At ten minutes past three Janice left the protective sanctuary of the church and stumbled through the portals back into the bleak and alien world without.
11
The long walk home from St. Patrick’s Cathedral in a driving rain was a revivifying tonic for Janice. The sharp spears of rain striking her face had a cleansing, therapeutic magic to them, and Janice held up her head to receive them. They were reality: cold, stinging, painful, shocking her into a full and sudden awareness of herself and the world around her—the real, present, only world there was in her particular speck of eternity.
Drenched, she arrived at the corner of Sixty-seventh Street and stood a moment gazing up at the massive stone and glass façade of Des Artistes, glistening wetly in the faltering autumn light. Bill’s fortress, she thought with a grim smile. Their bulwark of defense against the enemy without had been useless against the enemy within. Somehow, in planning the building, the artists had failed to provide against intruders from the spirit world. Garlic and wolfbane should have been mixed into the mortar.
She found Carole and Ivy playing checkers on the living-room floor. Ivy’s cheek felt cool against her own. Carole remained to finish the game, then picked up her needle-point and went to the door, flashing Janice a high sign to accompany her.
“He insists on seeing you tonight,” Carole whispered in a kind of delight. “He said he knows that Bill is away, but that you and he gotta talk for Ivy’s sake.” Her face twisted into a funny fright mask. “Gee, hon,” she tremoloed, “why don’t you call the cops? Like Russ says, this guy’s bananas.”
Janice smiled wanly and said, “I may do just that if he keeps it up.”
“If you need help, give a yell. We’re having dinner with Russ’ brother, but we’ll be home by eleven.”
“Thanks, Carole, for everything,” Janice said, meaning it, but glad to see her friend leave.
Janice had failed to shop for food and had to scrounge together a supper for them out of odds and ends. She found a half-filled box of spaghetti in the cupboard and prepared it with butter and Parmesan cheese. They ate it with gusto at the dining-room table, along with canned Bartlett pears and glasses of milk. Afterward they watched television until eight thirty, then went upstairs.
While Ivy sat up in bed, reading her newest Nancy Drew mystery, Janice went about preparing the room.
“What’s that for?” Ivy asked, referring to the large four-panel screen Janice had brought in from her own bedroom.
“It’s for the window; there’s an icy draft coming through the edges of the panes. We’ll have to have them resealed.”
“I don’t feel it.”
“It’s there,” Janice said, spreading the screen to its fullest extension and raising it above the radiator. For some minutes, the sheer bulk resisted all efforts to force it behind the radiator, causing Janice to swear softly and Ivy laughingly to admonish, “Watch your language, Mother; there are children present.” But the screen finally found its way past the various pipes, and now a Chinese red and gold motif totally obscured the window.
“Hey, that looks nice,” Ivy said, surprised. “Can we keep it there?”
“We’ll see,” Janice said, as she packed layers of blankets around the offending radiator. “I don’t want a repeat of what happened last night,” she explained, moving about the room, tidying up, but mainly pushing the bulkier pieces of furniture off into corners, out of harm’s way, and setting the stage for possible action.
At ten minutes past nine, after tucking Ivy in with Panda and kissing them both, Janice turned off the light and left the bedroom, closing the door behind her. She then walked into her own bedroom, opened her little phone book to the letter K, and placed it facedown next to the telephone. Her mind briefly reviewed all she had done, and only after having assured herself that she had forgotten nothing did she allow her head to seek the softness of her pillow. She would rest. Not sleep, she hoped. She would remain dressed, and keep the light on, and just rest, as she waited.
A sound woke her. She keened her ears, listening. She heard the rain, very softly, against the window. And even softer at first, the faint patter of feet—mincing, tiny steps, and the terrible twittering voice: “Daddydaddydaddy-hothothothot—” rising, fading, then rising again, louder: “Hothothothot!”
Janice shook the sleep from her eyes and looked at the clock. 10:05. She had dozed off after all.
The voice suddenly rose to a shriek, became chambered, “HOTHOT HOTHOTHOT!” reverberating, grating across the corridor into Janice’s ears. She covered them with her hands and heard the rush of blood and the pounding of her own heart. The telephone!
—Fists pounding, beating at—something!
Her hands shaking, Janice turned over the directory and sought “KAPLAN.” Her fingers had trouble staying in the holes as she dialed.
—Scratching, ripping sounds—tearing at—what?
“Dr. Kaplan’s service, hold on, please—”
“Damn!”
Seconds passed, then a minute.
“HOTHOT HOTHOTHOT!” The screaming shook the house.
“Dr. Kaplan’s service, thank you for waiting—”
“Dr. Kaplan, please!”
“Is it serious?”
“Yes!”
—Pounding, tearing, beating—
“Name?”
“Janice Templeton.”
“Phone number?”
“555-1461.”
“The doctor will call you shortly.”
“Hurry, please, it’s an emergency!”
—Scraping, bruising, scratching, shouting—
Janice dropped the receiver on the cradle and pushed herself off the bed and made her way to the door.…
“HOTHOTHOT HOTHOTHOT!” echoing, rebounding, filling the hallway with madness and terror, lashing out at Janice with shattering impact, rushing to meet her as she stumbled past the staircase and across the corridor to the bedroom door still closed as she had left it. She paused, panic growing in her, then pushed it open and stared into the sound-consumed darkness.
“HOTHOTHOT HOTHOTHOT” blasted into her face, pitifully sobbing out the words in choked, agonized throat-rasping bursts!
Vague outlines appeared in the darkness as Janice’s terrified eyes sought to adjust. The specter was at the window, flailing white sleeves and bandaged hands digging, scratching at the Chinese screen, prodded, impelled by the continual, unabating “HOTHOTHOT!”
“Oh, God—the screen!” Janice heard herself gasp and, reaching for the light switch, illuminated the room.
Her hands jerked up to her eyes. “No! Oh, God!” she said, nearly voiceless, her eyes blurring with dizziness. “Oh, dear Mary, Mother of God, No!” she cried, feeling a deep nausea rising within her.
For at the window stood her child, screaming, beating, tearing at the Chinese screen, ripping at the varnished and painted canvas with the nails of her hands, now bandageless and exposed, the scorched and blistered fingers bleeding from her superhuman efforts to tear through the barrier and reveal the thing she both craved and hated, desired and feared—the window, her symbol of hope and despair, of horror and salvation, the fires of hell, the doorway to heaven—her unattainable goal.
“Ivy—dear Mary!” Janice tried to say the names—to link them together in a cry of desperate appeal to the powers above, to seek the intercession of the Mother of Jesus in this her moment of severest agony—but her voice wouldn’t work, refused to obey her brain’s command, and all that emerged was a soft and abject sob.