Nightshade

EPILOGUE

KARL RHINEMANN’S VARIOUS degrees hung in gilt-framed splendor against his office’s rich, oiled-walnut paneling. His diploma from Harvard, denoting a Bachelor of Arts degree in biochemistry, hung in the center. Surrounding it were the rest. The medical diploma from Harvard Medical School. The Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia. The L.L.D. and J.D., also from Columbia. But neither the years of schooling nor his equal number of years in practice had prepared him for the woman who sat across the desk from him, perched nervously on the edge of the deep red leather wingback chair that usually made his subjects feel more relaxed than they had any right to be. Rhinemann’s practice was in forensic psychiatry, and on this day it had fallen upon him to do an initial evaluation of Joan Moore Hapgood.

As his subject watched him warily, he quickly reread the file in front of him. According to the report made out by Daniel Pullman, who had been the chief investigator of the crimes Joan Hapgood was accused of committing, she had killed her husband, her mother, and an unrelated teenage girl, attempted the murder of her son, and battered a second, unrelated teenage girl.

His eyes shifted from the file to the woman who sat before him. She did not look like the monster the file depicted. Indeed, she did not look like any sort of monster, but like a very frightened, very worried woman, whose face was etched by a grief that was engulfing her prettiness. “Would you like to tell me what happened?” Rhinemann asked, leaning forward and resting his chin on his folded hands, his attentiveness letting her know he would see through any lies she might tell.

“I don’t know what happened,” Joan Hapgood said softly. Her eyes, wide and frightened, met his with no hesitation. “I know what they say I did, but I don’t believe I did any of it. I loved my husband and my mother. I still love my son.”

“And the girls?” Rhinemann asked. “How did you feel about them?”

“Kelly Conroe is my best friend’s daughter. I loved her. I — ” She faltered. “ — I hardly knew Becky Adams. But I know she was a sweet girl. Shy, but very sweet. When we lived across the street from her, I always liked her very much.”

Rhinemann leaned back in his chair, unfolding his hands and idly picking up a pencil he had no intention of using. Whatever notes he took would be committed to paper after the subject was gone. “Would you like to tell me what happened the day your son had to go to the hospital?” Joan Hapgood tensed, and he could see her debating something in her mind. He nodded — an almost imperceptible gesture that he knew would probably not even register in the subject’s consciousness. It would, however, suggest to her subconscious that she could trust him. Sure enough, she shifted in her chair, making herself more comfortable.

“You’ll think I’m crazy,” she said.

Rhinemann shrugged noncommittally. “Try me.”

“I–I was clearing my sister’s things out of my house… ”

“Cynthia’s things?” Rhinemann had studied Dan Pullman’s account of his conversation with Joan Hapgood on the night she was arrested so many times that he could have repeated it verbatim, had no need to ask Joan to identify her sister. It was his way of prodding her. When she nodded but still said nothing, he added, “And she didn’t want you to do that?”

Joan bit down on her lip as if to prevent herself from speaking, then shook her head. “She said it should have been her house. Then — ” She took a deep breath and continued. “Then she started laughing at me.”

“Laughing at you?” Rhinemann repeated, deliberately lending his voice a touch of mockery. As he had intended, the subject exhibited the first signs of anger. “Did she laugh at you often?”

For the first time, Joan Hapgood’s eyes moved away from him, and she began picking at the seam of her dress. “She always laughed at me. As long as I can remember, she always laughed.”

“Why would she do that? Why would she laugh at you?”

Joan’s eyes met his again and when she spoke, Rhinemann could hear her anger in her voice. “She always thought she was better than I was. And she always said that even though I wanted to be her, I never could. She said I could never be as pretty as her, or as smart as her. She said Mother would never love me the way she loved her.”

“And that was true, wasn’t it?” Rhinemann asked, his voice bland though his pulse was quickening as he saw the subject’s rage growing.

“No!” Joan shouted. “It wasn’t Cynthia that Bill Hapgood loved — it was me! And even if I didn’t give birth to Matt, I was his mother. Not Cynthia! Me!”

“But it was always Cynthia your mother loved best, wasn’t it? And no matter what you did, you couldn’t be as pretty or as smart as your sister.”

Joan’s voice hardened. “I could! I could be everything she was. I could have been just as beautiful as she was. And just as smart and popular too!”

“But you couldn’t make your mother love you, could you?”

Joan flinched as if she’d been struck.

“Is that what it was about? That you could never make your mother love you?”

Again Joan flinched, and then, abruptly, she straightened, seeming to grow taller in the chair. Her expression shifted too, but more than that, her features now appeared more refined, her cheekbones higher, her eyes more widely spaced. And her lips curled into a smile so cold it made Karl Rhinemann’s skin crawl.

“Of course Mother never loved her,” the woman who sat across from him said. “I saw to that. I saw to everything.”

Rhinemann regarded her without speaking for several seconds, wondering how to proceed. Finally, he asked, “Does Joan know about you? Does she know what you’ve done?”

Cynthia smiled enigmatically. “That all depends, doesn’t it?”

“Depends on what?” Rhinemann countered.

Cynthia Moore shrugged. “Oh, come now, Doctor. I’m not a fool, and neither are you. We both know that what happens to Joan depends entirely on what you say in the report you’re going to write as soon as Joan is taken back to her room. So what is it going to be?” The forefinger of her right hand touched its counterpart on her left hand. “It’s quite possible that Joan is totally insane, isn’t it? After all, the way Mama beat her and locked her in the cedar chest in the basement when she was little could account for a lot, couldn’t it? Certainly it would account for her fear of the basement at Hapgood Farm. And it would account for the way she beat Mama and Becky Adams to death. And it would certainly account for me — Joan wouldn’t be the first person to develop a second personality, would she?” She cocked her head knowingly. “Someone had to take the abuse that she couldn’t stand. And who better to come up with than me?” Her smile turned brittle. “After all, Doctor, you and I both know that no matter how much she professes to love me, deep down she must hate me. Why wouldn’t she? I’m everything she never was. I’m everything she ever wanted to be. And she was my whipping boy from the day she learned to crawl. Without me, she never would have gotten those beatings.” Cynthia laughed, a cold, harsh sound. “But there’s another possibility, too, isn’t there?”

Rhinemann raised his brows in a silent invitation for her to go on.

The woman’s right forefinger moved on to the middle finger of her left hand. “Perhaps Cynthia doesn’t really exist at all — maybe I’m Joan, simply pretending to be Cynthia. After all, is it really reasonable to believe that Cynthia simply ‘appeared’ whenever I needed to be rid of someone? Don’t forget — Bill had left me, and told me he was going to take Matt away from me — he showed me the proof that he’d fathered him. He even told me that the only reason he married me was because he began to suspect that Matt really was his son. His, and Cynthia’s! So why wouldn’t I kill him? He was going to take my son away from me. And why wouldn’t I kill Mother, after everything she’d done to me?”

“And the girls?” Rhinemann asked.

The woman shrugged as if what she’d done to the two teenagers was barely worth explaining. “They wanted Matt. They wanted him, just like Bill wanted him.”

“So you killed one of them and beat the other,” Rhinemann continued. “Just like your mother beat you.”

The woman’s head tipped forward as if she were a teacher acknowledging the correctness of a pupil’s answer. “So what are you going to do, Doctor?” she asked. “What is Joan’s fate to be?”

“What do you think I should do?” he countered.

The woman leaned back in the chair and crossed her legs, and when she spoke again, her voice was soft, her smile easy. “For all I care, you can find her totally sane and do whatever you want to her. But the trial will be difficult, since Joan won’t be able to answer anybody’s questions about much of anything. And I won’t be around to help.”

Rhinemann allowed himself a small smile. “Oh, I suspect if the questioning were handled properly, you’d find it impossible to resist coming out.”

The woman refused to rise to the bait. “If I were you, I wouldn’t put my reputation at stake by trying.” Her eyes and smile hardened. “I told her I’d never let her have my baby. She didn’t believe me. And then I took Matt away from her, just like she took him away from me. And she’ll never get him back. Never.” As the psychologist was about to ask one more question, she said, “Good-bye, Dr. Rhinemann. And say good-bye to Joan for me too. I don’t ever expect to see her again. Not her, and not you either.”

As the psychologist watched, the woman opposite him changed again. She seemed to deflate, her body sagging in the chair, her features losing definition.

“Mother would have loved me,” Joan whispered, her eyes tearing. “If it hadn’t been for Cynthia, Mother would have loved me.” Her eyes fixed on the doctor’s. “Whatever happened,” she said, “I’m sure it’s all Cynthia’s fault.”

* * *

TWO WEEKS LATER, Joan Moore Hapgood was once again sitting in the chair across from Karl Rhinemann. As he went through the file in front of him — a file three inches thicker than when he first got it — he glanced occasionally at her. She looked exactly as she had at the end of their first interview: grief-stricken and confused.

For two weeks he’d interviewed her, given her numerous personality tests, and with her permission and cooperation had put her under hypnosis. He’d also administered drugs that would have made it impossible for her to tell him anything but the truth, at least as she knew it.

And he had found nothing.

There had not been a trace of the Cynthia Moore personality he’d spoken to during that first interview.

Joan Hapgood was unable to account for anything that occurred in the basement, except to repeat what she’d said at the end of their first interview: “… It’s Cynthia’s fault… it’s all Cynthia’s fault.”

As he finished perusing the file and leaned back in his chair, Joan spoke for the first time since being brought to his office a few minutes earlier. “What’s going to happen to me?”

Rhinemann pursed his lips and tented his fingers over them for a moment, then shrugged helplessly. “I have no choice but to keep you here.”

“But I didn’t do anything,” Joan protested.

“You don’t remember doing anything,” Rhinemann corrected. “And I agree that you truly don’t remember. But your son and Kelly Conroe both remember, and aside from your confession — which your own lawyer agrees that you made in front of him and the investigating officer — ”

“Dan Pullman,” Joan supplied.

Rhinemann tipped his head. “Dan Pullman, yes. Aside from that confession, traces of your fingerprints were found on the shovel and the blood of all three victims was found in your clothes. While there’s no evidence that you pulled the trigger while your son aimed the rifle at your husband, you yourself said you did.”

“But I didn’t — ”

Rhinemann held up his hands to stop her. “Whether you did or didn’t kill your husband makes no difference. I see no way you can be held accountable for things you can no longer remember having done, but at the same time I can’t agree to release you from the hospital. With the endorsement of the evaluation review committee, I’m recommending that the court remand you to this hospital until such time as you are deemed fit to stand trial.”

A gasp escaped Joan’s lips. “How long will that be?”

Karl Rhinemann rose from his desk, moved around it and put his hands gently on Joan Hapgood’s shoulders. “I don’t know,” he said softly. “But you might be here for the rest of your life.”

As Joan’s body shook with a strangled sob, a thought flitted through Karl Rhinemann’s mind: She’s won. By not appearing again, Cynthia has won.

It wasn’t until he was once more alone in his office that he realized that his conclusion had been unreasonable. After all, Cynthia Moore only existed in the mind of Joan Moore Hapgood.

Cynthia herself had been dead for sixteen years.

How could she possibly have won anything at all?

* * *

“YOU DON’T HAVE to do this if you don’t want to,” Matt told Kelly Conroe. They were outside the gates at the foot of the Hapgood driveway. The last of the leaves had been torn from the trees by a storm that passed through Granite Falls a week ago, and through the skeletal branches of the ancient oaks and maples, they could see the looming form of the house neither of them had gone into since the day Joan Hapgood had tried to kill Matt. His shoulder still hurt, but nothing was left of the cut on his head but a pale white scar.

Kelly’s wounds, too, had begun healing in the month since her father gently lifted her out of the root cellar beneath the basement floor. But though her body no longer ached and the cuts no longer stung, she still woke up in the middle of the night, the soft cloak of sleep ripped away by nightmares filled with images she could barely repress even in the full light of day. She slept with a night-light now, unwilling to awaken in darkness even though she knew that the terrors she had survived in the basement of Hapgood Farm could no longer reach her.

After spending three days in the clinic, Matt had gone to stay with the Conroes. “Bill Hapgood was my best friend,” Kelly’s father had told him. “You’re his son — you’ll stay with us as long as you need to, and you’ll always have a home here. You don’t ever have to go back to the farm again.” But when he and Kelly returned to school a week later, passing the gates to Hapgood Farm every day, Matt knew he would eventually have to return to the house he’d lived in since he was five years old, have to sort through everything that had been left to him — not just the house and its contents, but all the memories too.

This morning, he had decided there was no point in putting it off any longer, and when he told Kelly she insisted on going with him.

“Maybe if I see it all again,” she said, “maybe if I make myself go down to the basement and look at that place she put us in — I won’t have the nightmares anymore.”

And now they stood just outside the gates, and Matt could see the nervousness in her eyes. “I can do it by myself,” he assured her. “You really don’t have to come with me.” He could see Kelly wavering, but then she shook her head.

“You can’t go back in there by yourself. We’ll do it together.”

She slipped her hand into his and they started up the driveway. Their pace didn’t falter until they came to the spot where the driveway forked, one branch leading to the circular drive in front of the house, the other to the carriage house behind. They headed toward the front door as if by common consent, though no words passed between them. When they were on the porch, they stopped and looked at each other. “You really don’t have to — ” Matt said again, but Kelly didn’t let him finish.

“Open the door, Matt.”

He slipped the key into the lock, twisted it, and pushed the door open. They stepped through quickly, as if afraid they might lose their nerve entirely if they hesitated.

The house did not have the feeling Matt had expected. Indeed, as he closed the door behind him, he had the sensation that they were not alone. He glanced at Kelly and saw that she sensed it too.

“Maybe we shouldn’t do this,” she said, her voice so soft it almost vanished into the silence of the house. “Maybe we should just go home.”

Matt shook his head. “I have to do it. I have to try to find out why my mother — ”

“She wasn’t your mother,” Kelly broke in. “She was never your mother, Matt. She was your aunt.”

Matt said nothing. He hadn’t yet told anyone about the dreams — dreams that he was now almost certain had not been dreams at all — in which his mother came into his room in the darkness of night. Came into his room, and into his bed, and —

Not his mother.

Joan Hapgood had not been his mother. Had never been his mother. Was that why she crept into his bed? Had she somehow thought that would bind him to her? He shuddered at the memory.

Face it, he told himself. Face all of it.

Steeling himself, he moved into the living room with Kelly still by his side, and saw the photograph of Joan and Bill Hapgood that had been taken on their wedding day, the photograph he’d previously assumed was of his mother and stepfather.

Now he knew better: it was his aunt and his father. Except as he moved closer, he saw that it had been altered. Instead of Joan Hapgood’s face, there now was an image of Cynthia Moore.

He was looking at a picture of his parents.

His mother and father, both dead, and now together in a way they had never been in life. His eyes stung with tears as he gazed at the photo. What might his life have been like if his true parents had married? He bit his lip to hold back the sob that rose in his throat. His hand tightening on Kelly’s, he moved on through the rooms on the first floor, then started up the stairs. He stopped at the door to the guest room, where all of Cynthia Moore’s things — his mother’s things — had been preserved by his grandmother but nearly destroyed by his aunt.

Face it, he repeated to himself. You have to face it.

Still holding Kelly Conroe’s hand, he stepped into the room.

And smelled his mother’s musky perfume.

Then he heard his mother’s voice. “You’re here,” she whispered. “You’ve come back to me.”

Matt froze as the words sank in, and then, as he stood rooted to the spot, he felt it.

His mother’s touch on the back of his neck.

“No,” he whispered. “Don’t… please don’t… ”

The finger on his neck moved to his cheek, then his lips. As his heart pounded and panic rose within him, the familiar darkness — the darkness in which his aunt had seduced him — began to close around him. Don’t, he told himself. Don’t give in to it again.

“Do it,” he heard his mother whisper, as he’d heard her whisper so many times before. “Do what you have to do… do what you want to do… ”

The fingers caressing his lips moved lower, slipping between the buttons of his shirt to touch his chest. As his body responded to the familiar touch, his resolve began to crumble. But just before he lost himself to the scent, the touch, and the voice of his mother, he steeled himself and spun around.

He was facing Kelly Conroe.

But it was not quite Kelly. Where before Kelly’s eyes had always been clear and sparkling, now they were burning.

Burning, as her fingers — now stroking his cheek… touching his skin — were burning.

“Love me, Matt,” she whispered, her voice husky, her eyes smoldering. “Love me here. Love me now.” Her hands were under his shirt again, peeling it back until it fell from his shoulders, and then Kelly’s body was pressed against his. “Please,” she whispered. “Love me.”

Matt’s heart throbbed as his body responded to Kelly’s touch. Almost of their own volition, his arms went around her, pulling her close.

Her lips found his, and as the scent of his mother’s perfume spread through his body, he felt himself drifting once more into the dark pleasures she had brought him. “Do it,” he heard her whisper once more. “Do what you want to do… ” But as her arms tightened around him, as her body pressed against his, images began boiling up out of his memory.

The deer — his father — his grandmother and Becky — all of them dead.

The scent of his mother’s perfume gave way to the smell of blood.

“No!” Matt moaned. Twisting free of Kelly’s embrace, he grabbed her by the arm and began pulling her toward the door. “We have to get out of here,” he told her. “Now!”

He heard his mother cry out. “No! Don’t leave me! Please don’t leave me!”

He ignored her cries, pulling Kelly out the door and toward the top of the stairs, then lifting her into his arms and carrying her down the long flight toward the entry hall and the open front door.

“No…” his mother’s voice whimpered, pleading with him as he had so often pleaded with her. “Please… no…”

Matt shut his mind to his mother’s imprecations, but he could feel her reaching out to him, trying to keep him with her. And then he was through the front door, across the porch, and down the steps.

Standing in the driveway, he finally lowered Kelly to the ground. Gently, he turned her so she was facing him, and looked into her eyes.

They were the eyes of his friend.

Putting his arms around Kelly, he held her close. “It’s going to be all right,” he said. “It’s finally going to be all right.”

Kelly looked up at him uncertainly. The last thing she remembered was being in the guest room, looking at Cynthia Moore’s things. And then —

Nothing.

“What happened?” she asked. “We were in the guest room and — ”

Matt put a finger over her lips. “Nothing happened,” he told her. “I just saw a ghost, that’s all.”

His arm wrapped protectively around Kelly, he turned his back not only on the house, but on all of its ghosts as well.