John Saul - The Right Hand of Evil

There was a large table, and Jared had built what looked like some kind of workbench along the wall opposite the windows.

Against another wall stood an armoire that Janet remembered from one of the second-floor bedrooms, and a chest of drawers she couldn't recall having seen before.

The windows were covered with black paper.

How can he stand it? she wondered. No light, no air, a musty odor. But she checked herself, remembering her purpose.

She scanned the room again, searching for something-anything-she could relate to, finally fixing on the desk lamp that stood on the table next to Jared's backpack, and on a floor lamp next to the bed.

"Well, at least you can still find enough light to read," she said as brightly as she could.

Jared, sprawled out on the bed with his arms crossed on his chest, glared at her. "I like it, okay?" he said. "And Dad said I could do anything with it I wanted to, as long as you couldn't hear my music upstairs."

"But I'm sure he didn't mean-"

"Can you hear anything?" Jared interrupted. "Do I bother you?"

"No, but-"

"Then what's wrong with it?" he demanded.

Other than the fact that I can't see, I can't breathe, and I feel as if the walls are closing in around me, I suppose there's nothing wrong with it, Janet said to herself. Then she remembered what Ted had told her before she came down. "Teenage boys' rooms can get pretty weird." It wasn't as if she hadn't been warned. "I guess nothing's wrong with it," she finally replied. She took a tentative step toward him. "Truce, okay? I'm just worried about you, that's all. It seems like ever since we came here, you've…" She searched for the right word, but couldn't find anything better than the one already in her mind. "It just seems as though you're different, that's all. And I'm worried about you."

For several seconds Jared said nothing. When he finally looked at her, Janet saw the same fury glittering in his eyes as she'd seen upstairs. "Just leave me alone," he said. "Okay, Ma? Just leave me alone!"

A painful memory broke into Janet's consciousness. His father, she thought. He sounds just like his father! But it was more than the words Jared had spoken, which she must have heard a thousand times- ten thousand times-from Ted. It even went beyond the dark blaze in his eyes. It was an aura that seemed to have gathered around him; the same kind of impenetrable miasma that had surrounded Ted when he was drinking, making it impossible for her to reach him. Instinctively, she took a step toward Jared, but quickly stopped herself, remembering all the rebuffs from Ted over the years.

Was it possible Jared had begun drinking? She tried to reject the thought even as it popped into her head, but scanned the room once more, this time searching for a bottle or a glass.

Drugs?

She sniffed the air, searching for any sign of the sweet pungency of marijuana. All she smelled was the stale, musty odor that permeated the basement. But Jared wouldn't take drugs.

Would he?

Certainly she wouldn't have thought so a few weeks ago; in fact, if anyone had even suggested the possibility, she would have rejected it out of hand. Jared had lived through his father's drinking, and-

– and the children of alcoholics were far more likely to fall victim to the disease than those who hadn't grown up with it.

Not Jared, she prayed silently. Oh, God, please don't let it happen to Jared.

She wanted to reach out to her son, to hold him, to tell him that they could deal with whatever was going on inside him. But once again she saw the fury glowing in his eyes, and the impenetrable mask his face had become. Right now, she knew, there was no use trying to talk to him. Right now, he was his father's son. "Okay," she said. "I'll call you when supper's ready."

She backed out of the room, closed the door, and started up the stairs. She was halfway up when she heard the sound of the lock clicking.

Locking me out, she thought bleakly. Locking me out of his life.

Supper that evening turned into an eerie echo of all the suppers the Conways had survived when Ted was drinking. Though it was something none of them mentioned-as if they'd reached a silent understanding that by not talking about it they didn't have to admit it existed-Janet, Jared, and Kim had all felt a sense of reprieve, if not relief, when Ted didn't come home for supper, for when he did, the tension that hung over the table was often so thick that even one of the steak knives wouldn't have cut it. Even Molly had always sensed it, and no matter how hard Jared and Kim tried to keep their baby sister distracted, she invariably wound up fussing or making enough of a mess that Ted would demand she be taken away from the table. Recently, though, Molly's favorite place had become the spot just to the right of her father, who seemed to have tapped into an apparently inexhaustible well of patience that none of his children had seen before, and that Janet herself assumed had dried up years earlier.

But now all the old tension was back, except that instead of hanging like a dark curtain between Janet and Ted, the strain had fallen over Kim and Jared. Ever since the twins had first begun to talk, the supper table was their favorite place to recount the events of their day, each of them finishing the other's sentences, each picking up on his or her sibling's thoughts. Now, though, a silence hung over them. It wasn't the kind of comfortable lag in the conversation that used to occur when both of them seemed to run out of things to say at the same moment. Rather, the silence felt like the uneasy quiet of nighttime on a battlefield.

Janet felt as if she and Kim were crouched low in a foxhole, listening for something that might betray the approach of some enemy that neither of them could quite see but both of them knew was there. Now and then they would exchange a wary glance, and Janet could see the worry in her daughter's eyes.

Jared had been the last to arrive at the table, and then he'd hardly spoken, barely even acknowledging Molly's loud greeting. Instead, he sank into his chair and began eating, stolidly moving the food from his plate to his mouth.

Molly, picking up on the mood at the table, quickly began fussing. Then, halfway through the meal, she picked up a fistful of mashed potatoes and hurled it at her brother.

Janet and Kim both froze, their eyes meeting.

For a split second Jared seemed not to notice the wad of potatoes and gravy oozing down his chin, but then he looked up at his baby sister. Molly, pleased finally to be capturing her brother's attention, smiled happily and waited to see what Jared would do. But as Kim and Janet watched-and Jared's eyes fixed on his baby sister-the smile faded from Molly's face, and then she began screaming.

It was a high-pitched wail, the kind of sound a cornered animal might make just before a predator leaps upon it and tears it to shreds.

Janet rose from her chair to pick the child up. But before she could get to Molly, Ted had boosted the little girl out of the high chair and was cradling her against his chest. Molly's arms were coiled around his neck as she clung to him, her face buried in his shoulder as her body quivered with frightened sobs.

"There there, sweetheart," Ted crooned. "It's okay, Molly. Daddy's here, and nothing's going to hurt you."

As Molly settled down, Janet turned furiously on Jared. "What did you do?" she demanded. "What did you do that made her start screaming like that?"

"Me?" Jared shot back. "I didn't do anything! She's the one who threw the food. Why don't you get mad at her?" Standing, he wiped the last of the gravy from his cheek, crushed his napkin, and hurled it onto the table. As he stalked out of the kitchen, Scout, who was curled up on his blanket in the corner, tensed, then snarled at Jared.