The Mask

seconds before he spurted deep within her, and when they finally parted for the night, he felt pleasantly wrung out.
    Nevertheless, she was asleep before he was. He stared at the dark ceiling of the dark bedroom and thought about the Scrabble game.
    BLADE, BLOOD, DEATH, TOMB, KILL…
    He thought about the word he had hidden from Carol and Jane, the word that had compelled him to end the game and start another. After adding EATH to the D in BLOOD, he’d been left with just three letter tiles on his rack: X, U, and C. The X and the U had played no part in what was to follow. But when he had drawn four new letters, they had gone disconcertingly well with the C. First he’d picked up an A, then an R. And he had known what was going to happen. He hadn’t wanted to continue; he’d considered throwing all the tiles back into the box at that moment, for he dreaded seeing the word that he knew the last two letters would spell. But he hadn’t ended it there. He had been too curious to stop when he should have stopped. He had drawn a third tile, which had been an O, and then a fourth, L.
    C…A…R…O…L…
    BLADE, BLOOD, DEATH, TOMB, KILL, CAROL.
    Of course, even if he was able to fit it in, he couldn’t put CAROL on the board, for it was a proper name, and the rules didn’t allow the use of proper names. But that was a moot point. The important thing was that her name had been spelled out so neatly, so boldly on his rack of letters that it was uncanny. He had drawn the letters in their proper order, for God’s sake! What were the odds against that?
    It seemed to be an omen. A warning that something was going to happen to Carol. Just as Grace Mitowski’s two nightmares had turned out to be prophetic.
    He thought about the other strange events that had transpired recently: the unnaturally violent lightning strikes at Alfred O’Brian’s office; the hammering sound that had shaken the house; the intruder on the rear lawn during the thunderstorm. He sensed that all of it was tied together. But for Christ’s sake, how?
    BLADE, BLOOD.
    DEATH, TOMB.
    KILL, CAROL.
    If the series of words on the Scrabble tiles had constituted a prophetic warning, what was he supposed to do about it? The omen, if it was an omen, was too vague to have any value. There was nothing specific to guard against. He couldn’t protect Carol until he knew from which direction the danger was coming. A car wreck? A plane crash. A mugger? Cancer? It could be anything. He could see nothing to be gained by telling Carol that her name had turned up on his rack of Scrabble tiles; there was nothing she could do, either, nothing except worry about it.
    He didn’t want to worry her.
    Instead, lying in the darkness, feeling icy even under the covers, he worried for her.
     
    At two o’clock in the morning, Grace was still reading in the study. There wasn’t any point in going to bed for at least another hour or two. The events of the last week had turned her into an insomniac.
    The day just past had been relatively uneventful.
    Aristophanes was still behaving oddly—hiding from her, sneaking about, watching her when he thought she didn’t know he was there—but he hadn’t torn up any more pillows or furniture, and he had used his litter box as he was supposed to do, which were encouraging signs. She hadn’t received any more telephone calls from the man who had pretended to be Leonard, and for that she was grateful. Yes, it had been pretty much an ordinary day.
    And yet…
    She was still tense and unable to sleep because she sensed that she was in the eye of the hurricane. She sensed that the peace and quiet in her house were deceptive, that thunder and lightning raged on all sides of her, just beyond the range of her hearing and just out of sight. She expected to be plunged back into the storm at any moment, and that expectation made it impossible for her to relax.
    She heard a furtive sound and glanced up from the novel she was reading.
    Aristophanes appeared at the open study door, peering in from the hallway. Only his elegant Siamese head was visible as he craned it cautiously around the doorframe.
    Their eyes met.
    For an instant, Grace felt that she was not looking into the eyes of a dumb animal. They seemed to contain intelligence. Wisdom. Experience. More than mere animal intent and purpose.
    Aristophanes hissed.
    His eyes were cold. Twin balls of crystal-clear, blue-green ice.
    “What do you want, cat?”
    He broke the staring contest. He turned away from her with