“Oh, really?” Chet grated. “Well, let’s just see about that, shall we?” He went to the desk and snapped on the Macintosh he’d bought a few months ago. The system booted itself up, and then, almost immediately, the computer beeped as the modem answered a call from outside. A few seconds later the screen cleared and the cursor flashed slowly, almost as if beckoning him. Chet sat down, thought a second, then quickly typed:
IT’S DAD, JEFF. AND I’M PRETTY MAD ABOUT THIS.
“It’s not Jeff, Dad,” Adam said from the television set. It’s me.
Chet hesitated, then typed again:
DONT GIVE ME THAT CHAP, SON. ALL YOU’RE DOING IS PISSING ME OFF AND HURTING YOUR MOTHER. THIS ISNT FUNNY.
On the screen Adam’s expression changed. His smile faded away and his eyes glistened with tears. “I’m not trying to hurt anyone,” he said. “I just wanted Mom to know I’m okay, that’s all.”
On the couch Jeanette’s body was racked by a sob, and Chet groaned silently.
He typed:
ADAM IS DEAD. YOU WERE AT HIS FUNERAL, AND SO WERE WE. THIS HAS GONE FAR ENOUGH. I DONT KNOW HOW YOU’RE DOING THIS, BUT BELIEVE ME, I’LL FIND OUT!
“But it’s really me, Dad,” Adam said, his voice shaking now. “I can prove it. Ask me something. Ask me something I’d know, but that Jeff wouldn’t!”
“Jesus,” Chet rasped. “That’s it! I’m shutting this thing—”
“No!” Jeanette turned away from the television, her cheeks stained with tears. “Honey, don’t. What — What if it
“Remember when I was five, Mom? Remember when I came home from school because I wet my pants, and you promised you’d never tell anyone?”
Jeanette froze.
She still remembered it perfectly. It had been the middle of the morning, and Adam had come through the back door, sobbing with mortification at the accident he’d had just before recess at kindergarten. He’d waited until everyone else had left the room, then run the three blocks home, praying that no one had seen him. But what he’d been most afraid of was that his brother would find out about it and tease him. “He’ll tell everyone,” the little boy had pleaded.
Jeanette had known he was right, for ever since they’d learned to talk, Jeff had always taken a strange pleasure in teasing his brother until Adam burst into tears, then laughing at Adam’s fury. So Jeanette had helped the little boy get cleaned up and into fresh clothes, then let him stay home for the rest of the day, explaining to Jeff that Adam had felt sick to his stomach.
That had been the end of it, and it had never been mentioned again.
Until now.
“It’s him,” Jeanette whispered. “Oh, God, Chet, it is!”
Chefs expression hardened. “It’s not, Jeanette! It’s Jeff, goddamn it! I don’t know how he’s doing this, but you can bet I’m going to find out! And I’m not listening to any more of his crap, either!”
“I just wanted you to know I’m okay, Mom,” Adam was saying again. “I’m not dead. Really, I’m not. I’m —”
The screen went dark as Chet snapped off the set. A moment later he took the cassette out of the video recorder and put it into the battered briefcase in which he carried his papers and lecture notes. “First thing in the morning, I’m going to find out why they let Jeff do that,” he said. “And if I discover that he had help from some of the college kids, there are going to be a few expulsions at Barrington. I’ve heard of some cruel pranks, but this one beats them all!”
Jeanette stared at the darkened television set.
Chet was right, of course. It had to be a prank.
And yet, all the time she’d watched him, and listened to him, she’d had the strangest feeling that it wasn’t a prank at all.
She’d felt that she’d been watching a shadow.
A shadow of the dead.
24
Jeanette Aldrich hesitated in front of George Engersol’s office. “Are you sure we should be doing this?” she asked Chet for at least the fourth time that morning. “Maybe we should talk to Jeff first—”
“I’m not talking to him until I know how something like this could have happened,” Chet replied, remnants of last night’s fury still evident in his voice. “If Engersol can’t tell me, then I think we both know what has to happen.” Without giving Jeanette time to argue, he pulled the door open and led her inside.
Half an hour later, George Engersol sat behind his desk watching the tape for the second time. When the Aldriches had arrived — unannounced, and interrupting a discussion neither he nor Hildie had been happy to postpone — he’d listened patiently to them as they explained what had happened early that morning. At first he had assumed it would take no more than a few minutes to brush off what had happened last night as another of Jeff’s pranks. After watching the tape and instantly realizing what Adam had done, he turned to Chet and Jeanette. “I can’t imagine what Jeff was thinking of,” he said smoothly, his face a seamless mask of concern. “I know our youngsters have thought up some pretty sophisticated stunts, but this…” He let his voice trail off into a disapproving hiss, then turned to Hildie. “I think you’d better bring young Jeff up here,” he told her.
“The faster we deal with this, the better for all of us, don’t you think?”
Hildie had hesitated for a split second, but the look in Engersol’s eyes had told her not to argue with him, and she’d started out of his office. Even before she’d passed through the doorway, he stopped her. “And Hildie, I think you’d probably better tell the rest of my seminar that we won’t be meeting this morning. Tell them they may have the hour off, and then bring Jeff up here.”
Though her face had flushed when he’d spoken to her as if she were no more than one of his staff — and not a particularly important one, at that — Hildie had nonetheless accepted his orders in silence.
She hadn’t been gone long, since the seminar was meeting just a floor below his office, and when she came back with Jeff Aldrich in tow, the boy looked angry.
“How come you’re mad at me?” he’d demanded as soon as Hildie had brought him into the office. He’d planted himself just inside the door and glared at his father. “I didn’t do anything!”
“Don’t lie to me, Jeff,” Chet had replied, his voice sharp enough that the boy had taken an uncertain step backward. “Play the tape again, Dr. Engersol. He might as well see that this time he’s been caught.”
Wordlessly, George Engersol had rewound the tape and started playing it again. This time, as he played the tape, he watched Jeff Aldrich’s face. No more than a few seconds into the tape, Jeff’s eyes had darted toward him and an unspoken message had passed between them.
Jeff, too, had immediately understood what had happened. But how would he handle it?
The tape came to an end. A heavy silence hung over the room, a silence that Chet finally broke.
“Well?”
The word made Jeff turn to look at his father. His eyes narrowed. “Where’d that come from?” he asked.
Though his face remained impassive, George Engersol felt himself relax. There was just the right amount of defensiveness in Jeff’s voice, just the right amount of guilt. And Chet Aldrich had heard it, too.
“You know damned well where it came from. Jeff,” Chet said. “The question is, how did you do it?”
Jeff hesitated just long enough before he replied. “Do what? I don’t know anything about that. It looked like Mam, didn’t it?”
Jeanette, sitting on a sofa opposite Jeff, shrank away from her son’s words. “Jeff, why are you doing this to me?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“Aw, come on, Mom,” Jeff groaned. “How am I going to do something like that? What do you think I did? Got
