His eyes strayed to the window. Just beyond the outdoor lights, the trees surrounding his cabin formed a black, impenetrable wall. Nathan was out there. Somewhere. He wanted Mandy, and if anyone got in his way, Nathan wouldn’t hesitate. He’d shown his true nature. Under all his polish, Nathan was a killer.

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER TWELVE

Boston, May 1975

A high-pitched scream jolted Nathan from a dead sleep. He rubbed his eyes. Was he dreaming?

Moonlight streamed through the window, illuminating his room in silvery gray and casting long, boogeyman-type shadows from the furniture. But Nathan wasn’t afraid of anything creeping up on him. He was too old to be afraid of the dark, and stark reality had replaced any nightmare that could spring from his imagination. No dream could possibly be worse than real life.

Another scream pierced his eardrums, and Nathan cringed. Hopelessness was a freezing hand on the back of his neck.

Mom!

He threw back the covers and tiptoed through the doorway. He stopped in the middle of the hall. The wood floor was cold under his bare feet, but that wasn’t what made him tremble. It was thinking about what had caused the scream that made his knees go wobbly. The urge to run back to his room and hide under the covers almost won.

But he needed to know what was happening.

He eased to the threshold of his parents’ room. The door was ajar. Dread slid through his belly like an icy eel as he gave the door a two-finger nudge.

His parents were huddled on the bed. Mom’s head rested against Dad’s chest. His mother sobbed. Something about bugs. Bugs on the bed. Bugs crawling on her. Thousands of them. Her shoulders shook. Between the thin straps of her nightgown, her backbone protruded through the skin like a snake’s skeleton.

“Shhh.” Dad stroked her hair and murmured things too softly for Nathan to make out the words. The words didn’t matter anyway.

Moonlight deepened the shadows across his mother’s face. One eye twitched. Without seeing, he knew the pupil was just a tiny pinprick, nearly lost in eyes the color of the ocean in winter. Her freckled skin had gone sallow and slack.

Dad hadn’t slept much either. His face was haggard; shadows under his eyes made him look like one of the zombies in Night of the Living Dead, the movie Nathan and his friend Eddy sneaked in to see last Saturday when Dad took Mom to another doctor, some big-time psychiatrist who wanted to put Mom in an asylum.

Nathan wished he’d gone with them. He’d have told the doctor he was wrong. His mother wasn’t crazy. She just couldn’t sleep.

Ever.