'I'm sorry, Ray,' she sobbed. And not for the first time she begged her husband's forgiveness, asked him to absolve her for not listening to him all those years, not believing;
She wiped the tears away, embarrassed by her weakness though there was no one there to see it.
Outside, the sun was going down, shadows lengthening and darkening on the hill, and she shivered, letting the curtains fall. She quickly went through the house, turning on all of the lights in each of the rooms, but even with every corner of the dwelling brightly illuminated, she was still filled with fear and a bone-deep dread. She returned to the now well-lit living room where she'd started, and slowly, gingerly, as though handling something that was radioactive, picked up the telephone receiver and took it off the hook.
It was worse at night.
It was always worse at night.
She turned on the television for noise and companionship and went into the kitchen to make dinner. Before, she would have prepared a real meal--pan-blackened swordfish or chicken fajitas or turkey casserole--but now she simply melted some cheese on toast and washed it down with a can of Coke. She told herself that she would not drink tonight, she would remain sober and go to sleep clear eyed and clear-headed, but by eight o'clock there was a bottle in her hand, and by the time she rolled into bed at ten, she was pretty well hammered.
She fell asleep with all of the lights on, and both the living room and bedroom television sets blaring.
She awoke in silence to find all of the lights turned off.
The house was dark and her first panicked thought was that someone had sneaked into her home and flipped the switches to frighten her. But a quick look toward the digital alarm clock on the bed stand told her that it was not just the lights and television. The power was out.
They'd shut off her electricity.
She swung her feet off the bed, felt for the wall and guided herself over to the window, where she opened the curtains and peered out, looking down the hill where she knew there were other homes. She wanted to see only darkness, only night, but through the trees came the faint yellow sparkle of occasional porch lights.
The other houses had power.
It was just her.
She felt her way back to the bed and crawled in quickly, closing her eyes and willing herself to fall asleep.
But sleep would not come. Instead, she remained wide awake, her mind racing, trying to remember all of the things Ray had told her, all of the details, wishing he had written them down so she'd have a reference, corroboration, proof.
No, not proof. They were too good for that.
Her mind was going in circles, but at least it kept her from thinking about the power and why it had been turned off and the fact that there was someone on her property, snooping around her house, probably trying to get in.
There'd been other incidents on previous nights but none of them had ever escalated to anything dangerous or physically threatening, and she prayed that such would be the case tonight.
She tried to stop thinking, tried to count sheep, tried to think of black nothingness, but no matter what she did she remained wide awake.
She heard noises in the dark: the house creaking; the outside cries of nocturnal birds; coyote howls; crickets; an occasional tapping that could have been tree branches in the wind, could have been ...
something else. Gradually, all of these sounds seemed to coalesce, some disappearing, others gaining in strength, until she heardA
voice.
At first she thought it was her imagination. It sounded like a young boy, but it was speaking gibberish, not making any sense. Just as the cacophony of night sounds had blended to form the voice, so too did the unintelligible syllables differentiate themselves into recognizable words.
Her name.
'Liz!' the voice called playfully. 'Lizzy!'
It came from everywhere, came from nowhere, and she could not tell if it originated outside the house or inside.
'Lizzy! Lizzy !Lizzy !'
Now it didn't sound so much like a little boy. Instead, it had the odd high-pitched timbre of a midget or speech that had been electronically altered. She pulled the covers up over her head, the way she'd done as a child, but that didn't block out the sound, and she tucked the edges of the blanket under her body, under her head, leaving her hands free to plug her ears and keep out the voice.
She knew it was there, though, even if she couldn't hear it, and she remained unwillingly awake until morning, her arms, hands, and fingers falling asleep and tingling but remaining glued to her ears until a hint of dawn light could be discerned through the material of the covers.
At six o'clock, the power came back on, lights suddenly blazing, televisions blasting out morning news programs, and it was then that she knew it was finally safe to get out of bed. She quickly threw on a robe and rushed from room to room, checking windows, checking doors, but everything seemed to be secure and in place. No one had gotten in during the night.
She was not brave enough to go out on the deck and look around, but through the windows she saw no impaled cats or decapitated dogs or any signs of vandalism, and she assumed that all was right.
'Thank God,' she breathed.
She was eating breakfast--more cheese on toast, this time with coffee--when she heard a knock at the front door.
She jumped, startled, and nearly dropped her cup. She considered hiding, not answering the door, pretending she was asleep or in the shower, but the knock came again. Louder this time, more insistent.
She put down her coffee cup and walked out to the foyer. Closing one eye, she looked through the door's peephole.
Jasper Calhoun.
Liz sucked in her breath. She could not remember ever seeing the association president outside of an official function--the annual meeting or one of the numerous disciplinary hearings--and to find him standing on her porch this early in the morning, dressed in his robes, was more than a little disconcerting.
Was he the one who had been playing with her power last night?
He looked straight at the peephole, smiling. 'I see you Elizabeth.
Open up.'
That was impossible, she knew. The peephole was a security device, visibility only went one way, and for that, one had to place an eye almost directly on the tiny glass circle. There was no way he could even know she was on the other side of this door. Still, her instinctive reaction was to pull away, move back, retreat into the house.
'Come on, Elizabeth. I want to talk to you.'
There seemed something odd about his face, as though he were wearing makeup or a mask, and a shiver passed through her as she studied him through the convex glass.
'You know I've been trying to call you,' he said. 'I know you're not answering your phone.'
She held her breath, willing him to go away, afraid of moving, afraid of making any sound that would confirm her presence.
'I'm not leaving until you open that door and speak to me.'
She'd been planning to remain here forever if need be, safe inside her fortress, but suddenly she unlocked and unbolted the door, yanking it open. 'Get the hell off my property!' she demanded.
He spread his hands benignly in a gesture of tolerance that was no doubt meant to seem sincere but that came across as parody. 'Elizabeth, Elizabeth.'
'Stop harassing me and get the hell off my porch!'
'Harassing you?' He chuckled as if the idea had never before occurred to him, as though such an intention were the furthest thing from his mind. 'I just came to ask you a question.
