It was, finally, simple enough: "Thank you, Ben. And I'm sorry I snapped at you."
He dismissed it with a casual wave. "No sweat, Doc. I'm surprised you're still talking to me, after what freckle-head told you."
"It's just that I had a scare," she said, as if she hadn't heard him. "It's awfully lonely up there. I was seeing things, I guess, and they made me run."
"I thought you were training for a marathon."
She smiled. "I'd never make it past the first mile."
The houses loomed. There were children in a snow-battle in a yard up the street. Line was across the road, talking with Still worth. She turned suddenly to Ben, and his eyebrows lifted in wary surprise. Waiting. But she couldn't do it. Here, amid all she'd lived with for the past decade and more, the terror she'd felt had been relegated to something less than physical, though she definitely hadn't forgotten the flight, the pain. But she couldn't ask him to take her back. Something stopped her: the puzzled expression on his face, the quiet crawl of ice along her arms, the idea that going out there would yield her nothing but what Ben had claimed— snow, the quarry . . . and nothing else at all.
"What?" he asked.
"Nothing," she said. Her hand fumbled at the door latch, pulled it to her, and she stepped out into the street.
"Doc," he said, leaning toward her.
"I'm all right," she said, gesturing him to leave. "I'll see you tomorrow."
She stepped back until her legs pushed into the curbside snow bank, waited until he'd driven off slowly before walking to the open mouth of the driveway. The shadow of the garage was already lapping at the sidewalk, the haze breaking up again to show her dark patches of blue. The children laughed and shrieked. She stood for a moment, watching them, until the cold reminded her of the cold she had felt, and she hurried to the porch, through the door and up the stairs. Her footsteps were loud, and she wished the Evanses would return from Florida so she could sit in their living room, listening to their stereo whispering a favorite opera, drinking tea and nodding while the couple filled an hour or more with trivial details of a trip they'd taken twenty years ago.
But they were gone, and she didn't feel up to the exuberance of Kelly's nonstop talking. She opened the door and shrugged off her coat, letting it fold to the floor. Into the kitchen where she automatically put on the kettle and turned the flame as high as it would go.
"It was, wasn't it," she said to the kettle. "I saw it. I saw it."
She walked dreamlike around the room, pressing a palm to every cool surface, wandering into the living room and switched on the lamp. Stared at the windows until she saw flickering, hurriedly pulled the draperies closed and stepped back to wait.
"It was real."
The bedroom was next.
Coverlet still thrown back, indentation in the pillow where Greg had positioned her head before he'd gone off to make breakfast. She walked around the dresser on the left, paused at the window and glanced down into the drive, saw nothing and continued on into the bathroom. Stared in the mirror. At the tangle the wind had made of her hair, at the suggestions of shadows beneath her eyes, at the raw deep pink at chin and lips and across her high cheeks. She reached for a container of hand lotion and spread it over her palms. Massaged her face gently, feeling the skin loosen, smelling the herbal scent that lingered even after she rinsed her hands.
Workroom. Dust. Clutter. An impotent red sun spiked through the treetops.
The kettle whistled and she ran to it, poured herself a cup and watched the tea from its bag drift into the water.
"It was real."
With an anticipatory wince she sipped the tea, wrinkling her nose at the curling steam. She grinned sourly then when she remembered a fragment of time, an afternoon her mother had told her she had no imagination. Had the woman been with her this afternoon, that much disappointment at least would have been dispelled.
She sat, her palms warming against the cup.
The room darkened.
There was no question but what she had seen at the quarry was not connected with the occult, the supernatural. It was, however, part and parcel complete with stamps connected to the experience in the street and all the rest. A masterful conjuration of illusion. An elaborate attempt to multiply the pressures she'd been under lately. To what end? To break her, she decided. Nothing quite so dramatic as driving her insane, but a shove in the direction which would lead her to believe she wasn't capable of handling the responsibilities of the new department. The pressures she would feel there, too. The leadership she would have to provide after all these years of following. She would believe that she'd bitten off more than she could chew, and she would back out. She would give up the fight. She would pass up the departmental promotion and give it to someone else, someone stronger, someone who wanted it as much as she and would do the job she herself had dreamed of, had planned for, had bucked the odds for over months beyond counting.
Unless it had nothing to do with the job at all.
Unless it was a reaction to something she had done, something she had said; unless it was in itself a reaction to a reaction.
She sputtered a laugh and leaned back in the chair. Her speculations were beginning to wander away from common sense. But she found herself much more relaxed now that distance had been placed between the apartment and the quarry. Now it was a matter of setting up possible villains and beginning the process of logical elimination. And in thinking that she realized she was sounding like Ellery Queen or Sir Henry Merrivale; it was a crime to be solved, with a dozen possible criminals, all with motives as fragile as the illusion.
The tea cooled; she did not notice.
It would be interesting to learn how it was done. It would be fascinating to see how long this calm would last before her temper took charge. She could feel it now, stirring like a disturbed slumbering beast, its limbs jerking in half-sleep, searching for whatever it was that had poked it awake.
Night-red, rising . . .
You are a remarkable woman, Patrice, if I do say so myself.
. . . soaring above the mouth of the quarry, masked in white, bellowing in fury . . .
Anyone else would be a prime candidate for a strait-jacket and a padded room. Doctors scuttling all over the place, their glasses sliding down their noses while they stared at you and questioned you and wanted to know how well you got along with your mother, your father, why was it really that you broke up with your husband, and isn't it possible that you've never really gotten over the death of your daughter and so you're lashing back now, striking out at everyone you believe to be your enemy at the college?
Isn't that possible, Dr. Shavers?
Isn't it possible you've finally lost your mind?
. . . massive forearms stretching toward the clouds, whistling through the air to smash the shed and render it into firewood; less, into dust . . .
She felt the cup slip from her hands and shatter on the floor, felt a splash of cold tea land on her ankle. Her boots were off. When, she wondered, had she taken them off? And why, she wondered, is it so damned dark?
She could barely see her hands on the table. But she could feel her fingers twitching, feel the vibrations tingling up her arm to her shoulders, making their serpentine way to her neck and causing her throat to tighten, her lips to draw taut, her eyes to widen until she thought they would explode out of their sockets.
"It . . . was . . . real."
Her voice. So small. Mouse-like. Quivering. No confidence there at all. Not at all like the way she had spoken to Ben. Ben, who had just happened to drive out to the quarry because Greg had told him what he had done. Ben, who—if Harriet was to be believed—was ready to agree with Oliver about the state of their career. Non-career. So young. So damned young, so damned inexperienced, and so goddam ready to take on the world.
"Real."
A gasp more than a word.
She closed her eyes tightly, furrowing her brow, pulling up her chin. The bloodwind beast was there. Rising. Climbing.
Hidden behind the snow cloud, the snow pillar, the tornado, allowing her only glimpses to fuel the imagination she wasn't supposed to have. It was there. Vividly stalking her, vividly silent, launching her into the forest as it trampled the shed.
Her eyelids fluttered and lifted. There was nothing for it but that she would have to go back. As long as she sat here in the dark she would vacillate between intriguing illusion and horrifying insanity. She had to know, and she had to know now, before she tried to sleep.
And immediately the decision was made there was no hesitation in her movements. She pushed back the chair and heard a leg crunch through the shards of the cup. Carefully, she sidestepped the debris and grabbed a broom from the narrow closet at the back. Swept up as much as she could and dumped it in the trash. Skirted the table so as not to cut her feet on anything she'd missed and walked purposefully into the bedroom. Changed her jeans, slipped on a ski sweater midnight blue and unadorned, found her boots in the bathroom and pulled them on over a fresh pair of wool socks, fished a dry pair of gloves from the top dresser drawer and strode into the living room.
Though it occurred to her that she ought to, she did not feel the least bit silly. This was her sanity she was defending, and nothing she did now would seem any more insane than fleeing what just might be a delusion. She would need luck, of course, in getting out there and back without attracting attention, or without breaking her neck. And luck, she decided with a grin, was exactly what she would have.
Whistling, she hurried into the kitchen to fetch Homer. There was still only the lamp's light from the front room, so she only frowned when she reached around the door and came up with nothing. Frowned more deeply when she half-stepped into the room and saw the shelf was empty.
"Rat," she said. "Where the hell did I put you?"
The bedroom didn't hide him. Neither did the hallway or living room. Despite the fact she'd never brought him in there, she checked the bathroom anyway, checked the closets, checked under all the furniture while she wrestled with the implication that somehow she'd lost him.
Then she snapped her fingers. "Ha!" It was too easy. She'd been working on Greg's present in the workroom. She had used Homer for the model. Therefore, it stood reason's test the grizzly would be there.
But it wasn't.
When she flicked on the overhead light and her eyes adjusted to the glare, the pedestal was empty, as well as the stool.
And it was then she remembered her door had been unlocked.
Chapter 16
On the wall a crescent of light formed by the baseboard and the edge of the lampshade. Within, a shadow, an elongated globe that swelled and shrank as Pat turned her head from side to side. She could hear the water in the pipes trying to warm her, could feel the carpet beneath her soles trying to muffle the sound of a scream that had not yet been born. She pivoted slowly and stared at the door. It was a block of wood with inserted panels, polished and worn and fitting snugly to its frame. She had never seen it before, not now, not since it was evident someone had used it while she'd been away. Once part of her protection, it became alien within the space of a blink, and she backed away from it, half expecting the knob to begin turning, to hear breathing on the landing, to hear footfalls across the threshold.
And it wasn't the first time.
Through all her hysterical outbursts and the accumulation of woes, she'd forgotten the glove. Oliver's glove. And how the statuette had been shifted from the perch to the table.
Twice, then. Twice someone had broken into her apartment; first to retrieve the glove, then to steal the images of the grizzly.
I saw Dr. Billings at the curb, Ben had told her only a few hours ago. But the boy had been here, too.
She took several steps toward the kitchen and halted.
No, she would say to the police if they came; no, nothing else has been taken as far as I know. My watch is still on the dresser, and all the prints—some of them rather valuable, they're signed—are still here. It was only a statuette. Two, actually. Of a grizzly bear. I did them myself and they're not valuable at all. And no, no one has a key to this place but me. The Evanses from across the way are down in Florida, and the two women who live downstairs, well, one's man-hungry and the other is deaf. No, we don't fight. No, I've never had a cross word with Mr. Goldsmith, either. Who am I fighting with? Funny you should ask. It seems like the whole world sometimes. First, there's Greg Billings. He's in love with me, you see, and I think I'm in love with him but sometimes he can be so smothering that I strike out at him. No, not with my fist, with my stupid tongue. We had a fight just this afternoon, as a matter of fact. And then there's the Three Musketeers. One-armed Ben, who saved me from going crazy this afternoon, and Harriet with the freckles who acts more like a puppy dog sometimes than a growing woman, and Cowboy Oliver, whose glove I found outside the other night and then it was gone when I got back from New York and I went over there to demand an explanation, and we, the four of us, we didn't really have a fight but it wasn't the most pleasant experience in the world, either. Do you want to count my parents? I've been fighting with them since the day I was born.
No. No one hates me as far as I know. What an odd question, officer. I thought we were talking about a theft here, not an attempted murder or anything like that.
No, I already told you, no one has my keys but me. I keep them right over here in my purse. Right here on the table by the door. If you'll just wait a minute I'll show you. I keep them right down at the bottom, just like my mother always taught me. Right—
She blinked and pulled away from the purse, suddenly realizing she'd been talking aloud to herself. And realizing, too, her keys weren't where they were supposed to be.
"Easy." The word was barked. An order, as she snapped her head around to check the corners, to check the shadows. "Easy. Think." A whisper, now. Calming, demanding calm, while she reviewed the weekend, remembered Abbey asking for the keys for a double date the night before. Saturday night. And unlike Friday, they'd not been taped in an envelope and left on the hall table.
"Easy."
It didn't prove anything. Abbey and Kelly had been up here only a half-dozen times since they'd moved in below, and not at all since the first of the year. Neither one of them had expressed interest in anything they'd seen here, made only socially polite remarks about the furnishings and wasn't it curious how someone could do something so totally different with the same space you have.
It was a simple matter of calling downstairs and finding out. That's all there was to it. But she didn't want to stay here alone anymore. Grabbing her coat from the floor, then, she hurried out to the landing and closed the door behind her. A thought, and she leaned over to the lock, searching for signs of a break-in, the use of a tool to snap back the bolt. But there was nothing. Not even space enough between door and frame to use a credit card, or a stiff cutting of plastic.
Whoever had taken Homer and his image had apparently walked in as if the door weren't there.
The foyer was unlighted. The single bulb in the ceiling had burned out, and there was nothing but the drift of the street glow through the curtained door and the panes to either side. She listened for sounds of activity in Goldsmith's apartment, crossed to Kelly's door and knocked. Waited. Frowned at the lack of response and knocked again, several times, loudly. Her foot tapped impatiently, and a loose fist pressed lightly against her mouth. Kelly, she finally decided, must not be home. She rang the bell, cocking her head to hear it buzzing inside. If Abbey were there, she would see the warning lights flashing. If not—
The door opened inward, the room beyond dark except for a single lamp muffled by a white glass shade. She stepped over the threshold, and the door closed silently behind her. Turning quickly, her left arm caught under the overhanging topcoat, she saw Abbey standing in shadow.
"Abbey? Abbey, are you okay?"
Abbey walked away from her, stumbling once over nothing Pat could see, and sat on the couch. Her hair hadn't been brushed in what looked l
ike days, her face was devoid of makeup, and she was wearing a tattered bathrobe that seemed stiff and uncomfortable.
Pat glanced around the dim apartment, looking for Kelly, then hurried to join the woman so her lips could be seen.
"Abbey, what's wrong?" When there was no response, when Abbey just stared at her blankly, she reached out and took the girl's hand. It was cold, clammy, the feel of someone in deep summer who'd just come out of midnight walking. "Abbey . . . it's Kelly, isn't it? Your date last night was a flop, but hers was a success, right? She probably made you drive home alone and you're worried about her because she hasn't gotten in touch."
Abbey didn't move, and not for the first time did Pat wish the girl would talk. She could, physically, but someone had told her what the sound of a deaf person was like, sometimes too loud and often toneless. She'd made a decision to use only her hands, which "was limiting only when she felt too weary to lift them. Or when she was depressed.
"You know, dear," she said, pulling up a leg, "Kelly is always telling me how man-crazy you are." She smiled. "I know it's a fib. And I suspect it bothers you when you hear it. But she's done this before, a hundred times since I've known you. Abbey? Abbey are you listening to me?"
Abbey nodded.
"Okay. Well, look, I came down here . . . Abbey, did you, have you been here all day?" Waiting. A slow nod. "Have you seen anyone come in or out of the house? Besides me and Linc, that is. Anyone at all? Maybe Professor Billings, the man I work with at Hawksted. Or maybe one of my students."
Abbey's hands fluttered in her lap, a sigh as she gathered strength. A boy. He had one arm.
"That would be Ben. Did you see anyone else? Anyone you didn't know?"
Abbey's eyes widened in suspicion, a slow-growing fear sparking her eyes. What's wrong?
"I don't want to frighten you, dear, but I think someone's broken into my apartment. You remember Homer? The grizzly? He's gone, and so is a copy I was making for someone."
The Bloodwind - An Oxrun Station Novel (Oxrun Station Novels) Page 15