Paul felt defenseless. He scanned the room for makeshift weapons, but he saw nothing useful.
The.38 revolver was in the suitcase. He wouldn’t be able to get to it in time to defend himself with it, and he wished fervently that he had kept the gun in his hand.
THUNKTHUNKTHUNKTHUNK!
The bedroom door exploded inward in half a dozen large pieces and countless smaller chunks and scraps.
He threw one arm over his face to protect his eyes. Wood rained down on all sides of him.
When he lowered his arm, he saw there was no one standing beyond the doorway, no man with an ax. The chopper-of-doors was, after all, the unseen presence.
THUNK!
Paul stepped over a shattered section of the door and went out into the hallway
***
The fuse box was in the kitchen pantry. Carol engaged all the breaker switches, and the lights came on.
There was no telephone. That was virtually the only modern convenience the cabin lacked.
“Do you think it’s chilly in here?” Carol asked.
“A little.”
“We have a bottled-gas furnace, but unless it’s really cold, the fireplace is nicer. Let’s bring in some firewood.”
“You mean we’ve got to cut down a tree?”
Carol laughed. “That won’t be necessary. Come see.”
She led the girl outside, to the rear of the cabin, where an open porch ended in steps leading down to a short rear yard. The yard met the edge of a small meadow where the grass was knee-deep, and the meadow climbed up toward a wall of trees fifty yards away.
When Carol saw that familiar landscape, she stopped, surprised, remembering the dream that had spoiled her sleep several nights last week. In the nightmare, she had been running through one house, then through another house, then across a mountain meadow, while something silvery flickered in the darkness behind her. At the time, she had not realized that the meadow in the dream was this meadow.
“Something wrong?” Jane asked.
“Huh? Oh. No. Let’s get that firewood.”
She led the girl down the porch steps and to the left, to where a woodshed was attached to the southwest corner of the cabin.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. The rain hadn’t
begun to fall yet.
Carol keyed open the heavy-duty padlock on the woodshed, took it off the hasp, and slipped it in her jacket pocket. There would be no need to replace it until they were ready to return to Harrisburg, nine or ten days from now.
The woodshed door creaked open on unoiled hinges. Inside, Carol tugged on the chain-pull light, and a bare hundred-watt bulb revealed stacks of dry cordwood being protected from inclement weather.
A scuttle for carrying firewood hung from a ceiling hook. Carol got it down and handed it to the girl. “If you fill it up four or five times, we’ll have more than enough wood to last us until tomorrow morning.”
By the time Jane returned from taking the first scuttle-load into the cabin, Carol was at the chopping block, using an ax to split a short log into four sticks.
“What’re you doing?” the girl asked, stopping well
out of the way and staring warily at the ax.
“When I build a fire,” Carol said, “I put kindling on the bottom, a layer of these splits on top of that, and then the full logs to crown it off. It never fails to bum well that way. See? I’m a regular Daniel Boone.”
The girl scowled. “That ax looks awful sharp.”
“Has to be.”
“Are you sure it’s safe?”
“I’ve done it lots of times before, here and at home,” Carol said. “I’m an expert. Don’t worry, honey. I’m not going to accidentally amputate my toes.”
She picked up another short log and started to split it into quarters.
Jane went to the woodshed, giving the chopping block a wide berth. When she returned, carrying her second scuttle-load to the house, she repeatedly glanced over her shoulder, frowning.
Carol began quartering another log.
THUNK!
***
Carrying his suitcase, Paul walked down the second-floor hall to the stairway, and the poltergeist went with him. On both sides, doors opened and slammed shut, opened and slammed shut, again and again, all by themselves and with such tremendous force that it sounded as if he were walking through a murderous barrage of cannon fire.
As he descended the stairs, the chandelier at the top of the well began describing wide circles on the end of its chain, stirred by a breeze that Paul could not feel or moved by a hand that had no substance.
On the first floor, paintings were flung off walls as he passed by. Chairs toppled over. The living room sofa rocked wildly on its four graceful wooden legs. In the kitchen, the overhead utensil rack shook; pots and pans and ladles banged against one another.
By the time he reached the Pontiac in the garage, he knew he didn’t have to bother taking the entire suitcase to the mountains. He hadn’t wanted to go charging into the cabin with just a gun and the clothes on his back, for if nothing had been wrong, he would have looked like an idiot, and he would have done Jane a grave injustice. But now, because of the call from Polly at Maugham & Crichton, and because of the astounding display put on by the poltergeist, be knew that everything was wrong; there was no chance whatsoever that he would reach the cabin only to discover that all was peaceful. He would be walking into a nightmare of one kind or another. No doubt about it. So he opened the suitcase on the garage floor beside the car, took out the loaded revolver, and left the rest of his stuff behind.
As he was backing out of the driveway, he saw Grace Mitowski’s blue Ford turn the corner, too fast. It angled toward the curb in front of the house, scraping its sidewalls so badly that blue-white smoke rose from them.
Grace was out of the car the instant it stopped. She rushed to the Pontiac, moving faster than Paul had seen her move in years. She pulled open the front, passenger-side door and leaned in. Her hair was in complete disarray. Her face was eggshell white and spattered with blood.
“Good God, Grace, what’s happened to you?”
“Where’s Carol?”
“She went to the cabin.”
“Already?”
“This morning.”
“Damn? Exactly when?’
"Three hours ago.”
Grace’s eyes contained a haunted expression. “The girl went with her?”
“Yes.”
She closed her eyes, and Paul could see she was on the edge of panic, trying to deal with it and calm herself. She opened her eyes and said, “We’ve got to go after them.”
“That’s where I’m headed.”
He saw her eyes widen as she noticed the revolver lying on the car seat beside him, the muzzle pointed forward, toward the dashboard.
She raised her eyes from the gun to his face. “You know what’s happening?” she asked, surprised.
“Not really,” he said, putting the gun in the glove compartment. “All I know for sure is that Carol’s in trouble. Damned serious trouble.”
“It’s not just Carol we’ve got to worry about,” Grace said. “It’s both of them.”
“Both? The girl, you mean? But I think the girl’s the one who’s going to—”
“Yes,” Grace said. “She’s going to try to kill Carol. But she might be the one who ends up dead. Like before.”
She got in the car and pulled the door shut.
“Like before?” Paul said. “I don’t—” He saw her blood-crusted hand. “That needs medical attention.”
“There’s no time.”
“What the hell’s happening?” he demanded, his fear for Carol briefly giving way to frustration.” I know something strange is going on, but I don’t know what in Christ’s name it is.”
“I do,” she said. “I know. In fact I know a lot more than maybe I want to know.”