Nathaniel (41 page)

Trembling, Michael glared at her, then silently hurried away. He moved across the field, then finally stopped.

“Here,” he said once more. “If you want to see it, it’s right here.”

Wordlessly, Janet began digging once more.

Nathaniel watched for a few moments, then turned away and moved slowly through the barn, looking at it all for the last time. The little room beneath the trapdoor where he’d spent so many years; the tack room, from which he’d watched the burials on those strange nights when the children had been born and then died.

His children, the children he could reach through the powers of his mind. There hadn’t been many of them, but he still thought of them as his.

There had been his brother. On the night Nathaniel was born, he had called out to his brother, and his brother had answered him. But then he’d gone to sleep, and when he woke up, his brother was gone. For a long time after that, Nathaniel had called out to his brother, called to him for help, but his brother had never come to him.

There had been two others since then, two others that he had felt, but in the end, they had brought them to the field, and buried them.

And then, a few months ago, his brother had come back. Nathaniel remembered it so well—he’d awakened one morning and sensed that he was no longer alone, that at last his brother had returned to help him avenge all the wrongs that had been done. For a long time, he and his brother had talked, and his brother had promised to come for him, to take him outside, to help him destroy their enemies.

But then his brother had died. He’d tried to warn Mark, but he couldn’t. Mark was older than he and had ignored his warnings. And the old man had killed him.

And then, a few days later, Michael had come. He’d called out to Michael, too, and Michael had answered him.

And with Michael’s help, he had destroyed his enemies.

And now, Michael and his mother were in the field, and would find the children, and know the truth.

Now, at last, Nathaniel could go home.

He left the barn and in the gathering darkness crossed the yard. He ignored the house—the house that had been part of his prison through all the years of his life, but that had, in these last days, been his secret refuge. Instead, he concentrated his mind on his goal: the house where he’d been born.

He moved quickly, slipping easily through the barbed wire, and in a few seconds, he was there.…

Janet’s shovel struck something, something that stopped the blade’s penetration of the earth, but was too soft to be a rock. As Michael stood by, with Shadow quivering at his side, Janet lowered herself to her knees, and began digging with her hands.

A moment later she felt the soft folds of a blanket.

Her heart began to beat faster as she worked, and then she pulled the object she had uncovered free from the earth that had hidden it.

She stared at it for a long time, afraid to open it, afraid it might actually be what she thought it was.

But she had come too far to turn back now. With a shaking hand, she folded back one corner of the blanket.

She could only stand to look at it for a second. Already, the flesh had begun to rot away, and the skin was entirely gone from the skull. Her stomach lurched, and involuntarily, Janet dropped the tiny corpse back into its grave. Her face pale, her whole body trembling now, Janet turned to gaze at her son.

“How did you know?” she breathed. “How did you know?”

“Nathaniel,” Michael said, his voice steady. “Nathaniel told me.”

“Where is he?”

Michael fell silent for a moment, then his eyes filled with tears.

“He’s gone home,” he said. “He’s gone home to die.”

*  *  *

Michael stopped, his eyes fixed on the window of his room. Janet, too, stopped. Following Michael’s gaze, she looked up. The house was dark except for a single, oddly flickering light that glowed from Michael’s window. Shadow bounded ahead to scratch eagerly at the back door.

“What is it, Michael?” Janet asked.

“Nathaniel. He’s here. He’s in my room.”

“No,” Janet whispered. “There’s no one here, Michael. There’s no Nathaniel.” But even as she said the words, Janet knew she no longer believed them. Whatever Nathaniel was, whether he was someone real, or a ghost, or no more than a creature of Michael’s imagination, he was real. He was as real to her now as he was to Michael, and to Anna.

Slowly, Janet moved toward the back door of the house. Michael followed her, his face suddenly gone blank, as if he was listening to some being that Janet couldn’t see.

She pulled the door open, and reached for the light switch. Nothing happened. Shadow slipped inside, immediately disappearing through the kitchen and up the stairs.

Janet could sense the presence in the house now, and her instinct was to flee, to abandon the house to whatever had invaded it, to take Michael and run out into the darkening night.

Instead, she went into the living room and picked up the poker that hung from the mantelpiece. Then she turned, and as if in a trance, moved toward the foot of the stairs, and started up.

Michael followed. Once again, his head was pounding, and once again, his nostrils seemed filled with smoke. And once again, Nathaniel’s voice was whispering in his head.

“This is my house, and I have come home.”

Michael moved on, his vision starting to cloud.

“This is my house, and I will never leave it. Never again.”

They reached the landing. The presence of Nathaniel was almost palpable. Shadow, too, was there, his great body stretched on the floor in front of Michael’s door, a strangled whimpering coming from his throat.

“This was my mother’s house, and this is my house. I will not leave my house again.”

Michael stopped, staring at the closed door, listening to Nathaniel’s voice, knowing what Nathaniel was going to ask him to do.

Janet, too, stopped, but then she moved forward again, and put her hand on the knob of the door to Michael’s room.

She turned it, then gently pushed the door, letting it swing open.

In the center of the room, his empty blue eyes fixed on her, his ashen face expressionless, Nathaniel stood, illuminated by the soft light of an oil lamp.

“This is my house,” he said. “I was born here, and I will die here.”

Janet recognized them all in the strange face she beheld. It was an ageless face, and it bore no emotion, and all of them were there.

Mark was there, and Amos.

Ben Findley was there.

And Michael was there.

For endless seconds, Janet searched that face, her mind reeling. Even now, as she saw him, she still was uncertain if he was real or only an apparition.

“Who are you?” she breathed at last.

“I am Nathaniel.”

“What do you want?”

“I want what is mine,” Nathaniel replied, his toneless voice echoing in the small room. “I want what was taken from me. I want—”

“No!” Janet suddenly screamed. All the torment that had built inside her over the last months, all the tensions, all the fears, overwhelmed her now, focusing on the strange being in Michael’s room. “No,” she screamed once again. “Nothing. You’ll get nothing here.”

She raised the poker, swinging it at Nathaniel with all the force she could muster. Nathaniel staggered backward under the blow, and then Janet dropped the poker, hurling herself forward.

“Help me, Michael!”
The words thundered in Michael’s head as he watched his mother throw herself on Nathaniel. Then, again, Nathaniel’s words came:
“Help me!”

Everything Michael saw was fogged now, fogged by the smoke that was choking him, and by the sound of Nathaniel’s words ringing in his head.

“Help me, Michael. Please help me …”

His mind began to focus, and Nathaniel’s wish began to take shape within him.

And then, as Michael silently commanded him, Shadow suddenly rose to his feet and launched himself into the room. To Michael, it was as if he was seeing it in slow motion: the dog seeming to arc slowly through the air, his lips curling back to expose his gleaming fangs, his ears laid fiat against his head, droplets of saliva scattering from his jowls.

“Help me!” Nathaniel’s words filled the room now, battering Michael’s ears as well as his mind.

Then Shadow reached his target, his body twisting in midair and knocking over the little table that held the oil lamp as his jaws closed firmly on a human throat.

A scream filled the room as the oil lamp burst, and flames suddenly shot in every direction. The bedcovers caught first, and then the curtains.

Suddenly the room was filled with real smoke, and Michael understood with certain clarity that this was the smoke he’d been smelling all along, that Nathaniel, while showing him the past, had been showing him the future as well. And now he could hear his mother’s terrified screams drowning out Nathaniel’s bellows of pain and anguish.

His fogged mind cleared, and he watched for a moment, frozen to the spot, as his mother began flailing at the quickly spreading fire.

On the floor, his throat bleeding, Nathaniel lay calmly beneath the still attacking dog.

“No,” Michael screamed. He hurled himself into the room. “No, Mom. Stop it—it’s too late! Out! We’ve got to get out!”

Without waiting for her to reply, Michael grabbed her arm and began dragging her from the burning room.

For Janet, none of it was real anymore. Not Nathaniel, not Michael, not even the fire. She was caught in her nightmare again, but this time, she had to save them. Her family was going to die, and she had to save them.

She fought against the hands that restrained her, tried her best to stay in the burning room, tried to combat the growing flames.

Then, out of the smoke, a great weight hurled itself against her, and she fell to the floor. She recovered herself and got to her knees, then once again regained her feet.

But the weight was pressing at her now, pushing her toward the door, while the insistent hands still pulled.

And then she was out of the burning room and on the stairs. Her mind began to clear, and she recognized Michael in front of her, pulling her along. Behind her was Shadow, barking furiously, prodding at her, his large body preventing her from going back up the narrow stairs.

Then they were out of the house, huddled together in the yard, watching as the flames consumed the tinder-dry wood. Once, as she looked up, Janet thought she saw a face at Michael’s window, but a second later it disappeared as the house crashed in on itself.

Then people began to gather around her; first the Simpsons, then the Shieldses, and then others, until soon most of Prairie Bend was there.

No one tried to save the house, no one tried to save anything that was in it: as the house burned, Janet’s labor began.

“We’ll take her to our house,” Leif Simpson said.

Janet lay on the ground, her head cradled in Laura Shields’s lap. Her face, glistening with a film of perspiration, was a mask of pain made grotesque by the orange light of the fire. The first violent contraction of her premature labor had wrenched a scream from her lips, and only Buck Shields’s strong arms had kept her from collapsing. But now she drew on what few reserves of strength she still had. “No,”

she whispered. “Anna’s … I want to go to Anna’s.”

“But there’s no time, Janet,” Ione protested.

“There is,” Janet gasped. “I’ll make time. But I want to have my baby at Anna’s. Please … please.” Another contraction seized her, and she moaned.

“I’ll take her,” Buck Shields said. “We’ll put her in the back of the Chevy. It won’t take more than an extra minute or two.” He glanced at Ione Simpson. “Can you meet us there?” As soon as Ione had nodded, Buck leaned over and picked Janet up in his strong arms. “It’s going to be all right,” he told her. “We’re taking you home.” Janet sighed, and let her eyes close, blotting out the sight of the smoldering farmhouse, giving in to the pain that was wracking her body.

As Buck carried her to the car, she numbly tried to remember what had happened that night, how the fire had started.

But all she could remember was being at the kitchen table, then going upstairs to bed. A few minutes later, the house had burned.

She had no memory of going out to Potter’s Field that night, no memory of what she had found there.

She had no memory of seeing Nathaniel that night.

For in dying, Nathaniel had taken her memories of him with him.

Ten minutes later, Ione Simpson arrived at Anna Hall’s house, a determinedly cheerful expression masking the dread she was feeling. Janet’s baby, she knew, was at least a month early, possibly more. And from the look in her eyes, Ione had known that Janet was in shock even before she went into labor. Nonetheless, she did her best to ease the fear that was plain in Michael’s eyes as he sat in Anna’s parlor, staring up at her. “Isn’t this going to be exciting?” she asked. “Just like Magic foaling last spring, except this time you’re going to have a baby brother or sister.” Then, when Michael failed to react to her words, her tone changed. “Where’s your mother?”

“Upstairs,” Michael replied in a dazed voice.

“All right. Now, I want you to do something for me. I want you to find all the clean towels you can, and bring them into your mother’s room. Okay?”

Michael seemed to come out of his trance, and nodded.

A few minutes later, his arms filled with folded towels, he appeared in the doorway of his mother’s room. He stared at Janet, who was propped up against the pillows, her face drawn, lines of pain etched around her eyes. “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice filled with anxiety. “Does it hurt?”

Janet said nothing, but Laura Shields took the towels from Michael and eased him out of the room. “She’s going to be fine, Michael. She and the baby are both going to be fine.”

Michael gazed at the faces around his mother, but in none of them could he see anything to give him a hint about what was going to happen to his mother. His grandmother was sitting beside his mother, gently wiping her face with a damp cloth, while his uncle hovered in one corner. At last, understanding that right now no one had time for him, Michael went back downstairs to wait.