as the bath beneath the stairs on the first floor. The beauty cabinet contained a wide variety of oils, scents and powders, plus clean, plastic-wrapped combs and brushes. The wall closet held extra sheets and towels, though Yuri made it plain that her bed would be made for her every morning and that the linen and towels would be changed regularly.
One of the three closets which lead off the bedroom contained a waist-high refrigerator which had already been stocked with fruit juices, sodas, cheeses and a few other snacks. He informed her that she had only to tell Patricia Keene what she would like to have supplied her, and the refrigerator would be re-filled twice a week or as often as was required.
She loved it. It was perfect, or as close to perfection as anything she had had before.
“May I please also make a suggestion that might concern your safety and happiness in Owlsden?” Yuri asked.
The tone of the question, the strained expression on his broad face were at odds with the good-humored tour guide he had been only a moment earlier. “Certainly,” she said, apprehensively.
“Lock your door when you retire each night,” he said. “The iron bolt is ancient but sound.”
“Why should I lock it?” she asked, curious about the secretive manner in which Yuri had broached the subject. She was certain that he did not want Lydia and Alex to know what advice he was giving her.
Obviously, he did not want to explain the suggestion, and he looked down at the carpet, as if she would forget that she had asked. He said, “And if you are wise, you will not leave Owlsden for a stroll around the grounds — not once the hour of midnight has passed and not before dawn.”
“Yuri—” she began, not a little exasperated by this sudden, mysterious turn in the conversation.
“Come here,” he said abruptly, walking toward the largest window in her room. He was confident again, sure of himself. It was clear that he had decided to tell her everything, the reasoning behind these odd bits of advice.
She went to the window and looked out.
The snow was still falling, more like a horizontal avalanche than a snowstorm as the wind drove it from left to right across the window. The view looked out from the back of the house on a lawn that was not clearly defined in the blizzard, toward an endless stretch of scraggly darkness which she took to be the forest.
“It must be a beautiful view by daylight.”
“Quite,” Yuri said. “But in darkness, at midnight and after, it is something else again.”
“Are you trying to tell me its haunted or something?” she asked.
“Something,” Yuri said, “but not exactly haunted.” He wiped a thick hand across the sweat-dotted expanse of his broad forehead, then continued, “Twice in the last several months, I have stood at the second floor windows and watched strange lights and stranger figures cavorting down by the pines, at the very edge of the forest, not more than seven hundred yards from this window.”
Katherine felt chilled, though her room was adequately heated. She said, “What are you trying to tell me?”
He sighed. “Miss Sellers, my home is Romania, a dark but beautiful land in Europe. I was born there and grew up there and did not leave until 1942 when I fled the influence of the Nazis. In Romania, indeed in much of Europe, the people do not scoff at many of the things that you in America find so amusing. A belief in evil spirits, possession and exorcism, werewolves and vampires is as common a part of their lives as the knowledge that they must one day die in the natural cycle of things. I am an educated man, as I hope is evident, and yet I can see the wisdom in many of these beliefs and accept the knowledge of generations even if science laughs at it.”
“And you think there are werewolves in this forest?” she asked, trying to be light and airy, but not quite succeeding.
“Worse than that,” he said, a flicker of a smile passing across his thick lips, a smile that contained more of a sense of irony than of good humor.
“What, then?”
“Twice, I have watched a devil's dance in progress.”
“A dance?”
“I know that you've heard about the Satanic cult that has been practicing its own brand of 'religion' in these hills during the last year and a half.”
“Yes,” Katherine said, not bothering to explain about the cat she had found.
“When these cultists welcome a new member to their ranks, a new soul designated for Satan, they perform a devil's dance that is not unlike those I witnessed as a child in Romania. It is an age-old ritual of evil with the most frighteningly powerful ceremonial frenzy I have ever seen. The cultists pray to Satan as the bonfire is lighted, then they slaughter an animal and cast its blood into the flames. Blood is also splashed upon the earth in a circle about the fire, a preliminary guide to the path the dancers will take. In the middle of the dance, if the cult is performing it sincerely and if the new member is a desirable soul to possess, the devil appears in some form or other — perhaps as a dog or wolf, perhaps as a great leopard or black panther with yellowed eyes. He rises on his hindpaws and dances with the new member, to welcome him to the legions of the damned.”
“You can't be serious,” Katherine said. At first, he had frightened her with his warning about the locked door. Now, when she could see that he was merely superstitious, the warning was less unsettling. She could fear prowlers and other human agents, but not spirits of another world. It was almost comical.
“I am very serious,” Yuri said.
She realized that she had hurt his feelings, and she said, “And after the devil has danced with the new cultist?”
“He punctures the throat of the newcomer with his fangs and drinks the blood — simultaneously spitting his own hideous plasma back into the tainted body.”
“That's positively grotesque!” Katherine said, turning quickly away from the window and the forest beyond. “You Romanians have a morbid imagination, don't you?”
“Perhaps it is not imagination at all,” he said, wiping at his face again, as if brushing off a cobweb that he had walked into. “Perhaps it is only
“I'm sorry, Yuri, but I think that sounds silly; I can't accept it. Understand that I wasn't born and raised in Europe, but here in the United States. We teach our children that the devil is little to be feared and that all those other things — werewolves and vampires and so forth — are only real in the movies.”
He had crossed the room as she spoke and stood by the carved door. “I understand,” he said. “And please try to understand me, too. I was not attempting to frighten you, but was merely presenting what seemed to be good advice. Will you lock your door when you retire?”
Reluctantly, she said, “Yes.”
He smiled, pleased with even this small concession, and said, “Excellent! Goodnight, Miss Sellers.”
He was gone in a moment, closing the heavy door behind him, leaving her alone for the first time since she had entered Owlsden.
Katherine sat on the edge of her bed and looking into the full-length mirror that rested on its stand only half a dozen feet away, surveyed her appearance. She realized that her expression was drawn and haggard, the corners of her mouth turned down and touched with doubt. She looked as if she had actually been terrified by Yuri's nonsense and would spend every night in Owlsden shivering in expectation of a vampire fluttering close by her window. She suddenly laughed; the figure in the mirror laughed too. Seeing her smile reflected, she felt a great deal better.
As she prepared for bed, she had time to consider the little scene that had so recently been played out before the window in this room, and she began to wonder if Yuri had motives beyond those that he claimed. He was obviously well educated and it was exceedingly difficult to believe that he was as superstitious a man as he pretended to be.
But what other motivation could he have? Did he mean to frighten her? If so, why?
When she was ready for bed, she found that her ruminations had driven away all desire for sleep. Her eyes felt as if they were pinned open and lacquered in position.
She opened her suitcases and unpacked them, hung her clothes in the two large closets and folded others away in the drawers of the hutch and the triple chest.
When she finished unpacking, she went to the window and stared out at the snow and the distant woods where, Yuri insisted, the devil's dance had taken place. It all seemed unreal.
She went to bed, slid beneath the covers, and reached over and turned off the bedside lamp. Darkness
