The Mask

therapy. That’s a lot different than lugging an IBM Selectric into the piny woods and pounding on the keys ten hours a day. Don’t you realize that all the squirrels and deer and bunny rabbits would complain about the noise?”
     
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    Later still, when they were in bed and the lights were out, he said, “Hell, I’m letting this book take possession of me. Why can’t I let the scene lie unfinished for ten days? I might even do a better job with it if I take the time to think about it. I’ll come along with you and Jane tomorrow, and I won’t bring the typewriter. Okay? I won’t even bring a pencil.”
    “No,” Carol said.
    “No?”
    “When you do get to the mountains, I want you to be able to put the book completely out of your mind. I want us to take long walks in the forest. I want us to go boating on the lake and do some fishing and read a couple of books and act like bums who never even heard the word ‘work.’ if you don’t finish that scene before you go, you’ll just brood about it during the entire vacation. You won’t have a moment's real peace, which means I won’t have a moment's peace, either. And don’t tell me I’m wrong. I know you better than I know myself, buster: You stay here, write the end of that scene, and then join us on Sunday.”
    She kissed him goodnight, fluffed her pillows, and settled down to sleep.
    He lay in the dark, thinking about the words in yesterday’s Scrabble game.
BLADE
KILL
O
O
DEATH
     O
     M
     B
    And the one word he had refused to reveal:
    CAROL…
    He still didn’t think anything would be gained by telling her what the last of those six words had been. What could she do about it other than worry? Nothing. She could do nothing, and he could do nothing. Except wait and see. A threat—if one actually arose—could come from any of ten thousand or a hundred thousand sources. It could come anytime, anywhere. At home or in the mountains. One place was as safe—or as dangerous—as the other.
    Anyway, maybe the appearance of those six words had been merely coincidence. An incredible but meaningless coincidence.
    He stared into the darkness, trying hard to convince himself that there were no such things as spirit messages, omens, and clairvoyant prophecies. Only a week ago, he wouldn’t have needed convincing.
     
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    Blood.
    Get it off, scrub it off, every sticky drop of it, wash it off, quickly, quickly, down the drain, every incriminating drop of it, off, before someone finds out, before someone sees and knows what’s been done, wash it off, off…
    The girl woke in the bathroom, in a fluorescent glare. She had been sleepwalking again.
    She was surprised to find that she was nude. Her knee socks, panties, and T-shirt were scattered on the floor around her.
    She was standing in front of the sink, scrubbing herself with a wet washcloth. When she looked at her reflection in the mirror, she was briefly paralyzed by what she saw.
    Her face was smeared with blood.
    Her arms were spattered with blood.
    Her sweetly uptilted, bare breasts glistened with blood.
    And she knew instantly that it wasn’t her own. She had not been slashed or stabbed. She was the one who had done the slashing, the stabbing.
    Oh God.
    She stared at her gruesome reflection, morbidly fascinated by the sight of her blood-moistened lips.
    What have I done?
    She slowly lowered her gaze along her crimsoned neck, looked down at the reflection of her right nipple, on which hung a very fat, carmine droplet of gore.
    The gleaming pearl of blood quivered for an instant on the tip of her erect nipple; then it succumbed to gravity and fell away from her.
    She pulled her gaze from the mirror, lowered her head to see where the droplet had struck the floor.
    There was no blood.
    When she looked directly at herself, rather than at her reflection, she discovered that her body was not covered with blood after all. She touched her bare breasts. They were damp because she had been scrubbing them with the washcloth, but the dampness was nothing more than water. Her arms weren’t spattered with blood, either.
    She squeezed the washcloth. Clear water dripped from it; the cloth bore no grisly stains.
    Confused, she raised her eyes to the mirror once more and saw the blood, as before.
    She held out her hand. In reality it was not bloody, but in the mirror it was sheathed in a glove of gore.
    A vision, she thought. A weird illusion. That’s all. I didn’t hurt anyone. I didn’t spill anyone’s blood.
    As she struggled to understand