The Mask

wall, she turned her back to it, then fell against it with all her weight, slamming the cat into the plaster behind her, pinning it hard between her body and the wall, hoping to break its spine. The jolt brought a flash of pain through her shoulders and drove the animal’s claws deeper into her back muscles. The cat’s scream was nearly shrill enough to shatter fine crystal, and it sounded almost like the wail of a human infant. But its grip on her didn’t weaken. Grace pushed away from the wall, then slammed into it a second time, and the cat wailed as before, but still held fast. She thrust herself off the wall, intending to make a third attempt to crush her adversary, but before she could fall back on him, the cat let go of her. He dropped to the floor, rolled, sprang to his feet, and scurried away from her, favoring his right foreleg.
    Good. She had hurt him.
    She sagged against the wall, raised the .22 pistol that was stilt in her right hand, and squeezed the trigger.
    Nothing.
    She had forgotten to switch off the safeties.
    The cat hurried through the open door and disappeared into the upstairs hall.
    Grace went to the door, closed it, leaned wearily against it. Gasping.
    Her left hand was scratched and bleeding, and her back bore half a dozen claw punctures, but she had won the first round. The cat was limping; he was injured, perhaps as badly as she was, and he was the one who had retreated.
    No celebration, though. Not yet.
    Not until she had gotten out of the house alive. And not until she was certain that Carol was safe, too.
     
    After the unsettling telephone conversation he’d had with the receptionist at Maugham & Crichton, Paul didn’t know what the hell to do.
    He couldn’t write. That was for sure. He couldn’t get his mind off Carol long enough to advance the plot of his novel by so much as even one sentence.
    He wanted to call Lincoln Werth, at police headquarters, and arrange to have a sheriff’s deputy waiting at the cabin when Carol and Jane arrived up there. He wanted them brought home. But he could imagine the conversation he would have with Detective Werth, and the thought of it daunted him:
    “You want a deputy to meet them at the cabin?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Why?”
    “I think my wife’s in danger.”
    “What kind of danger?”
    “I think the girl, Jane Doe, might be violent. Maybe even homicidal.”
    “Why do you think that?”
    “Because under hypnosis she claimed to be Millie Parker.”
    “Who’s that?”
    “Millie Parker once tried to kill her mother.”
    “She did? When was that?”
    “Back in 1905.”
    “Then she’d be a little old lady today, for Christ’s sake. The kid’s only fourteen or fifteen.”
    “You don’t understand. Millie Parker’s been dead for about seventy-six years and—”
    “Wait a minute, wait a minute! What the hell are you saying? That your wife might be murdered by some kid who’s been dead for most of the century?”
    “No. Of course not.”
    “Then what do you mean?”
    “I… don’t know.”
    Werth would think that he had been out boozing all night, or that he had started the morning with a couple of joints of good grass.
    Besides, it wasn’t fair to Jane to accuse her publicly of being a potential killer. Perhaps Carol was right. Maybe the kid was just a victim. Except for what she said under hypnosis, she certainly seemed to be incapable of violence.
    On the other hand, of all the people she could have claimed to be, why had she said that she was Millicent Parker, the would-be murderess? Where had she heard that name before. Didn’t the use of it indicate latent hostility?
    Paul swiveled his typing chair away from the desk and stared out the window at the gray sky. The wind was picking up by the minute. The clouds were racing westward across the sky, as if they were enormous, swift, dark ships with billowing sails the color of thunderstorms.
    BLADE, BLOOD, DEATH, TOMB, KILL, CAROL.
    I’ve got to go to the cabin, he thought with sudden decisiveness, and he got to his feet.
    Maybe he was overreacting to this Millicent Parker business, but he couldn’t just sit here, wondering….
    He went into the master bedroom to throw some things into a suitcase. After only a brief hesitation, he decided to pack his .38 revolver.
     
    The girl said, “How much farther to the cabin?”
    “Another twenty minutes,” Carol said. “The whole drive usually takes just about two hours and fifteen minutes, and we’re pretty much on schedule.”
    The mountains were cool and green. Some trees had