Over the howling of the wind came another sound:
wicka-wicka-wicka!
Wings. Leathery wings. Just beyond the window.
Wicka-wicka-wicka!
Perhaps it was a coincidental sound. The curtain rod vibrating in its fixtures? A branch or shrub rustling rhythmically against the side of the house?
Whatever the cause of it, she was certain she was not merely imagining the sound this time
;
nor was she receiving it as part of her psychic impressions. Some creature was actually close at hand, beyond that open window, some unimaginably bizarre creature with wings.
No. Insanity.
Well, go look, she told herself. Go see what it is that has these wings. See if it’s anything at all. End this forever.
She couldn’t move.
Wicka-wicka-wicka!
Max, help me, she said. But the words formed without sound.
To her left, beside the sink, the door of the medicine cabinet was wrenched open by invisible hands. Thrown shut. Wrenched open. Thrown shut. The next time it came open, it stayed that way. All of the contents of the cabinet—bottles of Anacin, aspirin, cold tablets, iodine, cough syrup, laxatives
;
tubes of toothpaste, skin cream, shampoo
;
boxes of throat lozenges, Band-Aids, gauze pads—leaped from the shelves to the floor.
The shower curtain was flung back by an invisible hand, and the shower rod sagged and bent as if someone quite heavy was hanging from it. The rod tore out of the wall and fell into the tub.
The commode seat began to bash itself up and down, faster and faster, making an incredible din.
She took one step toward the bathroom door.
It swung open as if urging her to leave—then a second later went shut with a crash like a thunderclap It opened and closed itself repeatedly, almost in time with the clatter of the commode seat.
She put her back to the wall once more, afraid to move.
“Mary!”
Max and Lou were on the other side of the door, briefly visible as it swung open. They were staring, amazed.
The door closed with even greater power than it had before, flew open, shut, open, shut.
Max tried to come in as the door opened again, but it slammed in his face. The next time it opened he grabbed the doorknob and forced his way inside.
The door stopped moving.
The wind at the window decreased to a slight draft.
There were no wings beating now.
Stillness.
Silence.
Mary looked at the mirror above the washbasin and saw that, while the images in it had changed, it was still not an ordinary mirror and did not reflect the room in front of it. The pale blonde, the crucifix, and the man with the butcher knife were gone. The mirror was black—except for the very bottom of it, where blood appeared to seep through the glass and over the frame, where it dripped into the room, as if the world on the other side was nothing but a lake of gore with a surface that reached slightly above the lower edge of the mirror. The blood splashed on the faucets that were directly below the mirror, spattered the white porcelain sink.
Confused, Max said, “What the devil is this? What’s happening here?” He looked from the mirror to Mary. “Are you hurt? Have you cut yourself?”
“No,” she said. And only then did she realize that
he
saw the blood, too.
Max touched the rim of the mirror. Impossibly, incredibly, the blood came off on his fingers.
Lou squeezed into the small bathroom to have a better look.
Gradually the blood—on the mirror, faucets, porcelain, and on Max’s finger—became less vivid, less brilliantly red, less substantial, faded until it was gone, as if it had never been.
Mary sat on the living room sofa and accepted a glass of brandy from Lou. When she brushed her hair back from her forehead, it felt greasy and cold. There was no color in her face. Her hands were clammy. The brandy burned her throat and brought a welcome warmth.
Standing in front of her, Max said, “What you saw in that mirror before we came after you—does that mean someone will die tonight?”
“Yes,” Mary said.“The girl I saw. She’ll die. She’ll be stabbed before morning.”
“What’s her name?”
“I didn’t see it.”
Where does she live?”
“Here in King’s Point. But I didn’t sense any address for her.”
“Does she live on the hills, in the flats, or around the harbor?”
“It could be any place,” Mary said.
“What does she look like?”
“She’s got very light yellow hair, almost white. Kinky hair, worn long. Pale skin. Big blue eyes. She’s young, in her twenties, very cute. Delicate. No, a better word... ethereal.”
Max turned to Lou as the newspaperman finished a double shot of Wild Turkey. The way he tossed it back, he might as well have been drinking milk or cyanide. “This is your town, Lou. Do you know anyone who fits that description?”
“We’ve got ten thousand permanent residents,” Lou said. “I don’t know all of them. I don’t
want
to know all of them. Nine tenths of them are hopeless jackasses, dullards, and bores. Besides, a lot of pretty young blondes are drawn to the Southern California beach life. Sun, sand, sea, sensitivity sessions, sex, and syphilis. In this town there must be at least two hundred tender, achingly ethereal blondes who could be the one Mary saw.”
Unconsciously Max had picked up a copy of
The Nation
and had rolled it into a tight tube. He slapped it into the palm of his left hand. “If we don’t locate the girl, she’ll be killed tonight.”
Mary’s fear had metamorphosed into a depression like an endless plain of ashes
;
but beneath the ashes were scattered glowing coals of anger. She was not angry with Max or Lou or with herself, but with fate. Even as the anger built, she knew it was a luxury, that it had no effect or meaning
;
for the only weapon anyone had against fate was resignation.
“You forget what it means when I foresee something,” she told Max. “It doesn’t matter if we find this girl and warn her. Nothing matters. She’ll die anyway.
I’ve seen it!
I can’t see the names of the winning horses in tomorrow’s races. I can’t see what stocks will rise in price and which will fall next week. All I can see is people dying.” She stood up. “Jesus, but I’m sick of the way I have to live. I’m sick of seeing violence and being unable to prevent it. I’m sick of seeing innocent people in trouble and being unable to help them. I’m tired of a life filled with corpses and violated women and battered children and blood and knives and guns.”
“I know,” Max said gently. “I know.”
She went to the bar and jerked the stopper from the bottle of brandy. “I don’t want to be a funnel for other people’s misery! I want to be a mechanism for the destruction of that misery, for the amelioration of that misery, for the prevention of it.” She poured herself a brandy. “If I’m going to have the all-seeing eye of a god, then dammit, I should have the power of a god, too. I should be able to reach out with that power right this minute and find the man we’re after. I should be able to squeeze his heart in a vise of power until it bursts. But I’m not a god. I’m not even a complete mechanism. I’m like half a radio set. I can receive, but I can’t transmit. I can be affected, but I can’t cause an effect.” She drank the brandy as quickly and smoothly as Lou might have done. “I hate it. Hate it. Why do
I
have to have this power? Why
me?”
Later, at the front door, Lou said, “I wish you’d stay here tonight.”
“We’ve seen your guest room,” Max said. “Magazines and books, but no furniture. We appreciate your intellect and the size of your library, but we don’t relish sleeping on stacks of old paperbacks.”
“I could use the living room sofa tonight,” Lou said. “You two could sleep in my room.”
Mary kissed him on the cheek. “You’re a darling man. But we’ll be fine. Really we will. At least until tomorrow night.”
Thursday, December 24
12
AT ONE O’CLOCK in the morning, rain slashed inland from the sea. It made the bare earth slick, flattened the dry grass, bounced off the macadam roadway.
He parked the Mercedes at the end of the paved lane, switched off the engine. Darkness wrapped the car. There was so little light that he could not even see his own hands on the steering wheel. The only sound was the incessant drumming of the rain on the hood and roof.
He decided to wait until the storm passed. The rainy season had come to Southern California
;
however, sudden cloudbursts like this one seldom lasted long.
The butcher knife was on the seat beside him. He felt for it, picked it up. He could barely see it in the poor light
;
but he was thrilled by the feel of it as much as by the sight of the well-honed blade. He pressed one finger to the cutting edge, not firmly enough to draw his own blood but hard enough to feel the energy of death lying inert but ready within the tempered steel.
At one-ten the rain slowed to a drizzle. Five minutes after that, it stopped altogether. He opened the car door and got out.
The air was clean and cool. The wind had died down.
Three quarters of a mile to his left and below him, the night around the harbor was strung with lights like Christmas decorations.
The only nearby light came from one of three cottages that stood two hundred yards to the west. These houses were lined up along the cliff, facing seaward, presenting their back doors to the dead-end macadam road. The northernmost cottage, which belonged to Erika Larsson, was seventy yards from its neighbor and stood in a cluster of trees
;
lights shone from many of its windows.
As he had expected, Erika was awake. Probably working. One of her somber watercolors. Or a disquieting oil painting full of brooding faces rendered in blues and deep greens. She did most of her painting in the calm, early morning hours and went to bed at dawn.
He walked around the back of the Mercedes and opened the trunk. It was littered with guns—an Italian shotgun, two rifles, and seven hand-guns—and boxes of ammunition. He chose a .45 Auto Colt, a custom-made collector’s piece, all the metalwork heavily engraved with wild animals fleeing from the muzzle back toward the handgrip. It was already loaded. All of the guns were loaded. He put the Colt in his jacket pocket and closed the trunk.
Holding the knife at his side, he walked down the dirt lane toward the lighted house. The night was so unrelievedly dark that he occasionally stumbled over the driveway ruts. His shoes squished in the mud.
Mary murmured in her sleep.
In her dream she was with her father. He looked as he had when she was nine years old
;
and she was a child again. They were sitting on a velvety green lawn. The sun was high
;
it came straight down on top of them
;
and they cast no shadows.
“If I help people with my ESP, maybe they’ll love me. I want people to love me, Daddy. ”
“Well, Sweetcakes, I love you. ”
“But you’ll leave me. ”
“Leave my little girl? Nonsense. ”
“You’ll die in the car. Die and leave me. ”
“You mustn’t say things like that. ”
“But—”
“If I did die, you’d still have your mother. ”
“She’s left me already. Left me for her whiskey. ”
“No, no. Your mother still loves you. ”
“She loves whiskey. She forgets my name. ”
“Your brother loves you. ”
“No, he doesn’t. ”
“Mary, what a terrible thing to say!”
“I don’t blame Alan for not loving me. All his pets die because of me. ”
“That’s not your fault. ”
“You know it is. But even if Alan loves me, he’ll leave me someday. Then I’ll be alone. ”
“Someday you’ll meet a man who’ll marry you and love you. ”
“Maybe he’ll love me for a little while. But then he’ll leave, won’t he? Like everyone leaves. I need protection against being left alone. I’m scared of being alone. I need lots of people who love me. If lots and lots of people love me, they won’t all be able to go away at the same time. ”
“Look at the time! I’ve got to be going. ”
“Daddy, you can’t leave me. ”
“I don’t have any choice. ”
“I found Elmo
this morning.”
“Alan’s cat?”
“I found him all bloody. ”
“Found him where?”
“At the playhouse. ”
“Not another dead animal?”
“Someone cut him to pieces. ”
“Does Alan know?”
“Not yet. Daddy, he’ll cry. ”
“Jesus, the poor kid. ”
“He’ll be awful mad at me. ”
“Mary... you didn’t...”
“No! Daddy, I wouldn’t do something like that. ”
“After what happened last week...”
“It wasn’t me! It wasn’t!”
“Okay, then it was the Mitchell boy again. ”
“I wish Mrs. Mitchell would move out of town. ”
“Berton Mitchell’s boy cut up Elmo. Alan won’t be mad at you. ”
“But it’s because I had his daddy sent away that he’s coming here and killing all of Alan’s pets. ”
“Alan understands. He doesn’t hold you responsible. ”
“Alan’s still mad because I threw his turtles in the creek last week. ”
“You haven’t explained why you did that. ”
“Something told me to. ”
“You deserved your punishment, you know. They were Alan’s turtles, not yours. ”