Nightshade

PROLOGUE

THE CHILD LAY still; anyone observing it would have been certain it was sound asleep. But it was not, for long ago — so long ago that there was no memory of how it began — the child’s mind had learned to defend itself from the agony that the body it inhabited was forced to bear. Someday — in a future so far away that the barely formed mind could not even begin to comprehend it — it might be able to defend the body too.

But not yet.

For now, all the mind could do was retreat from the enemy, hiding deep inside the body, leaving the body to bear the pain as best it could.

Now the child’s mind hovered on the fringe of consciousness, neither fully awake nor fully asleep, but lurking furtively in some shadowy nether region, ready to drop back into unconsciousness if it sensed that the enemy was near.

Beyond the eyelids — which the mind had learned very early to keep carefully closed — a growing brightness hinted that the terrors of the night would soon succumb to the onset of dawn.

But what about the terrors of the day?

The mind shifted its attention to the ears, sifting through the sounds, sorting them, searching for signals of danger.

Nothing threatened: only a voice, laughing; a bird, singing.

The mind ventured slightly closer to full consciousness.

It allowed the eyes to open — just the tiniest crack.

Brilliant yellow light flowed through the single small window.

The mind edged further into wakefulness.

Then a new sound — the creaking of an unoiled hinge on a sagging door — rasped in the child’s ears, and the mind darted back, shying instinctively away from the noise that so often signaled approaching danger.

It closed the eyes again, lest they betray the mind’s presence.

The creaking sound stopped, but the mind cowered where it was, ready to retreat into the black safety of unconsciousness at any moment.

Another sound came.

… click-click-click… The mind hesitated, still waiting, warily listening.

The sound came again.

… click-click-click…

The sound drew closer and closer, and the mind, uncertain, waited.

The click-click-click stopped, and a familiar scent filled the child’s nostrils, a scent that instantly eased some of the fear in the child’s mind.

“Doggie,” the mind let the child whisper as the animal’s tongue lapped at its face.

The furry mass of one of the animal’s forepaws left the cracked cement floor upon which its claws had been clicking and gently prodded the child.

The child’s eyes opened, and its arms wrapped around the animal’s neck.

“Nice doggie,” the child whispered as it peered into the dog’s great brown eyes.

The dog whimpered, its tongue slurping across the child’s face again.

The child giggled as its fingers stroked the animal’s fur, but a second later the happy sound died on its lips and its fingers jerked away as if they’d been burned as the door at the top of the stairs was suddenly slammed open, crashing against the wall behind it.

“Out!” a voice commanded, the single word lashing down the steep flight of stairs like a snaking whip.

The child’s body reflexively recoiled from the lash of the voice, and as the dog darted up the stairs, the child’s mind began to retreat.

“How dare you?” the voice demanded, but even as the words rained down on the child, its mind began rejecting the signals that were funneling in through the ears and turning away from the bright sunlight the eyes perceived, retreating into the dark quiet safety of unconsciousness.

Too late. Despite the mind’s effort to reject them, the furious words filtered through. “How many times have I told you not to touch that animal? Do you want me to make it go away forever? I can do that, you know! I made your father go away!” The mind felt the child trying to curl up, trying to make itself small.

Don’t, the mind commanded. Lie still. Be asleep.

But it was far too late, for the mistake had already been made and for the child’s body there was no longer any way to escape from the fury that hovered above.

“I’ll teach you!” the voice rasped.

As the mind raced toward the safety of darkness, the first blow struck. Though the mind struggled once more to keep the child from reacting, a howl of pain and fear escaped its throat, and once more the voice spoke.

“Evil child! Nasty, vile, evil child! Well, I won’t have it! Do you understand? I won’t stand for it!”

As the raging voice ranted on, the child tried to pull its body away from the blows, but there was no escape.

The mind, reacting in an instant to the agony of the blows, retreated into the blackness, closing out what was happening. It closed off the ears and the voice began to fade away until the individual words could no longer be distinguished and the only sound that filtered through was an indistinct hum.

Next came the nerves. It doesn’t hurt, the mind told itself. It won’t hurt. It can’t hurt. Nothing can hurt. Nothing… nothing… nothing…

The sting of the slashing blows began to fade, and the mind turned further away, retreating into the safety, darkness and silence of unconsciousness, sheltered from all the terrors the world held.

* * *

AN ETERNITY — or perhaps only a minute — passed.

The child’s mind began once more to creep out of the cavern into which it had retreated. This time, though, it was even warier than before, refusing to let the child twitch even the smallest muscle until it was certain the danger had passed.

Beyond the closed eyelids there was no glow at all, which told the mind it had been gone all day, and that night — the long darkness that held its own unique terrors — must have fallen.

From the ears came no signal at all — no creak of the door, or whimpering of the dog, or voice sharp with anger. Yet the mind sensed no safety in the silence.

The lungs expanded, and the mind, suddenly stimulated by the scent captured by the child’s nose, paused. The odor was strong, and very familiar.

And comforting.

It was the smell of the blanket that had given the child comfort long before its conscious memory had formed. Now, reacting to the deep emotions stirred by the scent, the mind let the child reach out to pull the comforting blanket more closely around its aching body. But the fingers touched nothing — the warm softness of the material was nowhere to be found.

Slowly, the mind became aware of the pain in the child’s body. But there was more than the fading sting of the hands that had struck the child. The mind had long since learned to deal with that. This time there was an ache as well — an ache that had settled so deep into the child’s legs and arms that at first the limbs refused to obey the mind’s commands. But finally — agonizingly — the child reached out into the darkness.

After moving only a few inches, the child’s fingers found something hard, something immovable.

The fingers probed in another direction; the same hardness blocked them once more.

In an instant the mind knew: it wasn’t the scent of the blanket at all, but the scent of the chest where all the blankets in the house were kept through the summer.

The cedar chest.

The cedar chest that sat against the wall below the cellar’s single tiny window.

The lungs expanded again, and the scents of cedar and mothballs filled the child’s nostrils once more. But this time, instead of reminding the child of the comfort, warmth, and softness of the blanket, the scent seemed to wrap around it like a serpent’s coils, pressing tighter every second.

Panic took over and the child thrashed and cried — sobbed and choked — as it struggled to free itself from the imprisoning walls of the chest.

But the chest was strong, the child weak.

As the terror and the blackness and the scent closed around the child’s body, the mind — as it had grown so used to doing — began once more to slip away, to disappear into a safer world.

This time, as the mind retreated into the dark haven of unconsciousness, it wondered if it would come back at all. But then, even as it dropped away into the darkness, it knew.

It would come back.

But it would be changed.

And it would strike back.