothing Ted told her helped: a gulf had formed between Jared and the rest of the family, and it seemed to be widening every day.

Now, as Jared passed through the kitchen on his way to the butler's pantry and the dining room beyond, he didn't even speak to her, not even to say hello, much less offer an explanation of why he was so late coming home.

"Jared?" When her son didn't even slow down, she spoke more sharply. "Jared!"

He stopped, but didn't turn around.

"Look at me, please," Janet said, her voice soft, but pitched to let him know she wasn't in a mood to put up with any nonsense.

He turned to face her.

"Father Bernard called me this afternoon," she said.

Jared shrugged. "So?"

"'So?" Janet echoed. "Is that all you can say?"

"What do you want me to say?" Jared demanded. "Sister Clarence got pissed off at me, and so did Father Bernard, so I spent the afternoon cleaning the church. That's my problem, not yours."

Janet's eyes narrowed. "Your problems are my problems. I'm your mother."

Jared's eyes flashed with sudden fury. "Jeez, Mom! I'm not a little kid! I'm almost sixteen years old!"

"And until we came here, you've never gotten in trouble at school."

"I'd think you'd be proud of that, instead of climbing all over my back," Jared snapped, turning his back to her. "I'm going down to my room."

"Jared!" Janet exclaimed. "When I'm talking to you, I-" Catching sight of Molly, whose eyes were wide with worry over the anger in the voices she was hearing, Janet scooped the little girl into her arms. "It's all right, sweetheart," she crooned. "Mommy's not mad at you, and neither is Jared. Nobody's mad at you."

Taking the little girl by the hand, she led her into the library, which served Ted as a temporary office, and turned the little girl over to her father. "How about looking after Molly for a few minutes? I have to deal with Jared."

Ted stood up from the desk. "Maybe I should take care of it-" he began, but Janet shook her head.

"This is between him and me. Besides, I'm finally going to get a look at his room."

"Okay." Ted sighed, lifting Molly into his lap. "But I warn you-teenage boys' rooms can get pretty weird."

"Whatever I find, I'm sure I'll be able to cope with it," Janet replied. Unwilling to reopen any of the slowly healing wounds in her marriage, she resisted the urge to remind him that she'd been dealing with Jared pretty much by herself almost since the day he was born. Leaving Molly and Ted in the library, she headed for the basement.

She stopped at the top of the stairs, peering down into the shadows rendered deeper by the glare of the single naked bulb screwed into a socket in the wall halfway down. Why would anyone want to live down here? she wondered as she went down the creaking stairs. She tried to imagine what it must be like in the middle of the night, and shuddered at the thought of the spiders that must be creeping around. She paused at Jared's door, staring at the gleaming brass lock that she'd first noticed a few days ago. But at least there was no KEEP OUT sign, like the one he'd put on the door to his room when he was six. She reached for the doorknob, then changed her mind and knocked softly instead.

A moment later she heard Jared's voice, muffled by the door. "What?"

"May I come in?" she called.

A silence, then: "It's not locked."

Twisting the knob, she pushed the door open, stepped forward, then stopped short. Whatever she'd been expecting-and she wasn't sure if she'd been expecting anything in particular-it wasn't this.

For a single, utterly disorienting moment, Janet felt as if she'd stepped into a void. A wave of vertigo swept over her, and she instinctively put out a hand to steady herself. Then, as her eyes began to refocus, her brain to straighten out the signals it was receiving, the dizziness passed.

The room was painted black.

Not a glossy black, which might have created some interesting light patterns, but a dull, flat black that absorbed practically every ray of light the overhead lamp put out. The rafters that had been exposed the first time she'd been down here had disappeared: Jared-or, more likely, Ted-had filled the spaces between them with sound-deadening insulation, held in place by sheets of plywood painted the same flat black as the walls. The bulb that had once been suspended from a hanging wire was now screwed into a socket mounted on the ceiling, and it was covered by a shade. The shade, though, was nothing more than a red paper lantern, which only served to cast a fiery glow over the room. "Is that thing safe?" Janet heard herself ask, and immediately wished she could retract the words.

Too late.

"It's not gonna burn the house down," Jared said sullenly. "I checked it out with Dad."

As if he'd know, Janet thought, and then felt guilty about the disloyal thought. In truth, Ted had learned a lot more about reconstruction since they'd moved to St. Albans than she would have thought possible. There didn't seem to be a single question about wiring, plumbing, heating, or anything else relating to the house that he didn't have an answer for. So far, every one of his answers had proved to be correct.

Janet's eyes swept the rest of the room. There was a bed in one corner-at least most of a bed, for Jared hadn't bothered to put a frame under the box springs and mattress he and Luke had dragged down from the second floor. There were a couple of other mattresses-apparently rescued from the attic, or some part of the huge basement she herself hadn't yet explored-that were half folded up the walls to form rudimentary sofas.

There was a large table, and Jared had built what looked like some kind of workbench along the wall opposite the windows.

Against another wall stood an armoire that Janet remembered from one of the second-floor bedrooms, and a chest of drawers she couldn't recall having seen before.

The windows were covered with black paper.

How can he stand it? she wondered. No light, no air, a musty odor. But she checked herself, remembering her purpose.

She scanned the room again, searching for something-anything-she could relate to, finally fixing on the desk lamp that stood on the table next to Jared's backpack, and on a floor lamp next to the bed.

"Well, at least you can still find enough light to read," she said as brightly as she could.

Jared, sprawled out on the bed with his arms crossed on his chest, glared at her. "I like it, okay?" he said. "And Dad said I could do anything with it I wanted to, as long as you couldn't hear my music upstairs."

"But I'm sure he didn't mean-"

"Can you hear anything?" Jared interrupted. "Do I bother you?"

"No, but-"

"Then what's wrong with it?" he demanded.

Other than the fact that I can't see, I can't breathe, and I feel as if the walls are closing in around me, I suppose there's nothing wrong with it, Janet said to herself. Then she remembered what Ted had told her before she came down. "Teenage boys' rooms can get pretty weird." It wasn't as if she hadn't been warned. "I guess nothing's wrong with it," she finally replied. She took a tentative step toward him. "Truce, okay? I'm just worried about you, that's all. It seems like ever since we came here, you've…" She searched for the right word, but couldn't find anything better than the one already in her mind. "It just seems as though you're different, that's all. And I'm worried about you."

For several seconds Jared said nothing. When he finally looked at her, Janet saw the same fury glittering in his eyes as she'd seen upstairs. "Just leave me alone," he said. "Okay, Ma? Just leave me alone!"

A painful memory broke into Janet's consciousness. His father, she thought. He sounds just like his father! But it was more than the words Jared had spoken, which she must have heard a thousand times-ten thousand times-from Ted. It even went beyond the dark blaze in his eyes. It was an aura that seemed to have gathered around him; the same kind of impenetrable miasma that had surrounded Ted when he was drinking, making it impossible for her to reach him. Instinctively, she took a step toward Jared, but quickly stopped herself, remembering all the rebuffs from Ted over the years.

Was it possible Jared had begun drinking? She tried to reject the thought even as it popped into her head, but scanned the room once more, this time searching for a bottle or a glass.

Drugs?

She sniffed the air, searching for any sign of the sweet pungency of marijuana. All she smelled was the stale, musty odor that permeated the basement. But Jared wouldn't take drugs.

Would he?

Certainly she wouldn't have thought so a few weeks ago; in fact, if anyone had even suggested the possibility, she would have rejected it out of hand. Jared had lived through his father's drinking, and-

– and the children of alcoholics were far more likely to fall victim to the disease than those who hadn't grown up with it.

Not Jared, she prayed silently. Oh, God, please don't let it happen to Jared.

She wanted to reach out to her son, to hold him, to tell him that they could deal with whatever was going on inside him. But once again she saw the fury glowing in his eyes, and the impenetrable mask his face had become. Right now, she knew, there was no use trying to talk to him. Right now, he was his father's son. "Okay," she said. "I'll call you when supper's ready."

She backed out of the room, closed the door, and started up the stairs. She was halfway up when she heard the sound of the lock clicking.

Locking me out, she thought bleakly. Locking me out of his life.

Supper that evening turned into an eerie echo of all the suppers the Conways had survived when Ted was drinking. Though it was something none of them mentioned-as if they'd reached a silent understanding that by not talking about it they didn't have to admit it existed-Janet, Jared, and Kim had all felt a sense of reprieve, if not relief, when Ted didn't come home for supper, for when he did, the tension that hung over the table was often so thick that even one of the steak knives wouldn't have cut it. Even Molly had always sensed it, and no matter how hard Jared and Kim tried to keep their baby sister distracted, she invariably wound up fussing or making enough of a mess that Ted would demand she be taken away from the table. Recently, though, Molly's favorite place had become the spot just to the right of her father, who seemed to have tapped into an apparently inexhaustible well of patience that none of his children had seen before, and that Janet herself assumed had dried up years earlier.

But now all the old tension was back, except that instead of hanging like a dark curtain between Janet and Ted, the strain had fallen over Kim and Jared. Ever since the twins had first begun to talk, the supper table was their favorite place to recount the events of their day, each of them finishing the other's sentences, each picking up on his or her sibling's thoughts. Now, though, a silence hung over them. It wasn't the kind of comfortable lag in the conversation that used to occur when both of them seemed to run out of things to say at the same moment. Rather, the silence felt like the uneasy quiet of nighttime on a battlefield.

Janet felt as if she and Kim were crouched low in a foxhole, listening for something that might betray the approach of some enemy that neither of them could quite see but both of them knew was there. Now and then they would exchange a wary glance, and Janet could see the worry in her daughter's eyes.

Jared had been the last to arrive at the table, and then he'd hardly spoken, barely even acknowledging Molly's loud greeting. Instead, he sank into his chair and began eating, stolidly moving the food from his plate to his mouth.

Molly, picking up on the mood at the table, quickly began fussing. Then, halfway through the meal, she picked up a fistful of mashed potatoes and hurled it at her brother.

Janet and Kim both froze, their eyes meeting.

For a split second Jared seemed not to notice the wad of potatoes and gravy oozing down his chin, but then he looked up at his baby sister. Molly, pleased finally to be capturing her brother's attention, smiled happily and waited to see what Jared would do. But as Kim and Janet watched-and Jared's eyes fixed on his baby sister-the smile faded from Molly's face, and then she began screaming.

It was a high-pitched wail, the kind of sound a cornered animal might make just before a predator leaps upon it and tears it to shreds.

Janet rose from her chair to pick the child up. But before she could get to Molly, Ted had boosted the little girl out of the high chair and was cradling her against his chest. Molly's arms were coiled around his neck as she clung to him, her face buried in his shoulder as her body quivered with frightened sobs.

"There there, sweetheart," Ted crooned. "It's okay, Molly. Daddy's here, and nothing's going to hurt you."

As Molly settled down, Janet turned furiously on Jared. "What did you do?" she demanded. "What did you do that made her start screaming like that?"

"Me?" Jared shot back. "I didn't do anything! She's the one who threw the food. Why don't you get mad at her?" Standing, he wiped the last of the gravy from his cheek, crushed his napkin, and hurled it onto the table. As he stalked out of the kitchen, Scout, who was curled up on his blanket in the corner, tensed, then snarled at Jared.

"Shut up," Jared told the dog as he passed by. "Don't even think about it!"

Scout cowered back as if he'd been struck, his snarl dying away to a whimper.

When Jared was gone, Janet turned to Kim, whose face was ashen, her eyes wide. "What was it?" Janet asked. "Did you see what happened?"

"I-I don't know," Kim breathed, her voice shaking. "It was-I don't know. It was just the way he looked at Molly." Her eyes met her mother's, and Janet could see the fear in them. "Mom, it was awful. It was…" She paused as if trying to find the right words, then shook her head helplessly. "He looked like he wanted to kill her, Mom." Tears were running down Kim's face now. She slid her chair back and fled from the kitchen.

Janet turned to her husband. Ted, still rocking Molly in his arms and crooning softly into her ear, seemed not to even notice that his two older children had left the room. Suddenly, her worries about Jared's sullen behavior coalesced into anger. How could Ted simply ignore the scene Jared had caused? "Do you still think everything's just fine with Jared?" she demanded. "Or were you drunk for so many years that you don't even know how normal families behave anymore?" Regretting her words the moment she spoke them, Janet braced herself against the eruption of Ted's temper she expected her words to trigger. But again no trace of the old Ted appeared. Instead, he offered her a sympathetic smile, and when he spoke, his tone was as soothing as the crooning he'd just used to calm Molly.

"Take it easy, hon. It was just a little squabble."

"Little squabble?" Janet echoed. "You call that a little squabble? Molly was scared to death!"

"And Jared was covered with potatoes and gravy," Ted reminded her.

"He wasn't covered at all," Janet objected. "He had a couple of blobs of-"

"All right, 'a couple of blobs,' " Ted agreed. He transferred Molly back into the high chair, ignoring the food stains that had spread across his own shirt as he'd held the little girl close and dabbed her tears away with a napkin. Then he began spooning food into her mouth. "All Jared did was glare at her," he reminded Janet. The beginning of a grin played around the corners of his mouth. "Consider yourself lucky he didn't sling some peas back at her, or maybe an even bigger blob of potatoes. We could have had a major food fight on our hands."

"For God's sake, Ted!" Janet flared. "He terrified Molly! He even terrified Scout! And have you seen his room? What is he doing down there? It looks like-oh, God, I don't know what it looks like!"

Then Ted's arms were around her and he was cuddling her as gently as he'd held his baby daughter moments before. "Hey, take it easy," he said. He tipped her face up so she was looking into his eyes. "Nothing that terrible happened. It wasn't anything more than a little squabble, and it's over now." His eyes held hers, and the fears she felt for Jared began to melt away. "There's nothing wrong with Jared," Ted assured her again. "He's just a perfectly normal teenage boy. When you think about it, we've been incredibly lucky at just how normal he is." His finger stroked her cheek, and she felt a thrill run through her body. "When I think about the problems we could have had…" He let his voice trail off, and was just bending over to kiss her when there was a loud knocking at the back door. "Don't move," Ted whispered. "Just hold my place and I'll be right back."

Ted opened the door and saw Luke Roberts standing nervously on the porch. "Is Jared here?" the boy asked.

"Down in his room." Ted held the door wide open so Luke could come in. The boy hurried through the kitchen, barely nodding to Janet, and disappeared through the butler's pantry, toward the stairs to the basement. As soon as he was gone, Ted's arms were once more around his wife. "Told you I'd be right back," he murmured.

Janet looked worriedly up into his face. "After the trouble they got into at school, don't you think we ought to send Luke home? At least tonight?"

Once again Ted's eyes sought out her own and held them. "If we did, Jared would be gone in an hour," he told her. "Better to know where they are, don't you think?"

"But-" Janet began, but Ted didn't let her finish.

"No buts," he said. "Let's just clean up the kitchen, and put Molly to bed. And maybe," he said, putting on a wide smile, "I'll put you to bed, too."

As she and Ted set to work, all the worries-the fears-Janet had felt a few minutes earlier drained from her. By the time she and Ted went upstairs half an hour later, all she was thinking about was the way Ted had looked at her, and the feeling his touch-just his finger, stroking her cheek-had brought to her body.

Everything else was forgotten.