by John Saul
"What? What did you hear?"
Michael's head was pounding now, and something seemed to have happened to his eyes. It was as if the office had suddenly filled with fog, except that it wasn't quite like fog. And then he knew. Smoke. The room seemed to have filled with smoke.
"I—I can't breathe…"
Potter rose from his chair and moved around the desk. "What is it, Michael? Tell me what's happening."
"I can't breathe," Michael replied. "My head hurts, and I can't breathe."
Again, he heard the voice. "He knows. He's going to make you tell. Don't let him. Stop him, Michael. Stop him now!"
Michael's mouth opened wide, as if he was about to scream, but all that came out was a desperate whisper. "No. Stop it. Please stop it."
"Stop what, Michael?" Potter asked. "What do you want me to stop?"
"Not you," Michael whispered. "Not you. Him. Make him stop talking to me."
Potter grasped the distraught boy by the shoulders. "Who is talking to you, Michael?" he asked, his eyes fixing on the boy. "Who?"
"Nath—"
"No! Do not speak my name!"
"Leave me alone!" Michael wailed. "Please…"
Potter released Michael from his grip, and as the boy slumped in his chair, he returned to his desk. Silence hung over the room for a few minutes, and then, when Michael's breathing had returned to normal, Potter finally spoke.
"The barn," he said softly. "You were in Ben Findley's barn, weren't you?"
Michael said nothing and held himself perfectly still, terrified of what might happen if he so much as nodded his head.
"It was Nathaniel you saw, wasn't it?" Potter pressed, his voice low but nonetheless insistent. "You went into Ben Findley's barn, and you saw Nathaniel, didn't you?"
Michael shook his head fearfully. "No," he whispered. "He's not real. He's only a ghost, and I didn't see him. I didn't see him, and I didn't talk to him."
But now it was Potter who shook his head. "No, Michael. That's not the truth, is it? Don't lie to me. We both know what you saw and what you heard, don't we?" When Michael made no reply, Potter pushed further. "He looked like you, and he looked like your father, didn't he, Michael?"
Michael bit his lip and squirmed deeper into the chair. Then, as he offered an almost imperceptible nod, Nathaniel's voice whispered to him, no longer loud, no longer threatening. Now it was soft and gentle, caressing. "Kill him."
And suddenly, as Michael watched Dr. Potter while Nathaniel whispered to him, he knew he could do it. If he wished it right now, with Nathaniel there inside his head, Dr. Potter would die.
"No," he whispered. Then, again, "No."
"But you will," Nathaniel whispered. "You must, and soon. You will. …" The voice trailed off, and Michael's headache faded away. As his vision cleared, he frowned uncertainly at the doctor. "Can I go now?" he asked shyly.
Potter said nothing for a moment, then finally shrugged. "We both know what happened that night, don't we, Michael?"
Michael hesitated, then nodded.
"But you won't talk about it, will you?"
This time, Michael shook his head.
"Can you tell me why not?"
Again, Michael shook his head.
"All right," Potter told him. "Now, listen to me carefully. I know what you did, and I know what you think you saw. But you didn't see anything. Do you understand? You didn't see anything in Ben Findley's barn, and you didn't see anything in the field. It was the middle of the night, and you were tired, and all that happened was that you imagined you saw some things that weren't there. They weren't there, because they couldn't have been there. Do you understand?"
Michael hesitated, then nodded. "I—I think so."
"All right." Potter stood up and moved toward the door, but before he opened it, he turned back to Michael. "And one more thing. From now on, you stay away from Ben Findley's barn. You stay away from his barn, and stay off his property."
Michael gazed up at the doctor. He knows, he thought. He knows about Nathaniel, and he knows what we saw. And now we're going to have to make him die. He turned the strange thought over in his mind, and wondered why the idea of making Dr. Potter die didn't scare him. Then, while he half listened to the doctor talking to his mother, he began to think about something.
Was making someone die the same as killing them?
He thought it probably was, but somehow, deep inside, it didn't feel the same. Making someone die, he was suddenly sure, was different from killing them. He could never kill anyone.
But he could make someone die.
Janet gazed questioningly at Michael as he emerged from Potter's office, but when he said nothing, her eyes shifted to Potter.
"I don't know," Potter said thoughtfully. "I don't think anything too serious is wrong, but I'd like to think about it and maybe make a couple of calls. Why don't you bring him back tomorrow afternoon?"
A few moments later, after they'd left Potter's house, Michael finally spoke, a fearful note in his voice. "Why did you tell him about—" He hesitated, then finished the question: "Why did you tell him about the ghost?"
"I—well, I was worried about the headaches, and I thought the doctor ought to know what happened when you got them."
"He thinks I'm crazy."
"I'm sure he doesn't—"
"He does too," Michael insisted, his face beginning to redden. "He told me there's no such things as ghosts, and that I couldn't have seen anything out there. Then he wanted me to tell him everything that happened."
"Did you?"
As Michael hesitated, Janet thought she saw a furtive flicker in his eyes, but then he nodded. "What I remember."
They walked along in silence for a few minutes, and Janet had an uneasy sense that Michael had not told Potter all of what he remembered. But before she could think of a way to draw him out on the subject without making him angrier than he already was, she heard someone calling her name. She looked around to see Ione Simpson beckoning to her from in front of the Shieldses' general store.
"Janet, look at this. Isn't it wonderful?" Ione asked as Janet and Michael approached. "Have you ever seen anything like it?"
In the store window, propped up against a galvanized milk can, was an immense Raggedy Ann doll that seemed, somewhere during its lifetime, to have suffered a minor accident. There were a few buttons missing, and one of its shoulders had a tear in it. Looking at it, Janet couldn't help grinning: it was huge and clumsy, and its flaws appeared almost self-induced, as if it had stumbled over its own feet. It was totally irresistible. "It is wonderful," she agreed. "But what on earth would you do with it?"
"Peggy," Ione said decisively. Janet stared at her. Peggy, Eric Simpson's two-year-old sister, was only about a third the size of the doll.
"If it fell on her, she'd suffocate," Janet pointed out, but Ione only shook her head.
"I don't care. She'll grow into it. But do you suppose it's for sale? It doesn't look new."
"Well, let's go in and find out," Janet replied. "I've got a whole list of things to get there anyway." With Michael trailing along, the two women entered the cluttered store.
They were greeted by a large matronly woman with a happy face and wide blue eyes, whom Janet recognized but couldn't put a name to.
"Well, now, don't you worry," the woman told them. "You can't be expected to know everybody's name until at least day after tomorrow. I'm Aunt Lulu—Buck's mother? Isn't that terrible, having a name like Lulu at my age? But what can you do? I've been Lulu since I was a baby, and I'll be Lulu when I die. Now, what can I do for you?"
"I have a whole list—" Janet began, but Ione Simpson immediately interrupted.
"The doll, Lulu. The Raggedy Ann in the window."
Aunt Lulu smiled. "Oh, I didn't put that out there to sell it," she explained. "But it's been in the back room too long, and I thought it might be fun to give it some sunshine, do you know what I mean?"
"You mean it isn't for sale?" Janet asked, feeling Ion
e's disappointment as keenly as if it were her own.
"Why—-well—I don't know, really," Lulu stammered. "It's been here for I don't know how long. It was ordered for little Becky—" She hesitated for just a second, her eyes bulging slightly, and then hurriedly corrected herself. "We ordered it for Ryan, but he didn't want it. I don't see how he could have resisted it, do you? Isn't it wonderful? Just wonderful. And almost as big as a real child—"
"It's bigger than the child I want it for," Ione broke in. "I just have to have it for Peggy. Please?"
Lulu's big eyes blinked. "Well—well, I suppose if it's for Peggy, we'll just have to make sure it's for sale, won't we? I'll have to call Buck and find out what the price is. He's at home, you know, taking care of Laura." Suddenly her happy expression collapsed, and her eyes brimmed with tears. "Isn't it a shame about Laura? So close, and then losing the baby like that." She gazed at Janet, then reached out and took her hand. "But of course, you were there, weren't you? While Laura worked all day in that hot sun? And everything was going along so well for a change. Well, we certainly can't blame you, can we? I mean, if you'd known Laura better, you certainly wouldn't have let her work so hard at your place, would you? I told her she should take it easier, but you know Laura—she won't take anybody's word for anything, and her so small she almost died when Ryan was born, and now this has to happen. I just don't know how much more she can take. I just don't."
As Michael began edging away from the teary woman, and Ione looked on in what appeared to be horrified embarrassment, Janet tried to understand what the woman was really saying. Though she'd denied it, was she blaming her for Laura's miscarriage? At last though, Lulu's tears began to abate, and her warm smile spread once more over her round face. She glanced around distractedly, then lowered her voice, even though there was no one else in the store. "I do run on, don't I? Well, it's just something everyone has to put up with from us older women. I was a good wife to Fred, and I never talked back to him, not once. But ever since he's been gone, I've found I just love to talk. I suppose it was all those years of not saying much at all. It all just bottles up, doesn't it?"
Janet smiled weakly, wondering if there was a graceful way to end Lulu's ramblings, when Ione Simpson came to her rescue.
"The doll?" Ione asked. "Could we find out how much the doll is?"
"Oh, you just take it, and anything else you want. I'll keep track of it all, and Buck can tell you some other time how much it all comes to. I don't usually work here, you know," she said, turning to Janet again. "Fred always thought a woman's place was in the home, and until he died, that's where I stayed. I'm afraid Buck thinks the same way as his father did. He only lets me in here when he absolutely can't be here himself, and that's only when Laura's having one of her—"
And once again Lulu Shields fell silent, the last, unspoken words of her sentence hanging on her tongue like wineglasses teetering on the edge of a shelf. But in the end, they didn't fall. Instead, Lulu stepped back from Janet, though her eyes suddenly went to Ione Simpson. "You girls just prowl around and find what you need. All right?"
"Fine," Janet agreed, then turned away to begin her shopping before Aunt Lulu could wind herself up again. Thirty minutes later she and Ione left the store together, their arms filled with packages. Behind them came Michael, totally occupied with coping with the giant Raggedy Ann.
"Do you have a way to get home, or were you planning to haul all this stuff by hand?" Ione asked as they approached her car.
"Well, we were planning to walk, but I hadn't really realized how much there was going to be."
"Say no more," Ione declared. Then she suppressed a giggle. "That's what I should have told Lulu Shields. Isn't she something else? And don't you believe she never said a word to her husband. There's a lot of people around here, me included, who think she talked him into an early grave, and that he wasn't the least bit sorry to go."
The three of them piled into the front seat of Ione's car. Raggedy Ann and the groceries occupied the rear. "You don't suppose she really thinks Laura's miscarriage was my fault, do you?" Janet asked as they left the village behind and started out toward their farms.
Ione glanced at her over Michael's head. "With Lulu, you can count on her not thinking at all. I can't imagine why she said that." Then: "Yes, I can. She didn't think. But she didn't mean anything by it, either, so don't worry about it. She's just a little batty."
"She's weird," Michael said.
Janet frowned at him. "She's just talkative. And don't you dare start to get in the habit of calling people weird." She turned her attention back to lone. "Who's Becky?"
"Becky?" Ione repeated. "What are you talking about?"
"The girl they bought the doll for. That's what Lulu said before she said they bought it for Ryan."
"I didn't hear that." Ione shrugged. "I'm afraid I don't hear a lot of what Lulu says. I just tune her out after a while." Then her brow furrowed. "Are you sure she said 'Becky'? As far as I know, there aren't any little girls named Becky in Prairie Bend."
"I bet they killed her," Michael suddenly said as Ione turned into Janet's driveway.
Janet stared at her son. "What a terrible thing to say!"
Michael's eyes narrowed. "I bet that's what happened to her. I bet they buried her in Potter's Field."
And then, as the car came to a halt in front of the house and Janet got out, Michael slid off the seat and jumped to the ground. "Is Eric home, Mrs. Simpson?" he asked.
"He's cleaning out the stable—" Ione faltered, shaken by Michael's strange pronouncement.
"I'm gonna go help him. Okay, Mom?"
Janet, as shaken as lone, nodded her assent, and Michael ran off. They watched him until he'd scrambled through the fence that separated the two farms and disappeared into the Simpson's stable, then began unloading Janet's packages from the back seat of Ione's car.
"What on earth was Michael talking about just now?" Ione asked when they were in the kitchen.
Though her heart was suddenly pounding, and she hadn't the least idea what the answer to Ione's question might be, Janet feigned nonchalance. "Nothing, really. It's probably just an association with that horrible ghost story Amos told him just after we arrived, and the coincidence of names." She smiled weakly. "They used to bury paupers and unknowns in potter's fields, you know."
"Oh, come on, Janet," Ione protested. "There's got to be more to it than that! When was the last time you heard of a graveyard called a potter's field? The term's obsolete! And even so—something like that in Prairie Bend? As far as I know, we've never even had a stranger or a pauper here. And the idea of anybody burying a baby out there— well, it sounds crazy!"
Janet sighed heavily, and sank into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. "I know," she agreed. "And I have to confess I'm a little worried." She glanced up, wryly. "In fact, I took him to Dr. Potter this morning." She hesitated. "Michael's been having some headaches. But the doctor
couldn't find anything wrong. He says it's probably all a reaction to Mark's death."
Ione's eyes reflected her chagrin. "Oh, God, Janet, I'm sorry. It was stupid of me not to think of that. I must have sounded just like Lulu Shields. Forgive me?"
Janet smiled. "There's nothing to forgive. But you could do me a favor—"
"Anything!"
"Help me out with Michael. I think he just needs some time to get used to things. He's lost his father, and he's living in a new place, and he hardly knows anyone. And I know how kids can be. They can gang up on someone and make his life miserable."
"And you think that might happen to Michael?"
"Apparently Michael and Ryan Shields had an argument. Ryan already told him he's crazy."
Ione's eyes narrowed as she remembered the boy's odd behavior the night Magic had foaled. "Well, we'll just see to it it doesn't happen with Eric, okay?" She paused for a moment, then: "Janet, I don't want you to get upset, but if you think you'd like Michael to talk to someone, I know a good psychiatrist in Omaha
."
"A psychiatrist? Come on, lone, Michael's just a little boy. He doesn't need—"
"I didn't say he does," Ione interrupted. "But you said yourself he's been through a lot, and sometimes children can have problems their parents aren't even aware of."
Janet looked quizzically at the other woman. "Why does it seem to me unlikely that a farmer's wife in Prairie Bend would be acquainted with a psychiatrist in Omaha?" she asked.
Ione burst into laughter. "Because I'm a nurse, that's why! Not everybody in this town never got out. I got out for eight years. But then I reverted to type, and married the boy next door. Anyway, I know someone in Omaha in case you ever need someone for Michael. Okay?"
Janet hesitated, then offered Ione a small smile. "Okay," she agreed. "And thanks." Suddenly she brightened. "I have an idea. Why don't you come over for supper tonight? All of you. It'll be my first party in my new house, and I can't think of better people to have than my neighbors."
"What about your family?" Ione asked. "Don't you think maybe your first guests ought to be Amos and Anna or the Shieldses?"
Janet considered it, then shook her head. "I'll have Laura and Buck as soon as Laura's better, and Amos and Anna must be sick and tired of me by now. Besides, if it's just the six of us, who's going to know? Or care?"
Ione shrugged. "Okay, if that's the way you want it, it's fine with me." A wry grin came over her face. "But I can tell you one thing: everybody in town is going to know we were your first guests. Mark my words!"
Michael stepped out of the sunlight into the shadows of the Simpsons' barn. "Eric?" he called out. When there was no reply, he went farther into the barn. A soft whinny came from Magic's stall, and Michael paused to pat the big mare's muzzle. "Where's Eric?" he asked, and Magic, almost as if she'd understood the question, pawed at the floor of the stall, neighed loudly, and tossed her head. Michael grinned, then called out his friend's name once again, more loudly this time.
"Back here." Eric's voice drifted faintly from the far end of the barn, and Michael abandoned Magic for the tack room, where he found Eric working with a tangle of leather straps.
