Demon Child

the black stem, smoke leaking around his lips, smelling of cherries.
        “What do you mean?” Richard asked.
        “Freya, because of the years with her mother, views the world as unstable, as fluid, about to change unexpectedly at any moment, often for the worse. Her time here, in this stable home atmosphere, has done a bit to alleviate this neurosis of hers, though certainly not enough. It will take two or three more years, at least, before she'll begin to comprehend that not everyone's life is subject to the jet-set conditions.”
        He drew on his pipe a moment, gathering the words he wanted.
        Jenny shifted in her chair. It was dark beyond the window. No wolf howled. Irrationally, she thought that once Walter had explained Freya's illness, she would never hear a wolf again.
        “Now,” Hobarth continued, “when such a young child tries to cope with a changing world and is defeated by shifting conditions, that child will begin to seek a fantasy to shield him against reality. Schizophrenia, it's called. That child will begin to live his fantasy and to consider it every bit as real as actual reality. If the fantasy is not taken from him early, he will be institutionalized by adulthood, if not by adolescence.”
        “But Freya never had this fantasy before she came here,” Cora said. “When she lived with her mother, she was normal. She didn't sleep so deeply, in these comas. All that started here, when she came to the Brucker land, and then only a few months ago.”
        “That doesn't discount what I'm telling you,” Walter said. He held his pipe in one hand, stirred his coffee with a spoon in the other hand.
        Explain, Walt, Jenny thought. Explain everything to us. Already, she felt silly for ever having believed in the curse.
        “The first six or eight months that Freya lived with you, Cora, was the longest period of stability in her life. Before, she had been moved every two or three months, sometimes every two or three weeks, jaunting from hotel penthouse to hotel penthouse, from one European capital to another. Her first three months here, she expected to be uprooted at any moment, day or night. But the longer she remained, the more she came to love you and this estate and the stability it offered her. But, too, the more attached she became to this place, the greater her fear. Now, it would be more cruel than ever to be plucked up and deposited elsewhere. Daily, she expected Lena to arrive for her. The tension built-every bit of it bottled up inside of her. Eventually, she had just been wound too tight. She came across the legend of the family curse, somehow, and absorbed it. It offered an out, a fantasy. In the fantasy, she was a deadly, powerful wolf, a predator that no one could order about. In the fantasy, she was her own master, and Lena could do nothing to her.”
        They were all quiet a while.
        “The comas?” Richard asked.
        “A way to make the fantasy seem real. Closer to ca-tatonia than true coma.”
        “And you can make her better, get rid of these delusions?” Jenny asked.
        “I should hope so!” Walter said. “That's my profession, after all!”
        “How?” Richard asked.
        Cora said nothing. Though she did not seem as tense as she was a few minutes before, she was still not relaxed.
        Hobarth hesitated, drew on his pipe, exhaled the rich smoke. “I have to preface my suggestion with a small explanation of my thoughts on this matter, why they ran the direction they did. I want to make it clear that I am making the recommendations that I am because I am aware of your family's financial holdings. Ordinarily, expensive solutions would be out and a chance for definite improvement in Freya's condition would be almost nil. What I am going to suggest may cost you money, but it will obtain the desired results with the child.”
        “Money doesn't matter,” Cora said. “We have more than we know what to do with, and the business and our other stocks are always increasing the family wealth geometrically. Whatever it costs, it can't be too much.”
        For once, Richard agreed with his stepmother.
        “Freya's case is a difficult one,” Walter said. “I have never seen a patient cling so steadfastly to a delusion, even under hypnosis, as the child clings to hers.” He nodded at Jenny. “You sat in on my second session with her. Can you explain it to them, what she was