Beyond the groaning of glass and wood, she heard no alien sound. But something was wrong here. She wasn’t alone. And the intruder was not on the second floor of the house, she was certain of that. He was near. He was watching her. But where? She could find no explanation for what she felt.
The digital clock in the kitchen made a tiny, near imperceptible clicking sound as it rolled over to reveal that the time was five minutes after three A.M.
Something moved in the corner of her eye. She did not turn to stare at it. She chose not to move at all. And gradually, shifting her gaze sharply to the left without moving her head, she took in the figure of a man standing on the western deck.
He appeared to be slight of build, white-faced, with dark hair. His posture was not furtive or threatening. He stood unaccountably straight, arms natural at his sides. Surely she wasn’t seeing this figure clearly, for the clothes seemed improbable to the point of impossibility-formal, and elegantly cut.
Her rage grew stronger, and a cold calm settled over her. Her reasoning was instantaneous. He could not gain entrance to the house through the deck doors. He could not batter his way through the thick glass either. And if she fired the gun at him, which she would have loved to do, shed put a hole in the glass. Of course he might fire a gun at her as soon as he saw her. But why would he do it? Intruders want to get in. Besides, she was almost certain that he had already seen her, that he’d been watching her, and was watching her now.
Very slowly she turned her head. However dark the living room might have appeared to him, there was no doubt that he could see her, that he was looking at her, in fact.
His boldness infuriated her. And her sense of the danger of the situation mounted. She watched coldly as he moved towards the glass.
“Come on, you bastard, I’ll cheerfully kill you,” she whispered, feeling the hairs rise on her neck. A delicious chill passed through her whole body. She wanted to kill him, whoever he was, trespasser, madman, thief. She wanted to blow him right off the deck with the.38-caliber bullet. Or to put it simply, with any power she had at her command.
Slowly, with both hands, she lifted the gun. She pointed it directly at him and stretched out her arms as Chase had taught her to do.
Undeterred, the intruder continued to look at her, and through her quiet, iron-cold fury, she marveled at the physical details that she could make out. The dark hair was wavy, the face wan and thin, and there seemed something sad and beseeching in the shadowy expression. The head turned gently on the neck as though the man were pleading with her, speaking to her.
Who in God’s name are you? she thought. The incongruity of it struck her slowly, along with a completely alien thought. This is not what it appears to be. This is some form of illusion I’m looking at! And with a sudden interior shift, her anger passed into suspicion and finally fear.
The dark eyes of the being implored her. He raised his pale hands now and placed his fingers on the glass.
She could neither move nor speak. Then, furious at her helplessness and at her terror, she cried:
“You go back to hell where you came from!” her voice sounding loud and terrible in the empty house.
As if to answer her, to unsettle her and vanquish her totally, the intruder slowly disappeared. The figure went transparent, then dissolved utterly, and nothing was left but the faintly horrible and completely unsettling sight of the empty deck.
The immense pane of glass rattled. There came another boom from it as though the wind had pushed against it head on. Then the sea seemed to settle. The rushing of water died away. And the house grew still. Even the Sweet Christine settled uneasily in the channel beside the pier.
Rowan continued to look at the empty deck. Then she realized her hands were wet with perspiration, and shaking. The gun felt enormously heavy and dangerously uncontrollable. In fact, she was shaking all over. Nevertheless, she went directly to the glass wall. Furious at her defenselessness against this thing, she touched the glass where the being had touched it. The glass was faintly but distinctly warm. Not warm as it might be from a human hand, for that would be too subtle a thing to warm such a cold surface, but warm as if heat had been directed at it.
Again she studied the bare boards. She stared out at the dark, faceted water and the distant cozy lights of Sausalito on the other side of the bay.
She moved swiftly to the kitchen counter, set down the gun, and picked up the phone.
“I have to reach the Pontchartrain Hotel in New Orleans. Please dial it,” she said, her voice quaking. And the only thing she could do to calm herself as she waited was to listen, to reassure herself of what she already knew, that she was completely alone.
Useless to check locks and latches. Useless to go poking in drawers and nooks and crannies. Useless, useless, useless.
She was frantic by the time the hotel answered. “I have to speak to Michael Curry,” she said. He was to have checked in that night, she explained. No, it didn’t matter that it was five-twenty in New Orleans. Please ring his room.
It seemed forever that she stood there alone, too shaken to question the selfishness of waking Michael at this hour. Then came the operator again: “I’m sorry, but Mr. Curry is not answering.”
“Try him again. Send someone up to the room, please. I have to talk to him.”
Finally, when they had failed to rouse him altogether, and refused of course to enter the suite without his permission-and for that she couldn’t blame them-she left an urgent message, hung up and sank down on the hearth, and tried to think.
She was certain of what she’d seen, absolutely certain of it. An apparition there on the deck, looking at her, drawing close to her, examining her! Some being that could appear and disappear entirely at will. Yet why had she seen the gleam of light on the edge of his collar; why the droplets of moisture in his hair? Why was the glass warm to the touch? She wondered if the thing had substance to it when it was visible, and if that substance dissolved when the creature “appeared to disappear.”
In sum, her mind ran to science as it always had, and she knew this was her tack, but it could not stop the panic in her, the great awful feeling of helplessness that had come over her and stayed with her now, making her afraid in her own safe place, where she’d never been afraid before.
Why had the wind and the rain been part of it, she wondered. Surely she hadn’t imagined that part. And why, above all else, had this creature appeared to her?
“Michael,” she whispered. It was like a prayer dropping from her lips. Then she gave a little whispered laugh. “I’m seeing them, too.”
She rose from the hearth and went about the house slowly, with steady steps, turning on every light.
“All right,” she said calmly, “if you come back, it will have to be in a blaze of illumination.” But this was absurd, wasn’t it? Something that could move the very waters of Richardson Bay could trip a circuit breaker easily enough.
But she wanted these lights on. She was scared. She went into the bedroom, locked the door behind her, locked the door of the closet, and closed the door of the bathroom, and then lay down, plumping the pillows under her head, and placing the gun within reach.
She lit a cigarette, knowing it was dreadful to smoke in bed, checked out the tiny winking red light on the smoke alarm, and then continued to smoke.
A ghost, she thought. Imagine it, I have seen one. I never believed in them, but I’ve seen one. It had to be a ghost. There’s nothing else it could have been. But why did this ghost appear to me? Again, she saw its imploring expression, and the vividness of the experience returned to her.
It made her miserable suddenly that she couldn’t reach Michael, that Michael was the only one in the whole world who might believe what had happened, that Michael was the only one she trusted enough to tell.