The Howling II

8

KARYN STEPPED OUT of the elevator in the Seattle Sheraton Hotel, feeling highly pleased with herself. She had a job. At least she would have, starting next month — coordinating the new hotel's banquet facilities. It would be good to feel useful again.

Over the past several weeks there had been several discussions with David, who did not fully approve of her going back to work. Finally, though, he said he would not object if that was what she really wanted. Dr. Goetz thought it was a good idea, and he had helped convince David. She had arranged to work only twenty hours a week, and would have afternoons and evenings free for her family.

This morning she had been so excited about the job interview that she skipped breakfast. Now she was hungry. The hotel's coffee shop opened off the lobby, and Karyn went in. It was eleven o'clock, in between coffee-breakers and the lunch crowd, so the room was nearly empty. Karyn took a table near the window and ordered shrimp salad, boysen-berry pie, and coffee. As she waited for the waitress to come back with the order, Karyn began to feel uneasy. At first it was nothing she could define, just a prickling of the skin and a sort of chill down her back. Then she knew what it was. Someone was watching her.

Karyn tried to shrug off the feeling. It was nerves, of course. The excitement of getting a job. Just sit still, she thought, and it will go away.

But it did not go away. Instead, the feeling of being watched grew stronger and more oppressive. The waitress brought her food and gave her an odd look.

Even though Karyn knew it was foolishness, the desire to turn around became too strong to resist. As casually as she could manage, Karyn turned in her chair and surveyed one by one the other customers. There was a haggard young mother trying to keep a pair of little boys in their chairs. A young man with an Army haircut, probably from Fort Lewis. An old man in a black mohair suit, reading a Hebrew newspaper. A woman with dark hair streaked with silver, studying the menu through oversized sunglasses. A fat woman cheating on her diet with a double caramel sundae. A young woman in a beautician's smock, with the name of the hotel stitched over the pocket.

That was all. An ordinary lot. And none of them watching her. At least, no one was watching when she turned to look.

Karyn returned to her food, but found she was no longer hungry. She knew she had to stop these imaginings. Be logical about it, she told herself. Why would anyone watch her? What reason could they have?

She snapped upright in the chair. Why would anyone wear dark sunglasses on a cloudy day?

Karyn turned again, quickly this time. Everything was as before — all the same customers sitting where they had been. All, except the dark-haired woman in the sunglasses. She was gone.

What had the woman looked like? Karyn bit her lip and tried to remember. The woman's eyes had been invisible behind the dark lenses, and the lower part of her face was hidden behind the menu. Deliberately? The only feature Karyn could recall was the startling slash of white through the blue-black hair. And yet the woman seemed familiar.

Karyn shook her head, impatient with herself. This was getting her nowhere. There was no earthly reason for anyone to be watching her. She had to stop these fancies. She resolved to tell Dr. Goetz about it. In his gentle, professional way he could settle her down, explain these irrational feelings.

She' paid for her uneaten lunch and left the coffee shop. Outside the day had darkened as the heavy clouds pressed down on the city. There was nothing for Karyn to do at homeland she did not want to spend the day alone in the big house with only Mrs. Jensen for company.

She stood indecisively in front of the hotel and looked up and down the street. The marquee of a theater down the block advertised a movie she had been wanting to see. On an impulse she turned and walked to the theater, bought a ticket, and went in.

The audience was small for the early show, and Karyn found a seat by herself halfway down and on the aisle. She settled down to watch the movie, but soon began to shift uncomfortably in her seat. The feeling of being watched came back. It was stronger here in the darkened theater than it had been in the coffee shop.

Making no attempt this time to be casual, Karyn turned to scan the faces in the reflected light from the screen. No one was looking at her. She did not see the woman with the streak in her hair.

After that she found she could not concentrate on the movie, and soon left the theater. Outside, a light, dismal rain had begun. Karyn hurried the two blocks to the parking lot where she had left her car. Once she stopped and turned suddenly. She caught a fleeting impression of a woman half a block behind her, on the same side of the street. Just as Karyn turned the woman slipped into the entrance of a building. In the brief glimpse, all that Karyn could be sure of was that the woman was tall and dark. She walked slowly the rest of the way, turning several times to look behind her, but the woman did not reappear.

The Evergreen Motel was a neglected, U-shaped stucco complex at the northern city limits of Seattle. The Evergreen had no swimming pool, no television in the rooms, no automobile club recommendations, but it was private and cheap and did good Friday-night business among romantic couples from nearby offices. The couple in Room 9, however, had their minds on other things.

"Are you sure she didn't recognize you?" Roy Beatty asked.

"She never got a good look at my face," Marcia said. She smiled, the green eyes glowing with some deep emotion: "But I touched something in her memory. I let her see me twice, and I know she felt the beginnings of fear."

"Do you think that's a good idea?" Roy said. "Dragging it out like this?"

"My love, that is the idea. For what that woman did to me, and to you too, we want her to suffer. She must have time to worry about it."

Marcia lay back across the bed, stretching her long body sensuously. Roy did not look at her. He paced the worn carpet nervously.

"What do we do now?" he asked.

"Don't worry, darling, I have it all planned. I will let her see me again — just a glimpse here and there. Maybe we'll give her a quick look at you. That would give her something to think about. I have watched her at home, and I have a little something in mind there too. The important thing is to have patience. I want your Karyn to finally understand what is happening to her, and why, just before — " She left the unfinished sentence hanging.

"Before what?" Roy said.

Marcia sat up suddenly and swung around to face him. "Don't be stupid, Roy. You know what we have to do."

"Kill her, Marcia? Do we have to kill her? What good will that do?"

Marcia swung her long legs from the bed and walked over to stand in front of him. She looked deep into his eyes, holding her body close to his. Her voice was soft and carressing.

"It will give me peace, darling, after months of agony. It is something I must do. If you don't want to be a part of it, I will understand. Leave now if that's the way you feel, and I will go on alone."

Roy held himself away from the green-eyed woman for a moment, then put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her tight against him. He stroked her hair, gently fingering the streak of silver as though it were a wound. The gentle scent of sandalwood brought to his mind the intoxicating days and nights when they had first been together.

"I can't leave you," he said. "Whatever has to be done, we will do together."

"My Roy," she breathed close to his ear. "My lover." Gently she pulled him toward the bed.

"What did Dr. Goetz say?"

David Richter held his wife's hand and studied her worriedly.

"He said it was all in my head."

David frowned.

"I'm only kidding. He didn't say that in so many words, but that was the gist of his message. What he said was something like, 'Many people go through periods of mild paranoia. Even people with no other neuroses. For someone with your history, it isn't at all unusual. Nothing to worry about.' "

David squeezed Karyn's hand and nodded sagely. "I'm sure Dr. Goetz knows what he's talking about, dear."

"Not in this case, he doesn't," Karyn said. "There is someone following me. A woman. Since the other day when I first saw her in the coffee shop, I've seen her again on the street, once at the library, and again just this morning in a taxi driving by right in front of our house."

"You're sure it was the same woman?"

"I'm positive. She was dressed differently, and always had her face covered or turned away, but I couldn't miss that white streak in her black hair."

David listened thoughtfully. When Karyn finished speaking he rubbed his jaw and gazed off at a corner of the ceiling. "Karyn, about your going to work — do you think we might be rushing things a bit?"

"No, I don't! And what the hell does that have to do with anything?"

"I just thought that, well, the added strain of taking on an outside job just now might — might — "

"Might make me start imagining things?" Karyn finished for him. "Like people following me?"

"I didn't mean that exactly."

"Like hell you didn't." Karyn saw the hurt look come into his eyes, and she reached up to touch his cheek. "I'm sorry, David. I know you're trying to do what you think is best for me. So is Dr. Goetz. It's just that neither of you wants to consider the possibility that I am seeing exactly what I think I am seeing."

David smiled at her, but the doubt was still in his eyes. "I'm trying, dear. I'm really trying." They talked no more about it that evening, and went up to bed early. David fell asleep almost immediately. It was another hour before Karyn began to get drowsy. Then she was jolted back to fullwakefulness. Something was moving around downstairs.

It was not any distinct sound that she could identify. Just a sort of soft shuffling. Then nothing. For a long time Karyn lay tense, staring into the darkness. She fought to convince herself that she had heard no sound, and she prayed that it would not come again.

Then she heard it again. Just the suggestion of movement. She wanted it to be Mrs. Jensen, but knew that it was not. The housekeeper moved with a firm, heavy tread, not the furtive shuffling Karyn heard now.

Her mind groped for possible explanations. The wind. The house settling. Mice. The plumbing. But it was no good. She knew it was none of these. She lay utterly still and listened. For many minutes the only sound Was David's deep, regular breathing. Her ears ached with the effort of listening. Then it came again. Something sliding, like cloth on cloth. Then a muffled thump, barely audible, but unmistakably real.

"David." Her voice was a rasping whisper.

"Wha — "

She placed her fingers lightly on his lips to silence him as he awoke. When his eyes were fully open and alert, she took her hand away.

"What is it?" he said, whispering in reaction to her tension.

"There's something downstairs."

"What do you mean?"

"Sssh. Listen."

They sat up in bed, their shoulders touching, and listened. The seconds ticked by. Karyn's chest began to ache, and she realized she was holding her breath. She let it out in a long, silent sigh.

"I don't hear anything," David said. A touch of annoyance had crept into his voice.

"No, I heard something. Really."

For another interminable two minutes they sat in the bed, their heads cocked toward the door.

Nothing.

"Karyn — " David began, speaking now in a natural voice.

"I didn't imagine it," she said. "There's something down there. Or at least there was."

"Why do you say 'something' instead of 'someone'?"

"God, I don't know. What difference does it make?"

With a sigh, David threw back the covers. "I'll go down and look around."

Karyn watched as he got out of bed, pulled on a robe over his white pajamas, and went out into the hallway. She felt foolish. Like some giddy wife in an old television sitcom. "Ricky, get up, I heard a burglar!" "Aw, go hack to sleep, Lucy, ees nothing."

Briskly she threw off the blankets and got up. At least she did not have to stay up here cowering in bed, playing out her role. Pulling on a quilted robe, she went out the door and headed down the hallway toward the stairs. At the head of the stairs she stopped to look into Joey's room. The boy was sleeping peacefully. Karyn went on down to join her husband.

All the lights were blazing now as David flicked them on as he walked from room to room. When Karyn reached the bottom of the stairs he was just coming back from the rear of the house. Behind him was Mrs. Jensen, her face puffy from sleep, her hair twisted around plastic rollers.

"Nothing down here," David said. Karyn knew he was making an effort not to let his irritation show.

"Mrs. Jensen," she said, "did you hear anything?"

"Not me. Not until Mr. Richter knocked on my door. But then, I sleep like the dead anyway."

Karyn looked around helplessly. "I'm sure I heard a noise down here."

"Well, there's nothing here now," David said. "You can go back to bed, Mrs. Jensen. Sorry to disturb you."

Karyn waited while David went around turning off the lights, then followed him upstairs. They got into bed and he lay rigidly with his back to her. She wanted to reach out and touch him, bring him close, but she could not. She had to listen. But there were no more sounds from downstairs. After a very long time she fell into a troubled sleep.