Nightshade (8 page)

“Me?” Stackworth repeated. What was going on? Pete always passed to Matt — they were like a team within a team.

“Yes, you,” Arneson shot back. “You can’t do any worse than Moore, can you? As for you, Moore, you’re blocking on this play.”

A few seconds later Matt, seething, was back on the line, facing Eric Holmes.

Concentrate,
he told himself.
Just forget about everything else and focus.
But as he crouched down, Pete Arneson’s words kept running through his mind, and when he heard the last number of the count, something happened.

Instead of launching himself into Eric Holmes and blocking him, Matt spun out to the right, letting Eric lunge past him. A second later he heard Pete Arneson’s outraged howl as Eric took him down, but it didn’t matter.

Matt was already off the field.

“Moore!” he heard the coach shouting as he started toward the locker room.

Matt kept walking.

“Moore! Hold it right there!”

Matt hesitated, but then turned to face the coach, who was walking quickly toward him.

“You want to tell me what’s going on?” Ted Stevens asked. “Since when do you just walk off the field in the middle of a play?”

Matt’s jaw tightened and his right hand clenched into a fist.

The coach’s tone changed when he saw the uncharacteristic anger in Matt’s face. “What is it, Matt?” he asked. “What’s going on?” For a moment Matt’s expression didn’t change, but then, as if he’d made a decision, Matt unclenched his fist and his shoulders slumped.

“I just don’t feel very good today.”

“You sick?”

Matt shrugged. “I didn’t sleep very well last night.” He hesitated, then: “And my dad left.”

Suddenly, Ted Stevens understood. No wonder the boy’s game had been off. “You want to talk about it?” he offered. “It can be pretty rough when your folks split up.”

“He’s not my father,” Matt said, a little too quickly. “He’s just my stepfather.”

Stevens knew better than to challenge the defensiveness in Matt’s words, but instead slung a friendly arm around the boy’s shoulders. “Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t you call it a day and hit the showers? And if you want to talk, I’ll be in my office. Okay?”

Matt shrugged the coach’s arm off. “Hey, it’s no big deal,” he said. “Everybody’s folks split up, right?”

Again the coach knew better than to try to argue. “I’ll be in my office,” he repeated. “The door’s always open.”

Right,
Matt thought as he went to his locker, stripped out of his jersey and padding, then headed for the showers.
Everybody wants to talk about it.

He turned the hot water up until the needle spray was nearly scalding and stepped under it, letting it sluice the sweat off his body. But even the stream of hot water could do nothing to ease the tension that had been building in him all through last night and then the long day at school. He finally shut off the shower, toweled himself dry, and pulled on his clothes.

As he headed for the door he didn’t even glance in the direction of the coach’s office.

Nor did he head out Manchester Road toward Hapgood Farm.

Instead he found himself walking toward Burlington Avenue.

Five minutes later he was standing in front of his grandmother’s house. From where he stood, there was no sign of the fire at all, but even though it had been only a week since his grandmother had moved in with his own family, the house had already taken on a look of abandonment.

“It’s weird, isn’t it?”

Matt turned to see Becky Adams smiling at him. Before Matt’s mother had married his stepfather and they’d moved away from Burlington Avenue, Becky had been his best friend. Now, ten years later, he wasn’t sure if they were friends at all; it wasn’t just his family and address that had changed, but the crowd he hung out with as well. And there was Becky’s mother too. His eyes automatically flicked across the street toward the Adams house as he wondered if Becky’s mother was drunk, but a second later he pulled his gaze self-consciously away. Then he relaxed: even if Becky had noticed his glance, she couldn’t know what he was thinking.

“What’s weird?” Matt countered. “It’s just a house.” But even as he spoke the words, he knew it wasn’t “just a house” at all. It was the house of the nightmares and nameless terrors of his early childhood, along with the frightening woman who was his grandmother. Now, as he gazed at it, a thought crept into his head.

Why couldn’t it have burned to the ground? And why couldn’t she have been in it?

“All the little kids on the block think it’s haunted,” Becky said.

“I bet they think my grandmother’s a witch too.”

Though Becky shook her head, her blush told him the truth.

“Well, she’s not,” he went on. “She’s just — ” He fell silent as fragments of the last few days flitted through his memory.
Crazy,
he wanted to say.
She’s just crazy.
But when he spoke, his words were carefully tempered: “She’s just sick, that’s all.”

“How come your mom didn’t put her in a nursing home?”

“Why would she?” Matt countered.

Becky Adams’s flush deepened. “Well, I mean — ” she stammered. “Like — everyone knows how she treats your mom. And my mom said — ”

“I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” Matt said, his voice harsh enough to make Becky flinch. “Look, Becky, I’m sorry,” he quickly went on when he saw her reaction. “It’s just — oh, Jeez, I don’t know . . .”

His voice trailed off and he turned away, suddenly wanting to be by himself.

“Matt?” Becky called.

He turned back.

“If there’s anything I can do . . . I mean to help . . .”

“There’s not,” Matt said. “There’s nothing anyone can do.”

CHAPTER
5

BILL HAPGOOD SLOWED his car to a stop as he came to the black wrought-iron gates of the home he’d left almost three weeks earlier. This would be the first time he’d set foot on the property since the night he packed his suitcase and moved into the Granite Falls Inn. He was still there, camping out in the two-room suite on the second floor whose main attraction, for him, was that it faced away from his own house. Even tonight he was reluctant to go back; indeed, he’d almost called Joan an hour ago to tell her he wouldn’t be there after all. In the end, though, he succumbed to his mother’s social dictum that the only valid excuse not to attend a dinner party is death. “People like us do not ruin someone’s evening merely because we don’t feel well, or are out of sorts,” she’d instructed him when he was a child. “We attend the dinners we’ve accepted, and eat whatever is put before us. And we expect no less of others.”

Aside from his mother’s rule, tonight’s dinner party was a special event that had been on the calendar for months. In truth, the dinner had been on the calendar for years, for every Hapgood boy was given a formal dinner on the eve of his sixteenth birthday, and it had never occurred to Bill not to continue the tradition for Matt simply because his name was Moore instead of Hapgood. “I raised him,” he said when Gerry Conroe suggested that perhaps the dinner was inappropriate for a stepson. “I’ve brought him up to be a Hapgood, and I’m proud to be able to say that I’ve succeeded.” So tonight the table would be set for six: Gerry and Nancy Conroe would bring Kelly to join Matt and his parents.

Tomorrow, the rest of the Hapgood sixteenth birthday tradition would be carried out:

At dawn, he and Matt would go hunting, along with Marty and Eric Holmes, and Paul and Pete Arneson.

In the afternoon, he and Matt would play a round of golf.

And tomorrow night would be the big party at the house for Matt and all his friends.

Tonight and tomorrow, at least, they could all pretend that nothing was wrong. And the next day . . .

The next day will take care of itself, Bill told himself as he put the car back in gear and drove through the gates. Pulling up in front of the big brick house a few moments later, he switched off the ignition, but didn’t immediately leave the car. Instead he sat there, looking at the house, trying to get a sense of what might be happening inside. And he wondered if he really wanted to go back in, with Emily Moore still there.
She’s just an old woman,
he reminded himself.
None of this is her fault.
He got out of the car, strode up to the front door, then hesitated before knocking.

Should he just go in? But why not? It was his house, wasn’t it?

He opened the door and stepped inside.

And instantly noticed the change.

The warmth — the sense of welcome and comfort — was gone.

Though everything in the house looked exactly the same, everything had also somehow changed.

Something doesn’t want me here!

The thought seemed to come out of nowhere, but even as Bill tried to banish it, it took root in his mind. It was as if some kind of hostile force had crept into the house, and as he moved from room to room on the first floor, the feeling that this was no longer his home grew stronger. But that was ridiculous! The furniture was exactly as it had been for decades; the paintings were in their proper places on the walls. In the dining room, the table was set, laid with the best china and his great-grandmother’s sterling flatware, along with the Venetian crystal his grandparents had shipped back from their honeymoon tour long before World War II.

He started out of the dining room, then abruptly turned back.

There were seven places set at the table instead of six.

So Emily Moore would be joining them for dinner.

Again Bill felt an urge to leave, and again he put it aside.
She’s Matt’s grandmother,
he reminded himself.
She has a right to be here.

“Hello?” he called out as he started up the wide stairs toward the second floor. “Anybody home?”

Joan suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs, but before she could speak, he heard his mother-in-law calling out from her room: “Make him go away. I don’t want to see him! Not after what he did to me!”

“What
I
did to her?” Bill said, hurrying up the stairs. Then, as Joan stepped back and the light from the chandelier in the corridor shone full on her face, he stopped short. His wife’s face was ashen, and she seemed to have aged ten years in the short time since he’d last seen her. “Joan? Are you all right? You look — ”

Joan’s chin trembled, and for a moment Bill thought she would start to cry, but she regained control of herself. “I’m just a little tired, that’s all,” she said. “I’ll be all right.” She managed a slight smile. “And it’s not you she’s angry at. Right now, it’s my father.”

“Your father? But your father’s — ”

Joan held up a hand to silence him. “She has Alzheimer’s, remember? She’s been pretty good the last couple of days, but today — ” Her voice broke and she shrugged helplessly. “She’s been muttering about my father all day. She seems to think he’s coming home, and when she heard your voice, well . . .” Her words trailed off into silence, and Bill pulled her into his arms.

“This can’t go on,” he told her, gently stroking her face as if to caress the strain away. “Look what she’s doing to you. And from what I’m hearing about Matt — ”

Joan pulled away from him. “I thought you were just coming to his dinner party,” she said, her voice taking on a bitter edge. “But if you’re going to start about Mother, maybe you shouldn’t stay. She’s just having a bad day, but by tomorrow she’ll be fine.” In a near desperate tone she added: “She will be. I know she will be!”

Before Bill could say anything, Emily Moore’s voice erupted again. “Cynthia? Where are you?”

“I’m coming, Mother!” Joan called. As Bill opened his mouth to say something, she shook her head. “Don’t,” she pleaded. “Sometimes it’s easier if I just pretend to be my sister. At least she’s always nice to Cynthia.” She moved toward the door to her mother’s room, then turned back. “Are you staying for dinner?” she asked. “But before you answer, remember — I don’t want to talk about Mother tonight. For Matt’s sake, let’s just try not to fight about her, all right?”

Bill nodded, managing a smile. “For Matt’s sake,” he agreed quietly.

While Joan went to tend to her mother, he went to his closet and began laying out his tuxedo.

The Hapgood tradition, he decided, could survive Emily Moore.

Whether his marriage could remained to be seen.

*                                     *                                     *

MATT LAY SPRAWLED on his bed, staring up at the ceiling.

Why the hell did they have to have a dinner party, anyway?

But he knew why — because tomorrow he’d turn sixteen, and whenever a Hapgood boy turned sixteen, they had a dinner party the night before.

And then they went hunting.

And then they played a round at the Granite Falls Golf Club.

And then they had a big party for all the birthday boy’s friends.

It was the way his dad’s family always did it.

Except Bill Hapgood wasn’t his dad. Not anymore. He was just his stepfather, and three weeks ago he’d walked out, leaving him with his mother and his grandmother.

And everything had turned to crap.

From that night, when he’d watched his dad leave without even looking up at him, let alone saying good-bye, nothing had been right. At first he told himself the nightmares would go away — that they’d just begun again because of what had happened with his parents. After a week, he thought, he’d get used to the way things were and the nightmares would stop. But when they were still plaguing him in the middle of the second week, he began dreading going to bed, knowing what would come. For a while the house would be silent, but it wasn’t the kind of quiet he was used to, when you could hear owls hooting softly as they hunted, and listen to the gentle rustling of the wind in the trees outside the window. Instead it was a foreboding silence that enveloped the house.

But soon it would be broken by his grandmother’s voice. At first Matt had gone out into the hall to listen, in case she needed help, but every night it was the same. His grandmother was always in the room that was filled with his aunt’s stuff, always talking to his mother’s sister as if she were actually there. So he would go back to his room and try to go to sleep.