Nightshade

deepened. Now he had the eyes of a frightened animal, eyes that darted as if searching for a predator he sensed but had not yet seen. As his eyes finally fixed on her, she could see a flame of anger burning in them.

“You called the school,” he said. “You talked to Mr. Wing, didn’t you?”

Joan bit her lip. “I thought — ”

“It doesn’t matter what you thought, Mom!” Matt burst out, his voice bitter. “You want to know what happened today? You want to hear it?” Before Joan could respond, the story came out. Bitter, angry words spewed from Matt. “Someone even nailed a dead rabbit to the shed,” he finished, his voice shaking, his face streaked with the tears he was unable to control.

“A rabbit?” Joan echoed. “What are you talking about?”

Matt pointed to the window. “Go look!” he said. “If you don’t believe me, look for yourself!”

Joan crossed to the window and peered out into the darkening afternoon. Forty yards away, behind the carriage house, she saw the shed Matt was talking about. But there was nothing on it. “You saw it on the shed?” she asked, her voice conveying her doubt as much as her words. “The one behind the carriage house?”

“Is there another one?” Matt demanded, getting off the bed and coming over to stand beside her. “It’s right — ” His words died abruptly as he stared at the shed wall. There was nothing there at all. The dead rabbit was gone, and as he stared at the empty expanse of white-painted siding, he wondered if it had been there at all. Could his eyes have been playing a trick on him? “But I saw it,” he murmured, more to himself than his mother.

Joan remembered, then, a morning more than ten years ago, when she found the pet Bill had given Matt, dead in its cage.

Hanging upside down, eviscerated.

It had been a rabbit — a white rabbit — and Matt was unable to explain what had happened to it.

He’d clung to her then, crying inconsolably, brokenly insisting over and over again that he hadn’t done anything to it, that he’d loved it, that someone must have come into the room in the night and done it. For a moment Joan had wondered if it could have been her mother. But in the end, rather than even talk to her mother about it, she put the dead rabbit in a plastic bag and deposited it in the garbage barrel in the alley. Neither of them had ever spoken of it again. Now, as her son stood trembling next to her, his eyes fixed on the woodshed, she slipped her arm around him.

“It’s all right, Matt,” she said. “You probably just dreamed it.”

He turned to face her, the anger gone from his eyes; instead, the terrible, frightened, hunted look had returned. “Remember the rabbit Dad gave me before you got married and we still lived at Gram’s?” Joan felt a chill go through her, and knew she didn’t want to hear what Matt was about to say. “What if I killed it? What if I killed the rabbit myself and didn’t remember?” Though he said no more, Joan knew what he was thinking. If he could have killed the rabbit and not remembered, then what about his stepfather?

And his grandmother?

Joan put both her hands on her son’s shoulders. “You didn’t do anything, Matt. I know you didn’t.” But even as she spoke the words, she knew they weren’t quite true.

For the first time, a seed of doubt had been planted in her mind.

It wasn’t until she was about to leave Matt’s room a few minutes later that she remembered why she’d knocked on his door in the first place. “Matt,” she said, turning back to face him, “did you go into Cynthia’s room?” She thought she saw something flicker in Matt’s eyes, but it was gone so quickly that she wasn’t sure she’d seen it at all.

Matt shook his head. “Why would I do that?”

Joan hesitated, but decided to say nothing more. Leaving Matt, she went down the hall to her own room. Bill’s old robe — the one she’d been wearing this morning — still hung from the hook in her dressing room, where she’d left it. But as she reached for the pocket, she paused. What if the key was gone? What would she do? What if Matt had lied about going into Cynthia’s room?

She could think about that later — right now, she simply had to know. One way or the other, she had to know.

She slipped her hand into the pocket of the robe.

The key was still there.

Surely, even if Matt had found the key and used it, he would have relocked the door before he put it back. So Matt hadn’t lied.

But she still had no idea why the door had been open. Then, heading downstairs to find something for their dinner, she heard Cynthia’s voice again. “Maybe I did it,” her sister whispered. “Maybe I opened the door myself.”

Joan jerked to a stop and spun around, as if expecting to see her sister standing on the landing, her mocking eyes sparkling with cruel mischief. “Leave me alone!” she cried. “Just leave me alone!”

It wasn’t until she’d shouted the words that she realized Cynthia wasn’t there at all.

Couldn’t be there.

After all, Cynthia was dead.

Wasn’t she?

“Am I?” Cynthia whispered. “Come and see, Joanie-baby. Come to my room and see… ”

* * *

MATT STAYED BY the window even after his mother left his room, staring down at the blank white wall of the shed. Its emptiness seemed to taunt him. But the rabbit had been there! He’d seen its slit belly, seen its entrails hanging down the wall, seen the bloodstains on the wall itself. Yet now, from his room on the second floor, the wall appeared as pristine as if it had been painted only yesterday. A wave of angry frustration crashing over him, Matt wheeled away from the window and bolted from his room.

A minute later he was standing in front of the shed, staring at the spot where the rabbit had hung. He moved closer, reaching out to touch the siding; there was no sign of any stain whatsoever.

His eyes moved to the storm clouds scudding across the sky. Could the rain have washed away the stains? But it didn’t seem possible: the rain had almost stopped; the ground was hardly even wet. So whoever had hung the rabbit there — then come and taken it away — must have cleaned up the mess themselves.

A thought rose unbidden in his mind: Maybe the rabbit was never there at all.

But if it hadn’t been, that meant —

He cut the thought short. He wasn’t crazy! He had seen the rabbit. And he would find out what happened to it!

He went around behind the shed to the trash barrels and jerked their covers off one by one. Nothing!

Inside the shed?

He reached for the handle of the door, then stopped as he remembered what was inside. It’s only a deer, he told himself. And it can’t hurt you. Grasping the handle, he pulled the door open, and for only the second time since the day he shot it, looked at the animal he had killed. It was exactly as he remembered it: hanging from its hind legs, its belly slit, its head suspended just a few inches above the floor.

Just like the rabbit.

But it didn’t mean anything — it couldn’t mean anything! Yet as he stood transfixed at the doorway, the memory of what had happened the morning of his birthday came back to him.

Again he was staring down the length of his rifle barrel, holding the sight steady on the buck’s raised head.

Again he could smell the musky aroma that had filled his nostrils.

And again there was the voice, whispering to him: “Do it, Matt. Do it… do it… do it…”

But do what? What was he supposed to do? His eyes remained fixed on the deer. Why was it here? Why had they left it hanging in the shed?

Because he’d shot it.

They all knew he’d shot it, shot it just the way his dad had wanted him to.