Nightshade

“It’s time for you to bag your first trophy,” his father had told him when they finally sighted the deer. And he had. He’d circled around the deer, crept up on him, and taken him.

“I did what you wanted,” Matt whispered. “I did exactly what you wanted.” But even as he said it, he knew he hadn’t — not yet. His stepfather had intended that the buck — this buck — be his first trophy.

That its head be cut off and taken to Mr. Rudman, who would stuff it and mount it on a mahogany plaque with a brass plate commemorating his sixteenth birthday.

The day he’d shot the deer. The day everyone thought he’d shot his father.

“No,” he whispered. “No…”

But how could he prove it? There wasn’t any way.

Then an idea came into his mind. What if he had Mr. Rudman do exactly what his dad had wanted? That would prove it, wouldn’t it? If he’d done what everyone thought — if he’d really shot his stepfather — he’d never want the deer’s head around to remind him of it, would he?

His eyes darted to the bench that ran along the length of the wall. Hanging in its usual place was the skinning knife that generations of Hapgoods had used to dress their game, its razor-sharp blade protected by a leather sheath.

Matt moved closer to the bench, reaching out toward the knife, but hesitating just before his fingers closed on it. Why was he really doing it? What would it really prove?

Then the voice he’d heard before — the voice that seemed to come out of nowhere and out of everywhere — whispered again. “Do it… do it… do it…” Grasping the sheath with one hand, he pulled the knife out with the other. Its perfectly honed blade glinted even in the gray light of the afternoon, and as Matt’s eyes fixed on it, the voice whispered once again. “That’s right, Matt… do it, Matt… do what you have to do… ”

All the anger, all the rage, all the terrible frustrations that had been building inside him for days burst loose, and with a single heave he lifted the buck’s carcass from the hook and let it fall to the floor. Dropping to his knees, straddling the animal’s body, he grabbed the animal’s head with one hand and lifted it, and with the other hand went to work with the knife, plunging it through the deer’s thick hide, then jerking it upward through skin and muscle and tendons. The knife stuck, jammed between two vertebrae. Matt yanked it loose, then attacked again. Nearly congealed blood oozed from the arteries and veins the blade slashed through, but he ignored the gory mess that covered his hands, hacking harder and harder with the knife, struggling to force it through the creature’s spine.

Again he felt the blade strike bone, but this time he twisted it, jerking it one way and then another until he found the cartilaginous disk between the vertebrae. A moment later he lost his grip, and as the stag’s head dropped to the floor of the shed, the knife stuck fast. Grunting, his rage and frustration unabated, Matt attacked the carcass again, the knife flashing as he yanked it free and raised it once more.

Raised it high over the body.

“I didn’t do it,” he cried out. “I didn’t!”

The knife slashed downward, plunging deep into the stag’s chest.

“I didn’t,” he sobbed again, jerking the knife loose and raising it yet again.

Over and over the knife rose and fell, slashing at the animal’s chest and legs and neck. Matt was sobbing, his breath coming in great heaving gasps. Now, as he sucked air deep into his lungs, he could smell the aroma too — the musky aroma that had filled his nights.

His nights, and his nightmares.

And through it all the soft, seductive voice kept whispering to him. “That’s right. That’s a good boy. Do what you want to do.Do what you need to do… ”

* * *

AT FIRST EMILY Moore barely noticed the strange light that glowed in the sky above her. She had been drifting among her memories, but in her mind they weren’t memories at all, for something deep in her brain had finally given up trying to distinguish between the conscious and the subconscious, between what was real and what was not. The darkness surrounding her and the terrible pain in her failing body had at last become too much to bear, and her mind retreated into itself. Memories had become reality, and though her body — stiff and sore — still lay in the darkness, Emily herself was living in the warmth of a summer afternoon…

* * *

THEY WERE ALL in the backyard of the house on Burlington Avenue. Frank — his shirt stripped off — was mowing the lawn. Joan was perched on his shoulders, her little hands clutching his hair as her tiny heels kicked at his chest.

Cynthia, her blond curls bouncing, was chasing after Frank, begging him to pick her up. But Frank ignored her.

Ignored Cynthia the same way he had begun ignoring her.

She knew when it started: the day Joan was born, two years earlier. She had been holding her new baby, and Frank lifted the corner of the blanket to look at his new daughter’s face for the first time. “She’s beautiful,” he breathed. “She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” He was wrong, of course: Joan’s face, framed by more straight black hair than any baby should have been born with, had looked to her like that of a tiny monkey, with a pushed-in nose and eyes that were too big. Not like Cynthia at all. Cynthia looked like a perfect china-doll from the day she was born, and it seemed to her that Cynthia had gotten even more beautiful every day since. But Frank, lifting Joan out of her arms and cuddling her against his chest, had murmured, “Are you my perfect princess?” From that moment, Frank and Joan became inseparable.

When Joan cried in the night, Frank got up to comfort her.

When she fussed about eating, Frank fed her.

Day after day Emily watched as her baby daughter stole her husband’s heart away.

Day after day, Cynthia watched as her baby sister stole her daddy’s heart away.

As Joan and Frank grew closer, so also did she and Cynthia.

Now, as she watched Joan cling to her father while he worked, pressing herself close to his bare flesh, resentment seethed inside her. It’s not natural, she told herself. She shouldn’t cling to him like that, and he shouldn’t let her.

But he did let the child touch him, did let the child put her hands on his flesh.

And he liked it — she could see that. He liked it in a way he shouldn’t.

In a dirty way.

When Frank was finished mowing the lawn, he went in the house, carrying Joan with him. She and Cynthia stayed outside, sprawled in the sunshine, but as the minutes ticked by, she began to wonder what Frank was doing in the house.

What Frank was doing with Joan.

Getting up, she went in the back door. For a second she heard nothing, but then heard Joan giggling.

She didn’t hear Frank at all.

Moving silently through the kitchen to the hall, she followed her baby daughter’s laughter upstairs to the bedroom.

The bedroom she shared with Frank.

Joan, naked, lay on her back, her little legs spread, her little arms waving.

Frank stood over her, his hands caressing her skin.

The way they had once caressed her skin.

He was smiling down at Joan.

The way he had once smiled at her.

The seething resentment that had been building in her as she watched her daughter ride her husband — ride him like an animal, rubbing her crotch on the back of his neck while she cried out with pleasure — suddenly erupted. “Get out!” she screamed, shoving Frank away from the bed and snatching Joan up so quickly the tiny child screamed with fright.