Demon Child (10 page)

    As she let the first panel of velvet down, she froze, her heart beating quicker in her breast, her palms suddenly cold and damp. Out there, on the late night lawn, a man was sneaking along a row of hedges leading from the house to the stables, trying his best to conceal himself.

    She eased herself behind the unfurled drape so that she could watch without being seen.

    He was moving away from the house, not toward it. He took his time passing through the deepest areas of shadow, but he scurried quickly through those patches where the estate's pole lights cast some illumination. Just ahead of him, there was a wide expanse of rather brilliantly lighted ground. When he came to that, he walked briskly across it, his shoulders hunched, his head hung between them.

    It was Richard.

    She watched him steal to the stables until he was out of sight. She stood there for fifteen minutes, hoping she would see him return and perhaps shed some clue on his strange behavior. But he did not come back.

    Why had he been so furtive? The stables belonged to him. He could certainly walk openly to them if he wished.

    She waited another twenty minutes.

    Still, there was no sign of him.

    At last, she closed the rest of the drapes, turned out the lights and crawled into bed. She added another debit to the events of the day.

    She wished Walter had seen this. He would have been able to make it all seem ordinary and unfrightening.

    No wolves howled the first half of the long night. She was positive of that, for it took her half the night to finally fall asleep.

    

    The following morning, as Jenny was again taking breakfast in the company of Walter Hobarth, Richard entered the kitchen, looking agitated, the car keys jingling in his hand. Hobarth broke off a long and delightful tale about his experiences as an army psychiatrist in North Carolina and said good morning to the young Brucker heir.

    Richard replied tersely, as if he did not have enough energy to give a completely civil answer. It was not that he was being consciously rude, but as if he had too much pressing on him to concern himself with minor things of life like etiquette.

    He turned to Jenny. “I'd like to ask a favor of you,” he said. He chose his words carefully, as if he wished he did not have to speak with her in front of Anna and Hobarth, though neither appeared to be trying to eavesdrop.

    “What's that?” she asked.

    Was this the confidence he had been about to impart the previous evening when Cora had returned from the kitchen, interrupting them?

    “My friend's coming around at eleven,” Richard said.

    She looked blankly at him.

    “The one I mentioned last evening, remember?”

    She remembered something about the veterinarian and nodded.

    He smiled nervously. “Most likely, he won't need to leave his work area. But if he should need anything, I've told him to ask for you. Would that be all right?”

    “What could I possibly do to help him?” she asked, somewhat bewildered by all this.

    Richard jingled the keys in his hand. “Like I said, he probably won't need any help. But if he should, I'd like you to assist him. I would myself, but I've got to be in town for lunch with the family banker. Today's one of those investment counseling sessions. Will you?”

    She could not understand the reason for the veterinarian in the first place, but she said, “Yes. I guess so.”

    “Thanks very much, Jenny,” he said. He nodded to Hobarth who was finishing his eggs. “Sorry to disturb you, doctor.”

    “That's okay,” Hobarth said to Richard's back as the younger man turned and left the room.

    Jenny drank some coffee to settle her nerves. Richard seemed able to destroy a pleasant mood and put her on edge every time he showed up.

    “Strange young man,” Hobarth observed.

    She nodded. She did not want to say anything against her own cousin, no matter how much she might agree with the doctor.

    Hobarth chuckled. “His friend sounds like some cloak and dagger agent with the FBI!”

    She laughed too. In a way, Richard's actions were rather comical, melodramatic and silly. “Just a veterinarian,” she said.

    “Oh?”

    She remembered that Richard wanted to keep the vet's visit a secret. Perhaps she should have kept her lips sealed with Hobarth. Yet what harm could be done by sharing the joke? She told him about Richard's effort to search the stall where Hollycross died for a clue that might show what species of wolf had attacked the horse.

    “I wish we could just forget about that terrible scene,” Anna said, shivering. “Every time I think of that poor mare's throat-”

    She didn't have to finish.

    “Richard's emotionally upset over these recent events,” Hobarth said. “It's easily understandable. I think, perhaps, he genuinely cares for the twins-cares for them a great deal. But, perhaps, mixed with that love, there is a bit of jealousy.”

    “Jealousy?” Anna asked.

    “With his own mother dead at an early age, he may have come to feel more strongly about Cora than either he or she realizes. Now that new children are in the house and now that his father has gone, he may feel as if his own place of affection has been usurped.”

    “That doesn't sound like Richard!” Anna said, as ready to defend him as if he were her own.

    Jenny was not so sure. She thought she saw a good deal of sense in what Hobarth had said.

    “Oh, don't misunderstand me!” the doctor said, suddenly more diplomatic than professional. “I don't think Richard consciously feels jealous about the twins. Unconsciously, yes. And it's no slur to his character, Anna. The same feelings would rise in anyone in similar circumstances. He's just going through a difficult period, that's all.”

    Now that it seemed the doctor was sympathizing with Richard, Anna was all in agreement.

    

    At one o'clock, Jenny rapped on the library door where Freya and Walter Hobarth waited for her. Lee Symington, the veterinarian, had not come to the house; if he was even at the stables, he had arrived there in a very covert manner. She had all but forgotten about him and about Richard. She was anxiously looking forward to the experience at hand, watching Walter work his psychiatric charms on Freya.

    “Ah,” Hobarth said, “just on time. That's what I would have expected of you, Jenny.”

    “Are you analyzing me, doctor?”

    He smiled. “Forgive me if I seem to be. It's an occupational hazard. We keep prying at everyone we know, friends and relatives and casual acquaintances alike. And, please call me Walt.”

    She thought, perhaps, she was blushing, though she was trying very hard to look cool and collected. But being asked to use his first name was, she decided, a credit on the day's list worth being at least a little excited about.

    “Come in,” he said, ushering her into the library and closing the door behind her. “Take that seat, behind the couch.”

    “Hello, Freya,” Jenny said.

    “ 'Lo,” the child answered. She was lying on a black leather couch, trying not to look frightened. But her posture was stiff and unnatural, evidence of her underlying fear.

    Walter took a chair directly beside the couch and talked to Freya for a while, mostly about inconsequential things. He wanted to know what her favorite television show was, what kind of music she liked, what games she preferred to play, what foods she most enjoyed eating. When she said that she liked spaghetti, he told a very funny story about the first time he had tried to cook the Italian dish. He had not realized how the spaghetti swelled when it was cooked, and he had ended up with enough food for sixteen people. When he had finished, Freya was giggling and at ease.

    “Now,” Walter said, picking up some odd piece of equipment from his open satchel beside his chair, “Let's play the game we played yesterday.”

    “Okay,” she said.

    Jenny could see, now, that the thing he held was a foot square piece of thick pasteboard. On one side, there was a geometric design that tempted the eye to follow it. It made Jenny's eyes cross just looking at it for a brief moment. On the other side of the pasteboard square, there was a handle by which he could hold and maneuver the thing.

    As he talked to Freya, he began to slowly move the square in and out, pushing it toward her face, drawing it away, pushing it toward. The geometric design seemed to move, to whirl faster and faster as he began to move the device at a more rapid speed. The black and green lines spun around one another, whipped and whirled, lead the eye deeper and deeper into the ink maze…

    Jenny realized that she was beginning to grow very sleepy. The movement of the card had begun to hypnotize her!

    She looked away from it, shook herself, finally regained her full awareness.

    Walter talked smoothly, slowly, deeply, lulling the child into a trance.

    Finally, the psychiatrist stopped moving the square of cardboard, stopped speaking altogether. The sudden silence in the room seemed to have a weight all its own. He placed the device in his satchel, took a moment to look up at Jenny and smile. When she had returned his smile, he looked at Freya once more. In a gentle, quiet voice, he said, “Are you asleep, Freya?”

    “Yes,” she said.

    “Are you happy?”

    “I am.”

    “You can't hear anything but my voice. Is that right?”

    “Yes.”

    “Soon, I will want you to be able to go to sleep whenever I ask you to. Do you think you'll be able to do that?”

    “I'll try.”

    “Sure you will. You're a good girl, aren't you.”

    “No,” she said.

    That startled Jenny, but it seemed not to upset Walt in the least, as if he had been expecting just such a response.

    “You aren't a good girl?”

    “No.”

    “I find that hard to believe.”

    Freya said nothing.

    “Can you explain to me why you're not a good girl?”

    “I'm a demon child,” Freya said.

    “Is that so?”

    “Yes.”

    “Do you trust me, Freya?”

    The small girl squirmed just the slightest on the couch, as if she wished, for the first time, she could wake up. “Yes,” she said.

    “If I could prove to you that you aren't a werewolf, would you believe my proof?”

    There was a long pause.

    Feet clacked by the library door in the corridor beyond.

    At last, Freya said, “Yes.”

    “Remember when the wolf killed Hollycross?” Hobarth asked. “Do you remember what night that was?”

    “Friday night,” Freya said.

    “Very good. What were you doing then?”

    “I was in a coma,” Freya said. Her voice sounded much more mature than the voice of a seven-year-old. “I went out while I was in a coma-and I killed Holly-cross.”

    “No,” Walt said. “And I'll show you you're wrong.” He did not speak hostilely, but with warmth and Mend-ship.

    “You can't show me that,” Freya said. “Because it's true. I really did tear out Hollycross' throat.”

    She said it dryly, coolly, matter-of-factly. Her tone made Jenny unconsciously hug herself against the chill that had invaded the library hi the last few minutes.

    “You wait,” Walt said. “I'll show you that you're wrong.” He paused a moment, collecting thoughts. “What day is today?” he asked Freya.

    “Monday.”

    “Let's go backwards through time,” Hobarth said. “Let's just melt back and back through the hours. See, it's Monday morning now, and you're just getting up. What color pajamas are you wearing?”

    “Yellow,” Freya said. “With blue buttons.”

    “You're yawning and stretching,” Walt said, putting a yawn into his voice. “You rub your eyes and get out of bed. You look at the clock. What time does the clock say?”

    Freya's voice had grown sleepy, as if she indeed had just climbed out of bed. “Ten minutes until nine.”

    Hobarth continued swiftly. “That reminds you of when you went to bed Sunday night, doesn't it? You were really tired, weren't you? What time is it Sunday night when you go to bed?”

    “Aunt Cora puts us to bed at eight-fifteen.”

    “How do the covers feel?”

    “Warm. The middle cover is scratchy, though. It's made of wool, and I don't like it.”

    “You're talking to Frank in the dark, aren't you.”

    “Yes.”

    “What are you saying to him?”

    And that easily, he had taken her back to the previous night. With great care, he worked her back to supper time Friday evening, to the point where she passed out on the upstairs hallway floor.

    “What was it like?” he asked.

    “Dark,” she said.

    “You were asleep?”

    “Yes. Waiting.”

    Walt frowned. “Waiting for what?”

    “For the spirit to congeal inside me.”

    “What spirit?” he asked.

    “The demon.”

    “There is no demon,” he said softly.

    “The wolf demon.”

    Hobarth looked at Jenny, shook his head. It seemed that he had not been expecting this either. He pulled at his nose with the fingers of his left hand, trying to think. A few moments later, he said, “There wasn't any such thing. You were asleep. There was nothing more than darkness, was there? Don't fib to me, Freya? There wasn't any wolf spirit, was there?”

    “Yes, “Freya said.

    Again, he collected his thoughts, decided to play along with the child to see where she was taking him. “Tell me about this wolf spirit, Freya. What was it like?”