The Mask (32 page)

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 breadbox 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 fired 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

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…THUNK!

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.

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 choping 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 burn 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?”

“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 accidently 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, he 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.”

“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.”