everything.
That belief had been severely tested during the past year.
But Elena’s return from the dead had swept away all his doubts. It had seemed to prove everything that he’d always wanted to believe in.
You wouldn’t give her back to us for just a few days, and then take her away again? he wondered, and the wondering was really a form of praying. You wouldn’t — would You?
Because the thought of a world without Elena, without her sparkle; her strong will; her way of getting into crazy adventures — and then getting out of them, even more crazily — well, it was too much to lose. The world would be painted in drab grays and dark browns again without her. There would be no fire-engine reds, no flashes of parakeet green, no cerulean, no daffodil, no mercury silver — and no gold. No sprinkles of gold in endless blue lapis lazuli eyes.
“Elllleeeeeeenaaaa! Damn you, you answer me! It’s Matt, Elena! Elleeeeee—” He broke off quite suddenly and listened. For a moment his heart leaped and his whole body started. But then he made out the words he could hear.
“Eleeeeeenaaa? Maaaatt? Where are you?”
“Bonnie?Bonnie! I’m here! ” He turned his flashlight straight up, slowly twisting it in a circle. “Can you see me?”
“Can you see us?”
Matt pivoted slowly. And — yes — there were the beams of one flashlight, two flashlights, three!
His heart leaped to see three beams. “I’m coming toward you,” he shouted, and suited the action to the word. Secrecy had been long ago left behind. He was running into things, yanking at tendrils that tried to grab his ankles, but bellowing all the while, “Stay where you are! I’m coming to you!”
And then the flashlight beams were right in front of him, blinding him, and somehow he had Bonnie in his arms, and Bonnie was crying. That at least lent the situation some normality. Bonnie was crying against his chest and he was looking at Meredith, who was smiling anxiously, and at…Mrs. Flowers? It had to be, she was wearing that gardening hat with the artificial flowers on it, as well as what looked like about seven or eight woolly sweaters.
“Mrs. Flowers?” he said, his mouth finally catching up with his brain. “But — where’s Elena?”
There was a sudden droop in the three people watching him, as if they had been on tiptoes for news, and now they had slumped in disappointment.
“We haven’t seen her,” Meredith said quietly. “You were with her.”
“I was with her, yeah. But then Damon came.He hurt her, Meredith”—Matt felt Bonnie’s arms clench on him. “He had her rolling on the ground having seizures. I think he’s going to kill her. And — he hurt me. I guess I blacked out. When I woke up she was gone.”
“He took her away?” Bonnie asked fiercely.
“Yeah, but…I don’t understand what happened next.” Painfully, he explained about Elena seemingly jumping out of the car and the tracks that led nowhere.
Bonnie shivered in his arms.
“And then some other weird stuff happened,” Matt said. Slowly, faltering sometimes, he did his best to explain about Kristin, and the similarities to Tami.
“That is…just plain weird,” Bonnie said. “I thought I had an answer, but if Kristin hasn’t had any contact with any of the other girls…”
“You were probably thinking something about the Salem witches, dear,” said Mrs. Flowers. Matt still couldn’t get used to Mrs. Flowers talking to them. She went on, “But you don’t really know with whom Kristin has been in the last few days. Or with whom Jim has been, for that matter. Children have quite a lot of freedom in this day and age, and he might be — what do they call it? — a carrier.”
“Besides, even if this is possession, it may be an entirely different kind of possession,” Meredith said. “Kristin lives out in the Old Wood. The Old Wood is full of these insects — these malach. Who knows whether it happened when she simply stepped outside her door? Who knows what was waiting for her?”
Now Bonnie was shaking in Matt’s arms. They’d turned out all the flashlights but one, to conserve energy, but it sure made for spooky surroundings.
“But what about the telepathy?” Matt said to Mrs. Flowers. “I mean, I don’t believe for a minute that real witches were attacking those Salem girls. I think they were repressed girls who had mass hysteria when they all got together, and somehow everything got out of hand. But how could Kristin know to call me — to call me — the same name that Tamra did?”
“Maybe we’ve all got it all wrong,” Bonnie said, her voice buried somewhere in Matt’s solar plexus. “Maybe it’s not like Salem at all, where the — the hysteria spread out horizontally, if you see what I mean. Maybe there’s somebody on top here, who’s spreading it wherever they want to.”
There was a brief silence, and then Mrs. Flowers murmured, “‘Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings…’”
“You mean you think that’s right? But then who is it that’s on top? Who’s doing all of this?” Meredith demanded. “It can’t be Damon because Damon saved Bonnie twice — and me once.” Before anyone could muster words to ask about that, she was going on. “Elena was pretty sure that something was possessing Damon. So who else is it?”
“Somebody we haven’t met yet,” Bonnie muttered ominously. “Somebody we aren’t going to like.”
With perfect timing there was the crackle of a branch behind them. As one person, as one body, they turned to look.
“What I really want,” Damon said to Elena, “is to get you warm. And that either means cooking you something hot so you’ll warm up from the inside or putting you in the tub so you’ll warm up from the outside. And considering what happened last time—”
“I…don’t feel I can eat anything….”
“Come on, it’s an American tradition. Apple soup? Mom’s homemade chicken pie?”
She chuckled in spite of herself, then winced. “It’s apple pie and Mom’s homemade chicken soup. But you didn’t do badly, for a start.”
“Well? I promise not to mix the apples and the chicken together.”
“I could try some soup,” Elena said slowly. “And, oh, Damon I’m so thirsty just for plain water. Please.”
“I know, but you’ll drink too much, get pains. I’ll make soup.”
“It comes in little cans with red paper on them. You pull the tab on top to make it come off….” Elena stopped as he turned to the door.
Damon knew she had serious doubts about the entire project, but he also knew that if he brought her anything passably drinkable she would drink it. Thirst did that to you.
He was unliving proof of the example.
As he went through the door there was a sudden horrendous noise, like a pair of kitchen choppers coming together. It nearly took off his — his rear from top to bottom, by the sound of it.
“Damon!”A voice crying weakly through the door. “Damon, are you all right? Damon! Answer me!”
Instead, he turned around, studied the door, which looked perfectly normal, and opened it. Anyone watching him open it would have wondered because he put a key in the unlocked door, said “Elena’s room” and then unlocked and opened the door.
When he got inside, he ran.
Elena was lying in a hopeless tangle of sheets and blankets on the floor. She was trying to get up, but her face was blue-white with pain.
“What pushed you off the bed?” he said. He was going to kill Shinichi slowly.
“Nothing. I heard a terrible sound just as the door shut. I tried to get to you, but—” Damon stared at her.“I tried to get to you, but—” This broken, hurting, exhausted creature had tried to rescue him? Tried so hard that she’d fallen off her bed?
“I’m sorry,” she said, with tears in her eyes. “I can’t get used to gravity. Are you hurt?”
“Not as much as you are,” he said, purposely keeping his voice rough, his eyes averted. “I did something stupid, leaving the room, and the house…reminded me.”
“What are you talking about?” said the woebegone Elena, dressed only in sheets.
