Nightshade

CHAPTER 26

HALF CARRYING, HALF dragging Becky Adams, Cynthia made her way down the stairs into the basement. She didn’t like the basement — it was far too dark and dirty for her tastes — but it didn’t hold the terror for her that it held for Joan. But Joan had always been a fraidy-cat, screaming the moment she’d first been put in the cedar chest in the basement of the house on Burlington Avenue all those years ago. Cynthia had almost felt sorry for her the first time their mother did it, but she knew that if she did anything — even said anything — she would be the one her mother locked up.

It had actually happened once, when she was very young. She couldn’t even remember anymore what her infraction had been, but remembered that after her mother was finished slapping her — hard — she was taken down to the basement and put in the cedar chest.

Then the lid was closed.

Cynthia had been terrified, not only of the dark, but of the awful feeling that the box might actually crush her.

But she hadn’t let herself scream.

She hadn’t even let herself move. Instead, she’d forced herself to lie perfectly still and close her eyes and pretend she wasn’t in the box at all. And she made up her mind that no matter what she had to do, she would never let her mother slap her again.

She would never let herself be put in the box again.

And she would get even.

Some day — some way — she would make her mother feel the pain and fear she herself had felt that day.

From then on, Cynthia said whatever she had to say, did whatever she had to do, to keep her mother from punishing her.

She didn’t let herself get slapped.

She didn’t let herself get put back in the cedar chest.

For a while it had been hard — she had to be so careful about what she did that most of the time she just didn’t do anything at all — but after Joan was born, it got a lot easier. As soon as Joan was old enough to crawl, Cynthia began blaming things on her; she was already a good enough liar that her mother always believed her. From then on, it was Joan who took the punishment for whatever Cynthia did — and screamed through every minute of it.

Now, as Cynthia dragged Becky across the floor to the trapdoor that was the only entrance to the old root cellar, she wondered what would have happened if Joan had summoned up the courage to come down here — or, even worse, if Joan had managed to regain control before she had finally become strong enough to take over completely.

Maybe Joan would have been happy, seeing what she’d done to their mother. But probably not; for some reason — some reason that she had never been able to understand — Joan kept loving their mother. It never seemed to matter how cruel the old woman was, Joan always managed to make excuses for her.

Weak. That’s what Joan had always been — just plain weak!

Heaving the trapdoor open, Cynthia peered down into the black pit below. Her nostrils filled with the putrid odor of rotting flesh mixed with urine and feces, but she paid no attention to the vile stench as she pushed Becky through the opening, barely waiting for the girl’s body to drop to the dirt floor before closing the trapdoor and returning to the bright rooms upstairs.

Climbing to the second floor, she went to the guest room to clean up the mess Joan had made. Most of the clothes would be all right — she could find a seamstress to fix the damage, and after they were cleaned and pressed, they would be almost as good as new. But as she tried to put the pictures back together — the wonderful images of herself that she’d always kept on her walls, and in frames on her desk, and next to her bed — her anger toward Joan grew stronger than ever.

The pictures were ruined!

She remembered, then, the album her mother kept hidden in the drawer of her nightstand. The album that was filled with copies of every picture Cynthia had, and dozens more. Leaving the guest room, Cynthia went through the bathroom to the room next door. Her mother’s nightstand was gone! She felt a flash of panic. Was it possible that every picture of her — every image of her beauty — could be gone?

No! Of course not! The nightstand wasn’t here, but her mother would have saved the album.

Frantically, Cynthia began searching for it. Beginning with the dresser that stood against the wall opposite the foot of the bed, she pulled open one drawer after another, scattering their contents across the floor until the rug was strewn with a jumble of nightgowns, underwear, sweaters, and stockings — things her mother hadn’t worn in years, but had refused to give up.

Finally, in the third drawer of the bureau that stood next to the window, Cynthia found it. The album was covered with cheap leatherette that had long ago worn away to reveal the cardboard beneath, but Cynthia handled it with as much care as if it were a Gutenberg Bible. Lifting it from the drawer, she laid it carefully on a table, opened it, and began turning the pages.

They were all there. Every photograph she remembered, from the first one, taken when she was only a month old, to the last, taken just before she had gone away to New York. Even though the baby hadn’t been showing yet, she could see the radiance in her eyes the day the photo was taken. It was a lovely photograph — far too lovely to be hidden away in her mother’s old photo album. It should be downstairs!

Cynthia knew where she wanted it to be. Not just this one, but all of them. She took the album downstairs and into the den. Rummaging in the top drawer of Bill’s desk, she found a pair of scissors, then carefully set to work.

One by one she removed the photographs that sat on top of Bill Hapgood’s desk — photographs of his wedding, and his wife, and his family — and carefully cut out the images of Joan. Then, equally carefully, she cut her own face from the photographs in the album.

For the formal portrait taken the day Joan and Bill were married, she chose a photograph of herself as homecoming queen, taken during her last year of high school. The dress she’d worn had been white, its panels and bodice embroidered with rhinestones. It had looked almost like a wedding dress, and as she carefully placed it over the cutout where Joan’s image had been, Cynthia knew the image of herself was finally in its rightful place.

“It should have been me anyway,” she murmured as she slipped the altered photo back into its frame. Standing it up, she stepped back, cocked her head, and gazed at her work with a critical eye. From only six feet away, the picture looked totally genuine.

Not only genuine, but right.

Then she moved on to the photographs on the desk, replacing the cutouts of Joan’s face and figure with images of herself from the album until all the photographs on Bill’s desk had been altered.

Bill and Cynthia at their wedding, their son standing next to his mother.

Cynthia and Matt, on the Eiffel Tower, gazing out over Paris. Looking at the picture, Cynthia could almost see the view herself, as clearly as if it she had been there instead of Joan.

Bill, Cynthia, and Matt, riding horses five years ago.

“Perfect,” she whispered as she gazed at the photographs, now put back in the positions Bill had left them. “Now it’s right. Now it’s the way it should have been… ”

* * *

MATT DRIFTED BACK to consciousness, the line between sleep and wakefulness so blurred that he wasn’t sure where one state ended and the other began. Pain was the first thing he became aware of — pain that seemed to have seized every nerve of his body.

His head ached — a dull, throbbing ache that intensified every time his heart beat. Instinctively, he reached up to touch his head, but his shoulder protested, sending a searing tongue of agony down not only his arm, but his body as well. He groaned out loud, then made himself lie still as the spasm slowly eased.

Where was he? The blackness around him was so deep he could feel it closing in on him as if it were something physical. Claustrophobia gripped him then, and he lashed out in panic with his feet, as if to kick at an unseen enemy. But when his feet touched nothing, the claustrophobia lost its grip and his panic subsided.

His nostrils filled with a foul odor — urine and feces, mixed with something else, something he couldn’t quite identify, but that made his skin crawl and his stomach heave. Steeling himself against the revolting stench, he tried moving again, experimenting with his limbs one by one. His legs were sore, but the pain began to ease as he moved them. Satisfied that they weren’t broken, he tested his arms. They felt all right, except for the pain in his shoulders. In fact, his shoulders felt like they had when he slammed into a practice bag too hard a couple of weeks ago. They’d ached for a couple of hours, but nothing was broken. So now he thought that he must have run into something, or fallen.

He reached up to touch his head again, moving slowly this time, working through the pain in his shoulder. He felt something sticky matting his hair, brought his fingers to his mouth and licked them. The salty taste of blood spread across his tongue.

He touched his head again, and felt a swollen, spongy knob. A cut across the top of the knob stung when his fingers encountered the raw nerves exposed by his torn scalp.

Hit by something.

Something hard, and with an edge sharp enough to —

An image flashed into his mind. Aunt Cynthia! He’d been in the den — at his father’s desk — and his nostrils had filled with the scent of his aunt’s perfume. He’d looked up, and —

And seen her!

She’d been there, looming above him, holding a fireplace poker. But that was impossible! His aunt was dead.

Struggling to hold on to the image before it could fade away from his memory like the wispy vestiges of a dream, he suddenly saw it. Not his aunt — his mother! That’s who it had been!

Her face had been covered with makeup, and she’d twisted her hair up the way his aunt’s was in the big picture hanging in the guest room, but behind the makeup, it had been his mother’s face.

Memories of dreams tumbled through his mind, dreams in which his aunt had come to him in the night, and he’d heard her voice whispering to him, telling him she loved him.

Felt her fingers on his flesh.

Felt her slipping into bed beside him, caressing him, touching him.

Not dreams!

It had never been dreams!

A wave of nausea rose inside him as the truth sank in. How many times had it happened? How many times had his mother crept into his bed in the middle of the night?

Three times?

Six?

A dozen?

No! Not that many! It couldn’t have been that many. He struggled to remember, but all the memories seemed twisted together.

He lay still in the darkness, wanting to shut out the terrible memories of what he and his mother had done. Again he told himself it had only been a dream, that his mother couldn’t possibly have done the things he was remembering, but even as his mind struggled to repress it all, his body remembered, and merely the memory of her touch brought back the stirring heat in his groin.

With the excitement came guilt. Was it possible that he’d actually liked it? No! No, he couldn’t have!

But if he hadn’t liked it, why had he let her come back?

A sob caught in his throat, and he wished he could die in the blackness, wished the darkness could swallow him up so he would never have to be exposed to the light again, never again have to be seen by anyone.

A sense that he wasn’t alone suddenly overwhelmed Matt, pulling him from his thoughts. He felt an unseen presence, lurking in the darkness nearby.

Then he heard a soft, muffled groan.

Pulling himself to his hands and knees, ignoring the pain in his shoulders and his head, Matt crawled through the darkness. “Who is it?” he whispered. “Who’s here?”

Again he heard the muffled sound, closer now. He groped in the darkness, and a moment later touched something. It moved, and his hand reflexively jerked away. Once again he heard it. It sounded as if someone were trying to say something. He reached out, and this time when his hand brushed against something, he didn’t pull away.

“It’s all right,” he whispered. “I won’t hurt you.” He reached out with his other hand and felt an arm… an arm in a sleeve.

He moved his hands up the arm until his fingers brushed against bare skin. Hearing a muffled cry, he understood. Whoever he’d touched was gagged.

Quickly, he groped in the darkness until his fingers found a face, and felt the duct tape over the mouth. Carefully, he worked a corner of the tape loose, then slowly began peeling it away. Before he finished, the head jerked back, leaving the tape hanging in his fingers.

“Matt? Is that you?”

It was Kelly!

“What happened?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”

Sobbing, her voice barely audible, Kelly tried to tell him what had happened. “I was coming to see you… I just hated the way everyone was treating you, and — and — ” She broke off, her voice choking as relieved sobs overtook her.

“But what happened?” Matt repeated.

“Your mother,” Kelly said when her sobs subsided enough so she could speak again. “She — I think she killed your grandmother. And she kicked me so hard I think my arm is broken.” Matt reached out to her, but when he started to put his arms around her, she whimpered with pain. “Just hold my hand,” she begged. “Hold my hand and tell me where we are.”

“I don’t know. I was in the den, and she — she — ” He faltered, but made himself finish. “I think she wanted to kill me too,” he whispered hollowly. He told her what had happened.

“There’s someone else here too,” Kelly said when he finished. “She opened the trapdoor again a little while ago and pushed somebody down.”

“Trapdoor?” Matt echoed. “You mean, like in the ceiling?”

“Yes. There’s a ladder she uses when she comes down, and — ”

“I know!” Matt blurted. “I know where we are — the old root cellar in the basement of our house!” He was silent a moment. “But Mom won’t even go down in the basement — she hates it. She says it gives her claustrophobia!” He stood up and moved around in the darkness, feeling for the walls.

Twice his feet struck objects on the floor and he stumbled. The first time, he knelt down and found a corpse, its flesh cold, and he knew what had caused the stench he smelled when he woke up a few minutes ago.

It was the stink of rotting flesh.

The second time he stumbled, it was another body, but when he knelt down, he felt the warmth of life. The body stirred under his touch, and he heard a soft moan.

“Who is it?” he asked. “Who are you?”

There was silence, and then he heard a voice, barely audible, whimpering.

“Don’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me.”

“Becky?” Matt breathed. “Is that you?”

Becky Adams’s only response was to beg him again not to hurt her.

“It’s okay,” he assured her. “I’m going to get you out. I’m going to get all of us out.”

But he knew the root cellar, could picture it as clearly as if it were illuminated with a halogen lamp. Its walls were bare and featureless. The ceiling was more than eight feet above the floor. The trapdoor — the only way to enter the chamber — was in the center of that ceiling. Even if he could find some way to reach it, how would he open it? It was impossible.

There was no way out.

* * *

THOUGH THE TV was on, Dan Pullman was neither watching it nor listening to the vacuously pretty blonde who was earnestly reporting the news of a low-sodium diet in the same solemn tones in which she’d discussed a plane crash a few moments earlier. Instead, the police chief’s attention was fixed on the special edition of the Granite Falls Ledger that had been on his doorstep when he arrived home ten minutes ago. Most of the front page was taken up by an unsigned piece, obviously written by Gerry Conroe, suggesting that if the local police were unable to solve the disappearances of both Emily Moore and Kelly Conroe within the next twentyfour hours, it would be time “to look to new leadership at our police department.” The Ledger was certainly keeping accounts tonight, Pullman thought sourly. Why not just demand that he resign right now and be done with it?

His phone rang as he tossed the paper aside, and for a moment he was tempted to ignore it; Heather’s friends knew better than to call on his line, and if it were something important from the department, the message would come over the radio that sat on the end table next to his recliner. When the phone rang at his house, it was usually either someone calling to criticize something he’d done, or to demand that he deal with a situation that was beyond the purview of his department. On the other hand, he knew there was a remote possibility that this particular call might be from someone as fed up with Gerry Conroe as he was, and phoning to offer support. Which wasn’t really fair, he silently chided himself as he reached for the receiver. This time, at least, Conroe had a legitimate reason to be unreasonable.

“Hello?”

“Becky’s gone, Dan.” The man at the other end of the line spoke only the three words, but Dan recognized Frank Adams’s voice at the first syllable. Frank had been his best friend since they’d had a fight in second grade, and hardly a day had gone by since then that they hadn’t talked to each other.

“Tell me exactly what happened,” Dan said.

Frank Adams reconstructed the fight Becky had with her mother. “I’m not going to pretend Becky hasn’t ever taken off before,” he said. “She has, and frankly, there have been times when I couldn’t blame her. God knows I’ve wanted to take off myself plenty of times over the years. But before, she’s always cooled off in an hour or so and come back home. You know Becky — she’s a good kid, but she doesn’t have a lot of friends. The only place I thought that she might go was out to the Hapgoods’ to see Matt.”

“Did you call there?” Dan asked.

“That’s why I’m calling you. Joan said she hasn’t seen Becky, but she also told me that Matt’s not there. And after what happened to Kelly Conroe…” Frank Adams’s voice trailed off, but he didn’t have to finish his sentence for his friend to get the message.

“Frank, there’s absolutely no hard evidence that Matt’s done anything wrong. Just a lot of gossip and innuendo, and people wanting quick answers.”

It occurred to him to give Frank the same speech he’d given Gerry Conroe last night, but he knew he couldn’t do it. Frank Adams wasn’t Gerry Conroe, and in all the years he’d been running the Granite Falls police department, Frank had never presumed on their friendship for any kind of favor. Once, he’d even insisted on being given a speeding ticket Tony Petrocelli was about to tear up on the basis of his friendship with the chief. “You do that, and I’ll report you to Dan myself,” Frank warned Petrocelli. Though Frank had never told Dan about the incident, Petrocelli had.

“Let me make a few calls, and see what I can find out,” Pullman said now.

“I know I shouldn’t be calling you yet — ” Frank began.

“You shouldn’t call your best friend when your daughter’s missing?” Pullman cut in. “If that’s all you think of me, maybe I don’t want to be your friend anymore.” He started to hang up, then added one more word, just to let Frank know he wasn’t really mad at him: “Jerk!”

“Asshole,” Frank replied, just as he had since the fight in second grade.

Both men hung up, and Pullman immediately picked up the phone and dialed Joan Hapgood’s number.

* * *

CYNTHIA WAS JUST pouring herself a glass of Bill’s favorite sherry — something Joan had always declined when he’d offered it — when the phone rang. For a moment Cynthia was tempted to ignore it; she hadn’t liked the way Frank Adams spoke to her when he called a few minutes ago, and had no wish to speak to him again. He hadn’t been rude, precisely, but she heard an accusatory note in his voice. Still, if she didn’t answer, he might take it into his head to drive out here, which appealed to her even less than speaking to him on the phone. She picked up the receiver on the fourth ring, and was careful to keep her voice neutral. Not cold, but not overly friendly either. “Hello?”

There was a moment’s hesitation, then: “Joan?”

Not Frank Adams.

Reaching into her sister’s memory, Cynthia quickly identified the voice of the police chief. “Oh dear, Dan,” she said, her voice taking on an overtone of concern. “Is this about the little Adams girl?”

“Frank just called me,” Pullman replied. “He tells me Matt isn’t there?”

The question hung in the air for a few seconds before Cynthia responded. “No, I’m afraid he isn’t. He came home from school, but then went out again.”

“Do you know where he went?”

Cynthia felt a twinge of annoyance. “No, I don’t. But surely you don’t believe he could be interested in Becky Adams, do you? Such a — ” She was about to say “homely girl” but quickly edited herself. “ — shy little thing. Not the sort Matt would be interested in, no matter how much she chased him.”

Dan Pullman’s brow furrowed deeply. What was Joan talking about? Becky chasing Matt? He couldn’t imagine Becky Adams chasing any boy, least of all Matt Moore, whom she’d known all her life. And there was something strange in her voice, too. Though it sounded like Joan, it didn’t sound quite right. “What makes you think she was chasing him?” he asked.

There was a barely perceptible silence before Joan Hapgood spoke again. “All the girls chase him, Dan. Just like all the boys used to chase my sister. Don’t you remember? The boys always flocked around Cynthia just the way the girls flock around Matt.”

Pullman’s puzzlement deepened. Cynthia? He hadn’t heard her name mentioned in quite a while. And didn’t she know that the boys had sniffed around her sister because Cynthia had a reputation for doing pretty much anything any of them had in mind? “I’d never really thought Matt was much like his aunt,” he said carefully.

“Don’t be silly,” Cynthia replied. “He’s exactly like Cynthia! Good looking, and charming and — ” She caught herself. “But of course you’re not interested in Matt, are you? It’s that Adams girl you called about. But I’m afraid I can’t help you any more than I could help her father. I simply haven’t seen her.”

Dan was about to hang up when he realized that Joan hadn’t asked about her mother. In fact, Joan hadn’t called all afternoon to ask whether he’d found any sign of Emily Moore. “Joan, are you all right?” he asked.

“Of course I’m all right,” Cynthia replied, and after a moment added, “I mean, given the circumstances.”

Even after he hung up, Pullman’s eyes remained fixed on the phone. Something wasn’t right. Everything Joan Hapgood had said sounded a bit off, as if there were someone else in the room with her, making her try to act as if nothing was wrong.

But who? Matt?

But Matt was barely sixteen years old, and as far as Pullman knew, neither his mother nor anyone else had ever been the least bit intimidated by him. No one, anyway, except Eric Holmes, and Pullman was no more inclined to believe Eric’s story now than he had been last night. But he was certain that something was wrong at the Hapgood house. Getting out of his chair, he tiredly began putting his uniform back on, meanwhile working on a mental list of things to do before he actually went back out to see Joan Hapgood. Given what her attorney had told him just last night, he knew he’d better have a lot more to go on than just a feeling that something wasn’t right out there. So first he would have a talk with Frank Adams, and Phyllis too, if she was sober enough to be coherent. Then he’d have a look around and see if he could find Becky in the usual places kids went. And finally he would call Trip Wainwright — better to take him along than have Joan call him herself.

It was going to be a long evening.

* * *

HE DIDN’T BELIEVE me, Cynthia thought as she put the phone down. He’s going to come out here and try to take my son away from me. But he won’t… he won’t take Matt away.

I won’t let him.