Strangers

buttons.
        She could not forestall the attack. For the first time in three weeks, Ginger was overwhelmed by a crushing, irrational terror. It made her feel small, doomed. It plunged her into a strange and lightless interior landscape through which she was compelled to run blindly.
        Turning from the buttons, she fled down the fire escape, and as total blackness claimed her, she knew that her reckless flight would terminate in a broken leg or fractured spine. Then, while she lay paralyzed, the killer would come to her, put the gun to her head, and blow her brains out.
        Darkness.
        

    ***
        
        Cold.
        When the world returned to Ginger - or she to the world - she was huddled in dead leaves and snow and shadows at the foot of a set of exterior cellar steps behind a townhouse, an unguessable distance along Newbury Street from Pablo's building. A dull pain throbbed the length of her back. Her entire right side ached. The badly abraded palm of her left hand burned. But the severe cold was the worst discomfort. A chill lanced up through her from the snow and ice in which she sat. A frost passed into her by osmosis from the concrete retaining wall against which she leaned. The raw wind rushed down the single flight of ten steep steps, snuffling and growling like a living creature.
        She did not know how long she had been cowering there, but she ought to get moving or risk pneumonia. However, the gunman might be nearby, searching for her, and if she revealed herself, the chase would be on again, so she decided to wait a minute or two.
        She was astonished that she had clambered all the way down the ice-sheathed fire escape and had fled, by whatever roundabout route, to this hiding place without breaking her neck. Evidently, in her fugue, reduced to the miserable condition of a frightened and mindless animal, there was at least the compensation of an animal-like fleetness and sure-footedness.
        Like a pair of industrious morticians, the wind and cold continued to drain the warmth from her. The narrow, gray concrete stairwell increasingly resembled an unlidded sarcophagus. Ginger decided it was time to go. She rose slowly. The small backyard was deserted, as were the yards of houses on both sides. Ice-crusted snow. A few bare trees. Nothing threatening. Shivering, sniffing, blinking away tears, Ginger climbed the stairs and followed a brick walkway that linked the rear of the house to the gate at the end of the small property.
        She intended to find her way back to Newbury Street, locate a telephone, and call the police, but as she reached the gate, that plan was abruptly forgotten. On each of the two gateposts was a wrought-iron carriage lamp with amber panes of glass. Either they'd been left burning by accident or were activated by a solenoid that had mistaken the dreary winter morning for twilight. They were electric lamps but had those flickering bulbs that imitated gas flames, so the lantern-glass was alive with shimmering, dancing amber light. That throbbing, yellowish luminosity made Ginger's breath catch, and she was once more pitched into a state of unreasoning panic.
        No! Not again.
        But, yes. Yes. The mist. Nothingness. Gone.
        

    ***
        
        Colder.
        Her feet and hands were going numb.
        She was apparently on Newbury Street again. She had crawled under a parked truck. Lying in the gloom under the oil pan, she peered out from beneath her sanctuary, getting a wheel-level view of the vehicles parked on the other side of the street.
        Hiding. Every time she recovered from a fugue, she was hiding from something unspeakably terrifying. Today, of course, she was hiding from Pablo's killer. But what about other days? What had she been hiding from then? Even now, she was hiding not only from the gunman but from something else that hovered tantalizingly at the edge of remembrance. Something she had seen out in Nevada. Something.
        "Miss? Hey, miss?"
        Ginger blinked and turned stiffly toward the voice, which came from the back of the truck. She saw a man on his hands and knees, looking under the tailgate. For a moment she thought it was the gunman.
        "Miss? What's wrong?"
        Not the gunman. Evidently, he had given up when he couldn't find her quickly and had fled. This was someone she had never seen before, and this was one occasion when a stranger's face was