Demon Child

werewolves or whether she believed more in modern psychiatric medicine.
        “You've been reading some of Cora's books, I gather,” he said.
        “A couple of them yes”
        “My stepmother is a wonderful woman,” he said. “But she was always one for simple explanations. The occult, spooks and spirits, always appealed to her. If you believe in the supernatural, then the complex workings of the world can be made to look simple. You can say evil is the result of the work of bad spirits and ignore the complex nature of evil in men. When father died, she got stuck on such things even more. I try to dissuade her. It's not very healthy to believe a thousand different silly superstitions.”
        “I guess not,” she said.
        “No guessing about it.”
        She did not respond. She felt as if he were trying to bait her into some sort of argument. She could see his temper flaring a little, though she could not understand his constant readiness to argue. Was such edginess a more important sign of psychological instability than even Freya's long and unexplained comas?
        “Even the twins have heard the rumors,” Richard said. He swayed a little on the balls of his feet, as if he had laced even his early morning coffee with a touch of brandy.
        “Do you know who told them?”
        “I wish to the devil I did!” He smacked one fist into the open palm of his other hand.
        “They say no one told them. They say that they just know that Freya is a werewolf, possessed.”
        Why was she holding him here, prying at him with statements and questions, when all she really wanted was to be away from him? Did she think she could learn something from his reactions? What? And if he made a slip or reacted to something in a strange way, how would she interpret it? How could any of this shed light on his phone conversation which she had overheard?
        “That is nonsense,” he said. “But it shows you just how unhealthy such stuff is for young children. If Freya has actually come to believe this simple-minded sort of explanation for her comas, then Dr. Hobarth's work is going to be a dozen times more difficult.”
        With that, he turned and left the house through the rear door. He walked to the garage where he kept the maroon Corvette, and a moment later he drove away, his foot rather heavy on the accelerator.
        She longed to say: “I know one thing which was not superstition, Richard. That talk on the telephone, just minutes ago, about killing and about drugs. That was real. That was not my over-worked imagination or a bunch of silly superstitions I've gotten from Cora. That was real. But how would you explain its meaning, Richard? What would you say? Huh?”
        But she dared not speak any such thing, no matter how much she might wish to.

----

    7
        
        Dr. Walter Hobarth was tall, dark and handsome- just the sort of man that every gypsy fortune-teller spoke of when making promises to her female customers. Slightly more than six feet tall, he weighed near a hundred and ninety pounds. His sedentary profession had not caused him to fatten at the waist or to lose the agility and grace of youth. He was, perhaps, thirty-one or thirty-two, an intriguing combination of the distinguished doctor and the easily-amused youth with some adventure still left in his soul. His eyes were blue in startling contrast to his dark complexion and his brown hair. He spoke softly but clearly and with conviction. And when he smiled, his cheeks dimpled.
        Jenny first met him at dinner that Saturday evening and was impressed immediately. The general air about the table had been magically transformed and was far more pleasant than it had been on any previous occasion since she had arrived. Partially, that was attributable to the suspension of the argument between Cora and Richard. Partly, too, they all felt better with the knowledge that at least something concrete was being done about Freya's condition; even Cora, who did not hold much with psychiatrists, seemed relieved-as if she could not be blamed for something that had been taken out of her hands. But the friendliness and good cheer were not, Jenny thought, merely the result of the altered circumstances. Walter Hobarth had more than a little to do with the fine humor that infected them all.
        Hobarth was witty and amusing, and he seemed to have an interesting anecdote for every topic of discussion that arose,