“Not from me,” Lydia said. “I don't want to dwell on anything that gruesome.”
They sat for a long time in silence, while Alex nursed the fire and built it to a peak that was easily maintained by the regular feeding of dry logs into the yellow-orange mouth.
“Mason and I can get a fire started in the dining room and kitchen hearths,” he said. “Pity we can't go into the drawing room and use that one as well. Even so, we ought to have the bottom floor fairly warm in a few hours.”
Katherine looked at her watch and saw the time was ten minutes after ten o'clock. She said, “I think I'll go up to my room and get into some warmer clothes. I feel pretty chill right now.”
Alex turned away from the fireplace and picked up the flashlight that Mason Keene had been using earlier. He approached her, smiling, and said, “I'll help you find your way upstairs, Katherine.”
“That's not necessary.”
“But I don't mind. I don't want you tripping and falling. If anyone hurt himself here, we'd be hard-pressed to get him medical help.”
“I'll take a candle,” she said. “I'll be just fine.” She hoped she didn't sound as desperate as she felt. The last thing she wanted was to be alone with Alex Boland, in a darkened house, for even a brief moment.
“Don't be stubborn,” he said, taking her elbow in a gentlemanly manner. “It will only take a minute to—”
“I insist,” Katherine said, pulling her arm away from him. “You and Mason have to see to the other fires. That's the most important thing right now, isn't it?”
He didn't say anything but looked down at her wrist — at her watch. Had he seen her glancing at the time a moment ago? And what could he make of that, even if he had seen it?
“Okay,” he said at last.
“Be back in a minute,” Katherine told Lydia.
She picked up one of the candles in a brass holder with a wax-catch that flared out around its hilt, and she left the room. She walked sedately toward the stairs but, once on them, took the risers two at a time.
Strange shadows played on the walls around her, loomed in front and shrank into blackness behind.
At the top of the staircase, she turned around and held the candle out before her, barely lighting the last flight of steps. If anyone had followed her, he was now waiting beyond the turn at the landing, on the flight below this last one, where she could not see him. She turned and started down the hall toward her room, the candlelight carrying only six or seven feet in front of her.
She was halfway down the hall when she heard something close at hand: a floorboard squeaking as someone stepped on it without being aware that it was loose beneath the carpet. She stopped, stood very still and slowly turned in every direction, looking for movement, a glimpse of light.
She could not see anyone.
“Anybody there?”
When she got no answer, she went on.
She closed and bolted the door to her room and lighted the ornamental candles on her hutch and triple dresser. Satisfied that there was no one in the room, closets and attached bath, she began to change clothes.
Her watch told the time: 10:22, little more than half an hour until she must meet Michael Harrison at the top of the ski run. If she had previously had any doubts about sneaking away from Owlsden during the night, they had been destroyed by this sudden deprivation of light and by Alex's increasingly suspicious behavior — Where had he been all day, until after darkness had fallen, in town arranging something with his friends? And why his insistence to accompany her to the second floor, to get her alone long enough to…?
She zipped up her ski jacket and pulled the toboggan cap down over her ears. She was ready to go.
Picking up the candle in the brass holder, she blew out those that burned on the hutch and the dresser, and she went to the door. As she slid the iron bolt out of place, she heard someone on the other side of the door — taken quite by surprise as he had been listening at the keyhole — scurrying quickly down the long corridor. When she swung her door open and stepped into the hall, she heard another door swing shut farther along toward the head of the stairs. Though the sound had carried well in the still house, it was not possible to figure out which door it had been.
The stairs seemed an eternity away, but she struck out for them just the same, flinching uncontrollably as she passed each room and expected to be accosted by someone hiding in one of them.
She was halfway along the corridor when, not so very far behind her, a door squeaked open and someone stepped into the hall, hot on her trail again.
She turned swiftly and held the candle high and forward, but she was too far away to illuminate anything. For a moment, she considered taking several quick steps back the way she had come, thereby surprising and trapping the stalker in the open where she could learn his identity. The only thing that held her back was the certain knowledge that she would not like what happened after she had pulled off this little coup…
Turning again, she walked toward the steps more quickly than before, went down them two at a time with the inescapable feeling that someone was only inches behind her.
Near the bottom of the steps, she reluctantly blew out her candle so that none of the household would see her leaving.
Moving cautiously along the main hall, aware that she faced danger in front as well as behind now, she passed the library where the two women waited. She felt certain that the stalker was still behind her, watching and waiting for the proper moment to make his move. She passed the dining room where she could hear Mason Keene speaking to someone else. She assumed he must be talking to Alex and that surprised her. She had assumed that it was Alex behind her, waiting to trip her up.
Of course, Alex did not have to be the only one of the cultists in Owlsden, did he? He might easily have stationed one of his friends upstairs in the event that she tried to slip away from them.
She stepped into the kitchen, turned and shut the door. She stepped quickly to the table in the center of the room, fumbled around until she found a wooden chair, turned and placed the chair against the door so that the back of it was braced under the knob.
She waited.
Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the darkness and fully used the shallow snowlight that came through the big windows.
Had she been imagining the stalker? Had there really been someone behind her, or had she—
Someone tried the door, not boldly, not normally— but stealthily, as if he half expected it to be locked.
Katherine turned and went quickly across the kitchen.
Behind her, someone was cautiously putting a shoulder to the door, trying to pop the brace loose with a minimum of noise.
You'll be with Michael in a few minutes, she told herself. Everything will be fine then. He'll take care of you; he'll joke with you; he'll make everything bright and fine.
She opened the kitchen door, stepped into the wind and snow, closed the door behind her, and was instantly relieved that she had taken the first major step in her flight from this strange house.
CHAPTER 15
When she had gone only twenty steps from the kitchen door, her eyes watering from the fierce assault of the wind, her face numb with cold, Katherine began to wonder if the loss of power had, after all, been due to the storm. Inside Owlsden, she had become accustomed to the continuous growl of the elements without really understanding how furious they really were. The first snow had been a spring shower compared to this thunderstorm of a buzzard. She could not see more than another step in front of her, and she guided herself as much by instinct as by anything she came across in the way of landmarks. The snow was well over her knees except where the wind had scoured it away to drift it elsewhere, and she was required to expand an enormous amount of energy to make any headway at all. Why hadn't Michael told her how rough it would be? The heavy insulation of her ski-suit did not keep her as toasty warm as usual; chills ran up her spine as the most severe blasts seemed somehow to cut right through the quilted fabric and dry the thin sheen of perspiration on her body.
Twice, she turned and looked back toward the house to see if anyone were following her, but the first time
