Shadows

Still, Eustace Barrington was certain he’d done the right thing, for when his son had finally withdrawn so deeply into himself that he no longer responded to the outside world, and when the Barringtons’ friends had begun to talk about the boy as if he were some kind of inanimate object to be disposed of unless a reason for keeping him could be found, Eustace had brought him here.

He’d moved the boy into the subterranean chambers, which he’d furnished with far more care than he’d given to the rest of the house, making sure his son would be comfortable, and have everything he could possibly need, and couldn’t accidentally hurt himself.

The main room contained the boy’s bed, and enough furniture so the two of them could be comfortable while the man sat with the boy, and talked to him, disregarding the near certainty that his son no longer heard him.

In another room was a dining table and two chairs, where he took his son’s meals every day, and ate with him.

He took them himself. Never a servant, because he did not trust servants.

No one but Eustace Barrington knew the boy was there at all, for he had decided long ago that it would be better for this child to be kept at home, where he would be loved and left to whatever mystic thoughts he may have, than to be turned over to the care of strangers who would neither love, nor understand him.

His son, Eustace Barrington was convinced, was a genius.

Though the boy never spoke except to mutter numbers, and seemed to be both blind and deaf, Barrington was still certain that his son’s mind was special, not insane.

Sometimes, when he could make out the numbers his son spoke, he wrote them down, and spent hours alone at his desk, working out the relationships of the numbers to each other.

What his son was apparently calculating in his head in seconds, it took Eustace Barrington hours to work out on paper.

Today, though, he was worried.

He, after all, would be ninety-six on his next birthday.

His son was only fifty-five.

And it had been fifty years since his son had been taken to live in the suite of rooms beneath the basement

Eustace Barrington, after all his years, had only one wish left.

That he would outlive his son, so the boy would never have to be delivered into the hands of strangers.

But if he died before his son, there was something else he would do.

He would find a way to destroy anyone who might threaten the boy beneath the basement.

The boy who lived in shadows.

If the boy were harmed, so also would others be harmed ….

“Has he ever come back?” Josh MacCallum breathed when the story was over. “Has he actually done anything?”

Jeff Aldrich smiled mysteriously. “Maybe he has,” he whispered. “Maybe sometimes he comes back in the night, and creeps around the house, looking for his son. And they say,” he went on, his voice dropping so it was barely audible, and his gaze fixing on Josh, “that when he finds the right boy, he’ll take him away with him. In fact, last year—”

“That’s enough, Jeff,” Hildie Kramer cut in, breaking the ghostly mood with a laugh. “You don’t want to scare poor Josh away on his very first night with us, do you?”

“It’s okay,” Josh protested. “I like ghost stories!” As Jeff Aldrich gazed appraisingly at him, he decided to add just the tiniest little fib. “They don’t scare me at all!”

Jeff’s eyes held his own for a moment, then shifted away, leaving Josh wondering if his new friend had believed him or not.

Brenda MacCallum watched her son slowly being absorbed into the group. She had seen his guard drop lower and lower as these kids — bright kids so much like Josh himself — took him into their circle, making a place for him when he approached, listening to him when he talked, accepting him.

Brenda herself, torn between her unease at leaving her little boy among strangers, four hundred miles from home, and her desire to give him a better opportunity than she could provide, spent the evening talking quietly with the Aldriches and learning that her problems were not unique. She listened in silence as Chet Aldrich, speaking softly, related the story about the night almost a year before when they’d found Adam in the bathroom, unconscious, an empty bottle of Jeanette’s sleeping pills next to him on the floor. After the shock and horror of that event, the two of them had finally faced up to the fact that both their boys needed special programs, and had brought them to the Academy. “Kind of makes you wonder about our own intelligence,” Chet remarked wryly, adding that the transformation in the twins had been nothing short of miraculous since they’d been at the school.

And this is my miracle, too, Brenda thought. The miracle I’ve been waiting for.

With that, the last of her ambivalence crumbled.

Tomorrow morning she would sit down with Hildie Kramer and go through the formalities of enrolling Josh in Barrington Academy.

The strange uneasiness she’d felt earlier, when George Engersol, watching Amy trying to conquer her fear, had stood by with that odd detachment, observing her as if she were some kind of scientific specimen beneath a microscope, had been completely forgotten.

Indeed, all the misgivings she’d felt in the last few hours, from her first sense of foreboding as she’d seen the immense old house and the almost abnormally quiet children spread around it, to her dislike of George Engersol, were forgotten, for Josh, she could see, was going to be happy here.

In the end, that was all that really counted.

8

That first morning, when he awoke to the sound of classical music, Josh had felt a momentary disorientation. Blinking in the strong sunlight that flooded through his east-facing dormer, he had one of those awful seconds of panic when he didn’t know where he was. And when he finally remembered, the panic only swelled, for he also remembered that last night, Sunday, his mother had kissed him good-bye after getting him settled into his new room, assuring him that she’d come back to visit him the next weekend, bringing the rest of his clothes with her. Josh, putting on a braveness he didn’t feel, told her just to send his stuff. He didn’t need her coming back to see him, he’d insisted. But that first morning he wasn’t so sure. He’d stayed in bed for a few minutes, paralyzed with a sudden fear.

What was he supposed to do?

Was he supposed to take a shower this morning, like he had every morning at home?

Deciding it couldn’t hurt, he pulled on the worn flannel bathrobe that had been his Christmas present last year, but was already too small for him, and padded down the narrow hall to the boys’ room at the end. Someone was already in one of the shower stalls, but the other one was vacant. Feeling self-conscious as he took off his bathrobe and stood naked in the rest room, Josh reached into the empty shower and turned on the hot water.

“Jeez!” The boy in the other stall screeched as the temperature of his own shower instantly dropped ten degrees. “Will you get out of here and leave me alone, jerkface?”

“I–I’m sorry,” Josh stammered, stung by the boy’s words, and all the memories of the torment he’d received from the kids in Eden rising with the force of a gale off the ocean. He was about to slink out of the bathroom when