Demon Child (9 page)

    Jenny turned to look directly at him. “Isn't that unusual-to hold up while hypnotized like that?”

    “Rather,” he said. “Of course, I didn't expect a cure immediately, nothing like that. But I hoped to see at least a little doubt in her. But she is very positive about her supernatural powers. She leaves her body, certain nights, she says, and prowls as a wolf.”

    They said nothing for a while.

    The squirrels scampered from tree to tree, played tag in these early days of summer while there was yet leisure time before the business of storing food for winter took their full attention.

    At last, Jenny said, “You've heard about the wolf loose on the estate, have you?”

    “Some of it.”

    “And about the horse? Hollycross?”

    “Just snatches of it,” he said. “I gather it was grisly. Was it you who found her?”

    “Yes,” she said, shivering in the moment of recollection. Briefly, she told him about it, though she did not detail the hideous condition of the mare's corpse.

    “Most interesting,” Hobarth said.

    “Then you don't think there's-”

    “What?” he asked.

    “Any connection?”

    A bird chirped in a tree nearby, held its note deep in it's throat, warbling to it's mate.

    “Between the wolf and Freya's delusion?” he asked. He smiled, though not patronizingly. “There's an indirect relationship, of course. Purely coincidental, true. But since the child already had the seeds of this silly superstition in mind, the presence of a real wolf roaming the property only served to strengthen her beliefs. It was a most unfortunate coincidence.”

    “Richard says that a wolf, alone, couldn't have opened Hollycross' door,” Jenny said. She mentioned Richard reluctantly. She did not know what Hobarth's opinion of the young man was, and she didn't want him to think she approved of Richard's more impulsive traits.

    “Then the door wasn't closed properly,” Hobarth said, shrugging.

    She bit her lip and looked down at the ground. There were brown pine needles scattered there, residue of a previous autumn.

    The doctor chuckled. “I see,” he said. “You rode her last-before she was killed.” He waited until she nodded agreement. “Well, then,” he said with mock gusto, “the door
must
have been locked properly! I would never believe otherwise of you. Even if it meant accepting a wolf with hands!”

    She smiled. “But it's not really funny-not if it was my fault and Hollycross died because I-”

    He patted her shoulder with a warm, dry hand, his humor suddenly a brotherly sympathy. “You're worrying too much, Jenny. Hollycross is gone. There is only a slight possibility it was your fault-only slight. And even if it was your fault, self-recrimination will do no good. You strike me as the sort of girl who does everything properly, rarely makes mistakes. But we've all got to be allowed mistakes, and we've all got to be able to deal with our guilt afterward.”

    “You can't make mistakes,” she said, a little too hastily, a little too forcefully. “If you make mistakes, if you aren't careful, it will sneak up on you while you aren't looking.”

    She looked into his ice blue eyes.

    He matched her gaze, said, “What will sneak up on you, Jenny?”

    “I don't know,” she said. “Something. Anything. Whatever you least expect. Death, maybe.”

    “But we can't go through life with our back raised like a cat, sniffing for trouble.”

    His voice was low, soft, almost hypnotic.

    “I have to!” she said. “Mom, dad, grandma-they all failed to keep a good watch. And I have to.” She blinked, looked away from those deep, sparkling eyes.

    “Yes?” he asked, urging her to go on.

    “We're acting like psychiatrist and patient,” she said.

    “We are?”

    She looked back at his eyes, smiled. “You know we are. And you weren't brought here to listen to a flighty girl.”

    “Uh-huh,” he said. “You're not a flighty girl.”

    “Just the same,” she said, “let's not talk about it.”

    “Okay,” he said. He was a good psychiatrist. He knew when to stop pressuring, when to let a subject drop.

    As they turned their attention back to the frisky squirrels, there was a low, animal moan far back in the forest. Whether it was a wolf or not, Jenny could not discern. But whatever it was, it was large and sounded disagreeable.

    Hobarth seemed most surprised, starting slightly where he sat by her side.

    “Maybe we'd better go inside,” Jenny said.

    He recovered his calm in short order. “Not necessary. If there is a wolf about, it won't come out in the daylight, not where we can see it, at least. Like any animal, the wolf is basically a coward. It only attacks what it knows it can defeat. And if it's been around these parts long enough, its learned enough about men to know it can't defeat them.”

    “Just the same,” she said, “I think I'll go inside. I want to freshen up for dinner, and I don't want to miss the news.”

    “Do you mind if I don't escort you back?” he asked.

    “No,” she said. “Please enjoy yourself; the woods are beautiful. And the squirrels can be hysterically funny at times.”

    She stood and turned, brushing pine needles from her jeans, and she saw Richard Brucker standing on the rear veranda of the mansion. He was staring along the four-hundred yards of lawn to the spot where they sat by the trees. When he realized that she was watching him in turn, he left the patio with a sharpness of manner that might either have indicated anger or haste, and he disappeared into the large house.

    When she reached the rear door, she could not see her cousin anywhere nearby.

    She turned and looked back at Walter Hobarth. He sat in the same place, staring intently into the forest, his head cocked as if he were listening for something. She thought that he was not watching the squirrels but searching deeper into those leafy shadows, trying to catch a glimpse of something else altogether.

    

    At supper, the doctor gave them a far more detailed report on his first session with Freya. Jenny found it fascinating to listen to the techniques he used and planned to develop in this case. His grasp of the human mind, of what made people what they were, was somehow reassuring. People were so much more understandable once he explained them to you. Human actions seemed so much less mysterious, exceedingly more rational than she had come to believe they were.

    She wished he could explain Richard to her, though. All through the meal, snatches of the young man's brooding nature returned, though the doctor's good humor kept Richard from growing as surly as he had been on previous occasions. Often, as they ate, she caught Richard watching her with an odd, mystified expression on his face.

    What, she wondered, was on his mind?

    Hobarth excused himself around a quarter of ten by explaining that he wished to tape-record his impression of this morning's session so that he would not lose his early viewpoint as he continued the study. Cora went into the kitchen, shortly afterward, to speak with Anna about something. That left Jenny alone with her cousin.

    He spoke almost immediately, as if he had been waiting for such an opportunity at privacy all evening. “Did you hear a wolf this afternoon when you were down by the woods?” he asked.

    She did not think that he really wanted to ask that. It appeared as if it was only some bit to break the ice with.

    “I don't know if it was a wolf or not,” she said. She tried to force the pleasant tone that she had once used naturally with him, but she could not manage it very well. She hoped that he did not see how ill at ease she was with him.

    “Lee Symington is coming around tomorrow,” he said. “That's the veterinarian to whom I took Hollycross.”

    She saw that she was expected to carry on this exchange. “What on earth for?” she asked. “What could he find here?”

    “I don't know. But anything would help. Maybe he could find clues as to what sort of wolf it is.”

    “What good would knowing the species do?”

    He frowned. “It might do a great deal of good. But I can't tell you what I mean yet. I just-just wanted you to know Lee would be around. No one else knows. Not even Cora. I want to keep it that way, if at all possible.”

    Then why tell me? she wondered. Why confide in me all of a sudden?

    It was a bit of the unexpected. A small fragment, to be sure, but enough to make her wary.

    “Do you like Hobarth?” he asked.

    She nodded. “He's very nice. When he gets in a story-telling mood at dinner, he's marvelous.”

    “I think he'll do Freya some good,” he said. But the tone of his voice was somber, not hopeful.

    “He seems to think he can break through her shell,” she agreed.

    For a moment, neither of them spoke.

    The sounds of pots and pans echoed from the kitchen. Upstairs, a water tap was run, reverberating the pipes throughout the house.

    “Listen, Jenny-” he began, leaning forward on his chair in a conspiratorial manner.

    But Cora returned, interrupting him.

    Shortly after that, Jenny excused herself and went upstairs to her room where, as was becoming customary with her, she sifted through the events of the day, totaling the debits and credits.

    There were a lot of credits under Hobarth's name. The more she saw of the man, the more she respected him. She had not been so attracted to another human being in her life, so pleased to be in the same room with him, pleased to hear him talk and explain.

    Explain…

    Yes, that was what she liked the most about him. He could so simply and concisely explain another human being's motivations. He was so secure in his hold on the world and his relationship to the rest of society that he was like a rock, a post that could not be budged. When he was around, she had a sense of security that she experienced at no other time. She intuitively sensed that she could not be surprised by any disaster so long as she was near him.

    She could not have put any of this into such uncomplicated sentences. She only felt it all as an indefineable but comforting force that simmered at the back of her mind and eluded description.

    And how did Hobarth feel about her?

    She was almost certain that there was a special tenderness in his regard for her. He had waited with her while she finished breakfast. He had come to sit with her and watch the squirrels. Surely, that meant something.

    But she wouldn't hope. She wouldn't want anything. Because, when you wanted something and hoped for something, you never got it.

    When she was nearly prepared for sleep, someone knocked softly on her door. She knew it wasn't Cora when the knock came the third time, for Cora would have let herself in after a second knock.

    Slipping on a robe over her pajamas, she opened the portal just a crack and looked at Walter Hobarth. He was smoking a pipe; the tobacco smelled like cherries, pleasant and not at all as obnoxious as most kinds of smoke were.

    “I didn't wake you?” he asked solicitously.

    “No. Not at all,” she said.

    “I saw how interested you were in psychiatric techniques at dinner,” he said. “It just occurred to me that you might enjoy sitting in on tomorrow's session with Freya.”

    “Really?” she asked. The prospect excited her, partly because it showed he trusted her.

    “Really,” he said, smiling.

    “Won't that put Freya off-to have an outsider there?”

    “Not at all. She'll be hypnotized for the main part of the session.”

    “Well, if you're sure-”

    “I'm sure,” he said. “One o'clock, in the library tomorrow? I find the library better suited than a bedroom, because it has less the connotation of sickness. Scares the child less.”

    “One o'clock,” she said. “I'll be there.”

    “Good,” he said. “Pleasant dreams.”

    Then he turned and walked down the corridor towards his own room.

    She closed the door and threw the lock on it, out of habit, feeling as if she had just had some of Harold's brandy. Add one more credit to the day's list. This was a definite sign that Walter was more interested in her than mere good manners said he should be.

    She sat on the bed, not at all ready for sleep now. She had more thinking to do. It was time, she supposed, to face her feelings about the young psychiatrist.

    She had heard and read a great deal about love, of course. It was everyone's favorite subject. Great love stories made the bestseller list. Love songs were always in the top ten. But she had never, before this moment, experienced anything that she thought might be the equivalent of what those novelists wrote about, of what those musicians composed.

    Oh, yes, she had loved her parents and Grandmother Brighton. To a smaller degree, she loved Cora and Richard. But that was another sort of love from this one. Not a lesser love, merely a different kind.

    Then, like the stab of a dagger, she remembered where those other loves had ended. In death. And just because this was a different sort of love did not mean it would be terminated any differently.

    She refused to indulge herself in more romanticism.

    She finished preparing for bed, cooling her enthusiasm with a list of things that might possibly happen to shatter any dreams she had started to build. Pessimism had always been her byword. Now was not the time to change.

    Still, the invitation to tomorrow's session was a credit.

    She could not deny that.

    Before she turned off the lights (all but the tiny nightlight which glowed until morning) she went to the windows to draw the drapes tight across the glass. Harold always pulled them back in the morning and replaced the restraining golden cord. She made a note to tell him that was unnecessary.