Nightshade

“Not speaking to you?” Nancy echoed. “But you and Kelly are friends. You’ve always been friends — ”

Suddenly Matt’s control over his emotions broke. “I don’t have any friends anymore,” he blurted. “Didn’t she tell you? No one’s speaking to me. No one’s even looking at me anymore! It’s like — ” His voice broke, and the last words he spoke before he cut off the connection were strangled by a sob. “You don’t care what it’s like. Kelly doesn’t care. No one cares.”

Matt set the phone on the table, then looked up at his mother to see something in her eyes that he’d never seen before.

Doubt.

Silence fell over the kitchen, a silence that seemed to stretch into eternity. Slowly, Matt began to understand.

She thought he was lying.

She thought he had lied to Kelly’s mother.

He rose from the table. “You don’t believe me either,” he said. “Nobody believes me!” His voice rose. “Why doesn’t anyone believe me?” He started for the back door.

Joan took a step toward him, instinctively reaching out. “Matt, where are you going?”

He spun around to look at her, his face pale, his eyes anguished. “To find her! Don’t you understand? If I don’t find her — if something’s happened to her — ” His voice broke. “If you don’t even believe me, who’s going to?” A moment later he was gone, stumbling out into the darkness.

Then Joan too was out the back door. “Matt?” she called. “Matt, come back!” She listened for a moment, but heard nothing. “Please come back,” she cried, her own voice breaking now. But it was as if the night had swallowed him up.

* * *

SHE THINKS I did something! My own mother thinks I did something to Kelly!

His chest heaving as he paused to catch his breath, Matt leaned against the wall of the carriage house. He could see his mother framed in the light of the open back door, and hear her voice as she called out to him. But even though he could hear her and see her — even though he stood no more than fifty yards from her — he felt as if he’d been transported into a parallel universe where everything he had always known had suddenly changed.

It looked exactly the same; everything smelled and sounded the same. Everything was familiar.

But everything was different, for the world he had always known, and loved, had been filled with people. His family, his friends, his teachers. All of them had been part of his life.

And he’d thought they’d always be part of his life.

Now they were gone. Now he was alone in the world. What had happened?

Had the world changed?

Or was it he, himself, who was different?

I’m not! he cried silently to himself. I’m who I always was!

But as his mother called out to him once more — her voice echoing through the darkness as if through a long tunnel — he wondered.

Fragmented memories flitted through his mind.

Mr. Rudman, looking at him as if he didn’t quite know who he was. But Mr. Rudman had known him all his life!

The way his mother had looked at him when she’d handed the phone to him a little while ago.

Another memory rose in his mind.

The words that had been whispered to him as he crouched over the carcass of the deer: “That’s right, Matt… do what you want to do… do what you have to do… ”

The musky aroma that had filled his nostrils…

And the blood on his clothes — had it really all come from the deer? Or —

No! It wasn’t possible! He couldn’t have done anything to Kelly!

What if he was going crazy?

A strangled, half-muted cry rose from his throat, and he started running again, sprinting through the darkness as if he were being chased by an unseen enemy. But even as he ran, he knew that the enemy lay not in the darkness of the night, but somewhere deep within the darkest reaches of his own mind.

He paused when he came to the gates. Where could he go?

But there was nowhere to go, no one to turn to. He couldn’t go find Eric Holmes or Pete Arneson, couldn’t just go into town and see who might be hanging out.

Not anymore.

Maybe not ever again.

But he hadn’t done anything!

Without thinking about it — without even understanding quite why he was doing it — he turned away from the town and began walking in the other direction. In the direction of the Conroes’ house. He walked quickly, with no thought at all, his head down, his feet carrying him along the familiar route. He paused only once as the glow of headlights appeared around a bend far ahead. As the glow brightened and he heard the rumble of a diesel engine, a new thought leaped into his mind.

What if he stepped out in front of the truck?

It would be over. There would be no more terrible dreams that stole his rest at night, nor the even worse nightmares that had become the reality of his days.

The headlights grew brighter, and as the truck came around the bend, the twin beams of light swept across him, blinding him. But instead of turning away, or even shielding his eyes from the glare, he stood perfectly still, staring into the light as if gazing at a beacon in the night.

A beacon signaling refuge, beckoning him toward safety.

As it approached, Matt almost unconsciously took a step off the shoulder onto the pavement.

The roar of the engine grew; the headlights held him in rapture. A hundred yards, then fifty. The twin halogen beams held him transfixed.

He stepped farther into the road, so he was standing directly in front of the truck as it hurtled toward him.

Only a few more seconds and it would all be over.

Thirty yards. Twenty. Ten —

The blare of the horn rent the night, shattering the trance into which Matt had slipped, and he leaped away, hurling himself into the ditch that ran alongside the road. He felt the slipstream as the truck raced past, and in another moment it was over; the roar of the diesel faded away, the glow of the headlights dimmed.

He was still alive, still living in the strange new world in which he was cut off from everyone he had ever known.

He recalled then the last words he’d spoken to his mother. “I have to find her. If I don’t find her — if something’s happened to her — ” He hadn’t finished the sentence, hadn’t been able even to finish the thought. But now, alone in the darkness, he did.

If he didn’t find Kelly Conroe — if something had happened to her — it would never end. The nightmare his life had become would go on, unchanged, until the day he died.

He might as well have thrown himself under the truck.

Picking himself up from the ditch, ignoring the scratches and bruises on his hands and face, Matt headed back the way he’d come.

CHAPTER 18

JOAN STOOD AT the back door, staring into the darkness that had swallowed up her son. Her first impulse