Nightshade

  Should he just go in? But why not? It was his house, wasn’t it?

  He opened the door and stepped inside.

  And instantly noticed the change.

  The warmth — the sense of welcome and comfort — was gone.

  Though everything in the house looked exactly the same, everything had also somehow changed.

  Something doesn’t want me here!

  The thought seemed to come out of nowhere, but even as Bill tried to banish it, it took root in his mind. It was as if some kind of hostile force had crept into the house, and as he moved from room to room on the first floor, the feeling that this was no longer his home grew stronger. But that was ridiculous! The furniture was exactly as it had been for decades; the paintings were in their proper places on the walls. In the dining room, the table was set, laid with the best china and his great-grandmother’s sterling flatware, along with the Venetian crystal his grandparents had shipped back from their honeymoon tour long before World War II.

  He started out of the dining room, then abruptly turned back.

  There were seven places set at the table instead of six.

  So Emily Moore would be joining them for dinner.

  Again Bill felt an urge to leave, and again he put it aside. She’s Matt’s grandmother, he reminded himself. She has a right to be here.

  “Hello?” he called out as he started up the wide stairs toward the second floor. “Anybody home?”

  Joan suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs, but before she could speak, he heard his mother-in-law calling out from her room: “Make him go away. I don’t want to see him! Not after what he did to me!”

  “What I did to her?” Bill said, hurrying up the stairs. Then, as Joan stepped back and the light from the chandelier in the corridor shone full on her face, he stopped short. His wife’s face was ashen, and she seemed to have aged ten years in the short time since he’d last seen her. “Joan? Are you all right? You look — ”

  Joan’s chin trembled, and for a moment Bill thought she would start to cry, but she regained control of herself. “I’m just a little tired, that’s all,” she said. “I’ll be all right.” She managed a slight smile. “And it’s not you she’s angry at. Right now, it’s my father.”

  “Your father? But your father’s — ”

  Joan held up a hand to silence him. “She has Alzheimer’s, remember? She’s been pretty good the last couple of days, but today — ” Her voice broke and she shrugged helplessly. “She’s been muttering about my father all day. She seems to think he’s coming home, and when she heard your voice, well . . .” Her words trailed off into silence, and Bill pulled her into his arms.

  “This can’t go on,” he told her, gently stroking her face as if to caress the strain away. “Look what she’s doing to you. And from what I’m hearing about Matt — ”

  Joan pulled away from him. “I thought you were just coming to his dinner party,” she said, her voice taking on a bitter edge. “But if you’re going to start about Mother, maybe you shouldn’t stay. She’s just having a bad day, but by tomorrow she’ll be fine.” In a near desperate tone she added: “She will be. I know she will be!”

  Before Bill could say anything, Emily Moore’s voice erupted again. “Cynthia? Where are you?”

  “I’m coming, Mother!” Joan called. As Bill opened his mouth to say something, she shook her head. “Don’t,” she pleaded. “Sometimes it’s easier if I just pretend to be my sister. At least she’s always nice to Cynthia.” She moved toward the door to her mother’s room, then turned back. “Are you staying for dinner?” she asked. “But before you answer, remember — I don’t want to talk about Mother tonight. For Matt’s sake, let’s just try not to fight about her, all right?”

  Bill nodded, managing a smile. “For Matt’s sake,” he agreed quietly.

  While Joan went to tend to her mother, he went to his closet and began laying out his tuxedo.

  The Hapgood tradition, he decided, could survive Emily Moore.

  Whether his marriage could remained to be seen.

  * * *

  MATT LAY SPRAWLED on his bed, staring up at the ceiling.

  Why the hell did they have to have a dinner party, anyway?

  But he knew why — because tomorrow he’d turn sixteen, and whenever a Hapgood boy turned sixteen, they had a dinner party the night before.

  And then they went hunting.

  And then they played a round at the Granite Falls Golf Club.

  And then they had a big party for all the birthday boy’s friends.

  It was the way his dad’s family always did it.

  Except Bill Hapgood wasn’t his dad. Not anymore. He was just his stepfather, and three weeks ago he’d walked out, leaving him with his mother and his grandmother.

  And everything had turned to crap.

  From that night, when he’d watched his dad leave without even looking up at him, let alone saying good-bye, nothing had been right. At first he told himself the nightmares would go away — that they’d just begun again because of what had happened with his parents. After a week, he thought, he’d get used to the way things were and the nightmares would stop. But when they were still plaguing him in the middle of the second week, he began dreading going to bed, knowing what would come. For a while the house would be silent, but it wasn’t the kind of quiet he was used to, when you could hear owls hooting softly as they hunted, and listen to the gentle rustling of the wind in the trees outside the window. Instead it was a foreboding silence that enveloped the house.

  But soon it would be broken by his grandmother’s voice. At first Matt had gone out into the hall to listen, in case she needed help, but every night it was the same. His grandmother was always in the room that was filled with his aunt’s stuff, always talking to his mother’s sister as if she were actually there. So he would go back to his room and try to go to sleep.

  And every night the dreams would come. Dreams he could never quite remember in the morning, but that left him so tired he could barely stay awake at school and couldn’t concentrate on the lessons even if he managed to keep his eyes open.

  This week he’d actually failed a history test.

  It should have been an easy test — history was his favorite subject, and he’d been studying the textbook the night before the quiz. Except that even as he pored over the book, trying to memorize the major tenets of the Monroe Doctrine, the first tentacles of the terror of the nightmares were already creeping up from the dark depths of his subconscious, distracting him from his work, setting his nerves on edge, making his skin crawl as if some unseen creature were slithering over him.

  So he failed the test in the morning, and then after lunch Mrs. Clemens wanted to know why his math assignments — always perfect until three weeks ago — were no longer being turned in at all.

  And today Ted Stevens had dropped him from the first string of the football team.

  Shit!

  The last thing he felt like doing was putting on his tux and sitting in the dining-room pretending like there was something to celebrate!

  Screw it — maybe he’d just stay in his room. If they wanted to pretend to have a party, let them do it by themselves.

  There was a rap at his door then, and he heard his mother’s voice. “Matt? The Conroes will be here in fifteen minutes!”

  He hesitated. Should he tell her he was sick? But he wasn’t — not really. Just tired, and pissed off, and —

  — and it would just make things worse if he didn’t show up downstairs. “Okay,” he sighed as he rolled off the bed.

  He put the studs in his shirt, put it on, then pulled on his trousers and fastened the braces. He was still struggling with the bow-tie when he heard the muffled sound of the doorbell ringing. Jerking the half-done knot loose, he replaced the tie with a pre-tied one on a ribbon that fastened under his collar, pulled on his socks and shoes, and arrived in the living room just as his father was pouring drinks for Kelly’s parents.

  His gra
ndmother, her tiny body all but lost in one of the wingback chairs flanking the fireplace, seemed unaware that there was anyone else in the room at all, not even looking up when he came in.

  “How come you didn’t wait for me after school?” Kelly asked as he found a Coke in the refrigerator under the bar.

  Matt shot a quick glance at his parents. He hadn’t even spoken to his dad yet, nor had he told his mother about what happened at school that afternoon. “I just didn’t feel like it,” he said, trying to signal Kelly to drop the subject.

  “ ‘Didn’t feel like it?’ ” Gerry Conroe echoed, his brow arching as his lips curved into a tight smile. “I’m not sure I like your attitude, young man! That’s my daughter you’re talking about!”

  Though Conroe tried to make it sound like he was joking, Matt still felt the sting of the words. His face flushed, but Kelly leaped to his defense before he could say anything. “He didn’t do anything wrong, Daddy! It’s just that Mr. Stevens kicked him off — ”

  “I quit the team,” Matt cut in quickly, but it was already too late.

  “You quit?” Joan Hapgood asked. “But you love playing football! Why would you quit?”

  Matt felt his face burning. “It — I — ” His eyes darted from his mother’s face to his stepfather’s, then back to his mother’s. “It was just taking up too much of my time, that’s all.”

  “From what I’ve been hearing, maybe you’re right,” Bill Hapgood said. “It seems your grades haven’t been what they might be lately.”

  Matt felt his face burn hotter, and his temper began to smolder. “How would you know about my grades?” he demanded. “It’s not like you’ve been around here to find out what’s going on!”

  “Matt! Don’t speak to your father like — ”

  Matt’s angry eyes shifted to his mother. “My father? I don’t even know who my father is, remember?”

  “Now see here, young man,” Gerry Conroe began, his own face darkening with anger. “Boys don’t speak to their mothers in that tone of — ”

  Bill Hapgood raised his hands as if in supplication, saying, “Can we all just hold on a minute? This is a party, remember? A sixteenth birthday party, and in my family — ” He hesitated, and his eyes fixed on Matt. “ — and this is my family — sixteenth birthdays are important. So let’s just not worry about anything tonight except having a good time. All right?”

  An uncomfortable silence fell over the room, and it seemed as though everyone was waiting for someone else to break it. Nancy Conroe was the one who finally spoke. “I agree with Bill,” she declared, struggling to infuse her voice with a gaiety that no one was feeling. She raised her glass. “Happy birthday, Matt. And may we all celebrate many more of them together.”

  Though everyone lifted their glasses, Nancy Conroe’s words couldn’t quite dispel the pall that had been cast over the party by the angry exchange between Matt and his parents. Only Emily Moore, who spoke not a word during dinner and barely ate a bite of her food, seemed unaffected by what had happened. Even after the Conroes left — almost as soon as dinner was over — there was still an air of tension in the house.

  “We have to talk,” Bill said quietly to Joan as he closed the front door behind his departing guests. When his wife’s eyes flicked toward Matt, who was standing at the foot of the stairs, he shook his head almost imperceptibly. “Just us.”

  Without a word, Matt turned away from them and disappeared up the stairs.

  * * *

  SHUT OUT! JUST plain shut out, as if he didn’t even exist!

  Well, then, fine! To hell with them too.

  Matt’s simmering anger was about to boil over. What had Kelly been thinking about, blabbing to his folks that he’d been dropped from the football team? Couldn’t she keep her mouth shut, just for one night? Coming to the top of the stairs, he started down the hall toward his room. At least there he’d be by himself, away from everyone, at least for a little while. But as he came to the room next to his grandmother’s, he hesitated.

  His grandmother was still downstairs, and he could barely hear his folks, who must have shut the door to the library, which meant that they didn’t want him to hear what they were talking about.

  Which meant that he was alone upstairs.

  He eyed the closed door to the room next to his grandmother’s, her warning echoing in his mind. “This is Cynthia’s room,” she’d said as he and his mother finished unpacking the boxes filled with his aunt’s things. “Nobody goes in it except me.” Her eyes, sunk so deep in her wrinkled face as to be almost invisible, had flicked from Matt to his mother, then come back to rest on him. “Nobody!” she’d repeated. He’d wondered why she thought he’d even want to go in there — there was nothing in the room but a bunch of old pictures stuck on the walls, a closet full of clothes that no one would want even if they weren’t so old they were starting to fall apart, and some ratty old furniture that Gram had insisted on using instead of the stuff he’d had to drag up to the attic. Why would anybody want to go in there?

  But every day — and every night too — his grandmother spent hours in the room, talking as if someone were in there with her. But of course there wasn’t — Gram’s Alzheimer’s had just made her forget that his aunt was dead.

  But what was it that made her go in there? Why didn’t she just sit in her own room and talk to Aunt Cynthia, if that’s what she wanted to do?

  Matt went quickly back to the top of the staircase and peered down into the empty foyer. He still could barely hear his parents’ voices, muffled and indistinct, through the closed library door. And there was no sign at all of his grandmother.

  His movements unconsciously furtive, he went back to the closed door and tested its knob.

  Unlocked.

  Slowly, praying that no squeaking hinge would give him away, he pushed the door open and slipped into the room.

  He stood still, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark, and took a deep breath to try to calm his now-pounding heart.

  As his lungs filled with air, his nose was flooded with a scent that instantly transported him back to the house on Burlington Avenue.

  But that was crazy! This room was much bigger than the one in the other house, and nothing like it at all except for all his aunt’s stuff.

  Yet even as he told himself that it made no sense, the aroma washed over him and the walls seemed to close around him, just as the walls of his grandmother’s house had. In the gloom of the night, the terrors that used to come to him in his dreams surrounded him again, even though he was wide-awake.

  Feeling as if he couldn’t breathe, he strode across the room to pull a window open and suck the cool evening air deep into his lungs.

  A little better.

  He took another breath, and the strange suffocating panic began to release its grip on him.

  And then he felt something else.

  Eyes.

  Eyes watching him in the darkness.

  Caught!

  Someone had come upstairs and —

  He spun around, his eyes searching.

  Nothing! The door was still closed, the room still empty.

  He started toward the door, and again was seized by the irrational feeling that unseen eyes were following his every move.

  Once again he turned, and this time he saw it.

  A pair of eyes pierced the darkness, seeming to hang suspended in the blackness, fixing on him with an intensity that made his skin crawl. As his heart raced, he fumbled for the light switch by the door, found it, and flipped the toggle. He blinked as light flooded from the chandelier in the center of the ceiling, and then he saw it.

  The picture!

  It was the picture of his aunt that hung over the fireplace. Now, in the bright light of the chandelier, the eyes lost the terrible intensity they had possessed in the darkness, and he found himself looking at nothing more than a carefully posed photograph of a beautiful girl who appeared to be no more than a year or two older than he was.

 
Nothing that bore any threat at all.

  Then why had her eyes frightened him so much? Why had they seemed to glow in the dark almost as if they were lit from within?

  His fingers trembling, he reached for the light switch, plunging the room back into darkness. As he waited for his eyes to readjust to the gloom, the strange suffocating claustrophobia closed around him again, but this time he fought it, his fingers clutching at the doorknob, tightening on it harder with every second that passed. Then, very slowly, Cynthia Moore’s eyes emerged out of the darkness, fixing on him.

  No, he told himself. It’s not possible — it’s just some kind of trick of the light! But even as he tried to reassure himself, the eyes seemed to reach out to him, reach into him, peer into the depths of —

  “No!”

  The word exploded from him in a choked gasp of panic, cut off even before it was fully formed. Reflexively, his hand twisted the doorknob and he pulled the door open, spun out into the corridor, then jerked it closed behind him. He stayed there a moment, his heart pounding, his breath coming in panting gasps. As the panic slowly ebbed, as the terror drained away, he began to understand what must have happened.

  Of course he’d been reminded of the house on Burlington Avenue: the odor in the room his grandmother had filled with all his aunt’s stuff smelled just like it. Until tonight he’d always thought the strange musky scent in his grandmother’s house was just the way that particular house smelled.

  Now he knew it wasn’t that at all. It had been his aunt’s perfume, filling his grandmother’s house the way it now filled the room he’d just left.

  And as for the eyes — the eyes that seemed to loom in the darkness as if lit from within — that was easy. It must have been a beam of moonlight straying in through the window, hitting the portrait at just the right angle. Putting the last of his fear aside, Matt went to his room, stripped off his tuxedo, and, even though it was barely ten o’clock, climbed into bed.