The Mask

by Dean Koontz

  He spoke again, much softer than before, but she could still hear him. "Protect Willa."

  "I tell you, I don't know her. And if you keep calling me with this nonsense, I'm going to tell the police that some sick practical joker is-"

  "Carol. . . Carol," the man said, his voice fading syllable by syllable. "Willa. . . but you call her. . . Carol."

  "What the hell is going on here?"

  "Beware.. .the. . .cat."

  "What?"

  The voice was so distant now that she had to strain to hear it. "The .. . cat ..."

  "Aristophanes? What about him? Have you done something to him? Have you poisoned him? Is that what's been wrong with him lately"

  No response.

  "Are you there"

  Nothing.

  "What about the cat?" she demanded.

  No answer.

  She listened to the pure, pure silence, and she began to tremble so violently that she had trouble holding the phone. "Who are you? Why do you want to torment me like this? Why do you want to hurt Aristophanes?"

  Far, far away, the achingly familiar voice of her long-dead husband uttered a few final, barely audible words. "Wish. . .1 was there.. . for the.. . apple dumplings."

  ***

  They had forgotten to buy pajamas for Jane. She went to bed in knee socks, panties, and one of Carol's T-shirts, which was a bit large for her.

  "What happens tomorrow?" she asked when she was tucked in, her head raised on a plump pillow.

  Carol sat on the edge of the bed. "I thought we might start a program of treatment designed to pry open your memory."

  "What kind of treatment?"

  "Do you know what hypnotic regression therapy is?"

  Jane was suddenly frightened. Several times since the accident, she had made a conscious, concerted effort to remember who she was, but on each occasion, as she felt herself coming close to a disturbing revelation, she had become dizzy, disoriented, and panicky. When she pressed her mind back, back, back toward the truth, a psychological defense mechanism cut off her curiosity as abruptly as a strangler's garrote might have cut off her air supply. And every time, on the edge of unconsciousness, she saw a strange, silvery object swinging back and forth through blackness, an utterly indecipherable yet blood-chilling vision. She sensed there was something hideous in her past, something so terrible that she would be better off no: remembering. She had just about made up her mind not to seek what had been lost, to accept her new life as a nameless orphan, even though it might be filled with hardships. But through hypnotic regression therapy, she could be forced to confront the specter in her past, whether she wanted to or not. That prospect filled her with dread.

  "Are you all right?" Carol asked.

  The girl blinked, licked her lips. "Yeah. I was just thinking about what you said. Hypnotic regression. Does that mean you're going to put me in a trance and make me remember everything?"

  "Well, it isn't that easy, honey. There's no guarantee it'll work. I'll hypnotize you and ask you to think back to the accident on Thursday morning; then I'll nudge you further and further into the past. If you're a good subject, you might remember who you are and where you come from. Hypnotic regression is a tool that comes in handy sometimes when I'm trying to get a patient to relive a deeply hidden, severely regressed trauma. I've never used the technique on an amnesia victim, but I know it's applicable to a case like yours. Of course, it only works about half the time. And when it does work, it takes more than one or two sessions. It can be a tedious, frustrating process. We're not going to get much of anywhere tomorrow, and in fact your parents will probably show up before I've been able to help you remember. But we might as well make a start. That is, if it's all right with you."

  She didn't want Carol to know that she was afraid to remember, so she said, "Oh, sure! It sounds fascinating."

  "I've got four patients scheduled for tomorrow, but I can work you in at eleven o'clock. You'll have to spend a lot of time in the waiting room, before and after your session, so first thing in the morning, we'll find a book for you to take along. Do you like to read mystery stories?"

  "I guess so."

  "Agatha Christie?"

  "The name's familiar, but I don't know whether I've ever read any of her books."

  "You can try one tomorrow. If you were a big fan of mysteries, maybe Agatha Christie will open your memory for you. Any stimulus, any connection whatsoever with your past can act like a doorway." She leaned down, kissed Jane's forehead. "But don't worry about it now. Just get a good night's sleep, kiddo."

  After Carol left the room, closing the door behind her, Jane didn't immediately switch off the light. She let her gaze travel slowly around the room and then slowly back again, her eyes resting on each point of beauty.

  Please, God, she thought, let me stay here. Somehow, some way, let me stay in this house forever and ever. Don't make me go back where I came from, wherever that might be. This is where I want to live. This is where I want to die, it's so pretty.

  Finally, she reached out and snapped off the bedside lamp.

  Darkness folded in like bat wings.

  Using a piece of Masonite and four nails, Grace Mitowski fixed a temporary seal over the inside of the pet door.

  Aristophanes stood in the center of the kitchen, his head cocked to one side, watching her with bright-eyed interest. Every, few seconds, he meowed in what seemed to be an inquisitive tone.

  When the last nail was in place, Grace said, "Okay, cat. For the time being, your license to roam has been suspended. There might be a man out there who's been feeding you small amounts of drugs or poison of some sort, and maybe that's been the cause of your bad behavior. We'll just have to wait and see if you improve. Have you been flying high on drugs, you silly cat?"

  Aristophanes meowed questioningly.

  "Yes," Grace said. "I know it sounds bizarre. But if it's not some kook I've got to deal with, then it really must've been Leonard on the phone. And that's even more bizarre, don't you think?"

  The cat turned his head from one side to the other, as if he really were flying to make sense of what she was saying.

  Grace stopped, held out her hand, and rubbed her thumb and forefinger together. "Here, kitty. Here, kitty-kitty-kitty."

  Aristophanes hissed, spat, turned, and ran.

  For a change, they made love with the lights off.

  Carol's breath was hot against his neck. She pressed close, rocked and tensed and twisted and flexed in perfect harmony with him; her exquisite, pneumatic movements were as fluid as currents in a warm river. She arched her elegant back, lifted and subsided in tempo with his measured strokes. She was as pliant, as silken, and eventually as all-encompassing as the darkness.

  Afterwards, they held hands and talked about inconsequential things, steadily growing drowsy. Carol fell asleep while Paul was talking. When she failed to respond to one of his questions, he gently disentangled his hand from hers.

  He was tired, but he couldn't find sleep as quickly as she had found it. He kept thinking about the girl. He was certain he had seen her prior to their meeting outside the courtroom this morning. During dinner, her face had grown more and more familiar. It continued to haunt him. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't recall where else he had seen her.

  As he lay in the dark bedroom, paging through his memory, he gradually became uneasy. He began to feel-utterly without reason-that his previous encounter with Jane had been strange, perhaps even unpleasant. Then he wondered if the girt might actually pose some sort of threat to Carol and himself.

  But that's absurd, he thought. Doesn't make any sense at all. I must be even more tired than I thought.

  Logic seems to be slipping out of my grasp. What possible threat could Jane pose? She's such a nice kid. An exceptionally nice kid.

  He sighed, rolled over, and thought about the plot of his first novel (the failed one), and that quickly put him to sleep.

  At one o'clock in the morning, Grace Mitowski was s
itting up in bed, watching a late movie on the Sony portable. She was vaguely aware that Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall were engaged in witty repartee, but she didn't really hear anything they said. She had lost track of the film's plot only minutes after she had turned it on.

  She was thinking about Leonard, the husband she had lost to cancer eighteen years ago. He had been a good man, hard-working, generous, loving, a grand conversationalist. She had loved him very much.

  But not everyone had loved Leonard. He had had his faults, of course. The worst thing about him had been his impatience-and the sharp tongue that his impatience had encouraged. He couldn't tolerate people who were lazy or apathetic or ignorant or foolish. "Which includes two-thirds of the human race," he had often said when he was feeling especially curmudgeonly. Because he was an honest man with precious little diplomacy in his bones, he had told people exactly what he thought of them. As a result, he had led a life remarkably free of deception but rich in enemies.

  She wondered if it had been one of those enemies who had called her, pretending to be Leonard. A sick man might get as much pleasure from tormenting

  Leonard's widow as he would have gotten from tormenting Leonard himself. He might get a thrill from poisoning her cat and from harassing her with weird phone calls.

  But after eighteen years? Who would have remembered Leonard's voice so well as to be able to imitate it perfectly such a long time later? Surely she was the only person in the world who could still recognize that voice upon hearing it speak only a word or two. And why bring Carol into it? Leonard had died three years before Carol had entered Grace's life; he had never known the girl. His enemies couldn't possibly have anything against Carol. What had the caller meant when he'd referred to Carol as "Willa"? And, most disturbing of all, how did the caller know she had just made apple dumplings?

  There was another explanation, though she was loath to consider it. Perhaps the caller hadn't been an old enemy of Leonard's. Maybe the call actually had come from Leonard himself. From a dead man.

  -No. Impossible.

  -A lot of people believe in ghosts.

  -Not me.

  She thought about the strange dreams she'd had last week. She hadn't believed in dream prophecies then. Now she did. So why not ghosts, too?

  No. She was a level-headed woman who had lived a stable, rational life, who had been trained in the sciences, who had always believed that science held all the answers. Now, at seventy years of age, if she made room for the existence of ghosts within her otherwise rational philosophy, she might be opening the floodgates on madness. If you truly believed in ghosts, what came next? Vampires? Did you have to start carrying a sharp wooden stake and a crucifix everywhere you went? Werewolves? Better buy a box of silver bullets! Evil elves who lived in the center of the earth and caused quakes and volcanoes? Sure! Why not?

  Grace laughed bitterly.

  She couldn't suddenly become a believer in ghosts, because acceptance of that superstition might require the acceptance of countless others. She was too old, too comfortable with herself, too accustomed to her familiar ways to reconsider her entire view of life. And she certainly wasn't going to contemplate such a sweeping reevaluation merely because she had received two bizarre phone calls.

  That left only one thing to be decided: whether or not she should tell Carol that someone was harassing her and had used Carol's name. She tried to hear how she would sound when she explained the telephone calls and when she outlined her theory about Aristophanes being drugged or poisoned. She couldn't hope to sound like the Grace Mitowski that everyone knew. She'd come off like an hysterical old woman who was seeing nonexistent conspirators behind every door and under every bed.

  They might even think she was going senile.

  Am I? she wondered. Did I imagine the telephone calls? No. Surely not.

  She wasn't imagining Aristophanes's changed personality, either. She looked at the claw marks on the palm of her hand; although they were healing, they were still red and puffy. Proof. Those marks were proof that something was wrong.

  I'm not senile, she told herself. Not even a little bit. But I sure don't want to have to convince Carol or Paul that I've got all my marbles, once I've told them that I'm getting phone calls from Leonard. Better go easy for the time being. Wait. See what happens next. Anyway, I can figure this out on my own. I can handle it.

  On the Sony, Bogart and Bacall grinned at each other.

  When Jane woke up in the middle of the night, she discovered she had been sleepwalking. She was in the kitchen, but she couldn't recall getting out of bed and coming downstairs.

  The kitchen was silent. The only sound was from the softly purring refrigerator. The only light was from the moon, but because the moon was full and because the kitchen had quite a few windows, there was enough light to see by.

  Jane was standing at a counter near the sink. She had opened one of the drawers and had taken a butcher knife out of it.

  She stared down at the knife, startled to find it in her hand.

  Pale moonlight glinted on the cold blade.

  She returned the knife to the drawer.

  Closed the drawer.

  She had been gripping the knife so tightly that her hand ached.