Demon Child

response.
        Malmont shrugged. “Well, perhaps I haven't followed my advice to the letter. But I make certain my patient's do!”
        He took her temperature, blood pressure. He checked the size of her pupils, listened to her heart, took her pulse. He was swift and economical in his movements, handling the instruments of his profession as if they were somehow outgrowths of his own body.
        “Perhaps a little shock,” he said. “But you're fine. My recommendations are a big, hot meal for supper, a little earlier than is the Brucker norm. Have it in bed. Will that be too much of an inconvenience, Anna?”
        The cook looked up, surprised that she had been addressed. “No trouble at all, doctor.”
        “Fine. Then, some light television or light reading. No melodrama. And early to bed after two of these.” He took a small bottle of sleeping capsules from his case.
        “Do I have to take pills?” Jenny asked.
        “You're too old to be stubborn,” he said, writing the directions on the white packet.
        “I don't want to sleep,” she said. “I'll have all sorts of terrible nightmares. I know I will!”
        “Not with these,” Malmont said. “They put you so far under that you wouldn't wake up for the end of the world.”
        She didn't argue any further. As long as she didn't dream, she preferred sleep to being awake. Awake, she had too much time to think…
        When Malmont left, Cora went with him.
        That afternoon, Jenny and Anna played 500 rummy, at Anna's insistence, to help to pass the time. The old woman was clever enough to build a rivalry between them for the best of three games. Jenny saw what she was doing, how she was trying to divert her young charge's mind from uglier things, but she didn't mind. If Anna could divert her, that was fine. Heaven knew, she didn't want to continually think of Hollycross, her parents, her grandmother, and of things that howled and crept about after dark.
        She was left alone while Anna went to prepare an early supper, but she filled the two hours with an old comedy that was playing on the late afternoon movie. She supposed it was a senseless and time-wasting film, but it distracted her.
        Anna brought a tray around six, lavishly set with a number of dishes and two thick slices of a cream-filled chocolate cake for dessert. Watching news, she ate everything that had been put before her. She had not thought she could take a bite, but it seemed that her fear and the day's excitement had taken more out of her than she had thought.
        It was shortly before seven o'clock when she heard Richard and Cora arguing. She used her remote control to turn down the volume on the television set, listened closely. She could not make out many individual words, but she could gather the general drift of the fight. Richard was pressing, harder than ever, for a psychiatrist for Freya. Cora was resisting.
        Twice, she could make out loud, undisciplined cursing, and she felt herself grow hot with anger that Richard should subject his mother to such things.
        In a short while, the shouted conversation stopped with the abruptness of a slammed door.
        Then a door really did slam somewhere in the house.
        Feet pattered hurriedly across an uncarpeted floor.
        Distantly, she could hear Cora crying.
        What on earth was happening in this house?
        She started to climb out of bed and then thought better of that idea. She could not do anything to help. She might only walk in on something which was none of her business. Instead of moving from the comfort of the warm bed, she snuggled even deeper into the heavy covers that were draped across her.
        She turned the television back up and tried to get interested in whatever was on. In twenty minutes, she had flipped to all the channels on the cable and was still unsatisfied. It was growing more and more difficult to shut out of her mind all the strange events that transpired in this house and on the grounds surrounding it.
        The red bindings on the bookshelf caught her eye. She stared at them for a long while, then finally got out of bed and took the witchcraft volumes down from the shelf. Back in bed, she opened them, skimmed through them, and finally began reading in earnest.
        There was only one way to abolish fear-and that was through knowledge. It was difficult to be frightened of anything that you understood. She