The Mask Read online

  "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.

  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 expressing 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."

  "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.

  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 swe
rved, 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.

  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.