The Mask (24 page)

“Because I’m such a great lover?”

“You are, but that’s not why I love you.”

“Because I have tight buns?”

“Not that.”

“Because I keep my fingernails so neat and clean?”

“Not that.”

“I give up.”

“You’re so damned sensitive, so caring about other people. How typical of my Paul to worry about the Scrabble game being fun for Jane.
That’s
why I love you.”

“I thought it was my hazel eyes.”

“Nah.”

“My classic profile.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Or the way my third toe on my left foot lays half under the second toe.”

“Oh, I’d forgotten about that. Hmmmmm. You’re right.
That’s
why I love you. Not because you’re sensitive. It’s your
toes
that drive me wild.”

Their teasing led to cuddling, and the cuddling led to kissing, and the kissing led to passion again. She reached her peak only a few seconds before he spurted deep within her, and when they finally parted for the night, he felt pleasantly wrung out.

Nevertheless, she was asleep before he was. He stared at the dark ceiling of the dark bedroom and thought about the Scrabble game.

BLADE, BLOOD, DEATH, TOMB, KILL…

He thought about the word he had hidden from Carol and Jane, the word that had compelled him to end the game and start another. After adding EATH to the D in BLOOD, he’d been left with just three letter tiles on his rack: X, U, and C. The X and the
U had played no part in what was to follow. But when he had drawn four new letters, they had gone disconcertingly well with the C. First he’d picked up an A, then an R. And he had known what was going to happen. He hadn’t wanted to continue; he’d considered throwing all the tiles back into the box at that moment, for he dreaded seeing the word that he knew the last two letters would spell. But he hadn’t ended it there. He had been too curious to stop when he should have stopped. He had drawn a third tile, which had been an O, and then a fourth, L.

C…A…R…O…L…

BLADE, BLOOD, DEATH, TOMB, KILL, CAROL.

Of course, even if he was able to fit it in, he couldn’t put CAROL on the board, for it was a proper name, and the rules didn’t allow the use of proper names. But that was a moot point. The important thing was that her name had been spelled out so neatly, so boldly on his rack of letters that it was uncanny. He had drawn the letters in their proper order, for God’s sake! What were the odds against
that
?

It seemed to be an omen. A warning that something was going to happen to Carol. Just as Grace Mitowski’s two nightmares had turned out to be prophetic.

He thought about the other strange events that had transpired recently: the unnaturally violent lightning strikes at Alfred O’Brian’s office; the hammering sound that had shaken the house; the intruder on the rear lawn during the thunderstorm. He sensed that all of it was tied together. But for Christ’s sake,
how
?

BLADE, BLOOD.

DEATH, TOMB.

KILL, CAROL.

If the series of words on the Scrabble tiles had constituted a prophetic warning, what was he supposed to do about it? The omen, if it
was
an omen, was too vague to have any value. There was nothing specific to guard against. He couldn’t protect Carol until he knew from which direction the danger was coming. A car wreck? A plane crash. A mugger? Cancer? It could be anything. He could see nothing to be gained by telling Carol that her name had turned up on his rack of Scrabble tiles; there was nothing she could do, either, nothing except worry about it.

He didn’t want to worry her.

Instead, lying in the darkness, feeling icy even under the covers, he worried
for
her.

At two o’clock in the morning, Grace was still reading in the study. There wasn’t any point in going to bed for at least another hour or two. The events of the last week had turned her into an insomniac.

The day just past had been relatively uneventful. Aristophanes was still behaving oddly—hiding from her, sneaking about, watching her when he thought she didn’t know he was there—but he hadn’t torn up any more pillows or furniture, and he had used his litter box as he was supposed to do, which were encouraging signs. She hadn’t received any more telephone calls from the man who had pretended to be Leonard, and for that she was grateful. Yes, it had been pretty much an ordinary day.

And yet…

She was still tense and unable to sleep because she
sensed that she was in the eye of the hurricane. She sensed that the peace and quiet in her house were deceptive, that thunder and lightning raged on all sides of her, just beyond the range of her hearing and just out of sight. She expected to be plunged back into the storm at any moment, and that expectation made it impossible for her to relax.

She heard a furtive sound and glanced up from the novel she was reading.

Aristophanes appeared at the open study door, peering in from the hallway. Only his elegant Siamese head was visible as he craned it cautiously around the doorframe.

Their eyes met.

For an instant, Grace felt that she was not looking into the eyes of a dumb animal. They seemed to contain intelligence. Wisdom. Experience. More than mere animal intent and purpose.

Aristophanes hissed.

His eyes were cold. Twin balls of crystal-clear, blue-green ice.

“What do you want, cat?”

He broke the staring contest. He turned away from her with haughty indifference, padded past the doorway, and went softly down the hall, pretending that he hadn’t been spying on her, even though they both knew he had been doing exactly that.

Spying? she thought. Am I crazy? Who would a cat be spying for? Catsylvania? Great Kitten? Purrsia?

She could think of other puns, but none of them brought a smile to her lips.

Instead, she sat with the book on her lap, wondering about her sanity.

T
HURSDAY AFTERNOON
.

The office drapes were tightly closed as usual. The light from the two floor lamps was golden, diffuse. Mickey Mouse was still smiling broadly in all his many incarnations.

Carol and Jane sat in the wing chairs.

The girl slipped into a trance with only a little assistance from Carol. Most patients were more susceptible to hypnosis the second time than they had been the first, and Jane was no exception.

Again using the imaginary wristwatch, Carol turned the hands of time backwards and regressed Jane into the past. This time the girl didn’t need two minutes to get beyond her amnesia. In only twenty or thirty seconds, she reached a point at which memories existed for her.

She twitched and suddenly sat up ramrod-straight in her chair. Her eyes popped open like the eyes on a doll; she was looking
through
Carol. Her face was twisted with terror.

“Laura?” Carol asked.

Both of the girl’s hands flew up to her throat. She clutched herself, gasping, gagging, grimacing in pain. She appeared to be reliving the same traumatic experience that had panicked her during yesterday’s sessions, but today she did not scream.

“You can’t feel the fire,” Carol told her. “There is no pain, honey. Relax. Be calm. You can’t smell the smoke, either. It doesn’t bother you at all. Breathe easily, normally. Be calm and relax.”

The girl didn’t obey. She quivered and broke out in a sweat. She retched repeatedly, dryly, violently, yet almost silently.

Afraid that she had lost control again, Carol redoubled her efforts to soothe her patient, without success.

Jane began to gesture wildly, her hands cutting and stabbing and tugging and hammering at the air.

Abruptly, Carol realized the girl was trying to talk, but for some reason had lost her voice.

Tears welled up and slid down Jane’s face. She was moving her mouth without the slightest result, desperately trying to force out words that refused to come. In addition to the terror in her eyes, there was now frustration.

Carol quickly fetched a notebook and a felt-tipped pen from her desk. She put the notebook on Jane’s lap and pressed the pen into her hand.

“Write it for me, honey.”

The girl squeezed the pen so hard that her knuckles were white and nearly as sharp as the knuckles on a skeleton’s fleshless hand. She looked down at the notebook. She stopped retching, but she continued to quiver.

Carol crouched beside the wing chair, where she could see the notebook. “What is it you want to say?”

Her hand shaking like that of a palsied old woman, Jane hurriedly scrawled two words that were barely legible:
Help me
.

“Why do you need help?”

Again:
Help me
.

“Why can’t you speak?”

Head
.

“Be more specific.”

My head
.

“What about your head?”

The girl’s hand began to form a letter, then jumped down one line and made another false start, jumped to a third line—as if she couldn’t figure out how to express what she wanted to say. At last, in a frenzy, she started slashing at the paper with the felt-tipped pen, making a meaningless crosshatching of black lines.

“Stop it!” Carol said. “You
will
relax, dammit. Be calm.”

Jane stopped slashing at the paper. She was silent, staring down at the notebook on her lap.

Carol tore off the smeared page and threw it on the floor. “Okay. Now you’re going to answer my questions calmly and as fully as you can. What is your name?”

Millie
.

Carol stared at the handwritten name, wondering what had happened to Laura Havenswood. “Millie? Are you sure that’s your name?”

Millicent Parker
.

“Where is Laura?”

Who’s Laura?

Carol stared at the girl’s drawn face. The perspiration was beginning to dry on her porcelain-smooth skin. Her blue eyes were blank, unfocused. Her mouth was slack.

Carol abruptly flashed a hand past the girl’s face. Jane didn’t flinch. She wasn’t faking the trance.

“Where do you live, Millicent?”

Harrisburg
.

“Right here in town. What’s your address?”

Front Street
.

“Along the river? Do you know the number?”

The girl wrote it down

“What’s your father’s name?”

Randolph Parker
.

“What’s your mother’s name?”

The pen made a meaningless squiggle on the notebook page.

“What’s your mother’s name?” Carol repeated.

The girl surrendered to a new series of spasmic tremors. She retched soundlessly and put her hands to her throat once more. The felt-tipped pen made a black mark on the underside of her chin.

Apparently, the mere mention of her mother frightened her. That was territory that would have to be explored, though not right now.

Carol talked her down, calmed her, and asked a new question. “How old are you, Millie?”

Tomorrow’s my birthday
.

“Is it really? How old will you be?”

i won’t make it
.

“What won’t you make?”

Sixteen
.

“Are you fifteen now?”

Yes
.

“And you think you won’t live to be sixteen? Is that it?”

Won’t live
.

“Why not?”

The sheen of sweat had nearly evaporated from the girl’s face, but again perspiration popped out along her hairline.

“Why won’t you live to see your birthday?” Carol persisted.

As before, the girl used the felt-tipped pen to slash angrily at the notebook.

“Stop that,” Carol said firmly. “Relax and be calm and answer my question.” She tore the ruined page out of the book and tossed it aside, then said, “Why won’t you live to see your sixteenth birthday, Millie?”

Head
.

So we’re back to this, Carol thought. She said, “What about your head? What’s wrong with it?”

Cut off
.

Carol stared at those two words for a moment, then looked up at the girl’s face.

Millie-Jane was struggling to remain calm, as Carol had told her she must. But her eyes jiggled nervously, and there was horror in them. Her lips were utterly colorless, tremulous. Beneath the rivulets of sweat that coursed down her forehead, her skin was waxy and mealy white.

She continued to scribble frantically in the notebook,
but all she wrote was the same thing over and over again:
Cut off, cut off, cut off, cut off
…She was bearing down on the page with such great pressure that the head of the felt-tipped pen was squashed into shapeless mush.

My God, Carol thought, this is like a live report from the bottom of Hell.

Laura Havenswood. Millicent Parker. One girl screaming in pain as fire consumed her, the other a victim of decapitation. What did either of those girls have to do with Jane Doe? She couldn’t be
both
of them. Perhaps she wasn’t either of them. Were they people she had known? Or were they only figments of her imagination?

What in Christ’s name is happening here?
Carol wondered.

She put her own hand over the girl’s writing hand and stilled the squeaking pen. Speaking gently, rhythmically, she told Millie-Jane that everything was all right, that she was perfectly safe, and that she must relax.