She supposed that she did have a certain responsibility for the poor creature. She couldn’t blame herself for killing it—she’d been driving under the speed limit and it had stepped out right in front of her and nobody could’ve stopped in time. But she had been the one to kill it, even if it weren’t her fault. As much as she hated the idea, she supposed that hauling its corpse to a veterinary hospital would be the right thing to do.
Let them dispose of it properly.
They could leave it here for the Department of Animal Regulation to pick up. But other cars might…Maybe the man would move it out of the road.
Hell, she might as well take it. Make Rose happy. Unless she was mistaken, there was a veterinary hospital on Wilshire, just a block from their dentist’s office.
She saw the man striding down his driveway with a garbage bag and a shovel. A shovel. “Get in the car, honey.”
As the girl obeyed, Alice took the keys from the ignition and stepped to the rear of the station wagon. She lowered the tailgate. Hearing a car behind her, she rushed to the driver’s door and shut it. The car swung into the other lane. Alice looked down so she wouldn’t see those inside the car as it passed. She was relieved that it didn’t stop. Once it was gone, the road was clear.
“You sure you want to take this thing?” the man asked. “I could drag it over to the curb, have the pound come for it.”
“No, that’s all right. My daughter—”
“Yeah. Kids. You’re always better off going along with them. Hey, they’re usually right anyway.”
He spread the plastic bag flat on the pavement, its edge an inch from the blood puddle. Standing on it, he put on a pair of garden gloves. He spread his feet wide, pinning down the bag, and dragged the dog forward by its front paws. Horrified, Alice saw that some of its insides stayed behind, as if glued to the street. She gagged and turned away. She heard crinkling plastic, then the raspy scrape of the shovel. “There y’go,” the man said. To the dog? “You hanging in there? Ma’am? You all right?”
Alice nodded.
“Do you think you can lend a hand? We don’t want the bag to tear.”
“Of course,” she muttered. She faced the man, and tried not to look at the dog. “What should I do?”
“Let’s drag it to the back. If you can lift that end of the bag a bit, take some of the weight off…”
She stepped around the man. Crouching, she grabbed the edge of filmy plastic. The man lifted his end and waddled backward, dragging the awful load. The dog was very heavy. To keep from looking at it, Alice focused on the man’s head. Though he appeared no older than thirty, his black hair was thin on top. That explains the beard, she thought: balding men often wore beards.
Finally, they reached the rear of the station wagon.
“Lift?” he asked.
“I’ll try.”
“Got a good grip on it?”
She adjusted her hold. “Okay,” she said.
“Now.”
They lifted. She felt the plastic stretch as if melting over her fingertips and knuckles. It spread and tore, but then the weight was gone, the dog supported by the tailgate.
The man crawled into the rear of the wagon. He tugged the bag, sliding the dog in after him. Turning away, he climbed into the backseat and left through a passenger door.
Alice shoved the tailgate shut.
“Okay,” the man said. He plucked off his gloves and picked up his shovel. “All set. You can probably get someone at the vet’s to take it out for you.”
“Well, thank you so much for helping.” She wondered if she should offer him money. That would be embarrassing, especially if he refused. “We really appreciate it.”
“Anytime,” he said, and made a wry smile. “Hey, if it pulls through, let me know.”
Sick, Alice thought. “I will,” she muttered.
Then the man was walking away with a sprightly step, the shovel over one shoulder. She half expected him to start whistling like one of the Seven Dwarfs.
“Hurry, Mom,” Rose called.
She climbed in behind the steering wheel. The girl was on her knees, looking over the back of the seat toward the dog. She was sniffing, dabbing at her nose with a wad of blue Kleenex. “Turn around and strap yourself in,” Alice said. While Rose sat down and fastened her safety harness, she buckled herself in and started the car.
She drove forward slowly to the end of the block. At the stop sign, she checked the intersection carefully before proceeding.
“Drive faster, Mom. Please!”
“There’s no hurry,” she said.
“Yes there is!”
On the front lawn of a house just ahead, a boy in overalls was cavorting with a cocker spaniel. Alice watched them as she approached. Thank God it had been a dog, she thought, and not a child. That was too awful even to contemplate. What was wrong with the mother of this boy, letting him romp unattended in the front yard? The spaniel suddenly made a lunge toward the road. Alice shot her foot to the brake pedal, but the dog stopped at the sidewalk, wheeled around, and scampered back into the yard. Sighing with relief, Alice drove past.
The steering wheel was slick under her sweaty hands. She let go, one hand at a time, and wiped them on her skirt.
The shopping trip, she decided, was out of the question. After this ordeal, she was in no condition to face the supermarket. It could wait, or Arnold could go. Either way, she had no intention of leaving the house again today. When she got home, she would shut herself up in the bedroom with the new Sidney Sheldon book and not come out until…
From behind Alice came a low, rumbling growl. The back of her neck prickled.
“It is alive!” Rose blurted joyously, starting to turn around.
In the rearview mirror, Alice saw the German shepherd, forepaws on top of the backseat, fangs bared, bloody saliva hanging in strings from its snout. With a raging snarl, it sprang forward. Rose shrieked. Alice jammed on the brake pedal. The car lurched to a stop, throwing them both into their harnesses, slamming Alice’s forehead against the steering wheel. The dog tumbled onto the cushion beside her, its entrails slopping down after it, teeth snapping shut on Rose’s wrist as the screaming girl tried to unbuckle her safety belt. It released her wrist and lunged at her throat.
Alice fumbled with her own buckle. She flung the straps aside and threw herself onto the huge beast, hooking an arm around its neck as Rose cowered against the door and shrieked and tried to hold off its snapping jaws. Alice squeezed the thick, furry neck in the crook of her elbow. She shoved her other hand into its mouth, cried out as the teeth tore into her, but clutched the snout and pulled it toward her, away from Rose. Then she was falling backward, the squirming dog heavy on her chest, the teeth still grinding into her hand. “Rose!” she yelled. “Get out!”
The dog writhed and jerked, trying to roll but unable to free itself from Alice’s grip. If she let go, she knew it would flip over and go for her throat. Her hand was afire with pain, her fingers weakening, but still she held on.
The door behind her head swung open.
Rose, standing above her, grabbed one of the dog’s kicking forelegs. “Let go!” she cried.
“Rose!”
“Let go!”
She opened her fingers, felt the teeth release her. The dog stretched its head up, trying to snap at Rose.
Rose was trying to pull it out of the car! Didn’t she realize…
“No!” Alice yelled. The wet fur of the dog’s back muffled her outcry.
It was half out of the car, and didn’t Rose realize it would go for her? Alice wrapped her arms around its open belly, trying to keep the beast from getting out.
The body suddenly quaked as a thudding, crushing sound filled Alice’s ears. The car rocked a bit. The sound came again. Again. Each time, the car swayed and the dog jerked and trembled.
Then it was motionless on top of her.
“Mom? Are you okay?”
As the body was dragged off Alice, she realized what the thud
ding sound had been—her daughter slamming the car door three times on the German shepherd’s head.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“What’ve they got him for?” Benny asked as a young man standing beside a guard shack waved them ahead.
Tanya smiled at the man, and drove slowly past him. “He’s supposed to keep out undesirables,” she said. “People who don’t have any business being here. You get all kinds of crazies hanging around if you aren’t careful. Flashers, rapists, that kind of thing. It’s because there are so many women around. Every college has trouble like that.”
“Really?” Benny asked.
“Sure. Berkeley had about a dozen rapes when I was there. That’s one reason my folks were so eager to have me transfer down here and live with you guys.”
“I didn’t know that,” Benny admitted. “I thought you did it just to help Dad.”
“Oh, that was part of it, too.” She swung into an empty space next to a VW van. “There were all kinds of reasons,” she said. She reached for the spiral notebook and the heavy volume of Shakespeare plays on the seat beside her, but Benny grabbed them first.
“I’ll carry them for you,” he said.
Tanya smiled, and Benny felt a blush spread over his face. She really was so beautiful. Not as beautiful as Karen, though. He wished he could be home when Karen arrived.
He climbed from the car and joined Tanya on a walkway that led down the side of the parking lot. Not far ahead, he saw several buildings: some looked low and modern, all stucco and windows like his junior high; others were ancient, square structures of red brick. The buildings were far apart, separated by broad lawns with more trees than a park. In fact, Benny decided, the campus looked very much like a park. There were even benches. “This is nice,” he said.
“I like it,” Tanya told him.
“Better than Berkeley?”
She shrugged.
“Not as much?” he persisted.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I think I like this better. Berkeley was so huge, I felt lost. There’d be a couple of hundred students in some of my lecture classes. You know this Shakespeare class? Fourteen students. It’s great.” She glanced at her wristwatch, and groaned. “Cutting it close,” she said. Instead of hurrying, she stopped. She nodded to the right. “My class is over that way. You’d better go on to the library without me, or I’ll be late. I’ll meet you there when class is over, so we can check out any books you want. Okay?”
“Fine.”
She pointed straight ahead. “See the third building down? That’s the library.”
Benny flipped up his clip-on sunglasses and counted the structures. “The one with the pillars?”
“That’s it. Kind of a dreary place. If you get sick of it, the student union’s directly across the quad. You can get yourself a Coke or something. I’d better get moving.” Benny gave her the notebook and the thick text. “Good luck,” she said, and hurried away. She cut across the grass, walking quickly, her rump shifting inside her tight blue shorts. Then she waved and called out, “Steve!” A guy climbing the stairs of a distant building turned around, waved back, and waited for her. Tanya jogged forward to meet him.
Benny watched until they disappeared through a glass door. Feeling abandoned, he lowered his sunglasses into place and started toward the library. The few students he passed on the walkway seemed to be in no hurry. Apparently, they were between classes. A young couple was sitting on a bench, holding hands and talking. On a rise off to his left, a girl in shorts and a halter was lying on a towel, sunbathing while she read a paperback. A Frisbee landed near her. She ignored both the Frisbee and the shirtless guy who raced up and scooped it from the ground. The guy sailed it over Benny’s head, and ran across the walkway to rejoin his friends.
Benny was glad that nobody seemed to notice him. He felt out of place here among these college kids, an intruder in their special world. He half expected someone to challenge him and throw him out.
A skinny, middle-aged woman in a pantsuit approached, scowling through her tinted glasses. “Excuse me, young man,” she said in a sharp voice.
His heart quickened. “Me?”
“Yes, of course you. Which way is the administration building?”
“Gee, I don’t know.”
“You don’t know,” she said with disgust. “The administration building,” she repeated, more loudly this time as if to penetrate his deafness or stupidity. “Weller Hall.”
“I don’t know him, either,” Benny said. The whiny sound of his voice embarrassed him.
“It’s not a he, young man. Weller Hall. It’s the name of the administration building.”
“Oh.”
She huffed through her nose, and Benny eyed her nostrils, expecting snot to fly out.
“I don’t know where anything is,” he admitted. “Just the library and the parking lot.”
“If I’d wanted the library or parking lot, I would’ve asked. I’m looking for—”
“Weller Hall,” Benny interrupted.
“Are you being smart with me, young man?”
“No, ma’am.”
“See that you’re not,” she snapped, and hurried off.
Shaken by the encounter, Benny quickened his pace. What was she, crazy? Couldn’t she tell, just by looking, that he didn’t belong here? Crazy old bag.
Crazy old bag. Somebody—Julie?—had used those words about the mountain woman. The witch.
Benny glanced back.
Gone! She was nowhere in sight. A creepy feeling scurried up his spine.
Probably she just went into the building back there.
But what if she is the witch? What if she followed us down from the mountains, followed us home?
As he climbed the steps toward the library door, he pictured the witch in the dark with her arms high, shouting her curse over the noise of the wind and rain. He tried to imagine how she might look in a gray pantsuit, wearing fashionable glasses, her hair fixed up. With a sick feeling, he realized she might look very much like the woman he’d just met. If only he’d had a better look at the witch’s face.
“Don’t be dumb,” he said to himself out loud.
Then he took off his clip-ons and pulled open the library door. Carpet silenced his footsteps as he walked toward the circulation desk, where a young woman was reading. She held a felt-tipped pen. She wore a white blouse with a frilly collar, and had golden hair like Karen. Benny saw nothing threatening about her. She looked up as he approached, and smiled. “Hello,” she said.
“Hi,” Benny whispered. “Is it all right if I look around for a while? I’m waiting for my cousin. She’s in class.”
“Certainly. No problem. If you want to look at some magazines, the periodical room’s over behind those stacks.” She pointed to the right.
“Thank you.”
“Help yourself. If you have any questions, I’ll be right here.”
Benny thanked her again, and walked over to the card catalog. Nobody else was using it. Except for a few students seated nearby at long tables, reading or scribbling notes, the big room was deserted.
He studied the drawer labels. Finding one marked WIK–WIZ, he slid the drawer open. He flipped through the cards toward the back of it. Soon, he came to a card marked Witchcraft in Salem Village. Behind it was Witchcraft Through the Ages, then Witchery Ditchery Doc, a novel. No good to him. He flicked that card forward. Witches and Warlocks. That sounded useful. But the next card set his heart racing: Witch’s Spells and Potions.
He looked at the call number, and frowned. Instead of Dewey decimal numbers, which he understood, there was a series of letters.
Well, the librarian had offered to help.
Taking the ballpoint from his shirt pocket, he started to write the letters on the heel of his hand. The pen skipped badly. Then he noticed a small tray of scrap paper on top of the catalog. He took down a piece, and wrote out the call letters, author, and title.
Then he returned to the circulation desk
. The woman finished marking a passage with her yellow felt-tipped pen, and smiled up at him.
“I’m sorry to bother you again,” Benny said, “but do you know where I can find this book?”
She glanced at the paper. “Oh, that’ll be downstairs. Are you familiar with the Library of Congress system?”
“No, I—”
“Well, you just go alphabetically along the shelves. They’re all labeled. Then, when the books are all lettered the same, you go by the numbers underneath. It’s pretty simple, really.”
“Fine. Thank you. Uh…it’s downstairs?”
Nodding, she swiveled her chair around and pointed. “Right through those double doors.”
“Thank you,” he said again. Taking the scrap paper, he walked alongside the counter and pulled open one of the doors. It swung shut behind him. The landing was dimly lit. Benny looked up at the fixture, a globe with the debris of dead bugs showing through its frosted glass. Wrinkling his nose, he started down the stairs. They seemed to be concrete, but rang under his footsteps as if there was metal inside. The echo made him uneasy. He tried to descend more quietly. As he neared the next landing, he imagined taking off his shoes to muffle the noise. That would be dumb. And what if somebody saw him? “Hey, kid, put your shoes on. What’re you trying to pull?” Besides, why should he worry about making a little noise?
When he reached the landing, he looked down the final flight of stairs and hesitated.
It was dark down there.
The globe overhead cast its light on the first few steps, faded, and left the lower ones in murky gloom. The fixture below was a dull, gray ball, its bulb either turned off or dead.
He’d seen a movie last summer, where a monster lurked under a staircase. He leaned over the railing and peered down. There did appear to be an open space beneath the stairs.
Don’t be a jerk, he told himself. He took a deep breath and charged down into the darkness, more certain with each clamoring footfall that he was not alone in the stairwell. The bottom of the stairs took him by surprise. He thought there was one more step, but there wasn’t. His right foot pounded down hard on the floor, sending pain up his leg. He stumbled forward, his shoulder driving open the door, and fell sprawling as the door slammed the wall with a stunning crash.
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