The Wall (11 page)

emotions more than any other single human being. She whispered,

'Sure,' and thought dully, he's not coming back. He is not going to

come.

Greg must have been able to read her thoughts on her confused face,

for his softened slightly as he repeated, 'I will see you tomorrow,

Sara, I promise.' Then he was gone, and she didn't feel any better

after his last words than she had before. He shook her up so violently.

She brooded all evening long.

All in all, she had completely forgotten to feel even a little nervous

about the dark night, the empty house, and the memory of that tall

black shape that moved in the night.

The ticking of the bedside clock was so loud to her that she nearly

picked up the offending object to hurl it across her bedroom. It was

close to three in the morning and she was still so tense that every

muscle was held rigid, aching. And of course, the more she thought

about it and fussed, the more rigid she became. She needed a

cigarette; her nerves were a total wreck. She couldn't stop thinking

and thinking. Everything that happened to her in the past few days

came whirling back, like an old film being replayed over and over

and being stopped at the best parts. She threw back her covers in

disgust, too warm and so restless that the weight on her legs

aggravated her more than anything else, or would have, except that

everything else was aggravating her as much the stifling blankets.

And so on and so forth, her mind chanted disgustedly.

The worst single problem was the quiet. The place was so damned

quiet, like a tomb, and she couldn't rest in such quiet. She wanted

someone to honk a blaring horn, she wanted the noise of downtown

Los Angeles— no, she wanted—she didn't know what she wanted.

One, two, creak. That floorboard, she thought vaguely, is going to

drive me crazy one of these days— she froze in sudden horror, the pit

of her stomach just dropping away into nothingness and her heart

starting to pound so hard that she thought it must surely burst her

chest apart. That creaking floorboard was in the middle of her living

room. It was such a totally harmless sound, such a completely

ordinary everyday sound. Until you realised the context of the sound.

That creaking floorboard only creaked when someone walked over it.

There was someone in her living room. There was an actual, real,

unimagined and unknown person at that very moment creeping

across her living room floor.

She was so totally, completely, utterly alone in the house, in the dark,

in that terrible silence. God, she thought in a silent scream,
I can't

move!
I'm going to be killed in my. bed, because I can't get my stupid

asinine body to move! Three, and a pause, and then four. Seven steps

across the open space in the living room, she recalled suddenly,

pulling the knowledge out of the darkness like a magician pulling a

rabbit out of the hat. One corner of her brain registered this analogy

with a stunned incredulity. Seven steps and then the hall, and my

bedroom down here, so close, at the end of the hall with the door

wide open. Dear sweet heaven, why did I ever leave the door open?

But the question was academic and she knew it. There was no reason

for her to shut her bedroom door if she lived alone.

Sweat poured off her body and she shook as if she had a chill. The so

quiet steps and the silent night made her want to scream in a mad

orgy of hysteria. The horror and the terrible fear almost held her

bound to the bed with the crazy desire to go to sleep, to wake and to

know that she was dreaming. She wanted to pull the covers over head

and feel safe, as if she were a little child hiding from the shadows of

the outside night.

Five!

The tiny shuffle of sound that she would have never heard had she

been asleep shrieked through her head and she nearly moaned. That

one sound had ruined irreparably the illusion that she might have

possibly imagined the whole thing after all. Isolation. Rape. Death—

oh,
God\

After being unable to move for what had seemed a thousand

eternities, she suddenly found herself standing by the bed without

ever having realised that she had moved after all. Frozen there like a

silent wraith, she played over in her mind the remembrance, the echo

of creaking bedsprings that had accompanied her rise, and with

sudden urgent, shaking hands,
she reached down and gently pushed

the bed down. The bed creaked again, as if she had rolled over in her

sleep. The utter terrible silence that came from the living room told

her that whoever it was had frozen and was listening intently.

She nearly turned on the light and called out to the unknown person.

The crazy desire to give herself up and see once and for all who was

down the hall was almost her undoing. Then she shook herself

violently and thought with a goading desperation. I have to get out of

here! I have to run. Where? Where can I go?

The answer was like a sigh. Greg. Without another second's

hesitation, she silently scooped up her dressing gown that was at the

foot of her bed and her shoes on the floor. She slid to the window to

look frantically at its latch. The feeling of entrapment, of utter

helplessness, of blinding fear was gagging her at the base of the

throat.

Six. She heard that footstep and nearly threw up. Then something

clicked in her head like a computer terminal coming on, and her brain

was racing faster than it had ever in her life.

She had a very slight advantage. She was at the end of the hall and

whoever it was in the living room was almost certainly unaware of

the floor plan of the house. He might have a good idea of where her

bedroom was, but he wouldn't know for sure, and the same necessity

for quiet that was hampering her movements was hampering his. If

he still thought she was asleep. But at that, she shook her head and

was totally unaware of the movement. The silence throughout the

house told her that he still thought she was asleep.

The window latch was a simple turn lock, and the window one that

swung out on a hinge. She could have wept from relief at the

merciful God that had ordained such a simple style of window, for it

excluded the possibility of a windowscreen, an obstacle that would

have trapped her like iron bars in a prison! She slid her hand to the

latch and carefully, oh, so carefully, began to turn it. Her hands were

shaking so violently that she was barely able to grasp the handle with

her nerveless fingers, but she soon saw the latch come free of its rest.

Seven. He was at the hall opening. Was it about twenty feet away, or

thirty? If the window creaked when she pushed it open, he would

hear it as clearly as a gunshot. He would down the hall in two

seconds flat. The fear in Sara's mouth made her tongue stick to the

roof with its dryness. She nearly fainted when she pushed the

window out on its hinges.

It went as silently and as smoothly as the quiet stalk of a panther.

Sara was small and she was out of that window opening in a split

second, pausing only to push the window shut again in an attempt to

fool the intruder, then she was tiptoeing around the corner of the

house, completely unaware of the sharp sticks that bit into the bottom

of her soft feet. She hit the beginning of the path that lead to the

beach at a dead run.

Of course she fell. That funny hitch in the path that was caused by

tree roots caught her toes and she pitched headlong into the darkness,

to fall bruisingly.

Sheer unadulterated panic was gripping her by the throat, though, and

she was up and running almost before she could breathe.

Never had the trip to the beach seemed so long and frighteningly

black. He was behind her, she knew, with hands like claws almost to

her throat, her hair, dragging her back along the path to that silent

house. She kicked up sand as she sprinted, her breath coming in huge

agonising gasps. It wasn't really happening after all. It couldn't be!

She faltered at the rise only for a second and then scrabbled up

frantically, feeling the cold bitter wind bite through her flimsy

nightdress. It was as if she really didn't have anything on. She was

completely unaware of the dressing gown and shoes that she still

clutched in a death-grip. Her feet were ice and totally deadened to

sensation. She was down the other side of the rise and stumbling

along the beach with an iron band around her chest and her hair

whipped around her neck.

It was here that the tears started to fall, for she was in fear's control,

and it was very dark with little moonlight to show the way. She

wasn't sure where the path was that lead to Greg's house. The

murmur of the waves behind her was like a scream of rage, and the

gentle, wind rustling the undergrowth was a thousand night stalkers,

her death on their minds.

Eternity came and went when she finally found the path and

stumbled along it. Little animal-like moans startled her, even more so

when she found that they were coming from her own throat.

Something black loomed ahead, and she barely paused to ascertain

where the door in the silent structure was before she fell on it,

pounding frantically and bruising her wrists. She never felt a thing.

It was terrible, standing at the closed door and begging to be let in

while she had at her back the black, silent, infinitely menacing forest.

He was going to be too late, she knew, she just knew, for the

unknown assailant was right behind her, he was about to grab her and

kill her horribly—and a thought struck her, as she stood leaning

against the door with her cheek pressed to it. 'Oh, dear Lord,' she

groaned. Don't let it be Greg. Please, don't let it be him. Please!

The door was jerked violently open and she fell into Greg's arms,

sobbing wildly.

She heard above her head an uttered ejaculation, and he exclaimed

profoundly shocked, 'Sara! Dammit, what's happened? Are you hurt?

Are you all right? Oh—hellfire!' This last was accompanied by a

shove of the foot to the open door, and the hard arms that had closed

around her so tightly loosened. Sara moaned deep in her throat and

clung to him, shaking like a leaf, but he was only flipping on a light

switch and his arms came back around her, reassuringly firm. He

held her to his body heat when he realised that she was as cold as ice.

She didn't protest; she couldn't have stood alone if she tried. Her head

was bent to his wide chest and she was heaving in great gulps of air

in an effort to catch her breath after her headlong dash across the

beach. It wasn't easy, since she was trying to talk and cry at the same

time, with every gulp.

Greg took one look at her saucer-like eyes, dilated pupils, pinched

white face and thinly clad body, and bent to pick her up, one arm to

her shoulders and one beneath her knees. Her two hands were

entwined in what she now saw to be a black dressing robe, loosely

belted at the waist. She never let go, as he walked down a length of

hall to what opened into a spaciously large den, thickly carpeted,

with a huge fireplace. He deposited her carefully on a couch, then

found that he couldn't stand up because of her knuckle-clenched hold

on his dressing gown's lapel. He sat immediately, his own hands

coming up to hers to try and gently pry her loose. Failing that, he

merely stroked the backs of those thin cold hands soothingly. They

were trembling.

She couldn't see him through the sudden moisture in her eyes, and

finally got a hold on herself enough to let go with one hand and

knuckle her eyes. 'S-sorry,' she whispered, teeth chattering. 'Sorry to

bother you. I didn't mean to wake you up, it's just that I—God, I can't

-'

A warm hand came up to rub at her cheek roughly, the thumb

stroking her lips over and over. 'Shh! Get a grip of yourself, Sara.

Calm down a bit first ... hold on, now, you're safe. Calm down—

that's it.' He talked this way until he saw a measure of rationality

come back into her eyes, replacing that blind, unreasoning panic of a