Demon Child

swiftly.
        Jagged, yellow lightning cracked down the backdrop of the clouds, followed almost instantly by hard, loud thunder that sounded like nothing so much as cannons, dozens of cannons firing simultaneously.
        Jenny leaped back from the window, frightened by the violent display. She back-stepped a bit, even though there was no serious threat to her.
        You are a big girl now, she chided herself. You kept a stiff upper lip when mom and dad died seven years ago. You handled grandma's funeral all by yourself, settled the old woman's estate without much help. You've worked your way through college, and you're twenty-one years old. Now stop being frightened by a little old flash of lightning!
        Where on earth was her cousin? Richard Brucker was fifteen minutes late already. She wondered if he might have had an accident, for she thought of the rain-slicked pavement on which her mother and father had died. She felt guilty for even nourishing the start of impatience.
        Just then, the storm broke over the terminal. Lightning struck down, seemed to smash into the surface of the parking lot, as if attracted by the aerials of the cars parked there.
        Impulsively, Jenny turned away from the glass.
        Rain hissed across the concrete veranda, driven by stiff gusts of wind. It darkened the veranda floor, spattered on the windows. It sounded like someone whispering a warning to her, over and over.
        She left her two suitcases where the driver had put them, crossed the terminal building to the far wall where a waitress wiped the top of a small lunch counter. She took a stool and ordered a cup of coffee.
        “Looks like it finally broke,” the waitress said.
        “Do you think it'll last all day?”
        “Supposed to go on all night too!” The waitress put the coffee down. “Want a doughnut with that?”
        “No thank you.”
        “Moving in or visiting?” the waitress asked. She did not seem to be a busybody, just friendly.
        “Visiting,” Jenny said. “I graduated from college last week. I used to live with my grandmother, but she passed on two months ago. I have an aunt here who wants to have me until my first teaching job starts in the fall.”
        “A teacher!” the waitress said. “I never was any good with books myself. That's why I'm just a waitress. Right now, though, I wish I was home in bed with a book. This place gets spooky when there ain't many people about.”
        Jenny looked at the open-beam ceiling, dark and mysterious, at the dim corners where old, hooded lights didn't cast much cheer. “I sure wouldn't want to work here!” She sipped her coffee. “But I guess you meet a good many different types of people.”
        The waitress nodded. “Some you'd like to know, others you'd give anything never to see again.” She looked over Jenny's shoulder toward the front doors. “And here comes one I could do without. He's from that house where poor little Freya lives. If there's a curse, then he's the cause of it.” Her voice fell as the man drew nearer the counter. “Half the child's troubles, if you ask me, stem from this one. No good at all; too quiet and too dark and too unwilling to talk with anyone.”
        Jenny looked at the man who, a moment later, stepped up to the counter. He was tall and slim, with very large hands that moved rapidly. They pressed at his lapels, searched his pockets, flicked at dirt on the countertop. He was a handsome man, scholarly in appearance except for his black, curly hair which he wore full and rather long. It was this last detail which kept her from recognizing him immediately. When he smiled at her, she saw that it was Richard.
        “Hello, Jenny,” he said.
        She got up and hugged him. He had been four years her senior when her parents died, and, in the midst of sympathetic adults, he had been the only one to whom she could communicate her grief. His own mother had died when Richard was two years old. And though he had been too young to remember it, he had learned the loneliness of the world in the years after. When she had needed consolation, it was Richard who, clumsily but earnestly, had given it to her.
        The waitress moved off, disapproving, scowling at them when she thought they could not see.
        “We can talk more in the car,” Richard said, hefting her suitcases. “After that, we have the whole summer.”
        At the front door, she said, “You'll get