Nightshade

“You can,” Matt insisted. “There isn’t any other way.”

They worked their way back to the corner, and this time it was Becky who crouched down in the darkness. Matt took off his shoes, felt in the darkness until his fingers touched her, then gingerly placed his right foot on her shoulder.

“Okay,” he said. “This is going to be the worst part. I’m going to push off with my left foot really hard, and you try to stand up at the same time. As soon as you feel my left foot, grab my ankles. I’ll steady us both. Ready?”

Becky said nothing, but he heard her take a deep breath. Then, as he said “Go!” and lunged upward, he felt her body tense. He surged up the corner, bracing himself against the ninety-degree angle with both hands. Becky trembled beneath him, and for a moment he thought she was going to collapse, but then she steadied herself.

A second later she began turning around. “I don’t know if I can — ”

“Don’t talk,” Matt told her. “Just start working your way out toward the middle.”

Then Becky was moving, though so slowly Matt thought her strength would give out long before they made it to the center of the room and the trapdoor. But after what seemed a long time, but couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds, the fingers of his right hand brushed against the frame of the trapdoor.

“Another couple of steps,” he said. “We’re almost there.” Becky edged forward, and finally Matt felt the door above him. “Okay, make yourself as rigid as you can.” He could feel Becky’s body tense beneath his feet and her hands tighten on his ankles.

“Now,” she whispered, her voice strangling on the tension in her neck.

Matt shoved hard, and as the trapdoor lifted, he thrust one arm through just as he heard Becky yelp with pain, then collapse beneath him. For a moment he hung there, dangling, then managed to force his other arm through the crack as well. “I’ve got it!” he said, hauling himself up. He swung his body and lifted the trapdoor just enough with his shoulder to jam his knee through. A second later he was slithering through the gap between the basement floor and edge of the trapdoor. As he pulled his left leg free, the door dropped into place and he heard Becky’s muffled voice calling out to him. Grasping the handle of the door, he pulled it all the way up so the hole in the root cellar’s ceiling was fully opened. He groped for the string that would turn on the light above the trapdoor, found it, and pulled. Brilliant yellow light flooded the basement, and Matt blinked in its glare.

“Get me out,” Becky pleaded. She was huddled on the floor, staring up at him, squinting against the bright light.

“What happened?” Matt asked.

“I twisted my ankle. I don’t think I can stand on it.”

Matt scanned the basement and spotted the aluminum extension ladder lying on the floor a few feet away. He pulled it over to the trapdoor, lifted it up and lowered one end into the chamber below. When it rested on the ground, Becky grabbed onto it and began pulling herself up. Then she was on her feet, working her way up the ladder, hanging from each rung as she pulled her good leg up, transferred her weight to it, and reached for the next rung. She was almost at the top, reaching for Matt’s extended hand, when her eyes widened and she tried to speak.

Too late.

Matt had just sensed the presence behind him when something crashed against his head. Grunting, he let go of Becky’s hand and slumped to the floor.

Becky screamed as she dropped back into the root cellar. As the terrifying figure of Joan Hapgood began climbing down the ladder, clutching the shovel with which she’d just struck Matt, Becky tried to scuttle away into the shadows in the corner. But it was too late — a moment later Joan was looming over her, the shovel raised high. Becky held up her hands as the shovel arced downward, its blade slashing at her face. Clutching at the tear in her cheek, Becky tried to roll away from the shovel, but it rose and fell over and over again, its blade ripping through her flesh, smashing at her skull until she lay huddled against the wall, unmoving, her face streaming with blood.

Reaching down, Cynthia rolled Becky’s body over, ripping the pocket off Becky’s blouse as she did. As the pool of blood around Becky spread, Cynthia turned to peer at the body of her mother. “Look what Joan did,” she whispered. “It wasn’t my fault, Mama. Joan did it… Joan did it all… ”

Turning away from the bodies on the floor of the root cellar, Cynthia climbed the ladder up to the basement.

She blinked in the bright light.

Where Matt had been only a few moments ago, there was now only a smear of blood.

Her son — her perfect son — her beloved son — was gone.

* * *

MATT REELED THROUGH the door at the top of the basement stairs, oblivious to his surroundings, his mind still seared by what he’d seen in the root cellar. Stunned by the blow from the shovel, he’d collapsed on the floor next to the trapdoor, his body convulsing as waves of pain rolled through him. Then a scream cut through the pain, a terrified scream that rose into a howl of agony. Pulling himself up to his hands and knees, he peered down through the trapdoor. What he saw made his stomach heave.

Lying against one wall, her hands cut off so her arms ended in ragged stumps of decaying flesh and mangled bones, was the body of his grandmother, her nightgown stained with congealed blood, her eyes, wide- open, staring up at him.

A few feet to her left lay Kelly Conroe, unconscious, her face covered with bruises, a cut on her lip encrusted with a thick scab.

In the opposite corner, sprawled against the wall, was Becky Adams, blood gushing from deep gashes in her mouth and throat. Her arms and legs twitched spasmodically, and as Matt watched his mother slash at her with the shovel, his throat constricted, turning his own cry into a choking sob that was all but inaudible. Blind to everything but the vision of the carnage below the cellar’s floor, he’d stumbled toward the stairs and started up.

Now he stood numb and trembling in the kitchen, his mind refusing to work, his reason washed away by the flood of horror he’d just witnessed.

Then, through the numbness in his mind, he heard: “Matt? Matt, where are you?”

His mother’s voice.

But not quite his mother’s voice.

His aunt’s voice — the voice he’d so often heard whispering to him in the night.

The voice that should have existed only in his dreams.

Then there were footsteps coming up the basement stairs, and the voice was louder.

He had to get away! He had to escape!

Matt stumbled across the kitchen, through the mud room, and out the back door. Late afternoon had given way to evening, and he froze on the porch for a moment, blinded now by the sudden darkness. Then the crash of the door at the top of the basement stairs galvanized him, and he charged down the steps, taking them two at a time.

The road! If he could get to the road, he would be safe.

He stumbled down the driveway, unable to shake the vision of horror in the basement. It drowned out any other thoughts, paralyzing his ability to reason, so that when he heard the roar of an automobile engine behind him, the sound only spurred him on, sent him pounding harder down the driveway toward the gates. He was almost there, almost within reach of his goal, when the car struck him.

He went down hard, his shoulder and then his head slamming against the driveway, knocking him unconscious.

The car screeched to a stop, and then a figure was crouched over him.

“My baby,” Cynthia whispered. “My poor baby.” She gently lifted Matt’s head and cradled it against her breast, her finger stroking his cheek as she gazed down into his face. “But it’s all right, my darling. We’ll be together now.” Her lips pressed close to his ear. “Now we’ll always be together.”

Gently easing Matt’s head back onto the driveway, Cynthia straightened up. Leaving the car where it was, she walked quickly back up the driveway toward the house, and when she came back, the shovel — the one she’d used to put an end to Becky Adams’s life — was in her hand. Stooping down, she placed the handle in Matt’s right