Koontz, Dean - The Mask
THE MASK
DEAN
KOONTZ
This book is dedicated to Willo and Dave Roberts
and to Carol and Don McQuinn who have no faults - 
except that they live too far away from us
A dirge for her, the doubly dead, in that she died so young.
 - Edgar Allan Poe. "Lenore"
And much of Madness, and more of Sin, And Horror the soul of the plot.
 - Edgar Allan Poe, "The Conqueror Worm"
Extreme terror gives us back the gestures of our childhood.
 - Chazal
Prologue
LAURA was in the cellar, doing some spring cleaning and hating every minute of it.
She didn’t dislike the work itself; she was by nature an industrious girl who was
happiest when she had chores to do. But she was afraid of the cellar.
For one thing, the place was gloomy. The four narrow windows, set high in the walls,
were hardly larger than embrasures, and the dust-filmed panes of glass permitted
only weak, chalky light to enter. Even brightened by a pair of lamps, the big room
held on tenaciously to its shadows, unwilling to be completely disrobed. The
flickering amber light from the lamps revealed damp stone walls and a hulking,
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coal-fired furnace that was cold and unused on this fine, warm May afternoon. On a
series of long shelves, row upon row of quart jars reflected splinters of light, but
their contents - home-canned fruit and vegetables that had been stored here for the
past nine months - remained unilluminated. The corners of the morn were all dark, and
the low, open-beamed ceiling was hung with shadows like long banners of funeral
crepe.
The cellar always had a mildly unpleasant odor, too. It was musty, rather like a
limestone cave. In the spring and summer, when the humidity was high, a mottled
gray-green fungus sometimes sprang up in the corners, a disgusting scablike growth,
fringed with hundreds of tiny white spores that resembled insect eggs; that
grotesquery added its own thin but nonetheless displeasing fragrance to the cellar
air.
However, neither the gloom nor the offending odors nor the fungus gave rise to
Laura’s fears; it was the spiders that frightened her. Spiders ruled the cellar.
Some of them were small, brown, and quick; others were charcoal gray, a bit bigger
than the brown ones, but just as fast-moving as their smaller cousins. There were
even a few blue-black giants as large as Laura’s thumb.
As she wiped dust and a few cobwebs from the jars of home-canned food, always alert
for the scuttling movement of spiders, Laura grew increasingly angry with her
mother. Mama could have let her clean some of the upstairs rooms instead of the
cellar Aunt Rachael or Mama herself could have cleaned down here because neither of
them worried about spiders. But Mama knew that Laura was afraid of the cellar, and
Mama was in the mood to punish her. It was a terrible mood, black as thunderclouds.
Laura had seen it before. Too often. It descended over Mama more frequently with
every passing year, and when she was in its thrall, she was a different person from
the smiling, always singing woman that she was at other times. Although Laura loved
her mother, she did not love the short-tempered, mean-spirited woman that her mother
sometimes became. She did not love the hateful woman who had sent her down into the
cellar with the spiders.
Dusting the jars of peaches, pears, tomatoes, beets, beans, and pickled squash,
nervously awaiting the inevitable appearance of a spider, wishing she were grown up
and married and on her own, Laura was startled by a sudden, sharp sound that pierced
the dank basement air. At first it was like the distant, forlorn wail of an exotic
bird, but it quickly became louder and more urgent. She stopped dusting, looked up
at the dark ceiling, and listened closely to the eerie ululation that came from
overhead. After a moment she realized that it was her Aunt Rachael’s voice and that
it was a cry of alarm.
Upstairs, something fell over with a crash. It sounded like shattering porcelain. It
must have been Mama’s peacock vase, If it was the vase, Mama would be in an
extremely foul mood for the rest of the week.
Laura stepped away from the shelves of canned goods and started toward the cellar
stairs, but she stopped abruptly when she heard Mama scream. It wasn’t a scream of
rage over the loss of the vase; there was a note of terror in it.
Footsteps thumped across the living room floor, toward the front door of the house.
The screen door opened with the familiar singing of its long spring, then banged
shut. Rachael was outside now, shouting, her words unintelligible but still
conveying her fear.
Laura smelled smoke.
She hurried to the stairs and saw pale tongues of fire at the top. The smoke wasn’t
heavy, but it had an acrid stench.
Heart pounding, Laura climbed to the uppermost step. Waves of heat forced her to
squint, but she could see into the kitchen. The wall of fire wasn’t solid. There was
a narrow route of escape, a corridor of cool safety; the door to the back porch was
at the far end.
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She lifted her long skirt and pulled it tight across her hips and thighs, bunching
it in both hands to prevent it from trailing in the flames. She moved gingerly onto
the fire-ringed landing, which creaked under her, but before she reached the open
door, the kitchen exploded in yellow-blue flames that quickly turned orange. From
wall to wall, floor to ceiling, the room was an inferno; there was no longer a path
through the blaze. Crazily, the fire-choked doorway brought to Laura’s mind the
image of a glittering eye in a jack-o’-lantern.
In the kitchen, windows exploded, and the fire eddied in the sudden change of
drafts, pushing through the cellar door, lashing at Laura. Startled, she stumbled
backwards, off the landing. She fell. Turning, she grabbed at the railing, missed
it, and stumbled down the short flight, cracking her head against the stone floor at
the bottom.
She held on to consciousness as if it were a raft and she a drowning swimmer. When
she was certain she wouldn’t faint, she got to her feet. Pain coruscated across the
top of her head. She raised one hand to her brow and found a trickle of blood, a
small abrasion. She was dizzy and confused.
During the minute or less that she had been incapacitated, fire had spread across
the entire landing at the head of the stairs. It was moving down onto the first
step.
She couldn’t keep her eyes focused. The rising
stairs and the descending fire repeatedly blurred together in an orange haze.
Ghosts of smoke drifted down the stairwell. They reached out with long,
insubstantial arms, as if to embrace Laura.
She cupped her hands around her mouth. "Help!"
No one answered.
"Somebody help me! I’m in the cellar!"
Silence.
"Aunt Rachael! Mama! For God’s sake, somebody help me!"
The only response was the steadily increasing roar of the fire.
Laura had never felt so alone before. In spite of the tides of heat washing over
her, she felt cold inside. She shivered.
Although her head throbbed worse than ever, and although the abrasion above her
right eye continued to weep blood, at least she was having less trouble keeping her
eyes focused. The problem was that she didn’t like what she saw.
She stood statue-still, transfixed by the deadly spectacle of the flames. Fire
crawled lizardlike down the steps, one by one, and it slithered up the rail posts,
then crept down the rail with a crisp, chuckling sound.
The smoke reached the bottom of the steps and enfolded her. She coughed, and the
coughing aggravated the pain in her head, making her dizzy again. She put one hand
against the wall to steady herself.
Everything was happening too fast. The house was going up like a pile of
well-seasoned tinder.
I’m going to die here.
That thought jolted her out of her trance. She wasn’t ready to die. She was far too
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young. There
was so much of life ahead of her, so many wonderful things to do, things she had
long dreamed about doing. It wasn’t fair. She refused to die.
She gagged on the smoke. Turning away from the burning stairs, she put a hand over
her nose and mouth, but that didn’t help much.
She saw flames at the far end of the cellar, and for an instant she thought she was
already encircled and that all hope of rescue was gone. She cried out in despair,
but then she realized the blaze hadn’t found its way into the other end of the room
after all. The two points of fire that she was seeing were only the twin oil lamps
that had provided her with light. The flames in the lamps were harmless, safely
ensconced in tall glass chimneys.
She coughed violently again, and the pain in her head settled down behind her eyes.
She found it difficult to concentrate. Her thoughts were like droplets of
quicksilver, sliding over one another and changing shape so often and so fast that
she couldn’t make sense of some of them.
She prayed silently and fervently.
Directly overhead, the ceiling groaned and appeared to shift. For a few seconds she
held her breath, clenched her teeth, and stood with her hands fisted at her sides,
waiting to be buried in rubble. But then she saw that the ceiling wasn’t going to
collapse -  not yet.
Trembling, whimpering softly, she scurried to the nearest of the four high-set
windows, It was rectangular, approximately eight inches from sill to top and
eighteen inches from sash to sash, much too small to provide her with a means of
escape. The other three windows were identical to the first; there was no use even
taking a closer look at them.
The air was becoming less breathable by the second. Laura’s sinuses ached and
burned. Her mouth was filled with the revulsive, bitter taste of the smoke.
For too long she stood beneath the window, staring up in frustration and confusion
at the meager, milky light that came through the dirty pane and through the haze of
smoke that pressed tightly against the glass. She had the feeling she was
overlooking an obvious and convenient escape hatch; in fact she was sure of it.
There was a way out, and it had nothing to do with the windows, but she couldn’t get
her mind off the windows; she was fixated on them, just as she had been fixated on
the sight of the advancing flames a couple of minutes ago. The pain in her head and
behind her eyes throbbed more powerfully than ever, and with each agonizing
pulsation, her thoughts became more muddled.
I’m going to die here.
A frightening vision flashed through her mind. She saw herself afire, her dark hair
turned blond by the flames that consumed it and standing straight up on her head as
if it were not hair but the wick of a candle. In the vision, she saw her face
melting like wax, bubbling and steaming and liquefying, the features flowing
together until her face no longer resembled that of a human being, until it was the
hideously twisted countenance of a leering demon with empty eye sockets.
No!
She shook her head, dispelling the vision.
She was dizzy and getting dizzier. She needed a draught of clean air to rinse out
her polluted lungs, but with each breath she drew more smoke than she had drawn last
time. Her chest ached.
Nearby, a rhythmic pounding began; the noise was
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even louder than her heartbeat, which drummed thunderously in her ears.
She turned in a circle, gagging and. coughing, searching for the source of the
hammering sound, striving to regain control of herself, struggling hard to think.
The hammering stopped.
‘‘Laura . .
Above the incessant roar of the tire, she heard someone calling her name.
"Laura. .
"I’m down here.. . in the cellar!" she shouted. But the shout came out as nothing
more than a whispered croak. Her throat was constricted and already raw from the
harsh smoke and the fiercely hot air.
The effort required to stay on her feet became too great for her. She sank to her
knees on the stone floor, slumped against the wall, and slid down until she was
lying on her side.
"Laura..." . .
The pounding began again. A fist beating on a door.
Laura discovered that the air at floor level was cleaner than that which she had
been breathing. She gasped frantically, grateful for this reprieve from suffocation.
For a few seconds the throbbing pain behind her eyes abated, and her thoughts
cleared, and she remembered the outside entrance to the cellar, a pair of doors
slant-set against the north wall of the house. They were locked from the inside, so
that no one could get in to rescue her, in the panic and confusion she had forgotten
about those doors. But now, if she kept her wits about her, she would be able to
save herself.
"Laura!" It was Aunt Rachael’s voice.
Laura crawled to the northwest corner of the room, where the doors sloped down at
the top of a short flight of steps. She kept her head low, breathing the tainted but
adequate air near the floor. The edges of the mortared stones tore her dress and
scraped skin off her knees.
To her left, the entire stairwell was burning now, and flames were spreading across
the wooden ceiling. Refracted and diffused by the smoky air, the firelight glowed on
all sides of Laura, creating the illusion that she was crawling through a narrow
tunnel of flames. At the rate the blaze was spreading, the illusion would soon be
fact.
Her eyes were swollen and watery, and she wiped at them as she inched toward escape.
She couldn’t see very much. She used Aunt Rachael’s voice as a beacon and otherwise
relied on instinct.
"Laura!" The voice was near. Right above her.
She felt along the wall until she located the setback in the stone. She moved into
that recess, onto the first step, lifted her head, but could see nothing: the
darkness here was seamless.
"Laura, answer me. Baby, are you in there?"
Rachael was hysterical, screaming so loudly and pounding on the outside doors with
such persistence that she wouldn’t have heard a response even if Laura had been
capable of making one.
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Where was Mama? Why wasn’t Mama pounding on the door, too? Didn’t Mama care?
Crouching in that cramped, hot, lightless space, Laura reached up and put her hand
against one of the two slant-set doors above her bead. The sturdy barrier quivered
and rattled under the impact of Rachael’s
small fists. Laura groped blindly for the latch. She put her hand over the warm
metal fixture - and squarely over something else, too. Something strange and
unexpected. Something that squirmed and was alive. Small but alive. She jerked
convulsively and pulled her hand away. But the thing she touched had shifted its
grip from the latch to her flesh, and it came away from the door when she withdrew
her hand. It skittered out of her palm and over her thumb and across the back of her
hand and along her wrist and under the sleeve of her dress before she could brush it
away.
A spider.
She couldn’t see it, but she knew what it was. A spider. One of the really big ones,
as large as her thumb, a plump black body that glistened like a fat drop of oil,
inky black and ugly. For a moment she froze, unable even to draw a breath.
She felt the spider moving up her arm, and its bold advance snapped her into action.
She slapped at it through the sleeve of her dress, but she missed. The spider bit
her above the crook of her arm, and she winced at the tiny nip of pain, and the
disgusting creature scurried into her armpit. It bit her there, too, and suddenly
she felt as though she was living through her worst nightmare, for she feared
spiders more than she feared anything else on earth - certainly more than she feared
fire, for in her desperate attempt to kill the spider, she had forgotten all about
the burning house that was dissolving into ruin above her -  and she flailed in panic,
lost her balance, rolled backwards off the steps, into the main room of the cellar,
cracking one hip on the stone floor. The spider tickled its way along the inside of
her bodice until it was
between her breasts. She screamed but could make no sound whatsoever. She put a hand
to her bosom and pressed hard, and even through the fabric she could feel the spider
squirming angrily against the palm of her hand, and she could feel its frenzied
struggle even more directly on her bare breast, to which it was pressed, but she
persisted until at last she crushed it, and she gagged again, but this time not
merely because of the smoke.
For several seconds after killing the spider, she lay on the floor in a tight fetal
position, shuddering violently and uncontrollably. The repulsive, wet mass of the
smashed spider slid very slowly down the curve of her breast. She wanted to reach
inside her bodice and pluck the foul wad from herself, but she hesitated because,
irrationally, she was afraid it would somehow come to life again and sting her
fingers.
She tasted blood. She had bitten her lip.
Mama...
Mama had done this to her. Mama had sent her down here, knowing there were spiders.
Why was Mama always so quick to deal out punishment, so eager to assign penance?
Overhead, a beam creaked, sagged. The kitchen floor cracked open. She felt as though
she were staring up into Hell. Sparks showered down. Her dress caught fire, and she
scorched her hands putting it out.
Mama did this to me.
Because her palms and fingers were blistered and peeling, she couldn’t crawl on her
hands and knees any longer, so she got to her feet, although standing up required
more strength and determination than she had thought she possessed. She swayed,
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dizzy and weak.
Mama sent me down here.
Laura could see only pulsing, all-encompassing orange luminescence, through which
amorphous smoke ghosts glided and whirled. She shuffled toward the short flight of
steps that led to the outside cellar doors, but after she had gone only two yards,
she realized she was headed in the wrong direction. She turned back the way she had
come - or back the way she thought she had come - but after a few steps she bumped into
the furnace, which was nowhere near the outside doors. She was completely
disoriented.
Mama did this to me.
Laura squeezed her ruined hands into raw, bloody fists. In a rage she pounded on the
furnace, and with each blow she fervently wished that she were beating her mother.
The upper reaches of the burning house twisted and rumbled. In the distance, beyond
an eternity of smoke, Aunt Rachael’s voice echoed hauntingly: "Laura... Laura. . ."
Why wasn’t Mama out there helping Rachael break down the cellar doors? Where in
God’s name was she? Throwing coal and lamp oil on the fire?
Wheezing, gasping, Laura pushed away from the furnace and tried to follow Rachael’s
voice to safety.
A beam tore loose of its moorings, slammed into her back, and catapulted her into
the shelves of home canned food. Jars fell, shattered. Laura went down in a rain of
glass. She could smell pickles, peaches.
Before she could determine if any bones were broken, before she could even lift her
face out of the spilled food, another beam crashed down, pinning her legs.
There was so much pain that her mind simply blanked it out altogether. She was not
even sixteen years old, and there was only so much she could bear. She sealed the
pain in a dark corner of her mind; instead of succumbing to it, she twisted and
thrashed hysterically, raged at her fate, and cursed her mother.
Her hatred for her mother wasn’t rational, but it was so passionately felt that it
took the place of the pain she could not allow herself to feel. Hate flooded through
her, filled her with so much demonic energy that she was nearly able to toss the
heavy beam off her legs.
Damn you to Hell, Mama.
The top floor of the house caved in upon the ground floor with a sound like cannons
blasting.
Damn you, Mama! Damn you!
The first two floors of flaming rubble broke through the already weakened cellar
ceiling.
Mama - 
PART ONE
Something Wicked This Way
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Comes...
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
Open, locks,
whoever knocks!
 - Shakespeare, Macbeth
1
ACROSS the somber gray clouds, lightning followed a jagged course like cracks in a
china plate. In the unsheltered courtyard outside Alfred O’Brian’s office, the
parked cars glimmered briefly with hard-edged reflections of the storm light. The
wind gusted, whipping the trees. Rain beat with sudden fury against the three tall
office windows, then streamed down the glass, blurring the view beyond.
O’Brian sat with his back to the windows. While thunder reverberated through the low
sky and seemed to hammer on the roof of the building, he read the application that
Paul and Carol Tracy had just submitted to him.
He’s such a neat little man, Carol thought as she watched O’Brian. When he sits very
still like that, you’d almost think he was a mannequin.
He was exceedingly well groomed. His carefully combed hair looked as if it had
received the attention of a good barber less than an hour ago. His mustache was so
expertly trimmed that the halves of it appeared to be perfectly symmetrical. He was
wearing a gray suit with trouser creases as tight and straight as blades, and his
black shoes gleamed. His fingernails were manicured, and his pink, well-scrubbed
hands looked sterile.
When Carol had been introduced to O’Brian less than a week ago, she had thought he
was prim, even prissy, and she had been prepared to dislike him. She was quickly won
over by his smile, by his gracious manner, and by his sincere desire to help her and
Paul.
She glanced at Paul, who was sitting in the chair next to hers, his own tensions
betrayed by the angular position of his lean, usually graceful body. He was watching
O’Brian intently, but when he sensed that Carol was looking at him, he turned and
smiled. His smile was even nicer than O’Brian’s, and as usual, Carol’s spirits were
lifted by the sight of it. He was neither handsome nor ugly, this man she loved; you
might even say he was plain, yet his face was enormously appealing because the
pleasing, open composition of it contained ample evidence of his gentleness and
sensitivity. His hazel eyes were capable of conveying amazingly subtle degrees and
mixtures of emotions. Six years ago, at a university symposium entitled "Abnormal
Psychology and Modem American Fiction," where Carol had met Paul, the first thing
that had drawn her to him had been those warm, expressive eyes, and in the
intervening years they had never ceased to intrigue her. Now he winked, and with
that wink he seemed to be saying: Don’t worry;
O’Brian is on our side; the application will be accepted; everything will turn out
all right; I love you.
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She winked back at him and pretended to be confident, even though she was sure he
could see through her brave front.
She wished that she could be certain of winning Mr. O’Brian’s approval. She knew she
ought to be overflowing with confidence, for there really was no reason why O’Brian
would reject them. They were healthy and young. Paul was thirty-five, and she was
thirty-one, and those were excellent ages at which to set out upon the adventure
they were contemplating. Both of them were successful in their work. They were
financially solvent, even prosperous. They were respected in their community. Their
marriage was happy and trouble-free, stronger now than at any time in the four years
since their wedding. In short, their qualifications for adopting a child were pretty
much impeccable, but she worried nonetheless.
She loved children, and she was looking forward to raising one or two of her own.
During the past fourteen years - in which she had earned three degrees at three
universities and had established herself in her profession - she had postponed many
simple pleasures and had skipped others altogether. Getting an education and
launching her career had always come first. She had missed too many good parties and
had foregone an unremembered number of vacations and getaway weekends. Adopting a
child was one pleasure she did not want to postpone any longer.
She had a strong psychological need - almost a physical need - to be a mother, to guide
and shape children, to give them love and understanding. She was intelligent enough
and sufficiently self-aware to
realize that this deep-seated need arose, at least in part, from her inability to
conceive a child of her own flesh and blood.
The thing we want most, she thought, is always the thing we cannot have.
She was to blame for her sterility, which was the result of an unforgivable act of
stupidity committed a long time ago; and of course her culpability made her
condition harder to bear than it would have been if nature - rather than her own
foolishness - had cursed her with a barren womb. She had been a severely troubled
child, for she had been raised by violent, alcoholic parents who had frequently
beaten her and who had dealt out large doses of psychological torture. By the time
she was fifteen, she was a hellion, engaged in an angry rebellion against her
parents and against the world at large. She hated everyone in those days, especially
herself. In the blackest hours of her confused and tormented adolescence, she had
gotten pregnant. Frightened, panicky, with no one to turn to, she tried to conceal
her condition by wearing girdles, by binding herself with elastic cloth and tape,
and by eating as lightly as possible to keep her weight down. Eventually, however,
complications arose because of her attempts to hide her pregnancy, and she nearly
died. The baby was born prematurely, but it was healthy. She had put it up for
adoption and hadn’t given it much thought for a couple of years, though these days
she often wondered about the child and wished she could have kept it somehow. At the
time, the fact that her ordeal had left her sterile did not depress her, for she
didn’t think she would ever want to be pregnant again. But with a lot of help and
love from a child psychologist named Grace Mitowski,
who did charity work among juvenile wards of the court, Carol had turned her life
completely around.
She had learned to like herself and, years later, had come to regret the thoughtless
actions that had left her barren.
Fortunately, she regarded adoption as a more-than-adequate solution to her problem.
She was capable of giving as much love to an adopted child as she would have given
to her own offspring. She knew she would be a good and caring mother, and she longed
to prove it - not to the world but to herself; she never needed to prove anything to
anyone but herself, for she was always her own toughest critic.
Mr. O’Brian looked up from the application and smiled. His teeth were exceedingly
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white. "This looks really fine," he said, indicating the form he had just finished
reading. "In fact, it’s splendid. Not everyone that applies to us has credentials
like these."
"It’s kind of you to say so," Paul told him.
O’Brian shook his head. "Not at all. It’s simply the truth. Very impressive."
Carol said, "Thank you."
Leaning back in his chair, folding his hands on his stomach, O’Brian said, "I do
have a couple of questions. I’m sure they’re the same ones the recommendations
committee will ask me, so I might as well get your responses now and save a lot of
back-and-forth later on."
Carol stiffened again.
O’Brian apparently noticed her reaction, for he quickly said, "Oh, it’s nothing
terribly serious. Really, it isn’t. Believe me - I won’t be asking you half as many
questions as I ask most couples who come to see us."
In spite of O’Brian’s assurances, Carol remained tense.
Outside, the storm-dark afternoon sky grew steadily darker as the thunderheads
changed color from gray to blue black, thickened, and pressed closer to the earth.
O’Brian swiveled in his chair to face Paul. "Dr. Tracy, would you say you’re an
overachiever?"
Paul seemed surprised by the question. He blinked and said, "I’m not sure what you
mean."
"You are the chairman of the department of English at the college, aren’t you?"
"Yes. I’m on sabbatical this semester, and the vice-chairman is handling most things
for the time being. Otherwise, I’ve been in charge of the department for the past
year and a half."
"Aren’t you rather young to hold such a post?"
"Somewhat young," Paul admitted. "But that’s no credit to me. You see, it’s a
thankless position, all work and no glory. My senior colleagues in the department
craftily maneuvered me into it so that none of them would be stuck with the job."
"You’re being modest."
"No, I’m really not," Paul said. "It’s nothing much."
Carol knew that he was being modest. The departmental chairmanship was a prized
position, an honor. But she understood why Paul was playing it down; he had been
unsettled by O’Brian’s use of the word overachiever. She had been unsettled by it,
too. Until this moment she had never thought that an unusually long list of
achievements might count against them.
Beyond the tall windows, lightning zigzagged
down the sky. The day flickered and, just for a second or two, so did the electric
lights in O’Brian’s office.
Still addressing Paul, O’Brian said, "You’re also an author."
"Yes."
"You’ve written a very successful textbook for use in American literature courses.
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You’ve turned out a dozen monographs on a variety of subjects, and you’ve done a
local history of the county. And two children’s books, and a novel
"The novel was about as successful as a horse trying to walk a tightrope," Paul
said. "The New York Times critic said it was ‘a perfect example of academic
posturing, stuffed full of themes and symbols, utterly lacking in substance and
narrative drive, infused with ivory-tower naiveté."
O’Brian smiled. "Does every writer memorize his bad reviews?"
"I suppose not. But I have that one engraved on my cerebral cortex because there’s
an uncomfortable amount of truth in it."
"Are you writing another novel? Is that why you’ve taken a sabbatical?"
Paul was not surprised by the question. Clearly he now understood what O’Brian was
digging for. "Yes, in fact I am writing a new novel. This one actually has a plot."
He laughed with easy self-deprecation.
"You’re also involved in charity work."
"Not much."
"Quite a lot," O’Brian disagreed. "The Children’s Hospital Fund, the Community
Chest, the student scholarship program at the college - all of that in addition to
your regular job and your writing. Yet you don’t think you’re an overachiever?"
"No, I really don’t think I am. The charity work
amounts to just a couple of meetings a month. It’s no big thing. It’s the least I
can do, considering my own good fortune." Paul edged forward on his chair.
"Maybe you’re worried that I won’t have time to give to a child, but if that’s
what’s troubling you, then you can put your mind at rest. I’ll make the time. This
adoption is extremely important to us, Mr. O’Brian. We both want a child very badly,
and if we are lucky enough to get one, we certainly won’t ever neglect it."
"Oh, I’m sure you won’t," O’Brian said quickly, raising his hands placatingly. "That
isn’t at all what I meant to imply. Oh, certainly not. I’m on your side in this
matter. I mean that very sincerely." He swiveled to face Carol. "Dr. Tracy - the other
Dr. Tracy -  what about you? Do you consider yourself an overachiever?"
Lightning slashed through the panoply of clouds again, nearer this time than before;
it seemed to strike the ground no more than two blocks away. The ensuing crash of
thunder rattled the tall windows.
Carol used the interruption provided by the thunderclap to consider her response,
and she decided that O’Brian would appreciate forthrightness more than modesty.
"Yes. I’d say I’m an overachiever. I’m involved in two of the three charities that
Paul has his hand in. And I know I’m a bit young to have established a psychiatric
practice as successful as mine is. I’m also a guest lecturer at the college on a
fairly regular basis. And I’m doing post-doctoral research on autistic children.
During the summer I manage to keep a little vegetable garden going, and I do some
needlepoint in the winter months, and I even brush
my teeth three times a day, every day, without fail." O’Brian laughed.
"Three times a day, huh? Oh,
you’re most definitely an overachiever."
The warmth of his laughter reassured Carol, and with renewed confidence she said, "I
believe I understand what you’re concerned about. You’re wondering if Paul and I
might expect too much of our child."
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"Exactly," O’Brian said. He noticed a speck of lint on his coat sleeve and plucked
it off. "Parents who are overachievers tend to push their kids too hard, too fast,
too soon."
Paul said, "That’s a problem that arises only when parents are unaware of the
danger. Even if Carol and I are overachievers - which I’m not prepared to admit just
yet - we wouldn’t pressure our kids to do more than they were capable of doing. Each
of us has to find his own pace in life. Carol and I realize that a child should be
guided, not hammered into a mold."
"Of course," Carol said.
O’Brian appeared to be pleased. "I knew you’d say that - or something very like it."
Lightning flashed again. This time it seemed to strike even closer than before, only
a block away. Thunder cracked, then cracked again. The overhead lights dimmed,
fluttered, reluctantly came back to full power.
"In my psychiatric practice, I deal with a wide variety of patients who have all
kinds of problems,"
Carol told O’Brian, "but I specialize in the mental disorders and emotional
disturbances of children and adolescents. Sixty or seventy percent of my patients
are seventeen or younger. I’ve treated several kids who’ve suffered serious
psychological damage at the hands of parents who were too demanding, who pushed them
too hard in their schoolwork, in every aspect of their intellectual and personal
development. I’ve seen the wounded ones, Mr. O’Brian, and I’ve nursed them as best I
could, and because of those experiences, I couldn’t possibly turn around and do to
my children what I’ve seen some parents do to theirs. Not that I won’t make
mistakes. I’m sure I will. My full share of them. But the one that you mentioned
won’t be among them."
"That’s valid," O’Brian said, nodding. "Valid and very well put. I’m sure that when
I tell the recommendations committee what you’ve just said, they’ll be quite
satisfied on this point." He spotted another tiny speck on his sleeve and removed
it, frowning as if it were not merely lint, but offal. "Another question they’re
bound to ask: Suppose the child you adopt turns out to be not only an underachiever
but. . . well... basically less intelligent than either of you. For parents as
oriented toward an intellectual life as you are, wouldn’t you be somewhat frustrated
with a child of just average - or possibly slightly below average -  intelligence?"
"Well, even if we were capable of having a child of our own," Paul said, "there
wouldn’t be any guarantee that he’d be a prodigy or anything of that sort. But if he
was. . . slow. . . we’d still love him. Of course we would. And the same goes for
any child we might adopt."
To O’Brian, Carol said, "I think you’ve got too high an opinion of us. Neither of us
is a genius, for heaven’s sake! We’ve gotten as far as we have primarily through
hard work and perseverance, not because
we were exceptionally bright. I wish it had come that easy, but it didn’t."
"Besides," Paul said, "you don’t love a person merely because he’s intelligent. It’s
his entire personality that counts, the whole package, and a lot of factors
contribute to that package, a great many things other than just intellect."
"Good," O’Brian said. "I’m glad to hear you feel that way. The committee will
respond well to that answer, too."
For the past few seconds, Carol had been aware of the distant wail of sirens. Fire
engines. Now they were not as distant as they had been; they were rapidly growing
nearer, louder.
"I think maybe one of those last two bolts of lightning caused some real damage when
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it touched down," Paul said.
O’Brian swung his chair around toward the center window, which was directly behind
his desk. "It did sound as if it struck nearby."
Carol looked at each of the three windows, but she couldn’t see any smoke rising
from behind the nearest rooftops. Then again, the view was blurred and visibility
was reduced by the water-spotted panes of glass and by the curtains of mist and gray
rain that wavered and whipped and billowed beyond the glass.
The sirens swelled.
"More than one truck," O’Brian said.
The fire engines were right outside the office for a moment - at least two trucks,
perhaps three - and then they passed, heading into the next block.
O’Brian pushed up from his chair and stepped to the window.
As the first sirens dwindled just a little, new ones shrieked in the street behind
them.
"Must be serious," Paul said. "Sounds as if at least two engine companies are
responding."
"I see smoke," O’Brian said.
Paul rose from his chair and moved toward the windows to get a better look.
Something’s wrong here.
That thought snapped into Carol’s mind, startling her as if a whip had cracked in
front of her face. A powerful, inexplicable current of panic surged through her,
electrified her. She gripped the arms of her chair so tightly that one of her
fingernails broke.
Something. . . is.. . wrong.. . very wrong...
Suddenly the air was oppressively heavy - hot, thick, as if it were not air at all but
a bitter and poisonous gas of some kind. She tried to breathe, couldn’t. There was
an invisible, crushing weight on her chest.
Get away from the windows!
She tried to shout that warning, but panic had short-circuited her voice. Paul and
O’Brian were at different windows, but they both had their backs to her, so that
neither of them could see she had been gripped by sudden, immobilizing fear.
Fear of what? she demanded of herself. What in the name of God am l so scared of?
She struggled against the unreasonable terror that had locked her muscles and
joints. She started to get up from the chair, and that was when it happened.
A murderous barrage of lightning crashed like a volley of mortar fire, seven or
eight tremendous bolts, perhaps more than that - she didn’t count them, couldn’t count
them - one right after the other, without
a significant pause between them, each fierce boom overlapping the ones before
and after it, yet each clearly louder than its predecessors, so loud that they made
her teeth and bones vibrate, each bolt smashing down discernibly closer to the
building than had the bolt before it, closer to the seven-foot-high windows - the
gleaming, flashing, rattling, now-black, now-milky, now-shining, now-blank,
now-silvery, now-coppery windows.
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The sharp bursts of purple-white light produced a series of jerky, stroboscopic
images that were burned forever into Carol’s memory: Paul and O’Brian standing
there, silhouetted against the natural fireworks, looking small and vulnerable;
outside, the rain descending in an illusion of hesitation; wind-lashed trees heaving
in a strobe-choppy rage; lightning blasting into one of those trees, a big maple,
and then an ominous dark shape rising from the midst of the explosion, a torpedo
like thing, spinning straight toward the center window (all of this transpiring in
only a second or two, but given a queer, slow-motion quality by the flickering
lightning and, after a moment, by the overhead electric light as well, which began
to flicker, too); O’Brian throwing one arm up in front of his face in what appeared
to be half a dozen disconnected movements; Paul turning toward O’Brian and reaching
for him, both men like figures on a motion picture screen when the film slips and
stutters in the projector; O’Brian lurching sideways; Paul seizing him by a coat
sleeve, pulling him back and down toward safety (only a fraction of a second after
the lightning splintered the maple); a huge tree limb bursting through the center
window even as Paul was pulling O’Brian out of the way; one leafy branch sweeping
across O’Brian’s head, ripping his glasses loose, tossing them into the air - his
face, Carol thought, his eyes! - and then Paul and O’Brian falling to the floor, out
of sight; the enormous limb of the shattered maple slamming down on top of O’Brian’s
desk in a spray of water, glass, broken mullions, and smoking chips of bark; the
legs of the desk cracking and collapsing under the brutal impact of the ruined tree.
Carol found herself on the floor, beside her overturned chair. She couldn’t remember
falling.
The fluorescent tubes blinked off, stayed off.
She was lying on her stomach, one cheek pressed to the floor, staring in shock at
the shards of glass and the torn maple leaves that littered the carpet. As lightning
continued to stab down from the turbulent sky, wind roared through the missing
window and stirred some of the loose leaves into a frantic, dervishlike dance;
accompanied by the cacophonous music of the storm, they whirled and capered across
the office, toward a row of green filing cabinets. A calendar flapped off the wall
and swooped around on wings of January and December, darting and soaring and kiting
as if it were a bat. Two paintings rattled on their wire hangers, trying to tear
themselves free. Papers were everywhere - stationery, forms, small sheets from a note
pad, bulletins, a newspaper - all rustling and skipping this way and that, floating
up, diving down, bunching together and slithering along the floor with a snakelike
hiss.
Carol had the eerie feeling that all of the movement in the room was not solely the
result of the wind, that some of it was caused by a . . . presence. Something
threatening. A bad poltergeist. Demonic spirits seemed
to be at work in the office, flexing their occult muscles, knocking things off the
walls, briefly taking up residence in a body composed only of leaves and rumpled
sheets of newsprint.
That was a crazy idea, not at all the sort of thing she would ordinarily think of.
She was surprised and disconcerted by a thrill of superstitious fear that coursed
through her.
Lightning flared again. And again.
Wincing at the painfully sharp sound, wondering if lightning could get into a room
through an open window, she put her arms over her head, for what little protection
they provided.
Her heart was pounding, and her mouth was dry.
She thought about Paul, and her heartbeat grew even more frantic. He was over by the
windows, on the far side of the desk, out of sight, under some of the maple tree’s
branches. She didn’t think he was dead. He hadn’t been directly in the path of the
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tree. O’Brian might be dead, yes, depending on how that small branch had struck his
head, depending on whether he had been lucky or not, because maybe a pointed twig
had been driven deep into his eye and his brain when his glasses had been knocked
off, but Paul was surely alive. Surely. Nevertheless, he could be seriously injured,
bleeding.
Carol started to push herself up onto her hands and knees, anxious to find Paul and
give him any first aid he might need. But another bolt of blinding, ear shattering
lightning spent itself just outside the building, and fear turned her muscles into
wet rags. She didn’t even have the strength to crawl, and she was infuriated by her
weakness, for she had always
been proud of her strength, determination, and unflagging willpower. Cursing
herself, she slumped back to the floor.
Something’s trying to stop us from adopting a baby.
That incredible thought struck her with the same cold, hard force as had the
forewarning of the window's implosion, which had come to her an instant before the
impossible barrage of lightning had blasted into the courtyard.
Something’s trying to stop us from adopting a baby.
No. That was ridiculous. The storm, the lightning - they were nothing more than acts
of nature. They hadn’t been directed against Mr. O’Brian just because he was going
to help them adopt a child.
Absurd.
Oh, yeah? she thought as the deafening thunder and the unholy light of the storm
filled the room. Acts of nature, huh? When have you ever seen lightning like this
before?
She hugged the floor, shaking, cold, more afraid than she had been since she was a
little girl. She tried to tell herself that it was only the lightning that she was
afraid of, for that was very much a legitimate, rational fear, but she knew she was
lying. It was not just the lightning that terrified her. In fact, that was the least
of it. There was something else, something she couldn’t identify, something formless
and nameless in the room, and the very presence of it, whatever the hell it was,
pushed a panic button deep inside her, on a sub-subconscious, primitive level; this
fear was gut-deep, instinctive.
A dervish of windblown leaves and papers whirled across the floor, directly toward
her. It was a big one:
a column about two feet in diameter, five or six feet
high, composed of a hundred or more pieces of this and that. It stopped very near
her, writhing, churning, hissing, changing shape, glimmering silver-dark in the
flashing storm light, and she felt threatened by it. As she stared up at the
whirlwind, she had the mad notion that it was staring down at her. After a moment it
moved off to the left a few feet, then returned, paused in front of her again,
hesitated, then scurried busily to the right, but came back once more, looming above
her as if it were trying to make up its mind whether or not to pounce and tear her
to shreds and sweep her up along with the leaves, newspaper pages, envelopes, and
other flotsam by which it defined itself.
It’s nothing more than a whirlwind of lifeless junk! she told herself angrily.
The wind-shaped phantom moved away from her.
See? she told herself scornfully. Just lifeless junk. What’s wrong with me? Am I
losing my mind?
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She recalled the old axiom that was supposed to provide comfort in moments like
this: If you think you’re going mad, then you must be completely sane, for a lunatic
never has doubts about his sanity. As a psychiatrist, she knew that hoary bit of
wisdom was an oversimplification of complex psychological principles, but in essence
it was true. So she must be sane.
Nevertheless, that frightening, irrational thought came to her again, unbidden,
unwanted: Something’s trying to stop us from adopting a baby.
If the maelstrom in which she lay was not an act of nature, then what was it? Was
she to believe that the lightning had been sent with the conscious intent of
transforming Mr. O’Brian into a smoking heap of charred flesh? That was a fruitcake
notion, for sure.
Who could use lightning as if it were a pistol? God? God wasn’t sitting up in
Heaven, aiming at Mr. O’Brian, popping away at him with lightning bolts, just to
screw up the adoption process for Carol and Paul Tracy. The Devil? Blasting away at
poor Mr. O’Brian from the depths of Hell? That was a looney idea. Jesus!
She wasn’t even sure she believed in God, but she knew she definitely did not
believe in the Devil.
Another window imploded, showering glass over her.
Then the lightning stopped.
The thunder decreased from a roar to a rumble, fading like the noise of a passing
freight train.
There was a stench of ozone.
The wind was still pouring in through the broken windows, but apparently with less
force than it had exerted a moment ago, for the whirling columns of leaves and
papers subsided to the floor, where they lay in piles, fluttering and quivering as
if exhausted.
Something...
Something...
Something’s trying to stop us from -  She clamped off that unwanted thought as though
it were a spurting artery. She was an educated woman, dammit. She prided herself on
her levelheadedness and common sense. She couldn’t permit herself to succumb to
these disturbing, uncharacteristic, utterly superstitious fears.
Freaky weather - that was the explanation for the lightning. Freaky weather. You read
about such things in the newspapers every once in a while. A half an inch of snow in
Beverly Hills. An eighty-degree day in the middle of an otherwise frigid Minnesota
winter.
Rain falling briefly from an apparently cloudless blue sky. Although a lightning
strike of this magnitude and intensity was undoubtedly a rare occurrence, it
probably had happened before, sometime, somewhere, probably more than once. Of
course it had. Of course.
In fact, if you picked up one of those popular books in which the authors compiled
all kinds of world records, and if you turned to the chapter on weather, and if you
looked for a subsection entitled "Lightning," you would most likely find an
impressive list of other serial lightning strikes that would put this one to shame.
Freaky weather. That’s what it was. That’s all it was. Nothing stranger than that,
nothing worse.
For the time being, at least, Carol managed to put aside all thoughts of demons and
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ghosts and malign poltergeists and other such claptrap.
In the relative quiet that followed in the wake of the fast-diminishing thunder, she
felt her strength returning. She pushed up from the floor, onto her knees. With the
clinking sound of mildly disturbed wind chimes, pieces of glass fell from her gray
skirt and green blouse; she wasn’t cut or even scratched. She was a bit dazed,
however, and for a moment the floor appeared to roll sickeningly from side to side,
as if this were a stateroom aboard a ship.
In the office next door, a woman began to cry hysterically. There were shouts of
alarm, and someone began calling for Mr. O’Brian. No one had yet burst into the
office to see what had happened, which meant that only a second or two had elapsed
since the lightning had stopped, although it seemed to Carol as if a minute or two
had passed.
Over by the windows, someone groaned softly.
‘Paul?" she said.
if there was an answer, it was drowned out by a sudden gust of wind that briefly
stirred the papers and leaves again.
She recalled the way that branch had whipped across O’Brian’s head, and she
shuddered. But Paul hadn’t been touched. The tree had missed him. Hadn’t it?
"Paul !"
With renewed fear, she got to her feet and moved quickly around the desk, stepping
over splintered maple branches and an overturned wastebasket.
2
THAT Wednesday afternoon, following a lunch of Campbell’s vegetable soup and a
grilled cheese sandwich, Grace Mitowski went into her study and curled up on the
sofa to sleep for an hour or so. She never napped in the bedroom because that
formalized it somehow, and though she had been taking naps three or four days a week
for the past year, she still had not reconciled herself to the fact that she needed
a midday rest. To her way of thinking, naps were for children and for old, used-up,
burnt-out people. She wasn’t in her childhood any more - neither the first nor the
second, thank you - and although she was old, she certainly wasn’t used up or burnt
out. Being in bed in the middle of the day made her feel lazy, and she couldn’t
abide laziness in anyone, especially not in herself. Therefore, she took naps on the
study sofa, with her back to the shuttered windows, lulled by the monotonous ticking
of the mantel clock.
At seventy, Grace was still as mentally agile and energetic as she had ever been.
Her gray matter hadn’t begun to deteriorate at all; it was only her treacherous body
that caused her grief and frustration. She had a touch of arthritis in her hands,
and when the humidity was high - as it was today - she also suffered from a dull but
unrelenting ache of bursitis in her shoulders. Although she did all of the exercises
that her doctor recommended, and although she walked two miles every morning, she
found it increasingly difficult to maintain her muscle tone. From the time she was a
young girl, throughout most of her life, she had been in love with books, and she
had been able to read all morning, all afternoon, and most of the evening without
eyestrain; nowadays, usually after only a couple of hours of reading, her eyes felt
grainy and hot. She regarded each of her infirmities with extreme indignation, and
she struggled against them, even though she knew this was a war she was destined to
lose.
That Wednesday afternoon she took a break from the battle, a brief period of R and
R. Two minutes after she stretched out on the sofa, she was asleep.
Grace did not dream often, and she was even less often plagued by bad dreams. But
Wednesday afternoon, in the book-lined study, her sleep was continuously disturbed
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by nightmares. Several times she stirred, came half awake, and heard herself gasping
in panic. Once, drifting up from some hideous and threatening vision, she heard her
own voice crying out wordlessly in terror, and she realized she was thrashing on the
couch, twisting and torturing her
aching shoulders. She tried to come fully awake, but she could not; something in the
dream, something dark and menacing, reached up with icy, clammy hands and pulled her
down into deep sleep again, down and down, all the way down into a lightless place
where an unnamable creature gibbered and muttered and chuckled in a mucous-wet
voice.
An hour later, when she finally woke up and managed to cast off the clutching dream,
she was standing in the middle of the shadow-shrouded room, several steps away from
the sofa, but she had no memory of getting to her feet. She was shaking, sheathed in
sweat.
 - I’ve got to tell Carol Tracy.
 - Tell her what?
 - Warn her.
 - Warn her about what?
 - It’s coming. Oh, God...
 - What’s coming?
 - Just like in the dream.
 - What about the dream?
Already her memory of the nightmare had begun to dissolve; only fragments of it
remained with her, and each of those disassociated images was evaporating as if it
were a splinter of dry ice. All she could remember was that Carol had been a part of
it, and had been in awful danger. And somehow she knew that the dream had been more
than just an ordinary dream....
As the nightmare receded, Grace became uncomfortably aware of how gloomy the study
was. Before taking her nap, she had switched off the lamps. The shutters were all
closed, and only thin blades of light Were visible between the wooden slats. She had
the irrational but unshakable feeling that something had followed her up from the
dream, something vicious and evil that had undergone a magical metamorphosis from a
creature of the imagination into one composed of solid flesh, something that was now
crouched in a corner, watching, waiting.
 - Stop it!
 - But the dream was...
 - Only a dream.
Along the edges of the shutters, the taut threads of light abruptly brightened, then
dimmed, then grew bright again as lightning flashed outside. A roof-rattling crash
of thunder quickly followed, and more lightning, too, an unbelievable amount of it,
one blue-white explosion after another, so that for at least half a minute the
cracks in the shutters looked like sputtering electrical wires, white-hot with
sparking current.
Still drugged with sleep and slightly confused, Grace stood in the middle of the
unlighted room, rocking from side to side, listening to the thunder and the wind,
watching the intense pulse of lightning. The extreme violence of the storm seemed
unreal, and she concluded that she was still under the influence of the dream,
misinterpreting what she was seeing. It couldn’t possibly be as savage outside as it
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appeared to be.
"Grace..."
She thought she heard something call to her from over by the tallest set of
bookshelves, directly behind her. Judging from its slurred, distorted pronunciation
of her name, its mouth was severely malformed.
There’s nothing behind me! Nothing.
Nevertheless, she did not turn around.
When the lightning finally stopped and the long-sustained crescendo of thunder
subsided, the air seemed thicker than it had been a minute ago. She had difficulty
breathing. The room was darker, too.
‘Grace. .
A confining mantle of claustrophobia settled over her. The dimly visible walls
appeared to ripple and move closer, as if the chamber might shrink around her until
it was precisely the size and shape of a coffin.
"Grace. .
She stumbled to the nearest window, banging her hip against the desk, nearly
tripping over a lamp cord. She fumbled with the lever on the shutters, her fingers
stiff and unresponsive. At last the slats opened wide; gray but welcome light poured
into the study; forcing her to squint but gladdening her as well. She leaned against
the shutters and stared out at the cloud-plated sky, resisting the insane urge to
look over her shoulder to see if there really was something monstrous lurking there
with a hungry grin on its face. She drew deep, gasping breaths, as if the daylight
itself - rather than the air - sustained her.
Grace’s house was atop a small knoll, at the end of a quiet street, sheltered by
several large pine trees and by one enormous weeping willow; from her study window
she could see the rain-swollen Susquehanna a couple of miles away. Harrisburg, the
state capital, huddled solemnly, drearily along the river’s banks. The clouds hung
low over the city, trailing bedraggled beards of mist that obscured the upper floors
of the tallest buildings.
When she’d blinked the last grains of sleep out of her eyes, when her nerves had
stopped jangling, she turned around and surveyed the room. A quiver of relief swept
through her, unknotting her muscles.
She was alone.
With the storm temporarily quiet, she could hear the mantel clock again. It was the
only sound.
Hell, yes, you’re alone, she told herself scornfully. What did you expect? A green
goblin with three eyes and a mouthful of sharp teeth? You better watch yourself,
Grace Louise Mitowski, or you’ll wind up in a rest home, sitting all day in a
rocking chair, happily chatting with ghosts, while smiling nurses wipe drool off
your chin.
Having led an active life of the mind for so many years, she worried more about
creeping senility than about anything else. She knew she was as sharp and alert as
she had ever been. But what about tomorrow and the day after? Because of her medical
training, and because she had kept up with her professional reading even after
closing down her psychiatric practice, she was up to date on all the latest findings
about senility, and she knew that only fifteen percent of all elderly people
suffered from it. She also knew that more than half of those cases were treatable
with proper nutrition and exercise. She knew her chances of becoming mentally
incapacitated were small, only about one in eighteen. Nevertheless, although she was
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conscious of her excessive sensitivity regarding the subject, she still worried.
Consequently, she was understandably disturbed by this uncharacteristic notion that
something had been in the study with her a few moments ago, something hostile and. .
. supernatural. As a lifelong skeptic with little or no patience for astrologers and
psychics and their ilk, she could not justify even a fleeting belief in such
superstitious non-sense; to her way of thinking, beliefs of that nature were. . .
well. . . feebleminded.
But good, sweet God, what a nightmare that had been!
She had never before experienced a dream even one-tenth as bad as that one. Although
the grisly details had completely faded away, she could still clearly remember the
mood of it - the terror, the gut-wrenching horror that had permeated every nasty
image, every ticking sound.
She shivered.
The sweat that the dream had squeezed out of her was beginning to feel like a thin
glaze of ice on her skin.
The only other thing she remembered from the nightmare was Carol. Screaming. Crying
for help.
Until now, none of Grace’s infrequent dreams had included Carol, and there was a
temptation to view her appearance in this one with alarm, to see it as an omen. But
of course it wasn’t surprising that Carol should eventually have a role in one of
Grace’s dreams, for the loved-one-in-danger theme was common in nightmares. Any
psychologist would attest to that, and Grace was a psychologist, a good one,
although she was entering her third year of retirement. She cared deeply about
Carol. If she’d had a child of her own, she couldn’t have loved it any more than she
loved Carol.
She had first met the girl sixteen years ago, when Carol had been an angry,
obstinate, obstreperous fifteen-year-old delinquent who had recently given birth to
a baby that had nearly killed her, and who, subsequent to that traumatic episode,
had been remanded
to a juvenile detention facility for possession of marijuana and for a host of other
offenses. In those days, in addition to a private psychiatric practice, Grace had
performed eight hours a week of free service to assist the overworked counseling
staff at the reform school in which Carol was held. Carol was incorrigible,
determined to kick you in the teeth if you smiled at her, but even then her
intelligence and innate goodness were there, to be seen by anyone who looked closely
enough, beneath the rough exterior. Grace had taken a very close look indeed, and
had been intrigued, impressed. The girl’s obsessively foul language, her vicious
temper, and her amoral pose had been nothing more than defense mechanisms, shields
with which she protected herself from the physical and psychological abuse dished
out by her parents.
As Grace gradually unearthed the horrendous story of Carol’s monstrous home life,
she became convinced that reform school was the wrong place for the girl. She used
her influence with the court to get Carol permanently removed from the custody of
her parents. Later, she arranged to serve as Carol’s foster parent. She had watched
the girl respond to love and guidance, had watched her grow from a brooding, self
centered, self-destructive teenager into a warm, self-assured, admirable young woman
with hopes and dreams, a woman of character, a sensitive woman. Playing a part in
that exciting transformation had been perhaps the most satisfying thing that Grace
had ever done.
The only regret she had about her relationship with Carol was the role she had
played in putting the baby up for adoption. But there had been no reasonable
alternative. Carol simply hadn’t been financially or emotionally or mentally capable
of providing for the infant. With that responsibility to attend to, she would never
have had an opportunity to grow and change. She would have been miserable all her
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life, and she would have made her child miserable, too. Unfortunately, even now,
sixteen years later, Carol felt guilty about giving her baby away. Her guilt became
overpowering on each anniversary of the child’s birth. On that black day, Carol sank
into a deep depression and became uncharacteristically uncommunicative. The
excessive anguish that she suffered on that one day was evidence of the deep-seated,
abiding guilt that she carried with her, to a lesser degree, during the rest of the
year. Grace wished she had foreseen this reaction, wished she had done more to
assuage Carol’s guilt.
I’m a psychologist, after all, she thought. I should have anticipated it.
Perhaps when Carol and Paul adopted someone else’s child, Carol would feel that the
scales had at last been balanced. The adoption might relieve some of her guilt, in
time.
Grace hoped it would. She loved Carol like a daughter and wanted only the best for
her.
And of course she couldn’t bear the thought of losing Carol. Therefore, Carol’s
appearance in a nightmare wasn’t the least bit mysterious. It was certainly not an
omen.
Clammy with stale sweat, Grace turned to the study window again, seeking warmth and
light, but the day was ashen, chilly, forbidding. Wind pressed on the glass, soughed
softly under the eaves one floor above.
In the city, near the river, a roiling column of smoke rose into the rain and mist.
She had not noticed it a minute ago, but it must have been there; it was too much
smoke to have appeared in only a few seconds. Even from this distance, she could see
a glint of fire at the base of the dark column.
She wondered if lightning had done the dirty work. She recalled the storm flashing
and roaring with extraordinary power in those first seconds after she had awakened.
At the time, groggy and bleary-eyed, she had thought her sleep-dulled senses were
misleading her and that the extreme violence of the lightning was largely illusory
or even imaginary. Could that incredible, destructive barrage have been real after
all?
She glanced at her wristwatch.
Her favorite radio station would carry its hourly newscast in less than ten minutes.
Maybe there would be a story about the fire and the lightning.
After she’d straightened the throw pillows on the sofa, she stepped out of the study
and spotted Aristophanes at the far end of the downstairs hall, near the front door.
He was sitting up straight and tall, his tail curled forward and across his front
paws, his head held high, as if he were saying, "A Siamese cat is the very best
thing on earth, and I am an exceedingly handsome example of the species, and don’t
you dare forget it."
Grace held one hand toward him, rapidly rubbing her thumb against her forefinger.
"Kitty-kitty-kitty."
Aristophanes didn’t move.
"Kitty-kitty-kitty. Come here, Ari. Come on, baby."
Aristophanes got up and went through the archway on his left, into the dark living
room.
"Stubborn damn cat," she said affectionately.
She went into the downstairs bathroom and washed her face and combed her hair. The
mundane task of grooming herself took her mind off the nightmare. Gradually, she
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began to relax. Her eyes were watery and bloodshot. She rinsed them out with a few
drops of Murine.
When she came out of the bathroom, Aristophanes was sitting in the hallway again,
watching her.
"Kitty-kitty-kitty," she coaxed.
He stared unblinkingly.
"Kitty-kitty-kitty."
Aristophanes rose to his feet, cocked his head, and examined her with curious,
shining eyes. When she took a step toward him, he turned and quickly slunk away,
casting one backward glance, then disappearing into the living room again.
"Okay," Grace said. "Okay, buster. Have it your way. Snub me if you want. But just
see if there’s any Meow Mix in your bowl tonight."
In the kitchen she snapped on the lights, then the radio. The station came in
clearly enough, though there was a continuous crackle of storm-generated static.
While she listened to tales of economic crises and breathless accounts of airplane
hijackings and rumors of war, Grace put a clean paper filter in the coffee machine,
filled the brewing basket with drip-ground Colombian, and added half a spoonful of
chicory. The story of the fire came at the end of the newscast, and it was only a
sketchy bulletin. The reporter knew nothing more than that lightning had struck a
couple of buildings in the heart of the city and that one of them, a church, was
afire. He promised more details on the half hour.
When the coffee was ready, Grace poured some for herself. She took her mug to the
small table by the kitchen’s only window, pulled out a chair, and sat down.
In the backyard, the myriad roses - red, pink, orange, white, yellow - looked
preternaturally bright, almost phosphorescent, against the cinereous backdrop of the
rain.
Two psychology journals had arrived in the morning mail. Grace opened one of them
with pleasant anticipation.
Halfway through an article about new findings in criminal psychology, as she
finished her first mug of coffee, there was a pause between songs on the radio, a
few seconds of dead air, and in that brief quietude, she heard furtive movement
behind her. She turned in her chair and saw Aristophanes.
"Come to apologize?" she asked.
Then she realized that he appeared to have been sneaking up on her, and that now,
confronted, he was frozen; every lithe muscle in his small body was spring-taut, and
the fur bristled along his arched back.
"Ari? What’s wrong, you silly cat?"
He whirled and ran out of the kitchen.
3
CAROL sat in a chrome chair with shiny black vinyl cushions, and she slowly sipped
whiskey from a paper cup.
Paul slumped in the chair next to hers. He didn’t sip his whiskey; he gulped the
stuff. It was an excellent bourbon, Jack Daniel’s Black Label, thoughtfully provided
by an attorney named Marvin Kwicker, who had offices down the hail from Alfred
O’Brian and Who realized that a restorative was urgently needed. Pouring bourbon for
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Carol, Marvin had said, "Kwicker With liquor," which he had probably said ten
thousand times before, but he still enjoyed his own joke. "Kwicker with liquor," he
repeated when dispensing a double shot to Paul. Although Paul wasn’t much of a
drinker, he needed every drop that the attorney gave him. His hands were still
shaking.
The reception lounge that served O’Brian’s office was not large, but most of the
people who worked on the same floor had congregated here to talk about the lightning
that had shaken the building, to marvel that the place hadn’t caught fire, to
express surprise that the electric power had been restored so quickly, and to wait
their turns for a peek at the nibble and ruin in O’Brian’s inner sanctum. The
resultant roar of conversation did nothing to soothe Paul’s nerves.
Every thirty seconds or so, a bleached blonde with a shrill voice repeated the same
words of amazement:
"I can’t believe nobody got killed in all that! I can’t believe nobody got killed."
Each time she spoke, regardless of where she was in the room, her voice carried over
the din and made Paul wince. "I can’t believe nobody got killed." She sounded
somewhat disappointed.
Alfred O’Brian was sitting at the reception desk. His secretary, a prim-looking
woman whose hair was drawn back in a tight bun, was trying to apply Merthiolate to
half a dozen scratches on her boss’s face, but O’Brian seemed more concerned about
the condition of his suit than he was about himself. He plucked and brushed at the
dirt, lint, and small fragments of tree bark that clung to his jacket.
Paul finished his whiskey and looked at Carol. She was still badly shaken.
Contrasted with her glossy dark hair, her face was very pale.
Apparently, she saw the concern in his eyes, for she took his hand, squeezed it, and
smiled reassuringly. However, the smile didn’t set well on her lips; it was
tremulous.
He leaned close to her, so that she could hear him above the excited chatter of the
others. "Ready to get out of here?"
She nodded.
Over by the window, a young executive type raised his voice. "Hey! Hey, everybody!
Better look sharp. The TV news people just drove up to the front door."
"If we get trapped by reporters," Carol said, "we’ll be here an hour or more."
They left without saying goodbye to O’Brian. In the hall, as they headed toward a
side entrance, they slipped into their raincoats. Outside, Paul opened his umbrella
and put one arm around Carol’s waist. They hurried across the slippery macadam
parking lot, stepping gingerly around huge puddles. The gusting wind was chilly for
early September, and it kept changing direction until it finally got under the
umbrella and turned it inside out. The cold, wind-driven rain was falling so hard
that it stung Paul’s face. By the time they reached the car, their hair was
plastered to their heads, and a lot of water had found its way down the backs of
their necks, under the collars of their coats.
Paul half expected the Pontiac to be lightning-damaged, but it was just as they had
left it. The engine turned over without protest.
Leaving the parking lot, he started to turn left but put his foot on the brake pedal
when he saw that the street was sealed off by police cars and fire trucks just half
a block away. The church was still ablaze, in spite of the pouring rain and in
defiance of the big streams of water that the firemen directed onto it.
Black smoke billowed into the gray day, and behind the blasted windows, flames
spurted and churned.
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Clearly, the church was going to be a total loss.
He turned right, instead, and drove home through rain-choked streets. where the
gutters overflowed and where every depression in the pavement had been transformed
into a treacherous lake that had to be negotiated with utmost caution to avoid
drowning the engine and stalling out.
Carol slouched in her seat and huddled against the passenger-side door, hugging
herself. Although the heater was on, she was obviously cold.
Paul realized his teeth were chattering.
The trip home took ten minutes. and during that time neither of them said a word.
The only sounds were the whispery hiss of the tires on the wet pavement and the
metronomic thump of the windshield wipers. The silence was not uncomfortable or
strained, but there was a peculiar intensity about it, an aura of tremendous,
pent-up energy. Paul had the feeling that if he did speak, the surprise would send
Carol straight through the roof of the car.
They lived in a Tudor-style house, which they had painstakingly restored, and as
always. the sight of it - the stone walk, the big oak doors framed by carriage lamps,
the leaded-glass windows, the gabled roofline - pleased Paul and gave him the warm
feeling that this was where he belonged. The automatic garage door rolled up, and he
pulled the Pontiac inside, next to Carol’s red Volkswagen Rabbit.
In the house, they maintained their silence.
Paul’s hair was wet, and the legs of his trousers clung damply to him, and the back
of his shirt was still soaked. He figured he was going to come down with a nasty
cold if he didn’t get into some dry clothes right away. Apparently, Carol had the
same thought, and they went straight upstairs to the master bedroom.
She opened the closet doors, and he switched on a bedside lamp. Shivering, they
stripped out of their wet clothes.
When they were nearly undressed, they glanced at each other. Their eyes locked.
Still, they didn’t speak. They didn’t need to.
He took her in his arms, and they kissed lightly at first, tenderly. Her mouth was
warm and soft and vaguely flavored with whiskey.
She clutched him, pulled him closer, her fingertips digging into the muscles of his
back. She pushed her mouth hard against his, scraped his lip with her teeth, thrust
her tongue deep, and abruptly their kisses grew hot, demanding.
Something seemed to snap in him, and in her, too, for their desire was suddenly
marked by animal urgency. They responded to each other in a hungry, almost frenzied
fashion, hastily casting off the last of their clothes, pawing at each other,
squeezing, stroking. She nipped his shoulder with her teeth. He gripped her buttocks
and kneaded them with uncharacteristic crudity, but she didn’t wince or try to pull
away; indeed, she pressed even more insistently against him, rubbing her breasts
over his chest and grinding her hips against his. The soft whimpers that escaped
from her were not sounds of pain; they clearly expressed her eagerness and need. In
bed, his energy was manic, and his staying power amazed him. He was insatiable, and
so was she. They thrust and thrashed and flexed and tensed in perfect harmony, as if
they were not only joined but fused, as if they were a single organism, shaken by
only one set of stimuli instead of two. Every vestige of civilization slipped from
them, and for a long while the only noises they made were animal sounds: panting;
groaning; throaty grunts of pleasure; short, sharp cries of excitement. At last
Carol uttered the first word to pass between them since they had left O’Brian’s
office:
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"Yes." And again, arching her slender, graceful body, tossing her head from side to
side on the pillow: "Yes, yes!" It was not merely an orgasm to which she was saying
yes, for she’d already had a couple of those and had announced them with only ragged
breathing and soft mewling. She was saying yes to life, yes to the fact that she
still existed and was not just a charred and oozing lump of unanimated flesh, yes to
the miraculous fact that they had both survived the lightning and the deadly,
splintered branches of the toppling maple tree. Their unrestrained, fiercely
passionate coupling was a slap in Death’s face, a not wholly rational but
nevertheless satisfying denial of the grim specter’s very existence. Paul repeated
the word as if chanting an incantation - "Yes, yes, yes!" - as he emptied himself into
her a second time, and it seemed as though his fear of death spurted out of him
along with his seed.
Spent, they stretched out on their backs, side by side on the disheveled bed. For a
long time they listened to the rain on the roof and to the persistent thunder, which
was no longer loud enough to rattle the windows.
Carol lay with her eyes closed, her face completely relaxed. Paul studied her, and,
as he had done on countless other occasions during the past four years, he wondered
why she had ever consented to marry him. She was beautiful. He was not. Anyone
putting together a dictionary could do worse than to use a picture of his face as
the sole definition of the word plain. He had once jokingly expressed a similar
opinion of his physical appearance, and Carol had been angry with him for talking
about himself that way.
But it was true, and it didn’t really matter to him that he was not Burt Reynolds,
just so long as Carol didn’t notice the difference. It was not only his plainness
of which she seemed unaware; she could not comprehend her own beauty, and she
insisted she was actually rather plain, or at least no more than "a little bit
pretty, no, not even pretty, just sort of cute, but kind of funny-looking cute." Her
dark hair - even now, when it was matted and curled by rain and sweat - was thick,
glossy, lovely. Her skin was flawless, and her cheekbones were so well sculpted that
it was difficult to believe the clumsy hand of nature could have done the job. Carol
was the kind of woman you saw on the arm of a tall, bronzed Adonis, not with the
likes of Paul Tracy. Yet here she was, and he was grateful to have her beside him.
He never ceased to be surprised that they were compatible in every respect - mentally,
emotionally, physically.
Now, as rain began to beat on the roof and windows with renewed force, Carol sensed
that he was staring at her, and she opened her eyes. They were so brown that, from a
distance of more than a few inches, they looked black. She smiled. "I love you."
"I love you," he said.
"I thought you were dead."
"Wasn’t."
"After the lightning stopped, I called you, but you didn’t answer for the longest
time."
"I was busy with a call to Chicago," he said, grinning.
"Seriously."
"Okay. It was San Francisco."
"I was scared."
"I couldn’t answer you right away," he said soothingly. "In case you’ve forgotten,
O’Brian fell on top of me, Knocked the wind right out. He doesn’t look so big, but
he’s as solid as a rock. I guess he builds a lot of muscles by picking lint off his
suits and shining his shoes nine hours a day."
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"That was a pretty brave thing you did."
"Making love m you? Think nothing of it."
Playfully, she slapped his face. "You know what I mean. You save O’Brian’s life."
"Nope."
"Yes, you did. He thought so, too."
"For God’s sake, I didn’t step in front of him and shield him from the tree with
mine own precious bod! I just pulled him out of the way. Anyone would have done the
same."
She shook her head. "Wrong. Not everyone thinks as fast as you do."
"A fast thinker, huh? Yeah. That’s something I’ll admit to being. I’m a fast
thinker, but I’m sure no hero. I won’t let you pin that label on me because then
you’ll expect me to live up to it. Can you just imagine what a hell on earth
Superman’s life would be if he ever married Lois Lane? Her expectations would be so
high!"
"Anyway," Carol said, "even if you won’t admit it, O’Brian knows you saved his life,
and that’s the important thing."
"It is?"
"Well, I was pretty sure the adoption agency would approve us. But now there’s not
the slightest doubt about it."
"There’s always a slim chance - "
"No," she said, interrupting him. "O’Brian’s not going to fail you after you saved
his life. Not a chance.
He’s going to wrap the recommendations committee around his finger."
Paul blinked, then slowly broke into a smile. "I’ll
be damned. I didn’t think of that."
"So you’re a hero, Papa."
"Well.. . maybe I am, Mama."
"I think I prefer ‘Mom."
"And I prefer ‘Dad."
"What about ‘Pop’?"
"Pop isn’t a name. It’s a sound a champagne cork makes."
"Are you suggesting a celebration?" she asked.
"I thought we’d put on our robes, mosey down to the kitchen, and whip up an early
dinner. If you’re hungry, that is."
"Famished."
"You can make a mushroom salad," he said. "I’ll whip up my famous fettuccine
Alfredo. We’ve got a bottle or two of Mumm’s Extra Dry we’ve been saving for a
special occasion. We’ll open that, pile our plates high with fettuccine Alfredo and
mushrooms, come back up here, and have dinner in bed."
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"And watch the TV news while we eat."
"Then pass the evening reading thrillers and sipping champagne until we can’t keep
our eyes open."
"Sounds wonderfully, sinfully lazy," she said.
More evenings than not, he spent two hours proofreading and polishing his novel. And
it was an unusual night when Carol didn’t have some paperwork to catch up on.
As they dressed in robes and bedroom slippers,
Paul said, "We’ve got to learn to take most evenings off. We’ll have to spend plenty
of time with the kid. We’ll owe it to him."
"Or her."
"Or them," he said.
Her eyes shone. "You think they’ll let us adopt more than one?"
"Of course they will - once we’ve proven we can handle the first. After all," he said
self-mockingly, "am I not the hero who saved good old Al O’Brian’s life?"
On their way to the kitchen, halfway down the stairs, she stopped and turned and
hugged him. ‘We’re really going to have a family."
"So it seems."
"Oh, Paul, I don’t remember when I’ve ever been so happy. Tell me this feeling’s
going to last forever."
He held her, and it was very fine to have her in his arms. When you got right down
to it, affection was even better than sex; being needed and loved was better than
making love.
"Tell me nothing can go wrong," she said.
"Nothing can go wrong, and that feeling you have will last forever, and I’m glad
you’re so happy. There.
How’s that?"
She kissed his chin and the corners of his mouth, and he kissed her nose.
"Now," he said, "can we please get some fettuccine before I start chewing my
tongue?"
"Such a romantic."
"Even romantics get hungry."
As they reached the bottom of the steps, they were startled by a sudden, loud
hammering sound. It was
steady but arrhythmic: Thwsk, thunk, thunk-thunkthunk, thunk-thunk...
Carol said, "What the devil’s that?"
"It’s coming from outside.. . and above us."
They stood on the last step, looking up and back toward the second floor.
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Thunk, thunk-thunk, thunk, thunk...
"Damn," Paul said. "I’ll bet one of the shutters came loose in the wind." They
listened for a moment, and then he sighed. "I’ll have to go out and fix it,"
"Now? In the rain?"
"If I don’t do anything, the wind might tear it clean off the house. Worse yet, it
might just hang there and clatter all night. We won’t get any sleep, and neither
will half the neighborhood."
She frowned. "But the lightning. . .Paul, after everything that’s happened, I don’t
think you should risk climbing around on a ladder in the middle of a storm."
He didn’t like the idea, either. The thought of being high on a ladder in the middle
of a thunderstorm made his scalp prickle.
She said, "I don’t want you to go out there if - "
The hammering stopped.
They waited.
Wind. The patter of rain. The branches of a tree scraping lightly against an outside
wall.
At last, Paul said, "Too late. If it was a shutter, it’s been torn off."
"I didn’t hear it fall."
"It wouldn’t make much noise if it dropped in the grass or the shrubbery."
"So you don’t have to go out in the rain," she said, crossing the foyer toward the
short hall that led to the kitchen.
He followed her. "Yeah, but now it’s a bigger repair job.
As they entered the kitchen, their footsteps echoing hollowly off the quarry-tile
floor, she said, "You don’t have to worry about it until tomorrow or the day after.
Right now, all you’ve got to worry about is the sauce for the fettuccine. Don’t let
it curdle."
Taking a copper saucepan from a rack of gleaming utensils that hung over the center
utility island, he pretended to be insulted by her remark. "Have I ever curdled the
sauce for the fettuccine?"
"Seems to me the last time you made it, the stuff
was - "
"Never!"
"Yes," she said teasingly. "Yes, it definitely wasn’t up to par the last time." She
took a plastic bag of mushrooms from the big, stainless-steel refrigerator.
"Although it breaks my heart to tell you this, the last time you made fettuccine
Alfredo, the sauce was as lumpy as the mattress in a ten-dollar-a-night motel."
"What a vile accusation! Besides, what makes you such an expert on
ten-dollar-a-night motels? Are you leading a secret life I ought to know about?"
Together, they prepared dinner, chatting about this and that, bantering a lot,
flying to amuse each other and to elicit a laugh now and then. For Paul, the world
dwindled until they were the only two people in it. The universe was no larger than
the warm, familiar kitchen.
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Then lightning flickered, and the cozy mood was broken. It was soft lightning,
nothing as dazzling and destructive as the bolts that had struck outside of
O’Brian’s office a few hours ago. Nevertheless, Paul stopped talking in midsentence,
his attention captured by the flash, his eyes drawn to the long, many-paned window
behind the sink. On the rear lawn, the trees appeared to writhe and shimmer and
ripple in the fluttering storm light, so that it seemed he was looking not at the
trees themselves but at their reflections in the surface of a lake.
Suddenly, another movement caught his eye, though he wasn’t sure what he was seeing.
The afternoon, which had been gray and dark to begin with, was now gradually giving
away to an early night, and thin fog was drifting in. Shadows lay everywhere.
The meager daylight was deceptive, muddy; it distorted rather than illuminated those
things it touched. In that penumbral landscape, something abruptly darted out from
behind the thick trunk of an oak tree, crossed a stretch of open grass, and quickly
disappeared behind a lilac bush.
Carol said, "Paul? What’s wrong?"
"Someone’s out on the lawn."
"In this rain? Who?"
"I don’t know."
She joined him by the window. "I don’t see anybody."
"Someone ran from the oak to the lilac bush. He was hunched over and moving pretty
fast."
"What’s he look like?"
"I can’t say. I’m not even sure it was a man. Might have been a woman."
"Maybe it was just a dog."
"Too big."
"Could’ve been Jasper."
Jasper was the Great Dane that belonged to the
Hanrahan family, three doors down the street. He was a large, piercing-eyed,
friendly animal with an amazing tolerance for small children and a liking for Oreo
cookies.
"They wouldn’t let Jasper out in weather like this," Paul said. "They pamper that
mutt."
Lightning pulsed softly again, and a violent gust of wind whipped the trees back and
forth, and rain began to fall harder than before - and in the middle of that
maelstrom, something rushed out from the lilac bush.
"There!" Paul said.
The intruder crouched low, obscured by the rain and the mist, a shadow among
shadows. It was illuminated so briefly and strangely by the lightning that its true
appearance remained tantalizingly at the edge of perception. It loped toward the
brick wall that marked the perimeter of the property, vanished for a moment in an
especially dense patch of fog, reappeared as an amorphous black shape, then changed
direction, paralleling the wall now, heading toward the gate at the northwest corner
of the rear lawn. As the darkening sky throbbed with lightning once more, the
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intruder fled through electric-blue flashes, through the open gate, into the street,
and away.
"Just the dog," Carol said.
Paul frowned. "I thought I saw... .
"What?’
"A face. A woman looking back. . . just for a second, just as she went through the
gate."
"No," Carol said. "It was Jasper."
"You saw him?"
"Clearly?"
"Well, no, not clearly. But I could see enough to tell that it was a dog the size of
a small pony, and Jasper’s the only pooch around who fits that description."
"I guess Jasper’s a lot smarter than he used to be."
Carol blinked. "What do you mean?"
"Well, he had to unlatch the gate to get into the yard. He never used to be able to
do that trick."
"Oh, of course he didn’t. We must have left the gate open."
Paul shook his head. "I’m sure it was closed when we drove up a while ago."
"Closed, maybe - but not latched. The wind pushed it open, and Jasper wandered in."
Paul stared out at the rain-slashed fog, which glowed dully with the last somber
rays of the fading twilight. "I guess you’re right," he said, though he was not
entirely convinced. "I better go latch the gate."
"No, no," Carol said quickly. "Not while the storm’s on."
"Now look here, sugarface, I’m not going to jump into bed and pull the blankets over
my head every time there’s a little thunder - just because of what happened this
afternoon."
"I don’t expect you to," she said. "But before you start dancing in the rain like
Gene Kelly, you’ve got to let me get over what happened today. It’s still too fresh
in my mind for me to stand here watching you while you cavort across the lawn in the
lightning."
"it’ll only take a moment and - "
"Say, are you trying to get out of making that fettuccine?" she asked, cocking her
head and looking at him suspiciously.
"Certainly not. I’ll finish making it as soon as I’ve gone and closed the gate."
"I know what you’re up to, mister," she said smugly. "You’re hoping you will be
struck by lightning because you know your sauce is going to turn out lumpy, and you
simply can’t take the humiliation."
"That’s a base canard," he said, falling easily into their game again. "I make the
silkiest fettuccine Alfredo this side of Rome. Silkier than Sophia Loren’s thighs."
"All I know is, the last time you made it, the stuff was as lumpy as a bowl of
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oatmeal."
"I thought you said it was as lumpy as a mattress in a ten-dollar-a-night motel."
She lifted her head proudly. "I’m not just a one-simile woman, you know."
"How well I know."
"So are you going to make fettuccine - or will you take the coward’s way out and get
killed by lightning?"
"I’ll make you eat your words," he said.
Grinning, she said, "That’s easier than eating your lumpy fettuccine."
He laughed. "All right, all right. You win. I can latch the gate in the morning."
He returned to the stove, and she went back to the cutting board where she was
mincing parsley and scallions for the salad dressing.
He knew she was probably right about the intruder. Most likely, it had been Jasper,
chasing a cat or looking for an Oreo handout. The thing he’d thought he had seen - the
slightly twisted, moon-white face of a woman, lightning reflected in her eyes, her
mouth curled into a snarl of hatred or rage - had surely been a trick of light and
shadow. Still, the incident left him uneasy. He could not entirely regain the warm,
cozy feeling he’d had just before he’d looked out the window.
Grace Mitowski filled the yellow plastic bowl with Meow Mix and put it in the corner
by the kitchen door.
"Kitty-kitty-kitty."
Aristophanes didn’t respond.
The kitchen wasn’t Ari’s favorite place in the house, for it was the only room in
which he was not permitted to climb wherever he wished. He wasn’t actually much of a
climber anyway. He lacked the spirit of adventure that many cats had, and he usually
stayed on the floor. However, even though he had no burning desire to scamper up on
the kitchen counters, he didn’t want anyone telling him he couldn’t do it.
Like most cats, he resisted discipline and despised all rules. Nevertheless, as
little as he liked the kitchen, he never failed to put in an appearance at mealtime.
In fact, he was often waiting impatiently by his bowl when Grace came to fill it.
She raised her voice. "Kitty-kitty-kitty."
There was no answering meow. Aristophanes did not, as expected, come running, his
tail curled up slightly, eager for his dinner.
"Ari-Ari-Ari! Soup’s on, you silly cat."
She put away the box of cat food and washed her hands at the sink.
Thunk, thunk-thunk!
The hammering sound - one hard blow followed by two equally hard blows struck close
together - was
so sudden and loud that Grace jerked in surprise and almost dropped the small towel
on which she was drying her hands. The noise had come from the front of the house.
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She waited a moment, and there was only the sound of the wind and falling rain, and
then -  Thunk! Thunk!
She hung the towel on the rack and stepped into the downstairs hallway.
Thunk-thunk-thunk!
She walked hesitantly down the hail to the front door and snapped on the porch
light. The door had a peephole, and the fish-eye lens provided a wide view. She
couldn’t see anyone; the porch appeared to be deserted.
THUNK!
That blow was delivered with such force that Grace thought the door had been torn
from its hinges. There was a splintering sound as she jumped back, and she expected
to see chunks of wood exploding into the hall. But the door still hung firmly in
place, though it vibrated noisily in its frame; the deadbolt rattled against the
lock plate.
THUNK! THUNK! THUNK!
"Stop that!" she shouted. "Who are you? Who’s there?"
The pounding stopped, and she thought she heard
adolescent laughter.
She had been on the verge of either calling the police or going for the pistol she
kept in her nightstand, but when she heard the laughter, she changed her mind. She
could certainly handle a few kids without help. She wasn’t so old and weak and
fragile that she needed to call the cops to deal with a bunch of ornery little
pranksters.
Cautiously, she drew aside the curtain on the long, narrow window beside the door.
Tense, ready to step away quickly if someone made a threatening move toward the
glass, she looked out. There was no one on the porch.
She heard the laughter again. It was high-pitched, musical, girlish.
Letting the curtain fall back into place, she turned to the door, unlocked it, and
stepped onto the threshold.
The night wind was raw and wet. Rain drizzled off the scalloped eaves of the porch.
The immediate area in front of the house offered at least a hundred hiding places
for the hoaxers. Bristling shrubbery rustled in the wind, just the other side of the
railing, and the yellowish glow from the insect-repelling bulb in the porch ceiling
illuminated little more than the center of the porch. The walkway that led from the
bottom of the porch steps to the street was flanked by hedges that looked blue black
in the darkness. Among the many shades of night, none of the pranksters were
visible.
Grace waited, listened.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, but there was no laughter, no giggling in the
darkness.
 - Maybe it wasn’t kids.
 - Who else?
 - You see them on TV news all the time. The ironeyed ones who shoot and stab and
strangle people for the fun of it. They seem to be everywhere these days, the
misfits, the psychopaths.
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 - That was not adult laughter. This is kids’ work.
 - Still, maybe! better get inside and lock the door.
 - Stop thinking like a frightened old lady, dammit!
It was odd that any of the neighborhood children would harass her, for she was on
excellent terms with all of them. Of course, maybe these weren’t kids from the
immediate neighborhood. Just a couple of streets away, everyone was a stranger to
her.
She turned and examined the outer face of the front door. She could find no
indication that it had been struck repeatedly and violently only moments ago. The
wood was not chipped or cracked; it wasn’t even slightly marred.
She was amazed because she was certain she had heard the wood splintering. What
would kids use that would make a lot of noise while leaving absolutely no marks on
the door? Bean bags or something of that nature? No. A bean bag wouldn’t have made
such a horrendous racket; the impact of the bag against the door might have been
loud, yes, very loud indeed, if it had been swung with sufficient force, but the
sound wouldn’t have been so hard, so sharp.
Again, she slowly scanned the yard. Nothing moved out there except the wind-stirred
foliage.
For nearly a minute she watched and listened. She would have waited longer, if only
to prove to any mischievous young observers that she was not a frightened old lady
who could be easily intimidated; but the air was damp and chilly, and she began to
worry about catching a cold.
She went inside and closed the door.
She waited with her hand on the knob, expecting the kids to return shortly. The
first time they hit the door, she would jerk it open and catch them red-handed,
before they could dart off the porch and hide.
Two minutes passed. Three minutes. Five.
No one hammered on the door, which was distinctly strange. To pranksters, the fun
wasn’t in the first assault so much as in the second and third and fourth; their
intent was not to startle but to torment.
Apparently, the defiant stance she had taken in the doorway had discouraged them.
Very likely, they were on their way to another house, seeking a more excitable
victim.
She snapped the lock into place.
What kind of parents would allow their children to be out playing in an electrical
storm like this?
Shaking her head in dismay at the irresponsibility of some parents, Grace headed
back the hail, and with each step she half expected the hammering to start again.
But it didn’t.
She had planned to have a light, nutritious dinner of steamed vegetables covered
with Cheddar cheese, accompanied by a slice or two of home-baked cornbread, but she
wasn’t hungry yet. She decided to watch the ABC evening news before preparing
dinner - although she knew that, with the world in the state it was, the news might
put her off her dinner altogether.
In the study, before she had a chance to turn on the television set and hear the
latest atrocity stories, she found a mess on the seat of her big armchair. For a
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moment she could do nothing but stare at the ruin in disbelief: hundreds of
feathers; shreds of cloth; colorful, unraveled threads that had once constituted a
needlework pattern, but which now lay in a bright, meaningless tangle amidst drifts
of goosedown. A couple of years ago, Carol Tracy had given her a set of three small,
exceedingly lovely, handmade needlework throw pillows. It was one of those gifts
that had been clawed to pieces and left on the armchair.
Aristophanes.
Ari hadn’t ripped up anything important since he was a kitten. An act as destructive
as this was quite out of character for him, but he was surely the culprit. There was
not really another suspect to be seriously considered.
"Ari! Where are you hiding, you sneaky Siamese?"
She went to the kitchen.
Aristophanes was standing at the yellow bowl, eating his Meow Mix. He glanced up as
she entered the room.
"You fur-footed menace," she said. "What in the world has gotten into you today?"
Aristophanes blinked, sneezed, rubbed his muzzle with one paw, and returned to his
dinner with lofty, catlike indifference to her exasperation and puzzlement.
Later that night, in her darkened bedroom, Carol Tracy stared at the adumbral
ceiling and listened to her husband’s soft, steady breathing. He had been asleep for
only a few minutes.
The night was quiet. The rain had stopped, and the sky was no longer shaken by
thunder. Occasionally, wind brushed across the shingled roof and sighed wearily at
the windows, but the fury had gone out of it.
Carol teetered pleasantly on the edge of sleep. She was a bit lightheaded from the
champagne she had been slowly sipping throughout the evening, and she felt as if she
were floating in warm water, with gentle waves lapping at her sides.
She thought dreamily about the child they would adopt, tried to envision its
appearance. A gallery of sweet young faces filled her imagination. If it was an
infant, rather than a three- or four-year-old, they would name it themselves: Jason,
if a boy; Julia, if a girl. Carol rocked herself on the thin line between
wakefulness and dreams by rolling those two names back and forth in her mind: Jason,
Julia, Jason, Julia, Jason...
Falling off the edge, dropping into a well of sleep, she had the ugly, unwelcome
thought she had resisted so strenuously earlier in the day: Something’s trying to
stop us from adopting a baby.
Then she was in a strange place where there was not much light, where something
hissed and murmured sullenly just out of sight, where the purple-amber shadows had
substance and crowded close with menacing intent. In that unknown place, the
nightmare unrolled with the frantic, nerve-jarring rhythm of player-piano music.
At first she was running in utter lightlessness, and then she was suddenly running
from one room to another in a large house, weaving through a forest of furniture,
knocking over a floor lamp, banging one hip against the sharp corner of a credenza,
stumbling and nearly falling over the loose edge of an oriental carpet. She plunged
through an archway, into a long hall, and turned and looked back into the room from
which she had come, but the room wasn’t there any longer. The house existed only in
front of her; behind, there was perfect, featureless blackness.
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Blackness. . . and then a glimmer of something. A glint. A splinter of light. A
silvery, moving object. The thing swung from side to side, vanishing into darkness,
reappearing with a gleam a second later, vanishing again, back and forth, back and
forth, rather like a pendulum, never visible long enough to be identified. Although
she couldn’t quite see what the silvery thing was, she could tell that it was moving
toward her, and she knew she must get away from it or die. She ran along the hail to
the foot of the stairs, climbed quickly to the second floor. She glanced back and
down, but the stairs were not there any more. Just an inky pit. And then the brief
flash of something swinging back and forth in that pit. . . again. . . again
like a ticking metronome. She rushed into the bedroom, slammed the door, grabbed a
chair with the intention of bracing it under the knob - and discovered that, while her
back was turned, the door had disappeared, as had the wail in which it had been set.
Where the wall had been, there was subterranean gloom. And a silvery flicker. Very
close now. Closer still. She screamed but made no sound, and the mysteriously
gleaming object arced over her head and -  (Thunk!)
 - This is more than just a dream, she thought desperately. Much more than that. This
is a memory, a
prophecy, a warning. This is a -  (Thunk!)
 - She was running in another house that was altogether different from the first. This
place was smaller, the furnishings less grand. She did not know where she was, yet
she knew she had been here before. The house was familiar, just as the first place
had been. She hurried through a doorway, into a kitchen.
Two bloody, severed heads were on the kitchen table. One of them was a man’s head,
and the other was a woman’s. She recognized them, felt that she knew them well, but
was unable to think of their names.
The four dead eyes were wide but sightless; the two mouths gaped, the swollen
tongues protruding over the purple lips. As Carol stood transfixed by that grisly
sight, the dead eyes rolled in their sockets and focused on her. The cold lips
twisted into icy smiles. Carol turned, intending to flee, but there was only a void
behind her and a glint of light off the hard surface of something silvery and then - 
(Thunk!)
-She was running through a mountain meadow in reddish, late-afternoon light. The
grass was knee-high, and the trees loomed ahead of her. When she looked over her
shoulder, the meadow was no longer back there. Only blackness, as before. And the
rhythmically swinging, shimmering, steadily approaching thing to which she was
unable to fix a name. Gasping, her heart racing, she ran faster, reached the trees,
glanced back once more, saw that she had not run nearly fast enough to escape, cried
out and -  (Thunk!)
For a long time the nightmare shifted from one of
those three dreamscapes to the other - from the first house to the meadow to the
second house to the meadow to the first house again - until at last she woke with an
unvoiced scream caught in her throat.
She sat straight up, shuddering. She was cold and yet slick with sweat; she slept in
just a T-shirt and panties, and both garments clung to her skin, unpleasantly
sticky. The frightening sound from the nightmare continued to echo in her
mind - thunk, thunk, thunk
thunk, thunk - and she realized that her subconscious had borrowed. that noise from
reality, from the wind-loosened shutter that had startled her and Paul earlier.
Gradually, the pounding noise faded and blended with the thumping of her heart.
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She drew back the covers and swung her bare legs out of bed. She sat on the edge of
the mattress, hugging herself.
Dawn had come. Gray light seeped in around the drapes; it was too dim to reveal the
details of the furniture, but it was just bright enough to deepen the shadows and
distort the shapes of everything, so that the room seemed like an alien place.
The rain had stopped a couple of hours before she’d gone to bed, but the storm had
returned while she’d been sleeping. Rain pattered on the roof and gurgled through
the gutters and the downspouts. Low thunder rumbled like a distant cannonade.
Paul was still asleep, snoring softly.
Carol knew she wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep. Like it or not, rested or not,
she was up for the day.
Without turning on a light, she went into the master bathroom. In the weak glow of
dawn, she stripped out of her damp T-shirt and panties. While soaping herself in the
shower, she thought about the nightmare, which had been considerably more vivid than
any dream she’d ever had before.
That strange, jarring sound - thunk, :hunk - had been the most frightening thing in the
dream, and the memory of it still nagged her. It wasn’t just an ordinary hammering
noise; there was an odd echo to it, a hardness and sharpness she couldn’t quite
define. She decided it was not only a case of her subconscious mind borrowing the
noise the shutter had made earlier. The terrifying sound in the dream was caused by
something considerably more disturbing than the mere banging of an unmoored shutter.
Furthermore, she was sure she had heard precisely that sound on another occasion,
too. Not in the nightmare. In real life. In another place. . . a long time ago...
As she let the hot water stream over her, sluicing away the soap, she tried to
recall where and when she had heard exactly that same unsettling sound, for it
suddenly seemed important for her to identify it. Without understanding why, she
felt vaguely threatened as long as she could not recall the source of the sound. But
remembrance hung tantalizingly beyond the limits of her reach, like the title of a
hauntingly familiar but unnamable piece of music.
4
AT 8:45, after breakfast, Carol left for work, and Paul went upstairs to the rear
bedroom that he had converted into an office. He had created a Spartan atmosphere in
which to write without distraction. The off-white walls were bare, unadorned by even
a single painting. The room contained only an inexpensive desk, a typist’s chair, an
electric typewriter, a jar bristling with pens and pencils, a deep letter tray that
now contained nearly two hundred manuscript pages of the novel he had started at the
beginning of his sabbatical, a telephone, a three-shelf bookcase filled with
reference works, a bottled-water dispenser in one corner, and a small table upon
which stood a Mr. Coffee machine.
This morning, as usual, he prepared a pot of coffee first thing. Just as he pressed
the switch labeled BREWER and poured water into the top of the Mr.
Coffee, the telephone rang. He sat on the edge of the desk, picked up the receiver.
"Hello."
"Paul? Grace Mitowski."
"Good morning, love. How are you?"
"Well, these old bones don’t like rainy weather, but otherwise I’m coping."
Paul smiled. "Listen, I know you can still run circles around me any time."
"Nonsense. You’re a compulsive worker with a guilt complex about leisure. Not even a
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nuclear reactor has your energy."
He laughed. "Don’t psychoanalyze me, Grace. I get enough of that from my wife."
"Speaking of whom. .
"Sorry, but you just missed her. You ought to be able to catch her at the office in
half an hour."
Grace hesitated.
Hot coffee began to drizzle into the Pyrex pot, and the aroma of it swiftly filled
the room.
Sensing tension in Grace’s hesitation, Paul said, "What’s wrong?"
"Well. . ." She cleared her throat nervously. "Paul, how is she? She’s not ill or
anything?"
"Carol? Oh, no. Of course not."
"You’re sure? I mean, you know that girl’s like a daughter to me. if anything was
wrong, I’d want to know."
"She’s fine. Really. In fact she had a physical exam last week. The adoption agency
required it. Both of us passed with flying colors."
Grace was silent again.
Frowning, Paul said, "Why are you worried all of a sudden?"
"Well. . . you’ll think old Gracie is losing her marbles, but I’ve had two
disturbing dreams, one during a nap yesterday, the other last night, and Carol was
in both. I seldom dream, so when I have two nightmares and wake up both times
feeling I’ve got to warn Carol. .
"Warn her about what?"
"I don’t know. All I remember about the dreams is that Carol was in them. I woke up
thinking: it’s coming. I’ve got to warn Carol that it’s coming. I know that sounds
silly. And don’t ask me what ‘it’ might be. I can’t remember. But I feel Carol’s in
danger. Now Lord knows, I don’t believe in dream prophecies and garbage like that. I
think I don’t believe in them - yet here I am calling you about this."
The coffee was ready. Paul leaned over, turned off the brewer. "The strange thing
is - Carol and I were nearly hurt in a freak accident yesterday." He told her about
the damage at O’Brian’s office.
"Good God," she said, "I saw that lightning when I woke up from my nap, but it never
occurred to me that you and Carol.. . that the lightning might be the very thing I
was. . . the very thing my dream oh, hell! I’m afraid to say it because I might
sound like a superstitious old fool, but here goes anyway:
Was there actually something prophetic about that dream? Did I foresee the lightning
strike a few minutes before it happened?"
"If nothing else," Paul said uneasily, "it’s at least a remarkable coincidence."
They were silent for a moment, wondering, and then she said, "Listen, Paul, I don’t
recall that we’ve ever discussed this subject much before, but tell me -  do you
believe in dream prophecies, clairvoyance, things of that nature?"
"I don’t believe, and I don’t disbelieve. I’ve never really made up my mind."
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"I’ve always been so smug about it. Always considered it a pack of lies, delusions,
or just plain nonsense. But after this - "
"You’re reconsidering."
"Let’s just say a tiny doubt has cropped up. And now I’m more worried about Carol
than I was when I called you."
"Why? I told you she wasn’t even scratched."
"She escaped once," Grace said, "but I had two dreams, and one of them came to me
hours after the lightning. So maybe the ‘it’ is something else. I mean, if the first
dream had some truth in it, then maybe the second does, too. God, isn’t this crazy?
If you start believing in just a little bit of this nonsense, you get carried away
with it real fast. But I can’t help it. I’m still concerned about her."
"Even if your first dream was prophetic," Paul said, "the second one was probably
just a repeat of it, an echo, not a whole new dream."
"You think so?"
"Sure. This never happened to you before, so why should it happen again? Most
likely, it was just a freak thing.. . like the lightning yesterday."
"Yeah, I guess you’re probably right," she said, sounding somewhat relieved. "Maybe
it could happen once. Maybe I can accept that. But I’m not Edgar Cayce or
Nostradamus. And I can guarantee you I’m never going to be writing a weekly column
of predictions for the National Enquirer."
Paul laughed.
"Still," she said, "I wish I could remember exactly what happened in both those
nightmares."
They talked a while longer, and when Paul finally hung up, he stared at the receiver
for a moment, frowning. Although he was pretty much convinced that the timing of
Grace’s dream had been merely a strange coincidence, he was nonetheless affected by
it, more profoundly affected than seemed reasonable.
it’s coming.
The moment Grace had voiced those two words, Paul had felt a gut-deep, bone-deep
chill.
it’s coming.
Coincidence, he told himself. Sheer coincidence and nonsense. Forget about it.
Gradually he became aware, once again, of the rich aroma of hot coffee. He rose from
the edge of the desk and filled a mug with the steaming brew.
For a minute or two he stood at the window behind the desk, sipping coffee, staring
out at the dirty, scudding clouds and at the incessant rain. Eventually he lowered
his gaze and looked down into the rear yard, instantly recalling the intruder he had
seen last evening while he and Carol had been making dinner:
that briefly glimpsed, pale, distorted, lightning-illuminated face; a woman’s face;
shining eyes; mouth twisted into a snarl of rage or hatred. Or perhaps it had just
been Jasper, the Great Dane, and a trick of light.
THUNK!
The sound was so loud and unexpected that Paul jumped in surprise. If his mug hadn’t
been half empty, he would have spilled coffee all over the carpet.
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THUNK! THUNK!
It couldn’t be the same shutter they’d heard last
evening, for it would have continued banging all night. Which meant there were now
two of them to repair.
Jeez, he thought, the old homestead is falling down around my ears.
THUNK!
The source of the sound was nearby; in fact it was so close that it seemed to
originate within the room. Paul pressed his forehead against the cool window glass,
peered out to the left, then to the right, trying to see if that pair of shutters
was in place. As far as he could see, they were both properly anchored. Thwzk,
thunk-thunk, thunk, thunk...
The noise grew softer but settled into a steady, arhythmical beat that was more
irritating than the louder blows had been. And now it seemed to be coming from
another part of the house.
Although he didn’t want to get up on a ladder and fix a shutter in the rain, that
was exactly what had to be done, for he couldn’t get any writing accomplished with
that constant clattering to distract him. At least there hadn’t been any lightning
this morning.
He put his mug on the desk and started out of the room. Before he reached the door,
the telephone rang.
So it’s going to be one of those days, he thought wearily.
Then he realized that the shutter had stopped banging the moment the phone had rung.
Maybe the wind had wrenched it loose of the house, in which case repairs could wait
until the weather improved.
He returned to his desk and answered the telephone. It was Alfred O’Brian, from the
adoption agency. Initially, the conversation was awkward, and Paul was embarrassed
by it. O’Brian insisted on ex
pressing his gratitude: "You saved my life; you really did!" He was equally
insistent about repeatedly and quite unnecessarily apologizing for his failure to
express that gratitude yesterday, immediately following the incident in his office:
"But I was so shaken, stunned, I just wasn’t thinking clearly enough to thank you,
which was unforgivable of me." Each time Paul protested at the mention of words like
"heroic," and "brave," O’Brian became even more vociferous than before. At last,
Paul stifled his objections and allowed the man to get it out of his system; O’Brian
was determined to cleanse his conscience in much the same way that he fussed with
the minute specks of lint on his suit jacket. Finally, however, he seemed to feel he
had atoned for his (largely imaginary) thoughtlessness, and Paul was relieved when
the conversation changed directions.
O’Brian had a second reason for calling, and he got straight to it now, as if he,
too, was suddenly embarrassed. He could not (he explained with more apologies)
locate the application form that the Tracys had brought to his office the previous
day. "Of course, when that tree crashed through the window, it scattered a lot of
papers all over the floor. A terrible mess. Some of them were rumpled and dirty when
we gathered them up, and a great many of them were damp from the rain. In spite of
that, Margie. my secretary, was able to put them in order - except, of course, for
your application. We can’t find it anywhere. I suppose it might have blown out
through one of the broken windows. I don’t know why your papers should be the only
ones we’ve lost, and of course we must have a completed, signed application before
we can present your names to the recommendations committee. I’m extremely sorry
about this inconvenience, Mr. Tracy, I truly am."
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"It wasn’t your fault," Paul said. "I’ll just stop in
later today and pick up another form. Carol and I can fill it out and sign it
tonight."
"Good," O’Brian said. "I’m glad to hear that. It has to be back in my hands early
tomorrow morning if we’re going to make the next meeting of the committee. Margie
needs three full business days to run the required verifications on the information
in your application, and that’s just about how much time we have before next
Wednesday’s committee meeting.
If we miss that session, there’s not another one for two weeks."
"I’ll be in to pick up the form before noon," Paul assured him. "And I’ll have it
back to you first thing Friday morning."
They exchanged goodbyes, and Paul put down the phone.
THUNK!
When he heard that sound, he sagged, dispirited.
He was going to have to fix a shutter after all. And then drive into the city to
pick up the new application. And then drive home. And by the time he did all of
that, half the day would be shot, and he wouldn’t have written a single word.
THUNK! TRUNK!
"Dammit," he said.
Thunk, thunk-thunk, thunk-thunk...
It definitely was going to be one of those days.
He went downstairs to the hail closet where he kept his raincoat and galoshes.
***
The windshield wipers flogged back and forth, back and forth, with a short, shrill
squeak that made Carol grit her teeth. She hunched forward a bit, over the steering
wheel, squinting through the streaming rain.
The streets glistened; the macadam was slick, greasy looking. Dirty water raced
along the gutters and formed filthy pools around clogged drainage grids.
At ten minutes past nine, the morning rush hour was just over. Although the streets
were still moderately busy, traffic was moving smoothly and swiftly. In fact
everyone was driving too fast to suit Carol, and she hung back a little, watchful
and cautious.
Two blocks from her office, her caution proved justified, but it still wasn’t enough
to avert disaster altogether. Without bothering to look for oncoming traffic, a
young blond woman stepped out from between two vans, directly into the path of the
VW Rabbit.
"Christ!" Carol said, ramming her foot down on the brake pedal so hard that she
lifted herself up off the seat.
The blonde glanced up and froze, wide-eyed.
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Although the VW was moving at only twenty miles an hour, there was no hope of
stopping it in time. The brakes shrieked. The tires bit - but also skidded - on the wet
pavement.
God, no! Carol thought with a sick, sinking feeling.
The car hit the blonde and lifted her off the ground, tossed her backwards onto the
hood, and then the rear end of the VW began to slide around to the left, into the
path of an oncoming Cadillac, and the Caddy swerved, brakes squealing, and the other
driver hit his horn as if he thought a sufficient volume of sound
might magically push Carol safely out of his way, and for an instant she was certain
they would collide, but the Caddy slid past without scraping, missing her by only an
inch or two - all of this in two or three or four seconds - and at the same time the
blonde rolled off the hood, toward the right side, the curb side, and the VW came to
a full stop, sitting aslant the street, rocking on its springs as if it were a
child’s hobby horse.
***
None of the shutters was missing. Not one. None of them was loose and flapping in
the wind, as Paul had thought.
Wearing galoshes and a raincoat with a hood, he walked all the way around the house,
studying each set of shutters on the first and second floors, but he couldn’t see
anything amiss. The place showed no sign of storm damage.
Perplexed, he circled the house again, each step resulting in a squishing noise as
the rain-saturated lawn gave like a sodden sponge beneath him. This time around, he
looked for broken tree limbs that might be swinging against the walls when the wind
gusted. The trees were all intact.
Shivering in the unseasonably chilly autumn air, he just stood on the lawn for a
minute or two, cocking his head to the right and then to the left, listening for the
pounding that had filled the house moments ago. He couldn’t hear it now. The only
sounds were the soughing wind, the rustling trees, and the rain driving into the
grass with a soft, steady hiss.
At last, his face numbed by the cold wind and by
the heat-leaching rain, he decided to halt his search until the pounding started
again and gave him something to get a fix on. Meanwhile, he could drive downtown and
pick up the application form at the adoption agency. He put one hand to his face,
felt his beard stubble, remembered Alfred O’Brian’s compulsive neatness, and figured
he ought to shave before he went.
He reentered the house by way of the screened-in rear porch, leaving his dripping
coat on a vinyl-upholstered glider and shedding his galoshes before going into the
kitchen. Inside, he closed the door behind him and basked for a moment in the warm
air.
THUNK! THUNK! THUNK!
The house shuddered as if it had received three extremely hard, rapid blows from the
enormous fist of a giant. Above the kitchen’s central utility island, where a
utensil rack was suspended from the ceiling, copper pots and pans swung on their
hooks and clattered against one another.
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THUNK!
The wall clock rattled on its hook; if it had been any less firmly attached than it
was, it would have flung itself off the wall, onto the floor.
Paul moved toward the middle of the room, trying to ascertain the direction from
which the pounding was coming.
THUNK! THUNK!
The oven door fell open.
The two dozen small jars nestled in the spice rack began to clink against one
another.
What the hell is happening here? he wondered uneasily.
THUNK!
He turned slowly, listening, seeking.
The pots and pans clattered again, and a large ladle slipped from its hook and fell
with a clang to the butcher-block work surface that lay under it.
Paul looked up at the ceiling, tracking the sound.
THUNK!
He expected to see the plaster crack, but it didn’t.
Nevertheless, the source of the sound was definitely overhead.
Thwzk, thunk-thunk, thunk...
The pounding suddenly grew quieter than it had been, but it didn’t fade away
altogether. At least the house stopped quivering, and the cooking utensils stopped
banging together.
Paul headed for the stairs, determined to track down the cause of the disturbance.
The blonde was in the gutter, flat on her back, one arm out at her side with the
palm up and the hand slack, the other arm draped across her belly. Her golden hair
was muddy. A three-inch-deep stream of water surged
around her, carrying leaves and grit and scraps of paper litter toward the nearest
storm drain, and her long hair fanned out around her head and rippled silkily in
those filthy currents.
Carol knelt beside the woman and was shocked to
see that the victim wasn’t actually a woman at all. She was a girl, no older than
fourteen or fifteen. She was exceptionally pretty, with delicate features, and at
the moment she was frighteningly pale.
She was also inadequately dressed for inclement weather. She wore white tennis
shoes, jeans, and a blue and white checkered blouse. She had neither a raincoat nor
an umbrella.
With trembling hands, Carol lifted the girl’s right arm and felt the wrist for a
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pulse. She found the beat at once; it was strong and steady.
"Thank God," Carol said shakily. "Thank God, thank God."
She began to examine the girl for bleeding. There did not seem to be any serious
injuries, no major blood loss, just a few shallow cuts and abrasions. Unless, of
course, the bleeding was internal.
The driver of the Cadillac, a tall man with a goatee, stepped around the end of the
VW Rabbit and looked down at the injured girl. "Is she dead?"
"No," Carol said. She gently thumbed back one of the girl’s eyelids, then the other.
"Just unconscious.
Probably a mild concussion. Is anyone calling an ambulance?"
"I don’t know," he said.
"Then you call one. Quickly."
He hurried away, splashing through a puddle that was deeper than the tops of his
shoes.
Carol pressed down on the girl’s chin; the jaw was slack, and the mouth fell open
easily. There was no visible obstruction, no blood, nothing that might choke her,
and her tongue was in a safe position.
A gray-haired woman in a transparent plastic raincoat, carrying a red and orange
umbrella, ‘appeared out of the rain. "It wasn’t your fault," she told Carol.
"I saw it happen. I saw it all. The child darted out in front of you without
looking. There wasn’t a thing you could have done to prevent it."
"I saw it, too," said a portly man who didn’t quite fit under his black umbrella. "I
saw the kid walking
down the street like she was in a trance or something.
No coat, no umbrella. Eyes kind of blank. She stepped off the curb, between those
two vans, and just stood there for a few seconds, like she was just waiting for
someone to come along so she could step out and get herself killed. And by God,
that’s what happened."
"She’s not dead," Carol said, unable to keep a tremor out of her voice. "There’s a
first-aid kit on the back seat of my car. Will one of you get it for me?"
"Sure," the portly man said, turning toward the vw.
The first-aid kit contained, among other things, a packet of tongue depressors, and
Carol wanted to have those handy. Although the unconscious girl didn’t appear to be
headed for imminent convulsions, Carol intended to be prepared for the worst.
A crowd had begun to gather.
A siren sounded a couple of blocks away, approaching fast. It was probably the
police; the ambulance couldn’t have made it so fast.
"Such a pretty child," the gray-haired woman said, staring down at the stricken
girl.
Other onlookers murmured in agreement.
Carol stood up and stripped out of her raincoat.
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There was no point in covering the girl, for she was already as wet as she could
get. Instead, Carol folded the coat, knelt down again, and carefully slipped the
makeshift pillow under the victim, elevating her head just a bit above the gushing
water.
The girl didn’t open her eyes or stir in any way whatsoever. A tangled strand of
golden hair had fallen across her face, and Carol carefully pushed it aside for her.
The girl’s skin was hot to the touch, fevered, in spite of the cold rain that bathed
it.
Suddenly, while her fingers were still touching the
girl’s cheek, Carol felt dizzy and was unable to get her breath. For a moment she
thought she was going to pass out and collapse on top of the unconscious teenager. A
black wave rose behind her eyes, and then in that darkness there was a brief flash
of silver, a glint of light off a moving object, the mysterious thing from her
nightmare.
She gritted her teeth, shook her head, and refused to be swept away in that dark
wave. She pulled her hand away from the girl’s cheek, put it to her own face; the
dizzy spell passed as abruptly as it had come. Until the ambulance arrived, she was
responsible for the injured girl, and she was determined not to fail in that
responsibility.
Huffing slightly, the portly man hurried back with the first-aid kit. Carol took one
of the tongue depressors out of its crisp cellophane wrapper - just in case.
A police car rounded the corner and stopped behind the Volkswagen. Its revolving
emergency beacons splashed red light across the wet pavement and appeared to
transform the puddles of rainwater into pools of blood.
As the squad car’s siren died with a growl, another, more distant siren became
audible. To Carol, that warbling, high-pitched wail was the sweetest sound in the
world.
The horror is almost over, she thought.
But then she looked at the girl’s chalk-white face, and her relief was clouded with
doubt. Perhaps the horror wasn’t over after all; perhaps it had only just begun.
Upstairs, Paul walked slowly from room to room, listening to the hammering sound.
Thunk. . . thunk...
The source was still overhead. In the attic. Or on the roof.
The attic stairs were behind a paneled door at the end of the second-floor hallway.
They were narrow, unpainted, and they creaked as Paul climbed them.
Although the attic had full flooring, it was not otherwise a finished room. The
construction of the walls was open for inspection; the pink fiber glass insulation,
which somewhat resembled raw meat, and the regularly spaced supporting studs, like
ribs of bone, were visible. Two naked, hundred-watt bulbs furnished light, and
shadows coiled everywhere, especially toward the eaves. For all of its length and
for half of its width, the attic was high enough to allow Paul to walk through it
without stooping.
The patter of rain on the roof was more than just a patter up here. It was a steady
hissing, a soft, all-encompassing roar.
Nevertheless, the other sound was audible above the drumming of the rain: Thunk.. .
thunk-thunk...
Paul moved slowly past stacks of cardboard cartons and other items that had been
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consigned to storage: a pair of large touring trunks; an old six-pronged coat rack;
a tarnished brass floor lamp; two busted-out, cane-bottomed chairs that he intended
to restore some day. A thin film of whitish dust draped shroudlike over all the
contents of the room.
Thunk. . . thunk...
He walked the length of the attic, then slowly returned to the center of it and
stopped. The source of the sound seemed to be directly in front of his face, only
inches away. But there was nothing here that could possibly be the cause of the
disturbance; nothing moved.
Thunk.. . thunk. . thunk. . . thunk...
Although the hammering was softer now than it had been a few minutes ago, it was
still solid and forceful; it reverberated through the frame of the house. The
pounding had acquired a monotonously simple rhythm, too; each blow was separated
from the ones before and after it by equal measures of time, resulting in a pattern
not unlike the beating of a heart.
Paul stood in the attic, in the dust, smelling the musty odor common to all unused
places, trying to get a fix on the sound, trying to understand how it could be
coming out of thin air, and gradually his attitude toward the disturbance changed.
He had been thinking of it as nothing more than the audible evidence of storm damage
to the house, as nothing more than tedious and perhaps expensive repairs that might
have to be made, an interruption in his writing schedule, an inconvenience, nothing
more. But as he turned his head from side to side and squinted into every shadow, as
he listened to the relentless thudding, he suddenly perceived that there was
something ominous about the sound.
Thunk. . . thunk.. . thunk...
For reasons he could not define, the noise now seemed threatening, malevolent.
He felt colder in this sheltered place than he had felt outside in the wind and
rain.
***
Carol wanted to ride to the hospital in the ambulance with the injured girl, but she
knew she would only be in the way. Besides, the first police officer on the scene, a
curly-headed young man named Tom Weatherby, needed to get a statement from her.
They sat in the front seat of the patrol car, which smelled like the peppermint
lozenges on which Weatherby was sucking. The windows were made opaque by shimmering
streams of rain. The police radio sputtered and crackled.
Weatherby frowned. "You’re soaked to the skin. I’ve got a blanket in the trunk. I’ll
get it for you."
"No, no," she said. "I’ll be fine." Her green knit suit had become saturated. Her
rain-drenched hair was pasted to her head and hung slackly to her shoulders.
At the moment, however, she didn’t care about her appearance or about the goosebumps
that prickled her skin. "Let’s just get this over with."
"Well. . . if you’re sure you’re okay."
"I’m sure."
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As he turned up the thermostat on the car heater, Weatherby said, "By any chance, do
you know the kid who stepped in front of your car?"
"Know her? No. Of course not."
"She didn’t have any ID on her. Did you notice if she was carrying a purse when she
walked into the street?"
"I can’t say for sure."
"Try to remember."
"I don’t think she was."
"Probably not," he said. "After all, if she goes walking in a storm like this
without a raincoat or an umbrella, why would she bother to take a purse? We’ll
search the street anyway. Maybe she dropped it somewhere."
"What happens if you can’t find out who she is?
How will you get in touch with her parents? I mean, she shouldn’t be alone at a time
like this."
"No problem," Weatherby said. "She’ll tell us her name when she regains
consciousness.’
"If she does."
"Hey, she will. There’s no need to be concerned about that. She didn’t seem
seriously injured."
Carol worried about it nonetheless.
For the next ten minutes, Weatherby asked questions, and she answered them. When he
finished filling out the accident report, she quickly read over it, then signed at
the bottom.
"You’re in the clear," Weatherby said. "You were driving under the speed limit, and
three witnesses say the girl stepped out of a blind spot right in front of you,
without bothering to look for traffic. It wasn’t your fault."
"I should have been more careful."
"I don’t see what else you could have done."
"Something. Surely I could have done something,"
she said miserably.
He shook his head. "No. Listen, Dr. Tracy, I’ve seen this sort of thing happen
before. There’s an accident, and somebody’s hurt, and nobody’s really to blame - yet
one of the people involved has a misplaced sense of responsibility and insists on
feeling guilty. And in this case, if there is anybody to blame, it’s the kid
herself, not you. According to the witnesses, she was behaving strangely just before
you turned the corner, almost as if she intended to get herself run down."
"But why would such a pretty girl want to throw herself in front of a car?"
Weatherby shrugged. "You told me you were a psychiatrist. You specialize in children
and teenagers, right?"
"So you must know all the answers better than I do. Why would she want to kill
herself? Could be trouble at home - a father who drinks too much and makes heavy
passes at his own little girl, a mother who doesn’t want to hear about it. Or maybe
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the kid was just jilted by her boyfriend and thinks the world is coming to an end.
Or just discovered she was pregnant and decided she couldn’t face her folks with the
news. There must be hundreds of reasons, and I’m sure you’ve heard most of them in
your line of work."
What he said was true, but it didn’t make Carol feel better.
If only I’d been driving slower, she thought. If only I’d been quicker to react,
maybe that poor girl wouldn’t be in the hospital now.
"She might have been on drugs, too," Weatherby said. "Too damned many kids fool
around with dope these days. I swear, some of they'll swallow any pill they’re
given. If it isn’t something that can be swallowed, they’ll sniff it or stick it in
a vein. This kid you hit might have been so high she didn’t even know where she was
when she stepped in front of your car.
Now, if that’s the case, are you going to tell me it’s still somehow your fault?"
Carol leaned back in the seat, closed her eyes, and let her breath out with a
shudder. "God, I don’t know what to tell you. All I know is. . .I feel wrung out."
"That’s perfectly natural, after what you’ve just been through. But it isn’t natural
to feel guilty about this. It wasn’t your fault, so don’t dwell on it. Put it behind
you and get on with your life."
She opened her eyes, looked at him, and smiled. "You know, Officer Weatherby, I have
a hunch you’d make a pretty good psychotherapist."
He grinned. "Or a terrific bartender."
Carol laughed.
"Feeling better?" he asked.
"A little bit."
"Promise me you won’t lose any sleep over this."
"I’ll try not to," she said. "But I’m still concerned about the girl. Do you know
which hospital they’ve taken her to?"
"I can find out," he said.
"Would you do that for me? I’d like to go talk to the doctor who’s handling her
case. If he tells me she’s going to be all right, I’ll find it a whole lot easier to
take your advice about getting on with my life."
Weatherby picked up the microphone and asked the police dispatcher to find out where
the injured girl had been taken.
The television antenna!
Standing in the attic, staring up at the roof above his head, Paul laughed out loud
when he realized what was causing the pounding noise. The sound wasn’t coming out of
the empty air in front of his face, which was what he had thought for one unsettling
moment. It was coming from the roof, where the television antenna was anchored. They
had subscribed to cable TV a year ago, but they hadn’t removed the old antenna. It
was a large, directional, remote-control model affixed to a heavy brace-plate; the
plate was bolted through the shingles and attached directly to a roof beam.
Apparently, a nut or some other fastener
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had loosened slightly, and the wind was tugging at the antenna, rocking the
brace-plate up and down on one of its bolts, slamming it repeatedly against the
roof. The solution to the big mystery was amusingly mundane.
Or was it?
Thunk. . . thunk. . . thunk...
The sound was softer now than ever before, barely
audible above the roar of the rain on the roof, and it was easy to believe that the
antenna could be the cause of it. Gradually, however, as Paul considered this answer
to the puzzle, he began to doubt if it was the correct answer. He thought about how
loud and violent the pounding had been a few minutes ago when he had been in the
kitchen: the entire house quivering, the oven door falling open, bottles rattling in
the spice rack. Could a loose antenna really generate so much noise and vibration?
Thunk. . . thunk...
As he stared up at the ceiling, he tried to make himself believe unequivocally in
the antenna theory. If it was striking a roof beam in precisely the right way, at a
very special angle, so that the impact was transmitted through the entire frame of
the house, perhaps a loose antenna could cause the pots and pans to clatter against
one another in the kitchen and could make it seem as if the ceilings were about to
crack. After all, if you set up exactly the right vibrations in a steel suspension
bridge, you could bring it to ruin in less than a minute, regardless of the number
of bolts and welds and cables holding it together. And although Paul didn’t believe
there was even a remote danger of a loose antenna causing that kind of apocalyptic
destruction to a wood-frame house, he knew
that moderate force, applied with calculation and pinpoint accuracy, could have an
effect quite out of proportion to the amount of energy expended. Besides, the TV
antenna had to be the root of the disturbance, for it was the only explanation he
had left.
The hammering noise became even softer and then faded altogether. He waited for a
minute or two, but the only sound was the rain on the shingles overhead.
The wind must have changed direction. In time it would change back again, and the
antenna would begin to rock on its brace-plate, and the pounding would start once
more.
As soon as the storm was over, he would have to get the extension ladder out of the
garage, go up onto the roof, and dismantle the antenna. He should have taken care of
that chore shortly after they had subscribed to the cable television service. Now,
because he had delayed, he was going to lose precious writing time - and at one of the
most difficult and crucial points in his manuscript. That prospect frustrated him
and made him nervous.
He decided to shave, drive downtown, and pick up the new set of application papers
at the adoption agency. The storm might pass by the time he got home again. If it
did, if he could be on the roof by eleven-thirty, he ought to be able to tear down
the antenna, then have a bite of lunch, and work on his book all afternoon, barring
further interruptions. But he suspected there would be further interruptions. He had
already resigned himself to the fact that it was one of those days.
As he left the attic and turned out the lights, the house quivered under another
blow.
THUNK’
Just one this time.
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Then all was quiet again.
***
The visitors’ lounge at the hospital looked like an explosion in a clown’s wardrobe.
The walls were canary yellow; the chairs were bright red; the carpet was orange; the
magazine racks and end tables were made of heavy purple plastic; and the two large
abstract paintings were done primarily in shades of blue and green.
The lounge - obviously the work of a designer who had read too much about the various
psychological mood theories of color - was supposed to be positive, life-affirming. It
was supposed to lift the spirits of visitors and take their minds off sick friends
and dying relatives. In Carol, however, the determinedly cheery decor elicited the
opposite reaction from that which the designer had intended, It was a frenetic room;
it abraded the nerves as effectively as coarse sandpaper would abrade a stick of
butter.
She sat on one of the red chairs, waiting for the doctor who had treated the injured
girl. When he came, his stark white lab coat contrasted so boldly with the flashy
decor that he appeared to radiate a saintlike aura.
Carol rose to meet him, and he asked if she was Mrs. Tracy, and he said his name was
Sam Hannaport. He was tall, very husky, square-faced, florid, in his early fifties.
He looked as if he would be loud and gruff, perhaps even obnoxious, but in fact he
was soft-spoken and seemed genuinely concerned about how the accident had affected
Carol both physically and emotionally. It took her a couple of minutes to assure him
that she was all right on both counts, and then they sat down on facing red chairs.
Hannaport raised his bushy eyebrows and said,
"You look as if you could use a hot bath and a big glassful of warm brandy."
"I was soaked to the skin," she said, "but I’m pretty well dried out now. What about
the girl?"
"Cuts, contusions, abrasions," he said.
"Internal bleeding?"
"Nothing showed up on the tests."
"Fractures?"
"Not a broken bone in her body. She came through it amazingly well. You couldn’t
have been driving very fast when you hit her."
"I wasn’t. But considering the way she slipped up onto the hood and then rolled off
into the gutter, I thought maybe. . ." Carol shuddered, unwilling to put words to
what she had thought.
"Well, the kid’s in good condition now. She regained consciousness in the ambulance,
and she was alert by the time I saw her."
"Thank God."
"There’s no indication that she’s even mildly con-cussed. I don’t foresee any
lasting effects."
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Relieved, Carol sagged back in the red chair. "I’d like to see her, talk to her."
"She’s resting now," Dr. Hannaport said. "I don’t want her disturbed at the moment.
But if you’d like to come back this evening, during visiting hours, she’ll be able
to see you then."
"I’ll do that. I’ll definitely do that." She blinked.
"Good heavens, I haven’t even asked you what her name is."
His bushy eyebrows rose again. "Well, we’ve got a small problem about that."
"Problem?" Carol tensed up again. "What do you mean? Can’t she remember her name?"
"She hasn’t remembered it yet, but - "
"Oh, God."
" - she will."
"You said no concussion - "
"I swear to you, it isn’t serious," Hannaport said. He took her left hand in his big
hard hands and held it as if it might crack and crumble at any moment.
"Please don’t excite yourself about this. The girl is going to be fine. Her
inability to remember her name isn’t a symptom of severe concussion or any serious
brain injury; not in her case, anyway. She isn’t confused or disoriented. Her field
of vision is normal, and she has excellent depth perception. We tested her thought
processes with some math problems - addition, subtraction, multiplication - and she got
them all correct. She can spell any word you throw at her; she’s a damn good
speller, that one. So she’s not severely concussed. She’s simply suffering from mild
amnesia. It’s selective amnesia, you understand, just a loss of personal memories,
not a loss of skills and education and whole blocks of social concepts. She hasn’t
forgotten how to read and write, thank God; she’s only forgotten who she is, where
she came from, and how she got to this place. Which sounds more serious than it
really is. Of course, she’s disconcerted and apprehensive. But selective amnesia is
the easiest kind to recover from."
"I know," Carol said. "But somehow that doesn’t make me feel a whole hell of a lot
better."
Hannaport squeezed her hand firmly and gently.
"This kind of amnesia is only very, very rarely permanent or even long-lasting.
She’ll most likely remember who she is before dinnertime."
"If she doesn’t?"
"Then the police will find out who she is, and the minute she hears her name, the
mists will clear."
"She wasn’t carrying any ID."
"I know," he said. "I’ve talked to the police."
"So what happens if they can’t find out who she is?"
"They will." He patted her hand one last time, then let go.
"I don’t see how you can be so sure."
"Her parents will file a missing-persons report. They’ll have a photograph of her.
When the police see the photograph, they’ll make a connection. It’ll be as simple as
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that."
She frowned. "What if her parents don’t report her missing?"
"Why wouldn’t they?"
"Well, what if she’s a runaway from out of state? Even if her folks did file a
missing-persons report back in her hometown, the police here wouldn’t necessarily be
aware of it."
"The last time I looked, runaway kids favored New York City, California,
Florida - just about any place besides Harrisburg, Pennsylvania."
"There’s always an exception to any rule."
Hannaport laughed softly and shook his head. "If pessimism were a competitive sport,
you’d win the world series."
She blinked in surprise, then smiled. "I’m sorry. I guess I am being excessively
gloomy."
Glancing at his watch, getting up from his chair, he said, "Yes, I think you are.
Especially considering how well the girl came through it all. It could have been a
lot worse."
Carol got to her feet, too. In a rush, the words falling over one another, she said,
"I guess maybe the reason it bothers me so much is because I deal with disturbed
children every day, and it’s my job to help them get well again, and that’s all I
ever wanted to do since I was in high school - work with sick kids, be a healer - but
now I’m responsible for all the pain this poor girl is going through."
"You mustn’t feel that way. You didn’t intend to harm her."
Carol nodded. "I know I’m not being entirely rational about the situation, but I
can’t help feeling the way I feel."
"I have some patients to see," Hannaport said, glancing at his watch again. "But let
me leave you with one thought that might help you handle this."
"I’d like to hear it."
"The girl suffered only minor physical injuries. I won’t say they were negligible
injuries, but they were damned close to it. So you’ve got nothing to feel guilty
about on that score. As for her amnesia.. . well, maybe the accident had nothing to
do with it."
"Nothing to do with it? But I assumed that when she hit her head on the car or on
the pavement - "
"I’m sure you know a blow on the head isn’t the only cause of amnesia," Dr.
Hannaport said. "It’s not even the most common factor in such cases. Stress,
emotional shock - they can result in loss of memory. In fact we don’t yet understand
the human mind well enough to say for sure exactly what causes most cases of
amnesia. As far as this girl is concerned, everything points to the conclusion that
she was in her current state even before she stepped in front of your car."
He emphasized each argument in favor of his theory by raising fingers on his right
hand. "One: She wasn’t carrying any ID, Two: She was wandering around in the pouring
rain without a coat or an umbrella, as if she was in a daze. Three: From what I
understand, the witnesses say she was acting very strange before you ever came on
the scene." He waggled his three raised fingers. "Three very good reasons why you
shouldn’t be so eager to blame yourself for the kid’s condition."
"Maybe you’re right, but I still - "
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"I am right," he said. "There’s no maybe about it. Give yourself a break, Dr.
Tracy."
A woman with a sharp, nasal voice paged Dr. Hannaport on the hospital’s tinny public
address system.
"Thank you for your time," Carol said. "You’ve been more than kind."
"Come back this evening and talk to the girl if you want. I’m sure you’ll find she
doesn’t blame you one bit."
He turned and hurried across the gaudy lounge, in answer to the page’s call; the
tails of his white lab coat fluttered behind him.
Carol went to the pay phones and called her office. She explained the situation to
her secretary, Thelma, and arranged for the rescheduling of the patients she had
intended to see today. Then she dialed home, and Paul answered on the third ring.
"You just caught me as I was going out the door," he said. "I’ve got to drive down
to O’Brian’s office and pick up a new set of application papers. Ours
were lost in the mess yesterday. So far, this has been a day I should have slept
through."
"Ditto on this end," she said.
"What’s wrong?"
She told him about the accident and briefly summarized her conversation with Dr.
Hannaport.
n with Dr. Hannaport.
"It could have been worse," Paul said. "At least we can be thankful no one was
killed or crippled."
"That’s what everyone keeps telling me: ‘It could have been worse, Carol.’ But it
seems plenty bad enough to me."
"Are you all right?"
"Yeah. I told you. I wasn’t even scratched."
"I don’t mean physically. I mean, are you together emotionally? You sound shaky."
"I am. Just a little."
"I’ll come to the hospital," he said.
"No, no. That’s not necessary."
"Are you sure you should drive?"
"I drove here after the accident without trouble, and I’m feeling better now than I
did then. I’ll be okay. What I’m going to do is, I’m going over to Grace’s house.
She’s only a mile from here; it’s easier than going home. I have to sponge off my
clothes, dry them out, and press them. I need a shower, too. I’ll probably have an
early dinner with Grace, if that’s all right by her, and then I’ll come back here
during visiting hours this evening."
"When will you be home?"
"Probably not until eight or eight-thirty."
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"I’ll miss you."
"Miss you, too."
"Give my best to Grace," he said. "And tell her I think she is the next
Nostradamus."
"What’s that supposed to mean?"
"Grace called a while ago. Said she had two nightmares recently, and you figured in
both. She was afraid something was going to happen to you."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah. She was embarrassed about it. Afraid I’d think she was getting senile or
something."
"You told her about the lightning yesterday?"
"Yeah. But she felt something else would happen, something bad."
"And it did."
"Creepy, huh?"
"Decidedly," Carol said. She remembered her own nightmare: the black void; the
flashing, silvery object drawing nearer, nearer.
"I’m sure Grace’ll tell you all about it," Paul said. "And I’ll see you this
evening."
"I love you," Carol said.
"Love you, too."
She put down the phone and went outside to the parking lot.
Gray-black thunderheads churned across the sky, but only a thin rain was falling
now. The wind was still cold and sharp; it sang in the power lines overhead,
sounding like a swarm of angry wasps.
***
The semiprivate room had two beds, but the second one was not currently in use. At
the moment, no nurse was present either. The girl was alone.
She lay under a crisp white sheet and a creamcolored blanket, staring at the
acoustic-tile ceiling. She had a headache, and she could feel each dully throbbing,
burning cut and abrasion on her battered body, but she knew she was not seriously
hurt.
Fear, not pain, was her worst enemy. She was frightened by her inability to remember
who she was. On the other hand, she was plagued by the inexplicable yet unshakable
feeling that it would be foolish and exceedingly dangerous to remember her past.
Without knowing why, she suspected that full remembrance would be the death of
her - an odd notion that she found more frightening than anything else.
She knew her amnesia wasn’t the result of the accident. She had a misty recollection
of walking along the street in the rain a minute or two before she had blundered in
front of the Volkswagen. Even then, she had been disoriented, afraid, unable to
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remember her name, utterly unfamiliar with the strange city in which she found
herself and unable to recall how she had gotten there. The thread of her memory
definitely had begun unraveling prior to the accident.
She wondered if it was possible that her amnesia was like a shield, protecting her
from something horrible in the past. Did forgetfulness somehow equal safety?
Why? Safety from what?
What could- I be running from? she asked herself.
She sensed that recovery of her identity was possible. In fact her memories seemed
almost within her grasp. She felt as though the past lay at the bottom of a dark
hole, close enough to touch; all she had to do was summon sufficient strength and
courage to poke her hand into that lightless place and grope for the truth, without
fear of what might bite her.
However, when she tried hard to remember, when she probed into that hole, her fear
grew and grew until it was no longer just ordinary fear; it became incapacitating
terror. Her stomach knotted, and her throat swelled tight, and she broke out in a
greasy sweat, and she became so dizzy that she nearly fainted.
On the edge of unconsciousness, she saw and heard something disturbing, alarming - a
fuzzy fragment of a dream, a vision - which she couldn’t quite identify but which
frightened her nonetheless. The vision was composed of a single sound and a single,
mysterious image. The image was hypnotic but simple:
a quick flash of light, a silvery glimmer from a not-quite-visible object that was
swinging back and forth in deep shadows; a gleaming pendulum, perhaps. The sound was
hard-edged and threatening but not identifiable, a loud hammering noise, yet more
than that.
Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!
She jerked, quivered, as if something had struck her.
Thunk!
She wanted to scream, couldn’t.
She realized that her hands were fisted and that they were full of twisted,
sweat-soaked sheets.
Thunk!
She stopped trying to remember who she was.
Maybe it’s better that I don’t know, she thought.
Her heartbeat gradually slowed to normal, and she was able to draw her breath
without wheezing. Her stomach unknotted.
The hammering sound faded.
After a while she looked at the window. A flock of large, black birds reeled across
the turbulent sky.
What’s going to happen to me? she wondered.
Even when the nurse came in to see how she was doing, and even when the doctor
joined the nurse a moment later, the girl felt utterly, dishearteningly alone.
5
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GRACE’S kitchen smelled of coffee and warm spice cake. Rain washed down the window,
obscuring the view of the rose garden that lay behind the house.
"I’ve never believed in clairvoyance or premonitions."
"Neither have I," Grace said. "But now I wonder. After all, I have two nightmares
about you getting hurt, and the next thing I hear is that you’ve had two close
calls, just as if you were acting out a script or something."
They sat at the small table by the kitchen window. Carol was wearing one of Grace’s
robes and a pair of Grace’s slippers while her own clothes finished drying out.
"Only one close call," she told Grace. "The lightning. That was a gut-wrencher, all
right. But I wasn’t really in any danger this morning. That poor girl was the one
who nearly got killed."
Grace shook her head. "No. It was a close call for you, too. Didn’t you tell me you
slid toward the oncoming traffic when you braked to avoid the girl? And didn’t you
say the Cadillac missed you by an inch or less? Well, what if it hadn’t missed? If
that Caddy had rammed your little VW, you certainly wouldn’t have walked away
without a scratch."
Frowning, Carol said, "I hadn’t looked at it that way."
"You’ve been so busy worrying about the girl that you haven’t had a chance to think
about yourself."
Carol ate a bite of spice cake and washed it down with coffee. "You’re not the only
one having nightmares." She summarized her own dream: the severed heads, the houses
that dissolved behind her as she passed through them, the flickering, silvery
object.
Grace clasped her hands around her coffee cup and hunched over the table. There was
worry in her blue eyes. "That’s one nasty dream. What do you make of it?"
"Oh, I don’t think it’s prophetic."
"Why couldn’t it be? Mine appear to have been."
"Yes, but - it doesn’t follow that both of us are turning into soothsayers. Besides,
my dream didn’t make a whole lot of sense. It was just too wild to be taken
seriously. I mean, severed heads that suddenly come to life - that sort of thing isn’t
really going to happen."
"It could be prophetic without being literally prophetic. I mean, it might be a
symbolic warning."
"Of what?"
"I don’t see any easy interpretation of it. But I
really think you ought to be extra careful for a while. God, I know I’m starting to
sound like a phony gypsy fortune-teller, like Maria Ouspenskya in all those old
monster movies from the thirties, but I still don’t think you should dismiss it as
just an ordinary dream. Especially not after what’s already happened."
***
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Later, after lunch, as Grace squirted some liquid soap into the sinkful of dirty
dishes, she said, "How’s the situation with the adoption agency? Does it look like
they’ll give you and Paul a child soon?"
Carol hesitated.
Grace glanced at her. "Something wrong?"
Taking the dish towel from the rack and unfolding it, Carol said, "No. Not really.
O’Brian says we’ll be approved. It’s a sure thing, he says."
"But you’re still worried about it."
"A little," Carol admitted.
"Why?"
"I’m not sure. It’s just that.. I’ve had this feeling..."
"What feeling?"
"That it won’t work out."
"Why shouldn’t it?"
"I can’t shake the idea that somebody’s trying to stop us from adopting."
"Who?"
Carol shrugged.
"O’Brian?" Grace asked.
"No, no. He’s on our side."
"Someone on the recommendations committee?"
"I don’t know. I don’t actually have any evidence of ill will toward Paul and me. I
can’t point my finger at anyone."
Grace washed some silverware, put it in the drainage rack, and said, "You’ve wanted
to adopt for so long that you can’t believe it’s finally happening, so you’re
looking for boogeymen where there aren’t any."
"Maybe."
"You’re just spooked because of the lightning yesterday and the accident this
morning."
"Maybe."
"That’s understandable. It spooks me, too. But the adoption will go through as
smooth as can be."
"I hope so," Carol said. But she thought about the lost set of application forms,
and she wondered.
***
By the time Paul got back from the adoption agency, the rain had stopped, though the
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wind was still cold and damp.
He got the ladder out of the garage and climbed onto the least slanted portion of
the many-angled roof. The wet shingles squeaked under his feet as be moved
cautiously across the slope toward the television antenna, which was anchored near a
brick chimney.
His legs were rubbery. He suffered from a mild case of acrophobia, a fear that had
never become incapacitating because he occasionally forced himself to challenge and
overcome it, as he was doing now.
When he reached the chimney, he put a hand against it for support and looked out
across the roofs of the neighboring homes. The storm-dark September sky had settled
lower, lower, until it appeared to be
only six or eight feet above the tallest houses. He felt as if he could raise his
arm and rap his knuckles on the bellies of the clouds, eliciting a hard, ironlike
clank.
He crouched with his back to the chimney and inspected the TV antenna. The
brace-plate was held down by four bolts that went through the shingles, either
directly into a roof beam or into a stud linking two beams. None of the bolts was
missing. None of them was loose. The plate was firmly attached to the house, and the
antenna was anchored securely to the plate. The antenna could not possibly have been
responsible for the hammering sound that had shaken the house.
***
After washing the dishes, Grace and Carol went into the study. The room reeked of
cat urine and feces. Aristophanes had made his toilet on the seat of the big easy
chair.
Stunned, Grace said, "I don’t believe it. Ari always uses the litter box like he’s
supposed to do. He’s never done anything like this before."
"He’s always been a fussy cat, hasn’t he? Fastidious."
"Exactly. But now look what he’s done. That chair’ll have to be reupholstered. I
guess I’d better find the silly beast, put his nose to this mess, and give him a
good scolding. I don’t want this to become a habit, for God’s sake."
They looked in every room, but they couldn’t find Aristophanes. Apparently, he had
slipped out of the house by way of the pet door in the kitchen.
Returning to the study with Grace, Carol said, "Earlier, you mentioned something
about Ari tearing up a few things."
Grace winced. "Yes. I didn’t want to have to tell you - but he shredded two of those
lovely little needlepoint pillows you made for me. I was sick about it. After all
the work you put into those, and then he Just - ,’
"Don’t worry about it," Carol said. "I’ll make you a couple of new pillows. I enjoy
doing it. Needlepoint relaxes me. I only asked because I thought maybe, if Ari’s
been doing a lot of things that’re out of character, it might be a sign that he
isn’t well."
Grace frowned. "He looks healthy. His coat’s glossy, and he’s certainly as spry as
ever."
"Animals are like people in some ways. And when a person suddenly starts behaving
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strangely, that can
be an indication of a physical malady, anything from a brain tumor to an inbalanced
diet."
"I suppose I ought to take him to the vet."
Carol said, "While there’s a break in the rain, why don’t we go outside and see if
we can find him?"
"Wasted effort. When a cat doesn’t want to be found, it won’t be found. Besides,
he’ll come back by dinnertime: I’ll keep him in all night, and take him to the vet’s
in the morning." Grace looked at the mess on the easy chair, grimaced, and shook her
head. "This isn’t like my Ari," she said worriedly. "It’s just not like him at all."
***
The number on the open door was 316.
Hesitantly, Carol stepped into the white and blue hospital room and stopped just
past the threshold. The place smelled vaguely of Lysol.
The girl was sitting up in the bed nearest the window, her face averted from the
door, staring out at the twilight-shrouded hospital grounds. She turned her head
when she realized she was no longer alone, and when she looked at Carol there was no
recognition in her blue-gray eyes.
"May I come in?" Carol asked.
"Sure."
Carol went to the foot of the bed. "How are you feeling?"
"Okay."
"With all the scrapes and cuts and bruises, it must be hard to get comfortable."
"Gee, I’m not banged up all that bad. I’m just a little sore. It’s nothing that’s
going to kill me. Everyone's so nice; you’re all making too much of a fuss about
me."
"How’s your head feel?"
"I had a headache when I first came to, but it’s been gone for hours."
"Double vision?"
"Nothing like that," the girl said. A strand of golden hair slipped from behind her
ear and fell across her cheek; she tucked it back in place. "Are you a doctor?"
"Yes," Carol said. "My name’s Carol Tracy."
"You can call me Jane. That’s the name on my chart. Jane Doe. I guess it’s as good
as any. It might even turn out to be a lot nicer than my real name. Maybe I’m
actually Zelda or Myrtle or something like that." She had a lovely smile. "You’re
the umpteenth doctor who’s been in to see me. How many do I have, anyway?"
"I’m not one of yours," Carol said. "I’m here because ... well. . . it was my car
you stepped in front of."
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"Oh. Hey, gee, I’m awfully sorry. 1 hope there wasn’t a lot of damage."
Surprised by the girl’s statement and by the genuine look of concern on her face,
Carol laughed. "For heaven’s sake, honey, don’t worry about my car. it’s your health
that’s important, not the VW. And I’m the one who should be apologizing. I feel
terrible about this."
"You shouldn’t," the girl said. "I still have all my teeth, and none of my bones are
broken, and Dr. Hannaport says the boys will still be interested in me." She grinned
self-consciously.
"He’s certainly right about the boys," Carol said.
"You’re a very pretty girl."
The grin became a shy smile, and the girl looked down at the covers on her lap,
blushing.
Carol said, "I was hoping I’d find you here with your folks."
The girl tried to maintain a cheerful facade, but when she looked up, fear and doubt
showed through the mask. "I guess they haven’t filed a missing-persons report yet.
But it’s only a matter of time."
"Have you remembered anything at all about your past?"
"Not yet. But I will." She straightened the collar of her hospital gown and smoothed
the covers over her lap as she talked. "Dr. Hannaport says everything’ll probably
come back to me if I just don’t push too hard at remembering. He says I’m lucky I
don’t have global amnesia. That’s when you even forget how to read and write. I’m
not that bad off! Heck, no. Boy, wouldn’t that be something? What if I had to learn
to read, write, add, subtract, multiply, divide, and spell all over again? What a
bore!" She finished smoothing her covers and looked up again. "Anyway, I’ll most
likely have my memory back in a day or two.,,
"I’m sure you will," Carol said, though she wasn’t sure at all. "Is there anything
you need?"
"No. They supply everything. Even tiny tubes of toothpaste."
"What about books, magazines?"
The girl sighed. "I was bored out of my skull this afternoon. You think they might
keep a pile of old magazines for the patients?"
"Probably. What do you like to read?"
"Everything. I love to read; I remember that much. But I can’t remember the titles
of any books or magazines. This amnesia sure is funny, isn’t it?"
"Hilarious," Carol said. "Sit tight. I’ll be right back."
At the nurses’ station at the end of the hail, she explained who she was and
arranged to rent a small television set for Jane Doe’s room. An orderly promised to
hook it up right away.
The chief RN on duty - a stocky, gray-haired woman who wore her glasses on a chain
around her neck - said, "She’s such a sweet girl. She’s charmed everyone. Hasn’t
complained or uttered a cross word to a soul. There aren’t many teenagers with her
composure."
Carol took the elevator down to the ground-floor lobby and went to the newsstand.
She bought a Hershey bar, an Almond Joy, and six magazines that looked as if they
would appeal to a young girl. By the time she got back to room 316, the orderly had
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just finished installing the TV.
"You shouldn’t have done all this," the girl said.
"When my parents show up, I’ll make sure they pay you back."
"I won’t accept a dime," Carol said.
"But - "
"No buts."
"I don’t need to be pampered. I’m fine. Really. If you - "
"I’m not pampering you, honey. Just think of the magazines and the television as
forms of therapy. In fact, they might be precisely the tools you need to break
through this amnesia."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, if you watch enough television, you might see a show you remember seeing
before. That might spark a sort of chain reaction of memories."
"You think so?"
"It’s better than just sitting and staring at the walls or out the window. Nothing
in this place is going to spark a memory because none of it is related to your past.
But there’s a chance the TV will do the trick."
The girl picked up the remote-control device that the orderly had given her, and she
switched on the television set. A popular situation comedy was on.
"Familiar?" Carol asked.
The girl shook her head: no. Tears glistened in the corners of her eyes.
"Hey, don’t get upset," Carol said. "It would be amazing if you remembered the first
thing you saw. It’s bound to take time."
She nodded and bit her lip, trying not to cry.
Carol moved close, took the girl’s hand; it was cool.
"Will you come back tomorrow?" Jane asked shakily.
"Of course I will."
"I mean, if it’s not out of your way."
"It’s no trouble at all." "Sometimes.. ."
"What?"
The girl shuddered. "Sometimes I’m so afraid."
"Don’t be afraid, honey. Please don’t. It’ll all work out. You’ll see. You’re going
to be back on the track in no time," Carol said, wishing she could think of
something more reassuring than those few hollow platitudes. But she knew her
inadequate response was occasioned by her own nagging doubts.
The girl pulled a tissue out of the Kleenex dispenser that was built into the side
of the tall metal nightstand. She blew her nose, used another tissue to daub at her
eyes. She had slumped down in the bed; now she sat up straight, lifted her chin,
squared her slender shoulders, and readjusted her covers. When she looked up at
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Carol, she was smiling again. "Sorry," she said. "I don’t know what got into me.
Being a crybaby isn’t going to solve anything. Anyway, you’re right. My folks will
probably show up tomorrow, and everything’ll work out for the best. Look, Dr. Tracy,
if you come to see me tomorrow - "
"I will ."
"If you do, promise not to bring me any more candy or magazines or anything. Okay?
There’s no reason for you to spend your money like that. You’ve already done too
much for me. Besides, the best thing you could do is just come. I mean, it’s nice to
know someone outside the hospital cares about me. It’s nice to know I haven’t been
lost or forgotten in here. Oh, sure, the nurses and the doctors are swell. They
really are, and I’m grateful. They care about me, but it’s
sort of their job to care. You know? So that’s not exactly the same thing, is it?"
She laughed nervously. "Am I making sense?"
"I know exactly what you’re feeling," Carol assured her. She was achingly aware of
the girl’s profound loneliness, for she had been lonely and frightened when she was
the same age, before Grace Mitowski had taken custody of her and had given her large
measures of guidance and love.
She stayed with Jane until visiting hours were over. Before she left, she planted a
motherly kiss on the girl’s forehead, and it seemed like a perfectly natural thing
to do. A bond had formed between them in a surprisingly short time.
Outside, in the hospital parking lot, the sodium-vapor lights leached the true
colors from the cars and made them all look yellowish.
The night was chilly. No rain had fallen during the afternoon or evening, but the
air was heavy, damp. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and a new storm appeared to be
on the way.
She sat for a moment behind the wheel of the VW, staring up at the third-floor
window of the girl’s room.
‘What a terrific kid," she said aloud.
She felt that someone quite special had come unexpectedly into her life.
***
Near midnight, a river-cold wind came out of the west and made the trees dance. The
starless, moonless, utterly lightless night pressed close around the house and
seemed to Grace to be a living thing; it snuffled at the doors and windows.
Rain began to fall.
She went to bed as the hail clock was striking twelve, and twenty minutes later she
began to drift over the edge of sleep as if she were a leaf borne by cool currents
toward a great waterfall. On the brink, with only darkness churning under her, she
heard movement in the bedroom and instantly came awake again.
A series of stealthy sounds. A soft scrape. A rattle that died even as it began. A
silken rustle.
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She sat up, heart quickening, and opened the nightstand drawer. With one hand she
felt blindly for the .22 pistol she kept in the drawer, and with the other hand she
groped silently for the lamp switch. She touched the gun and lamp at the same
moment.
With light, the source of the noise was clearly visible. Ari was crouched atop the
highboy, staring down at her, as if he had been about to spring onto the bed.
"What are you doing in here? You know the rules."
He blinked but didn’t move. His muscles were bunched and taut; his fur was standing
up on the back of his neck.
For sanitary reasons, she would allow him to climb neither onto the kitchen counters
nor into her bed; generally, she kept the master bedroom door firmly shut, day and
night, rather than tempt him. Already, housecleaning required extra hours each week
because of him, for she was determined that the air should not contain even the
slightest trace of cat odor; likewise, she was not about to subject her visitors to
furniture covered with loose animal hairs. She loved Ari, and she thought him fine
company, and for the most part she gave him the run of the house in spite of the
extra work he caused her. But she was not prepared to live with cat hairs in her
food or in her sheets.
She got out of bed, stepped into her slippers.
Ari watched.
"Come down from there this instant," Grace said, looking up at him with her sternest
expression.
His shining eyes were gas-flame blue.
Grace went to the bedroom door, opened it, stepped out of the way, and said, "Shoo."
The cat’s muscles relaxed. He slumped in a furry puddle atop the highboy, as if his
bones had melted. He yawned and began to lick one of his black paws.
"Hey!" she said.
Aristophanes raised his head languidly, peered down at her.
"Out," she said gruffly. "Now."
When he still didn’t move, she started toward the highboy, and he was at last
encouraged to obey. He jumped down and darted past her so fast she didn’t have time
to swat him. He went into the hall, and she closed the door.
In bed again, with the lights out, she remembered the way he had looked as he
perched atop the highboy:
facing her, aimed at her, shoulders drawn up, head held low, haunches tense, his fur
electrified, his eyes bright and slightly demented. He had intended to jump onto the
bed and scare the bejesus out of her; there was no doubt about that. But such
schemes were a kitten’s games; Ari had not been playful in that fashion for the past
three or four years, ever since he had
attained a rather indolent maturity. What on earth had gotten into him?
That settles it, she told herself. We’ll pay a visit to the veterinarian first thing
in the morning. Good Lord, I might have a schizophrenic cat on my hands!
Seeking rest, she let the night embrace her again. She allowed herself to be carried
along by the riverlike sound of the soughing wind. Within a few minutes she was once
more being borne toward the waterfall of sleep. She trembled on the edge of it, and
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a quiver of uneasiness passed through her, a chill that nearly broke the spell, but
then she dropped down into darkness.
She dreamed that she was trekking across a vast underwater landscape of brilliantly
colored coral and seaweed and strange, undulating plants. A cat lurked among the
plants, a big one, much bigger than a tiger, but with the coloring of a Siamese. It
was stalking her. She could see its saucer eyes peering at her through the murky
sea, from among wavering stalks of marine vegetation. She could hear and feel its
low purr transmitted by the water. She paused repeatedly during her suboceanic trek
so that she could fill a series of yellow bowls with generous portions of Meow Mix
in the hope of pacifying the cat, but she knew in her heart that the beast would not
be content until it had sunk its claws into her. She moved steadily past towers of
coral, past grottoes, across wide aquatic plains of shifting sand, waiting for the
cat to snarl and lunge from concealment, waiting for it to rip open her face and
gouge out her eyes.
Once, she woke and thought she heard Aristophanes scratching insistently on the
other side of the
closed bedroom door. But she was groggy and couldn’t trust her senses; she wasn’t
able to wrench herself fully awake, and in a few seconds she sank down into the
dream once more.
At one o’clock in the morning, the third floor of the hospital was so quiet that
Harriet Gilbey. the head nurse on the graveyard shift, felt as though she was deep
underground, in some kind of military complex, tucked into the stony roots of a
mountain, far from the real world and the background noises of real life. The only
sounds were the whisper of the heating system and the occasional squeak of the
nurses’ rubber-soled shoes on the highly polished tile floors.
Harriet - a small, pretty, neatly uniformed black woman - was at the nurses’ station,
around the corner from the bank of elevators, entering data on patients’ charts,
when the tranquility of the third floor was abruptly shattered by a piercing scream.
She moved out from behind the reception desk and hurried along the hall, following
the shrill cry. It came from room 316. When Harriet pushed open the door, stepped
into the room, and snapped on the overhead lights, the screaming stopped as suddenly
as it had begun.
The girl they called Jane Doe was in bed, flat on her back, one arm raised and
angled across her face as if she were warding off a blow, the other hand hooked on
to one of the safety rails. She had kicked the sheets and the blanket into a tangled
wad at the foot of the bed, and her hospital gown was nicked up over her hips. She
tossed her head violently from side to side, gasping, pleading with an imaginary
assailant:
"No. . . no. . . no. Don’t! Please don’t kill me! No!" With gentle hands, a gentle
voice, and patient insistence, Harriet tried to quiet the girl. At first Jane
resisted all ministrations. She had been given a sedative earlier. Now she was
having trouble waking up. Gradually, however, she shook off the nightmare and calmed
down.
Another nurse, Kay Hamilton, appeared at Harriet’s side. "What happened? Must’ve
woke up half the floor."
"Just a bad dream," Harriet said.
Jane blinked sleepily at them. "She was trying to kill me."
"Hush now," Harriet said. "It was only a dream.
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No one here will hurt you."
"A dream?" Jane asked, her voice slurred. "Oh. Yeah. Just a dream. Whew! What a
dream."
The girl’s thin white gown and the tangled sheets were damp with perspiration.
Harriet and Kay replaced them with fresh linens.
As soon as the bed had been changed, Jane succumbed to the lingering tug of the
sedative. She turned onto her side and murmured happily in her sleep; she even
smiled.
"Looks like she switched to a better channel," Harriet said.
"Poor kid. After what she’s been through, the least she deserves is a good night’s
sleep."
They watched her for a minute, then left the room, turning off the lights and
closing the door.
Alone, deep in sleep, transported into a different dream from the one that had
elicited her screams, Jane sighed, smiled, giggled quietly.
"The ax," she whispered in her sleep. "The ax. Oh, the ax. Yes. Yes."
Her hands curled slightly, as if she were clutching a solid but invisible object.
"The ax," she whispered, and the second of those two words reverberated softly
through the dark room.
Thunk!
Carol ran through the huge living room, across the oriental carpet, banging her hip
against the edge of the credenza.
Thank! Thunk!
She dashed through the archway, into a long hall, headed toward the stairs that led
to the second floor.
When she glanced behind her, she saw that the house had vanished in her wake and had
been replaced by a pitch-black void in which something silvery flickered back and
forth, back and forth.
Thunk!
Understanding came with a flash; she knew what the glimmering object was. An ax. The
blade of an ax. Glinting as it swung from side to side.
Thunk. . . thunk-thunk...
Whimpering, she climbed the stairs toward the second floor.
Thunk.. thank...
At times the blade seemed to be biting into wood; the sound of it was dry,
splintery. But at other times the sound had a subtly different quality, as if the
blade were slicing brutally into a substance much softer than wood, into something
wet and tender.
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Into flesh?
Thank!
Carol groaned in her sleep, turned restlessly, flinging off the sheets.
Then she was running across the high meadow.
The trees ahead. The void behind. And the ax. The ax.
6
FRIDAY morning, there was another break in the rain, but the day was dressed in fog.
The light coming through the hospital window was wintry, bleak.
Jane had only a hazy recollection of the nurses changing her sheets and her
sweat-soaked bed gown during the night. She vaguely recalled having a frightening
dream, too, but she couldn’t bring to mind a single detail of it.
She was still unable to remember her name or anything else about herself. She could
cast her mind back as far as the accident yesterday morning, perhaps even to a point
a minute or so on the other side of the accident, but beyond that there was only a
blank wall where her past should have been.
During breakfast, she read an article in one of the magazines that Carol Tracy had
bought for her. Although there were no visiting hours until this afternoon, Jane was
already looking forward to seeing the woman again. Dr. Hannaport and the nurses were
nice, every one of them, but none of them affected her as positively as Carol Tracy
did. For reasons she could not understand, she felt more secure, more at ease, less
frightened by her amnesia when she was with Dr. Tracy than when she was with the
others. Maybe that was what people meant when they said a doctor had a good bedside
manner.
Shortly after nine o’clock, when Paul was on the freeway, headed downtown to deliver
the new set of application papers to Alfred O’Brian’s office, the Pontiac's engine
cut out. It didn’t sputter or cough; the pistons simply stopped firing while the car
was hurtling along at nearly fifty miles an hour. As the Pontiac's speed plummeted,
its power steering began to freeze up. Traffic whizzed past on both sides at sixty
and sixty-five, faster than the speed limit, too fast for the misty weather. Paul
maneuvered the car across two lanes, toward the right-hand shoulder of the road.
Second by second, he expected to hear a short squeal of brakes and feel the
sickening impact of another car against his, but amazingly, he was able to avoid a
collision. Wrestling with the stiffening steering wheel, he brought the Pontiac to a
full stop on the berm.
He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes until he had regained his composure.
When at last he leaned forward and twisted the key in the ignition, the starter
didn’t make the slightest response; the battery had no juice to offer. He tried a
few more times, then gave up.
A freeway exit was just ahead, and there was a service station less than a block
from the off-ramp. Paul walked to it in ten minutes.
The station was busy, and the owner couldn’t spare his young assistant - a big,
redheaded, open-faced kid named Corky - until the stream of customers subsided to a
trickle shortly before ten o’clock. Then Paul and Corky rode back to the crippled
Pontiac in a tow truck.
They tried jump-starting the car, but the battery wouldn’t hold a charge. The
Pontiac had to be towed back to the station.
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Corky intended to replace the battery and have the car running in half an hour. But
it wasn’t the battery after all, and the estimated time for completion of the
repairs was extended again and again. Finally, Corky found a problem with the
electrical system and fixed it.
Paul was stranded for three hours, always sure he would be on his way in just
another twenty or thirty minutes. But it was one-thirty when he finally parked the
revitalized Pontiac in front of the adoption agency’s offices.
Alfred O’Brian came out to the reception lounge to greet Paul. He was wearing a
well-tailored brown suit, a neatly pressed, cream-colored shirt, a neatly arranged,
beige display handkerchief in the breast pocket of his suit jacket, and a pair of
neatly shined, brown wing-tip shoes. He accepted the application, but he wasn’t
optimistic about the possibility of making all the required verifications prior to
the recommendations committee’s meeting next Wednesday morning.
"We’ll try to do a rush job on your papers," he told Paul. "I owe you that much at
least! But in getting these verifications, we have to deal with people outside this
office, and some of them won’t get back to us right away or won’t like being
hurried. It always takes a minimum of three full business days to run a complete
verification, sometimes four or five days, sometimes even longer, so I very much
doubt that we’ll be ready for this session of the recommendations committee, even
though I want to be. We’ll probably have to submit your application at the second
September meeting, at the end of the month. I feel terrible about that, Mr. Tracy.
I’m more sorry than I can say.
I truly am. If we hadn’t lost those papers in the turmoil yesterday - "
"Don’t worry about it," Paul said. "The lightning wasn’t your doing, and neither was
the problem with my car. Carol and I have waited a long, long time to adopt a child.
Another two weeks isn’t much in the scheme of things."
"When your papers are presented to the committee, you’ll be approved quickly,"
O’Brian said. "I’ve never quickly," O’Brian said. "I’ve never been more sure about a
couple than I am about you. That’s what I’m going to tell them."
"I appreciate that," Paul said.
"If we can’t make Wednesday’s meeting - and I assure you we’ll try our best - then it’s
only a minor, temporary setback. Nothing to be concerned about. Just a bit of bad
luck."
***
Dr. Brad Templeton was a fine veterinarian. However, to Grace, he always looked out
of place when he was ministering to a cat or dog. He was a big man who would have
looked more at home treating horses and farm animals in a country practice, where
his massive shoulders and muscular arms would be of more use. He stood six-five,
weighed about two hundred and twenty pounds, and had a ruddy, rugged, but pleasing
face. When be plucked Aristophanes out of the padded travel basket, the cat looked
like a toy in his enormous hands.
"He looks fit," Brad said, putting Ari on the stainless-steel table that stood in
the middle of the sparkling clean surgery.
"He’s never been one to tear up the furniture, not since he was just a kitten,"
Grace said. "He’s never been a climber, either. But now, every time I turn around,
he’s perched on top of something, peering down at me."
Brad examined Ari, feeling for swollen glands and enlarged joints. The cat
cooperated docilely, even when Brad used a rectal thermometer on him. "Temperature’s
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normal."
"Something’s wrong," Grace insisted.
Aristophanes purred, tolled onto his back, asking for his belly to be rubbed.
Brad rubbed him and was rewarded with an even louder purr. "Is he off his food?"
"No," Grace said. "He stills eats well."
"Vomiting?"
"No."
"Diarrhea?"
"No. He hasn’t shown any symptoms like those.
It’s just that he’s.. . different. He’s not at all like he was. Every symptom I can
point to is a symptom of a personality change, not an indication of physical
deterioration. Like destroying the pillows. Leaving the mess on the armchair. The
sudden interest he’s taken in climbing. And he’s gotten very sneaky lately, always
creeping around, hiding from me, watching me when be thinks I don’t see him."
"All cats are a bit sneaky," Brad said, frowning. "That’s the nature of the beast."
"Ari didn’t used to sneak," Grace said. "Not like he’s been doing the last couple of
days. And he’s not as friendly as he used to be. The last two days, he hasn’t wanted
to be petted or cuddled."
Still frowning, Brad lifted his gaze from the cat and met Grace’s eyes. "But dear,
look at him."
Ari was still on his back, getting his belly rubbed, and clearly relishing all the
attention being directed at him. His tail swished back and forth across the steel
table. He raised one paw and batted playfully at the doctor’s large, leathery hand.
Sighing, Grace said, "I know what you’re thinking. I’m an old woman. Old women get
funny ideas."
"No, no, no. I wasn’t thinking any such thing."
"Old women become obsessively attached to their pets because sometimes their pets
are the only company they have, their only real friends."
"I am perfectly aware that doesn’t apply to you, Grace. Not with all the friends
you’ve got in this town. I merely - "
She smiled and patted his cheek. "Don’t protest too strongly, Brad. I know what’s
going through your mind. Some old women are so afraid of losing their pets that they
think they see signs of illness where there are none. Your reaction is
understandable. It doesn’t offend me. It does frustrate me because I know something
is wrong with Ari."
Brad looked down at the cat again, continued stroking its belly, and said, "Have you
changed his diet in any way?"
"No. He gets the same brand of cat food, at the same times of day, in the same
quantities he’s always gotten it."
"Has the company changed the product recently?"
"How do you mean?"
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"Well, does the package say ‘new, improved,’ or
‘richer flavor,’ or anything like that?"
She thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. "I don't think so."
"Sometimes, when they change a formula, they add a new preservative or a new
artificial flavoring or coloring agent, and some pets have an allergic reaction to
it."
"But wouldn’t that be a physical reaction? Like I said, this seems to be strictly a
personality change."
Brad nodded. "I’m sure you know food additives can cause behavioral problems in some
children. A lot of hyperactive kids calm down when they’re put on a diet free of the
major additives. Animals can be affected by these things, too. From what you’ve told
me, it sounds like Aristophanes is intermittently hyperactive and may be responding
to a subtle change in the formulation of his cat food. Switch him to another brand,
wait a week for his system to purge itself of whatever additives have offended it,
and he’ll probably be the old Ari again."
"If he isn’t?"
"Then bring him in, leave him with me for a couple of days, and I’ll give him a
really thorough going over. But I strongly recommend that we try changing his diet
first, before we go to all that trouble and expense."
You are humoring me, Grace thought. Just coddling an old lady.
"Very well," she said. "I’ll try changing his food. But if he’s still not himself a
week from now, I’ll want you to give him a complete battery of tests."
"Of course."
"I’ll want an answer."
On the stainless-steel table, Aristophanes purred, happily twitched his long tail,
and looked infuriatingly normal.
***
Later, at home, just inside the front door, when Grace slipped the latch on the
padded travel basket and opened the lid, Aristophanes exploded out of confinement
with a hiss and a snarl, his fun bristling, his ears laid back against his head,
eyes wild. He clawed her hand and squealed as she thrust him away from her. He
sprinted down the hall, disappeared into the kitchen, where the pet door gave him
access to the rear yard.
Shocked, Grace stared at her hand. Ari’s claws had made three short furrows in the
meaty edge of her palm. Blood welled up and began to trickle down her wrist.
Carol’s last appointment on Friday was at one o’clock: a fifty-minute session with
Kathy Lombino, a fifteen-year-old girl who was gradually recovering from anorexia
nervosa. Five months ago, when she had first been brought to Carol, Kathy had
weighed only seventy-five pounds, at least thirty pounds below her ideal weight. She
had been teetering on the edge of starvation, repelled by the sight and even the
thought of food, stubbornly refusing to eat more than an occasional soda cracker or
slice of bread, often gagging on even those bland morsels. When she was put in front
of a mirror and forced to confront the pathetic sight of her emaciated body, she
still berated herself for being fat and could not be convinced that she was, in
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fact, frighteningly thin. Her prospects for survival had seemed slight. Now she
weighed ninety pounds, up fifteen, still well below a healthy weight for a girl of
her height and bone structure, but at least she was no longer in danger of dying. A
loss of self-respect and self-confidence was nearly always the seed from which
anorexia nervosa grew, and Kathy was beginning to like herself again, a sure sign
that she was on her way back from the brink. She hadn’t yet regained a normal
appetite; she still experienced mild revulsion at the sight and taste of food; but
her attitude was far better than it had been, for now she recognized the need for
food, even though she didn’t have any desire for it. The girl had a long way to go
before she would be fully recovered, but the worst was past for her; in time she
would learn to enjoy food again, and she would gain weight more rapidly than she had
done thus far, stabilizing around a hundred and five or a hundred and ten pounds.
Kathy’s progress had been immensely satisfying to Carol, and today’s session only
added to that satisfaction. As had become customary, she and the girl hugged each
other at the end of the session, and Kathy held on tighter and longer than usual.
When the girl left the office, she was smiling.
A few minutes later, at two o’clock, Carol went to the hospital. In the gift shop
off the lobby, she bought a deck of playing cards and a miniature checkerboard with
nickle-sized checkers that all fit neatly into a vinyl carrying case.
Upstairs, in 316, the television was on, and Jane was reading a magazine. She looked
up when Carol entered, and she said, "You really came."
"Said I would, didn’t I?"
"What’ve you got?"
"Cards, checkers. I thought maybe they’d help you pass the time."
"You promised you wouldn’t buy me anything else."
"Hey, did I say I was giving these to you? No way. You think I’m a soft touch or
something? I’m lending them, kid. I expect them back. And whenever you return them,
they’d better be in as good condition as they are now, or I’ll take you all the way
to the Supreme Court to get compensated for the damage."
Jane grinned. "Boy, you’re tough."
"I eat nails for breakfast."
"Don’t they get stuck in your teeth?"
"I pluck ‘em out with pliers."
"Ever eat barbed wire?"
"Never for breakfast. I have it for lunch now and then."
They both laughed, and Carol said, "So do you play checkers?"
"I don’t know. I don’t remember."
The girl shrugged.
"Nothing’s come back yet?" Carol asked.
"Not a thing."
"Don’t worry. It will."
"My folks haven’t shown up, either."
"Well, you’ve only been missing for one day. Give them time to find you. It’s too
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soon to start worrying about that."
They played three games of checkers. Jane remembered all of the rules, but she
couldn’t recall where or with whom she had played before.
The afternoon passed quickly, and Carol enjoyed every minute of it. Jane was
charming, bright, and blessed with a good sense of humor. Whether the game was
checkers, hearts, or five-hundred rummy, she played to win, but she never pouted
when she lost. She was very good company.
The girl’s charm and pleasing personality made it highly unlikely that she would go
unclaimed for long. Some teenagers are so self-centered, spaced out on drugs,
bullheaded, and destructive that when one of them decides to run away from home, his
decision often elicits only a sigh of relief from his mother and father. But when a
good kid like Jane Doe disappears, a lot of people start sounding alarms.
There must be a family that loves her, Carol
thought. They’re probably crazy with worry right now. Sooner or later they’ll turn
up, crying and laughing with relief that their girl has been found alive. So why not
sooner? Where are they?
The doorbell rang at precisely three-thirty. Paul answered it and found a pallid,
gray-eyed man of about
fifty. He wore gray slacks, a pale gray shirt, and a dark gray sweater.
"Mr. Tracy?"
"Yes. Are you from Safe Homes?"
"That’s right," the gray man said. "Name’s Bill Alsgood. I am Safe Homes. Started
the company two years ago."
They shook hands, and Alsgood entered the foyer, looking with interest at the
interior of the house. "Lovely place. You’re lucky to get same-day service. Usually,
I’m scheduled three days in advance. But when you called this morning and said it
was an emergency, I’d just had a cancellation."
"You’re a building inspector?" Paul asked, closing the door.
"Structural engineer, to be precise. What our company does is inspect the house
before it’s sold, usually on behalf of the buyer, at his expense. We tell him if
he’s buying into a heartache of any sort - a leaky roof, a cellar that floods, a
crumbling foundation, faulty wiring, bad plumbing, that kind of thing. We’re fully
bonded, so even if we overlook something, our client is protected. Are you the buyer
or the seller?"
"Neither," Paul said. "My wife and I own the place, but we aren’t ready to sell it.
We’re having a problem with the house, and I can’t pinpoint the cause of it. I
thought you might be able to help."
Alsgood raised one gray eyebrow. "May I suggest that what you need is a good
handyman. He’d be considerably cheaper, and once he’d found the trouble, he could
fix it, too. We don’t do any repair work, you know. We only inspect."
"I’m aware of that. I’m pretty handy myself, but I haven’t figured out what’s wrong
or how to fix it.
I think I need the kind of expert advice that no handyman can give me.’
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"You do know we charge two hundred and fifty dollars for an inspection?"
"I know," Paul said. "But this is an extremely annoying problem, and it might be
causing serious structural damage."
"What is it?"
Paul told him about the hammering sounds that occasionally shook the house.
"That’s peculiar as hell," Alsgood said. "I’ve never heard a complaint like it
before." He thought for a moment, then said, "Where’s your furnace?"
"In the cellar."
"Maybe it’s a heating duct problem. Unlikely. But we can start down there and work
our way up to the roof until we’ve found the cause."
For the next two hours, Alsgood looked into every cranny of the house, poked and
probed and rapped and visually inspected every inch of the interior, then every inch
of the roof, while Paul tagged along, assisting wherever he could. A light rain
began to fall when they were still on the roof, and they were both soaked by the
time they finished the job and climbed down. Alsgood’s left foot slipped off the
last rung of the ladder, just as he was about to step onto the waterlogged lawn, and
he twisted his ankle painfully. All that risk and inconvenience was for nothing
because Alsgood didn’t find anything out of the ordinary.
At five-thirty, in the kitchen, they warmed up with coffee while Alsgood filled out
his report. Wet and bedraggled, he looked even more pallid than when Paul had first
seen him. The rain had transformed his gray clothes - once a variety of shades  -  into
a single, dull hue, so that he appeared to be wearing a drab uniform. "It’s
basically a solid house, Mr. Tracy. The condition is really topnotch."
"Then where the devil did that sound come from? And why was the whole house shaken
by it?"
"I wish I’d heard it."
"I was sure it’d start up at least once while you were here."
Alsgood sipped his coffee, but the warm brew added no color to his cheeks.
"Structurally, there’s not a thing wrong with this house. That’s what my report will
say, and I’d stake my reputation on it."
"Which puts me right back at square one," Paul said, folding his hands around his
coffee cup.
"I’m sorry you spent all this money without getting an answer," Alsgood said. "I
really feel bad about that."
"It isn’t your fault. I’m convinced you did a thorough job. In fact, if I ever buy
another house, I’ll definitely want you to inspect it first. At least I now know the
trouble isn’t structural, which rules out possibilities and narrows the field of
inquiry."
"Maybe you won’t even hear it again. It might stop just as suddenly as it started."
"Somehow, I suspect you’re wrong about that," Paul said.
Later, at the front door, as Alsgood was leaving, he said, "One thought has occurred
to me, but I hesitate to mention it."
"Why?"
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"You might think it’s off the wall."
"Mr. Alsgood, I’m a desperate man. I’m willing to consider anything, no matter how
farfetched it might be."
Alsgood looked at the ceiling, then at the floor, then back along the hail that lay
behind Paul, then down at his own feet. "A ghost," he said quietly.
Paul stared at him, surprised.
Alsgood cleared his throat nervously, shifted his eyes to the floor again, then
finally raised them and met Paul’s gaze. "Maybe you don’t believe in ghosts."
"DO you?" Paul asked.
"Yes. I’ve been interested in the subject most of my life. I have a large collection
of publications dealing with spiritualism of all sorts. I’ve had some personal
experiences in haunted houses, too."
"You’ve seen a ghost"
"I believe I have, yes, on four occasions. Ectoplasmic apparitions. Insubstantial,
manlike shapes drifting in the air. I’ve also twice witnessed poltergeist phenomena.
As far as this house is concerned..
His voice trailed away, and he licked his lips nervously. "If you find this boring
or preposterous, I don’t want to waste your time."
"Quite frankly," Paul said, "I can’t picture myself calling an exorcist in to deal
with this. But I’m not entirely close-minded where ghosts are concerned. I find it
hard to accept, but I’m certainly willing to listen."
"Reasonable enough," Alsgood said. For the first time since he had rung the doorbell
more than two hours ago, color rose into his milky complexion, and his watery eyes
brightened with a spark of enthusiasm. "All right. Here’s something to consider.
From what you’ve told me, I’d say there might be a poltergeist at work here. Of
course, no objects have been hurled around by an unseen presence; there’s been no
breakage, and poltergeists dearly love to break things. But the shaking of the
house, the clattering pots and pans, the little bottles clinking against one another
in the spice rack - those are all indications of a poltergeist at work, one that’s
just beginning to test its powers. If it is a poltergeist, then you can expect worse
to come. Oh, yes. Definitely. Furniture moving across the floor all by itself.
Pictures flung off the walls, lamps knocked down and broken. Dishes flying around
the room as if they were birds." His wan countenance flushed with excitement as he
considered the supernatural destruction. "Levitations of heavy objects like sofas
and beds and refrigerators. Now mind you, there are some recorded cases of people
being plagued by benign poltergeists that don’t break much of anything, but the
overwhelming number of them are malign, and that’s what you’ll most likely have to
deal with - if indeed you’ve got one here at all.’, Having warmed to his subject, he
finished in an almost breathless rush of words: "In its most active form, even a
benign poltergeist can completely disrupt a household, interfere with your sleep,
and keep you so on edge that you don’t know whether you’re coming or going."
Startled by Alsgood’s passionately delivered speech
and by the odd new light in the man’s eyes, Paul said, "Well.. . uh. . . it’s really
not that bad. Not nearly that bad. Just a hammering sound and - "
"It’s not that bad yet," Alsgood said somberly.
"But if you have a poltergeist here, the situation could deteriorate rapidly. If
you’ve never seen one in action, Mr. Tracy, you simply can’t understand what it’s
like."
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Paul was disconcerted by the change in the man. He felt as if he had opened the door
to one of those
wholesome-looking types who turned out to be pushing crackpot religious pamphlets
and who proclaimed the imminence of Judgment Day in the same bubbly, upbeat tone of
voice that Donny Osmond might use to introduce his cute little sister, Marie, to a
panting audience of Osmond fans. There was a disquieting zeal in Alsgood’s manner.
"If it does turn out to be a poltergeist," Alsgood said, "if things do get a lot
worse, will you call me right away? I’ve been fortunate enough to observe two
poltergeists, as I said. I’d like nothing better than to see a third going through
its tricks. The opportunity doesn’t arise very often."
"I guess not," Paul said.
"So you’ll call me?"
"I very much doubt there’s a poltergeist involved here, Mr. Alsgood. If I keep
looking long enough and hard enough, I’ll find a perfectly logical explanation for
what’s been happening. But on the off-chance that it is a malign spirit, rest
assured I’ll give you a call the moment the first refrigerator or chiffonier
levitates."
Alsgood wasn’t able to see anything amusing about their conversation. He frowned
when he detected levity in Paul’s voice, and he said, "I didn’t really expect you to
take me seriously."
"Oh, please don’t think I’m not grateful for - "
"No, no," Alsgood said, waving him to silence.
"I understand. No offense taken." The excitement had gone out of his watery eyes.
"You’ve been raised to believe strictly in science. You’ve been taught to put your
faith only in things that can be seen and touched and measured. That’s the modem
way." His shoulders slumped. The color in his face faded, and his skin became pale,
grayish, and slack, as it had been a few minutes ago. "Asking you to be open-minded
about ghosts is as pointless as trying to convince a deep-sea creature that there
are such things as birds. It’s sad but true, and I have no reason to be angry about
it."
He opened the front door, and the sound of the rain grew louder. "Anyway, for your
sake, I hope it isn’t a poltergeist you’ve got here. I hope you find that logical
explanation you’re looking for. I really do, Mr. Tracy."
Before Paul could respond, Alsgood turned and walked out into the rain. He no longer
seemed like a zealot; there was no trace of passion in him. He was just a thin, gray
man, shuffling through the gray mist, head slightly bowed against the gray rain,
illuminated by the gray light of the storm; he almost seemed like a ghost himself;
Paul closed the door, put his back against it, and looked around the hall, through
the nearest archway, which opened onto the living room. Poltergeist? Not very damned
likely.
He preferred Alsgood’s other suggestion: that the hammering might simply stop as
suddenly and inexplicably as it had started, without the cause ever being known.
He glanced at his watch. 6:06.
Carol had said she would remain at the hospital until eight o’clock and would then
come home for a late meal. That gave him an hour or so to work on his novel before
he had to start cooking dinner -  broiled chicken breasts, steamed vegetables, and
rice with bits of green pepper.
He went upstairs to his office and sat down at the typewriter. He picked up the last
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page he had written, intending to reread it a few times and get back into the mood
and tone of the story he was telling.
THUNK! THUNK!
The house shook. The windows rattled.
He bolted up from his chair.
THUNK!
On his desk, the jar full of pens and pencils toppled over, cracked into several
pieces, and spilled its contents onto the floor.
Silence.
He waited. One minute. Two minutes.
Nothing.
There was no sound except the snapping of the rain against the windows and the
drumming of it on the roof.
Only three hammer blows this time. Harder than any that had come before. But only
three. Almost as if someone were playing games with him, taunting him.
***
Shortly before midnight, in room 316, the girl laughed softly in her sleep.
Outside her window, lightning pulsed, and the night flickered, and the darkness
seemed to gallop for a moment, as if it were a huge and eager beast.
The girl turned onto her stomach without waking, murmured into her pillows. "The
ax," she said with a wistful sigh. "The ax. ..."
On the stroke of midnight, just forty minutes after she had fallen asleep, Carol
bolted up from her pillows, trembling violently. As she struggled out of the grip of
her nightmare, she heard someone say, "It’s coming! It’s coming!" She stared wildly,
blindly into the lightless room until she realized the panic-stricken voice had been
her own.
Suddenly she could not tolerate the darkness one second longer. She fumbled
desperately for the switch on the bedside lamp, found it, and sagged with relief.
The light didn’t disturb Paul. He mumbled in his sleep but didn’t wake.
Carol leaned back against the headboard and listened to her racing heart as it
gradually slowed to a normal beat.
Her hands were icy. She put them under the covers and curled them into warming
fists.
The nightmares have got to stop, she told herself. I can’t go through this every
night. I need my sleep.
Perhaps a vacation was called for. She had been working too hard for too long. The
accumulated weariness was probably partly to blame for her bad dreams. She had also
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been under a great deal of unusual stress lately: the pending adoption, the
near-tragic events in O’Brian’s office on Wednesday, the accident just yesterday
morning, the girl’s amnesia for which she felt responsible. .. . Living with too
much tension could cause exceptionally vivid nightmares of the sort she was
experiencing. A week in the mountains, away from everyday problems, seemed like the
perfect medicine.
In addition to all the other sources of stress, that day was approaching, the
birthday of the child she had put up for adoption. A week from tomorrow, the
Saturday after next, would mark sixteen years since she had relinquished the baby.
Already, eight days in advance of that anniversary, she was burdened by a heavy
mantle of guilt. By the time next Saturday rolled around, she would most likely be
thoroughly depressed, as usual. A week in the mountains, away from everyday
problems, might be the perfect medicine for that ailment, too.
Last year, she and Paul had purchased a vacation cabin on an acre of timbered land
in the mountains. It was a cozy place - two bedrooms, one bath, a living room with a
big stone fireplace, and a complete kitchen - a retreat that combined all the comforts
of civilization with the clean air, marvelous scenery, and tranquility that could
not be found in the city.
They had planned to get away to the cabin at least two weekends every month during
the summer, but they had made the trip only three times in the past four months,
less than half as often as they had hoped.
Paul had labored hard to meet a series of self-imposed deadlines on his novel, and
she had taken on more patients - a couple of really troubled kids who simply could not
be turned away - and for both herself and Paul, work had expanded to fill every spare
moment. Perhaps they were the overachievers that Alfred O’Brian had thought they
might be.
But we’ll change when we have a child, Carol told herself. We’ll make lots of time
for leisure and for family outings because creating the best environment for our
child is the job we’re looking forward to more than any other.
Now, sitting up in bed, the grisly nightmare still chillingly fresh in her mind, she
decided to start changing her life from this moment on. They would take off a few
days, maybe a whole week, and go to the mountains before the recommendations
committee's meeting at the end of the month, so they would be rested and composed
when at last they met the child who would be theirs. They couldn’t take off this
coming week, of course. She would need time to reschedule her appointments. Besides,
she didn’t want to leave town until Jane Doe’s parents showed up and properly
identified the girl; that might take a few more days. But they ought to be able to
carve a large chunk of time out of the week after next, and she made up her mind to
start nudging Paul about it first thing in the morning.
Having reached that decision, she felt better. The mere prospect of a vacation, even
a brief one, relieved much of her tension.
She looked at Paul and said, "I love you."
He continued to snore softly.
Smiling, she clicked off the light and settled under the covers again. For a couple
of minutes she listened to the rain and to her husband’s rhythmic breathing; then
she drifted into a sound, satisfying sleep.
***
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Rain fell throughout Saturday, rounding out a monotonously watery, sunless week. The
day was cool, too, and the wind had teeth.
Carol visited Jane in the hospital on Saturday afternoon. They played cards and
talked about some of the articles the girl had read in the magazines Carol had
bought for her. Through every conversation, regardless of the subject, Carol probed
continuously but subtly at the girl’s amnesia, prodded her memory without letting
her see that she was being prodded.
But it was all wasted effort, for Jane’s past remained beyond her grasp.
At the end of the afternoon visiting hours, as Carol was heading toward the
elevators on the third floor, she encountered Dr. Sam Hannaport in the corridor.
"Haven’t the police come up with any leads at all?" she asked.
He shrugged his burly shoulders. "Not yet."
"It’s been over two days since the accident."
"Which isn’t all that long."
"It seems like an eternity to that poor kid in there," Carol said, gesturing toward
the door of 316.
"I know," Hannaport said. "And I feel just as bad about it as you do. But it’s still
too soon to be pessimistic."
"If I had a girl like her, and if my kid turned up missing for even one day, I’d be
pushing the police hard, and I’d make damned sure the story was in all the papers,
and I’d be pounding on doors and making a nuisance of myself all over the city."
Hannaport nodded. "I know you would. I’ve seen how you operate, and I admire your
style. And listen, I think your visits with the girl have an awful lot to do with
keeping her spirits up. It’s good of you to take all this time with her."
"Well, I’m not angling for a testimonial dinner,"
Carol said. "I don’t think I’m doing any more than I have to do. I mean, I’ve got a
responsibility here."
A nurse came along, pushing a patient in a wheelchair. Carol and Hannaport stepped
out of the way.
"At least Jane seems to be in good physical shape," Carol said.
"Like I told you on Wednesday - there were no
serious injuries. In fact, because she is in such good condition, she presents us
with a problem. She doesn’t really belong in a hospital. I just hope her parents
show up before I’m forced to discharge her."
"Discharge her? But you can’t do that if she has nowhere to go. She can’t cope
outside. For God’s sake, she doesn’t even know who she is!"
"Naturally, I’ll keep her here as long as I possibly can. But by late tonight or
tomorrow morning, all of our beds are probably going to be full. Then, if the number
of emergency admissions is greater than the number of discharges already scheduled,
we’ll have to look around for a few other patients who can be safely released.
Jane’s bound to be one of them. If some guy’s brought in here with a cracked skull
from an auto accident, or if an ambulance delivers a woman who’s been stabbed by a
jealous boyfriend, I can’t justify turning away seriously injured people while I’m
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keeping a perfectly healthy girl whose worst physical problem is a contusion on her
left shoulder."
"But her amnesia - "
"Is something we can’t treat anyway."
"But she has nowhere to go," Carol said. "What would happen to her?"
In his calm, soft, reassuring voice, Hannaport said, "She’ll be okay. Really. We’re
not going to just abandon her. We’ll petition to have her declared a ward of the
court until her parents show up. In the meantime, she’ll do just as well at some
minimal-care facility as she would do here."
"What facility are you talking about?"
"Just three blocks from here, there’s a borne for runaway and pregnant teenage
girls, and it’s far
cleaner and better managed than the average state institution."
"The Polmar Home," Carol said. "I know it."
"Then you know it’s not a dungeon or a dump."
"I still don’t like moving her out of here," Carol said. "She’s going to feel as if
she’s being shunted aside, forgotten, and left to rot. She’s on very shaky ground
already. This’II scare her half to death."
Frowning, Hannaport said, "I don’t like it much myself, but! truly don’t have an
option. If we’re short on bed space, the law says we’ve got to consider degrees of
need and take in those patients who have the most to lose by being denied care or by
having treatment delayed. I’m in a bind."
"I understand. I’m not blaming you. Dammit, if someone would just come forward to
claim her!"
"Someone might, any minute."
Carol shook her head. "No. I’ve got a feeling it’s not going to be that easy. Have
you told Jane yet?"
"No. We won’t make the petition to the court sooner than Monday morning, so I might
as well wait until tomorrow to explain it to her. Maybe something'll happen between
now and then to make it unnecessary. No use worrying her until we have to."
Carol was depressed, remembering her own days in a state-run institution, before
Grace had come along to rescue her. She had been a tough kid, street-smart, but the
experience had nevertheless scarred her. Jane was bright and spunky and strong and
sweet, but she wasn’t rough, not like Carol had been at her age. What would
institutional living do to her if she had to endure it for more than a day or two?
If she was simply dropped in among kids who were street-smart, among kids who had
drug and behavioral problems, she would most likely be victimized, perhaps even
violently. What she needed was a real home, love, guidance -  "Of course!" Carol said.
She grinned.
Hannaport looked at her questioningly.
"Why can’t she come with me?" Carol asked.
"What?"
"Look, Dr. Hannaport, if it’s all right with Paul, my husband, why couldn’t you
recommend to the court that I be awarded temporary custody of Jane until someone
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shows up who can identify her?"
"You really better think twice about that," Hannaport said. "Taking her in,
disrupting your lives - "
"It won’t be a disruption," Carol said. "It’ll be a pleasure. She’s a delightful
kid."
Hannaport stared at her a long moment, searching her face and her eyes.
"After all," Carol argued as persuasively as she could, "the only kind of doctor who
might be able to cure Jane’s amnesia is a psychiatrist. And in case you’ve
forgotten, that’s what I am. I’d not only be able to provide a decent home for her;
I’d also be able to treat her rather intensively."
Finally, Hannaport smiled. "I think it’s a grand and generous offer, Dr. Tracy."
"Then you’ll make the recommendation to the court?"
"Yes. Of course, you never can be sure what a judge will do. But I think there’s a
pretty good chance he’ll see where the best interests of the girl lie."
A few minutes later, in the hospital lobby, Carol used
a pay phone to call Paul. She recounted the conversation she’d had with Dr.
Hannaport, but before she
got to the big question, Paul interrupted her. "You want to make a place for Jane,"
he said.
Surprised, Carol said, "How’d you guess?"
He laughed. "I know you, sugarface. When it comes to kids, you’ve got a heart the
consistency of vanilla pudding."
"She won’t be in your way," Carol said quickly. "She won’t distract you from your
writing. And now that O’Brian won’t be able to present our application for the
adoption until the end of the month, there’s no chance we’ll have two kids to take
care of. In fact maybe the delay at the agency was meant to be - so we’d have a place
for Jane until her folks show up. It’s only temporary, Paul. Really. And we - "
"Okay, okay," he said. "You don’t have to sell me on it. I approve of the plan."
"If you’d like to come here and meet Jane first, that’s - "
"No, no. I’m sure she’s everything you’ve said she is. Don’t forget,
though, you were planning to go to the mountains in a week or so."
"We might not even have Jane that long. And if we do, we can probably take her with
us, so long as we let the court know where we’re going."
"When do we have to appear in court?"
"I don’t know. Probably Monday or Tuesday."
"I’ll be on my best behavior," Paul said.
"Scrub behind your ears?"
"Okay. And I’ll also wear shoes."
Grinning, Carol said, "Don’t pick your nose in front of the judge."
"Not unless he picks his first."
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She said, "I love you, Dr. Tracy."
"I love you, Dr. Tracy."
When she put down the receiver and turned away from the pay phone, she felt
wonderful. Not even the gaudy decor of the visitors’ lounge could get on her nerves
now.
***
That night, there was no hammering sound in the Tracy house, no evidence of the
poltergeist that Mr.
Alsgood had warned Paul about. There was no disturbance the following day, either,
and none the day after that. The strange noise and the vibrations had ceased as
inexplicably as they had begun.
Carol stopped having nightmares, too. She slept deeply, peacefully, without
interruption. She quickly forgot about the flickering, silvery blade of the ax
swinging back and forth in the strange void.
The weather improved, too. The clouds dissipated on Sunday. Monday was summery,
blue.
Tuesday afternoon, while Paul and Carol were in court trying to obtain temporary
custody of Jane Doe, Grace Mitowski was cleaning her kitchen. She had just finished
dusting the top of the refrigerator when the telephone rang.
"Hello."
No one answered her. "Hello," she said again.
A thin, whispery, male voice said, "Grace..
"Yes?"
His words were muffled, and there was an echo on the line, as if he were talking
into a tin can.
"I can’t understand you," she said. "Can you speak up?"
He tried, but again the words were lost. They seemed to be coming from an enormous
distance, across an unimaginably vast chasm.
"We have a terrible connection," she said. "You’ll have to speak up."
"Grace," he said, his voice only slightly louder. "Gracie it’s almost too late.
You’ve got to . . . move fast. You’ve got to stop it... from happening .. again."
It was a dry, brittle voice; it cracked repeatedly, with a sound like dead autumn
leaves underfoot. "It’s almost. . . too late. . . too late
She recognized the voice, and she froze. Her hand tightened on the receiver, and she
couldn’t get her breath.
"Gracie.. . it can’t go on forever. You’ve got to put an end to it. Protect her,
Gracie. Protect her
The voice faded away.
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There was only silence. But not the silence of an open phone line. There was no
hissing. No electronic beeping in the background. This was perfect silence, utterly
unmarred by even the slightest click or whistle of electronic circuitry. Vast
silence. Endless.
She put the phone down.
She started to shake.
She went to the cupboard and got down the bottle of Scotch she kept for visitors.
She poured herself a double shot and sat down at the kitchen table.
The liquor didn’t warm her. Chills still shook her.
The voice on the phone had belonged to Leonard. Her husband. He had been dead for
eighteen years.
PART TWO
Evil Walks Among Us...
Evil is no faceless stranger, living in a distant neighborhood.
Evil has a wholesome, hometown face, with many eyes and an open smile.
Evil walks among us, wearing a mask which looks like all our faces.
 - The Book of Counted Sorrows
7
TUESDAY, after winning temporary custody of Jane Doe, Paul went home to work on his
novel, and Carol took the girl shopping. Because Jane had no clothes except those
she’d been wearing when she’d stepped in front of the Volkswagen last Thursday
morning, she needed a lot of things, even for just a few days. She was embarrassed
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about spending Carol’s money, and at first she was reluctant to admit that she liked
anything she saw or that anything fit her well enough to buy it.
At last Carol said, "Honey, you need this stuff, so please just relax and let me buy
it for you. Okay? the long run, it won’t be coming out of my pocket anyway. I’ll
most likely be reimbursed either by your parents, by the foster children program, or
by some other county agency."
That argument worked. They quickly purchased a couple of pairs of jeans, a few
blouses, underwear, a good pair of sneakers, socks, a sweater, and a windbreaker.
When they got home, Jane was impressed by the Tudor house with its leaded-glass
windows, gabled roof, and stonework. She fell in love with the guest room in which
she was to stay. It had a cove ceiling, a long window seat inset in a bay window,
and a wall of mirrored closet doors. It was done in deep blue and pale beige, with
Queen Anne furniture of lustrous cherrywood. "It’s really just a guest room?" Jane
asked, incredulous. "You don’t use it regularly? Boy, if this were my house, I’d
come in here all the time! I’d just sit and read for a little while every day - read
and sit there in the window and soak up the atmosphere."
Carol had always liked the room, but through Jane’s eyes she achieved a new
perception and appreciation of it. As she watched the girl inspecting things - sliding
open the closet doors, checking the view from each angle of the bay window, testing
the firmness of the mattress on the queen-sized bed -  Carol realized that one
advantage of having children was that their innocent, fresh reactions to everything
could keep their parents young and open-minded, too.
That evening, Carol, Paul, and Jane prepared dinner together. The girl fit in
comfortably and immediately, in spite of the fact that she was somewhat shy. There
was a lot of laughter in the kitchen and at the dinner table.
After dinner, Jane started washing dishes while Carol and Paul cleared the table.
When they were separated from the girl for a moment, alone in the
dining room, Paul said quietly, "She’s a terrific kid."
"Didn’t I tell you so?"
"Funny thing, though."
"What?"
"Ever since I saw her this afternoon, outside the courtroom," Paul said, "I’ve had
the feeling that I’ve seen her somewhere before."
"Where?"
He shook his head. "I’ll be damned if I know. But there’s something familiar about
her face."
Throughout Tuesday afternoon, Grace expected the phone to ring again.
She dreaded having to answer it.
She tried to work off her nervous energy by cleaning the house. She scrubbed the
kitchen floor, dusted the furniture in every room, and swept all the carpets.
But she couldn’t stop thinking about the call: the paper-dry, echo-distorted voice
that had sounded like Leonard; the odd things he had said; the eerie silence when he
had finished speaking; the disquieting sense of vast distances, an unimaginable gulf
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of space and time.
It had to be a hoax. But who could be responsible for it? And why torment her with
an imitation of Leonard’s voice, eighteen years after the man had died? What was the
point of playing games like this now, after so much time had passed?
She tried to get her mind off the call by baking apple dumplings. Thick, crusty
dumplings - served with cinnamon, milk, and just a bit of sugar - were a suppertime
favorite of hers, for she had been born and raised in Lancaster, the heart of the
Pennsylvania Dutch country, where that dish was considered a meal in itself. But
Tuesday evening, she had no appetite, not even for dumplings. She ate a few bites,
but she couldn’t even finish half of one dumpling, though she usually ate two whole
ones in a single meal.
She was still picking disinterestedly at her food when the telephone rang.
Her head jerked up. She stared at the wall phone that was above the small, built-in
desk beside the refrigerator.
It rang again. And again.
Trembling, she got up, went to the phone, and lifted the receiver.
"Gracie. .
The voice was faint but intelligible.
"Gracie. . . it’s almost too late."
It was him. Leonard. Or someone who sounded exactly like Leonard had sounded.
She couldn’t respond to him. Her throat clutched tight.
"Gracie.. ."
Her legs seemed to be melting under her. She
pulled out the chair that was tucked into the kneehole
of the desk, and she sat down quickly.
"Gracie. . . stop it from happening again. It mustn’t. . . go on forever.. . time
after time. . . the blood. . . the murder. . ."
She closed her eyes, forced herself to speak. Her voice was weak, quavery. She
didn’t even recognize it as her own. It was the voice of a stranger - a weary,
frightened, frail old woman. "Who is this?"
The whispery, vibrative voice on the telephone said, "Protect her, Oracle."
"What do you want from me?"
"Protect her."
"Why are you doing this?"
"Protect her."
"Protect who?" she demanded.
"Willa. Protect Willa."
She was still frightened and confused, but she was beginning to be angry, too. "I
don’t know anyone named Willa, dammit! Who is this?"
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"Leonard."
"No! Do you think I’m a doddering, senile old fool? Leonard’s dead. Eighteen years!
You’re not Leonard. What kind of game are you playing?"
She wanted to hang up on him, and she knew that was the best thing to do with a
crank like this, but she couldn’t make herself put down the receiver. He sounded so
much like Leonard that she was mesmerized by his voice.
He spoke again, much softer than before, but she could still hear him. "Protect
Willa."
"I tell you, I don’t know her. And if you keep calling me with this nonsense, I’m
going to tell the police that some sick practical joker is - "
"Carol. . . Carol," the man said, his voice fading syllable by syllable. "Willa. . .
but you call her. . . Carol."
"What the hell is going on here?"
"Beware.. .the. . .cat."
"What?"
The voice was so distant now that she had to strain to hear it. "The .. . cat ..."
"Aristophanes? What about him? Have you done something to him? Have you poisoned
him? Is that what’s been wrong with him lately"
No response.
"Are you there"
Nothing.
"What about the cat?" she demanded.
No answer.
She listened to the pure, pure silence, and she began to tremble so violently that
she had trouble holding the phone. "Who are you? Why do you want to torment me like
this? Why do you want to hurt Aristophanes?"
Far, far away, the achingly familiar voice of her long-dead husband uttered a few
final, barely audible words. "Wish. . .1 was there.. . for the.. . apple dumplings."
***
They had forgotten to buy pajamas for Jane. She went to bed in knee socks, panties,
and one of Carol’s T-shirts, which was a bit large for her.
"What happens tomorrow?" she asked when she was tucked in, her head raised on a
plump pillow.
Carol sat on the edge of the bed. "I thought we might start a program of treatment
designed to pry open your memory."
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"What kind of treatment?"
"Do you know what hypnotic regression therapy is?"
Jane was suddenly frightened. Several times since the accident, she had made a
conscious, concerted effort to remember who she was, but on each occasion, as she
felt herself coming close to a disturbing revelation, she had become dizzy,
disoriented, and panicky. When she pressed her mind back, back, back toward the
truth, a psychological defense mechanism cut off her curiosity as abruptly as a
strangler’s garrote might have cut off her air supply. And every time, on the edge
of unconsciousness, she saw a strange, silvery object swinging back and forth
through blackness, an utterly indecipherable yet blood-chilling vision. She sensed
there was something hideous in her past, something so terrible that she would be
better off no: remembering. She had just about made up her mind not to seek what had
been lost, to accept her new life as a nameless orphan, even though it might be
filled with hardships. But through hypnotic regression therapy, she could be forced
to confront the specter in her past, whether she wanted to or not. That prospect
filled her with dread.
"Are you all right?" Carol asked.
The girl blinked, licked her lips. "Yeah. I was just thinking about what you said.
Hypnotic regression. Does that mean you’re going to put me in a trance and make me
remember everything?"
"Well, it isn’t that easy, honey. There’s no guarantee it’ll work. I’ll hypnotize
you and ask you to think back to the accident on Thursday morning; then I’ll nudge
you further and further into the past. If you’re a good subject, you might remember
who you are and where you come from. Hypnotic regression is a tool that comes in
handy sometimes when I’m trying to get a patient to relive a deeply hidden, severely
regressed trauma. I’ve never used the technique on an amnesia victim, but I know
it’s applicable to a case like yours. Of course, it only works about half the time.
And when it does work, it takes more than one or two sessions. It can be a tedious,
frustrating process. We’re not going to get much of anywhere tomorrow, and in fact
your parents will probably show up before I’ve been able to help you remember. But
we might as well make a start. That is, if it’s all right with you."
She didn’t want Carol to know that she was afraid to remember, so she said, "Oh,
sure! It sounds fascinating."
"I’ve got four patients scheduled for tomorrow, but I can work you in at eleven
o’clock. You’ll have to spend a lot of time in the waiting room, before and after
your session, so first thing in the morning, we’ll find a book for you to take
along. Do you like to read mystery stories?"
"I guess so."
"Agatha Christie?"
"The name’s familiar, but I don’t know whether I’ve ever read any of her books."
"You can try one tomorrow. If you were a big fan of mysteries, maybe Agatha Christie
will open your memory for you. Any stimulus, any connection whatsoever with your
past can act like a doorway." She leaned down, kissed Jane’s forehead. "But don’t
worry about it now. Just get a good night’s sleep, kiddo."
After Carol left the room, closing the door behind her, Jane didn’t immediately
switch off the light. She let her gaze travel slowly around the room and then slowly
back again, her eyes resting on each point of beauty.
Please, God, she thought, let me stay here. Somehow, some way, let me stay in this
house forever and ever. Don’t make me go back where I came from, wherever that might
be. This is where I want to live. This is where I want to die, it’s so pretty.
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Finally, she reached out and snapped off the bedside lamp.
Darkness folded in like bat wings.
Using a piece of Masonite and four nails, Grace Mitowski fixed a temporary seal over
the inside of the pet door.
Aristophanes stood in the center of the kitchen, his head cocked to one side,
watching her with bright-eyed interest. Every, few seconds, he meowed in what seemed
to be an inquisitive tone.
When the last nail was in place, Grace said, "Okay, cat. For the time being, your
license to roam has been suspended. There might be a man out there who’s been
feeding you small amounts of drugs or poison of some sort, and maybe that’s been the
cause of your bad behavior. We’ll just have to wait and see if you improve. Have you
been flying high on drugs, you silly cat?"
Aristophanes meowed questioningly.
"Yes," Grace said. "I know it sounds bizarre. But if it’s not some kook I’ve got to
deal with, then it really must’ve been Leonard on the phone. And that’s even more
bizarre, don’t you think?"
The cat turned his head from one side to the other, as if he really were flying to
make sense of what she was saying.
Grace stopped, held out her hand, and rubbed her thumb and forefinger together.
"Here, kitty. Here, kitty-kitty-kitty."
Aristophanes hissed, spat, turned, and ran.
For a change, they made love with the lights off.
Carol’s breath was hot against his neck. She pressed close, rocked and tensed and
twisted and flexed in perfect harmony with him; her exquisite, pneumatic movements
were as fluid as currents in a warm river. She arched her elegant back, lifted and
subsided in tempo with his measured strokes. She was as pliant, as silken, and
eventually as all-encompassing as the darkness.
Afterwards, they held hands and talked about inconsequential things, steadily
growing drowsy. Carol fell asleep while Paul was talking. When she failed to respond
to one of his questions, he gently disentangled his hand from hers.
He was tired, but he couldn’t find sleep as quickly as she had found it. He kept
thinking about the girl. He was certain he had seen her prior to their meeting
outside the courtroom this morning. During dinner, her face had grown more and more
familiar. It continued to haunt him. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t
recall where else he had seen her.
As he lay in the dark bedroom, paging through his memory, he gradually became
uneasy. He began to feel - utterly without reason - that his previous encounter with
Jane had been strange, perhaps even unpleasant. Then he wondered if the girt might
actually pose some sort of threat to Carol and himself.
But that’s absurd, he thought. Doesn’t make any sense at all. I must be even more
tired than I thought.
Logic seems to be slipping out of my grasp. What possible threat could Jane pose?
She’s such a nice kid. An exceptionally nice kid.
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He sighed, rolled over, and thought about the plot of his first novel (the failed
one), and that quickly put him to sleep.
At one o’clock in the morning, Grace Mitowski was sitting up in bed, watching a late
movie on the Sony portable. She was vaguely aware that Humphrey Bogart and Lauren
Bacall were engaged in witty repartee, but she didn’t really hear anything they
said. She had lost track of the film’s plot only minutes after she had turned it on.
She was thinking about Leonard, the husband she had lost to cancer eighteen years
ago. He had been a good man, hard-working, generous, loving, a grand
conversationalist. She had loved him very much.
But not everyone had loved Leonard. He had had his faults, of course. The worst
thing about him had been his impatience - and the sharp tongue that his impatience had
encouraged. He couldn’t tolerate people who were lazy or apathetic or ignorant or
foolish. "Which includes two-thirds of the human race," he had often said when he
was feeling especially curmudgeonly. Because he was an honest man with precious
little diplomacy in his bones, he had told people exactly what he thought of them.
As a result, he had led a life remarkably free of deception but rich in enemies.
She wondered if it had been one of those enemies who had called her, pretending to
be Leonard. A sick man might get as much pleasure from tormenting
Leonard’s widow as he would have gotten from tormenting Leonard himself. He might
get a thrill from poisoning her cat and from harassing her with weird phone calls.
But after eighteen years? Who would have remembered Leonard’s voice so well as to be
able to imitate it perfectly such a long time later? Surely she was the only person
in the world who could still recognize that voice upon hearing it speak only a word
or two. And why bring Carol into it? Leonard had died three years before Carol had
entered Grace’s life; he had never known the girl. His enemies couldn’t possibly
have anything against Carol. What had the caller meant when he’d referred to Carol
as "Willa"? And, most disturbing of all, how did the caller know she had just made
apple dumplings?
There was another explanation, though she was loath to consider it. Perhaps the
caller hadn’t been an old enemy of Leonard’s. Maybe the call actually had come from
Leonard himself. From a dead man.
 - No. Impossible.
 - A lot of people believe in ghosts.
 - Not me.
She thought about the strange dreams she’d had last week. She hadn’t believed in
dream prophecies then. Now she did. So why not ghosts, too?
No. She was a level-headed woman who had lived a stable, rational life, who had been
trained in the sciences, who had always believed that science held all the answers.
Now, at seventy years of age, if she made room for the existence of ghosts within
her otherwise rational philosophy, she might be opening the floodgates on madness.
If you truly believed in ghosts, what came next? Vampires? Did you have to
start carrying a sharp wooden stake and a crucifix everywhere you went? Werewolves?
Better buy a box of silver bullets! Evil elves who lived in the center of the earth
and caused quakes and volcanoes? Sure! Why not?
Grace laughed bitterly.
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She couldn’t suddenly become a believer in ghosts, because acceptance of that
superstition might require the acceptance of countless others. She was too old, too
comfortable with herself, too accustomed to her familiar ways to reconsider her
entire view of life. And she certainly wasn’t going to contemplate such a sweeping
reevaluation merely because she had received two bizarre phone calls.
That left only one thing to be decided: whether or not she should tell Carol that
someone was harassing her and had used Carol’s name. She tried to hear how she would
sound when she explained the telephone calls and when she outlined her theory about
Aristophanes being drugged or poisoned. She couldn’t hope to sound like the Grace
Mitowski that everyone knew. She’d come off like an hysterical old woman who was
seeing nonexistent conspirators behind every door and under every bed.
They might even think she was going senile.
Am I? she wondered. Did I imagine the telephone calls? No. Surely not.
She wasn’t imagining Aristophanes’s changed personality, either. She looked at the
claw marks on the palm of her hand; although they were healing, they were still red
and puffy. Proof. Those marks were proof that something was wrong.
I’m not senile, she told herself. Not even a little bit. But I sure don’t want to
have to convince Carol or Paul that I’ve got all my marbles, once I’ve told them
that I’m getting phone calls from Leonard. Better go easy for the time being. Wait.
See what happens next. Anyway, I can figure this out on my own. I can handle it.
On the Sony, Bogart and Bacall grinned at each other.
When Jane woke up in the middle of the night, she discovered she had been
sleepwalking. She was in the kitchen, but she couldn’t recall getting out of bed and
coming downstairs.
The kitchen was silent. The only sound was from the softly purring refrigerator. The
only light was from the moon, but because the moon was full and because the kitchen
had quite a few windows, there was enough light to see by.
Jane was standing at a counter near the sink. She had opened one of the drawers and
had taken a butcher knife out of it.
She stared down at the knife, startled to find it in her hand.
Pale moonlight glinted on the cold blade.
She returned the knife to the drawer.
Closed the drawer.
She had been gripping the knife so tightly that her hand ached.
Why did! want a knife?
A chill skittered like a centipede along her spine.
Her bare arms and legs broke out in gooseflesh, and she was suddenly very aware that
she was wearing only a T-shirt, panties, and knee socks.
The refrigerator motor shut off with a dry rattle that made her jump and turn.
Now the house was preternaturally silent. She could almost believe that she had gone
deaf.
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What was I doing with the knife?
She hugged herself to ward off the chills that kept wriggling through her.
Maybe she had dreamed about food and had come down here in her sleep to make a
sandwich. Yes. That was probably what had happened. In fact she was a bit hungry. So
she had gotten the knife out of the drawer in order to slice some roast beef for a
sandwich. There was a butt end of a roast in the refrigerator. She had seen it
earlier, when she had been helping Carol and Paul make dinner.
But now she didn’t think she could eat a sandwich or anything else. Her bare legs
were getting colder by the moment, and she felt immodestly exposed in just flimsy
panties and a thin T-shirt. All she wanted now was to get back to bed, under the
covers.
Climbing the steps in the darkness, she stayed close to the wall, where the treads
were less likely to creak. She returned to her room without waking anyone.
Outside, a dog howled in the distance.
Jane burrowed deeper in her blankets.
For a while she had trouble getting to sleep because she felt guilty about prowling
through the house while the Tracys slept. She felt sneaky. She felt as if she had
been taking advantage of their hospitality.
Of course, that was silly. She hadn’t been nosing around on purpose. She had been
sleepwalking, and there was no way a person could control something like that.
Just sleepwalking.
8
THE focal point of Carol Tracy’s office was Mickey Mouse. One long wall of the room
was fitted with shelves on which were displayed Mickey Mouse memorabilia. There were
Mickey Mouse buttons, Mickey Mouse pins, a wristwatch, belt buckles, a Mickey Mouse
phone, drinking glasses bearing the famous mouse’s countenance, a beer mug on which
there was a likeness of Mickey dressed in lederhosen and a Tyrolean hat. But mostly
there were statuettes of the cartoon star: Mickey standing beside a little red car;
Mickey curled up in striped pajamas. sleeping; Mickey dancing a jig; Mickey with
Minnie; Mickey with Goofy; Mickey holding barbells; Mickey with Pluto; Mickey and
Donald Duck with their arms around each other’s shoulders, looking like the best of
friends; Mickey riding a horse, with a cowboy hat
raised in one white-gloved, four-fingered hand; Mickey dressed like a soldier, a
sailor, a doctor; Mickey in swimming trunks, clutching a surfboard. There were
wooden, metal, chalk, porcelain, plastic, glass, and clay statuettes of Mickey; some
of them were a foot high, and some were no more than one inch tall, though most were
in between. The only thing those hundreds of Mickeys had in common was the fact that
every one of them was smiling broadly.
The collection was an icebreaker with patients of all ages. No one could resist
Mickey Mouse.
Jane responded as scores of patients had done before her. She said "oooh" and "aaah"
a lot, and she laughed happily. By the time she had finished admiring the collection
and had sat down in one of the big leather armchairs, she was ready for the therapy
session; her tension and apprehension had disappeared. Mickey had worked his usual
magic.
Carol didn’t have an analyst’s couch in her office.
She preferred to conduct sessions from a large wing chair, with the patient seated
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in an identical chair on the other side of the octagonal coffee table. The drapes
were always kept tightly shut; soft, golden light was provided by shaded floor
lamps. Except for the wall of Mickey Mouse images, the room had a nineteenth-century
air.
They chatted about the collection for a couple of minutes, and then Carol said,
"Okay, honey. I think we ought to begin."
Worry lines appeared on the girl’s forehead. "You really think this hypnosis is a
good idea?"
"Yes. I think it’s the best tool we have for restoring your memory. Don’t worry.
It’s a simple process. Just relax and flow with it. Okay?"
"Well. . . okay."
Carol got up and stepped around the coffee table, and Jane started to get up, too.
"No, you stay there," Carol said. She moved behind the wing chair and put her
fingertips against the girl’s temples. "Relax, honey. Lean back. Hands in your lap.
Palms up, fingers slack. That’s fine. Now close your eyes. Are they closed?"
"Yes."
"Good. Very good. Now I want you to think of a kite. A large, diamond-shaped kite.
Picture it in your mind. It’s an enormous, blue kite sailing high in the blue sky.
Can you see it?"
After a brief hesitation, the girl said, "Yes."
"Watch the kite, honey. See how gently it rises and falls on the currents of air.
Rises, falls, up and down, up and down, side to side, sailing so gracefully, far
above the earth, halfway between the earth and the clouds, far above your head,"
Carol said in a mellow, soothing, rhythmic voice as she stared down at the girl’s
thick blond hair. "While you’re watching the kite, you’ll gradually become as light
and as free as it is. You’ll learn to soar up and up into the blue sky, just like
the kite." With her fingertips, she lightly traced circles on the girl’s temples.
"All the tension is leaving you, all the worries and cares are floating away, away,
until the only thought in your head is the kite, the sailing kite in the blue sky. A
great weight has been removed from your skull, from your forehead and your temples.
Already, you feel much lighter." She moved her hands down to the girl’s neck. "The
muscles in your neck are relaxing. Tension is dropping away. A great weight is
dropping away. You are so much lighter now that you can almost feel yourself rising
up toward the kite. . . almost.. . almost. . She moved her hands down, touched the
girl’s shoulders. "Relax. Let the tension fall away. Like blocks of concrete. Making
you lighter, lighter. A weight is falling off your chest, too. And now you’re
floating. Just a few inches off the ground, but you are floating."
"Yes.. . floating. . ." she said, her voice thick.
"The kite is gliding far above, but you are slowly, slowly moving up to join it.. .
She went on like that for a minute, then returned to her own chair and sat down.
Jane was slumped in the other wing chair, head tilted to one side, eyes closed, face
soft and slack, breathing softly.
"You are in a very deep sleep," Carol told her. "A very relaxed, very deep, deep
sleep. Do you understand?"
"Yes," the girl murmured.
"You will answer a few questions for me."
"Okay."
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"You will remain in your deep sleep, and you will answer my questions until I tell
you it’s time to wake up. Understood?"
"Yes."
"Good. Very good. Now tell me - what is your name?"
The girl was silent.
"What is your name, honey?"
"Jane."
"Is that your real name?"
"No.’’
"What is your real name?"
Jane frowned. "I. . . don’t remember."
"Where did you come from?"
"The hospital."
"Before that""
"Nowhere."
A bead of saliva glistened at the corner of the girl’s
mouth. Languorously, she licked it away before it could drool down her chin.
Carol said, "Honey, do you remember the Mickey Mouse watch you saw a few minutes
ago?"
"Yes."
"Well, I’ve taken that watch from the shelf," Carol said, though she hadn’t moved
from her chair. "And now I’m turning the hands on it backwards, around and around
the dial, always backwards. Can you see the hands moving backwards on that Mickey
Mouse watch?"
"Yes."
"Now something amazing is happening. As I turn those hands backwards and backwards,
time itself begins to flow in reverse. It isn’t a quarter past eleven any more. It’s
now eleven o’clock. This is a magic watch. It governs the flow of time. And now it’s
ten o’clock in the morning. . . nine o’clock. . . eight o’clock.... Look around you.
Where are you now?"
The girl opened her eyes. They were fixed on a distant point. She said, "Ummm. . .
the kitchen. Yeah. The breakfast nook. Boy, the bacon’s nice and crisp."
Gradually, Carol moved her back in time, back through the days she had spent in the
hospital, finally regressing to the accident last Thursday morning. The girl winced
as she relived the moment of impact, and cried out, and Carol soothed her, and then
they went back a few minutes further.
"You’re standing on the sidewalk," Carol said.
"You’re dressed only in a blouse and jeans. It’s raining. Chilly."
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The girl closed her eyes again. She shivered.
"What’s your name?" Carol asked. Silence.
"What’s your name, honey?"
"I don’t know."
"Where have you just come from?"
"Nowhere."
"You mean you have amnesia?" "Yes."
"Even before the accident?’
"Yes."
Although she was still very concerned about the girl, Carol was relieved to hear
that she wasn’t responsible for Jane’s condition. For a moment she felt like that
blue kite, capable of soaring up and away.
Then she said, "Okay. You’re about to step into the street. Do you just want to
cross it, or do you intend to walk in front of a car?’
"I. . . don’t. . . know."
"How do you feel? Happy? Depressed? Indifferent?"
"Scared," the girl said in a small, shaky voice.
"What are you scared of?" Silence.
"What are you scared of?" "It’s coming."
"What’s coming?" "Behind me!" "What’s behind you?"
The girl opened her eyes again. She was still staring at a distant point, but now
there was stark terror in her eyes.
"What’s behind you?" Carol asked again.
"Oh God," the girl said miserably.
"What is it?"
"No, no." She shook her head. Her face was bloodless.
Carol leaned forward in her chair. "Relax, honey."
You will relax and be calm. Close your eyes.
Calm. . . like the kite.. . far above everything... floating. . . warm."
The tension went out of Jane’s face.
"All right," Carol said. "Staying calm, always relaxed and calm, you will tell me
what you’re afraid of."
The girl said nothing.
"Honey, what are you scared of? What’s behind you?"
"Something..."
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"What?"
"Something..."
Patiently, Carol said, "Be specific."
"I. . . don’t know what it is. . . but it’s coming. . . and it scares me."
"Okay. Let’s go back a bit further." Using the image of the backwards-moving hands
on the Mickey Mouse wristwatch, she regressed the girl another full day into the
past. "Now look around. Where are you?"
"Nowhere."
"What do you see?"
"Nothing."
"You must see something, honey."
"Darkness."
"Are you in a dark room?"
"No."
"Are there walls in the darkness?"
"No."
"Are you outdoors at night?"
"No."
She regressed the girl another day. "Now what do you see?"
"Just the darkness."
"There must be something else."
"No."
"Open your eyes, honey."
The girl obeyed. Her blue eyes were vacant, glassy. "Nothing."
Carol frowned. "Are you sitting or standing in that dark place?"
"I don’t know."
"What do you feel under you? A chair? A floor? A bed?"
"Nothing."
"Reach down. Touch the floor."
"There isn’t a floor."
Uneasy about the direction the session was taking, Carol shifted in her chair and
stared at the girl for a while, wondering what to try next.
After a few seconds, Jane’s eyes fluttered and went shut.
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Finally, Carol said, "All right. I’m turning the hands of the watch counterclockwise
again. Time is flowing in reverse. It will continue to flow backwards, hour by hour,
day by day, faster and faster, until you stop me. I want you to stop me only when
you come out of the darkness and can tell me where you are. I’m turning the hands
now. Backwards... backwards.. ."
Ten seconds passed in silence. Twenty. Thirty.
After a full minute, Carol said, "Where are you?"
"Nowhere yet."
"Keep going. Backwards.. . back in time. .
After another minute, Carol began to think something was wrong. She had the
disquieting feeling that she was losing control of the situation and placing her
patient in some kind of danger that could not be foreseen. But as she was about to
call a halt to the regression and bring the girl forward again, Jane spoke at last.
The girl shot up out of the chair, onto her feet, flailing and screaming. "Somebody
help me! Mama! Aunt Rachael! For God’s sake, help me!"
The voice wasn’t Jane’s. It came from her mouth, through her tongue and lips, but it
didn’t sound at all like her. It wasn’t merely distorted by panic. It was an
entirely different voice from Jane’s. It had its own character, its own accent and
tone.
"I’m going to die here’ Help! Get me out of here!"
Carol was on her feet, too. "Honey, stop it. Calm down."
"I’m on fire! I’m on fire!" the girl screamed, and she slapped at her clothes as if
trying to put out the flames.
"No!" Carol said sharply. She stepped around the coffee table and managed to seize
the girl’s arm, taking several glancing blows in the process.
Jane thrashed, tried to break loose.
Carol held on and began to talk softly but insistently to her, calming her down.
Jane stopped struggling, but she began to gasp and wheeze. "Smoke," she said,
gagging. "So much smoke."
Carol talked her out of that, too, and gradually brought her down from the peak of
hysteria.
At last Jane sank back into the wing chair. She was wan, and her forehead was strung
with beads of sweat. Her blue eyes, staring into a distant place and time, looked
haunted.
Carol knelt beside the chair and held the girl’s hand. "Honey, can you hear me?"
"Yes."
"Are you okay?"
"I’m afraid
"There is no fire."
"There was. Everywhere," the girl said, still speaking with the unfamiliar voice.
"There isn’t any more. No fire anywhere."
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"If you say so."
"I do. I say so. Now tell me your name."
"Laura."
"Do you remember your last name?"
"Laura Havenswood."
Carol flushed with triumph. "Very good. That’s just fine. Where’s your home, Laura?"
"Shippensburg."
Shippensburg was a small town less than an hour from Harrisburg. It was a quiet,
pleasant place that existed to serve a flourishing state college and a large number
of surrounding farms.
"Do you know the address where you live in Shippensburg?" Carol asked.
"There’s no street name. It’s a farm. Just outside of town, off Walnut Bottom Road."
"So you could take me there if you had to?"
"Oh, yes. It’s a pretty place. There are a pair of stone gateposts by the verge of
the county lane; they mark the entrance to our land. And there’s a long drive
flanked by maples, and there are big oaks around
the house. It’s cool and breezy in the summer with all those shade trees."
"What’s your father’s first name?"
"Nicholas."
"And his phone number?"
The girl frowned. "His what?"
"What’s the telephone number at your house?"
The girl shook her head. "I don’t know what you mean."
"Don’t you have a telephone?"
"What is a telephone?" the girl asked.
Carol stared at her, puzzled. It wasn’t possible for a person under hypnosis to be
coy or to make jokes of this sort. As she considered her next move, she saw that
Laura was becoming agitated again. The girl’s brow furrowed, and her eyes widened.
She started breathing hard again.
"Laura, listen to me. You will be calm. You will relax and - "
The girl writhed uncontrollably in her chair.
Squealing and gasping, she slid off the chair, rolled onto the floor, bumping the
coffee table and pushing it aside. She twisted and shuddered and wriggled as if she
were having a severe epileptic fit, though she was not; she brushed frantically at
herself, for again she seemed to believe she was on fire. She called for someone
named Rachael and choked on nonexistent smoke.
Carol required almost a minute to talk her down, which was a serious loss of
control; a hypnotist could usually calm a subject in only seconds. Apparently, Laura
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had lived through an extremely traumatic tire or had lost a loved one in a blaze.
Carol wanted to pursue the matter and learn what was at the root of it, but this
wasn’t the right time. After taking so long to quiet her patient, she knew the
session should be ended quickly.
When Laura was seated in the wing chair again, Carol crouched beside her and
instructed her to remember everything that had happened and everything that had been
said during the session. Then she led the girl forward through time to the present
and brought her out of the trance.
The girl wiped at the moist corner of one eye, shook her head, cleared her threat.
She looked at Carol and said, "I guess it didn’t work, huh?" She sounded like Jane
again; the Laura voice was gone.
But why the hell had her voice changed in the first place? Carol wondered.
"You don’t remember what happened?" Carol asked.
"What’s to remember? All that talk about a blue kite? I could see what you were
trying to do, how you were trying to lull me into a trance, so I guess that’s why it
didn’t work."
"But it did work," Carol assured her. "And you should be able to recall all of it."
The girl looked skeptical. "All of what? What happened? What did you find out?’
Carol stared at her. "Laura."
The girl didn’t even blink. She merely looked perplexed.
"Your name is Laura."
"Who said"
"You did."
"Laura? No. I don’t think so."
"Laura Havenswood," Carol said.
The girl frowned. "It doesn’t ring any bells at all."
Surprised, Carol said, "You told me you live in Shippensburg."
"Where’s that?"
"About an hour from here."
"I never heard of it."
"You live on a farm. There are stone gateposts to mark the entrance to your father’s
property, and there’s a long driveway flanked by maple trees. That’s what you told
me, and I’m sure it’ll turn out to be just like you said. It’s virtually impossible
to answer questions incorrectly or deceptively while you’re hypnotized. Besides, you
don’t have any reason to deceive me. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain
if we break through this memory block."
"Maybe I am Laura Havenswood," the girl, said. "Maybe what I told you in the trance
was true. But I can’t remember it, and when you tell me who I am, it doesn’t mean a
thing to me. Boy, I thought if I could just remember my name, then everything would
fall into place. But it’s still a blank. Laura, Shippensburg, a farm - I can’t connect
with any of it."
Carol was still crouched beside the girl’s chair. She rose and flexed her stiff
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legs. "I’ve never encountered anything quite like this. And so far as I know, a
reaction like yours hasn’t ever been reported in any of the psychology journals.
Whenever a patient is susceptible to hypnosis, and whenever a patient can be
regressed to a moment of trauma, there’s always a profound effect. Yet you weren’t
touched at all by it. Very odd. If you remembered while you were under hypnosis, you
ought to be able to remember now. And Just hearing your name ought to open doors for
you."
"But it doesn’t."
"Strange. .
The girl looked up from the wing chair. "What now?’
Carol thought for a moment, then said, "I suppose we ought to have the authorities
check out the Hayenswdod identity."
She went to her desk, picked up the phone, and called the Harrisburg police.
The police operator referred her to a detective named Lincoln Werth, who was in
charge of a number of conventional missing-persons files as well as the Jane Doe
case. He listened to Carol’s story with interest, promised to check it out right
away, and said he would call her back the instant he obtained confirmation of the
Havenswood identity.
Four hours later, at 3:55, after Carol’s last appointment for the day, as she and
the girl were about to leave the office and go home, Lincoln Werth rang back as
promised. Carol took the call at her desk, and the girl perched on the edge of the
desk, watching, clearly a bit tense.
"Dr. Tracy," Werth said, "I’ve been back and forth on the phone all afternoon with
the police in Shippensburg and with the county sheriff’s office up there.
I’m afraid I have to report it’s all been a wild-goose chase."
"There must be some mistake."
"Nope. We can’t find anyone in Shippensburg or the surrounding county with the name
Havenswood. There’s no telephone listed for anyone of that name, and-"
"Maybe they just don’t have a phone."
"Of course, we considered that possibility," Werth said. "We didn’t jump to
conclusions, believe me. For instance, when we checked with the power company, we
discovered they don’t have a customer named Havenswood anywhere m Cumberland County,
but that didn’t discourage us either. We figured these people we’re looking for
might be Amish. Lots of Amish in that neck of the woods. If they were Amish, of
course, they wouldn’t have electricity in their house. So next we went to the
property-tax rolls at the county offices up there. What we found was that nobody
named Havenswood owns a house, let alone a farm, in that whole area."
"They could be tenants," Carol said.
"Could be. But what I really think they are is nonexistent. The girl must’ve been
lying."
"Why would she?"
"I don’t know. Maybe the whole amnesia thing is a hoax. Maybe she’s just an ordinary
runaway."
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"No. Definitely not." Carol looked up at Laura -  no, her name was still Jane - looked
into those clear, bottomless blue eyes. To Werth, she said, "Besides, it just isn’t
possible to lie that well or that blatantly when you’re hypnotized."
Although Jane could hear only half of the conversation, she had begun to perceive
that the Havenswood name wasn’t going to check out. Her face clouded. She got up and
went to the display shelves to study the statuettes of Mickey Mouse.
"There is something damned odd about the whole thing," Lincoln Werth said.
"Odd?" Carol asked.
"Well, when I passed along the description of the farm that the girl gave - those
stone gateposts, the long driveway with the maples  - and when I said it was off
Walnut Bottom Road, the Cumberland County
sheriff and the various Shippensburg policemen I talked to all recognized the place
right off the bat. It actually does exist."
"Well, then - "
"But nobody named Havenswood lives there," Detective Werth said. "The Ohlmeyer
family owns that spread. Really well known around those parts. Highly thought of,
too. Oren Ohlmeyer, his wife, and their two sons. Never had a daughter, so I’m told.
Before Oren owned the farm, it belonged to his daddy, who bought it seventy years
ago. One of the sheriff’s men went out there and asked the Ohlmeyers if they’d ever
heard of a girl named Laura Havenswood or anything even similar to that. They
hadn’t. Didn’t know anyone fitting our Jane Doe’s description, either."
"Yet the farm is there, just like she told us it was."
"Yeah," Werth said. "Funny, isn’t it?"
In the Volkswagen, on the way home from the office, as they drove along the
sun-splashed autumn streets, the girl said, "Do you think I was faking the trance?"
"Heavens, no! You were very deeply under. And I’m quite sure you aren’t a good
enough actress to fake that business about the fire."
"Fire?"
"I guess you don’t remember that, either." Carol told her about Laura’s screaming
fit, the desperate cries for help. "Your terror was genuine. It came from
experience. I’d bet anything on that."
"I don’t remember any of it. You mean I really was in a fire once?"
"Could be." Ahead, a traffic light turned red. Carol stopped the car and looked at
Jane. "You don’t have any physical scars, so if you were in a fire, you escaped
unharmed. Of course, it might be that you lost someone in a fire, someone you loved
very much, and maybe you weren’t actually in a fire yourself. If that’s the case,
then when you were hypnotized, you might have confused your fear for that person
with fear for your own life. Am I making myself clear?"
"I think I get what you mean. So maybe the fire -  the shock of it - is responsible for
my amnesia. And maybe my parents haven’t shown up to claim me because. . . they’re
dead, burned to death."
Carol took the girl’s hand. "Don’t worry about it now, honey. I may be all wrong. I
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probably am. But I think it’s a possibility you ought to be prepared for."
The girl bit her lip, nodded. "The idea scares me a little. But I don’t exactly feel
sad. I mean, I don’t remember my folks at all, so losing them would almost be like
losing strangers."
Behind them, the driver of a green Datsun blew his horn.
The light had changed. Carol let go of the girl’s hand and touched the accelerator.
"We’ll probe into the fire during tomorrow’s session."
"You still think I am Laura Havenswood?"
"Well, for the time being, we’ll keep calling you Jane. But I don’t see why you’d
come up with the name Laura if it wasn’t yours.".
"The identity didn’t check out," the girl reminded her.
Carol shook her head. "That’s not exactly true. We haven’t proved or disproved the
Havenswood identity. All we know for sure is that you never lived in Shippensburg.
But you must have been there at least once because the farm exists; you’ve seen it,
if only in passing. Apparently, even under hypnosis, even regressed beyond the onset
of your amnesia, your memories are tangled. I don’t know how that’s possible or why.
I’ve never encountered anything quite like it. But we’ll work hard at untangling
them for you.
The problem might lie in the questions I asked and the way I asked them. We’ll just
have to wait and see."
They rode in silence for a moment, and then the girl said, "I half hope we don’t get
things untangled too quickly. Ever since you told me about your cabin in the
mountains, I’ve really been looking forward to going up there."
"Oh, you’ll get to go. Don’t worry about that.
We’re leaving on Friday, and even if tomorrow’s session goes well, we won’t be able
to untangle this Laura Havenswood thing that fast. I warned you, this could be a
slow, complicated, frustrating process. I’m surprised we made any progress at all
today, and I’ll be twice as surprised if we make even half as much headway
tomorrow."
"I guess you’ll be stuck with me for a while."
Carol sighed and pretended weariness. "Looks that way. Oh, you’re such a terrible,
terrible, terrible burden. You’re just too much to bear." She took one hand off the
steering wheel long enough to clutch her heart in a melodramatic gesture that made
Jane giggle. "Too much! Oh, oh!"
"You know what?" the girl asked.
"What?"
"I like you, too."
They looked at each other and grinned.
At the next red light, Jane said, "I’ve got a feeling about the mountains."
"What’s that?"
"I have this strong feeling that it’s going to be a lot of fun up there. Really
exciting. Something special. A real adventure." Her blue eyes were even brighter
than usual.
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After dinner, Paul suggested they play Scrabble. He set up the board on the game
table in the family room, while Carol explained the rules to Jane, who couldn’t
remember whether or not she had ever played it before.
After winning the starting lottery, Jane went first with a twenty-two-point word
that took advantage of a double-count square and the automatic double score for the
first word of the game.
BLADE
"Not a bad start," Paul said. He hoped the girl would win, because she got such a
kick out of little things like that. The smallest compliment, the most modest
triumph delighted her. But he wasn’t going to throw the game just to please her; she
would have to earn it, by God. He was incapable of giving the match away to anyone;
regardless of the kind of game he was playing, he always put as much effort and
commitment into it as he put into his work. He didn’t indulge in leisure activities;
he attacked them. To Jane, he said,. "I have a hunch you’re the kind of kid who says
she’s never played poker before - and quickly proceeds to win every pot in the game."
"Can you bet on Scrabble?" Jane asked.
"You can, but we won’t," Paul said.
"Scared?"
"Terrified. You’d wind up with the house."
"I’d let you stay."
"How decent of you."
"For very low rent."
"Ah, this child truly has a heart of gold!"
While he bantered with Jane, Carol studied her own group of letters. "Hey," she
said, "I’ve got a word that ties right in with Jane’s." She added LOOD to the B in
BLADE, forming BLOOD.
"Judging from your words," Paul said, "I guess you two intend to play a cutthroat
game."
Carol and Jane groaned dutifully at his bad joke and refilled their letter trays
from the stock in the lid of the game box.
To Paul’s surprise, when he looked at his own seven letters, he saw that he had a
word with which to continue the morbid theme that had been established. He added
EATH to the D at the end of BLOOD, creating DEATH.
"Weird," Carol said.
"Here’s something weirder still," Jane said, taking her second turn by adding OMB to
the T in DEATH.
BLADE
L
O
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O
DEATH
O
M
B
Paul stared at the board. He was suddenly uneasy.
What were the odds that the first four words in a game would be so closely related
in theme? Ten thousand to one? No. It had to be much higher than that. A hundred
thousand to one? A million to one?
Carol looked up from her unusual letters. "You aren’t going to believe this." She
added three letters to the board.
BLADE
KILL
O
O
DEATH
O
M
B
"Kill’?" Paul said.. "Oh, come on. Enough’s enough. Take it away and make another
word."
"I can’t," Carol said. "That’s all I have. The rest of my letters are useless."
"But you could have put ‘lik’ above the ‘e’ in
‘blade," Paul said. "You could have spelled ‘like’ instead of ‘kill."
"Sure, I could have done that, but I’d have gotten fewer points if! had. You see?
There’s no square with a double-letter score up there."
As he listened to Carol’s explanation, Paul felt strange. Bitterly cold inside.
Hollow. As if he were balancing on a tightrope and knew he was going to fall and
fall and fall...
He was gripped by déjà vu, by such a strikingly powerful awareness of having lived
through this scene before that, for a moment, his heart seemed to stop beating. Yet
nothing like this had ever happened in any other Scrabble game he’d ever played. So
why was he so certain he had witnessed this very thing on a previous occasion? Even
as he asked himself that question, he realized what the answer was. The seizure of
déjà vu wasn’t in reference to the words on the Scrabble board; not directly anyway.
The thing that was so frighteningly familiar to him was the unusual, soul-shaking
feeling that the coincidental appearance of those words aroused in him; the iciness
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that came from within rather than from without; the awful hollowness deep in his
guts; the sickening sensation of teetering on a high wire, with only infinite
darkness below. He had felt exactly the same way in the attic last week, when the
mysterious hammering sound had seemed to issue out of the thin air in front of his
face, when each thunk! had sounded as if it were coming from a sledge and anvil in
another dimension of time and space. That was how he felt now, at the Scrabble
board: as if he were confronted with something extraordinary, unnatural, perhaps
even supernatural.
To Carol, he said, "Listen, why don’t you just take those last three letters off the
board, put them back in the box, choose three brand-new letters, and make some other
word besides ‘kill."
He could see that his suggestion startled her.
She said, "Why should I do that?"
Paul frowned. "Blade, blood, death, tomb, kill -  what kind of words are they for a
nice, friendly, peaceable game of Scrabble?"
She stared at him for a moment, and her piercing eyes made him a bit uncomfortable.
"It’s only coincidence," she said, clearly puzzled by his tenseness.
"I know it’s only coincidence," he said, though he didn’t know anything of the sort.
He was simply un
able to explain rationally the eerie feeling that the words on the board were the
work of some force far stronger than mere coincidence, something worse. "It still
gives me the creeps," he said lamely. He turned to Jane, seeking an ally. "Doesn’t
it give you the creeps?’
"Yeah. It does. A little," the girl agreed. "But it’s also kind of fascinating. I
wonder how long we can keep going with words that fit this pattern."
"I wonder, too," Carol said. Playfully, she slapped Paul’s shoulder. "You know what
your trouble is, babe? You don’t have any scientific curiosity. Now come on. It’s
your turn."
After putting DEATH on the board, he hadn’t replenished his supply of letter tiles.
He drew four of the small wooden squares from the lid of the game box, put them on
the rack in front of him.
And froze.
Oh God.
He was on that tightrope again, teetering over a great abyss.
"Well?" Carol asked.
Coincidence. It had to be just coincidence.
"Well?"
He looked up at her.
"What have you got?" she asked.
Numb, he shifted his eyes to the girl.
She was hunched over the table, as eager as Carol to hear his response, anxious to
see if the macabre pattern would continue.
Paul lowered his eyes to the row of letters on the wooden rack. The word was still
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there. Impossible. But it was there anyway, possible or not.
"Paul?"
He moved so quickly and unexpectedly that Carol and Jane jumped. He scooped up the
letters on his rack and nearly flung them back into the lid of the box. He swept the
five offensive words off the board before anyone could protest, and he returned
those nineteen tiles to the box with all the others.
"Paul, for heaven’s sake!"
"We’ll start a new game," he said. "Maybe those words didn’t bother you, but they
bothered me. I’m here to relax. If I want to hear about blood and death and killing,
I can switch on the news."
Carol said, "What word did you have?"
"I don’t know," he lied. "I didn’t work with the letters to see. Come on. Let’s
start all over."
"You did have a word," she said.
"No."
"It looked to me like you did," Jane said.
"Open up," Carol said.
"All right, all right. I had a word. It was obscene. Not something a gentleman like
me would use in a refined game of Scrabble, with ladies present."
Jane’s eyes sparkled mischievously. "Really? Tell us. Don’t be stuffy."
"Stuffy? Have you no manners, young lady?"
"None!"
"Have you no modesty?"
"Nope."
"Are you just a common broad?"
"Common," she said, nodding rapidly. "Common to the core. So tell us what word you
had."
"Shame, shame, shame," he said. Gradually, he cajoled them into dropping their
inquiry. They started a new game. This time all the words were ordinary, and they
did not come in any unsettling, related order.
Later, in bed, he made love to Carol. He wasn’t particularly horny. He just wanted
to be as close to her as he could get.
Afterwards, when the murmured love talk finally faded into a companionable silence,
she said, "What was your word?"
"Hmmmm?" he said, pretending not to know what she meant.
"Your obscene word in the Scrabble game. Don’t try to tell me you’ve forgotten what
it was."
"Nothing important."
She laughed. "After everything we just did in this bed, surely you don’t think I
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need to be sheltered!"
"I didn’t have an obscene word." Which was the truth. "I didn’t really have any word
at all." Which was a lie. "It’s just that.. .I thought those first five words on the
board were bad for Jane."
"Bad for her?"
"Yes. I mean, you told me it’s quite possible she lost one or both of her parents in
a fire. She might be on the brink of learning about or remembering a terrible
tragedy in her recent past. Tonight she just needed to relax, to laugh a bit. How
could the game have been fun for her if the words on the board started to remind her
that her parents might be dead?"
Carol turned on her side, raised herself up a bit, leaned over him, her bare breasts
grazing his chest, and stared into his eyes. "is that really the only reason you
were so upset?"
"Don’t you think I was right? Did I overreact?"
"Maybe you did. Maybe you didn’t. It was Creepy." She kissed his nose. "You know why
I love you so much?"
"Because I’m such a great lover?"
"You are, but that’s not why I love you." "Because I have tight buns?"
"Not that."
"Because I keep my fingernails so neat and clean?"
"Not that."
"I give up."
"You’re so damned sensitive, so caring about other people. How typical of my Paul to
worry about the Scrabble game being fun for Jane. That’s why I love you."
"I thought it was my hazel eyes."
"Nah."
"My classic profile."
"Are you kidding?"
"Or the way my third toe on my left foot lays half under the second toe."
"Oh, I’d forgotten about that. Hmmmmmmmm. You’re right. That’s why I love you. Not
because you’re sensitive. It’s your toes that drive me wild."
Their teasing led to cuddling, and the cuddling led to kissing, and the kissing led
to passion again. She reached her peak only a few seconds before he spurted deep
within her, and when they finally parted for the night, he felt pleasantly wrung
out.
Nevertheless, she was asleep before he was. He stared at the dark ceiling of the
dark bedroom and thought about the Scrabble game.
BLADE, BLOOD, DEATH, TOMB, KILL...
He thought about the word he had hidden from Carol and Jane, the word that had
compelled him to end the game and start another. After adding EATH to the D in
BLOOD, he’d been left with just three letter tiles on his rack: X, U, and C. The X
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and the
U had played no part in what was to follow. But when he had drawn four new letters,
they had gone disconcertingly well with the C. First he’d picked up an A, then an R.
And he had known what was going to happen. He hadn’t wanted to continue; he’d
considered throwing all the tiles back into the box at that moment, for he dreaded
seeing the word that he knew the last two letters would spell. But he hadn’t ended
it there. He had been too curious to stop when he should have stopped. He had drawn
a third tile, which had been an 0, and then a fourth, L.
C...A. ..R...O...L...
BLADE, BLOOD, DEATH, TOMB, KILL, CAROL.
Of course, even if he was able to fit it in, he couldn’t put CAROL on the board, for
it was a proper name, and the rules didn’t allow the use of proper names. But that
was a moot point. The important thing was that her name had been spelled out so
neatly, so boldly on his rack of letters that it was uncanny. He had drawn the
letters in their proper order, for God’s sake! What were the odds against that?
It seemed to be an omen. A warning that something was going to happen to Carol. Just
as Grace Mitowski’s two nightmares had turned out to be prophetic.
He thought about the other strange events that had transpired recently: the
unnaturally violent lightning strikes at Alfred O’Brian’s office; the hammering
sound that had shaken the house; the intruder on the rear lawn during the
thunderstorm. He sensed that all of it was tied together. But for Christ’s sake,
how?
BLADE, BLOOD.
DEATH, TOMB.
KILL, CAROL.
If the series of words on the Scrabble tiles had constituted a prophetic warning,
what was he supposed to do about it? The omen, if it was an omen, was too vague to
have any value. There was nothing specific to guard against. He couldn’t protect
Carol until he knew from which direction the danger was coming. A car wreck? A plane
crash. A mugger? Cancer? It could be anything. He could see nothing to be gained by
telling Carol that her name had turned up on his rack of Scrabble tiles; there was
nothing she could do, either, nothing except worry about it.
He didn’t want to worry her.
Instead, lying in the darkness, feeling icy even under the covers, he worried for
her.
At two o’clock in the morning, Grace was still reading in the study. There wasn’t
any point in going to bed for at least another hour or two. The events of the last
week had turned her into an insomniac.
The day just past had been relatively uneventful.
Aristophanes was still behaving oddly - hiding from her, sneaking about, watching her
when he thought she didn’t know he was there - but he hadn’t torn up any more pillows
or furniture, and he had used his litter box as he was supposed to do, which were
encouraging signs. She hadn’t received any more telephone calls from the man who had
pretended to be Leonard, and for that she was grateful. Yes, it had been pretty much
an ordinary day.
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And yet...
She was still tense and unable to sleep because she sensed that she was in the eye
of the hurricane. She sensed that the peace and quiet in her house were deceptive,
that thunder and lightning raged on all sides of her, just beyond the range of her
hearing and just out of sight. She expected to be plunged back into the storm at any
moment, and that expectation made it impossible for her to relax.
She heard a furtive sound and glanced up from the novel she was reading.
Aristophanes appeared at the open study door, peering in from the hallway. Only his
elegant Siamese head was visible as he craned it cautiously around the doorframe.
Their eyes met.
For an instant, Grace felt that she was not looking into the eyes of a dumb animal.
They seemed to contain intelligence. Wisdom. Experience. More than mere animal
intent and purpose.
Aristophanes hissed.
His eyes were cold. Twin balls of crystal-clear, blue-green ice.
"What do you want, cat?"
He broke the staring contest. He turned away from her with haughty indifference,
padded past the doorway, and went softly down the hail, pretending that he hadn’t
been spying on her, even though they both knew he had been doing exactly that.
Spying? she thought. Am I crazy? Who would a cat be spying for? Catsylvania? Great
Kitten? Purrsia?
She could think of other puns, but none of them brought a smile to her lips.
Instead, she sat with the book on her lap, wondering about her sanity.
9
THURSDAY AFTERNOON.
The office drapes were tightly closed as usual. The light from the two floor lamps
was golden, diffuse. Mickey Mouse was still smiling broadly in all his many
incarnations.
Carol and Jane sat in the wing chairs.
The girl slipped into a trance with only a little assistance from Carol. Most
patients were more susceptible to hypnosis the second time than they had been the
first, and Jane was no exception.
Again using the imaginary wristwatch, Carol turned the hands of time backwards and
regressed Jane into the past. This time the girl didn’t need two minutes to get
beyond her amnesia. In only twenty or thirty seconds, she reached a point at which
memories existed for her.
She twitched and suddenly sat up ramrod-straight in her chair. Her eyes popped open
like the eyes on a doll; she was looking through Carol. Her face was twisted with
terror.
"Laura?" Carol asked.
Both of the girl’s hands flew up to her throat. She clutched herself, gasping,
gagging, grimacing in pain. She appeared to be reliving the same traumatic
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experience that had panicked her during yesterday’s sessions, but today she did not
scream.
"You can’t feel the fire," Carol told her. "There is no pain, honey. Relax. Be calm.
You can’t smell the smoke, either. It doesn’t bother you at all. Breathe easily,
normally. Be calm and relax."
The girl didn’t obey. She quivered and broke out in a sweat. She retched repeatedly,
dryly, violently, yet almost silently.
Afraid that she had lost control again, Carol redoubled her efforts to soothe her
patient, without success.
Jane began to gesture wildly, her hands cutting and stabbing and tugging .and
hammering at the air.
Abruptly, Carol realized the girl was trying to talk, but for some reason had lost
her voice.
Tears welled up and slid down Jane’s face. She was moving her mouth without the
slightest result, desperately trying to force out words that refused to come. In
addition to the terror in her eyes, there was now frustration.
Carol quickly fetched a notebook and a felt-tipped pen from her desk. She put the
notebook on Jane’s lap and pressed the pen into her hand.
"Write it for me, honey."
The girl squeezed the pen so hard that her knuckles were white and nearly as sharp
as the knuckles on a skeleton’s fleshless hand. She looked down at the notebook. She
stopped retching, but she continued to quiver.
Carol crouched beside the wing chair, where she could see the notebook. "What is it
you want to say?"
Her hand shaking like that of a palsied old woman, Jane hurriedly scrawled two words
that were barely legible: Help me.
"Why do you need help?"
Again: Help me.
"Why can’t you speak?"
Head.
"Be more specific."
My head.
"What about your head?"
The girl’s hand began to form a letter, then jumped down one line and made another
false start, jumped to a third line - as if she couldn’t figure out how to express
what she wanted to say. At last, in a frenzy, she started slashing at the paper with
the felt-tipped pen, making a meaningless crosshatching of black lines.
"Stop it!" Carol said. "You will relax, dammit. Be calm."
Jane stopped slashing at the paper. She was silent, staring down at the notebook on
her lap.
Carol tore off the smeared page and threw it on the floor. "Okay. Now you’re going
to answer my questions calmly and as fully as you can. What is your name?"
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Millie.
Carol stared at the handwritten name, wondering what had happened to Laura
Havenswood. "Millie?
Are you sure that’s your name?" Millicent Parker.
"Where is Laura?"
Who’s Laura?
Carol stared at the girl’s drawn face. The perspiration was beginning to dry on her
porcelain-smooth skin. Her blue eyes were blank, unfocused. Her mouth was slack.
Carol abruptly flashed a hand past the girl’s face. Jane didn’t flinch. She wasn’t
faking the trance.
"Where do you live, Millicent?"
Harrisburg.
"Right here in town. What’s your address?"
Front Street.
"Along the river? Do you know the number?" The girl wrote it down.
"What’s your father’s name?"
Randolph Parker.
"What’s your mother’s name?"
The pen made a meaningless squiggle on the notebook page.
"What’s your mother’s name?" Carol repeated.
The girl surrendered to a new series of spasmic tremors. She retched soundlessly and
put her hands to her throat once more. The felt-tipped pen made a black mark on the
underside of her chin.
Apparently, the mere mention of her mother frightened her. That was territory that
would have to be explored, though not right now.
Carol talked her down, calmed her, and asked a new question. "How old are you,
Millie?"
Tomorrow’s my birthday.
"Is it really? How old will you be?"
I won’t make it.
"What won’t you make?"
Sixteen.
"Are you fifteen now?"
Yes.
"And you think you won’t live to be sixteen? Is that it?"
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Won’t live.
"Why not?"
The sheen of sweat had nearly evaporated from the
girl’s face, but again perspiration popped out along
her hairline.
"Why won’t you live to see your birthday?" Carol persisted.
As before, the girl used the felt-tipped pen to slash angrily at the notebook.
"Stop that," Carol said firmly. "Relax and be calm and answer my question." She tore
the ruined page out of the book and tossed it aside, then said, "Why won’t you live
to see your sixteenth birthday, Millie?"
Head.
So we’re back to this, Carol thought. She said,
"What about your head? What’s wrong with it?"
Cut off.
Carol stared at those two words for a moment, then looked up at the girl’s face.
Millie-Jane was struggling to remain calm, as Carol had told her she must. But her
eyes jiggled nervously, and there was horror in them. Her lips were utterly
colorless, tremulous. Beneath the rivulets of sweat that coursed down her forehead,
her skin was waxy and mealy white.
She continued to scribble frantically in the notebook,
but all she wrote was the same thing over and over again: Cut cut off, cut off
cut off... She was bearing down on the page with such great pressure that the head
of the felt-tipped pen was squashed into shapeless mush.
My God, Carol thought, this is like a live report from the bottom of Hell.
Laura Havenswood. Millicent Parker. One girl screaming in pain as fire consumed her,
the other a victim of decapitation. What did either of those girls have to do with
Jane Doe? She couldn’t be both of them. Perhaps she wasn’t either of them. Were they
people she had known? Or were they only figments of her imagination?
What in Christ’s name is happening here? Carol wondered.
She put her own hand over the girl’s writing hand and stilled the squeaking pen.
Speaking gently, rhythmically, she told Millie-Jane that everything was all right,
that she was perfectly safe, and that she must relax.
The girl’s eyes stopped jiggling. She sagged back in her chair.
"All right," Carol said. "I think that’s enough for today, honey."
Employing the imaginary wristwatch, she brought the girl forward in time.
For a few seconds everything went well, but then, without warning, the girl erupted
from her chair, knocking the notebook off her lap and flinging the pen across the
room. Her pale face flushed red, and her placid expression gave way to a look of
pure rage.
Carol rose from beside the girl’s chair and stepped in front of her. "Honey, what’s
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wrong?"
The girl’s eyes were wild. She began to shout with such force that she sprayed Carol
with spittle. "Shit! The bitch did it! The rotten, goddamn bitch!"
The voice wasn’t Jane’s.
It wasn’t Laura’s either.
It was a new voice, a third one, with its own special character, and Carol had a
hunch it didn’t belong to Millicent Parker, the mute. She suspected that an entirely
new identity had surfaced.
The girl stood very stiff and straight, her hands fisted at her sides, staring off
into infinity. Her face was distorted by anger. "The stinking bitch did it! She did
it to me again!"
The girl continued to shout at the top of her voice, and half of the words she
blurted out were obscene. Carol tried to soothe her, but this time it wasn’t easy.
For at least a minute the girl continued to wail and curse. At last, however, at
Carol’s urging, she got control of herself. She stopped shouting, but there was
still anger in her face.
Holding the girl by the shoulders, face to face with her, Carol said, "What’s your
name?’
"Linda."
"What’s your last name?"
"Bektermann."
It was yet another identity, as Carol had thought. She had the girl spell the name.
Then: "Where do you live, Linda?"
"Second Street."
"In Harrisburg?"
"Yes."
Carol asked for the exact address, and the girl responded. ft was only a few blocks
from the Front Street address that Millicent Parker had provided.
"What’s your father’s name, Linda?"
"Herbert Bektermann."
"What’s your mother’s name?"
That question had the same effect on Linda as it had had on Millie. She rapidly
became agitated and began to shout again. "The bitch! Oh, God, what she did to me.
The slimy, rotten bitch! I hate her. I hate her!"
Chilled by the combination of fury and agony in the girl’s tortured voice, Carol
quickly quieted her.
Then: "How old are you, Linda?"
"Tomorrow’s my birthday."
Carol frowned. "Am I talking to Millicent now?"
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"Who’s Millicent?"
"Is this still Linda I’m talking to?’
"Yes."
"And your birthday is tomorrow?"
"Yes."
"How old will you be?"
"I won’t make it."
Carol blinked. "You mean you won’t live to see your birthday?"
"That’s right."
"Is it your sixteenth birthday?"
"Yes."
"You’re fifteen now?"
"Yes."
"Why are you worried about dying?"
"Because I know I will."
"How do you know?"
"Because I already am."
"You’re already dying?"
"Dead."
"You’re already dead?"
"I will be."
"Please be specific. Are you telling me that you’re already dead? Or are you saying
that you’re merely afraid you’re going to die sometime soon?’
"Yes."
"Which is it?"
"Both."
Carol felt as if she were in the middle of a tea party at the Mad Hatter’s house.
"How do you think you’re going to die, Linda?"
"She’ll kill me."
"Who?"
"The bitch."
"Your mother?"
The girl doubled over and clutched at her side, as if she had been struck. She
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screamed, turned, staggered two steps, and fell with a crash. On the floor she still
clutched her side, and she kicked her legs, writhed. She was obviously in
unendurable pain. It was only imaginary pain, of course, but to the girl it was
indistinguishable from the real thing.
Frightened, Carol knelt beside her, held her hand, and urged her to be calm. When
the girl eventually relaxed, Carol quickly brought her all the way back to the
present and out of the trance.
Jane blinked, stared up at Carol, and put one hand on the floor beside her, as if
testing the truth of what her eyes told her. "Wow, what am I doing down here?"
Carol helped her to her feet. "I suppose you don’t remember?"
"No. Did I tell you anything more about myself?’
"No. I don’t think so. You told me you were a girl named Millicent Parker, and then
you told me you were a girl named Linda Bektermann, but obviously you can’t be both
of them and Laura, too. So I suspect that you aren’t any of them."
"I don’t think so, either," Jane said. "Those two new names don’t mean anything more
to me than
Laura Havenswood did. But who are those people?
Where did I get their names, and why did I tell you I was any of them?"
"I’ll be damned if I know," Carol said. "But sooner or later, we’ll figure it out.
We’ll get to the bottom of all this, kiddo. I promise you that."
But what in God’s name will we find at the bottom, down there in the dark? Carol
wondered. Will it be something we’ll wish we’d left buried forever?
***
Thursday afternoon, Grace Mitowski worked in the rose garden behind her house. The
day was warm and clear, and she felt the need for some exercise. Besides, in the
garden she wouldn’t be able to hear the telephone ringing and wouldn’t be tempted to
answer it. Which was fine, because she wasn’t psychologically prepared to answer the
phone just yet; she hadn’t decided how to deal with the hoaxer the next time he
called and pretended that he was her long-dead husband.
Because of last week’s torrential rains, the roses were past their prime. The last
flowers of the season should have been at the peak of their beauty right now, but
many of the big blooms had lost a fifth or even a fourth of their petals under the
lashing of the wind-whipped rain. Nevertheless, the garden was still a colorful,
cheery sight.
She had let Aristophanes out for some exercise.
She kept an eye on him, intending to call him back the moment he headed off the
property. She was determined to keep him away from whoever had poisoned or drugged
him. But he didn’t seem to be in a rambling mood; he stayed nearby, creeping among
the roses, stirring up a moth or two and chasing them with catlike
single-mindedness.
Grace was on her hands and knees in front of a row of intermingled yellow and
crimson and orange flowers, hand-spading the earth with a trowel, when someone said,
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"You have a magnificent garden."
Startled, she looked up and saw a thin, jaundice-skinned man in a rumpled blue suit
that hadn’t been in fashion for many years. His shirt and tie were hopelessly out of
style, too. He looked as if he had stepped out of a photograph taken in the 1940s.
He had thinning hair the color of summer dust, and his eyes were an unusual shade of
soft brown, almost beige. His face was composed entirely of narrow features and
sharp angles that gave him a look halfway between that of a hawk and that of a
parsimonious moneylender in a Charles Dickens novel. He appeared to be in his early
or middle fifties.
Grace glanced at the gate in the white board fence that separated her property from
the street. The gate was standing wide open. Evidently, the man had been strolling
by, had seen the roses through a gap in the poplar-tree hedge that stood on the
outside of the fence, and had decided to come in and have a closer look.
His smile was warm, and there was kindness in his eyes, and he seemed not to be
intruding, even though he was. "You must have two dozen varieties of roses here."
"Three dozen," she said.
"Truly magnificent," he said, nodding approval.
His voice wasn’t thin and sharp like the rest of him. It was deep, mellow, friendly,
and would have seemed more fitting if it had issued from a brawny, hearty fellow
half again this man’s size. "You take care of the entire garden yourself?"
Grace sat back on her heels, still holding the trowel in one gloved hand. "Sure. I
enjoy it. And somehow. . . it just wouldn’t be my garden if I hired someone to help
me with it."
"Exactly!" the stranger said. "Yes, I can understand how you feel."
"Are you new in the neighborhood?" Grace asked.
"No, no. Used to live just a block from here, but that was a long, long time ago."
He took a deep breath and smiled again. "Ah, the wonderful aroma of roses!
Nothing else smells half so pretty. Yes, you’ve got
a superb garden. Really superb."
"Thank you."
He snapped his fingers as a thought occurred to him. "I ought to write something
about this. It might make a first-rate human-interest piece. This fantasy-land
tucked away in an ordinary backyard. Yes, I’m sure it would be just the thing. A
nice change of pace for me."
"Are you a writer?"
"Reporter," he said, still taking deep breaths and savoring the aroma of the blooms.
"Are you with a local paper?"
"The Morning News. Name’s Palmer Wainwright"
"Grace Mitowski."
"I hoped you might recognize my byline," Wainwright said, grinning.
"Sorry. I don’t read the Morning News. I take the
Patriot-News from the delivery boy every morning." "Ah, well," he said, shrugging,
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"that’s a good paper, too. But of course, if you don’t read the Morning News, you
never saw my story about the Bektermann case."
As Grace realized that Wainwright intended to hang around awhile, she got off her
haunches, stood up, and flexed her rapidly stiffening legs. "The Bektermann case?
That sounds familiar."
"All the papers reported it, of course. But I did a five-part series. Good stuff,
even if I do say so myself. I got a Pulitzer nomination for it. Did you know that?
An honest-to-God Pulitzer nomination."
"Really? Why, that’s something," Grace said, not sure if she should take him
seriously but not wanting to offend him. "That is really something. Imagine. A
Pulitzer nomination."
It seemed to her that the conversation had suddenly taken an odd turn. It wasn’t
casual any longer. She sensed that Wainwright had come into the yard not to admire
her roses and not to have a friendly chat, but to tell her, a complete stranger,
about his Pulitzer nomination.
"Didn’t win," Wainwright said. "But the way I look at it, a nomination is almost as
good as the prize itself. I mean, out of the tens of thousands of newspaper articles
that’re published in a year, only a handful are up for the prize."
"Refresh my memory, if you will," Grace said.
"What was the Bektermann case about?"
He laughed good-naturedly and shook his head. "Wasn’t about what I thought it was
about. That’s for damned sure. I wrote it up as a tangled, Freudian
puzzle. You know - the iron-willed father, with perhaps an unnatural attraction for
his own daughter, the mother with a drinking problem, the poor girl caught in the
middle. The victimized young girl subjected to hideous psychological pressures
beyond her understanding, beyond her tolerance, until at last she simply - snapped.
That’s how I saw it. That’s how I wrote it up. I thought I was a brilliant
detective, digging to the deepest roots of the Bektermann tragedy.
But all I ever saw was the window-dressing. The real story was far stranger than
anything I ever imagined. Hell, it was too strange for any serious reporter to risk
handling it. No reputable paper would have printed it as news. If had known the
truth, and if! had somehow gotten it published, I’d have destroyed my career."
What the devil’s going on? Grace wondered. He seems obsessed with telling me about
this in detail, compelled to tell me, even though he’s never even seen me before. Is
this life imitating art - Coleridge’s poem reset in a rose garden? Am I the partygoer
and Wainwright the Ancient Mariner?
As she looked into Wainwright’s beige eyes, she suddenly realized how alone she was,
even here in the yard. Her property was ringed by trees, sheltered, private.
"Was it a murder case?" she asked.
"Was and is," Wainwright said. "It didn’t end with the Bektermanns. It’s still going
on. This damned, endless pursuit. It’s still going on, and it’s got to be stopped
this time around. That’s why I’m here. I’ve come to tell you that your Carol is in
the middle of it. Caught in the middle. You’ve got to help her. Get her out of the
girl’s way."
Grace gaped at him, reluctant to believe that she
had heard what she knew she had heard.
"There are certain forces, dark and powerful forces," Wainwright said calmly, "that
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want to see -  Shrieking angrily, Aristophanes sprang at Wainwright with berserk
passion. He landed on the man’s chest and scrambled onto his face.
Grace screamed and jumped back in fright.
Wainwright staggered to one side, grabbed the cat with both hands, and tried
unsuccessfully to wrench it off his face.
"Ari!" Grace cried. "Stop it!"
Aristophanes had his claws in the man’s neck and was biting his cheek.
Wainwright wasn’t screaming as he ought to have been. He was eerily silent as he
wrestled with the cat, even though the creature seemed determined to tear off his
face.
Grace moved toward Wainwright, wanting to help, not knowing what to do.
The cat was squealing. It bit off a gobbet of flesh from Wainwright’s cheek.
Oh Jesus, no!
Grace moved in quickly, raising the trowel, but hesitated. She was afraid of hitting
the man instead of the cat.
Wainwright suddenly turned away from her and stumbled through the rose bushes, past
white and yellow blooms, the cat still clinging to him. He walked into a waist-high
hedge, fell through it, onto the lawn On the other side, out of sight.
Grace hurried to the end of the hedgerow, stepped around it, heart hammering, and
discovered that
Wainwright had vanished. Only the cat was there, and it bolted past her, sprinted
across the garden, up the back porch steps, and into the house through the half-open
rear door.
Where was Wainwright? Had he crawled away, dazed, wounded? Had he passed out in some
sheltered corner of the garden, bleeding to death?
The yard contained half a dozen shrubs large and dense enough to conceal the body of
a man Wainwright’s size. She looked around all of them, but she could find no trace
of the reporter.
She looked toward the garden gate that led to the street. No. He couldn’t have gone
that far without drawing her attention.
Frightened, confused, Grace blinked at the sun-dappled garden, trying to understand.
The Harrisburg telephone book contained neither a listing for Mr. Randolph Parker
nor one for Herbert Bektermann. Carol was perplexed but not surprised.
After she saw her final patient of the day, she and Jane drove to the address on
Front Street where Millicent Parker had claimed to live. It was a huge, impressive
Victorian mansion, but it hadn’t been anyone's home for a long time. The front lawn
had been paved over for a parking lot. There was a small, tasteful sign by the
entrance drive:
MAUGHAM & CRICHTON, INC.
A MEDICAL CORPORATION
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Many years ago, this portion of Front Street had been one of the most elegant
neighborhoods in Pennsylvania’s capital city. During the past couple of decades,
however, many of the riverfront boulevard’s grand old houses had been razed to make
room for sterile, modem office buildings. A few of the rambling houses had been
preserved, at least after a fashion -  the exteriors beautifully restored, the
interiors gutted and converted to various commercial uses. Farther north, there was
still a section of Front Street that was a desirable residential area, but not here,
not where Millicent Parker had sent them.
Maugham & Crichton was a group medical practice that included seven physicians: two
general internists and five specialists. Carol had a chat with the receptionist, a
henna-haired woman named Polly, who told her that none of the doctors was named
Parker. Likewise, no one of that name was employed as a nurse or as a member of the
clerical staff. Furthermore, Maugham & Crichton had been at their current address
for nearly seventeen years.
It had occurred to Carol that Jane might once have been a patient of one of Maugham
& Crichton’s physicians, and that her subconscious mind had made use of the firm’s
address to flesh out the Millicent Parker identity. But Polly, who had worked for
Maugham & Crichton ever since they’d opened their doors, was sure she had never seen
the girl. However, intrigued by Jane’s amnesia and sympathetic by nature, Polly
agreed to check the files to see if Maugham & Crichton had ever treated anyone named
Laura Havenswood, Millicent Parker, or Linda Bektermann. It was a fruitless search;
none of those names appeared in the patient records.
***
Grace stepped through the gate, into the street, and looked both ways. There was no
sign of Palmer Wainwright.
She returned to her own backyard, closed and latched the gate, and walked toward the
house.
Wainwright was sitting on the porch steps, waiting for her.
She stopped fifteen feet from him, amazed, confused.
He got up from the steps.
"Your face," she said numbly.
His face was unscarred.
He smiled as if nothing had happened and took two steps toward her. "Grace - "
"The cat," she said. "I saw your cheek.. . your neck. . . it’s claws tore out. .
"Listen," he said, taking another step toward her, "there are certain forces, dark
and powerful forces, that want to see this played out the wrong way. Dark forces
that thrive on tragedy. They want to see it end in senseless violence and blood.
That mustn’t be allowed to happen, Grace. Not again. You’ve got to keep Carol out of
the girl’s way, for her sake and for the sake of the girl, too."
Grace gaped at him. "Who the hell are you?"
"Who are you?" Wainwright asked, raising one eyebrow quizzically. "That is the
important question right now. You aren’t only who you think you are. You aren’t only
Grace Mitowski."
He’s mad, she thought. Or I’m mad. Or we both are. Stark, raving mad.
She said, "You’re the one on the phone. You’re the creep who imitates Leonard’s
voice."
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"No," he said. "I am - "
"No wonder Ari attacked you. You’re the one who’s been giving him drugs or poison or
something like that. You’re the one, and he knew."
But what about the facial wounds, the gouged neck? she asked herself. How in the
name of God did those injuries heal so quickly?
How?
She pushed those thoughts out of her mind, refused to think about such things. She
must have been mistaken. She must have imagined that Ari had actually hurt the man.
"Yeah," she said, "you’re the one who’s behind all of these weird things that’ve
been happening. Get off my property, you son of a bitch."
"Grace, there are forces aligned. . ." He looked no different now from the way he
had looked when he’d first spoken to her, several minutes ago. He hadn’t looked
crazed then; he didn’t look crazed now. He didn’t look dangerous, and yet he
continued to babble about dark forces. ". . . good and evil, right and wrong. You’re
on the right side, Grace. But the cat -  ah, the cat’s a different story. At all
times, you must be wary of the cat."
"Get out of my way," she said.
He took a step toward her.
She slashed at him with the gardening trowel, missing his face by just an inch or
two. She slashed again and again and again, cutting only empty air, not really
wanting to cut anything else unless she had no choice, just hoping to keep him at
bay until she could slip around him, for he was between her and the house. And then
she was around him; she turned and ran for the kitchen door, painfully aware that
her legs were old and arthritic. She went only a few steps before she realized she
shouldn’t have turned her back on the lunatic, and she wheeled to confront him,
gasping, certain that he was leaping toward her, perhaps with a knife in his hand - 
But he was gone.
Vanished. Again.
He hadn’t had time to reach any of the shrubs that were large enough to conceal a
man, not during the split second her back had been turned. Even if he had been a
much younger man than he was, in the very best condition, a trained runner - even then
he couldn’t have gone more than halfway to the gate in such a short time.
So where was he?
Where was he?
From the offices of Maugham & Crichton on Front Street, Carol and Jane drove a few
blocks to the Second Street address that was supposed to be the home of Linda
Bektermann. It was in a good neighborhood; a lovely French country house, at least
fifty years old, in fine condition. No one was at home, but the name on the mailbox
was Nicholson, not Bektermann.
They rang the bell at the house next door and talked to a neighbor, Jean Gunther,
who confirmed that the French country place was owned and occupied by the Nicholson
family.
"My husband and I have lived here for six years,"
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Mrs. Gunther said, "and the Nicholsons were next door when we moved in. I think I
once heard them say they’d lived in that house since 1965."
The name Bektermann meant nothing to Jean Gunther.
In the car again, on the way home, Jane said, "I’m really a lot of trouble for you."
"Nonsense," Carol said. "I kind of enjoy playing detective. Besides, if I can help
you break through your memory block, if I can uncover the truth behind all the
sleight-of-hand tricks that your subconscious is playing, then I’ll be able to write
about this case for any psychology journal I choose. It’ll definitely make my name
in the profession. I might even wind up with a book out of it. So you see, because
of you, kiddo, I could become rich and famous some day."
"When you’re rich and famous, will you still talk to me?" the girl teased.
"Certainly. Of course, you’ll have to make an appointment a week in advance."
They grinned at each other.
***
Using the kitchen phone, Grace called the offices of
the Morning News.
The switchboard operator at the newspaper didn’t have an extension number listed for
Palmer Wainwright. She said, "So far as I know, he don’t even work here. And I’m
sure he’s no reporter. Maybe one of the new copy editors or somebody like that."
"Could you connect me with the managing editor’s office?" Grace asked.
"That would be Mr. Quincy," the operator said. She buzzed the proper extension.
Quincy wasn’t in his office, and his secretary didn’t know whether or not the paper
employed a man named Palmer Wainwright. "I’m new here," she said apologetically.
"I’ve only been Mr. Quincy’s secretary since Monday, so I don’t know everybody yet.
If you’ll leave your name and number, I’ll have Mr. Quincy return your call."
Grace gave her the number and said, "Tell him Dr. Grace Mitowski wishes to speak
with him and that I’ll only need a few minutes of his time." She seldom used the
honorific in front of her name, but it came in handy in cases like this, for a
doctor’s phone calls were always returned.
"Is this an emergency, Dr. Mitowski? I don’t think that Mr. Quincy’s going to be
back until tomorrow morning."
"That’ll be good enough," she said. "Have him call me first thing, no matter how
early he gets in."
After she hung up, she went to the kitchen and stared out at the rose garden.
How could Wamwright vanish like that?
For the third evening in a row, Paul and Carol and Jane prepared dinner together.
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The girl was fitting in better day by day.
If she stays with us just another week, Paul thought, it’ll seem like she’s always
been here.
The salad consisted of hearts of palm and iceberg lettuce. That was followed by
eggplant Parmigiana with spaghetti on the side.
As they were starting dessert - small dishes of
richly flavored spumoni - Paul said, "Any chance we
could postpone the trip to the mountains for two days?"
"Why?" Carol asked
"I’m a bit behind in my writing schedule, and I’m at a very critical point in the
book," he said. "I’ve written two-thirds of the toughest scene in the story, and I
hate to leave it unfinished just to go on vacation.
I won’t enjoy myself. If we left Sunday instead of tomorrow, that would give me time
to polish off the end of the chapter. And we’d still have eight days at the cabin."
"Don’t look at me," Jane said. "I’m just excess baggage. I’ll go wherever you take
me, whenever you take me."
Carol shook her head. "Just last week, when Mr. O’Brian said we were compulsive
overachievers, we made up our minds to change our ways, didn’t we? We’ve got to
learn to make time for leisure and not let our work encroach on that."
"You’re right," Paul said. "But just this once - "
He broke off in midsentence because he saw that Carol was determined. She was rarely
intractable, but when she did decide not to compromise on. an issue, she was about
as movable as Gibraltar. He sighed. "Okay. You win. We’ll leave tomorrow morning.
I’ll just bring along the typewriter and the manuscript. I can finish the scene up
at the cabin and - "
"Nothing doing," Carol said, emphasizing each word by tapping her spoon against her
ice cream dish.
"If you bring it along, you won’t stop when you’ve reached the end of the scene
you’re working on. You’ll keep going. You know you will. Having the typewriter
within easy reach will just be too much of a temptation. You won’t be able to resist
it. The whole vacation will go down the drain."
"But I just can’t put that scene on hold for ten days," he said pleadingly. "By the
time I get back to it, the tone and the spontaneity will be lost."
Carol ate a spoonful of spumoni and said, "All right. Here’s what we’ll do. Jane and
I will leave for the mountains first thing in the morning, just as we planned. You
stay here, finish your scene, and then drive up to join us whenever you’re ready."
He frowned. "I’m not sure that’s a good idea."
"Why not?"
"Well, is it really wise for the two of you to go up there alone? I mean, the summer
season is over. Theme aren’t going to be many campers in the woods now, and most of
the other cabins will be deserted."
"For heaven’s sake," Carol said, "there’s no
Abominable Snowman lurking around in those mountains, Paul. We’re in Pennsylvania,
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not Tibet." She smiled. "It’s nice to know you’re so concerned about us, darling.
But we’ll be perfectly safe."
***
Later, after Jane had gone to bed, Paul made one last attempt to change Carol’s
mind, although he knew the effort would be wasted.
He leaned against the frame of the closet door and watched as Carol selected clothes
for the suitcases.
"Listen, be straight with me, okay?"
"Aren’t I always? Straight about what?"
"The girl. Is there any chance she’s dangerous?"
Carol turned from the clothes rack and stared at him, obviously surprised by his
question. "Jane? Dangerous? Well, a girl as pretty as she is will probably
break a lot of hearts over the years. And if cuteness could kill, she’d leave the
streets littered with bodies behind her."
He refused to be amused. "I don’t want you to be flippant about this. I think it’s
important. I want you to give it careful thought."
"I don’t need to give it a lot of thought, Paul. She’s lost her memory, sure. But
she’s a stable, mentally healthy kid. In fact, it takes an amazingly stable
personality to handle amnesia the way she’s handled it. I don’t know that I’d do
half as well if I were in her shoes right now. I’d either be a nervous wreck or sunk
neck-deep in depression. She’s resilient, flexible. Resilient and flexible people
aren’t dangerous."
"Never?"
"Hardly ever. It’s the rigid ones who crack."
"But after what’s happened in your therapy sessions with her, isn’t it reasonable to
wonder about what she might be capable of doing?" he asked,
"She’s a tortured girl. I believe she’s been through a truly terrifying experience,
something so awful that she refuses to relive it, even under hypnosis. She
obfuscates, misdirects, and holds back vital information, but that doesn’t mean
she’s the least bit dangerous. Just scared. It seems evident to me that she was the
victim of either physical or psychological violence at some time in her life. The
victim, Paul, not the perpetrator."
She carried a few pairs of jeans to the suitcases that were open on the bed.
Paul followed her. "Are you going to continue her therapy while you’re at the
cabin?"
Yes. I think it’s best to keep chipping away at the Wall of confusion she’s thrown
up."
"No fair."
"Huh?’
"That’s work," he said. "I’m not allowed to take my work up to the cabin, but you’re
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going to work.
That’s a double standard, Dr. Tracy."
"Double standard, my ass, Dr. Tracy. I’ll need only half an hour a day for Jane’s
therapy. That’s a lot different than lugging an IBM Selectric into the piny woods
and pounding on the keys ten hours a day. Don’t you realize that all the squirrels
and deer and bunny rabbits would complain about the noise?"
***
Later still, when they were in bed and the lights were out, he said, "Hell, I’m
letting this book take possession of me. Why can’t I let the scene lie unfinished
for ten days? I might even do a better job with it if I take the time to think about
it. I’ll come along with you and Jane tomorrow, and I won’t bring the typewriter.
Okay? I won’t even bring a pencil."
"No," Carol said.
"No?"
"When you do get to the mountains, I want you to be able to put the book completely
out of your mind. I want us to take long walks in the forest. I want us to go
boating on the lake and do some fishing and read a couple of books and act like bums
who never even heard the word ‘work.’ if you don’t finish that scene before you go,
you’ll just brood about it during the entire vacation. You won’t have a moment's
real peace, which means I won’t have a moment's peace, either. And don’t tell me I’m
wrong. I know you better than I know myself, buster: You
stay here, write the end of that scene, and then join us on Sunday."
She kissed him goodnight, fluffed her pillows, and settled down to sleep.
He lay in the dark, thinking about the words in yesterday’s Scrabble game.
BLADE
KILL
O
O
DEATH
O
M
B
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And the one word he had refused to reveal:
CAROL...
He still didn’t think anything would be gained by telling her what the last of those
six words had been. What could she do about it other than worry? Nothing. She could
do nothing, and he could do nothing. Except wait and see. A threat - if one actually
arose - could come from any of ten thousand or a hundred thousand sources. It could
come anytime, anywhere. At home or in the mountains. One place was as safe - or as
dangerous - as the other.
Anyway, maybe the appearance of those six words had been merely coincidence. An
incredible but meaningless coincidence.
He stared into the darkness, trying hard to convince himself that there were no such
things as spirit messages, omens, and clairvoyant prophecies. Only a week ago, he
wouldn’t have needed convincing.
***
Blood.
Get it off, scrub it off, every sticky drop of it, wash it off, quickly, quickly,
down the drain, every incriminating drop of it, off, before someone finds out,
before someone sees and knows what’s been done, wash it off, off...
The girl woke in the bathroom, in a fluorescent glare. She had been sleepwalking
again.
She was surprised to find that she was nude. Her knee socks, panties, and T-shirt
were scattered on the floor around her.
She was standing in front of the sink, scrubbing herself with a wet washcloth. When
she looked at her reflection in the mirror, she was briefly paralyzed by what she
saw.
Her face was smeared with blood.
Her arms were spattered with blood.
Her sweetly uptilted, bare breasts glistened with blood.
And she knew instantly that it wasn’t her own. She had not been slashed or stabbed.
She was the one who had done the slashing, the stabbing.
Oh God.
She stared at her gruesome reflection, morbidly fascinated by the sight of her
blood-moistened lips.
What have I done?
She slowly lowered her gaze along her crimsoned neck, looked down at the reflection
of her right nipple, on which hung a very fat, carmine droplet of gore.
The gleaming pearl of blood quivered for an instant on the tip of her erect nipple;
then it succumbed to gravity and fell away from her.
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She pulled her gaze from the mirror, lowered her head to see where the droplet had
struck the floor.
There was no blood.
When she looked directly at herself, rather than at her reflection, she discovered
that her body was not covered with blood after all. She touched her bare breasts.
They were damp because she had been scrubbing them with the washcloth, but the
dampness was nothing more than water. Her arms weren’t spattered with blood, either.
She squeezed the washcloth. Clear water dripped from it; the cloth bore no grisly
stains.
Confused, she raised her eyes to the mirror once more and saw the blood, as before.
She held out her hand. In reality it was not bloody, but in the mirror it was
sheathed in a glove of gore.
A vision, she thought. A weird illusion. That’s all. I didn’t hurt anyone. I didn’t
spill anyone’s blood.
As she struggled to understand what was happening. her mirror image faded, and the
glass in front of her turned black. It seemed to have been transformed into a window
that looked out onto another dimension, for it reflected nothing that was in the
bathroom.
This is a dream, she thought. I’m really snug in bed, where I belong. I’m only
dreaming that I’m in the bathroom I can put a stop to this just by waking up.
On the other hand, if it was a dream, would she be able to feel the cold ceramic
floor beneath her bare feet as vividly as she could fuel it now? If it was really
only a dream, would she be aware of the cold water on her bare breasts?
She shivered.
In the lightless void on the other side of the mirror, something flickered far off
in the darkness.
Wake up!
Something silvery. It flashed again and again, back and forth, the image growing
steadily larger.
For God’s sake, wake up!
She wanted to run. Couldn’t.
She wanted to scream. Didn’t.
In seconds the flickering object filled the mirror, pushing back the darkness out of
which it had come, and then somehow it burst out of the mirror without shattering
the glass, exploded out of the void and into the bathroom with one final, murderous
swing, and she saw that it was an ax, bearing down on her face, the steel blade
gleaming like the finest silver under the fluorescent lights. As the wickedly sharp
edge of the ax swept inexorably toward her head, her knees buckled, and she fainted.
***
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Near dawn, Jane woke again.
She was in bed. She was nude.
She threw the covers back, sat up, and saw her 1-shirt, panties, and knee socks on
the floor beside the bed. She dressed quickly.
The house was silent. The Tracys weren’t up yet.
Jane hurried quietly down the hallway to the guest bathroom, hesitated on the
threshold, then stepped
inside and snapped on the lights.
There was no blood, and the mirror above the sink was only an ordinary mirror,
reflecting her worried face but contributing no bizarre images of its own.
Okay, she thought, maybe I was sleepwalking. And maybe I was actually here without
any clothes on, trying to scrub nonexistent blood off my body. But the rest of it
was just part of the nightmare. It didn’t happen. It couldn’t. Impossible. The
mirror couldn’t really change like that.
She stared into her own blue eyes. She wasn’t sure what she saw in them.
"Who am I?" she asked softly.
All week, Grace’s sleep - what little she had managed to get between bouts of
insomnia - had been dreamless. But tonight she thrashed for hours in the sheets,
trying to fight her way out of a nightmare that seemed to last an eternity.
In the dream, a house was on fire. A big, beautifully ornamented Victorian house.
She was standing outside the blazing structure, pounding on a pair of slant-set
cellar doors and calling a name over and over again. "Laura! Laura!" She knew that
Laura was trapped in the cellar of the burning house and that these doors were the
only way out, but the doors were latched on the inside. She hammered on the wood
with her bare hands until each blow sent a cruel bolt of pain the length of her
arms, through her shoulders, and up the back of her neck. She wished desperately
that she had an ax or a pry-bar or some other tool with which she could smash
through the cellar doors, but she had nothing other than her fists, so she pounded
and pounded until her flesh bruised and split and bled, and she kept on pounding
even then, all the while screaming for Laura. Windows exploded on the second floor,
showering glass down over her, but she didn’t turn away from the slant-set cellar
doors; she didn’t run. She continued to slam her bloodied fists into the wood,
praying that the girl would answer at any moment. She ignored the sparks that
showered down on her and threatened to set her gingham dress afire. She wept, and
she coughed when the wind blew the acrid smoke in her direction, and she cursed the
wood that so easily resisted her fierce but ineffectual attack.
The nightmare had no climax, no peak of terror. It simply went on all night long at
a continuously breathless pace until, a few minutes after dawn, Grace finally
wrenched herself out of the hot, clutching arms of sleep and woke with a wordless
cry, flailing at the mattress.
She sat up on the edge of the bed and held her throbbing head in her hands.
Her mouth was filled with the taste of ashes and bile.
The dream had been so vivid that she had even felt the high-necked, long-sleeved,
blue and white gingham dress binding at her shoulders and across her bust as she had
hammered on the cellar doors. Now, wide awake, she could still feel the dress
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binding her, even though she was wearing a loose nightgown, and even though she had
never worn such a dress in her entire life.
Worse, she could smell the house burning.
The smoke odor lingered so long after she had awakened that she became convinced
that her own house was ablaze. Quickly, she pulled on a robe, stepped into her
slippers, and went from one room to another, searching for the fire.
There was no fire.
Yet for almost an hour, the stench of burning wood and tar stayed with her.
10
FRIDAY morning at nine o’clock, Paul sat down at his writing desk, picked up the
phone, and called Lincoln Werth, the police detective in charge of the Jane Doe
case. He told Werth that Carol was taking the girl out of town for a few days of
rest and recreation.
"Might as well," Werth said. "We don’t have any leads, and I sure don’t think this
is going to break wide open anytime soon. We keep expanding the search area, of
course. At first we just put the kid’s photo and description out to authorities in
the surrounding counties. When that didn’t do us any good, we put it on the wire to
police agencies all over the State. Yesterday morning we took another step and Wired
the same data to seven neighboring states. But I’ll tell you something, just between
you and me. Even if we expand the search area all the way to Hong
Kong, I got a feeling we ain’t never going to find anyone who knows the kid. I just
have a hunch. We’re going to keep coming up empty-handed."
After talking to Werth, Paul went down to the garage, where Carol and Jane were
putting their gear in the trunk of the Volkswagen. To spare the girl grief, Paul
didn’t pass along Werth’s pessimistic assessment of the situation. "He said it’s all
right to leave town for a few days. The court didn’t restrict you to Harrisburg. I
told him where the cabin is, so if anyone turns up to claim our girl here, the
Harrisburg police will contact the county sheriff out that way, and he or one of his
deputies will drop by the cabin and let you know you’ve got to come back."
Carol kissed him goodbye. Jane kissed him, too; hers was a shy, chaste kiss, lightly
planted on his cheek, and when she got into the car, she was blushing brightly.
He stood in front of the house and watched them drive away until the red Volkswagen
Rabbit was out of sight.
After almost a week of blue skies, clouds had drifted in again. They were flat,
slate gray. They matched Paul’s mood.
***
When the kitchen phone rang, Grace steeled herself for the sound of Leonard’s voice.
She sat down in the chair at the small built-in desk, reached up, put her hand on
the receiver that hung on the wall, let it ring once more, then picked it up. To her
relief, it was Ross Quincy, the managing editor of the Morning
News, returning the call she’d made late yesterday afternoon.
"You were inquiring about one of our reporters, Dr. Mitowski?"
"Yes. Palmer Wainwright."
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Quincy was silent.
"He does work for you, doesn’t he?" Grace asked.
"Uh.. Palmer Wainwnght has been an employee of the Morning News, yes."
"I believe he nearly won a Pulitzer Prize."
"Yes. But of course. . . that was quite a while back."
"Oh?"
"Well, if you know about the Pulitzer nomination, you must know it was for the
series he did on the Bektermann murders."
"Yes."
"Which was back in 1943."
"That long ago?"
"Uh. . . Dr. Mitowski, exactly what is it you wanted to know about Palmer
Wainwright?"
"I’d like to talk with him," she said. "We’ve met, and we have some unfinished
business that I’m rather anxious to take care of. It’s a.. . personal matter."
Quincy hesitated. Then: "Are you a long-lost relative?"
"Of Mr. Wainwright’s? Oh, no."
"A long-lost friend?"
"No. Not that either."
"Well, then, I guess I don’t have to be delicate about this. Dr. Mitowski, I’m
afraid that Palmer Wainwright is dead."
"Dead!" she said, astounded.
"Well, surely you realized there was that possibility. He was never a well man,
downright sickly. And you’ve obviously been out of touch with him for a long time."
"Not all that long," she said.
"Must be at least thirty-five years," Quincy said. "He died back in 1946."
The air at Grace’s back seemed suddenly colder than it had been an instant ago, as
if a dead man had expelled his icy breath against the nape of her neck.
"Thirty-one years," she said numbly. "You must be wrong."
"Not a chance. I was just a green kid back then, a copyboy. Palmer Wainwright was
one of my heroes. I took it pretty hard when he went."
"Are we talking about the same man?" Grace asked. "He was quite thin, with sharp
features, pale brown eyes, and a rather sallow complexion. His voice was several
notes deeper than you’d expect from just looking at him."
"That was Palmer, all right."
"About fifty-five?"
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"He was thirty-six when he died, but he did look twenty years older," Quincy said.
"It was that string of illnesses, one thing right after another, with cancer at the
end. Jt just wore him down, aged him fast. He was a fighter, but he just couldn’t
hold on any longer."
Thirty-one years in the grave? she thought. But I saw him yesterday. We had a
strange conversation in the rose garden. What do you say to that, Mr. Quincy?
"Dr. Mitowski? Are you still there?"
"Yes. Sorry. Listen, Mr. Quincy, I hate to take your valuable time, but this is
really important. I believe the Bektermann case had a lot to do with the personal
business I wanted to discuss with Mr. Wainwright. But I don’t really know anything
about those murders. Would you mind telling me what it was all about?"
"Family tragedy," Quincy said. "The Bektermanns’ daughter went berserk the day
before her sixteenth birthday. Her mind just snapped. Apparently, she got it in her
head that her mother intended to kill her before she turned sixteen, which was not
true, of course. But she thought it was true, and she went after her mother with an
ax. Her father and a visiting cousin got in the way, and she killed them. Her mother
actually managed to wrench the ax out of the girl’s hands. But that didn’t stop the
kid. She just picked up a fireplace poker and kept coming. When the mother, Mrs.
Bektermann, was backed into a corner and was about to have her skull cracked open
with the poker, she didn’t have any choice but to swing the ax at her daughter. She
hit the girl once, in the side. A pretty deep cut. The kid died in the hospital the
next day. Mrs. Bektermann only killed in self-defense, and no charges were brought
against her, but she felt so guilty about killing her own child that she had a
complete breakdown and eventually wound up in an institution."
"And that’s the story that won Mr. Wainwright his Pulitzer nomination?"
"Yeah. In the hands of a lot of reporters, the piece Would have been nothing but
sensationalistic garbage. But Palmer was good. He wrote a sensitive, well-researched
study of a family with serious emotional, interpersonal problems. The father was a
domineering man who set extremely high standards for his daughter and very likely
had an unnatural attraction to her. The mother was always competing with the father
for the girl’s heart, mind, and loyalty, and when she saw she was losing that
battle, she turned to drink. There were extraordinary psychological pressures
brought to bear on the daughter, and Palmer made the reader feel and understand
those pressures."
She thanked Ross Quincy for his time and consideration. She hung up the phone.
For a while she just sat there, staring at the softly humming refrigerator, trying
to make sense of what she had been told. If Wainwright had died in 1946, whom had
she talked to in the garden yesterday?
And what did the Bektermann murders have to do with her? With Carol?
She thought of what Wainwright had told her: This damned, endless pursuit. It’s
still going on, and it’s got to be stopped this tune around ye come to tell you that
your Carol is in the middle of it.
You’ve got to help her. Get her out of the girl’s way.
She felt she was on the verge of understanding what he had meant. And she was
scared.
Even though a number of impossible things had transpired within the past twenty-four
hours, she no longer questioned either her sanity or her perceptions.
She was sane, perfectly sane, and in command of all her faculties. Senility was not
even a remote possibility any longer. She sensed that the explanation for these
events was far more frightening, more soul-shattering even than the prospect of
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senility, which had once terrified her.
She recalled something else that Palmer Wainwright had said yesterday in the garden:
You aren’t only who you think you are. You aren’t only Grace Mitowski.
She knew the solution to the puzzle was within her grasp. She sensed a dark
knowledge within her, long-forgotten memories waiting to be tapped. She was afraid
to tap them, but she knew she must do precisely that, for Carol’s sake, and perhaps
for her own sake as well.
Suddenly, the air in the kitchen, though still quite clear, reeked of wood and tar
smoke. Grace could hear the crackle of fire, although there were no flames here,
now, in this place and time.
Her heart pounded frantically, and her mouth turned dry and sour.
She closed her eyes and could see the burning house as vividly as she had seen it in
the dream. She could see the cellar doors, and she could hear herself screaming,
calling Laura.
She knew it hadn’t been only a dream. It had been a memory, lost for ages, surfacing
now, reminding her that, indeed, she was not only Grace Mitowski.
She opened her eyes.
The kitchen was hot, stifling.
She felt herself being pulled along by forces she could not comprehend, and she
thought: Is this what I want? Do I really want to flow with this and discover the
truth and turn my little world upside down? Can
I handle it?
The stench of nonexistent smoke grew stronger.
The roar of nonexistent flames grew louder.
I guess there’s no turning back now, she thought.
She held her hands up in front of her face and Stared at them, amazed. Her flesh had
been miraculously disfigured by stigmata. Her hands were bruised, abraded, bloody.
There were splinters of wood embedded in her palms, splinters from the cellar doors
on which she had pounded such a long, long time ago.
***
At ten o’clock, when the phone rang, Paul had been at his desk, writing, for almost
an hour. The work had just begun to flow smoothly. He snatched up the receiver and
said, a bit impatiently, "Yes?"
An unfamiliar female voice said, "Could I speak to Dr. Tracy, please?"
"Speaking."
"Oh. Uh.. no.. . the Dr. Tracy I’m looking for is a woman."
"It’s my wife you want," he said. "She’s out of town for a few days. Can I take a
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message?"
"Yes, please. Would you tell her that Polly called from Maugham & Crichton?"
He jotted the name down on a note pad. "And what’s this in reference to?"
"Dr. Tracy was here yesterday afternoon with a young girl who’s suffering from
amnesia. . .
"Yes," Paul said, suddenly more interested than he had been. "I know the case."
"Dr. Tracy was asking if we’d ever heard of anyone named Millicent Parker."
"That’s right. She told me about it last evening. It was another dead end, I
gather."
"It seemed to be a dead end yesterday," Polly said, "but now it turns out that one
of our doctors is familiar with the name. Dr. Maugham himself, in fact."
"Listen, rather than waiting for my wife to call you back, why don’t you just tell
me what you’ve come up with, and I can pass the information along to her."
"Well, sure, why not? See, Dr. Maugham is the senior partner in the practice. He
bought this property eighteen years ago and personally oversaw the restoration of
the outside and the renovation of the interior. He’s a history bug, so it was
natural for him to want to know the history of the building he purchased. He says
this place was built in 1902 by a man named Randolph Parker. Parker had a daughter
named Millicent."
"1902?"
"That’s right."
"Interesting."
"You haven’t heard the best part," Polly said, the eagerness of a gossip-monger in
her voice. "Seems that back in 1905, the night before Millie’s sixteenth birthday
party, Mrs. Parker was in the kitchen, decorating a big cake for the girl. Millie
snuck in behind her and stabbed her in the back four times."
Unthinking, Paul snapped the pencil he’d been holding ever since he’d written
Polly’s name on the note pad. One broken piece popped out of his hand, spun across
the top of the desk, and fell to the floor.
"She stabbed her own mother?" he asked, hoping that he had not heard correctly.
"Isn’t that something?"
"Kill her?" he asked numbly.
"No. Dr. Maugham says that according to the newspaper accounts at that time, the
girl used a short bladed knife. It didn’t sink in far enough to do really major
damage. No vital organs or blood vessels were affected. Louise Parker - that was the
mother’s flame - managed to grab a meat cleaver from a kitchen rack. She tried to hold
the girl off with that. But I guess Millie must have been completely off her rocker,
‘cause she charged straight at Mrs. Parker again, and Mrs. Parker had to use that
cleaver."
"Jesus."
"Yeah," Polly said, obviously enjoying his shocked reaction. "Dr. Maugham says she
put that cleaver right into her daughter’s throat. Pretty much cut the girl’s head
clear off. Isn’t that a terrible thing? But what else could she do? Just let the kid
go on jabbing that knife into her?"
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Stunned, Paul thought about yesterday’s hypnotic regression therapy session, which
Carol had recounted for him in some detail. He remembered the part about how Jane
had claimed to be Millicent Parker and had insisted on writing out her answers to
questions and had written that she was unable to talk because her head had been cut
off.
"Are you still there?" Polly asked.
"Oh. Uh. . . sorry. Is there more to the story?"
"More?" Polly asked. "Wasn’t that enough?"
"Yes," he said. "You’re absolutely right. That was enough. More than enough."
"I don’t know if this information is of any help to Dr. Tracy."
"I’m sure it will be."
"I don’t see how it could have anything to do with the girl she brought in here with
her yesterday."
"Neither do I," Paul said.
"I mean, that girl can’t be Millicent Patter. Millicent Parker has been dead for
seventy-six years."
***
In the study, Grace stood at her desk, looking down at the open dictionary.
REINCARNATION (re’-in-kár-na’shen), n. 1. the doctrine that the soul, upon death of
the body, comes back to earth in another body or form. 2. rebirth of the soul in a
new body. 3. a new incarnation or embodiment, as of a person.
Bunk? Nonsense? Superstition? Bullshit?
At one time, not long ago, those were all the words she would have used to write her
own irreverent definition of reincarnation. But not now. Not any longer.
She closed her eyes, and with only the slightest effort, she was able to bring back
the image of the burning house. She wasn’t just envisioning it; she was there,
hammering with her fists on the cellar door. She was not Grace Mitowski now; she was
Rachael Adams, Laura’s aunt.
The fire scene was not the only part of Rachael’s life that she could recall with
perfect clarity. She knew the woman’s most intimate thoughts, her hopes and dreams
and hates and fears, shared her most closely held secrets, for those thoughts and
hopes and dreams and fears and secrets had been her own.
She opened her eyes and needed a moment to refocus them on the present-day world.
REINCARNATION
She closed the dictionary.
God help me, she thought, do I really believe it? Can it be true that I’ve lived
before? And that Carol’s lived before? And the girl they’re calling Jane Doe?
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If it was true - if she had been permitted to recall her previous existence as Rachael
Adams in order to save Carol’s life in this incarnation - then she was wasting
valuable time.
She picked up the phone to call the Tracys, wondering how in God’s name she was
going to make them believe her.
There was no dial tone.
She jiggled the receiver-cradle buttons.
Nothing.
She put the receiver down and followed the cord around the side of the desk to the
wall, to see if it had come unplugged. It wasn’t unplugged; it was chewed.
Bitten in two.
Aristophanes.
She remembered other things that Palmer Wainwright had said in the garden: There are
certain forces, dark and powerful forces, that want to see this played out the wrong
way. Dark forces that thrive on tragedy. They want to see it end in senseless
violence and blood. . . There are forces aligned. . . good and evil, right and
wrong. You’re on the right side, Grace. But the cat - ah, the cat’s a different story.
A: all times, you must be wary of the cat.
She also remembered when the series of paranormal events had begun, and she realized
that the cat had been an integral part of it all, from the very start. Wednesday of
last week. When she had suddenly awakened from her afternoon nap that day - catapulted
out of a nightmare about Carol - there had been an incredibly brilliant and violent
barrage of Lightening beyond the study windows. She had staggered to the nearest
window, and while she had stood there on unsteady, arthritic legs, half-awake and
half-asleep, she’d had the eerie feeling that something monstrous had followed her
up from the world of her nightmare, something demonic with a hungry grin on its
face. For a few seconds that feeling had been so strong, so real, that she had been
afraid to turn around and look into the shadowy room behind her. But then she had
dismissed that weird thought as nothing more than the cold residue of the nightmare.
Now, of course, she knew she shouldn’t have dismissed it so quickly. Something
strange had been in the room with her - a spirit; a presence; call it what you will.
It had been there. And now it was in the cat.
She left the study and hurried down the hall.
In the kitchen, she found that phone cord also chewed apart.
There was no sign of Aristophanes.
Nevertheless, Grace knew he was nearby, perhaps even close enough to be watching
her. She sensed his - or its - presence.
She listened. The house was too silent.
She wanted to cross the few feet of open floor to the kitchen door, open it boldly,
and walk away from the house. But she strongly suspected that any attempt to leave
would trigger an immediate and vicious attack.
She thought about the cat’s claws, teeth, fangs. It wasn’t merely a house pet, not
just an amusing Siamese with a cute, furry face. It was actually a tough little
killing machine, too; its feral impulses lay beneath a thin veneer of domestication.
It was both respected and dreaded by mice and birds and squirrels. But could it kill
a grown woman?
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Yes, she thought uneasily. Yes, Aristophanes could kill me if he caught me by
surprise and if he went for either my throat or my eyes.
The best thing she could do was stay within the house and not antagonize the cat
until she had armed herself and could feel confident of winning any battle.
The only other telephone was in the second-floor bedroom. Wary, she went upstairs,
even though she knew the third extension would be out of order, too.
It was.
But there was something in the bedroom that made the journey up the stairs
worthwhile. The gun. She pulled open the top drawer of her nightstand and took out
the loaded pistol she kept there. She had a hunch she would need it.
A hiss. A rustle.
Behind her.
Before she could swing around and confront her adversary, he was on her. He vaulted
from the floor to the bed, sprang from the bed to her back, landing with nearly
enough force to knock her off balance. She tottered for a moment and almost fell
forward into the bedside lamp.
Aristophanes hissed and spat and scrambled for purchase on her back.
Fortunately, she kept her feet under her. She spun around and shook herself,
frantically attempting to throw him off before he could do any damage.
His claws were hooked in her clothes. Although she was wearing both a blouse and a
sweater, she felt a couple of his razor-tipped nails puncturing her skin - hot little
points of pain. He wouldn’t let go.
She drew her shoulders up and tucked her head down, pulling her chin in tight
against her chest, protecting her neck as best she could. She swung one fist up
behind her back, struck only air, tried again, and hit the cat with a blow that was
too weak to have done any harm.
Nevertheless, Aristophanes squealed with rage and snapped at her neck. He was foiled
by her hunched shoulders and by her thick hair, which got in his mouth and gagged
him.
She had never wanted anything half so much as she wanted to kill the little bastard.
He was no longer the familiar pet she had loved; he was a strange and hateful beast,
and she harbored no ghost of affection for him.
She wished she could use the gun she was clutching in her right hand, but there was
no way she could shoot him without shooting herself, too.
She struck at him repeatedly with her left hand, her arthritic shoulder protesting
sharply, painfully when she twisted her arm up and backwards at such an unnatural
angle.
At least for a moment, the cat abandoned its relentless but thus far ineffective
attack on her neck. It slashed its claws across her flailing fist, slicing open the
skin on her knuckles.
Her fingers were instantly slick with blood. They stung so badly that her eyes
started to water.
Either the sight or the odor of the blood encouraged the cat. It shrieked with
savage glee.
Grace began to think the unthinkable - that she was going to lose this fight.
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No!
She struggled against the grip of fear that threatened to incapacitate her, tried to
clear her panic-befuddled mind, and suddenly had an idea that she thought might save
her life. She stumbled toward the nearest stretch of open wall, to the left of the
dresser. The cat clung tenaciously to her back, insistently pressing its snout
against the base of her skull, hissing and snarling. It was determined to force its
way to her sheltered neck and rip open her jugular vein.
When Grace reached the wall, she turned her back to it, then fell against it with
all her weight, slamming the cat into the plaster behind her, pinning it hard
between her body and the wall, hoping to break its spine. The jolt brought a flash
of pain through her shoulders and drove the animal’s claws deeper into her back
muscles. The cat’s scream was nearly shrill enough to shatter fine crystal, and it
sounded almost like the wail of a human infant. But its grip on her didn’t weaken.
Grace pushed away from the wall, then slammed into it a second time, and the cat
wailed as before, but still held fast. She thrust herself off the wall, intending to
make a third attempt to crush her adversary, but before she could fall back on him,
the cat let go of her. He dropped to the floor, rolled, sprang to his feet, and
scurried away from her, favoring his right foreleg.
Good. She had hurt him.
She sagged against the wall, raised the .22 pistol that was stilt in her right hand,
and squeezed the trigger.
Nothing.
She had forgotten to switch off the safeties.
The cat hurried through the open door and disappeared into the upstairs hail.
Grace went to the door, closed it, leaned wearily against it. Gasping.
Her left hand was scratched and bleeding, and her back bore half a dozen claw
punctures, but she had won the first round. The cat was limping; he was injured,
perhaps as badly as she was, and he was the one who had retreated.
No celebration, though. Not yet.
Not until she had gotten out of the house alive. And not until she was certain that
Carol was safe, too.
After the unsettling telephone conversation he’d had with the receptionist at
Maugham & Crichton, Paul didn’t know what the hell to do.
He couldn’t write. That was for sure. He couldn’t get his mind off Carol long enough
to advance the plot of his novel by so much as even one sentence.
He wanted to call Lincoln Werth, at police headquarters, and arrange to have a
sheriff’s deputy waiting at the cabin when Carol and Jane arrived up there. He
wanted them brought home. But he could imagine the conversation he would have with
Detective Werth, and the thought of it daunted him:
"You want a deputy to meet them at the cabin?"
"That’s right."
"Why?"
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"1 think my wife’s in danger."
"What kind of danger?"
"1 think the girl, Jane Doe, might be violent. Maybe even homicidal."
"Why do you think that?"
"Because under hypnosis she claimed to be Millie Parker."
"Who’s that?"
"Millie Parker once tried to kill her mother."
"She did? When was that?"
"Back in 1905."
"Then she’d be a little old lady today, for Christ’s sake. The kid’s only fourteen
or fifteen."
"You don’t understand. Millie Parker’s been dead for about seventy-six years and - "
"Wait a minute, wait a minute! What the hell are you saying? That your wife might be
murdered by some kid who’s been dead for most of the century?"
"No. Of course not."
"Then what do you mean?"
"F. . . don’t know."
Werth would think that he had been out boozing all night, or that he had started the
morning with a couple of joints of good grass.
Besides, it wasn’t fair to Jane to accuse her publicly of being a potential killer.
Perhaps Carol was right. Maybe the kid was just a victim. Except for what she said
under hypnosis, she certainly seemed to be incapable of violence.
On the other hand, of all the people she could have claimed to be, why had she said
that she was Millicent Parker, the would-be murderess? Where had she heard that name
before. Didn’t the use of it indicate latent hostility?
Paul swiveled his typing chair away from the desk and stared out the window at the
gray sky. The wind was picking up by the minute. The clouds were racing westward
across the sky, as if they were enormous, swift, dark ships with billowing sails the
color of thunderstorms.
BLADE, BLOOD, DEATH, TOMB, KILL, CAROL.
I’ve got to go to the cabin, he thought with sudden decisiveness, and he got to his
feet.
Maybe he was overreacting to this Millicent Parker business, but he couldn’t just
sit here, wondering....
He went into the master bedroom to throw some things into a suitcase. After only a
brief hesitation, he decided to pack his .38 revolver.
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The girl said, "How much farther to the cabin?"
"Another twenty minutes," Carol said. "The whole drive usually takes just about two
hours and fifteen minutes, and we’re pretty much on schedule."
The mountains were cool and green. Some trees had already been touched by the artful
hand of autumn, and most - all but the evergreens - would change the color of their
leaves during the next few weeks. Today, however, the predominant shade was still
green, with a smattering of gold here and there, an occasional touch of red. The
edge of the forest -  wherever the meadow or the roadway met the trees -  was decorated
with a few end-of-the-season wildflowers, blue and white and purple.
"It’s beautiful up here," Jane said as they followed the two-lane county road around
a curve. The right-hand bank, which sloped down to the macadam, was covered with
vividly green clusters of rhododendron shrubs.
"I love the Pennsylvania mountains," Carol said. She felt more relaxed now than she
had in weeks. "It’s so peaceful here. Wait till you’ve been at the cabin a day or
two. You’ll forget the rest of the world exists."
They came out of the curve onto an ascending straightaway, where the interlocking
branches of the trees formed a tunnel over portions of the lane. At those points
where the trees parted sufficiently to provide a glimpse of the sky, there was
nothing to be seen but massive, gray-black clouds clotted together in surging, ugly,
threatening formations.
"I sure hope it doesn’t rain and spoil our first day here," Jane said.
"Rain won’t spoil anything," Carol assured her. "If we’re forced to stay inside,
we’ll just throw a whole bunch of logs in the big stone fireplace and roast some hot
dogs indoors. And we have a closetful of games to help us pass rainy days. Monopoly,
Scrabble, Clue, Risk, Battleship, and at least a dozen others. I think we’ll be able
to avoid cabin fever."
"It’s going to be fun," Jane said enthusiastically.
The canopy of trees parted overhead, and the September sky churned darkly.
11
GRACE sat on the edge of the bed, holding the .22 pistol, considering her options.
She didn’t have many.
In fact, the more she thought about it, the more it seemed to her that the cat had a
better chance of winning this duel than she did.
If she attempted to leave the house by way of the bedroom window, she would surely
break a leg and probably her neck as well. If she had been only twenty years
younger, she might have tried it. But at seventy, with her swollen joints and
brittle bones, jumping from a second-floor window onto a concrete patio could only
end in misery. Anyway, the point wasn’t just to get out of the house, but to get out
in one piece, so she could make it across town to Carol’s and Paul’s place.
She could open the window and start screaming for help. But she was afraid that
Aristophanes - or the thing using Aristophanes' body - would attack anyone who showed up
and tried to assist her, and she didn’t want a neighbor’s death on her conscience.
This was her battle. No one else’s. She would have to fight it alone.
She considered all the routes by which she might possibly leave the house once she
had reached the bottom floor - if she reached the bottom floor - but no particular route
seemed less dangerous than any other. The cat could be anywhere. Everywhere. The
bedroom was the only safe place in the house. If she ventured out of this sanctuary,
the cat would be waiting for her and would attack her, regardless of whether she
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tried to exit the house by the front door, the kitchen door, or one of the
ground-floor windows. It would be crouched in one shadow or another, perhaps perched
atop a bookcase or cupboard or hutch, tensed and ready to launch itself down onto
her startled, upturned face.
She had the gun, of course. But the cat, stealthy by nature, would always have the
advantage of surprise. If it got just a two- or three-second lead on her, if she was
only that little bit slower to react than was the cat, it would have ample time to
fasten onto her face, tear open her throat, or gouge her eyes out with its quick,
stiletto claws.
Strangely, though she had accepted the doctrine of reincarnation, though she now
knew beyond doubt that there was some kind of life after death, she nevertheless
feared dying. The certainty of eternal life in no way diminished the value of this
life. Indeed, now that she could discern godlike machinery just below the visible
surface of the world, her life seemed to have more meaning and purpose than ever
before.
She didn’t want to die.
However, although the odds of her leaving the house alive were, at best, only
fifty-fifty, she couldn’t stay in the bedroom indefinitely. She had no water, no
food. Besides, if she didn’t get out of’ here in the next few minutes, she might be
too late to be of any help to Carol.
If Carol is killed simply because I lack the courage to face that damned cat, she
thought, then I might as well be dead anyway.
She switched off the two safeties on the pistol.
She got up and went to the door.
For nearly a minute she stood with one ear pressed to the door, listening for
scratching noises or other indications that Aristophanes was nearby. She heard
nothing.
Holding the pistol in her right hand, she used her bloody, claw-torn left hand to
turn the knob. She opened the door with the utmost caution, half an inch at a time,
expecting the cat to dart through the opening the instant it was wide enough to
admit him. But he didn’t.
Finally, reluctantly, she poked her head out into the hall. Looked left. Right.
The cat wasn’t anywhere in sight.
She stepped into the hail and paused, afraid to move away from the bedroom door.
Go! she told herself angrily. Move your ass, Gracie!
She took a step toward the head of the stairs. Then another step. Trying to be
quiet.
The stairs appeared to be a mile away.
She looked behind her.
Still no Aristophanes.
Another step.
This was going to be the longest walk she had ever taken.
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Paul latched his suitcase, picked it up, turned away from the bed - and jumped,
startled, when the entire house shook as if a wrecker’s ball had struck the side of
it.
THUNK!
He looked up at the ceiling.
THUNK! THUNK! THUNK!
During the past five days there had been no hammering to disturb the peace. He
hadn’t entirely forgotten about it, of course; he still occasionally wondered where
that mysterious sound had come from. For the most part, however, he had put it out
of his mind; there had been other things to worry about. But now -  THUNK! THUNK!
THUNK!
The nerve-fraying noise reverberated in the windows and bounced off the walls. It
seemed to vibrate in Paul’s teeth and bones, too.
THUNK!
After spending days trying to identify the source of that sound, understanding came
to him unexpectedly, in a flash. It was an ax. It was not a hammering, which was how
he had been thinking of it. No. There was a sharp edge to it, a brittle, cracking
quality at the end of each blow. It was a chopping sound.
THUNK!
Being able to identify the noise did absolutely nothing to help him understand where
it was coming from.
So it was an ax instead of a hammer. So what? He still couldn’t make sense of it.
Why were the blows shaking the entire house? It would have to be the mythical Paul
Bunyan’s ax to have such a tremendous impact. And regardless of whether it was a
hammer or an ax or even, for Christ’s sake, a salami, how could the sound of it
issue from thin air?
Suddenly, inexplicably, he thought of the meat cleaver that Louise Parker had buried
in the throat of her maniacal daughter back in 1905. He thought about the freakish
lightning strikes at Alfred O’Brian’s office; the strange intruder he had seen on
the rear lawn during the thunderstorm that evening; the Scrabble game two nights ago
(BLADE, BLOOD, DEATH, TOMB, KILL, CAROL); Grace’s two prophetic dreams. And he knew
beyond doubt - without understanding how he knew - that the sound of the ax was the
thread that sewed together all these recent extraordinary events. Intuitively, he
knew that an ax would be the instrument by whichax would be the instrument by which
Carol’s life would be endangered. He didn’t know how. He didn’t know why. But he
knew.
THUNK! THUNK!
A painting popped off its wall hook and clattered to the floor.
The river of blood in Paul’s veins turned winter-cold.
He had to get to the cabin. Fast.
He started toward the bedroom door, and it slammed shut in front of him. No one had
touched it. There had been no sudden draft that might have moved it. One moment the
door was standing wide Open, and the next instant it was flung shut as if it had
been shoved hard by an invisible hand.
Out of the corner of his eye, Paul saw something move. Heart banging, breath trapped
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in his constricted throat, he twisted around toward the movement and instinctively
raised his suitcase to partially shield himself.
One of the two heavy, mirrored closet doors was sliding open. He expected someone to
step out of the closet, but when the door was all the way open, he could see nothing
in there except clothes on hangers.
Then it slid shut, and the other door slid open. Then both of them started sliding
at the same time, one crossing behind the other, back and forth, back and forth on
their silent plastic wheels.
THUNK! THUNK!
A lamp crashed over on one of the nightstands.
Another painting fell off the wall.
THUNK!
On the dresser, two porcelain figurines - a ballerina and her male dancing
partner - began to circle one another, almost as if they had come to life and were
performing for Paul. They moved slowly at first, then faster, faster, until they
were swept into the air and tossed halfway across the room and dashed to the floor.
***
The cabin was constructed of logs and was nestled in the cool shadows beneath the
trees. it had a long, covered, screened porch out front and an excellent view of the
lake.
It was one of ninety vacation cabins tucked into the scenic mountain valley, each on
an acre or half-acre of its own. They were all built along the south shore of the
lake and were reachable only by way of a private, gated, gravel-surfaced road that
curved around the water. Some of the cabins were made of logs, like the one Paul and
Carol had bought, but there were also white clapboard New England models, modern
A-frames, and a few that resembled small Swiss chalets.
At the end of her own graveled drive, which branched off the community road, Carol
parked the car near the front door of the cabin. She and Jane got out and stood for
a moment in companionable silence, listening to the stillness, breathing the
wonderfully fresh air.
"It’s lovely," Jane said at last.
"Isn’t it, though?"
"So quiet."
"It isn’t always. Not when most of the cabins are in use. But right now there’s
probably no one here except Peg and Vince Gervis."
"Who’re they?" Jane asked.
"The caretakers. The homeowner’s association pays their salaries. They live
year-round in the last cabin, out at the end of the lake. In the off season, they
run a couple of inspection tours every day, just keeping a lookout for fire and
vandals and whatnot. Nice people."
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Above the distant north shore of the lake, lightning blazed across the malevolent
sky. A clap of thunder fell from the clouds and rolled across the water.
"We better get the suitcases and the food out of the car before we have to unload
everything in the rain," Carol said.
Grace expected to be attacked on the stairs, for that was where she would find it
most difficult to defend herself. If the cat frightened her and caused her to lose
her balance, she might fall. If she fell, she would probably break a leg or a hip,
and while she was temporarily stunned by the shock and pain of the fall, the cat
would be all over her, tearing, biting. Therefore, she descended the stairs
sideways, with her back against the wail, so she could look both ahead and behind.
But Aristophanes did not show up. Grace reached the downstairs hail without
incident.
She looked both ways along the hail.
To reach the front door, she had to pass the open door of the study and the archway
that led to the living room. The cat could bolt out of either place as she was
passing by and could leap for her face before she would have time to spot him, aim
the pistol, and pull the trigger.
To reach the other door, the one at the back of the house, she had to go right,
along the hallway, past the open dining room door, into the kitchen. That route
didn’t look any less dangerous.
The rock and the hard place, she thought unhappily. The devil and the deep blue sea.
Then she remembered that her car keys were in the kitchen, hanging on the pegboard
beside the back door, and that settled it. She would have to leave through the
kitchen.
She moved cautiously along the hall until she came to a wall mirror, beneath which
stood a narrow, decorative table. There were two tail vases on the table, bracketing
the mirror. She picked up one of them in her injured left hand and sidled toward the
open dining room door.
She paused before reaching the doorway, listened.
Silence.
She leaned forward and risked her eyes by peering into the dining room. She could
not see any sign of the cat. That didn’t mean it wasn’t in there, The drapes were
half drawn, and the day was gloomy; there were lots of shadows, many places where a
cat could hide.
For the purpose of creating a diversion in the- event that Aristophanes was in one
of those shadows, Grace pitched the vase inside. As it landed with a loud crash, she
stepped across the threshold just far enough to grasp the doorknob, then pulled the
door shut as she backed quickly into the hallway again. Now, if the cat was in
there, it would bloody well have to stay in there.
She heard no noise from the dining room, which probably meant she hadn’t managed to
trap the elusive beast. If he’d been in there, he would have been squealing with
rage and scratching at the inside of the closed door by now. Most likely, she had
only wasted time and energy with her little trick. But at least there was now one
downstairs room to which she could turn her back with impunity.
Repeatedly glancing left and right, forward and back, she crept to the kitchen door,
hesitated, then stepped through it, the gun thrust out in front of her. She looked
the room over slowly, thoroughly, before venturing farther. The small table and
chairs. The humming refrigerator. The dangling, cat-chewed phone cord. The gleaming
chrome fixtures on the oven. The double sinks. The white countertops. The small
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countertop wine rack. The cookie jar and the breadbox lined up beside the wine.
Nothing moved.
The refrigerator motor shut off, and the subsequent quiet was deep, unbroken.
Okay, she thought. Grit your teeth and move, Gracie.
She walked silently across the room, her eyes sweeping every niche, every nook: the
opening under the built-in writing desk, the narrow space beside the refrigerator,
the blind spot beyond the end of one row of cabinets. No cat.
Maybe I hurt him worse than I thought I did, she told herself hopefully. Maybe I
didn’t just lame the bastard. Maybe he crawled away and died.
She reached the back door.
She didn’t dare breathe for fear her own breathing would mask whatever furtive
sounds the cat might make.
A ring of keys, including those for the car, hung on a small oval pegboard beside
the door. She slipped it off the hook.
She reached for the doorknob.
The cat hissed.
Grace cried out involuntarily and swung her head to the right, in the direction of
the sound.
She was standing at one end of the long row of cabinets. At the far end, the wine
rack and the bread-box and the cookie jar were lined up side by side; she had seen
them from a front-on angle when she had first come into the room. Now she had a side
view. From this angle she saw something she couldn’t have seen from in front: The
cookie jar and breadbox, which usually rested snug against the wall behind the
counter, had been moved out a few inches. The cat had squeezed in behind those two
objects, muscling them slowly out of its way. It had crouched in that hiding place,
its butt against the wine rack, facing out toward the kitchen door. It was
approximately twelve feet from her, and then it wasn’t even that far away because it
launched itself across the counter, hissing.
The confrontation was over in a few seconds, but during those seconds, time seemed
to slow to a crawl, and Grace felt as if she were trapped in a slow-motion film. She
stumbled backwards, away from the counter and the cat, but she didn’t get far before
she collided with a wall; as she moved, she raised the gun and fired two rounds in
quick succession. The cookie jar exploded, and wood chips flew off one of the
cabinet doors. But the cat kept coming, coming, in slow-motion strides across the
slippery tile countertop, its mouth gaping and its fangs bared. She realized that
hitting such a small, quick target was not easy, even at such short range as this.
She fired again, but she knew the gun was wavering in her hand, and she wasn’t
surprised when she heard the bullet ricochet -  making a high, piercing eeeee - off
something wide of the mark. To her terror-heightened perceptions, the echoes of the
ricochet continued to infinity: eeeee, eeeee, eeeee, eeeee, eeeee.... Then the cat
reached the end of the counter and leapt into the air, and Grace flied again. This
time she hit the mark. The cat yelped. The bullet had sufficient impact to deflect
the animal only an instant before it would have landed, scratching and biting, on
her face. It was pitched back and to the left as if it were a bundle of rags. It
slammed into the kitchen door and dropped stonelike to the floor, where it lay
silent and motionless
***
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Paul couldn’t decide what the poltergeist intended to accomplish by its impressive
displays of power. He didn’t know whether or not he had anything to fear
from it. Was it trying to delay him, trying to keep him here until it was too late
for him to help Carol? Or perhaps it was urging him on, trying its best to convince
him that he must go to the cabin immediately.
Still holding the suitcase in one hand, he approached the bedroom door that had been
flung shut by the unseen presence. As he reached for the knob, the door began to
rattle in its frame - gently at first, then fiercely.
Thunk... thunk.. . thunk... TRUNK!
He jerked his hand back, unsure what he ought to do.
THUNK!
The sound of the ax was coming from the door now, not from overhead, as it had been.
Although the solid-core, raised-panel, fir door was a formidable barrier rather than
just a flimsy Masonite model, it shook violently and then cracked down the middle as
if it were constructed of balsa wood.
Paul backed away from it.
Another crack appeared, parallel to the first, and chips of wood flew into the room.
Sliding closet doors and flying porcelain figurines might be the work of a
poltergeist, but this was something else again. Surely no spirit could chop apart a
heavy door like this. There had to be someone swinging a very real ax against the
other side.
Paul felt defenseless. He scanned the room for makeshift weapons, but he saw nothing
useful.
The .38 revolver was in the suitcase. He wouldn’t be able to get to it in time to
defend himself with it, and he wished fervently that he had kept the gun in his
hand.
THUNKTHUNKTHUNKTHUNK!
The bedroom door exploded inward in half a dozen large pieces and countless smaller
chunks and scraps.
He threw one arm over his face to protect his eyes. Wood rained down on all sides of
him.
When he lowered his arm, he saw there was no one standing beyond the doorway, no man
with an ax. The chopper-of-doors was, after all, the unseen presence.
THUNK!
Paul stepped over a shattered section of the door and went out into the hallway
***
The fuse box was in the kitchen pantry. Carol engaged all the breaker switches, and
the lights came on.
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There was no telephone. That was virtually the only modern convenience the cabin
lacked.
"Do you think it’s chilly in here?" Carol asked.
"A little."
"We have a bottled-gas furnace, but unless it’s really cold, the fireplace is nicer.
Let’s bring in some firewood."
"You mean we’ve got to cut down a tree?"
Carol laughed. "That won’t be necessary. Come see."
She led the girl outside, to the rear of the cabin, where an open porch ended in
steps leading down to a short rear yard. The yard met the edge of a small meadow
where the grass was knee-deep, and the meadow climbed up toward a wall of trees
fifty yards away.
When Carol saw that familiar landscape, she stopped, surprised, remembering the
dream that had spoiled her sleep several nights last week. In the nightmare, she had
been running through one house, then through another house, then across a mountain
meadow, while something silvery flickered in the darkness behind her. At the time,
she had not realized that the meadow in the dream was this meadow.
"Something wrong?" Jane asked.
"Huh? Oh. No. Let’s get that firewood."
She led the girl down the porch steps and to the left, to where a woodshed was
attached to the southwest corner of the cabin.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. The rain hadn’t
begun to fall yet.
Carol keyed open the heavy-duty padlock on the woodshed, took it off the hasp, and
slipped it in her jacket pocket. There would be no need to replace it until they
were ready to return to Harrisburg, nine or ten days from now.
The woodshed door creaked open on unoiled hinges. Inside, Carol tugged on the
chain-pull light, and a bare hundred-watt bulb revealed stacks of dry cordwood being
protected from inclement weather.
A scuttle for carrying firewood hung from a ceiling hook. Carol got it down and
handed it to the girl. "If you fill it up four or five times, we’ll have more than
enough wood to last us until tomorrow morning."
By the time Jane returned from taking the first scuttle-load into the cabin, Carol
was at the chopping block, using an ax to split a short log into four sticks.
"What’re you doing?" the girl asked, stopping well
out of the way and staring warily at the ax.
"When I build a fire," Carol said, "I put kindling on the bottom, a layer of these
splits on top of that, and then the full logs to crown it off. It never fails to bum
well that way. See? I’m a regular Daniel Boone."
The girl scowled. "That ax looks awful sharp."
"Has to be."
"Are you sure it’s safe?"
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"I’ve done it lots of times before, here and at home," Carol said. "I’m an expert.
Don’t worry, honey. I’m not going to accidentally amputate my toes."
She picked up another short log and started to split it into quarters.
Jane went to the woodshed, giving the chopping block a wide berth. When she
returned, carrying her second scuttle-load to the house, she repeatedly glanced over
her shoulder, frowning.
Carol began quartering another log.
THUNK!
***
Carrying his suitcase, Paul walked down the second-floor hall to the stairway, and
the poltergeist went with him. On both sides, doors opened and slammed shut, opened
and slammed shut, again and again, all by themselves and with such tremendous force
that it sounded as if he were walking through a murderous barrage of cannon fire.
As he descended the stairs, the chandelier at the top of the well began describing
wide circles on the end of its chain, stirred by a breeze that Paul could not feel
or moved by a hand that had no substance.
On the first floor, paintings were flung off walls as he passed by. Chairs toppled
over. The living room sofa rocked wildly on its four graceful wooden legs. In the
kitchen, the overhead utensil rack shook; pots and pans and ladles banged against
one another.
By the time he reached the Pontiac in the garage, he knew he didn’t have to bother
taking the entire suitcase to the mountains. He hadn’t wanted to go charging into
the cabin with just a gun and the clothes on his back, for if nothing had been
wrong, he would have looked like an idiot, and he would have done Jane a grave
injustice. But now, because of the call from Polly at Maugham & Crichton, and
because of the astounding display put on by the poltergeist, be knew that everything
was wrong; there was no chance whatsoever that he would reach the cabin only to
discover that all was peaceful. He would be walking into a nightmare of one kind or
another. No doubt about it. So he opened the suitcase on the garage floor beside the
car, took out the loaded revolver, and left the rest of his stuff behind.
As he was backing out of the driveway, he saw Grace Mitowski’s blue Ford turn the
corner, too fast. It angled toward the curb in front of the house, scraping its
sidewalls so badly that blue-white smoke rose from them.
Grace was out of the car the instant it stopped. She rushed to the Pontiac, moving
faster than Paul had seen her move in years. She pulled open the front,
passenger-side door and leaned in. Her hair was in complete disarray. Her face was
eggshell white and spattered with blood.
"Good God, Grace, what’s happened to you?"
"Where’s Carol?"
"She went to the cabin."
"Already?"
"This morning."
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"Damn? Exactly when?’
"Three hours ago."
Grace’s eyes contained a haunted expression. "The girl went with her?"
"Yes."
She closed her eyes, and Paul could see she was on the edge of panic, trying to deal
with it and calm herself. She opened her eyes and said, "We’ve got to go after
them."
"That’s where I’m headed."
He saw her eyes widen as she noticed the revolver lying on the car seat beside him,
the muzzle pointed forward, toward the dashboard.
She raised her eyes from the gun to his face. "You know what’s happening?" she
asked, surprised.
"Not really," he said, putting the gun in the glove compartment. "All I know for
sure is that Carol’s in trouble. Damned serious trouble."
"It’s not just Carol we’ve got to worry about," Grace said. "It’s both of them."
"Both? The girl, you mean? But I think the girl’s the one who’s going to - "
"Yes," Grace said. "She’s going to try to kill Carol. But she might be the one who
ends up dead. Like before."
She got in the car and pulled the door shut.
"Like before?" Paul said. "I don’t - " He saw her blood-crusted hand. "That needs
medical attention."
"There’s no time."
"What the hell’s happening?" he demanded, his fear for Carol briefly giving way to
frustration." I know something strange is going on, but I don’t know what in
Christ’s name it is."
"I do," she said. "I know. In fact I know a lot more than maybe I want to know."
"If you’ve got anything that makes sense, anything concrete," he said, "we should
call the cops. They can put in a call to the sheriff’s department up there and get
help sent out to the cabin real fast, faster than we can get there."
"What I’ve got, my information, is harder than concrete, so far as I’m concerned,"
Grace said. "But the police wouldn’t see it the same way I do. They’d say I was just
a senile old fool. They’d want to lock me up in a nice safe place for my own good.
At best, they’d laugh at me."
He thought about the poltergeist - the sound of the ax, the splintering door, the
airborne ceramic figurines, the toppling chairs - and he said, "Yeah. I know exactly
what you mean."
"We’ll have to handle this ourselves," Grace said. "Let’s get rolling. I can tell
you everything I know on the way. Each minute we waste, I just get sicker and
sicker, thinking about what might be happening in the mountains."
Paul backed the car into the street and drove away from the house, heading for the
nearest freeway entrance. When he was on the open highway, he floored the
accelerator, and the car rocketed ahead.
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"How long does it usually take to get there?" Grace asked.
"About two hours and fifteen minutes."
"Too long."
"We’ll do better than that."
The speedometer needle touched eighty.
12
THEY had brought a lot of food in cardboard cartons and ice chests. They transferred
all of those items to the cupboards and refrigerator, agreeing to forgo lunch
altogether in order to indulge themselves guiltlessly in a glutton’s dinner.
"All right," Carol said, producing a list from one of the kitchen drawers, "here’s
what we need to do to make this place livable." She read from the list:
"Remove plastic dropcloths from furniture; dust
everything; scrub the kitchen sink; clean the bathroom; and put sheets and blankets
on the beds."
"You call this a vacation?" Jane asked.
"What’s wrong? Doesn’t that sound like a fun agenda to you?"
"Thrilling."
"Well, the cabin’s not enormous. The two of us will go through the list of chores in
an hour or an hour and a half."
They had barely started when they were interrupted by a knock at the door. It was
Vince Gervis, the colony’s caretaker. He was a big, barrel-chested man with enormous
shoulders, enormous biceps, enormous hands, and a smile to match the rest of him.
"Just makin’ my rounds," he said. "Saw your car. Thought I’d say hello." Carol
introduced him to Jane and said she was a niece (a convenient white lie), and there
was some polite chitchat, and then Gervis said, "Dr. Tracy, where’s the other Dr.
Tracy? I’d like to give him my best, too."
"Oh, he isn’t with us right now," Carol said. "He’s coming up on Sunday, after he
finishes some important work he couldn’t just put aside."
Gervis frowned.
Carol said, "Is something wrong?"
"Well. . . me and the missus was plannin’ to go into town to do some shoppin’, maybe
see a movie, eat a restaurant meal. It’s what we generally do on Friday afternoons,
you see. But there isn’t another soul up here besides you and Jane. Will be
tomorrow, bein’ as it’s a Saturday, and seem’ as if the weather don’t get too bad so
that everybody stays to home. But there’s no one else so far today except you."
"Don’t worry about us," Carol said. "We’ll be fine.
You and Peg go on into town like you planned."
"Well.. . I’m not sure I like the idea of you two ladies out here all by your
lonesome, twenty miles from other folks. No sir, I don’t like it much."
"Nobody’s going to bother us, Vince. The road’s gated; you can’t even get in without
a key card."
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"Anybody can walk in if he’s willin’ to go overland just a little ways."
Carol required several minutes and a lot of words to reassure him, but at last he
decided that he and his wife would keep to their usual Friday schedule.
Shortly after Vince left, the rains came. The soft roar of a hundred million
droplets striking a hundred million rustling leaves was soothing to Carol.
But Jane found the noise somewhat unpleasant.
"I don’t know why," she said, "but the sound makes me think of fire. Hissing. . .
just like a lot of flames eating up everything in sight. Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle.. ."
The rain forced Paul to slow down to sixty, which was still too fast for highway
conditions, but the situation called for the taking of some risks.
The windshield wipers thumped metronomically, and the tires sang softly on the wet
macadam.
The day was dark and growing darker. It looked more like twilight than like midday.
The wind blew obscuring curtains of rain across the treacherously wet pavement, and
the gray-brown road spray flung up by other traffic hung in the air, a thick and
dirty mist.
It seemed almost as if the Pontiac were a tiny vessel sailing through the deep
currents of a vast, cold sea, the only pocket of warmth and light within a million
miles.
Grace said, "You probably won’t believe what I’ve got to tell you, and that would be
understandable."
"After what’s happened to me today," Paul said, "I’m ready to believe anything."
And maybe that’s what the poltergeist meant to do, he thought. Maybe it meant to
prepare me for whatever story Grace has to tell. In fact, if I hadn’t been delayed
by the poltergeist, I would have left the house before Grace arrived.
"I’ll keep it as simple and straightforward as I can," Grace said. "But it’s not a
simple and straightforward matter." She cradled her torn left hand in her right
hand; the bleeding had stopped, and the cuts were all crusty, clotted. "It starts in
1865, in Shippensburg. The family was named Havenswood."
Paul glanced her, startled by the name.
She looked straight ahead, at the rain-sodden land through which they were rushing.
"The mother was Willa Havenswood, and the daughter’s name was Laura. Those two
didn’t get along well. Not well at all. The fault was on both sides, and the reasons
for their constant bickering aren’t really important here. What’s important is that
one day in the spring of 1865, Willa sent Laura into the cellar to do some spring
cleaning, even though she knew perfectly well that the girl was deathly afraid of
the cellar. It was punishment, you see. And while Laura was down there in the
cellar, a fire broke out upstairs. She was trapped and burned to death. She must
have died blaming her mother for putting her in that trap in the first place. Maybe
she even blamed Willa for starting the fire -  which she didn’t. It was accidentally
started by Rachael Adams, Laura’s aunt. It’s even possible that Laura wondered if
her mother had started the fire on purpose, just to get rid of her. The child had
emotional problems; she was capable of melodramatic notions of that sort. The mother
had emotional problems, too; she was capable of inspiring paranoia, for sure.
Anyway, Laura died a gruesome death, and we can be pretty certain that her last
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thought was an ardent wish for revenge. There was no way she could have known that
her mother perished in that fire, too!"
So that’s why the Havenswood identity didn’t check out when Carol put the police on
to it, Paul thought. They’d have had to go all the way back to the 1800s in order to
find the Havenswood family.
County records for that period probably don’t even exist any more.
A slow-moving truck appeared out of the mists ahead, and Paul passed it. For a
moment the filthy spray from the truck’s big tires drummed on the side of the
Pontiac, and the noise was too loud for Grace to speak above it.
When they had passed the truck, she said, "Since 1865, Laura has been pursuing
revenge through at least two and probably three other lives. Reincarnation, Paul.
Can you believe in that? Can you believe that in 1943, Laura Havenswood was a
fifteen-year-old girl named Linda Bektermann and that the night before her sixteenth
birthday she tried to kill her mother, who was Willa Havenswood reincarnated?
It’s a true case. Linda Bektermann went berserk and tried to ax her mother to death,
but her mother turned the tables and killed the girl instead. Laura didn’t get her
revenge. And can you believe that Willa is now alive again and that she’s our Carol
this time? And that Laura is alive again, too?"
"Jane?"
"Yes."
Together, Carol and Jane cleaned the cabin in an hour and fifteen minutes. Carol was
delighted to see that the girl was an industrious worker who took great pleasure in
doing even a menial job well.
When they were finished, they poured two glasses of Pepsi to reward themselves, and
they sat in the two big easy chairs that faced the mammoth fireplace.
"It’s too early to start cooking dinner," Jane said.
"And it’s too wet out there to go for a walk, so what game do you want to play?"
"Anything that looks good to you is fine with me. You can look over all the stuff in
our game closet and take your pick. But first, I think we really should get the
therapy session out of the way."
"Are we going to keep that up even on vacation?"
the girl asked. She was clearly uneasy about it, though she had not been noticeably
uneasy before, even on the occasion of the first session, the day before yesterday.
"Of course we’ve got to keep on with it," Carol said. "Now that we’ve made a start,
it’s best to continue working at it, pushing and probing a little bit every day."
"Well. . . all right."
"Good. Let’s turn these chairs around to face each other."
The fire flickered off to one side, creating dancing shadows on the hearth.
Outside, the rain rattled ceaselessly through the trees and pattered on the roof,
and Carol realized that it did sound like even more fire, as Jane had said, so that
they seemed to be totally surrounded by the hiss and crackle of flames.
She needed only a few seconds to put Jane into a trance this time. But as had
happened during the first session, the girl needed almost two minutes to regress to
a period at which memories existed for her. This time the long silence didn’t
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disturb Carol as it had done before.
When the girl spoke at last, she used the Laura voice. "Mama? Is that you? Is that
you, Mama?"
"Laura?"
The girl’s eyes were squeezed shut. Her voice was tight, tense. "Is that you? Is it
you, Mama? Is it?"
"Relax," Carol said.
Instead of relaxing, the girl became visibly more tense. She hunched her shoulders,
fisted her hands in her lap. Lines of strain appeared in her forehead and at the
corners of her mouth. She leaned away from the back of her chair, toward Carol.
"I want you to answer some questions," Carol said. "But you must be calm and relaxed
first. Now, you will do exactly as I say. You will unclench your fists. You will - "
"I won’t!"
The girl’s eyes popped open. She leapt up out of her chair and stood before Carol,
quivering.
"Sit down, honey."
"I won’t do what you say! I’m sick of doing what you tell me to do, sick of your
punishments."
"Sit down," Carol said softly but forcefully.
The girl glared at her. "You did it to me," she said in the Laura voice. "You put me
down there in that awful place."
Carol hesitated, then decided to flow with it. "What place do you mean?"
"You know," the girl said accusingly. "I hate you."
"Where is this awful place you spoke of?" Carol persisted.
"The cellar."
"What’s so awful about the cellar?"
Hatred seethed in the girl’s eyes. Her lips were peeled back from her teeth in a
feral snarl.
"Laura? Answer me. What’s so awful about the cellar?"
The girl slapped her across the face.
The blow stunned Carol. It was sharp, painful, unexpected. For an instant she simply
couldn’t believe that she actually had been hit.
Then the girl hit her again. Backhanded.
And again. Harder than before.
Carol grabbed her adversary’s slender wrists, but the girl wrenched loose. She
kicked Carol in the shins, and when Carol cried out and sagged for an instant, the
girl went for her throat. Carol fended her off, though not easily, and attempted to
get up from the armchair. Jane pushed her down and fell on top of her. She felt the
girl bite her shoulder, and suddenly her shock and confusion turned to fear. The
chair tipped over, and they both rolled onto the floor, flailing.
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The flat land through which they had been driving began to rise and form itself into
gently rolling hills, but the mountains were still a long way off.
If there had been any change in the weather during the last half hour, it had been
for the worse. Rain was falling harder than ever; the hard, fat pellets of water
shattered like glass on the roadway, and the amorphous fragments bounced high. Paul
kept the speedometer needle at eighty.
"Reincarnation," he said thoughtfully. "Just a few minutes ago, I told you that I
could believe anything today, but that’s wild. Reincarnation? Where in the devil did
you come by this theory?"
As the windshield wipers continued to thump, and as the tires sang a shrill dirge on
the rain-puddled pavement, Grace told him about the telephone calls from Leonard,
the visit from the long-dead reporter, the prophetic dreams; she told him about the
grim battle with Aristophanes. "I am Rachael Adams, Paul. That other life had been
revealed to me so that I can stop this murderous cycle. Willa did not start the
fire. I started it accidentally. There is no reason for the girl to seek revenge.
It’s all a mistake, a dark misunderstanding. If I can talk to the girl, Jane, while
she’s regressed to her Laura phase, I can persuade her of the truth. I know I can. I
can stop all of this here, now, once and forever. Do you think I’m babbling? Senile?
I don’t believe I am. In fact, I know I’m not. And I suspect you’ve had some strange
experiences recently that confirm what I’m telling you."
"You hit that one on the head, all right," he told her.
Nevertheless, reincarnation - being born again in a new body - it was a stunning,
soul-shaking thing to accept. There is no lasting death. Yes, that was much harder
to accept than the existence of poltergeists.
"Do you know about Millicent Parker?" he asked her.
"Never heard the name," Grace said.
The rain started falling even harder. He turned the windshield wipers up to their
highest speed.
"In 1905," he told Grace, "Millie Parker attempted to kill her mother - on the night
before her sixteenth birthday. Like the Linda Bektermann case, the mother ended up
killing Millie, instead of the other way around. Purely self-defense. And here’s
what you might not realize: Under hypnosis, Jane claimed to be Laura, Millie, and
then Linda Bektermann. But the names meant nothing to us."
"And again, in the Millicent Parker case," Grace said, "the girl’s desire for
revenge was frustrated. Yes. I knew there must be another life between Laura and
Linda."
"But why this night-before-the-birthday thing that keeps cropping up?"
"Laura was looking forward to her sixteenth birthday with great eagerness,"
Grace-Rachael said. "It was going to be the best day of her life, she said. She had
all sorts of plans for it - and for how her life would be changed after she attained
that magical age.
I think, somehow, she felt her mother’s treatment of her would change once she was
‘grown up.’ But she died in the fire before her birthday."
"And in life after life, as her sixteenth birthday approaches, the fear of her
mother and the hatred of her mother wells up from her subconscious."
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Grace nodded. "From the subconscious of the girl she was in 1865, the girl - the
identity - who is buried down at the bottom of Jane’s psyche."
They rode in silence for a minute or two.
Paul’s hands were sweaty on the steering wheel.
His mind spun as he tried to absorb the story she had told, and he had that old
feeling of balancing on a tightrope high above a deep, deep, dark chasm.
Then he said, "But Carol isn’t Jane’s mother."
"You’ve forgotten something," Grace said.
"What?"
"Carol had a child out of wedlock when she was a teenager. I know she told you all
about it. I’m giving away no secrets."
Paul’s stomach quivered. He was cold all the way into the marrow of his bones. "My
God. You mean. . . Jane is the child that Carol put up for adoption."
"I have no proof of it," Grace said. "But I bet that when the police spread their
search nets wide enough, when they finally locate the girl’s parents in some other
state, we’ll learn that she’s adopted. And that Carol is her natural mother."
For what seemed like an eternity, they struggled on the floor by the hearth,
grunting, twisting, the girl throwing punches, Carol trying to resist without
hurting her. At last, when it became clear that Carol was unquestionably the
stronger of the two and would eventually gain control of the situation, the girl
shoved away from her, scrambled up, kicked her in the thigh, and ran out of the
room, into the kitchen.
Carol was shocked and dazed both by the girl’s unexpected violence and by the
maniacal power of the blows. Her face stung, and she knew her cheeks were going to
bruise. Her bitten shoulder was bleeding; a large, damp, red stain was spreading
slowly down the from of her blouse.
She got up, swayed unsteadily for a moment. Then she went after the girl. "Honey,
wait!"
In the distance, outside the house, Laura’s voice rose in a sharp, shrill scream: "I
haaaaaate you!"
Carol reached the kitchen, leaned against the refrigerator. The girl was gone. The
back door was open.
The sound of the rain was very loud.
She hurried to the door and looked out at the rear lawn, at the small meadow, at the
forest that crowded in at the edge of the meadow. The girl had disappeared.
"Jane! Laura!"
Millicent? She wondered. Linda? What on earth should I call her?
She crossed the porch and went down the steps into the yard, into the pelting, cold
rain. She turned right, then left, not sure where to look first.
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Then Jane appeared. The girl came out of the woodshed at the southwest corner of the
cabin. She was carrying an ax.
***
"... and Carol is her natural mother."
Grace’s words echoed and reechoed in Paul’s head.
For a moment he was incapable of speech.
He stared ahead, shocked, not really seeing the road, and he nearly ran up the back
end of a sluggishly moving Buick. He jammed on his brakes. He and Grace were thrown
forward, testing their seat belts. He slowed down until he could regain control of
himself.
Finally, the words burst out of him like machine-gun fire: "But how in the hell did
the kid find out who her real mother was, they don’t give out that kind of
information to children her age, how did she get here from whatever state she was
living in, how did she track us down and make it all happen like this? Good Christ,
she did step in front of Carol’s car on purpose. It was a setup. The whole damned
thing was a setup!"
"I don’t know how she found her way to Carol," Grace said. "Maybe her parents knew
who the child’s natural mother was, and kept the name around in the family records,
in case the girl ever wanted to know it when she grew up. Perhaps not. Perhaps
anything. Maybe she was simply drawn to Carol by the same forces that tried to get
to me through Aristophanes. That might explain why she appeared to be in a daze
before she stepped in front of the car. But I don’t really know. Maybe we’ll never
know."
"Oh, shit," Paul said, and his voice wavered. "Oh, no, no. Goddamn!"
"What?"
"You know how Carol is on that day," he said shakily. "The day her baby was born,
the baby she gave up. She’s different from the way she is every other day of the
year. Depressed, withdrawn. It’s always such a bad day for her that the date’s
engraved on my memory."
"On mine, too," Grace said.
"It’s tomorrow," he said. "If Jane is Carol’s child, she’ll be sixteen tomorrow."
"Yes."
"And she’ll try to kill Carol today."
***
Sheets of dark rain rippled and flapped like wind-whipped canvas tents.
Carol stood on the soggy lawn, unable to move, numbed by fear, frozen by the cold
rain.
Twenty feet away, the girl stood with the ax, gripping it in both hands. Her
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drenched hair hung straight to her shoulders, and her clothes were pasted to her.
She appeared to be oblivious to the storm and the chilly air. Her eyes were owlish,
as if she were high on amphetamine, and her face was distorted by rage.
"Laura?" Carol said at last. "Listen to me. You will listen to me. You will drop the
ax."
"You stinking, rotten bitch," the girl said through tightly clenched teeth.
Lightning cracked open the sky, and the falling rain glittered for a moment in the
stroboscopic flashes that came through from the other side of the heavens.
When the subsequent thunder rolled away and Carol could be heard, she said, "Laura,
I want you to - ’,
"I hate you!" the girl said, She took one step toward Carol.
"Stop this right now," Carol said, refusing to retreat. "You will be calm. You will
relax."
The girl took another step.
"Drop the ax," Carol insisted. "Honey, listen to me. You will listen to me. You are
only in a trance. You are - "
"I’m going to get you this time, Mama. This time I’m not going to lose."
"I’m not your mother," Carol said. "Laura, you are-"
"I’m going to cut your goddamn head off this time, you bitch!"
The voice had changed.
It wasn’t Laura’s now.
It belonged to Linda Bektermann, the third identity.
"I’m going to cut your goddamn head off and put it on the kitchen table with
Daddy’s."
With a jolt, Carol recalled last week’s nightmare.
There had been a moment in the dream when she had stepped into the kitchen and had
encountered two severed heads on the table, a man’s and a woman’s. But how could
Jane know what had been in that nightmare?
Carol finally took a step backwards, then another. Although the rain was cold, she
began to sweat.
"I’m only going to tell you one more time, Linda. You must put the ax down and - "
"I’m going to cut your head off and chop you into a thousand little pieces," the
girl said.
And the voice now belonged to Jane.
It wasn’t the voice of an identity heretofore only evident in a trance. This was
Jane’s voice. She had come out of the trance on her own power. She knew who she was.
She knew who Carol was. And she still wanted to use the ax.
Carol edged toward the back porch steps.
The girl quickly circled in that direction, blocking access to the cabin. Then she
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started toward Carol, moving fast, grinning.
Carol turned and ran toward the meadow.
In spite of the pounding rain, which snapped with bulletlike power into the
windshield, in spite of the dirty mist that hung over the road, in spite of the
treacherously greasy pavement, Paul slowly pressed the accelerator all the way to
the floor and swung the Pontiac into the passing lane.
"It’s a mask," he said.
Grace said, "What do you mean?"
"The Jane Doe identity, the Linda Bektermann and Millie Parker identities - each of
them was just a mask. A very real, very convincing mask. But a mask nonetheless.
Behind the mask there was always the same face, the same person. Laura."
"And we’ve got to put an end to the masquerade once and for all," Grace said. "If I
can just talk to her as her Aunt Rachael, I’ll be able to stop this madness. I’m
sure I will, She’ll listen to me.. . to Rachael. That’s who she was closest to.
Closer than she was to her mother. I can make her understand that her mother, Willa,
didn’t intentionally or even accidentally start that fire back in 1865. At last
she’ll understand. She’ll see that there’s no justification for revenge. The cycle
will come to an end."
"If we’re in time," Paul said.
"If," Grace said.
***
Carol ran through the stinging rain and through the knee-high grass. She ran up the
sloping meadow, her arms tucked in close to her side, legs pumping high, gasping for
breath, each stride jarring her to the bones.
Ahead lay the forest, which seemed to be her only salvation. There were thousand of
places to hide in the wilderness, countless trails on which she could lose the girl.
After all, she was somewhat familiar with the land, but to the girl it was a strange
place.
Halfway across the meadow, she risked a glance behind her. The girl was only fifteen
feet away.
Lightning slashed through the bellies of the clouds, and the blade of the ax flashed
once, twice, with a brilliant reflection of that icy electric glow.
Carol looked straight ahead once more and redoubled her efforts to reach the trees.
The meadow was wet, spongy, and in some places slippery. She expected to fall or at
least twist an ankle, but she reached the perimeter of the forest without trouble.
She plunged in among the trees, among the purple and brown and black shadows, into
the lush undergrowth, and she began to think there was a chance -  maybe only a very
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small chance, but a chance nonetheless - that she would come out of this alive.
***
Hunching over the steering wheel, squinting at the ram-swept highway, Paul said, "I
want one thing perfectly clear between us."
Grace said, "What’s that?"
"Carol’s my first concern."
"Of course."
"If we walk into the middle of a nasty situation at the cabin, I’ll do whatever’s
necessary to protect Carol."
Grace glanced at the glove compartment. "You mean. . . the gun."
"Yes. If! have to, if there’s no other way, I’ll use it, Grace. I’ll shoot the girl
if there’s no other choice."
"It’s unlikely that we’ll walk into the middle of a
confrontation," Grace said. "Either it won’t have begun yet - or it’ll all be over
with by the time we get there."
"I won’t let her hurt Carol," he said grimly. "And if worse comes to worst, I don’t
want you trying to stop me."
"There are some things you should consider,"
Grace said.
"What?"
"First of all, it’ll be just as tragic if Carol kills the girl. And that’s the
pattern, after all. Both Millie and Linda attacked their mothers, but they were the
ones killed. What if that happens this time? What if Carol is forced to kill the
girl in self-defense? You know she’s never stopped feeling guilty about putting the
baby up for adoption. She carries that on her shoulders sixteen years after the
fact. So what will happen when she discovers she’s killed her own daughter?"
"It’ll destroy her," he said without hesitation.
"I think it very well might. And what’ll it do to your relationship with Carol if
you kill her daughter, even if you do it to save Carol’s life?"
He thought about that for a moment. Then he said,
"It might destroy us, and he shuddered.
***
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For a while, no matter how tortuous the path she followed through the woods, Carol
could not lose the girl. She switched from one natural trail to another, crossed a
small stream, doubled back the way she had come. She moved in a crouch at all times,
staying out of sight below the brush line. She made no sound that could be heard
above the constant hissing of the rain Most of the time she carefully stepped on old
leaves or made her way from stone to stone, from log to log, leaving no footprints,
in the damp, bare earth. Yet Jane pursued her with uncanny confidence, without
hesitation, as if she were part bloodhound.
At last, however, Carol was certain she had lost the girl. She squatted under a huge
pine, leaned back against the damp bark, and breathed deeply, rapidly, raggedly,
while waiting for her heart to stop racing.
A minute passed. Two. Five.
The only sound was the rain drizzling down through the leaves and through the
interlaced pine needles.
She became aware of the dank odor of heavy vegetation - moss and fungus and forest
grass and more.
Nothing moved.
She was safe, at least for now.
But she couldn’t just sit beneath the tall pine, waiting for help to arrive.
Eventually, Jane would stop searching for her and would try to find a way back to
the cabin. If the girl didn’t get lost - which she most likely would do - if she somehow
managed to return to the cabin, and if she was still in a psychotic fugue when she
got there, she might murder the first person she encountered. If she took Vince
Gervis by surprise, even his great size and impressive muscles would be of no use
against the blade of an ax.
Carol stood up, moved away from the tree, and began to circle back toward the cabin.
The keys to the Volkswagen were in her purse, and her purse was in one of the
bedrooms. She had to get the keys, drive into town, and ask the county sheriff for
assistance.
What went wrong? she wondered. girl shouldn’t have become violent. There was no
indication that she was capable of such a thing. The potential to kill simply was
not a part of her psychological profile. Paul was right to be worried. But why?
Proceeding with utmost caution, expecting the girl to leap at her from behind every
tree and bush, Carol needed fifteen minutes to reach the edge of the forest at a
point not far from the place at which she had
entered the trees with the girl in hot pursuit. The meadow was deserted. At the
bottom of the slope, the cabin huddled in the pouring rain.
The kid’s lost, Carol thought. All of that twisting and turning and doubling back
through unfamiliar territory was too much for her. She’ll never find the way home by
herself.
The sheriff’s men weren’t going to like this one: a search in the rain, in the
forest, for a violent girl who was armed with an ax. No, they weren’t going to like
this one at all.
Carol navigated the meadow at a run.
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The rear door of the cabin was standing open, just as she had left it.
She hurried inside, slammed the door, and threw the bolt. Relief swept through her.
She swallowed a couple of times, caught her breath, and crossed the kitchen to the
door that led into the living room. She was about to step across that threshold when
she was stopped by a sudden, terrible certainty that she was not alone.
She jumped back, spurred by intuition more than anything else, and even as she
moved, the ax swung in from the left, through the doorway. It sliced the air where
she had been. If she hadn’t moved, she would have been cut in half.
The girl stepped into the room, brandishing the ax. "Bitch."
Carol backed to the door that she had just latched.
She fumbled behind her for the bolt. Couldn’t find it.
The girl closed in.
Whimpering, Carol turned to the door, seized the
latch. She sensed the ax rising, into the air behind her and knew she wouldn’t have
time to open the door, and she jerked to one side, and the blade bit into the door
just where her head would have been.
With superhuman strength, the girl wrenched the ax out of the wood.
Gasping, Carol ducked past her and ran into the living room. She looked for
something with which to defend herself. The only thing available was a poker in the
rack of fireplace tools. She grabbed it.
Behind her, Jane said, "I hate you!"
Carol whirled.
The girl swung the ax.
Carol brought the poker up without any time to spare, and it rang against the
gleaming, viciously sharp blade, deflecting the blow.
The impact rang back the length of the poker, into Carol’s hands, numbing them. She
couldn’t maintain her grip on the iron rod; it fell from her tingling hands.
The impact did not ring back along the wooden handle of the ax, and Jane still held
that weapon with firm determination.
Carol backed up onto the wide hearth of the stone fireplace. She could feel the heat
against her legs.
She had nowhere else to run.
"Now," Jane said. "Now. At last."
She lifted the ax high, and Carol cried out in anticipation of the pain, and the
front door was flung open. It crashed against the wall. Paul was there. And Grace.
The girl glanced at them but was not going to be distracted; she brought the ax down
toward Carol’s face.
Carol collapsed onto the hearth.
The ax struck the stone mantel over her head; sparks flew.
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Paul rushed at the girl, but she sensed him coming. She turned toward him, slashed
with the ax, and drove him back.
Then turned on Carol again.
"Cornered rat," she said, grinning.
The ax came up.
This time it won’t miss, Carol thought.
Someone said, "Spiders!"
The girl froze.
The ax was suspended in midair.
"Spiders!" It was Grace. "There are spiders on your back, Laura. Oh God, they’re all
over your back. Spiders! Laura, look out for the spiders!"
Carol watched, bewildered, as a look of stark terror took possession of the girl’s
face.
"Spiders!" Grace shouted again. "Big, black, hairy spiders, Laura. Get them off! Get
them off your back. Quick!"
The girl screamed and dropped the ax, which clattered against the stone hearth. She
brushed frantically at her back, twisting her arms up behind her. She was snuffling
and squealing like a very small child. "Help me!"
"Spiders," Grace said again, as Paul picked up the ax and put it out of the way.
The girl tried to tear off her blouse. She dropped to her knees, then fell onto her
side, gibbering in terror. She writhed on the floor, brushing imaginary spiders off
her body. Within a minute she seemed to be in a state of shock; she lay shuddering,
weeping.
"She was always afraid of spiders," Grace said. "That was why she hated the cellar."
"The cellar?" Carol asked.
"Where she died," Grace said.
Carol didn’t understand. But at the moment she didn’t care. She watched the girl
writhing on the floor, and she suddenly felt overwhelming pity for her. She knelt
beside Jane, lifted her up, hugged her.
"You okay?" Paul asked her.
She nodded.
"Spiders," the girl said, quivering uncontrollably.
"No, honey," Carol said. "No spiders. There aren’t any spiders on you. Not now. Not
any more." And she looked at Grace, wondering.
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