Intensity

Climbing the stairs, pulling the girl after her, Chyna felt a hundred years old, weak and depleted. She wanted to sit and catch her breath and let her aching legs rest. To keep moving, Ariel needed constant tension on her arm; without it, she stopped and stood murmuring soundlessly. Each riser seemed higher than the one below it, as though Chyna were the storybook Alice in the wake of the white rabbit, her stomach full of exotic mushrooms, ascending an enchanted staircase in some dark wonderland.

Then, as they turned at the landing and started up the second flight, glass shattered into the living room below. In an instant, that sound made Chyna young again, able to bound like a gazelle up stairs made for giants.

'Hurry!' she urged Ariel, pulling her along.

The girl picked up her pace but still seemed to be plodding.

Leaping, desperate, to the top of the second flight, Chyna said, 'Hurry!'

Vicious barking rose in the stairwell below.

Chyna entered the upstairs hall, holding tightly to the girl's hand.

She could hear the galloping thunder of ascending dogs louder even than her own heart.

To the door on the left. Into Vess's bedroom.

She dragged Ariel after her, across the threshold, and slammed the door. There was no lock, just the spring latch activated by the knob.

They're dogs, for God's sake, just dogs, mean as hell, but they can't operate a doorknob.

A dog threw itself against the door, which rattled in its frame but seemed secure.

Chyna led Ariel to the open window, where she propped the mop against the wall.

Barking, barking, the dogs clawed at the door.

With both hands, Chyna clasped the girl's face, leaned close, and peered hopefully into her beautiful blue but vacant eyes. 'Honey, please, I need you again, like I needed you with the power drill and the handcuffs. I need you a lot worse now, Ariel, because we don't have much time, not much time at all, and we're so close, we really are, so damn close.'

Though their eyes were at most three inches apart, Ariel seemed not to see Chyna.

'Listen to me, listen, honey, wherever you are, wherever you're hiding out there in the Wild Wood or beyond the wardrobe door there in Narnia-is that where you are, baby? — or maybe Oz, but wherever you are, please listen to me and do what I tell you. We've got to go out on the porch roof. It's not steep, you can do it, but you have to be careful. I want you to go out the window and then take a couple of steps to the left. Not to the right. There's not much roof to the right, you'll fall off. Take a couple steps to the left and stop and just wait there for me. I'll be right behind you, just wait, and I'll take you on from there.'

She let go of the girl's face and hugged her fiercely, loving her as she would have loved a sister if she'd had one, as she wished she had been able to love her mother, loving her for what she had been through, for having suffered and survived.

'I am your guardian, honey. I'm your guardian. Vess is never going to touch you again, the freak, the hateful bastard. He's never going to touch you again. I'm going to get you out of this stinking place, and away from him forever, but you have to work with me, you have to help and listen and be careful, so careful.'

She let go of the girl and met her eyes again.

Ariel was still Elsewhere. There was no flicker of recognition as there had been for a split second in the cellar, after the girl had used the drill.

The barking had stopped.

From the far side of the room came a new and disturbing sound. Not the clatter of the door shaking in its frame. A harder rattling noise. Metallic.

The knob was jiggling back and forth. One of the dogs must be pawing industriously at it.

The door wasn't well fitted. Chyna could see a half-inch gap between the edge of it and the jamb. In the gap was a gleam of shiny brass: the tongue of the simple latch. If the latch was not seated deeply in the jamb, even the dog's fumbling might, by purest chance, spring it open.

'Wait,' she told Ariel.

She crossed the room and tried to pull the dresser in front of the door.

The dogs must have sensed that she'd drawn nearer, because they began barking again. The old black iron knob rattled more furiously than before.

The dresser was heavy. But there was no straight-backed chair that she could wedge under the knob, and the nightstand didn't seem bulky enough to prevent the dogs from shoving the door open if, in fact, the spring latch popped out of the jamb.

Heavy as it was, she nevertheless dragged the dresser halfway across the bedroom door. That seemed good enough.

The Dobermans were going crazy, barking more ferociously than ever, as if they knew that she had foiled them.

When Chyna turned to Ariel again, the girl was gone.

'No.'

Panicked, she ran to the window and looked outside.

Radiant in moonlight, hair silver now instead of blond, Ariel waited on the porch roof exactly two short steps to the left of the window, where she'd been told to go. Her back was pressed to the log wall of the house, and she was staring at the sky, though she was probably still focused on something infinitely farther away than mere stars.

Chyna pushed the sponge mop onto the roof and then went out through the window while the infuriated Dobermans raged in the house behind her.

Outside, blinded dogs were no longer wailing miserably in the distance.

Chyna reached for the girl. Ariel's hand was not stiff and clawlike as it had been before. It was still cold but now limp.

'That was good, honey, that was good. You did just what I said. But always wait for me, okay? Stay with me.'

She picked up the mop with her free hand and led Ariel to the edge of the porch roof. The gap between them and the motor home was less than a foot wide, but it was potentially dangerous for someone in Ariel's condition.

'Let's step across together. Okay, honey?'

Ariel was still gazing at the sky. In her eyes were cataracts of moonlight that made her look like a milky-eyed corpse.

Chilled as if the dead moonlight eyes were an omen, Chyna let go of her companion's hand and gently forced her to tilt her head down until she was looking at the gap between the porch roof and the motor home.

'Together. Here, give me your hand. Be careful to step across. It's not wide, you don't even have to jump it, no strain. But if you step into it, you might fall through to the ground, where the dogs could get you. And even if you don't fall through, you're sure to be hurt.'

Chyna stepped across, but Ariel didn't follow.

Turning to the girl, still holding her slack hand, Chyna tugged gently. 'Come on, baby, let's go, let's get out of here. We'll turn him in to the cops, and he'll never be able to hurt anybody again, not ever, not you or me or anyone.'

After a hesitation, Ariel stepped across the gap onto the roof of the motor home-and slipped on the dew-wet metal. Chyna dropped the mop, grabbed the girl, and kept her from falling.

'Almost there, baby.'

She picked up the mop again and led Ariel to the open skylight, where she encouraged her to kneel.

'That's good. Now wait. Almost there.'

Chyna stretched out on her stomach, leaned into the skylight, and used the mop to push the stepstool toward the back of the hall and out of the way. Dropping down onto it, one of them might have broken a leg.

They were so close to escape. They couldn't take any chances.

Chyna got to her feet and threw the mop into the yard.