Phantom (19 page)

He fell against the screen door in the
kitchen, smashing it open, and fell out onto the patio.

"Don't let them take me," the boy moaned
before losing consciousness.

* * *

18. And/Or

"No, I don't want a drink," Linda snapped.
Unable to sit still, she moved restlessly about the living room.
"Michael, the boy was terrified. I've never seen anyone so
frightened in my life."

"I know, I know." Michael stared at the
bottle of scotch as if reconsidering, but then he poured a double.
A drink wouldn't solve anything, but neither would abstaining.

"We have to do something."

"What do you have in mind?"

"I don't know, I honestly don't know." She
looked at her husband pleadingly. "Can't you think of
anything?"

"Yes, I can. I think it's very simple,"
Michael said calmly, suppressing a smile. "Make him take a rest in
the afternoon."

"A rest?"

Michael nodded. "What happened today was the
result of too much sun and too much heat."

Linda couldn't believe it. "You think that's
all it was?"

"Of course. You know what August is like.
And he's only a boy, honey. He doesn't know when to take a break.
Too much running around outside in that sun and heat—and it caught
up with him. We should have known better than to let it happen in
the first place."

"Michael—"

"If he doesn't want to rest, at least make
him sit down and read for an hour or two in the afternoon. Or watch
TV. Anything, but don't let him be outside all the time, pot until
the weather's cooler. It's only for the next three weeks or
so."

"Michael, he said there was someone in his
room."

"Sure there was. In his imagination."

"You don't think it's possible?"

"Nope, and neither do you, because if you
did you would have been on the phone to the police right away."

"I was taking care of Ned, and he didn't
tell me until a while later, and then you got home."

"Oh, come on, Lin. He imagined it, pure and
simple. If somebody goes into a house to cause trouble, he'll cause
trouble. He won't sneak upstairs, say 'Boo' to a kid and then flit.
That's just silly."

"But what if that's what happened? Ned and I
are alone here during the day, you know."

Michael fiddled with a pipe. This was
exactly what he didn't want to let happen, a small thing having a
catalytic effect on Linda, escalating her natural fears out of all
proportion.

"First, you're a lot safer here than you
ever were living in an apartment in Washington, and you know it."
His voice was firm and insistent, as it had to be. "And second,
when we asked Ned what this Mr. Someone looked like, he couldn't
tell us anything. Not even whether the fellow wore long sleeves or
short. Nothing, not a thing."

"You can say what you like, but I think
there's more to it." Linda was afraid that the incident earlier
that day was the warning sign she had been dreading, the sign that
Ned really was in some kind of danger. But if that's what it was,
she still didn't know how to interpret it, nor did she have any
idea what she could actually do about it.

"Okay, you think there's more to it,"
Michael allowed. "Tell me what. I'm willing to listen. Go ahead,
tell me."

"I don't know," Linda admitted helplessly.
"But you don't always have to know what's wrong to know that
something is wrong, and that's the way I feel now. We can't simply
ignore this or play it down as sunstroke."

"And, so ... ?"

It was frustrating, infuriating. What could
she say? Michael was being cool and reasonable, but that was no
help tonight. Still, Linda lacked the tiny, hard seed around which
her diffuse anxieties could crystallize into clear thoughts.

"I think we should go away," she blurted
out.

That brought a sudden look of concern to
Michael's face. "Go away? What do you mean? Go where?"

"Anywhere, it doesn't matter," Linda said.
"We could drive up to Buffalo and see the folks, or take a trip
down south. I just think it would be a good idea if we took a
couple of weeks off and got away from here. You've got the time
coming to you anyhow, so why not do something with it?"

"Hey, hold on there a second, honey. We
already talked about this before we moved in. We're spending our
vacation here this year, remember? There's so much I have to do
around the house, and besides, you know the money's going to be
tight for a while. Better to put it into the house than gas and
motels."

"The house won't go anywhere," Linda said.
"We don't have to do everything we want to do to it all at
once."

"Sure, but going away and spending money on
a vacation isn't going to solve anything either. If there's a
problem, as you seem to think there is—"

"Yes."

"—what makes you think we wouldn't take it
with us, or that it wouldn't still be here when we got back?" It
was the wrong argument, Michael knew; he had to stick to money.

"Doing something is better than doing
nothing."

She was making it easier now. "Not
necessarily," Michael said patiently. "One thing I've learned is
that some problems will work themselves out or just cease to be
problems, if you leave them alone for a while."

"Michael, we're talking about our son, not
the goddamn bureaucracy·. "

"Take it easy, hon. You're not being
rational about this. Now, I'm not insensitive, but I won't go along
with a bad idea just for the sake of doing something. It doesn't
make any sense, and if you take the time to think about it I'm sure
you'll come to the same conclusion."

Linda turned away and tried to blink back
the tears. Michael put down his drink and went to her. He put his
arms around her and for a moment they hugged each other without
speaking.

"You've had a rough day," he said
comfortingly. "That doesn't mean it'll happen again, or get worse,
or anything like that. It just means we have to be careful, and now
we know something else to watch out for. In other circumstances you
would never let a small thing like this upset you so much."

Linda knew what he meant by
"other circumstances." If she wasn't asthmatic, if she didn't live
under the threat of a severe attack, if Ned were not their only
child ... then perhaps she would agree with Michael and dismiss
today's incident as sunstroke, and not worry unduly about it. But
Linda
didn't
live
in "other circumstances," she had to deal with things the way they
were. She
did
have
a troublesome medical history. Ned
was
their only child. She didn't care
if this made her an overanxious and overprotective mother; it
wasn't a matter of choice.

"Do you think he should see a doctor?" Linda
asked.

"Sure, why not? If you want to take him in
for a check-up, by all means do so. You can tell the doctor what
happened today and see what he thinks. That's a good idea." Michael
was happy to agree. The doctor's fee would be a small price to pay
for peace in the house, and a consultation made a lot more sense
than a drive to Buffalo. Besides, he was sure the doctor's opinion
would be much the same as his own. Maybe then Linda would feel a
little better about it.

"All right, I'll do that," Linda said. "We
have to do something, Michael. I couldn't live with myself
otherwise. I'll make an appointment in the morning."

"Fine, that makes sense."

"Oh, Michael, if you could have seen the
look on Ned's face. He kept saying, 'Don't let them take me, don't
let them take me,' over and over again when he came to. It was
awful."

"I know, honey." Michael hugged her again
and began to massage the back of her neck and shoulders. She was
still all tensed up. "It was like a nightmare to him and he didn't
know what was going on, so his mind just created all that stuff. Of
course it was real to him. but ... "

"I know you think I worry too much because
he's our only child, but there's another side to that. We have to
remember what it's like for him. You and I have each other, but
we're all Ned has. He's more alone than we are. We can't let him
down, or he'll be lost."

"We won't, honey. Not ever."

"Do you know what I mean?"

"Mmm-hmm. I saw a good sign, by the
way."

"What?"

"Ned didn't object to going to bed in his
room. It didn't seem to bother him at all, so I guess the room
doesn't hold any unpleasant or frightening associations for him. I
think that's a good sign, don't you?"

Linda nodded. "I hope so."

Upstairs, Ned sat
cross-legged in the middle of his bed. He might be wrong but he had
the feeling that nothing would happen tonight. Not after the attack
this afternoon. And what else could he call it but an attack? The
funny part of it was that he now felt more sure of himself than he
had before. A move had been made, all pretense dropped, and the
game finally seemed to be out in the open. He stood alone against
it and he knew he really had one chance, but at least he no longer
had to guess about it.
It
had spoken to him.
It
had laid hands on him. Oh, yes, it
was real. But what was it—a ghost, a phantom, an evil spirit,
Satan?

Next to him on the bed was
the book he had just finished reading,
The
Ghost at Skeleton Rock
. It was a mystery
involving smugglers and subversives, and at the end of it the Hardy
Boys discovered that the "ghost" was nothing more than a huge
balloon which had been covered with phosphorescent paint and made
to look like the spirit of an ancient Indian chief.

No answer there for Ned, but then he hadn't
really expected to find one. What was happening to him was not the
kind of thing that could be taken care of by looking up a remedy or
an explanation in a book. He was on his own. His mother and father
couldn't help—what could Ned possibly tell them that they might
believe? Peeler and Cloudy were at least sympathetic and seemed to
understand some of what was bothering him, but they offered no way
out. Perhaps because there was no way out. Hadn't Peeler said
something about Ned not being able to do anything but see it
through? And he had also said that Ned would be the first to know
.... But, now what? That grown-ups couldn't help him. It was like
that time at the spa, when Ned knew that no one was going to come
and rescue him. If he was going to be saved he would have to save
himself.

But could he save himself? He didn't even
know what he was up against. His opponent was invisible and
apparently capable of doing whatever it wanted. Ned felt that he
had no hope of survival in such a one-sided confrontation. He was
an insignificant mouse being toyed with by an unimaginable
predator. He was in the grasp of supernatural forces which were
impossible to resist. Ned thought of the protozoa in the jar of
pond water on his desk. Could they influence what he did with them?
Hardly. They wouldn't even realize what was happening - whether he
put them on a slide under the microscope or simply flushed them
down the toilet. It didn't appear to Ned that his own situation was
substantially different from that of the protozoa. But he couldn't
merely surrender himself to an unknown, blind fate. His instinct
was to struggle, to fight back, regardless of whether that would
achieve anything or not.

What could he defend himself with? Were
there any weapons he could use against his foe? Ned knew from the
movies that vampires were afraid of garlic and the cross, and that
a wooden stake driven through the heart would destroy them. A
silver bullet or blade was necessary to stop a werewolf, and
zombies had to be burned. But Ned also knew that these things were
completely irrelevant to his situation. A vampire would already
have drained him dry by now, and werewolves and zombies were even
more implausible. No, he was not being stalked by such familiar and
predictable creatures. They were hard to believe in, but the
supernatural was not. It was silly to think that a string of garlic
could have any effect on the powers of the supernatural.

Ned tried again to
understand how he had escaped this long. In his bed he had avoided
confrontation and capture by staying under the sheets and blankets,
and by not looking out or exposing himself to the danger around
him. In the old spa he had survived by always moving forward and by
refusing to give in to the great temptation to look back over his
shoulder. In both situations he had known enough not to gaze into
the face of hell. But today, in his room, that had not been enough.
The evil presence had touched Ned, spoken to him and very nearly
succeeded in taking him. His puny defenses no longer worked. Or did
they? What had enabled Ned to break free at the last moment and
run? Was it the fact that he had not looked at or seen the face of
the enemy? Or perhaps it was that desperate burst of mental
rage—
You are nothing
—which denied the phantom's existence. If so, it could mean
that the terror was, after all, nothing but the product of his own
imagination. He really could be going crazy, disappearing into his
own nightmares. Being taken by a real phantom would be better than
that.

The only other explanation
Ned could come up with was that something else had disrupted the
attack. Nothing suggested itself to him, but he remembered thinking
about the scarecrow in that terrible moment. Why? Now that he
considered it again he wondered if unintentionally he could have
triggered something when he cut down the scarecrow in the back
meadow. But at the time, the scarecrow had seemed to be a visible
part of the problem, a dancing, taunting extension of the forces
gathered around Ned. Then a picture of the scarecrow formed in his
mind and he was shocked by it. Take away the tattered cloth and
what was a scarecrow? A man-sized
cross
. Maybe he was getting somewhere.
Ned's parents were not religious, and he was not being raised
according to any faith or church, so the cross had little
significance for him. It was something you saw on certain buildings
and in all vampire movies. But now he found himself in a situation
where the cross might well be of importance. Perhaps he had stepped
over a fateful line that morning he had chopped the scarecrow to
bits.