Joan shook her head. “I can’t. Not until we find Mother.” She turned to gaze out the rain-streaked window. “If she’s out there somewhere… if she somehow finds her way back…” Her voice trailed off, and neither woman was willing to voice what they both knew: if the temperature should suddenly drop — if the rain should suddenly turn to sleet or snow — Emily Moore couldn’t possibly survive more than a few hours in nothing more substantial than a thin nightgown.
“I’ll call you,” Joan promised as she walked Nancy out to her car, wrapping herself against the rain in one of Bill’s parkas. “And thanks for coming out. I really do appreciate it. But right now, I think I just need to be by myself.”
Three times she’d gone back to the stream, each time allowing herself to hope that some trace of her mother would have turned up.
Three times she’d come home, her hopes momentarily dashed.
It was as she was leaving the house for the fourth time that she saw Matt walking up the driveway. Even if he hadn’t been getting home far too early, everything about him — his posture, the shuffle in his step, the way his hands were shoved deep in his pockets — told her that something had gone terribly wrong at school.
Ten minutes later, after she dragged the truth out of him about what had happened, he at last looked directly into her eyes. “What if it’s true?” he whispered. “What if what they’re saying is true?” Joan reached for his hands, but he pulled away from her. “I had a dream last night, Mom,” he said.
Slowly, his tone reflecting the pain and fear it had caused him, he told her about the terrible vision that had come to him in the night. “And Aunt Cynthia was there,” he finished, at last lifting his eyes to meet hers. “She kept telling me to do it. To do what I wanted to do.” Even as he spoke the words, Joan could see the terror coming into his eyes once again. “I was pissed off at Dad on my birthday,” he went on. “And I was mad at Gram night before last. What if it’s true? What if I — ”
Joan clamped her hand over his mouth, refusing to let him even utter the terrible words. “You didn’t,” she said. “You didn’t do anything.” Recalling the accusations that Matt had told her he’d seen on the computer monitor, her sympathy for her son hardened into anger toward his tormentors. “Go up and change your clothes,” she told him. “I’ll fix you something to eat. You hardly touched your breakfast, and without lunch you must be starving.”
“But I’m not hungry,” Matt protested.
“Maybe you will be by the time you get back downstairs,” Joan replied.
As soon as Matt was gone, she picked up the phone and called the school.
“I wish I knew how kids can be so cruel,” Burt Wing sighed after hearing Joan out. “Jack Carruthers told me about Matt leaving early, but Matt didn’t tell him what had happened.” He was silent for a moment, then: “Joan, I wish I could tell you it won’t happen again, but — ”
“Then what is Matt supposed to do?” Joan asked. “By the time he got home, he was starting to wonder if maybe what they were saying was — ” She cut herself short, and when she spoke again, managed to keep most of the anger out of her voice. “You’re Matt’s counselor. I’m just asking you to talk to him, Burt. And maybe to the rest of the kids in that class too. Matt should be able to go to school without having to hear that kind of garbage, shouldn’t he?”
“Of course he should,” Burt Wing agreed. “Nothing like that should happen to any child. But these days — well, you know how kids can be.”
“I do,” Joan sighed. “I just don’t want them making Matt’s life any more difficult than it already is. And Burt? Don’t tell Matt I called, all right?”
For the first time since he’d picked up the phone, Burt Wing chuckled. “Don’t worry. The last thing any kid needs to know is that his mother called his counselor. Believe me, he won’t ever hear it from me. And I’ll talk to him first thing in the morning.”
As she hung up the phone, it occurred to Joan that morning was a long time away.
* * *
THE VOICE WHISPERED her name so softly that at first Joan wasn’t certain she’d heard it at all.
When it came again, slithering out of the silence and creeping around the fringes of her consciousness as if it didn’t want to be heard at all, she told herself it was just the wind. Though the rain had stopped and a breeze had come up, water still dripped from the leaves that clung to the branches of the huge maple just outside her bedroom window. Surely all she heard was the soughing of that breeze.
But then she heard the sound again, her name breathed in a long, drawn-out sigh:
She tried to shut it out, tried to tell herself once again that it was only the wind, or something in her imagination. But even as she tried to close her mind to it, the voice called out again.
Cynthia!
Only Cynthia had ever called her Joanie-baby.
It came again, and now the voice of her sister was unmistakable.
“No!” Joan whispered, unaware she had spoken aloud. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real.
Now she heard a tinkle of laughter, and then, once again, her sister’s voice.
Joan tried to resist the voice, but even as she told herself again that whatever she was hearing could be nothing more than an illusion, she found herself getting out of bed, slipping her arms into the sleeves of Bill’s worn woolen robe, and moving to the closed door of the bedroom.
She paused, listening.
Nothing.
But now, though the house was once again silent, she could feel something.
Something in the hall, just outside her door.
Her heart quickened, and her fingers went to the key in the lock just below the doorknob. “Matt?” she whispered, so softly that even she could barely hear her words. “Matt, is that you?”
Nothing.
She wanted to lock the door to her bedroom, wanted to go back to her bed and wrap herself in the comfort of the down quilt. But as if held in thrall by some force she could neither see nor feel, she turned the doorknob and pulled the door open.
The corridor was dimly lit by a night-light; both its ends lost in shadows. Clutching the lapels of the robe tight around her throat, Joan slipped out into the hallway.
Though she knew it could be no more than an illusion, the corridor seemed to stretch away forever in both directions.
Every door was closed.
Yet she still felt the presence of someone — or something — lurking close by.
Very close by.
“M-Mother?” she stammered, her voice trembling. “Mother, is that you?” But even as she uttered the words she knew her mother was nowhere in the house, and when once more the tinkle of laughter pierced the silence, it stung her like a thousand needles jabbing at her skin.
Cynthia!
It was Cynthia’s laugh!
The same laugh Joan had heard hundreds of times — thousands of times — when she was a child.
Steeling herself, she moved down the corridor until she stood in front of the door to Cynthia’s room.
She reached out and gripped the knob, but still she hesitated.
Why? What was she afraid of?
She was just tired — exhausted from everything she’d been through in the last few days. And her mind felt as exhausted as her body — her grief, her lack of sleep, all of it had taken its toll. Why wouldn’t she be imagining things? Hearing voices? Feeling things that weren’t there?
