The Mask

broken tree limbs that might be swinging against the walls when the wind gusted. The trees were all intact.
    Shivering in the unseasonably chilly autumn air, he just stood on the lawn for a minute or two, cocking his head to the right and then to the left, listening for the pounding that had filled the house moments ago. He couldn’t hear it now. The only sounds were the soughing wind, the rustling trees, and the rain driving into the grass with a soft, steady hiss.
    At last, his face numbed by the cold wind and by the heat-leaching rain, he decided to halt his search until the pounding started again and gave him something to get a fix on. Meanwhile, he could drive downtown and pick up the application form at the adoption agency. He put one hand to his face, felt his beard stubble, remembered Alfred O’Brian’s compulsive neatness, and figured he ought to shave before he went.
    He reentered the house by way of the screened-in rear porch, leaving his dripping coat on a vinyl-upholstered glider and shedding his galoshes before going into the kitchen. Inside, he closed the door behind him and basked for a moment in the warm air.
    THUNK! THUNK! THUNK!
    The house shuddered as if it had received three extremely hard, rapid blows from the enormous fist of a giant. Above the kitchen’s central utility island, where a utensil rack was suspended from the ceiling, copper pots and pans swung on their hooks and clattered against one another.
    THUNK!
    The wall clock rattled on its hook; if it had been any less firmly attached than it was, it would have flung itself off the wall, onto the floor.
    Paul moved toward the middle of the room, trying to ascertain the direction from which the pounding was coming.
    THUNK! THUNK!
    The oven door fell open.
    The two dozen small jars nestled in the spice rack began to clink against one another.
    What the hell is happening here? he wondered uneasily.
    THUNK!
    He turned slowly, listening, seeking.
    The pots and pans clattered again, and a large ladle slipped from its hook and fell with a clang to the butcher-block work surface that lay under it.
    Paul looked up at the ceiling, tracking the sound.
    THUNK!
    He expected to see the plaster crack, but it didn’t.
    Nevertheless, the source of the sound was definitely overhead.
    Thunk, thunk-thunk, thunk…
    The pounding suddenly grew quieter than it had been, but it didn’t fade away altogether. At least the house stopped quivering, and the cooking utensils stopped banging together.
    Paul headed for the stairs, determined to track down the cause of the disturbance.
     
    The blonde was in the gutter, flat on her back, one arm out at her side with the palm up and the hand slack, the other arm draped across her belly. Her golden hair was muddy. A three-inch-deep stream of water surged around her, carrying leaves and grit and scraps of paper litter toward the nearest storm drain, and her long hair fanned out around her head and rippled silkily in those filthy currents.
    Carol knelt beside the woman and was shocked to see that the victim wasn’t actually a woman at all. She was a girl, no older than fourteen or fifteen. She was exceptionally pretty, with delicate features, and at the moment she was frighteningly pale.
    She was also inadequately dressed for inclement weather. She wore white tennis shoes, jeans, and a blue and white checkered blouse. She had neither a raincoat nor an umbrella.
    With trembling hands, Carol lifted the girl’s right arm and felt the wrist for a pulse. She found the beat at once; it was strong and steady.
    “Thank God,” Carol said shakily. “Thank God, thank God.”
    She began to examine the girl for bleeding. There did not seem to be any serious injuries, no major blood loss, just a few shallow cuts and abrasions. Unless, of course, the bleeding was internal.
    The driver of the Cadillac, a tall man with a goatee, stepped around the end of the VW Rabbit and looked down at the injured girl. “Is she dead?”
    “No,” Carol said. She gently thumbed back one of the girl’s eyelids, then the other. “Just unconscious. Probably a mild concussion. Is anyone calling an ambulance?”
    “I don’t know,” he said.
    “Then you call one. Quickly.”
    He hurried away, splashing through a puddle that was deeper than the tops of his shoes.
    Carol pressed down on the girl’s chin; the jaw was slack, and the mouth fell open easily. There was no visible obstruction, no blood, nothing that might choke her, and her tongue was in a safe position.
    A