Hideaway

And again.
    It was rhythmic and getting louder.
    Thud. Thud.
    Lindsey's hand tightened on Hatch's.
    Thud. Thud!
    Someone seemed to be keeping time to an unheard tune by rapping a lead pipe against the hardwood floor of the hallway beyond the door.
    Puzzled, Hatch looked at Father Jiminez, who was staring at the floor, shaking his head, his state of mind not easy to read. As the sound grew louder and closer, Father Duran stared at the half-open hall door with astonishment, as did The Nun with No Name. Salvatore Gujilio rose from his chair, looking alarmed. Sister Immaculata's pleasantly ruddy cheeks were now as white as the linen band that framed her face.
    Hatch became aware of a softer scraping between each of the hard sounds.
    Thud! Sccccuuuurrrr … Thud! Sccccuuuurrrr …
    As the sounds grew nearer, their effect rapidly increased, until Hatch's mind was filled with images from a hundred old horror films: the-thing-from-out-of-the-lagoon hitching crablike toward its prey; the-thing-from-out-of-the-crypt shuffling along a graveyard path under a gibbous moon; the-thing-from-another-world propelling itself on God-knows-what sort of arachnoid-reptilian-horned feet.
    THUD!
    The windows seemed to rattle.
    Or was that his imagination?
    Sccccuuuurrrr …
    A shiver went up his spine.
    THUD!
    He looked around at the alarmed attorney, the head-shaking priest, the wide-eyed younger priest, the two pale nuns, then quickly back at the half-open door, wondering just exactly what sort of disability this child had been born with, half expecting a startlingly tall and twisted figure to appear with a surprising resemblance to Charles Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame and a grin full of fangs, whereupon Sister Immaculata would turn to him and say, You see, Mr. Harrison, Regina came under the care of the good sisters at Saint Thomas's not from ordinary parents but from a laboratory where the scientists are doing some really interesting genetic research.…
    A shadow tilted across the threshold.
    Hatch realized that Lindsey's grip on his hand had become downright painful. And his palm was damp with sweat.
    The weird sounds stopped. A hush of expectation had fallen over the room.
    Slowly the door to the hall was pushed all the way open.
    Regina took a single step inside. She dragged her right leg as if it were a dead weight: sccccuuuurrrr. Then she slammed it down: THUD!
    She stopped to look around at everyone. Challengingly.
    Hatch found it difficult to believe that she had been the source of all that ominous noise. She was small for a ten-year-old girl, a bit shorter and more slender than the average kid her age. Her freckles, pert nose, and beautiful deep-auburn hair thoroughly disqualified her for the role of the-thing-from-the-lagoon or any other shudder-making creature, although there was something in her solemn gray eyes that Hatch did not expect to see in the eyes of a child. An adult awareness. A heightened perceptivity. But for those eyes and an aura of iron determination, the girl seemed fragile, almost frighteningly delicate and vulnerable.
    Hatch was reminded of an exquisite 18th-century Mandarin-pattern Chinese-export porcelain bowl currently for sale in his Laguna Beach shop. It rang as sweetly as any bell when pinged with one finger, raising the expectation that it would shatter into thousands of pieces if struck hard or dropped. But when you studied the bowl as it stood on an acrylic display base, the hand-painted temple and garden scenes portrayed on its sides and the floral designs on its inner rim were of such high quality and possessed such power that you became acutely aware of the piece's age, the weight of the history behind it. And you were soon convinced, in spite of its appearance, that it would bounce when dropped, cracking whatever surface it struck but sustaining not even a small chip itself.
    Aware that the moment was hers and hers alone, Regina hitched toward the sofa where Hatch and Lindsey waited, making less noise as she limped off the hardwood floor onto the antique Persian carpet. She was wearing a white blouse, a Kelly-green skirt that fell two inches above her knees, green kneesocks, black shoes—and on her right leg a metal brace that extended from the ankle to above the knee and looked like a medieval torture device. Her limp was so pronounced that she rocked from side to side at the hips with each step, as if in danger of toppling over.
    Sister Immaculata rose from her armchair, scowling