Above the distant north shore of the lake, lightning blazed across the malevolent sky. A clap of thunder fell from the clouds and rolled across the water.
“We better get the suitcases and the food out of the car before we have to unload everything in the rain,” Carol said.
Grace expected to be attacked on the stairs, for that was where she would find it most difficult to defend herself. If the cat frightened her and caused her to lose her balance, she might fall. If she fell, she would probably break a leg or a hip, and while she was temporarily stunned by the shock and pain of the fall, the cat would be all over her, tearing, biting. Therefore, she descended the stairs sideways, with her back against the wail, so she could look both ahead and behind.
But Aristophanes did not show up. Grace reached the downstairs hail without incident.
She looked both ways along the hail.
To reach the front door, she had to pass the open door of the study and the archway that led to the living room. The cat could bolt out of either place as she was passing by and could leap for her face before she would have time to spot him, aim the pistol, and pull the trigger.
To reach the other door, the one at the back of the house, she had to go right, along the hallway, past the open dining room door, into the kitchen. That route didn’t look any less dangerous.
The rock and the hard place, she thought unhappily. The devil and the deep blue sea.
Then she remembered that her car keys were in the kitchen, hanging on the pegboard beside the back door, and that settled it. She would have to leave through the kitchen.
She moved cautiously along the hall until she came to a wall mirror, beneath which stood a narrow, decorative table. There were two tail vases on the table, bracketing the mirror. She picked up one of them in her injured left hand and sidled toward the open dining room door.
She paused before reaching the doorway, listened.
Silence.
She leaned forward and risked her eyes by peering into the dining room. She could not see any sign of the cat. That didn’t mean it wasn’t in there, The drapes were half drawn, and the day was gloomy; there were lots of shadows, many places where a cat could hide.
For the purpose of creating a diversion in the- event that Aristophanes was in one of those shadows, Grace pitched the vase inside. As it landed with a loud crash, she stepped across the threshold just far enough to grasp the doorknob, then pulled the door shut as she backed quickly into the hallway again. Now, if the cat was in there, it would bloody well have to stay in there.
She heard no noise from the dining room, which probably meant she hadn’t managed to trap the elusive beast. If he’d been in there, he would have been squealing with rage and scratching at the inside of the closed door by now. Most likely, she had only wasted time and energy with her little trick. But at least there was now one downstairs room to which she could turn her back with impunity.
Repeatedly glancing left and right, forward and back, she crept to the kitchen door, hesitated, then stepped through it, the gun thrust out in front of her. She looked the room over slowly, thoroughly, before venturing farther. The small table and chairs. The humming refrigerator. The dangling, cat-chewed phone cord. The gleaming chrome fixtures on the oven. The double sinks. The white countertops. The small countertop wine rack. The cookie jar and the breadbox lined up beside the wine.
Nothing moved.
The refrigerator motor shut off, and the subsequent quiet was deep, unbroken.
Okay, she thought. Grit your teeth and move, Gracie.
She walked silently across the room, her eyes sweeping every niche, every nook: the opening under the built-in writing desk, the narrow space beside the refrigerator, the blind spot beyond the end of one row of cabinets. No cat.
Maybe I hurt him worse than I thought I did, she told herself hopefully. Maybe I didn’t just lame the bastard. Maybe he crawled away and died.
She reached the back door.
She didn’t dare breathe for fear her own breathing would mask whatever furtive sounds the cat might make.
A ring of keys, including those for the car, hung on a small oval pegboard beside the door. She slipped it off the hook.
She reached for the doorknob.
The cat hissed.
Grace cried out involuntarily and swung her head to the right, in the direction of the sound.
She was standing at one end of the long row of cabinets. At the far end, the wine rack and the bread-box and the cookie jar were lined up side by side; she had seen them from a front-on angle when she had first come into the room. Now she had a side view. From this angle she saw something she couldn’t have seen from in front: The cookie jar and breadbox, which usually rested snug against the wall behind the counter, had been moved out a few inches. The cat had squeezed in behind those two objects, muscling them slowly out of its way. It had crouched in that hiding place, its butt against the wine rack, facing out toward the kitchen door. It was approximately twelve feet from her, and then it wasn’t even that far away because it launched itself across the counter, hissing.
The confrontation was over in a few seconds, but during those seconds, time seemed to slow to a crawl, and Grace felt as if she were trapped in a slow-motion film. She stumbled backwards, away from the counter and the cat, but she didn’t get far before she collided with a wall; as she moved, she raised the gun and fired two rounds in quick succession. The cookie jar exploded, and wood chips flew off one of the cabinet doors. But the cat kept coming, coming, in slow-motion strides across the slippery tile countertop, its mouth gaping and its fangs bared. She realized that hitting such a small, quick target was not easy, even at such short range as this. She fired again, but she knew the gun was wavering in her hand, and she wasn’t surprised when she heard the bullet ricochet— making a high, piercing eeeee — off something wide of the mark. To her terror-heightened perceptions, the echoes of the ricochet continued to infinity: eeeee, eeeee, eeeee, eeeee, eeeee…. Then the cat reached the end of the counter and leapt into the air, and Grace flied again. This time she hit the mark. The cat yelped. The bullet had sufficient impact to deflect the animal only an instant before it would have landed, scratching and biting, on her face. It was pitched back and to the left as if it were a bundle of rags. It slammed into the kitchen door and dropped stonelike to the floor, where it lay silent and motionless
***
Paul couldn’t decide what the poltergeist intended to accomplish by its impressive displays of power. He didn’t know whether or not he had anything to fear
from it. Was it trying to delay him, trying to keep him here until it was too late for him to help Carol? Or perhaps it was urging him on, trying its best to convince him that he must go to the cabin immediately.
Still holding the suitcase in one hand, he approached the bedroom door that had been flung shut by the unseen presence. As he reached for the knob, the door began to rattle in its frame — gently at first, then fiercely.
Thunk… thunk.. thunk… TRUNK!
He jerked his hand back, unsure what he ought to do.
THUNK!
The sound of the ax was coming from the door now, not from overhead, as it had been. Although the solid-core, raised-panel, fir door was a formidable barrier rather than just a flimsy Masonite model, it shook violently and then cracked down the middle as if it were constructed of balsa wood.
Paul backed away from it.
Another crack appeared, parallel to the first, and chips of wood flew into the room.
Sliding closet doors and flying porcelain figurines might be the work of a poltergeist, but this was something else again. Surely no spirit could chop apart a heavy door like this. There had to be someone swinging a very real ax against the other side.