Nightshade

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.

He was pushing against the lid now, trying to raise it, but already there was too much earth on top, and even as he struggled, more and more was piling onto the top of the coffin, until he could almost feel its weight. He tried to scream, but there was no way his voice could penetrate the coffin and the earth above. How long could he survive? How long before he suffocated?

Would it hurt?

Would he tear his fingernails off scratching at the walls as he tried to free himself?

Or could he force the panic back, make himself lie still and await the death that now would surely come?

But even in his imagination the darkness bore down on him, and the walls of the coffin closed around him, and an ineffable terror rose within him. The scream that no one would hear rose in his throat, but as he opened his mouth to give it vent, he felt something.

A hand, squeezing his elbow.

“Matt? Matt!” Though his mother’s voice was low, there was an urgency to it that jerked him out of the daydream. “It will be all right,” he heard her say. “Just do what I do.”

Numbly, he stepped forward to the edge of the grave and stood beside his mother as she stooped, picked up a clod of earth with her gloved hand, then dropped it onto his stepfather’s coffin.

Matt crouched, reached down, touched the pile of crumbling loam beside the grave.

And the terrible image of being trapped inside the box, knowing what was happening even as you were being buried alive, leaped again to the forefront of his mind.

He couldn’t do it!

Standing up, he turned away. His eyes glazing with tears, he threaded his way through the crowd around the grave, barely aware of the murmur that was passing through the throng of mourners, the eyes that watched his every move. Finally he was away from the crowd, and a moment later his mother was beside him.

“Matt? Darling, what happened?”

Matt shook his head. How could he explain the terrible, irrational fear that had suddenly taken hold of him? “Nothing,” he blurted. “I just…” His voice trailed off and his eyes moved back to the grave, where one by one the mourners were stooping to pick up a clod to add to the earth that was on the coffin. “I–I just couldn’t do it, that’s all,” he finally finished, his voice trembling.

His mother put her arms around him. “Just a little while longer,” she said. “Just a little while, then we can go home.”

But the little while seemed to stretch into a terrible eternity as he stood beside his mother just inside the door to the parish hall. As the mourners filed by, he heard them whisper words of sympathy to his mother, the women leaning forward to kiss her cheek, the men holding her hand in theirs.

But as they came to him, they fell silent.

Their eyes refused to meet his, instead darting first one way, then another, as if seeking some means of escape.

They think I did it on purpose. The first time the dark thought rose in his mind, he tried to ignore it, tried to tell himself that they just didn’t know what to say to him. But the thought kept coming back, jabbing at him over and over again. They think I did it on purpose. They all think I meant to kill my own dad!

Finally, though, the last of the throng who had come to bid their final respects to his stepfather had spoken to his mother, and one or two even nodded to him. His friends had gathered in the far corner of the room, whispering among themselves just out of earshot of their parents.

Both Eric Holmes and Pete Arneson were in the group, and so was Kelly Conroe. By force of habit, Matt made his way over to them, but instead of widening their circle to include him as they always had before, today they moved closer together, falling silent as he approached. A memory flashed into his mind. He was four years old, and he’d just come out the front door of his grandmother’s house, only a block away from where he was right