dead since before he was born!
He backed away from the door, stumbling to the head of the stairs.
The terrible echoes from his nightmares tumbling through his mind, he started down.
* * *
THE MASCARA FROM her eyelashes streaking her cheeks, her makeup smeared, the scissors from her mother’s sewing box clutched in her hand, Joan fairly shook with rage as she faced her sister. “You can’t take him back!” she screamed. “It’s too late!”
“I don’t have to take him back!” Cynthia replied. “I never gave him to you in the first place!”
“Liar!” Joan screeched. She raised the scissors high, then plunged them deep into Cynthia’s cheek, slashing through skin and flesh until the point stuck in the bone beneath.
Cynthia only laughed. “You stole him. You stole him like you stole my whole life. No wonder Mama hated you.”
Joan jerked the scissors free, then slashed again. “She loved me! She always loved me! She only punished me because she loved me!”
“You were nothing,” Cynthia shot back. “You were stupid, and ugly, and no one ever wanted you. Not me, not Mama, not Bill, not anyone!”
The terrible mocking laugh rose again, and once more Joan slashed at her sister’s face. But the voice went inexorably on. “You can’t have it, Joan. You can’t have my life and you can’t have my son! I’m taking it back! I’m taking it all back!”
Suddenly Joan was back in New York, back in the apartment where Cynthia had hidden herself away to have her baby. Even when she’d gone into labor, she refused to go to a hospital, refused even to let Joan call a doctor…
* * *
“MAMA WILL FIND out,” she insisted. “Mama will find out, and then she’ll hate me! She’ll hate me the way she hates you!”
“But what if something happens?” Joan begged. “What if something goes wrong?”
“Nothing will go wrong,” Cynthia said. “I’ll have the baby, and you’ll get rid of it, and then I can go home.”
But something did go wrong — right after the baby had been born, something went terribly wrong.
Cynthia started to bleed.
“I’m going to call a doctor,” Joan insisted, but Cynthia shook her head and pointed at the baby.
“Not until you get rid of it.”
Joan looked down at the tiny child in her arms. “I can’t. I can’t hurt him. I can’t — ”
“He’s not yours,” Cynthia hissed. “He’s mine. I’ll decide what to do with him.”
Joan backed away, holding the baby closer. “Let me have him,” she pleaded. “Let me be his mother.”
Fury and venom spewed from Cynthia’s tongue as freely as the blood that was flowing from her womb. “Never! He’s mine, and he’ll always be mine!”
“But you don’t want him!”
“And you can’t have him!” Cynthia pulled herself up, her arms stretched out as if to snatch the baby away from Joan. “He’s mine, and he’ll always be mine!” Spent, Cynthia flopped back against the pillow, her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath. As Joan watched, her face grew paler, her breathing more shallow.
A moment later her breathing stopped and she lay still.
Joan stood staring at her sister, holding the baby close to her breast. What should she do? Should she call a doctor?
Too late.
The police?
What if they took the baby away?
Go away. Just take the baby and go away.
The idea seemed to come out of nowhere, and at first she dismissed it. But then she thought about it.
No one knew who Cynthia was. She had taken the apartment — a grubby, furnished room in a building filled with drug addicts and whores — under another name. She’d even gotten identification under that name. “After I get rid of the baby, I’ll just go home,” she told Joan. “The person who lives here will just cease to exist, and I can go back to my life. But you can bet I won’t get pregnant again!”
Now, as Joan stood staring at her sister’s body, she tried to think of a reason not to simply walk away from the dingy room, as Cynthia had intended to do. No one knew she was here — even people who might have seen her had no idea who she was. She held the baby tighter, gazing down into its perfect face. “Everything will be all right now,” she whispered. “I’ll be your mother, and I’ll love you. And your grandmother will love you too.” And Mother will love me now, she thought. When she sees the baby, she’ll love him, and she’ll love me too. She edged toward the door. It would work! She’d take the baby, and in a few months — just long enough so no one would wonder why she hadn’t looked pregnant when she left — she would go back home. Everything would be perfect! Her mother would love her, and the baby would love her.
But a few minutes later, as she was leaving, she thought she heard her sister’s voice: “It won’t work, Joanie-baby. You can’t be me. You can never be me.”
* * *
“I CAN BE you!” she screamed, raising the scissors yet again. “I can! I can!” Over and over the scissors slashed into the portrait until, like everything else that had been Cynthia’s, it lay in tatters on the floor. Her rage finally spent, Joan turned away from the destruction she’d created and went back to Cynthia’s vanity table. “I can be you,” she said. “I can.”
She cleaned away the smeared makeup, then set to work once more. But as she applied the makeup this time, she worked quickly and efficiently.
As quickly and efficiently as Cynthia herself…
THE HOUSE CLOSED around Matt, making him feel like a trapped animal. He moved restlessly from room to room, but wherever he went the voice followed him.
Suddenly, he felt an overwhelming urge to escape, to free himself from the confines of the walls around him, and the terrors they contained. He started toward the front door, then paused. Where would he go? Where would he be safe?
He had no friends — no one except Becky Adams.
No family, except for his mother.
Nowhere — no one — to turn to.
Turning away from the front door, he went into the living room, then into the den.
His eyes fell on his stepfather’s desk. In an instant he was a little boy again — only five years old — and it was the day he’d come to live in this house. It was so big it frightened him, but his stepfather took his hand and led him through all the rooms, showing him everything, encouraging him to open every closet, every drawer, so he’d know what was inside. By the time they went through the house, he hadn’t been frightened anymore.
But there was one drawer — the bottom drawer on the right-hand side of his stepfather’s desk — that
