The Mask (27 page)

How could Wainwright vanish like that?

For the third evening in a row, Paul and Carol and Jane prepared dinner together. 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 spontanaeity 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. There 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, 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
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.

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.

She pulled her gaze from the mirror, lowered her head to see where the droplet had struck the floor.