The Door to December

men so far. And she'll kill the rest of us if she has the chance.'
     'Not six,' Dan said. 'Eight.'
    * * *
    The Spielberg film had ended. Earl had bought tickets for the next showing of another PG film in the same multiplex. He and Laura had settled into seats in the new theater, with Melanie ensconced between them once more.
     Laura had watched her daughter closely through the first movie, but the child had shown no sign of going to sleep or crawling deeper into her sheltering catatonia. Her eyes had continued to follow the action of the screen through the end of the story, and once a smile had flickered so very briefly at the corners of her mouth. She had not spoken or even made a wordless sound in response to the celluloid fantasy, and she had moved only once or twice, no more than slightly shifting in the theater seat, but even the minimal attention that she had paid to the movie constituted an improvement in her condition. Laura was more hopeful than she had been at any time in the past two days, although she was far from sanguine about the girl's prospects for total recovery.
     Besides, It was still out there.
     She checked her watch. Two minutes until showtime.
     Earl scanned the crowd, which was half the size of that for the previous movie. He appeared to be merely people watching, neither suspicious nor tense. He was less concerned than he had been before the other show had begun; this time, he reached inside his coat to check for his gun only once before the house lights dimmed and the big screen lit up.
     Melanie was slumped in her seat more than she had been before, and she looked wearier. But her eyes were open wide, and she seemed to be focused on the screen as previews of coming attractions began.
     Laura sighed.
     They had gotten through most of the afternoon without incident. Maybe everything would be all right now.
    * * *
    'Eight?' Uhlander was aghast. 'You say she's killed eight? '
     'Six,' Boothe insisted. 'Only six so far.'
     'You know about Koliknikov in Vegas?' Dan said.
     'Yes,' Boothe said. 'He was the sixth.'
     'You know about Renseveer and Tolbeck up in Mammoth?'
     'When?' Uhlander asked. 'My God, when did she get them?'
     'Last night,' Dan said.
     The two men looked at each other, and Dan could feel a surge in the current of fear that passed between them.
     Uhlander said, 'She's been disposing of people in a certain order, according to how much time they spent in that gray room and according to how much discomfort they caused her. Palmer and I were there far less than any of the others.'
     Dan was tempted to crack sarcastic about Uhlander's choice of the word 'discomfort' instead of the more accurate 'pain.'
     He saw why they had been so low-key when he had first arrived, so confident that they had time to enjoy a drink and to proceed cautiously; they had expected to be the last of the ten conspirators to be killed, and as long as they had thought Howard Renseveer and Sheldon Tolbeck were still alive, they had been frightened but not yet panicked.
     Beyond the huge French windows, even the dim gray light was fading.
     Within the library, shadows were growing and shifting as though they were living creatures.
     The glow from the Tiffany lamp seemed to grow brighter as the daylight dimmed. The multicolored, luminescent spots, when combined with the encroaching shadows, made the large room seem smaller, and somehow brought to the decreasing space the feeling of a Gypsy wagon or tent or other fantastic carnivalesque setting.
     'But if Howard and Sheldon are dead,' Boothe said, 'then we're next and ... she ... she could come at any time.
     'Any time,' Dan confirmed. 'So we don't have the leisure for drinks or bribery. I want to know exactly what went on in that gray room — and why.'
     Boothe said, 'But there's no time to tell it all. You've got to stop her! You evidently know we were encouraging OOBE — out-of-body-experiences — in the girl, and that she—'
     'I know some of it, and I suspect more, but most of it I don't yet understand,' Dan said. 'And I want to know it all, every detail, before I decide what to do.'
     A tremor shook Boothe's voice: 'I need another drink.' He got up and went unsteadily to the bar, which was tucked in one corner of the room.
     Uhlander collapsed