Nathaniel (40 page)

Ione had been sitting on the floor studying the chessboard between herself and Michael, but was now crouched beside the boy, cradling him in her arms. “It’s all right,” she told Anna. “It’s going to be all right.”

Michael’s screams subsided, and as he calmed down, so did Shadow. Finally, his weight still resting against Ione’s breast, his eyes opened and he looked up into his grandmother’s face.

“He killed him,” he whispered. “It happened just now. He killed him.”

“Who?” Ione asked. “Who killed someone, Michael?”

“Nathaniel,” Michael whispered. “I saw it. Just now. I saw him in the barn, and he was hiding. And then Mr. Findley came in. And—and Nathaniel killed him.”

Instinctively, Ione glanced toward the window, but the rapidly gathering darkness revealed nothing of what lay beyond the glass. Whatever Michael was talking about, he hadn’t seen it with his eyes.

“All right,” Ione said, automatically reverting to the soothing voice she’d cultivated during her years of nursing. “Tell us what happened. Tell me what you saw, and how you saw it. Can you do that?”

Michael gazed up at her for a moment, then his eyes shifted back to his grandmother.

“It’s all right,” she assured him. “Whatever you tell us, we’ll believe you. Just tell us what happened.”

Michael swallowed. “I was looking at the board,” he said. “I was trying to decide whether or not to move my bishop, and then all of a sudden I got a headache. And I heard Nathaniel’s voice.”

Ione frowned and started to say something, but Anna silenced her with a gesture.

“Only he wasn’t talking to me,” Michael went on. “He was talking to Mr. Findley. He was asking about the children. He wanted to know where the children were, and Mr. Findley wouldn’t tell him. So Nathaniel killed him.”

“How?” Anna asked. “How did Nathaniel kill him?”

Michael’s voice shook. “The way Grandpa killed Dad,” he said softly. “With a pitchfork.”

Suddenly, from the doorway, they heard a low moan, and both Ione and Anna turned to see Janet, her face pale, leaning heavily against the doorframe. “I can’t stand it,” Janet whispered. “I just can’t stand it.”

“Ione, help her,” Anna said, but the words were unnecessary: Ione was already on her feet, offering Janet a supporting arm. But Janet brushed her aside, her eyes fixed on Michael.

“It isn’t possible, Michael,” she said. “You couldn’t have seen anything like that.” Hysteria began to edge her voice. “You were sitting right here. You couldn’t have seen anything. You couldn’t!”

Michael stared at his mother, his eyes wide and frightened. “I did, Mama,” he said. “I know what I saw.”

“No!” Janet screamed. “You’re imagining things, Michael! Can’t you understand?” Her eyes, wide with distress and confusion, flicked from Michael to Anna, then to Ione. “Can’t any of you understand? He’s imagining things! He’s imagining things, and he needs help!” She broke down, her sobs coming in great heaving gulps, and now she let herself collapse into Ione’s arms. “Oh, God, help him. Please help him!”

“It’s all right, Janet,” Ione soothed. “Everything’s going to be all right. But you have to go back up to bed. You have to rest.” Without waiting for her to reply, Ione began guiding her back up the stairs.

Suddenly alone with his grandmother, Michael looked fretfully at the old woman. His hands played over Shadow’s thick coat, as if he were seeking comfort from the dog. “Why doesn’t she believe me?” he asked. “Why doesn’t she believe I saw what I did?”

“Maybe she does,” Anna told him. “Maybe she does, but just doesn’t want to admit it to herself. Sometimes it’s easier to pretend things aren’t happening, even when you know they are. Can you understand that?”

Michael hesitated, then nodded. “I—I think so.”

“All right. Now, would you do something for me?”

“Wh-what?”

“I want you to call Aunt Laura and ask her to come out here. And have her bring Buck and Ryan, too.”

Michael’s brow knitted into a worried frown. “Why?”

“To help Mrs. Simpson take care of your mother. You and I and your Uncle Buck are going to go over and have a look at Ben Findley’s barn.”

The enormous barn door stood slightly ajar, and an ominous silence seemed to hang over the unkempt farm like a funeral pall. The little group stopped in the center of the barnyard, Michael on one side of Anna, Buck Shields on the other, supporting her with his arm. Shadow, his tail between his legs, whined softly.

“He’s gone,” Michael whispered. “Nathaniel’s gone.”

“There’s no such person as Nathaniel,” Buck Shields said, his voice angry. Anna silenced him with a glance, then switched on the flashlight she held in one hand, playing its beam over the walls of the barn. Nothing showed, nothing moved.

“Stay here with your grandmother,” Buck said. “I’ll go have a look inside.”

“No!” Anna’s voice crackled in the darkness. “We’ll all go inside. Whatever’s there, Michael’s already seen it. And whatever’s there, I want to see it.”

They started toward the barn, and suddenly Shadow stiffened, then a growl rumbled up from the depths of his throat.

“Someone’s there,” Michael whispered. “Someone’s inside the barn.”

As if in response, Shadow whimpered, then leaped forward into the darkness, disappearing into the building. There was a scuffling sound, and Shadow began barking. Then his barking subsided into a steady snarl, and Buck Shields moved forward, taking the light from Anna Hall’s hands.

He slipped through the door, then paused. Shadow’s snarling was louder, coming from the far end of the barn. Buck made his way slowly along the inside of the door, then felt on the wall for a light switch.

The blackness of the barn’s interior was suddenly washed away with a brilliant white light from three overhead fixtures. Buck blinked, and shaded his eyes with one hand.

Sixty feet away, at the far end of the barn, he could see Ben Findley, his eyes still open, his clothes covered with blood, held upright only by the pitchfork that impaled his throat, pinning him to the wall. Buck stared at the dead man for a few seconds, trying to control the churning in his stomach that threatened to overwhelm him. Then his eye was caught by a flicker of movement.

Slowly, Buck started down the center aisle of the barn, approaching Ben Findley as if he were some grotesque religious icon hovering above an altar.

Like a supplicant at Ben Findley’s feet, Shadow was crouched low to the ground, his tail sweeping the floor in slow movements, his eyes fixed on the dead man’s face.

Nathaniel lay in Potter’s Field, his eyes fixed on the barn. Light glimmered through the cracks in the barn’s siding, and it almost looked as if the building were on fire.

He knew he should get up and move. Soon, he was sure, people would come looking for him, and when they found him—

Not yet. They couldn’t find him yet.

Even though the three of them were dead now—the one who had wanted to kill him when he was born, and the two who had kept him a prisoner all his life—there was still something he had to do.

He had to go home. His eyes turned away from the barn, and focused on the little house where he’d been born.

With his mind, he reached out to it, exploring it.

There were people in it tonight. His sister—Laura—was there, and Michael’s mother was there. And someone else, a stranger. So he couldn’t go there tonight. Tonight, he must hide, and stay hidden until it was safe. Softly, inaudibly, he sent out an urgent signal.

In the barn, Shadow suddenly rose from his position at Ben Findley’s feet and trotted out into the night.

There was no funeral for Amos Hall, none for Ben Findley. Anna had forbidden it.

“I won’t do it,” she’d said. “I won’t pretend to shed tears for Amos, and as for Ben Findley—well, he lived alone for twenty years, and he can be buried alone, too.”

She’d told no one of her conversation with Ben Findley the night Amos had died, and now she knew she never would. There was no point, she’d decided. There was no one left who knew the whole truth of what had happened all those years ago. And she’d decided it no longer really mattered. Finally, it was over. They were all dead, and even though they could no longer give her the answers to her questions, neither could they hurt her any more than they already had.

They’d talked to her about Ben Findley, of course, when they came down from Mulford to investigate his death.

She hadn’t told them about Nathaniel. That, too, was something she’d decided never to speak of again. So when they’d asked her if she had any idea who might have killed Ben Findley, she’d only shrugged. “A drifter, I suppose. Ben didn’t have any friends, but he didn’t have any enemies, either. So it must have been a drifter.”

No one else in Prairie Bend had been able to offer a better idea, nor had anyone given credence to Michael’s insistence that Nathaniel had killed the recluse.

The investigators went over Ben Findley’s farm, but paid scant attention to the little room below the barn, dismissing the cell as nothing more than the storm cellar it appeared to be. In the end, they went back to Mulford, sure they would never find Ben Findley’s killer, and equally sure that no one in Prairie Bend would care.

For Janet, the days following the deaths were increasingly difficult. She found herself watching Michael closely, guarding herself against the moment when he would suddenly be attacked by one of his headaches, then insist that Nathaniel had shown him something both hideous and impossible. Even as the days went by, and nothing happened, she did not calm down. Instead, she only grew more nervous, sure that whatever was happening to Michael had not yet ended.

Part of her certainty that things were not over involved Shadow.

Since the night Ben Findley had been found dead in his barn, the huge black dog had not been seen. Nor had Michael seemed upset by his disappearance.

“He’s helping Nathaniel,” Michael had said. “He’ll come back. Nathaniel will bring him back.”

And so Janet was waiting.

It was on the fifth day, near dusk, that Shadow returned.

Janet and Michael were in the kitchen. Michael was at the sink, doing the last of the supper dishes, while Janet sat at the kitchen table laboriously attempting to master the basic manipulations of the knitting needles that Anna had given her that afternoon. “Learn now,” Anna had told her. “In the winter, it will help pass the time.” And so she was trying, but it was not going well. In fact, Michael could already do it better than she could.

“I just don’t get it,” she said at last, dropping the work on the table. “I can’t keep the same number of stitches in a row, and they just keep getting tighter and tighter.” Then, when Michael made no reply, she looked up to see him staring out the window. His right hand was raised as he rubbed at his temples. “Michael?” When he still said nothing, Janet rose to her feet. “What is it, honey? Is something wrong?”

Then her eyes followed his, and in the distance, in Potter’s Field, she saw the familiar black mass that was Shadow.

“He’s looking for the babies,” Michael said in a faraway voice. “He’s looking for the babies that Grandpa killed.”

Holding her emotions tightly in check, Janet slipped her arms around her son. “No, Michael. There’s nothing out there.…”

“There is,” Michael repeated, his voice growing stronger. “Shadow’s out there looking for them, helping Nathaniel find them.”

“No!” Janet exclaimed.

Michael pivoted to face her, glaring at her with furious eyes. “Yes! They’re out there, and Nathaniel has to find them, and I have to help him.”

He began struggling in her arms, trying to wriggle free, but Janet hung on. “No!” she screamed. “There’s nothing out there, and there is no Nathaniel, and you have to stop pretending there is! You have to stop it, Michael! Do you hear me?
Just stop it!”

Michael was still in her arms, but suddenly his eyes, blazing with fury, gazed into hers.

“You don’t know,” he whispered. “You don’t know, because you don’t know Nathaniel.”

For several long minutes the two of them stood frozen in a contest of wills. Then, at last, Janet knew what she had to do.

“All right,” she said, letting go of Michael. “Let’s go find out. Right now, let’s go find out what the truth is.”

Taking Michael by the hand she left the house and strode across the yard to the toolshed. Seconds later, Michael’s arm still firmly gripped in her right hand, a shovel in her left, she started toward Potter’s Field. “We’ll dig them up,” she told Michael as they climbed through the barbed wire. “If there are any bodies in this field, we’ll dig them up right now, and look at them.”

Shadow’s head came up, and he watched them as they approached. Then, as he recognized them, he bounded over, his tail wagging, a happy bark ringing out over the prairie. Michael threw himself on the dog, scratching him and petting him, but Janet stood still and silent. Finally, when Michael had begun to calm down, she spoke.

“Where are they?” she asked. “Where are they buried?”

Shadow’s ears suddenly dropped flat against his head, and his joyful barking faded into a wary growl.

“It’s all right,” Michael soothed. “It’s all right, boy. We’re gonna help you.” Then, slowly, Michael began moving through the field with Shadow at his side.

“Here,” Michael said.

Janet moved the stone at Michael’s feet aside, and plunged the shovel into the earth. She worked silently, not heeding the stress she was putting on her body, caring more about proving to Michael that there was nothing in the field than about any danger to her unborn child.

And then, a moment later, the bone fragments appeared.

Janet stared at them, then reached down to pick one of them up. She studied it a moment, then handed it to Michael. “Look at it,” she said. “It’s old and crumbling, and it could be anything. It might be human, and it might not. But whatever it is, it’s far too old for your grandfather to have buried it here.”

Michael’s temples were pounding now, and he glowered at his mother with barely contained fury. “There’s more,” he whispered. “All over the field, there’s more.”

“Where?” Janet demanded. “Show me where. You keep telling me Aunt Laura’s babies are buried out here, Michael. But where are they? If they’re here, show them to me.”