John Saul - Nathaniel

"Thanks for coming," he said. "She's upstairs in our room, the first one on the left."

Janet slipped her arms around her brother-in-law. "I'm so sorry," she whispered. "I wish I'd been here-"

"There was nothing you could have done." There was a flat lifelessness in Buck's voice that wrenched at Janet, and she had to turn her head away as her eyes flooded with tears. Brusquely, Buck extricated himself from her embrace. "Go on upstairs. She's waiting for you. I've got to get down to the store." An uncharacteristic grin played at the corners of his mouth. "My mother's looking after it. She means well, but she never quite manages to make things add up. Can you stay with Laura 'til I get back?"

"Of course," Janet assured him. "I can stay all day, if you need me." Her eyes fell on Michael, who was fidgeting near the front door. "Where's Ryan?"

"Out back, I think. Somewhere around, anyway." He started down the steps, then turned back. "Janet. Laura's- well, she's taking this hard. Don't upset her." Then, before Janet could reply, he hurried down the steps and across the yard. A moment later, he was gone.

As Michael headed around to the backyard, Janet went directly upstairs. She found Laura propped up against some pillows, her pale face framed by her dark hair, her eyes closed.

"Laura?" Janet whispered. "Are you awake?" Slowly Laura's eyes came open, and she stared at Janet as if she didn't recognize her. Then a soft smile came over her face. "Janet? Janet, is that really you?"

Janet moved across the room, pulling a small chair close to the bed. "Who were you expecting?"

Laura's smile faded away. "Nobody, really," she said. "I've just been lying here, trying to pretend nothing happened." Her eyes met Janet's. "Did you do that when Mark died? Try to pretend it hadn't happened?"

Janet hesitated, then nodded. "It's shock, I suppose. You can't handle the pain, so you deny the injury. But all it does is postpone it." She paused, then: "Do you want to talk about it?"

A sigh escaped Laura's lips, and she turned her face away from Janet to stare at the wall. "I think they killed my baby, Janet," she whispered as her resolve to believe what she'd been told slipped away. "They said it was born dead, but I think they killed it."

Janet's mouth opened, but no words came out. Then, a moment later, she felt Laura's hand in her own.

"Why do they do that, Janet?" Laura continued. "Why do they kill my babies?"

The agony in Laura's voice wrenched at Janet. "Laura. Oh, Laura, you mustn't even think such a thing."

Laura's head turned once more, and Janet could see the tears that streaked her cheeks. "But it was all right, Janet. I know it was all right. They said it was born dead, but right up till the end, I could feel it moving." Her voice began to rise, and her grip on Janet's hand tightened. "I could feel it, Janet. If it had been dead, it wouldn't have moved, would it? Would it?"

Janet wondered what to say, wondered if she ought to call Buck or Dr. Potter. "I-I don't know," she said at last. "But sometimes things happen, Laura. Sometimes things go wrong, and there's nothing anybody can do."

Seeming to calm slightly, Laura let her head fall once more onto the pillows, and now her eyes fixed on the ceiling. When she spoke again, her voice was dull. "They wouldn't let me to go the hospital. They wouldn't take me to the hospital, and they wouldn't let mother come. I begged them, but they wouldn't let her come."

"She wouldn't have been able to do anything," Janet said, trying to soothe the distraught woman. "I know how horrible it must have been for you-"

Suddenly the fire came back into Laura's eyes, and she sat straight up in the bed. "Do you?" she demanded, her voice once more rising toward hysteria. "How can you know? Have you ever lost a baby? Have you ever been through what I went through last night? Have you?"

And once again Janet's childhood memory flashed through her mind. But it hadn't been a baby she had lost. It had been her whole family, burning before her very eyes. But she couldn't tell Laura about that, not now.

"N-no-" she stammered.

"Well, just wait, then. Just wait 'til your baby comes. They'll do it to you, too, Janet. Just like they did it to mother when her last baby came. They didn't let mother go to the hospital, either. And they won't let you! When your time comes, you'll be all alone, and they'll do what they want, and you won't be able to do anything about it. Then you'll know how I feel!"

Exhausted, she fell back onto the pillows, and her breathing became a strangling sob. Janet, on her feet now, glanced frantically around the room, her eyes finally alighting on a small vial of pills on the dresser. She picked them up and read the label, but the complicated name of the drug meant nothing to her. She took them to the bed. "Laura? Laura, do you want one of these?"

For a long time Laura was silent, and Janet began to wonder if she'd fainted. Then, once more, her eyes opened, and she stared at the bottle. Finally she shook her head. "No." She hesitated, then reached out to Janet. "I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have said all those things. I must have sounded crazy. It was all just so terrible last night, Janet. It hurt so much, and I was so frightened and confused, and I knew they were killing the baby but I couldn't stop them. I couldn't stop them, Janet." Quietly, she began to cry. "I saw what happened," she repeated brokenly. "I saw it." Then her sobbing overcame her, and Janet took her in her arms, rocking her gently as if Laura herself were the baby she'd just lost.

Michael found Ryan behind the garage, desultorily stacking a pile of split logs. "Whatcha doing?"

Ryan glanced up, then stared openly at the scratches on Michael's face. "What happened to you?"

"I-I fell off my bike. Whatcha doing with the wood?"

"What's it look like? My dad says I have to get all this wood stacked by tonight. Wanta help?"

Michael shrugged, and picked up a piece of wood. Beneath it, something moved, and he immediately dropped the wood back on the pile. "Something's under there."

"Prob'ly a lizard," Ryan told him. "I caught three so far."

"How do you catch 'em?"

Ryan grinned. "Easy. You just hold real still, and pretty soon they think you're gone, so they come out to lie in the sun. Then you put your hand out real slowly, and sneak up behind them, and grab 'em. Wanta try it?"

"Sure."

Cheerfully abandoning work, Ryan picked a likely-looking spot and lowered himself onto a log, Michael taking up a position beside him. For a few minutes, the two of them sat silently.

"Can we talk?" Michael finally asked.

Ryan gave him a sidelong glance. "What about?"

"I mean, will the noise scare the lizards away?"

"Nah. They're deaf." Then: "How long'd the foaling take last night?"

"A long time," Michael bragged. "I didn't go to bed 'til real late." He hesitated, wanting to tell Ryan what had happened the night before, but Nathaniel's strange words still lingered in his mind: " Never tell them the truth. Tell them what they want to hear ." But Nathaniel hadn't been talking about Ryan, had he?

Michael decided he had not: in his eleven-year-old mind, "them" meant "adults." It was grown-ups you had to keep secrets from, not other kids. "I-I think I saw Nathaniel last night."

Ryan turned to stare at him. "Nathaniel? The ghost?" His tone clearly betrayed his disbelief.

"I think so." Again Michael hesitated. Then: "If I tell you what happened, will you promise not to tell anyone? Anyone at all?"

Ryan regarded him with scorn. "What do you think I am? Besides, who'll I tell?"

"You can't tell anyone."

Ryan shrugged. "Okay. But what's the big deal? There's no such things as ghosts, so you couldn't have seen Nathaniel anyway."