Nightshade

by John Saul

  “Let me,” his aunt whispered. “Let me love you.”

  His heart throbbing, his breath coming in desperate gasps, the strange aroma transporting him, Matt surrendered to the warmth, the comfort — the ecstasy — of the vision that had appeared out of the darkness.

  * * *

  A DREAM.

  It had only been a dream.

  But even now, with the morning sun streaming through the window, his body felt spent.

  And his skin felt sticky, even though he had showered last night before he went to bed.

  Throwing back the covers at last, Matt went into his bathroom and turned on the shower, letting the near-scalding water wash over him. But even though he scrubbed his skin again and again, he couldn’t rid himself of the unclean feeling.

  Nor could the steaming water rid him of the cold that had entered his soul.

  CHAPTER 9

  I CAN’T FACE this. I can’t face any of it.

  The thought was already in Joan Hapgood’s mind as she woke from a restless sleep to begin the day that would culminate with her husband’s burial. The dread of it — a dread that had been building for the last two days — held her in bed for a few more minutes, and she found herself checking her body for symptoms — a fever, perhaps, or nausea — anything that would give her a legitimate excuse to avoid facing the day entirely. Like a ten-year-old, she chided herself. Like a little girl who doesn’t want to go to school. A memory came back to her — a memory of being in the fourth grade.

  “Just be sick,” Cynthia had told her. It was a Friday morning, and even though Joan had studied the words for the spelling test, she knew that when she was faced with the blank sheet of paper, and Mrs. Van Sant began reading the words to the class, it would be as if she’d never heard them before. “I do it all the time,” Cynthia blithely told her. “It’s easy — all you have to do is act like you’re trying to be brave and really want to go to school, but if you let out a little moan, sort of clutch at your stomach, Mom will send you back to bed. I’ll show you!”

  So they went into the kitchen and sat down at the table, and while their mother was facing the stove, Cynthia winked conspiratorially at her. Then, as their mother placed a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon in front of each of them, Cynthia flinched and her hand went to her stomach. “Cynthia?” their mother said, frowning anxiously. “Are you all right?” Joan watched as Cynthia forced a wan smile.

  “It’s okay, Mama,” she said, somehow managing to make her voice sound both weak and brave. “I’ll be fine.”

  But their mother was already at Cynthia’s side, her wrist pressed gently to Cynthia’s forehead. “I think you’re a little feverish — you go right back to bed, and I’ll bring you a tray.”

  As Cynthia trooped out of the kitchen, winking at Joan once more behind their mother’s back, Joan took a deep breath and tried to make her voice as much like Cynthia’s as she could. “I don’t feel very good either, Mother,” she ventured.

  Her mother glared at her. “Don’t think you’re going to get away with that with me, young lady! You just want to stay home with your sister.”

  That had been the end of it. She’d gone off to school, while Cynthia settled down on the sofa in the living room with a blanket wrapped around her to watch television all day while their mother brought her apple juice and hot tea and whatever else she wanted. But in school that day, when the teacher read the words for the spelling test, Joan managed to get them all right, and until this morning she’d never even thought of playing sick again. In fact, she hadn’t even realized she remembered that long ago day.

  So I’ll face it, she decided. I’ll face all of it, and get through it, and I’ll be all right. And Matt will be all right too. But even as she silently reassured herself, Joan knew the reassurance itself reflected her growing worry about Matt. Instead of starting to recover from the terrible trauma of three days ago, it seemed that each day the experience was weighing more heavily on him. Each morning he seemed a bit paler, a bit more nervous, a bit more withdrawn than the day before.

  Time, she told herself. We both just need time. After the funeral — after Bill is buried — he’ll start to recover. We both will.

  Pulling on her bathrobe, she began her new daily ritual. First she went downstairs to put on a pot of coffee. She never got it quite right, never got it quite the way Bill had always been able to do it, but at least the measuring and the grinding, and the wait while the coffee brewed, gave her a little time to herself before she had to face her mother each morning.

  A little time to pray that this would be one of her mother’s good mornings.

  On the good mornings, Emily knew where she was and why she was here. She would ask when she could go home again, and want to know what was being done to repair the damage to her house.

  And criticize anything and everything Joan might do.

  On the bad mornings, she barely recognized Joan at all, seeming lost in some world of the past. On those days, Joan could barely get through to her at all, and though Emily at least didn’t rant at her, it could sometimes take an hour just to get her out of bed and into her clothes. After her mother was dressed, Joan would have to spend most of the day just looking out for her, making certain she didn’t try to start cooking, or wander off for a walk, or simply get lost in the house. The worst so far had been the morning after Bill died, when she’d found her mother on the floor in the guest room, insisting that Cynthia had been there during the night.

  Still, given the cruelty of the words Emily was capable of speaking on the “good” days, versus the rambling near-incoherence of the “bad” days, Joan often wondered if the two appellations shouldn’t be reversed. Finally, when the coffee was done and she’d drunk a cup, she knew she could put it off no longer, and made herself go back upstairs.

  She tapped softly at her mother’s door, then opened it. “Mother? Are you awake?”

  “Did you bring me a cup of coffee?” Emily countered.

  No “Good morning,” Joan thought. No “How are you?” And why was she asking for coffee? The last time she had brought her mother a cup of coffee, Emily had refused to touch it.

  “I’m not an invalid,” she’d grumbled. “I’ll drink my coffee in the kitchen, like I always do.”

  “I’m sorry,” Joan said now. “I’ll bring a cup up right away.” She paused, then: “This is the day of the funeral, Mother.” Her voice trembled as she spoke the words, praying that at least her mother would remember what she was talking about. “We have to decide what you’re going to wear.”

  “I’m not going to any funeral,” Emily announced. “I don’t want to go anywhere.”

  Not going? What was she talking about? “Don’t you feel well?” Joan asked. “Would you like me to call Dr. Henderson?”

  “I’m fine. But I’m not going to sit at that funeral and be stared at.”

  “Stared at?” Joan echoed. “What are you talking about? Why would people stare at you?” Even as she asked the question, she knew the answer but despite being forearmed her mother’s next words lashed at her with the sting of a whip.

  “Your son murdered him,” Emily said, her eyes fixing balefully on Joan. “Everyone will be staring. They’ll be staring at him, and they’ll be staring at you. But they won’t stare at me, because I won’t be there. I’ll stay here, with Cynthia!”

  Joan recoiled, pain and anger churning within her. “That’s not true, Mother. It was just an accident! A stupid hunting accident that wasn’t anybody’s fault! And it certainly wasn’t Matt’s fault!”

  “Wasn’t it?” Emily shot back. Her eyes narrowed accusingly. “It was his finger on the trigger, Joan.”

  Joan stared at her mother. What was she talking about? Why was she talking as if she’d seen what had happened? “Who told you that?” she asked. “How could anyone have told you that?”

  “It’s true,” Emily insisted. “Cynthia told me!”

  Joan’s eyes widened in shock, and before she could even thi
nk about them, angry words began pouring from her lips: “Cynthia didn’t tell you anything, Mother! She’s dead! She’s been dead for years!”

  “She’s not!” Emily cried, pulling herself off the bed and onto her feet. She took an unsteady step toward Joan. “She’s here!” she insisted. “She’s in this house, and she talks to me!”

  In the face of her mother’s wrath, Joan backed toward the door. “That’s not true, Mother. You’re just confused . . . you’re just . . .”

  “Get out!” Emily spat the words at her daughter. “Just get out and leave me alone.”

  Too hurt — too upset — to argue, Joan escaped into the hall, pulling the door closed behind her. Her chest heaving, her pulse racing, she leaned against the door for a moment, willing herself to calm down. She doesn’t know what she’s saying, she insisted to herself. She doesn’t know.

  Slowly, she regained control of her emotions, but her mother’s words still echoed in her mind. At least Matt didn’t hear her, she told herself. At least —

  But then she opened her eyes, and there, standing in the corridor only ten feet away, was her son. And she knew by the look on his face that she was wrong.

  He’d heard what his grandmother had said.

  He’d heard it all.

  * * *

  THE STONE FACADE of the new congregational church on Hartford Street looked almost as dour as the face of its founding minister, Seth Frobisher, whose portrait — darkened with age — hung in the parish hall that adjoined the church. As the car bearing Joan and Matt to Bill Hapgood’s funeral pulled up and stopped in the space reserved for it directly in front of the great double doors — carved from a single tree that had been felled to make way for the building its wood now adorned — Joan almost wished she’d chosen another site for her husband’s memorial service. Yet where else could the funeral have been held? Bill’s family had worshiped in the Congregational Church for more years than the edifice itself had stood. It was Bill’s great-grandfather who had commissioned the doors when the “new” church was constructed seventy years ago to replace the original wooden structure built by Seth Frobisher. Except for a handful of Catholics, nearly everyone in town prayed at the New Congregational Church, was married in it, and was buried in the cemetery that took up the rest of the block upon which it stood. So when it came to Bill’s memorial ceremony, there really hadn’t been a choice at all.

  Stepping out of the car, Joan tucked her right hand under Matt’s left arm. “Are you going to be all right?” she asked softly as they started up the walk toward the doors.

  Matt, his face strained and looking thinner than it had just three days earlier, shook his head. “I’m never going to be all right again.”

  Joan squeezed his arm, certain he was remembering the cruel words his grandmother had uttered earlier. “You’re not responsible, Matt. You have to believe that whatever happened, it was an accident.”

  Before Matt could reply, the double doors were pulled open by two of the pallbearers, and a terrible sensation of déjà vu suddenly gripped Joan. Except it wasn’t déjà vu at all, for ten years earlier she had stood at the doors to this same church, with Matt at her side, nervously waiting to start down the aisle to the altar where Bill Hapgood was waiting for her.

  Waiting for her to marry him.

  She could still remember how terrified she’d been, wondering what all the people gathered inside the church — Bill’s friends, every one of them — really thought of her. Were they snickering behind their smiles? Were they laughing at the dress she’d chosen? That day, it had been Matt who squeezed her hand and looked up into her face. “You look beautiful, Mommy,” he’d told her, and his words had been enough. Taking a deep breath, she’d strode down the aisle, her son beside her, to marry the one man she’d ever loved.

  Now all of Bill’s friends were gathered in the church once more, and once more Bill was waiting for her in front of the altar.

  Waiting for her to bury him.

  The casket stood open, but as she paused at the top of the aisle, Joan refused to let herself look at it, knowing her tenuous hold on her emotions might easily give way the moment she saw her husband’s face. Taking a deep breath — just as she had a decade ago — she started down the aisle toward the front pew, Matt on her right, Gerry Conroe, who was serving as chief pallbearer, on her left.

  Ten years ago Gerry had been standing beside Bill, serving as his best man.

  Now, murmuring the same sympathetic words Joan had heard so many times over the last few days that they no longer seemed to have any meaning at all, he saw them into their pew, then retreated to his own, one pew back and on the other side of the aisle.

  The pew directly across from Joan and Matt was as empty as their own.

  As soon as they were settled in, Myra Conklin began muting the organ and Reverend Charles Frobisher, whose ancestor had founded the church, slipped through the side door and entered the pulpit. His eyes scanned the quiet mourners, then came to rest on the front pew, and as he began to speak, his gaze fixed on Matthew Moore. “We are gathered together to mark the tragically premature passing of our dear brother William Apperson Hapgood into the company of angels.”

  Matt, his mother’s fingers squeezing his left hand, did his best to concentrate on the minister’s words. All the way down the aisle he’d kept his eyes riveted on the face of his stepfather, terrified that if he let his gaze waver at all, he’d see the accusing looks on the faces of everyone he’d ever known. They don’t care, a voice had whispered inside his head. They don’t care what really happened. They’ve already made up their minds. Your fault. All this is your fault.

  Somehow he had survived the walk and slipped into the pew and kept his mind on what the minister was saying. But his eyes kept going back to his stepfather.

  He’s not dead, he kept thinking. He’s just asleep, and in a minute he’ll wake up and sit up, and everything will be all right again. But as quickly as the words ran through his mind, he knew they weren’t true, for even though his stepfather’s face looked as peaceful as if he were merely sleeping, it was still framed in the coffin like a mask of death.

  The minutes crept by.

  As the congregation rose to sing or knelt to pray, Matt numbly reacted to every cue. But through every second of it his eyes remained fixed on the figure in the coffin. Then, as the prayers and the eulogy and the singing began to draw toward an end, something happened.

  Something that Matt knew was impossible.

  He saw his father sitting up and turning to look at him in exact imitation of the fantasy that had entered Matt’s mind when he first slid into the pew.

  His stepfather was smiling at him, and reaching out a hand toward him.

  Matt rose from his place in the front pew and stepped out into the aisle, reaching out as if to touch his stepfather’s hand.

  But as he stared at the impossible apparition, it abruptly changed: his father’s head transformed into the head of the buck he’d been stalking that morning.

  The finger of Matt’s right hand slowly curled as if he were gently squeezing a trigger.

  In his mind, he heard the report of the rifle once more.

  As the terrible sound echoed in his brain, the apparition shifted again, and once more he was gazing at his stepfather’s face.

  Now his stepfather’s eyes were open and in the center of his head was a neat, round hole.

  A bullet hole.

  A bullet hole from which fresh blood was oozing, running down his stepfather’s face, into his eyes and down his cheeks, to drip onto the perfectly pressed blue suit and starched white shirt in which he would be buried.

  “I’m sorry,” Matt whispered. He lurched forward, half tripping on the step that led to the altar, his arm still stretched out as if in some kind of supplication. “I’m sorry.”

  He was at the coffin then, gazing down into his stepfather’s face, and still he could see the bullet hole, see the open eyes accusing him.

  “I didn’t
— ” he began, and his voice faltered. What if it was true? What if everything his grandmother had said that morning — everything his friends and everyone else he knew was thinking — had actually happened?

  “I’m sorry,” he moaned again, his voice choking on the terrible constriction in his throat. “I didn’t want anything to happen. I just wanted you to come home. Just come home. . . .” His voice trailed off as his mother slipped her arm around him and gently led him back to the front pew. As the final prayer began, he repeated the words: “All I wanted was for him to come home. . . .”

  * * *

  SILENCE FELL OVER the cemetery next to the church as the pallbearers slowly lowered the coffin into the grave. Even the birds that had been chirping in the trees paused in their song, as if sensing the solemnity of the ritual being carried out below. As the coffin came to rest on the floor of the grave, the church bell began to toll, but as Matt gazed down at the lid of the coffin, he barely heard the striking of the hours, for a terrible fear was slowly growing inside him.

  Suddenly it was no longer his stepfather in the coffin being lowered into the grave.

  It was himself. But it was a mistake, a terrible mistake — he wasn’t dead at all, even though everyone thought he was.

  As Reverend Frobisher whispered the final benediction and dropped a clod of earth onto the casket, Matt flinched, imagining the hollow sound it must make inside the coffin.

  What if that sound woke him up? Would he even know where he was? No, of course not — how could he know? He would be surrounded by a darkness so intense he could feel it even as he imagined it. There would be no flicker of light — not even the faintest glow would penetrate the seal of the coffin.

  In his mind he heard the hollow clunk as the next clod fell into the grave. Would he know then?

  Now he imagined himself reaching out to explore the darkness, but feeling only the satiny softness of the casket’s interior, a softness whose deception would be exposed as he felt the unyielding walls behind the padded fabric.