The Mask

few hours ago. Nevertheless, Paul stopped talking in midsentence, his attention captured by the flash, his eyes drawn to the long, many-paned window behind the sink. On the rear lawn, the trees appeared to writhe and shimmer and ripple in the fluttering storm light, so that it seemed he was looking not at the trees themselves but at their reflections in the surface of a lake.
    Suddenly, another movement caught his eye, though he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. The afternoon, which had been gray and dark to begin with, was now gradually giving away to an early night, and thin fog was drifting in. Shadows lay everywhere.
    The meager daylight was deceptive, muddy; it distorted rather than illuminated those things it touched. In that penumbral landscape, something abruptly darted out from behind the thick trunk of an oak tree, crossed a stretch of open grass, and quickly disappeared behind a lilac bush.
    Carol said, “Paul? What’s wrong?”
    “Someone’s out on the lawn.”
    “In this rain? Who?”
    “I don’t know.”
    She joined him by the window. “I don’t see anybody.”
    “Someone ran from the oak to the lilac bush. He was hunched over and moving pretty fast.”
    “What’s he look like?”
    “I can’t say. I’m not even sure it was a man. Might have been a woman.”
    “Maybe it was just a dog.”
    “Too big.”
    “Could’ve been Jasper.”
    Jasper was the Great Dane that belonged to the Hanrahan family, three doors down the street. He was a large, piercing-eyed, friendly animal with an amazing tolerance for small children and a liking for Oreo cookies.
    “They wouldn’t let Jasper out in weather like this,” Paul said. “They pamper that mutt.”
    Lightning pulsed softly again, and a violent gust of wind whipped the trees back and forth, and rain began to fall harder than before—and in the middle of that maelstrom, something rushed out from the lilac bush.
    “There!” Paul said.
    The intruder crouched low, obscured by the rain and the mist, a shadow among shadows. It was illuminated so briefly and strangely by the lightning that its true appearance remained tantalizingly at the edge of perception. It loped toward the brick wall that marked the perimeter of the property, vanished for a moment in an especially dense patch of fog, reappeared as an amorphous black shape, then changed direction, paralleling the wall now, heading toward the gate at the northwest corner of the rear lawn. As the darkening sky throbbed with lightning once more, the intruder fled through electric-blue flashes, through the open gate, into the street, and away.
    “Just the dog,” Carol said.
    Paul frowned. “I thought I saw…”
    “What?”
    “A face. A woman looking back… just for a second, just as she went through the gate.”
    “No,” Carol said. “It was Jasper.”
    “You saw him?”
    “Clearly?”
    “Well, no, not clearly. But I could see enough to tell that it was a dog the size of a small pony, and Jasper’s the only pooch around who fits that description.”
    “I guess Jasper’s a lot smarter than he used to be.”
    Carol blinked. “What do you mean?”
    “Well, he had to unlatch the gate to get into the yard. He never used to be able to do that trick.”
    “Oh, of course he didn’t. We must have left the gate open.”
    Paul shook his head. “I’m sure it was closed when we drove up a while ago.”
    “Closed, maybe—but not latched. The wind pushed it open, and Jasper wandered in.”
    Paul stared out at the rain-slashed fog, which glowed dully with the last somber rays of the fading twilight. “I guess you’re right,” he said, though he was not entirely convinced. “I better go latch the gate.”
    “No, no,” Carol said quickly. “Not while the storm’s on.”
    “Now look here, sugarface, I’m not going to jump into bed and pull the blankets over my head every time there’s a little thunder—just because of what happened this afternoon.”
    “I don’t expect you to,” she said. “But before you start dancing in the rain like Gene Kelly, you’ve got to let me get over what happened today. It’s still too fresh in my mind for me to stand here watching you while you cavort across the lawn in the lightning.”
    “It’ll only take a moment and—”
    “Say, are you trying to get out of making that fettuccine?” she asked, cocking her head and looking at him suspiciously.
    “Certainly not. I’ll finish making it as soon as I’ve gone and closed the gate.”
    “I know what you’re up to, mister,” she said smugly. “You’re hoping you will be struck by lightning