Darkfall

He wasn't a quitter.

Besides, he thought maybe he was in love.

VII

At fifty-eight, Nayva Rooney looked like a grandmother but moved like a dockworker. She kept her gray hair in tight curls. Her round, pink, friendly face had bold rather than delicate features, and her merry blue eyes were never evasive, always warm. She was a stocky woman but not fat. Her hands weren't smooth, soft, grandmotherly hands; they were strong, quick, efficient, with no trace of either the pampered life or arthritis, but with a few callouses. When Nayva walked, she looked as if nothing could stand in her way, not other people and not even brick walls; there was nothing dainty or graceful or even particularly feminine about her walk; she strode from place to place in the manner of a no-nonsense army sergeant.

Nayva had been cleaning the apartment for Jack Dawson since shortly after Linda Dawson's death. She came in once a week, every Wednesday. She also did some babysitting for him; in fact, she'd been here last evening, watching over Penny and Davey, while Jack had been out on a date.

This morning, she let herself in with the key that Jack had given her, and she went straight to the kitchen. She brewed a pot of coffee and poured a cup for herself and drank half of it before she took off her coat. It was a bitter day, indeed, and even though the apartment was warm, she found it difficult to rid herself of the chill that had seeped deep into her bones during the six-block walk from her own apartment.

She started cleaning in the kitchen. Nothing was actually dirty. Jack and his two young ones were clean and reasonably orderly, not at all like some for whom Nayva worked. Nonetheless, she labored diligently, scrubbing and polishing with the same vigor and determination that she brought to really grimy jobs, for she prided herself on the fact that a place positively gleamed when she was finished with it. Her father — dead these many years and God rest his soul — had been a uniformed policeman, a foot patrolman, who took no graft whatsoever, and who strived to make his beat a safe one for all who lived or toiled within its boundaries. He had taken considerable pride in his job, and he'd taught Nayva (among other things) two valuable lessons about work: first, there is always satisfaction and esteem in a piece of work well done, regardless of how menial it might be; second, if you cannot do a job well, then there's not much use in doing it at all.

Initially, other than the noises Nayva made as she cleaned, the only sounds in the apartment were the periodic humming of the refrigerator motor, occasional thumps and creaks as someone rearranged the furniture in the apartment above, and the moaning of the brisk winter wind as it pressed at the windows.

Then, as she paused to pour a little more coffee for herself, an odd sound came from the living room. A sharp, short squeal. An animal sound. She put down the coffee pot.

Cat? Dog?

It hadn't seemed like either of those; like nothing familiar. Besides, the Dawsons had no pets.

She started across the kitchen, toward the door to the dining alcove and the living room beyond.

The squeal came again, and it brought her to a halt, froze her, and suddenly she was uneasy. It was an ugly, angry, brittle cry, again of short duration but piercing and somehow menacing. This time it didn't sound as much like an animal as it had before.

It didn't sound particularly human, either, but she said, “Is someone there?”

The apartment was silent. Almost too silent, now. As if someone were listening, waiting for her to make a move.

Nayva wasn't a woman given to fits of nerves and certainly not to hysteria. And she had always been confident that she could take care of herself just fine, thank you. But suddenly she was stricken by an uncharacteristic twinge of fear.

Silence.

“Who's there?” she demanded.

The shrill, angry shriek came again. It was a hateful sound.

Nayva shuddered.

A rat? Rats squealed. But not like this.

Feeling slightly foolish, she picked up a broom and held it as if it were a weapon.

The shriek came again, from the living room, as if taunting her to come see what it was.

Broom in hand, she crossed the kitchen and hesitated at the doorway.

Something was moving around in the living room. She couldn't see it, but she could hear an odd, dry paper, dry-leaf rustling and a scratching-hissing noise that sometimes sounded like whispered words in a foreign language.

With a boldness she had inherited from her father, Nayva stepped through the doorway. She edged past the tables and chairs, looking beyond them at the living room, which was visible through the wide archway that separated it from the dining alcove. She stopped beneath the arch and listened, trying to get a better fix on the noise.

From the corner of her eye, she saw movement. The pale yellow drapes fluttered, but not from a draft. She wasn't in a position to see the lower half of the drapes, but it was clear that something was scurrying along the floor, brushing them as it went.

Nayva moved quickly into the living room, past the first sofa, so that she could see the bottom of the drapes. Whatever had disturbed them was nowhere in sight. The drapes became still again.

Then, behind her, she heard a sharp little squeal of anger.

She whirled around, bringing up the broom, ready to strike.

Nothing.

She circled the second sofa. Nothing behind it. Looked in back of the armchair, too. Nothing. Under the end tables. Nothing. Around the bookcase, on both sides of the television set, under the sideboard, behind the drapes. Nothing, nothing.

Then the squeal came from the hallway.

By the time she got to the hall, there wasn't anything to be seen. She hadn't flicked on the hall light when she'd come into the apartment, and there weren't any windows in there, so the only illumination was what spilled in from the kitchen and living room. However, it was a short passageway, and there was absolutely no doubt that it was deserted.

She waited, head cocked.

The cry came again. From the kids' bedroom this time.

Nayva went down the hall. The bedroom was more than half dark. There was no overhead light; you had to go into the room and snap on one of the lamps in order to dispel the gloom. She paused for a moment on the threshold, peering into the shadows.

Not a sound. Even the furniture movers upstairs had stopped dragging and heaving things around. The wind had slacked off and wasn't pressing at the windows right now. Nayva held her breath and listened. If there was anything here, anything alive, it was being as still and alert as she was.

Finally, she stepped cautiously into the room, went to Penny's bed, and clicked on the lamp. That didn't burn away all the shadows, so she turned toward Davey's bed, intending to switch on that lamp, as well.

Something hissed, moved.

She gasped in surprise.

The thing darted out of the open closet, through shadows, under Davey's bed. It didn't enter the light, and she wasn't able to see it clearly. In fact, she had only a vague impression of it: something small, about the size of a large rat; sleek and streamlined and slithery like a rat.

But it sure didn't sound like a rodent of any kind. It wasn't squeaking or squealing now. It hissed and. gabbled as if it were whispering urgently to itself.

Nayva backed away from Davey's bed. She glanced at the broom in her hands and wondered if she should poke it under the bed and rattle it around until she drove the intruder out in the open where she could see exactly what it was.

Even as she was deciding on a course of action, the thing scurried out from the foot of the bed, through the