"Well, what's in a nightmare? It's the intolerable thing. You remember your dreams, don't you? He never does. I think he's struggling with something that can't be said out loud. This unspeakable thing, it's something he can't deal with in a wide-awake brain. Sleepwalking is like his safety valve. His worst thoughts come out at night, and he never has to remember them when he wakes up." She sat back in her chair, downed her shot glass in one gulp, and then she poured another. "That's why I used to take him to the séances. Things slip out there. Sometimes things bypass your brain and just pop out on the witchboard."
"It's a scam." Oren filled his glass again.
Hannah smiled. "I remember a time when you thought different. How old were you when Mrs. Underwood died? You know who I mean-the old lady who used to live down on Paulson Lane."
"Our Good Samaritan duty."
"Right. I guess you were eleven and Josh was nine. That woman was very old, close to ninety. The judge was real surprised when you boys took her death so hard-all those nightmares." Hannah's grin spread slow and wide. "But you and I both know what caused those scary dreams. It was the witchboard you hid behind the washing machine. Did you boys really believe that I never cleaned behind the washing machine?"
Oren smiled. With the destruction of that old Ouija board, Hannah had ended the midnight conversations between two children and a dead woman in the dark of a cellar. Most of Mrs. Underwood's communication from the grave had been simple yes or no responses, but whole words had also been spelled out. Cold drafts of air had sometimes blown out their only candle, causing the boys to stifle screams of fear and delight. And all through that winter, Josh and Oren had believed in magic.
Kid stuff." He shook his head. "This is different. Alice Friday is a con artist. That Ouija board of hers is just a cheap trick."
It is, and it isn't," said Hannah. "Nothing magical or supernatural about it, but it does work in a way. You used to have an open mind." She laid one small hand atop his. "And then you grew up." This was said with a small measure of pity.
Oren poured himself another shot. "I've dealt with lots of psychics in homicide cases. They turn up at the funerals so they can meet the grieving relatives-and fleece them. Bloodsuckers."
"But there's no charge, Oren. The séances are free. So where's the crime?
"It's fraud." He made no distinctions between the fakes who charged and the ones who did it for attention. In his experience, they all did real damage to the families of victims.
Hannah sipped from her shot glass. "A witchboard can only tell you what you already know. That's my take on it. Most of the time, the board spells out nonsense words. You have to work at it to force out a meaning. More like therapy than magic, but it's way more interesting than that. And you'd be surprised at who turns up out there in the woods."
"Like the judge? That surprised me."
"At first he went on my account. I told him I was scared to go alone."
"And he believed that? You're not afraid of anything. He knows how you drive a car."
Ignoring this, Hannah continued. "So your father, always a gentleman, escorted me out there one night. He only watched for a while. The little wooden thing-a heart with a hole in it? Well, none of the players could believe they were moving it around the board."
"Somebody moves it, and it isn't my dead brother."
"Oh, Josh, the spirit guide." She nodded and smiled. "Now that part's fake. When Alice asks if his spirit is there, the wooden heart just settles over the letter Y for yes. The witchboard never spelled his name. But one night, the board spelled out the words red comb. It helps if you know that the judge took Josh in for a haircut the day before he disappeared, and the barber gave the boy a red plastic comb."
"Oh, please."
Hannah leaned toward him. "Don't you roll your eyes like that. The barber always gave every customer a black comb. That red one was a fluke. It just turned up in the box with the barbershop's regular order of solid black. Josh was the only boy in town with a red one."
"And Alice Friday probably heard that from one of her victims. Don't tell me the judge was fooled by-"
"Your father is no fool-and Alice Friday never touches the witchboard. Half the men at that séance were tourists-and the others were regulars at the town barbershop. I'm sure they all heard about the red comb. So, for a while, the judge sat down to play on a regular basis-and the sleepwalking stopped. All that's left of Josh is little snatches of memories, and lots of people have them. When they sit around that witchboard, all those little bits of the boy come out to play. You might say your father was collecting pieces of Josh long before the bones started coming home."
Oren leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling. "And that's why he never asked for more help-never called in state cops or the feds? The old man was waiting for somebody to drop a clue in a damn séance?"
Did he believe that? Did she? No, and no.
He refilled his shot glass and hers. "You weren't quite that patient, Hannah. Right after Josh went missing, you asked for help. You got William Swahn to find me an alibi." He lifted his glass and drained it. "I always knew who really ran this house-our lives. Was it your idea to send me away that summer?"
"No, I was against it." The shot glass seemed almost too heavy for her as she lifted it to take a sip. "I told your father to send Josh away. He didn't listen to me then. After the boy disappeared, the judge probably thought about that all the time. I wish I'd never said a word."
Now all her words were spent, and so was she. Her eyes were closed by half. Her day was done.
Oren switched on the bedside light and then rose to pull on his jeans. Though he was tired, sleep would not come, and he was grateful. He lacked his father's gift of forgetting every dream. Sometimes acts of nightmare violence broke into his wide-awake mind, but it was worse when he lay helpless, wrapped in sheets, eyes closed in the dark. And some nights he would wake up screaming the soldier's song, Makeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstop!
He sat down at his old desk and wrote a letter to Evelyn Straub. Then he put out the lamp and padded down the stairs in his stocking feet so as not to wake the house. Having no keys to the bolts on the front door, he climbed through the porch window, pulled on his boots and struck out for Coventry on foot.
No need for a flashlight. The moon was back, and it was bright. Oren walked down the road, undisturbed by any traffic. His only company was a dead boy and a dead dog. Josh had walked this same route with him on many a summer morning, and Horatio had trotted along between the brothers. Occasionally, one boy or the other would reach down to ruffle the dog's fur, reassuring their pet that he was still part of the family, though Josh never wanted the dog to come along on trips into town. Horatio had been shameless about kissing strangers and drooling on them, and he had been banned from every store where customers preferred to do their shopping dry and unloved.
One standout day, Josh had locked the poor beast in the kitchen, using his let's-be-reasonable voice to say, "No, you can't come today." That had set off the barking tantrum, followed by whining that was almost human. The dog had cried, as if in fear that he would never see his boys again.
Oren remembered his own words. "I know why you don't want Horatio along. He gives you away. This has to stop. It's creepy."
Josh had ducked his head under the weight of that comment. Creepy was a word that could turn a boy's high school life into a living hell of derision. Oren had released Horatio from the kitchen, and the dog had jumped his brother, paws on shoulders, kissing and slobbering. All was forgiven. This was followed by the old familiar line, screamed at the top of Josh's lungs, "Get off me! I'm gonna puke!"