John Saul - Nightshade

Still his grandmother’s voice tortured him: Damn you… damn you…

Her curse echoed in his mind and he clutched the covers tighter still, willing the hateful words away.

At last, hours later, he slept.

Once, he awoke, and for a moment thought he smelled a strange scent in the air, a scent that seemed to trigger some deep memory from his childhood, from before he had come to live in this house. But even as the strange, musky aroma filled his nostrils, he dropped back into his restless sleep.

That night, for the first time since he left his grandmother’s house when he was five years old, the nightmares of his childhood came back to torture him.

Nightmares from which neither his stepfather nor the Night-Knight could now defend him.

* * *

THE CLOUDS HANGING over granite falls were nearly as dark as Matt’s mood, and the morning looked every bit as cold as the house felt. Turning away from the window, he eyed his bed — still rumpled and tangled from his restless night — and felt an uncharacteristic urge to creep back into the warmth and comfort of the blankets. They had offered no solace last night, though, and even as the impulse flitted through his mind, he knew that retreating to the bed would accomplish nothing. After pulling on his clothes, he put his books in his backpack, added what little homework he’d managed to get done last night, and went down to breakfast.

Except there was no breakfast.

The kitchen was as cold and cheerless as the rest of the house.

The coffee maker — the one he’d given his dad for Christmas last year, that measured the beans, ground them, then brewed the coffee to be ready at whatever time was required — hadn’t been set last night. Matt reached out to push the manual start button but stopped short of actually pressing it. As he turned on the gas burner under the old teakettle, he told himself that the coffee maker would take too long, and that there wasn’t that much difference between fresh-ground and instant, anyway. But once again he knew the words weren’t quite true.

It was his dad’s coffeepot, and he should have been there to start it himself.

Fuck him! Matt thought, shutting off the burner and starting the coffee maker. If it was so easy for him to just walk out, why should I care?

The machine came to life, gears turning as it shifted beans into the grinder, blades clattering as the beans were pulverized. While the coffee began to brew, Matt rummaged through the refrigerator. Usually they had bacon and eggs for breakfast, but as he stared at the slab of bacon and the dozen fresh eggs, he had no appetite for any of it.

Cold cereal was a much better match for his mood this morning.

He had a cup of coffee, ate the cereal, and was just putting the bowl and spoon into the dishwasher when his mother finally appeared. Her skin was so pale — her face so drawn — that Matt knew at once she hadn’t slept any better than he had.

Mother and son eyed each other, both waiting for the other to speak, neither quite sure they wanted to know what the other was thinking or feeling.

The silence built like a wall between them. It was finally Joan who breached it. “Are you all right?” she asked, her voice betraying the fragility of her nerves.

“Are you?” Matt countered, keeping his voice carefully neutral.

His mother hesitated, then shook her head. “I didn’t sleep much last night.”

Matt’s eyes shifted from Joan to the coffee maker. “Do you think Dad’ll come home this afternoon?” he ventured as he refilled his cup and poured one for his mother.

Once again the chasm of silence widened until it threatened to engulf them while Joan tried to decide what to say. Her first impulse was to try to reassure him, as she had when Bill Hapgood first came into their lives eleven years ago. But then she remembered that he was not a little boy anymore. “I don’t think so,” she admitted. “I’m not sure what’s going to happen.”

Suddenly Emily’s voice could be heard drifting down from the floor above. Though her words were indistinct, both of them heard the anger in her tone. Joan flinched, and the hot coffee slopped out of the cup onto her hands. “I’d better go up and see what she wants.”

His mother started toward the door. “Maybe Dad’s right,” Matt said, and though his voice was soft, his words stopped Joan short. “Maybe Gram shouldn’t be here. Maybe you should let Dad find a place for her.” He saw a flicker of something in his mother’s eyes. Fear? Anger? He couldn’t be certain, and it was gone as quickly as it had come.

“No,” she said. “She’s my mother and I have to take care of her.” Then she was gone and he could hear her hurrying up the stairs as his grandmother called out again.

Matt drained his coffee, picked up his backpack, and went out into the cold morning, walking quickly down the long driveway. Kelly Conroe was waiting for him by the mailbox, just as she always did, but as he came out the gate her usually sunny smile faded.

“Matt?” she asked, unknowingly echoing the words he’d asked his mother a few minutes earlier. “Are you all right?”

He fell in beside her, taking her hand in his own. They’d been going to school together almost as long as they could remember, first waiting for the grade-school bus at the stop halfway between the Hapgood house and the Conroes’, then riding their bikes, and then, when they got to high school, walking. It wasn’t until last spring that they started holding hands, and though neither Matt’s parents nor Kelly’s had said anything, both of them were sure that their mothers, at least, were already speculating on the future possibilities, happily ignoring the fact that since Kelly was planning on going to medical school and Matt was toying with becoming a lawyer, whatever “future possibilities” there might be were at least eight or ten years away.

“My dad left last night,” Matt told her.

Kelly stopped short. “What do you mean, he left?”

Matt suddenly felt annoyed with Kelly. “You know — left ?”

“But why?” Kelly asked.

“Why do you think?” Matt demanded, his voice harsh. “Because of my grandmother moving in.”

“But he’s coming back, isn’t he?”

Matt dropped Kelly’s hand. “How should I know?” He hesitated. Then, as the rain that had been threatening began to fall, all the feelings that had been building in him through the night poured out. “It’s not like he told me if he’s coming back or not! He didn’t say anything at all. There wasn’t even a fight, or anything.” The whole story of what had happened the night before tumbled from his lips.

“He’ll come back,” Kelly decided when Matt was finished. They were in front of the school, and the first bell rang as she spoke. “I mean, your dad’s not going to leave just because — ”

Matt’s eyes, as stormy as the sky, fixed on her. “He’s not my dad, remember? He’s only my stepfather. So who cares if he comes back? I don’t!” Turning his back on her, he hurried up the front steps and into the shelter of the school.

Kelly, oblivious to the rain, watched him go.

You care, she thought. You care if he comes back.

“THAT DOESN’T GO there! why can’t you do anything right?”

Joan’s hands tightened on the dress she was holding. Pale blue, the bodice covered with seed pearls, the satin dress had been her mother’s favorite. But that was years ago, and even though the dress had been kept carefully hung in the closet since the one time it was worn, the color had begun to fade and the material to rot. In fact, it should have been given away years ago, while someone could still use it. Now it was beyond repair — not that it would be worth repairing, since the seed pearls were plastic and the satin was made of rayon instead of silk. But in her mother’s eyes the dress was still beautiful.