Demon Child

it?
        Yet, she remembered the warnings in those dreams: Beware the unknown. Expect the unexpected.. .
        “Who told you all of this?” Jenny asked.
        “No one told us,” Freya said. “We just know.”
        Jenny wasn't to be sidetracked so easily. “Someone must have given you the idea,” she persisted.
        “No.”
        “You must have overheard Cora or Richard-”
        With that impulsive energy and short attention span that only young children have, Frank grew bored with the matter at hand, took his sister's arm and tugged at it. “Let's race to the stables! Maybe the pony wants to go out!” He pulled Freya away from Jenny. Together, they ran around the rim of the pond, startling the ducks who made squawking protest. They grew smaller and smaller as they ran until, at last, the shadows around the stables swallowed them.
        Her perfect mood had been destroyed. What was wrong with the child? What would a psychiatrist say il he were able to study her? Who in the Brucker mansion had been filling the twins' minds with such ugly, primitive fears?
        She finished her nails, trying to lose herself again in the monotony of the task at hand.
        It didn't work.
        
        That night at dinner, Richard was late to the table. When he finally did arrive, he took his place without speaking or looking at anyone. He filled his dish almost mechanically.
        Jenny could tell that he was angry, though it did not occur to her why. She focused her attention on her own plate and said nothing. She wished Richard had not lost the pleasantness she remembered from seven years ago.
        When he had filled his platter with a helping of everything, he raised his head for the first time and stared down the length of the table at his stepmother. “Freya is having another spell, Cora. Harold ought to go up and sit with her. God knows, though, what good sitting up with her will do!”
        Cora laid her fork down, took a drink of ice water from her goblet. “She had her vitamins at supper. I made certain of that.”
        “Cora,” he said, his tone not respectful in the least, full of scorn and anger, “Freya's comas are not connected with her vitamin deficiency. There's no escaping the fact that the girl requires psychiatric help!”
        “We've already discussed that,” Cora said.
        “I've discussed it,” Richard replied. “But I don't think you've even listened to one goddamned word of it!”
        “Richard!” Cora said. “Please never speak to me that way again.”
        He pushed his chair back, rose from the table and left the room without asking to be excused.
        What have I gotten into? Jenny asked herself.
        She felt things closing in, building to an explosion. She didn't want to be around when the fuse burnt clear down to the keg of powder. She could not control the rapidly deteriorating circumstances in this house, which meant that she was at the mercy of them.
        Cora did not seem anxious to talk through the remainder of the dinner. Neither of them were really hungry any longer, either.
        
        Later that night, Cora came to Jenny's room. She was dressed in a lovely yellow lounging robe which contrasted with her dark beauty and her cultured dignity to make both those qualities even more evident. Jenny secretly hoped that, when she was Cora's age, she would look as feminine and sophisticated as her aunt.
        If I reach her age, she amended. And immediately, she wondered why she always had to have such negative thoughts.
        “I'd like to talk to you about Freya,” Cora Brucker said. She sat on the edge of the bed. hands folded on the yellow robe. For the first time, Jenny noticed the weariness in her aunt's dark eyes, the dark circles below that indicated bad sleeping habits.
        Jenny had been trying to interest herself in a mystery novel, but she had been making very little headway. The print seemed to run together, and her mind wandered over the tragedies of the past. She put the book down on the covers and sat up straighter in bed. She said, “I feel so sorry for her. She's such a sweet little girl.”
        Cora nodded. “And I think she'll be all right. We know that it isn't anything physically wrong. She's had the best doctors. She was in the city for a week with two of the best doctors on the staff there.”
        Jenny realized that Cora wanted to justify her own reluctance to bring in a