The Mask Read online

  "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 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.

  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 river like 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 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.

  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...