John Saul - The Right Hand of Evil

Luke's eyes clouded suspiciously. "So what is it? If it's about being late-"

"It's more than that." Ellie hesitated, then decided to face the issue head on. "It's Jared Conway. I don't want you to see him anymore."

"Why?" Luke demanded. "What's wrong with Jared?"

Ellie rose from her dead husband's chair, trying to summon up the words Big Luke would have used. "He's a bad influence and I don't approve of him. So you won't see him anymore. Is that clear?"

Luke's jaw tightened and his eyes smoldered. "Yeah," he finally said. "That's clear. It's bullshit, but it's clear."

"And you will obey me?" Ellie pressed.

Her son eyed her, and for the first time in her life, Ellie found herself frightened by the way Luke was looking at her. It was almost as if he was taking her measure.

"Maybe I will," Luke said, "and maybe I won't."

It was nearly six when the back door opened and Jared entered the kitchen. Janet looked up from the salad she was making, wondering what he would say about his lateness. Until recently, she wouldn't have wondered about it-Jared would have told her. But recently, especially since he'd moved into the basement room, he'd been disappearing downstairs as soon as he came home from school, and staying there until supper-time. And after supper, unless he went off to meet Luke somewhere, he'd vanish back downstairs.

"What's he doing down there?" she'd asked Ted a few days ago.

"It's all right, Janet. Let him have his space," Ted told her. "He's growing up. And no matter what the politically correct view might be, boys and girls are different. You can't expect Jared to be like you." A mischievous sparkle lit his eyes. "Of course, we don't want him to be quite like me, either, do we?"

"Lord, no," Janet replied without thinking, and then old habit had brought up her defenses as she waited for him to bristle at what she'd implied. But he only smiled at her.

"Every day I thank my lucky stars that you put up with it as long as you did. And don't worry-whatever Jared's doing down there, I'm sure he's not drinking. Believe me, I've had enough experience, so I'd know. I'd see it in him even faster than you'd see it in me if I fell off the wagon."

"But why does he need a lock on his door?" she pressed. "Kim certainly doesn't seem to need one."

"Territorialism," Ted had told her. "It's like an animal marking the boundaries of its hunting grounds."

Janet sighed. "Well, I guess a lock on the door is better than that." But nothing Ted told her helped: a gulf had formed between Jared and the rest of the family, and it seemed to be widening every day.

Now, as Jared passed through the kitchen on his way to the butler's pantry and the dining room beyond, he didn't even speak to her, not even to say hello, much less offer an explanation of why he was so late coming home.

"Jared?" When her son didn't even slow down, she spoke more sharply. "Jared!"

He stopped, but didn't turn around.

"Look at me, please," Janet said, her voice soft, but pitched to let him know she wasn't in a mood to put up with any nonsense.

He turned to face her.

"Father Bernard called me this afternoon," she said.

Jared shrugged. "So?"

"'So?" Janet echoed. "Is that all you can say?"

"What do you want me to say?" Jared demanded. "Sister Clarence got pissed off at me, and so did Father Bernard, so I spent the afternoon cleaning the church. That's my problem, not yours."

Janet's eyes narrowed. "Your problems are my problems. I'm your mother."

Jared's eyes flashed with sudden fury. "Jeez, Mom! I'm not a little kid! I'm almost sixteen years old!"

"And until we came here, you've never gotten in trouble at school."

"I'd think you'd be proud of that, instead of climbing all over my back," Jared snapped, turning his back to her. "I'm going down to my room."

"Jared!" Janet exclaimed. "When I'm talking to you, I-" Catching sight of Molly, whose eyes were wide with worry over the anger in the voices she was hearing, Janet scooped the little girl into her arms. "It's all right, sweetheart," she crooned. "Mommy's not mad at you, and neither is Jared. Nobody's mad at you."

Taking the little girl by the hand, she led her into the library, which served Ted as a temporary office, and turned the little girl over to her father. "How about looking after Molly for a few minutes? I have to deal with Jared."

Ted stood up from the desk. "Maybe I should take care of it-" he began, but Janet shook her head.

"This is between him and me. Besides, I'm finally going to get a look at his room."

"Okay." Ted sighed, lifting Molly into his lap. "But I warn you-teenage boys' rooms can get pretty weird."

"Whatever I find, I'm sure I'll be able to cope with it," Janet replied. Unwilling to reopen any of the slowly healing wounds in her marriage, she resisted the urge to remind him that she'd been dealing with Jared pretty much by herself almost since the day he was born. Leaving Molly and Ted in the library, she headed for the basement.

She stopped at the top of the stairs, peering down into the shadows rendered deeper by the glare of the single naked bulb screwed into a socket in the wall halfway down. Why would anyone want to live down here? she wondered as she went down the creaking stairs. She tried to imagine what it must be like in the middle of the night, and shuddered at the thought of the spiders that must be creeping around. She paused at Jared's door, staring at the gleaming brass lock that she'd first noticed a few days ago. But at least there was no KEEP OUT sign, like the one he'd put on the door to his room when he was six. She reached for the doorknob, then changed her mind and knocked softly instead.

A moment later she heard Jared's voice, muffled by the door. "What?"

"May I come in?" she called.

A silence, then: "It's not locked."

Twisting the knob, she pushed the door open, stepped forward, then stopped short. Whatever she'd been expecting-and she wasn't sure if she'd been expecting anything in particular-it wasn't this.

For a single, utterly disorienting moment, Janet felt as if she'd stepped into a void. A wave of vertigo swept over her, and she instinctively put out a hand to steady herself. Then, as her eyes began to refocus, her brain to straighten out the signals it was receiving, the dizziness passed.

The room was painted black.

Not a glossy black, which might have created some interesting light patterns, but a dull, flat black that absorbed practically every ray of light the overhead lamp put out. The rafters that had been exposed the first time she'd been down here had disappeared: Jared-or, more likely, Ted-had filled the spaces between them with sound-deadening insulation, held in place by sheets of plywood painted the same flat black as the walls. The bulb that had once been suspended from a hanging wire was now screwed into a socket mounted on the ceiling, and it was covered by a shade. The shade, though, was nothing more than a red paper lantern, which only served to cast a fiery glow over the room. "Is that thing safe?" Janet heard herself ask, and immediately wished she could retract the words.

Too late.

"It's not gonna burn the house down," Jared said sullenly. "I checked it out with Dad."

As if he'd know, Janet thought, and then felt guilty about the disloyal thought. In truth, Ted had learned a lot more about reconstruction since they'd moved to St. Albans than she would have thought possible. There didn't seem to be a single question about wiring, plumbing, heating, or anything else relating to the house that he didn't have an answer for. So far, every one of his answers had proved to be correct.

Janet's eyes swept the rest of the room. There was a bed in one corner-at least most of a bed, for Jared hadn't bothered to put a frame under the box springs and mattress he and Luke had dragged down from the second floor. There were a couple of other mattresses-apparently rescued from the attic, or some part of the huge basement she herself hadn't yet explored-that were half folded up the walls to form rudimentary sofas.