Nightshade (36 page)

Who is he? Tell me the truth!

The words hammered at Matt. What had Mr. Conroe been talking about?

Then he heard his mother’s voice, coming from beyond the heavy wooden door he’d locked a moment ago.

“I’ll kill you . . . this time I’ll really kill you!”

Matt’s heart pounded, and a terrible hopelessness rose within him.

Guilty . . .

He must be guilty!

Mr. Conroe thought so. So did Dan Pullman. He was pretty sure Trip Wainwright did too. Otherwise, why would the lawyer be so worried about what he might say to Mr. Pullman?

And now even his mother thought so.

Maybe he should just unlock the door and go out in the hall and face it. Face his mother.

Face everything.

He reached for the key, turned it, and pulled the door open a few inches.

The hall was empty, and silent.

Where was she? Where had she gone? “Mom?” he breathed, so softly the word was lost in the silence of the house. Then he heard a voice, muffled, barely audible at all.

“He’s mine! He’ll always be mine!”

Drawn toward the voice, Matt moved down the hall until he was standing outside his aunt’s room.

“He’s not yours,” he heard his mother say. “You gave him to me!”

Matt heard the sound of laughter then, but there was no joy in it. It was a harsh sound, a cruel sound. “Never! You
took
him! You took him like you took everything else! You did what you wanted to do. . . .”

And as the sound of the second voice came through the closed door, it echoed out of Matt’s memory —

. . . what you want to do.

Out of his dreams —

. . . do what you want to do . . .

Out of his nightmares —

. . . what you want to do . . .

His aunt’s voice — he was hearing his aunt’s voice! But that wasn’t possible — she was dead — she’d been dead since before he was born!

He backed away from the door, stumbling to the head of the stairs.

The terrible echoes from his nightmares tumbling through his mind, he started down.

*                                     *                                     *

THE MASCARA FROM her eyelashes streaking her cheeks, her makeup smeared, the scissors from her mother’s sewing box clutched in her hand, Joan fairly shook with rage as she faced her sister. “You can’t take him back!” she screamed. “It’s too late!”

“I don’t have to take him back!”
Cynthia replied.
“I never gave him to you in the first place!”

“Liar!” Joan screeched. She raised the scissors high, then plunged them deep into Cynthia’s cheek, slashing through skin and flesh until the point stuck in the bone beneath.

Cynthia only laughed.
“You stole him. You stole him like you stole my whole life. No wonder Mama hated you.”

Joan jerked the scissors free, then slashed again. “She loved me! She always loved me! She only punished me because she loved me!”

“You were nothing,”
Cynthia shot back.
“You were stupid, and ugly, and no one ever wanted you. Not me, not Mama, not Bill, not anyone!”

The terrible mocking laugh rose again, and once more Joan slashed at her sister’s face. But the voice went inexorably on.
“You can’t have it, Joan. You can’t have my life and you can’t have my son! I’m taking it back! I’m taking it all back!”

Suddenly Joan was back in New York, back in the apartment where Cynthia had hidden herself away to have her baby. Even when she’d gone into labor, she refused to go to a hospital, refused even to let Joan call a doctor. . . .

*                                     *                                     *

“MAMA WILL FIND out,” she insisted. “Mama will find out, and then she’ll hate me! She’ll hate me the way she hates you!”

“But what if something happens?” Joan begged. “What if something goes wrong?”

“Nothing will go wrong,” Cynthia said. “I’ll have the baby, and you’ll get rid of it, and then I can go home.”

But something did go wrong — right after the baby had been born, something went terribly wrong.

Cynthia started to bleed.

“I’m going to call a doctor,” Joan insisted, but Cynthia shook her head and pointed at the baby.

“Not until you get rid of it.”

Joan looked down at the tiny child in her arms. “I can’t. I can’t hurt him. I can’t — ”

“He’s not yours,” Cynthia hissed. “He’s mine. I’ll decide what to do with him.”

Joan backed away, holding the baby closer. “Let me have him,” she pleaded. “Let me be his mother.”

Fury and venom spewed from Cynthia’s tongue as freely as the blood that was flowing from her womb. “Never! He’s mine, and he’ll always be mine!”

“But you don’t want him!”

“And you can’t have him!” Cynthia pulled herself up, her arms stretched out as if to snatch the baby away from Joan. “He’s mine, and he’ll always be mine!” Spent, Cynthia flopped back against the pillow, her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath. As Joan watched, her face grew paler, her breathing more shallow.

A moment later her breathing stopped and she lay still.

Joan stood staring at her sister, holding the baby close to her breast. What should she do? Should she call a doctor?

Too late.

The police?

What if they took the baby away?

Go away. Just take the baby and go away.

The idea seemed to come out of nowhere, and at first she dismissed it. But then she thought about it.

No one knew who Cynthia was. She had taken the apartment — a grubby, furnished room in a building filled with drug addicts and whores — under another name. She’d even gotten identification under that name. “After I get rid of the baby, I’ll just go home,” she told Joan. “The person who lives here will just cease to exist, and I can go back to my life. But you can bet I won’t get pregnant again!”

Now, as Joan stood staring at her sister’s body, she tried to think of a reason not to simply walk away from the dingy room, as Cynthia had intended to do. No one knew she was here — even people who might have seen her had no idea who she was. She held the baby tighter, gazing down into its perfect face. “Everything will be all right now,” she whispered. “I’ll be your mother, and I’ll love you. And your grandmother will love you too.” And Mother will love me now, she thought. When she sees the baby, she’ll love him, and she’ll love me too. She edged toward the door. It would work! She’d take the baby, and in a few months — just long enough so no one would wonder why she hadn’t looked pregnant when she left — she would go back home. Everything would be perfect! Her mother would love her, and the baby would love her.

But a few minutes later, as she was leaving, she thought she heard her sister’s voice:
“It won’t work, Joanie-baby. You can’t be me. You can never be me.”

*                                     *                                     *

“I CAN BE you!” she screamed, raising the scissors yet again. “I can! I can!” Over and over the scissors slashed into the portrait until, like everything else that had been Cynthia’s, it lay in tatters on the floor. Her rage finally spent, Joan turned away from the destruction she’d created and went back to Cynthia’s vanity table. “I can be you,” she said. “I can.”

She cleaned away the smeared makeup, then set to work once more. But as she applied the makeup this time, she worked quickly and efficiently.

As quickly and efficiently as Cynthia herself . . .

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.