Superstition

56

The crash woke them both. Ralph reached for the light and swung his feet out of bed in one movement. He grabbed his robe and looked at Joanna, who was sitting up, pale with shock.

“Stay there,” he said, starting out.

“Ralph-be careful. There may be somebody in the house.”

“I doubt it-after making that much noise.”

He ran down the stairs, switching on lights as he went. There was no further sound or movement anywhere. On the floor below their bedroom he pushed open all the doors one by one, including the one to the music room where he worked. There he grabbed his old baseball bat from a corner before taking the remaining stairs to the hall. When he got there he stopped in his tracks.

The antique hat and coat stand that normally stood near the foot of the stairs lay some twenty feet away on its side by the front door. There was a gash on the door's paintwork where it had hit, as though the heavy object had been thrown against it like a missile.

He approached cautiously, holding the baseball bat ready to defend himself in case whoever had performed this considerable feat of strength was still hiding somewhere. But there was no sign of anyone, no sound or movement.

Looking around him and keeping his back to the wall so that nobody could take him by surprise, he reached down and hefted the iron stand in one hand as though to reassure himself that it really did weigh as much as it had the last time he'd had cause to move it. The strength that it had taken to fling it this distance would be frightening to confront; the reason why anybody might have wanted to do it was even more alarming to speculate upon. It made no sense.

He stepped over the stand without even trying to haul it upright. The drawing room was in darkness and the door partly open. He approached in a half-crouch, both hands gripping the handle of the bat, ready to lash out at the first movement. When he reached the door he slammed it with his shoulder, banging it back against the inner wall. At the same time he hit the light switch.

The room was empty, nothing had been disturbed. He went around it, circling the furniture to make sure that nobody was hiding behind anything, bat still in hand and ready to swing. There was nobody, and nowhere in the room where anybody could hide.

As he straightened up, lifting a hand to rub his nose in puzzlement, he sensed a movement in the doorway behind him. He spun around-and only Joanna's cry of alarm checked his swing before the hard wood smashed into her face. He let the bat fall to the floor and grabbed her in his arms, his fingers digging into the flesh beneath the thick white robe she wore.

“For God's sake, Jo, I could have killed you! I told you to stay where you were.”

“I was afraid.”

He could feel her trembling.

“It's all right, Jo…there's nobody here…”

“How did the coat stand get over there?”

“I don't know.”

“Ralph, there must have been somebody here.”

He didn't answer; he didn't know what to say. But he felt her stiffen, felt her scream before the sound even left her throat. She had seen something over his shoulder.

Ralph turned in time to see the big Venetian mirror that hung above the fireplace lurch crazily into space and fly across the room, moving like a playing card tossed by some unseen giant hand. A corner of it caught the back of the sofa. There was a sound of tearing fabric, then it cartwheeled on, smashing over an antique writing desk and against the far wall.

A moment later, in the sudden unreal silence, neither of them could hear anything except the sound of their own breathing and the beating of their hearts. They clung to each other, conscious of nothing other than the sheer impossibility of what they had just seen.

“I saw somebody,” she whispered, her voice shaking.

“Where?”

“In the mirror. Just before it came off the wall. I saw a woman, standing over there, watching us.”

They both looked in the direction she was pointing. There was nobody.

“Can you describe her?” he said.

“I only saw her for a second. Dark hair, a light coat, about my age. She had a kind of wild look about her, like she was half crazed or something.”

“It's the woman who was here earlier.”

She looked at him. “Ralph, this doesn't make any sense. I'm scared.”

“We're getting out of here-now.”

“It's two in the morning. Where will we go?”

“It doesn't matter where we go. Why don't you call that place your parents stay-they know you.”

“Okay.”

“We'll call them from upstairs…”

He took her by the arm, his eyes darting everywhere with each step for any threat or hint of movement. In their bedroom they pulled on clothes and gathered up the few things they would need to take with them. They spoke hardly at all, except when Joanna called the hotel to check they had a room and to say they'd be there in fifteen minutes.

A loud crash came from somewhere on the floor below. They froze and looked at each other. She sensed he was debating whether to investigate.

“Don't-!” she said.

He started for the door. “That was the music room.”

“Ralph, leave it!”

He looked back at her. “Stay here, finish packing. I'll only be a second.”

She watched him disappear down the stairs, wanting to call him back, but saying nothing. Instead she picked up the overnight bag she had already half filled and went into the bathroom. She grabbed a toothbrush, comb, a few cosmetics…and heard the door click softly shut behind her.

Her first thought was that she mustn't think at all. A door closing by itself was no mystery: a draft of air, or perhaps she'd caught it coming through and caused it to swing shut slowly after her. It was nothing to worry about, even now after what had been happening. She would simply walk over and open it again.

It wouldn't budge. The handle turned, but when she pulled it the door didn't “open. It wasn't locked, it was sealed shut by some force, some power, that didn't want her to leave.

She banged it with her hand, held flat, her palm slapping the smooth surface, and called out for Ralph. There was no answer, no footsteps coming to help her. She waited, then she banged the door again, with her fist this time, then both fists. And she called out, louder. She hammered with her fists and cried out for Ralph, until she realized that her hands hurt and her throat was sore.

Fear stole over her slowly, stealthily, like delayed shock. She became aware that she was fighting uselessly to hold it back, a Canute-like struggle that she couldn't win. Fear, like pain, she knew, would always overwhelm you in the end. You had to let it, but find something to cling to while it passed-even if no more than the idea that it would pass in the end.

But suppose it didn't? Suppose the fear stayed, became a permanent, eternal, tortured scream with no escape…?

No! That was panic, it wouldn't last. Just the first wave…a wave, a wave…a wave by definition couldn't last forever…

A sound came from the wall as though a small explosive charge had detonated in it. She turned with a gasp, trying to identify the spot that it had come from. Before she could, there was another-from somewhere else, but still behind the tiled and mirrored surfaces and in the fabric of the walls themselves. It was a sound like she had never heard before, a subtle, dangerous, insinuating thing. There was something hypnotic in the way, with each repetition, it became increasingly impossible not only to identify its source, but even to be sure that the source was not inside her own head.

Then something happened that she knew for sure she was not imagining. It started with a different sound, a scratching noise, like claws on slate or glass, the kind of noise that made you cringe and set your teeth on edge.

This time she knew where it was coming from. The sound was localized in a way the previous ones had not been. She found herself drawn as though by some magnetic force toward the mirror set into the wall behind the twin adjoining sinks. She saw her own reflection clearly enough, and that of her surroundings, including the door still firmly closed behind her.

But it was not on the image that her gaze was focused: rather, on the glass itself in which the image lay. Something, she sensed, was happening there. And just as swiftly as she sensed it, so the words began appearing-ragged, slightly wandering lines scratched into the silvery reflecting surface on the back of the glass, as though traced by some unseen hand, but in a place where no hand could possibly have been.

The letter “H” came first. Before it was complete, others began appearing simultaneously, as though each was being separately engraved in lines that hung in space at some intangible point between herself and her reflection.

She watched in awful fascination as the message was spelled out. At first she didn't understand. For a split second she thought it was in some strange language. Then she realized it was English, written backward, as though by someone on the other side.

The message was:

HELP ME

Her head swam and she felt herself falling in some strange way into herself, imploding, losing form and focus. She grabbed for something, shook herself; it was all right, she would hang on, it would pass.

A thick mat on the tiled floor broke her fall. She felt a jolt to her knee, then another to her elbow and arm. She pushed herself up. She was unhurt, but aware now that there was no escape, not even into unconsciousness, from what was happening.

HELP ME!

“Help me! Ralph, help me!”

She was on her feet now, pounding at the door, rattling the handle and tugging it toward her. Quite suddenly it opened, seemingly of its own accord, neither resisting nor yielding to the pressure she was putting on it. There was no click of any latch or lock; it just opened and released her.

Ralph was entering the room on the far side as she stumbled, white faced and terrified, from the bathroom. He ran to her.

“Jo-what happened?”

“Didn't you hear me?”

“I didn't hear anything. Are you all right?”

“Let's just go, now-right now, please.”