Silencing Eve

perspiration bead her face as she fought the fear.
    “Yes, that’s what I wanted,” Doane said softly, his gaze on her face. “I couldn’t do it to you, but Kevin managed, didn’t he? I keep telling you he’s special.” He straightened away from the table. “And now I’ll leave you to him. He’ll be sorry I gave you the shot. He always enjoyed the delicious sharpness of the response to whatever he did.” He paused at the door. “But perhaps you’ll be so afraid that the narcotic won’t take effect, and you’ll have him with you all the time I’m gone. Or maybe he’ll follow you down and bring the nightmare with him. All kinds of interesting possibilities…”
    Doane was gone.
    But Kevin was here. Eve had carefully mended the ugliness of the burned and blackened skull, but the sight of it was abruptly before her.
    Only a memory, she told herself. A memory heightened by the effect of the narcotic Doane had given her. For all she knew, Doane could have given her a hallucinogenic to mentally torture her.
    It wasn’t the drug.
    It was Kevin.
    Hate you. Take you. Take her.
    “The hell you will.” Her voice was slurred. “You’re only bone and clay and glass.”
    Blue eyes staring …
    She closed her own eyes, which were unbearably heavy. “And now I’m going to go to sleep and you … may go back to hell … where you belong.”
    Take you.
    “No way…”
    She could no longer see him, but she could still feel him there.
    Frustrated? Good. She was tired of dealing with monsters and filthy perverts who were incomprehensible to ordinary human beings. She just wanted to go away …
    *   *   *
    “YOU HAVE GONE AWAY. No one can touch you now, Mama.”
    Bonnie?
    She opened her eyes, but Kevin’s skull was no longer on the table before her.
    Bonnie was sitting in the chair at the end of the table, her right leg tucked beneath her. Same Bugs Bunny T-shirt and jeans, same curly red hair, same beloved, radiant smile.
    Oh, God, how Eve had missed that smile.
    “And just where have I gone, baby?” she asked shakily.
    “You’re still in the cottage, but the drug Doane gave you took you deep enough so that I could break through the barriers Kevin put up. I was able to reach you. I told you that was the only way I’d found to come to you.”
    “I’m surprised you were able to get through. This was Kevin’s place, and it’s full of him. It’s as if he’s still here.” She grimaced. “Even that hideous graveyard of driftwood out front. It’s kind of fitting that Doane gave me a drug to knock me out. It’s like that sleeping-beauty tale, only instead of a garden of thorns keeping everyone out, there’s that graveyard of driftwood.”
    “I had to work hard on it. This is a bad place.” She suddenly grinned impishly. “But I was even able to get rid of that nasty Kevin’s skull from your mind. I knew you’d be happier if he was gone. And Kevin was perfectly furious at both of us. Isn’t that wonderful?”
    “Wonderful. But he’s still there?”
    “Not as long as you’re asleep. Everything is fine as long as you’re deep under the influence of that narcotic. Doane did us a favor when he gave it to you.”
    “I don’t believe that was how it was meant.” Her gaze was running hungrily over her daughter. “But I don’t care. May I say how glad I am to see you. It’s been too long, Bonnie.”
    “I did the best I could. Kevin is very strong. But you know that, Mama, he makes you afraid.” She tilted her head. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you afraid.”
    “Only for you, Bonnie.”
    She nodded gravely. “I know that. Everything for me. That’s how it’s been since I came into your life.”
    “That’s how all parents feel, baby. It goes with the territory.”
    “But now you should think about yourself, Mama. Let me fight for myself.”
    Eve went still. “And is it a fight with Kevin? Not some kind of spiritual suppression or—”
    “Of course, it’s a fight,” Bonnie said bluntly. “Forget all those big, fancy religious or psychological ideas. There’s nothing but evil about Kevin. He’s … full of silences. I don’t know what a demon is like, but he may show us if he’s allowed to survive. He somehow managed to slip over the line, and now he won’t go back.” She paused. “He wants to cross another line.”
    “I know,” Eve whispered.
    Bonnie nodded. “I thought you did. So you have to fight him, too.” She added, “But we can beat him. We have