The Mask (12 page)

The hammering noise became even softer and then faded altogether. He waited for a minute or two, but the only sound was the rain on the shingles overhead.

The wind must have changed direction. In time it would change back again, and the antenna would begin to rock on its brace-plate, and the pounding would start once more.

As soon as the storm was over, he would have to get the extension ladder out of the garage, go up onto the roof, and dismantle the antenna. He should have taken care of that chore shortly after they had subscribed to the cable television service. Now, because he had delayed, he was going to lose precious writing time—and at one of the most difficult and crucial points in his manuscript. That prospect frustrated him and made him nervous.

He decided to shave, drive downtown, and pick up the new set of application papers at the adoption agency. The storm might pass by the time he got home again. If it did, if he could be on the roof by eleven-thirty, he ought to be able to tear down the antenna, then have a bite of lunch, and work on his book all afternoon, barring further interruptions. But he suspected there
would
be further interruptions. He had already resigned himself to the fact that it was one of those days.

As he left the attic and turned out the lights, the house quivered under another blow.

THUNK!

Just one this time.

Then all was quiet again.

The visitors’ lounge at the hospital looked like an explosion in a clown’s wardrobe. The walls were canary yellow; the chairs were bright red; the carpet was orange; the magazine racks and end tables were made of heavy purple plastic; and the two large abstract paintings were done primarily in shades of blue and green.

The lounge—obviously the work of a designer who had read too much about the various psychological mood theories of color—was supposed to be positive, life-affirming. It was supposed to lift the spirits of visitors and take their minds off sick friends and dying relatives. In Carol, however, the determinedly cheery decor elicited the opposite reaction from that which the designer had intended. It was a frenetic room; it abraded the nerves as effectively as coarse sandpaper would abrade a stick of butter.

She sat on one of the red chairs, waiting for the doctor who had treated the injured girl. When he came, his stark white lab coat contrasted so boldly with the flashy decor that he appeared to radiate a saintlike aura.

Carol rose to meet him, and he asked if she was Mrs. Tracy, and he said his name was Sam Hannaport. He was tall, very husky, square-faced, florid, in his early fifties. He looked as if he would be loud and gruff, perhaps even obnoxious, but in fact he was soft-spoken and seemed genuinely concerned about how the accident had affected Carol both physically
and emotionally. It took her a couple of minutes to assure him that she was all right on both counts, and then they sat down on facing red chairs.

Hannaport raised his bushy eyebrows and said, “You look as if you could use a hot bath and a big glassful of warm brandy.”

“I was soaked to the skin,” she said, “but I’m pretty well dried out now. What about the girl?”

“Cuts, contusions, abrasions,” he said.

“Internal bleeding?”

“Nothing showed up on the tests.”

“Fractures?”

“Not a broken bone in her body. She came through it amazingly well. You couldn’t have been driving very fast when you hit her.”

“I wasn’t. But considering the way she slipped up onto the hood and then rolled off into the gutter, I thought maybe…” Carol shuddered, unwilling to put words to what she had thought.

“Well, the kid’s in good condition now. She regained consciousness in the ambulance, and she was alert by the time I saw her.”

“Thank God.”

“There’s no indication that she’s even mildly concussed. I don’t foresee any lasting effects.”

Relieved, Carol sagged back in the red chair. “I’d like to see her, talk to her.”

“She’s resting now,” Dr. Hannaport said. “I don’t want her disturbed at the moment. But if you’d like to come back this evening, during visiting hours, she’ll be able to see you then.”

“I’ll do that. I’ll definitely do that.” She blinked. “Good heavens, I haven’t even asked you what her name is.”

His bushy eyebrows rose again. “Well, we’ve got a small problem about that.”

“Problem?” Carol tensed up again. “What do you mean? Can’t she remember her name?”

“She hasn’t remembered it yet, but—”

“Oh, God.”

“—she will.”

“You said no concussion—”

“I swear to you, it
isn’t
serious,” Hannaport said. He took her left hand in his big hard hands and held it as if it might crack and crumble at any moment. “Please don’t excite yourself about this. The girl is going to be fine. Her inability to remember her name isn’t a symptom of severe concussion or any serious brain injury; not in her case, anyway. She isn’t confused or disoriented. Her field of vision is normal, and she has excellent depth perception. We tested her thought processes with some math problems—addition, subtraction, multiplication—and she got them all correct. She can spell any word you throw at her; she’s a damn good speller, that one. So she’s not severely concussed. She’s simply suffering from mild amnesia. It’s selective amnesia, you understand, just a loss of personal memories, not a loss of skills and education and whole blocks of social concepts. She hasn’t forgotten how to read and write, thank God; she’s only forgotten who she is, where she came from, and how she got to this place. Which sounds more serious than it really is. Of course, she’s disconcerted and apprehensive. But selective amnesia is the easiest kind to recover from.”

“I know,” Carol said. “But somehow that doesn’t make me feel a whole hell of a lot better.”

Hannaport squeezed her hand firmly and gently.
“This kind of amnesia is only very, very rarely permanent or even long-lasting. She’ll most likely remember who she is before dinnertime.”

“If she doesn’t?”

“Then the police will find out who she is, and the minute she hears her name, the mists will clear.”

“She wasn’t carrying any ID.”

“I know,” he said. “I’ve talked to the police.”

“So what happens if they can’t find out who she is?”

“They will.” He patted her hand one last time, then let go.

“I don’t see how you can be so sure.”

“Her parents will file a missing-persons report. They’ll have a photograph of her. When the police see the photograph, they’ll make a connection. It’ll be as simple as that.”

She frowned. “What if her parents
don’t
report her missing?”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“Well, what if she’s a runaway from out of state? Even if her folks did file a missing-persons report back in her hometown, the police here wouldn’t necessarily be aware of it.”

“The last time I looked, runaway kids favored New York City, California, Florida—just about any place besides Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.”

“There’s always an exception to any rule.”

Hannaport laughed softly and shook his head. “If pessimism were a competitive sport, you’d win the world series.”

She blinked in surprise, then smiled. “I’m sorry. I guess I am being excessively gloomy.”

Glancing at his watch, getting up from his chair,
he said, “Yes, I think you are. Especially considering how well the girl came through it all. It could have been a lot worse.”

Carol got to her feet, too. In a rush, the words falling over one another, she said, “I guess maybe the reason it bothers me so much is because I deal with disturbed children every day, and it’s my job to help them get well again, and that’s all I ever wanted to do since I was in high school—work with sick kids, be a healer—but now I’m responsible for all the pain this poor girl is going through.”

“You mustn’t feel that way. You didn’t
intend
to harm her.”

Carol nodded. “I know I’m not being entirely rational about the situation, but I can’t help feeling the way I feel.”

“I have some patients to see,” Hannaport said, glancing at his watch again. “But let me leave you with one thought that might help you handle this.”

“I’d like to hear it.”

“The girl suffered only minor physical injuries. I won’t say they were negligible injuries, but they were damned close to it. So you’ve got nothing to feel guilty about on that score. As for her amnesia…well, maybe the accident had nothing to do with it.”

“Nothing to do with it? But I assumed that when she hit her head on the car or on the pavement—”

“I’m sure you know a blow on the head isn’t the only cause of amnesia,” Dr. Hannaport said. “It’s not even the most common factor in such cases. Stress, emotional shock—they can result in loss of memory. In fact we don’t yet understand the human mind well enough to say for sure exactly what causes most cases of amnesia. As far as this girl is concerned, everything
points to the conclusion that she was in her current state even before she stepped in front of your car.” He emphasized each argument in favor of his theory by raising fingers on his right hand. “One: She wasn’t carrying any ID. Two: She was wandering around in the pouring rain without a coat or an umbrella, as if she was in a daze. Three: From what I understand, the witnesses say she was acting very strange before you ever came on the scene.” He waggled his three raised fingers. “Three very good reasons why you shouldn’t be so eager to blame yourself for the kid’s condition.”

“Maybe you’re right, but I still—”

“I
am
right,” he said. “There’s no maybe about it. Give yourself a break, Dr. Tracy.”

A woman with a sharp, nasal voice paged Dr. Hannaport on the hospital’s tinny public address system.

“Thank you for your time,” Carol said. “You’ve been more than kind.”

“Come back this evening and talk to the girl if you want. I’m sure you’ll find she doesn’t blame you one bit.”

He turned and hurried across the gaudy lounge, in answer to the page’s call; the tails of his white lab coat fluttered behind him.

Carol went to the pay phones and called her office. She explained the situation to her secretary, Thelma, and arranged for the rescheduling of the patients she had intended to see today. Then she dialed home, and Paul answered on the third ring.

“You just caught me as I was going out the door,” he said. “I’ve got to drive down to O’Brian’s office and pick up a new set of application papers. Ours
were lost in the mess yesterday. So far, this has been a day I should have slept through.”

“Ditto on this end,” she said.

“What’s wrong?”

She told him about the accident and briefly summarized her conversation with Dr. Hannaport.

“It could have been worse,” Paul said. “At least we can be thankful no one was killed or crippled.”

“That’s what everyone keeps telling me: ‘It could have been worse, Carol.’ But it seems plenty bad enough to me.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah. I told you. I wasn’t even scratched.”

“I don’t mean physically. I mean, are you together emotionally? You sound shaky.”

“I am. Just a little.”

“I’ll come to the hospital,” he said.

“No, no. That’s not necessary.”

“Are you sure you should drive?”

“I drove here after the accident without trouble, and I’m feeling better now than I did then. I’ll be okay. What I’m going to do is, I’m going over to Grace’s house. She’s only a mile from here; it’s easier than going home. I have to sponge off my clothes, dry them out, and press them. I need a shower, too. I’ll probably have an early dinner with Grace, if that’s all right by her, and then I’ll come back here during visiting hours this evening.”

“When will you be home?”

“Probably not until eight or eight-thirty.”

“I’ll miss you.”

“Miss you, too.”

“Give my best to Grace,” he said. “And tell her I think she
is
the next Nostradamus.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Grace called a while ago. Said she had two nightmares recently, and you figured in both. She was afraid something was going to happen to you.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. She was embarrassed about it. Afraid I’d think she was getting senile or something.”

“You told her about the lightning yesterday?”

“Yeah. But she felt something else would happen, something bad.”

“And it did.”

“Creepy, huh?”

“Decidedly,” Carol said. She remembered her own nightmare: the black void; the flashing, silvery object drawing nearer, nearer.

“I’m sure Grace’ll tell you all about it,” Paul said. “And I’ll see you this evening.”

“I love you,” Carol said.

“Love you, too.”

She put down the phone and went outside to the parking lot.

Gray-black thunderheads churned across the sky, but only a thin rain was falling now. The wind was still cold and sharp; it sang in the power lines overhead, sounding like a swarm of angry wasps.