Sarah shook her head.
“Something painted on the floor,” Beverly said.
Now she saw it; now she remembered.
“A rat,” Sarah said, wondering. “I was up all night fighting a rat. It wasn’t a dream. But I don’t know how—”
Beverly’s expression turned to one of alarm. With the palm of her hand she touched Sarah’s cheeks and forehead. “You’re coming home with me,” she said.
Sarah tensed and drew back. “No.”
“Come on, Sarah. You’re sick. You need someone to look after you.”
“I can’t leave.”
“Of course you can! Why not?”
Sarah shook her head, groping for the reason. She had to stay, she knew that much. Unfinished business. Someone waiting for her. She remembered something else. “The rat,” she said. “It wasn’t just a rat. It was something else, something much more powerful. And it was trying to kill me. Not kill me physically”—she tried to think of the right word, remembering the feeling of being suffocated—“but push me out, destroy my soul. But I hung on. I woke up this morning, I was lying on the kitchen floor, and I was sick.”
“That’s why you’re coming home with me,” Beverly said gently. “Because you’re sick, and I can take care of you. I’ll just get your shoes and we’ll go.”
Sarah shook her head, staring after her friend. She couldn’t leave; she had to stay here. But then, through her confusion, she wondered why—and wondered if the reluctance to leave was even her own. Was it another trick, another trap? Her head ached so she could hardly think.
“Put these on,” Beverly said. Obediently, Sarah accepted a pair of socks and her boots and began to pull them on. She would leave with Beverly, she decided. She had to think, to figure things out. But first she needed to rest—and she could not rest safely here, because the rat might come back for her. She yawned suddenly, hugely, and then smiled wanly at her friend. “I’m glad you came by,” she said. “I guess I do need somebody to take care of me today.”
Beverly helped Sarah to her feet and kept one arm around her as they walked to the door. “Nurse Beverly to the rescue,” she said.
The next morning Sarah was herself again. The fever, confusion, pain and fear had all vanished in the night, and she ate breakfast ravenously, eager to get on with the day. She had lost Monday, and the thought of that made her feel anxious and pressed for time.
“Maybe you should take it easy today,” Beverly said. “Just lie around the house and relax.”
“I don’t have time for that,” Sarah said, spreading jam on an English muffin. “I have to pick up my telephone, go to the bank, do some grocery shopping, decide on my research topic for the Faulkner seminar, finish my paper on sexist language—”
“You’re not going to do yourself any good if you just get sick again,” Beverly said.
“I’m not going to get sick again,” Sarah said. “I’m perfectly fine.”
“No more nightmares?”
“Not a one. I dreamed it was summer, and you and Pete and I had a house on an island in the middle of Lake Travis. We got there by swimming through an underwater tunnel that no one else knew about.”
Beverly smiled, and Sarah smiled back, swallowing the last of her eggs. She didn’t want to talk about nightmares—she wanted to forget them. When Beverly had questioned her earlier about her experiences Sunday night, Sarah had pretended not to remember, and had quickly turned the subject. In fact, she remembered strange, unpleasant snatches of a nightmare about a rat with glowing eyes, a supernaturally powerful rat which she had struggled against for her very existence. She wanted to forget it. She remembered how seriously—probably the effect of the fever—she had taken that nightmare, and it embarrassed her to think of the things she had said to Beverly about it, her mad babblings about fighting a rat. But it was excusable —she had not been herself—she had been ill.
“I know what I wanted to ask you,” Beverly said. Sarah met her eyes across the table. “That design painted on your bedroom floor—remember?”
Sarah nodded slowly. “Something else I need to do today. Buy some paint remover and clean it off.”
“What is it?”
Sarah rose and began clearing away the dirty dishes. “It’s called a pentacle. Magicians and witches use them in magic rituals.”
“Ah,” said Beverly. “So old weirdo, the one who used to rent the place, was a witch?”
“I suppose so.”
“And used that pentacle—what? To talk to the devil?”
Sarah shrugged. “To conjure up spirits, I suppose.”
“Leave those,” Beverly said. “I’ll wash them all later. I’ve got to get to class—come on, I’ll drop you off. Do you suppose she was part of a coven?”
They went out the door together. “I doubt it,” Sarah said. “She struck me as a more solitary type of loon.”
Outside it was beautiful. The sky was a hard, bright blue and despite the heat of the sun there was a welcome crispness in the air, the faintest smell of autumn. Sarah breathed in deeply, feeling revived. She thought with pleasure of the trees around her house—soon the leaves would be turning brown and falling, and she could rake them into big piles and set them alight.
“I just hope she sent back whatever she conjured up,” Beverly said as they walked across the parking lot together. “Let’s hope there aren’t any leftover spirits hanging around your house.”
Her stomach lurched; fragments of nearly forgotten nightmare scratched at the back of her throat. Sarah opened her mouth, meaning to tell Beverly that she had changed her mind, that she couldn’t, mustn’t, go back to that house.
But Beverly, unaware, had already changed the subject. “That wasn’t much of a norther we had the other night, but I guess summer’s gone for good. I guess we won’t get out to the lake again this year.”
The moment passed, leaving Sarah feeling slightly disoriented. She grasped at Beverly’s words to anchor herself. “The lake . . . yes . . . I told you about my dream?”
They had reached the car. Pausing before unlocking the door, Beverly turned to Sarah with a slightly puzzled smile. “Yes, you did—about an underwater tunnel at Lake Travis? You’d better not tell Pete—I’m sure there’s probably something embarrassingly Freudian in that.”
Sarah nodded and smiled mechanically. There was some other dream, she thought, confused. Some other dream she should be remembering . . . She was silent as Beverly drove, but after a few moments she stopped trying to puzzle out the lost memory and simply enjoyed the familiar sights of this east-west drive through Austin: the students and street-people and corner flower-sellers; the rows of ugly, functional apartment complexes alternating with gracefully aging, tree-shaded frame houses; the rolling green lawn behind the chain-link fence of the state hospital.
And then, her favorite sight, the one she never tired of, as they rose up the overpass over the expressway: the hills. Just a glimpse, the gentle curve of green on the horizon, but it never failed to make her heart lift. The hills to the west of town where the Colorado River wound. They were a symbol of freedom to her. Sarah would never forget her first astonished, joyful discovery of them her first day in Austin six years before. After a lifetime spent on the flat Texas coast the hills of Austin were like a sight of heaven, as exciting and important to her as the facts of being away from home, on her own and enrolled at the university.
“This is it, isn’t it?” Beverly asked.
“Yes, turn off here. It’s not much of a driveway, I know . . .”
“Oh, this old car doesn’t mind.” Beverly steered skillfully off the street and behind Sarah’s car. She shifted into park and turned to give Sarah a long, measuring look. “Promise me,” she said. “If you start feeling the least bit sick, or tired, or even doubtful, you will either call me or come over.”