Demon Child (11 page)

    “It was inside me,” she said. “It was all wound up in me. But when I was sleeping, it unwound. It crawled out of me. You couldn't see it if you were there. It went out of the house, and part of me went with it.”

    “Where did you go?”

    “The woods. In the woods, in the darkness, it grew a coat and a face and feet to run on.”

    “Grew them? Out of what?”

    “Out of the fog,” Freya said. Her voice was tiny, desperate, echoing from deep inside her.

    “That's silly, isn't it?” Walt asked. He chuckled to set the mood he wanted.

    Jenny thought he was positively marvelous. He was able to handle anything, no matter how eerie and unexplainable it appeared. She wished she were sitting closer to him. She would not have felt so cold and frightened then.

    “It isn't silly,” Freya said.

    “But how could it make flesh and blood out of fog?”

    “It's a demon,” Freya replied. She seemed utterly certain of herself. Her eyes were closed, but her eyeballs jerked in agitation behind her thin, white lids.

    “What does it do now?” he asked.

    “It runs through the woods. It likes to run and be free. It scents rabbits and squirrels, and it chases the scents. It finds a nest and flushes a rabbit from it. It chases the rabbit through the trees, the branches whipping it as it runs. It feels good. It corners the rabbit. The rabbit's eyes are bright red. Its eyes are bright red too. It leaps at the rabbit. It catches the rabbit under its paws, listens to the rabbit squeal. It tears the rabbit apart. The blood tastes good.”

    The room was dimly lighted. The shadows crawled closer, fell about them like black cloaks.

    “Look at the wolf,” Walt said.

    “It's eating the rabbit,” Freya answered.

    “No it isn't. Its turning back into fog. It's turning into mist again, isn't it?”

    Jenny could see that he was trying to break the child loose of her delusion. But Freya was steadfast.

    “No,” Freya said. “It is
not
turning into fog again. It's got black fur and big teeth with blood running out its mouth. Lots of blood. It likes the blood and wants more.”

    “It's fading away,” he insisted.

    “No.”

    “And it doesn't want to kill anything more. It's getting very tired with all this running and hunting. It's a tired old wolf. It wants only to curl up somewhere and sleep.”

    “No. It wants more blood. It wants Hollycross, and it leaves the woods to get her. It runs across the lawn behind the house, down the drive next to the hedges. It's a very fast runner.”

    Hobarth was about to try another tact to get her away from her fantasy, but she spoke before he could. Her voice was higher now, the words spoken faster until, at times, they seemed to run together. It was almost the voice of hysteria.

    “The wolf is at the barn,” Freya said. “It sniffs along the doors, looking for Hollycross. It especially wants Hollycross because it knows that Hollycross will be ridden the next day. Jenny will find the horse and everyone will know the wolf is loose. It wants everyone to know that. It wants to let everyone know, almost as much as it wants to rip out the mare's throat.”

    “The wolf couldn't know that Jenny rode Hollycross every morning,” Hobarth said.

    But Freya continued as if she had not been interrupted, her tiny hands clenched at her sides, her chest rising and falling as her breathing grew deeper and faster.

    “The wolf stands on its hind feet by Hollycross' halfdoor. Its paws work the latch, 'cause a werewolf can have fingers when it wants them. It goes into the stall… it sees Hollycross. Hollycross whinnies. She's scared! She has big eyes, and her lips are drawn back from her teeth. She wants help! But she isn't going to get it. The wolf knows that. It leaps on her neck and sinks its teeth into her muscles. Blood is there. It loves the blood. It wants all the blood it can get. It tears at Hollycross and drags her down. She kicks at it! It avoids her hooves!”

    “That's enough,” Walter said.

    Jenny agreed.

    But Freya continued, her voice frantic now:

    “Hollycross' heart bursts. Blood runs out her mouth. She has died of fright! But the wolf keeps ripping at her, snarling, using its teeth and its claws to get the blood!” She was grumbling now, whimpering and hissing, snarling just as a wolf might have. Spittle showed on her lips. She was digging at the black leather couch with her well-manicured nails.

    “Wake up, Freya,” Walt said.

    She continued to snarl. “The wolf chews Hollycross' hip. He worries at her leg a while, seeing what he can taste there.”

    “Enough!” Hobarth said. In a gentler tone, he said, “You know who this is, Freya? It's Dr. Hobarth. I am telling you to wake up. You will wake up slowly, carefully, and open your eyes. Slowly and carefully-”

    “The wolf howls! There is blood on its face, all over its face, all over the fur on its neck, running off its lips, on its nose-”

    “Freya, wake up!”

    “It would like to attack a person now. It is tired of rabbits. A person's blood would be different, taste different, smell better and cleaner and feel smoother-”

    “FREYA, WAKE UP!” he commanded.

    The child sat straight up on the couch, her eyes wide. She tried to say something but could not break the sudden block on her vocal cords.

    “Are you awake,” Hobarth asked, taking her small, trembling hands in his large, dry hands.

    She did not reply.

    “Are you awake, Freya?” he repeated.

    She nodded that she was. Then, without warning, she broke into a long wailing sob. Tears burst from her beautiful eyes and ran down her freckled cheeks.

    “I'm sc-scared,” she said.

    Walt pulled her onto his lap and cradled her as if she were his own child, murmuring to her, trying to allay the terrors that filled her. He held her trembling body to his chest, looked at Jenny. “Maybe you better go,” he said.

    Jenny nodded and got out of there. In the corridor, the door shut between her and the little girl, she nearly collapsed. Her legs trembled; the backs of her knees felt as if they had turned to jelly. She leaned against the wall to regain her strength.

    Distantly, Freya sobbed.

    
Run, Jenny, run, run..
.

    Control yourself, she thought. Don't let panic take you, no matter how nice it might be to stop thinking rationally about all these irrational goings-on. If you panic, you're finished. You make mistakes when you panic, and then disaster gets you.

    But the voices of her dead loved ones still spoke to her with fierce urgency:
run, run, run, get away…

    

    She lay on the bed in her room, staring at the ceiling as the leaden minutes passed and the antique clock beside her bed ticked and locked like a mallet slammed repeatedly against a slab of iron. It was twenty minutes past four o'clock. In the hours since she had fled the library, she had had an opportunity to consider Freya's cold, demonic visions. She had attempted to analyze them, to break them down with logic just as Walt might have done. She admired his rationalization of the world and the people around him. But she did not have the talent. Her fear remained. She continued to look at the ceiling, for it was white and neutral and could help her forget, to a degree, exactly where she was.

    Did other people find life so hard, so full of challenge and possible catastrophe? If so, how did they manage to go on with it? How did they face the world every day, knowing that the only certain thing was uncertainty?

    Weren't they aware of the danger?

    That had to be it. If they weren't aware of all the snares along the paths of day-to-day existence, then life wouldn't seem so difficult for them. They would go on living, happy, unaware of the things that might befall them at any moment.

    Did that mean they were more sensible than she? Was it better not to think about all that might happen? Maybe, if you were ignorant, you were better off. When disaster came, it would be hard, of course, but then you would have had all the enjoyment, before the disaster, to balance your present heartache.

    But she could not be like that. She had learned the truth of life the hard way, through grief and loneliness, and she was constantly alert for the unexpected. Her wariness was as second-nature to her as the process of digestion or drawing breath.

    Therefore, she could not remain in this house, pretending that the events in this great mansion were nothing out of the ordinary. Every unidentified sound, every set of footsteps in the corridor, every shadow which was too deep to let the eye penetrate it-each of these was a thing to be feared. Every minute was the minute before trouble, every hour the calm before the storm. If she remained here, her nerves would soon be worn down to their raw ends, until she would find it easier and more tolerable to flee reality and sanity than to remain.

    Wolves. Curses. Possessed children. She could not live with those things and carry on normally.

    And yet it would be more dangerous to run.

    Running from a problem never solved that problem. Grandmother Brighton had been a level-headed, courageous woman, and she had passed on some of her level-headedness to her granddaughter. One had to stay and face up to adversity if one were ever to conquer it.

    Too, Jenny remembered the dream she had had on the bus only the previous week. She had, in that dream, fled from the cemetery as her invisible pursuer ran after her-and she had run directly into the path of a fast-moving automobile. That might have been an omen, a warning. If she tried to run away from her fear, she would run into destruction.

    But how did you stand up and fight a curse? How did you wage war against demon spirits encased in a young and frightened child?

    Would Walter know? Would he be able to explain a battle plan in that nice, well-modulated voice of his? Would he be able to lead her in the fight and act as a shield when she needed him?

    He would. She somehow was certain of that. Walter would never back down from such an engagement, never even contemplate running away. It would always be best to stay by Walter, a haven in bad weather, the eye of the hurricane which was calm while all else roiled furiously.

    Am I going mad? she wondered. Am I crazy for lying here thinking thoughts like this, for even believing in a curse and werewolves for a single minute?

    No. She wasn't going mad, she decided. She had read somewhere that the madman is always certain of his sanity. When you question your sanity, you're genuinely sane.

    There was an abrupt knock at her door.

    She jumped nearly a foot off the mattress. The little bit of calm which had come back to her was now pushed out of her mind and replaced with the underlying fear that had been there, waiting, all along.

    “Yes?” she called out.

    “Harold, Miss Jenny.”

    “What is it, Harold?”

    “Would you please come downstairs, to the drawing room?”

    “Now?”

    “Yes.”

    “Whatever for?”

    “The police are here,” Harold said. He said it matter-of-factly, as if the announcement were quite ordinary.

    “Police?”

    “Yes, Jenny.”

    “They want to talk to me?”

    “I was told to ask you to come down, that Detective Maybray would like to talk with you.” He hesitated, then finished with, “He says immediately, without delay.”

    “What does he want to see me for? What's happened?”

    “I can't say,” Harold said.

    “You don't know?”

    “I know. But he told me I can't say.”

    “Harold-”

    But she did not finish, because she heard the manservant's footsteps as he retreated down the corridor and down the main stairwell.

    She was sitting up now, tense, her hands fisted just as Freya's hands had been fisted while the child had been recounting her nightmare under hypnosis. The veins of her temple stood out. The veins in her delicate, pale neck throbbed.

    It's coming to a head now, she thought. The whole storm has been building and building toward this one point. If lightning strikes, I know that it is going to strike me.

    She slipped her shoes on, went to the mirror to comb her hair. She noticed crow's feet of exhaustion in the corners of her eyes, the only lines to mar her beautiful face. She didn't have time to worry about that, however. She left her room and went downstairs.

    Twice, as she made her way down the steep risers of the main stairwell, she stopped, clinging to the polished mahogany railing. Her feet seemed to metamorphose into concrete. She just could not go down. She didn't want to go back to her room, though, for that would be cowardly flight. If she could just remain here, poised on the brink of disaster but never having to take the final leap across the threshold, all would be fine. She could stand here, examining the gold print in the expensive wallpaper, the run of the wood's grain under her slim hand. Days, weeks, months and years would pass, and she would be well…

    She shook off the unhealthy fantasies and continued downward…

    She walked the main hall to the curtained arch of the drawing room where she had first had coffee and sandwiches with Cora and Richard and the twins just a week ago. At the archway, she seemed to gain extra strength from some source and stepped through without hesitation.

    There were four people in the room. Harold stood in a far corner, stiff and gentlemanly, his eyes darting quickly around the room, from one of the other three to the next-and finally to Jenny herself. Richard sat in the heavy brown armchair. There were great, dark circles under his eyes. His arms, at first, appeared to be lying relaxedly on the arms of the chair-but then she saw how his fingers gripped the fabric so tightly that his knuckles were white. Sitting on the long, dark green sofa was a man in suit and tie, balding, perhaps a little overweight, no more than forty-five years old. His legs were crossed, and he held a notebook and pencil in his lap. The last person was Detective Maybray. She knew that instinctively. He was tall, more than six feet, broad-shouldered, well-muscled. His face was all sharp planes with a Roman nose, a square chin, very dark eyes and heavy eyebrows.