The whole family, drawn out into the sunlight, gathered around the stranger with the wicker basket, waiting for Father to arrive to throw back the coverlet on the small carrier so they could all dip their hands in.
That moment, as Susan said later, was like reading the telephone book one more time.
The Witch Door
1995 year
It was a pounding on a door, a furious, frantic, insistent pounding, born of hysteria and fear and a great desire to be heard, to be freed, to be let loose, to escape. It was a wrenching at hidden paneling, it was a hollow knocking, a rapping, a testing, a clawing! It was a scratching at hollow boards, a ripping at bedded nails; it was a muffled closet shouting and demanding, far away, and a call to be noticed, followed by a silence.
The silence was the most empty and terrible of all. Robert and Martha Webb sat up in bed.
«Did you hear it?»
«Yes, again.»
«Downstairs.»
Now whoever it was who had pounded and rapped and made his fingers raw, drawn blood with his fever and quest to be free, had drawn into silence, listening himself to see if his terror and drumming had summoned any help.
The winter night lay through the house with a falling-snow silence, silence snowing into every room, drifting over tables and floors, and banking up the stairwell.
Then the pounding started again. And then:
A sound of soft crying.
«Downstairs.»
«Someone in the house.»
«Lotte, do you think? The front door's unlocked.»
«She'd have knocked. Can't be Lotte.»
«She's the only one it
They both glanced at the phone. If you lifted the receiver, you heard a winter stillness. The phones were dead. They had died days ago with the riots in the nearest towns and cities. Now, in the receiver, you heard only your own heart-beat. «Can you put me up?» Lone had cried from six hundred miles away. «Just overnight?»
But before they could answer her, the phone had filled itself with long miles of silence.
«Lotte
«No,'' said Robert. «I heard that crying other nights, too. Dear God.»
They lay in the cold room in this farmhouse back in the Massachusetts wilderness, back from the main roads, away from the towns, near a bleak river and a black forest. It was the frozen middle of December. The white smell of snow cut the air.
They arose. With an oil lamp lit, they sat on the edge of the bed as if dangling their legs over a precipice.
«There's no one downstairs, there
«Whoever it is sounds frightened.»
«We're
«I don't know. I don't believe in ghosts. This is 1999; I'm sane. Or like to
«We won't need it. Don't ask me why, but we won't.» They picked up their oil lamps. In another month the small power plant would be finished in the white barns behind the house and there'd be power to spare, but now they haunted the farm, coming and going with dim lamps or candles.
They stood at the stairwell, both thirty-three, both immensely practical.
The crying, the sadness, and the plea came from below in the winter rooms.
«She sounds so damned sad,» said Robert. «God, I'm sorry for her, but don't even know who it
They went downstairs.
As if hearing their footsteps, the crying grew louder. There was a dull thudding against a hidden panel somewhere.
«The
«Can't be.»
They stood in the long hall looking at that place under the stairs, where the panels trembled faintly. But now the cries faded, as if the crier was exhausted, or something had diverted her, or perhaps their voices had startled her and she was listening for them to speak again. Now the winter-night house was silent and the man and wife waited with the oil lamps quietly fuming in their hands.
Robert Webb stepped to the Witch Door and touched it, probing for the hidden button, the secret spring. «There can't be anyone in there,» he said. «My God, we've
«Listen!»
They listened.
Nothing.
«She's gone, it's gone, whatever it was, hell, that door hasn't been opened in our lifetime. Everyone's forgotten where the spring is that unlocks it. I don't think there
«Silly,» she said. «Good Lord, rats don't cry. That was a voice, asking to be saved. Lotte, I thought. But now I know it wasn't she, but someone else in as much trouble.»
Martha Webb reached out and trembled her fingertips along the beveled edge of ancient maple.
«With a crowbar and hammer, tomorrow.»
«Oh, Robert!»
«Don't 'Oh, Robert' me. I'm tired.»
«You
«She's quiet now. Christ, I'm exhausted. I'll come down at the crack of dawn and knock the damned thing apart, okay?»
«All right,» she said, and tears came to her eyes.
«Women,» said Robert Webb. «Oh, my God, you and Lotte, Lotte and you. If she
«Lotte's
«Sure, but she should keep her mouth shut. It doesn't pay now to say you're Socialist, Democrat, Libertarian, Pro-Life Abortionist, Sinn Fein Fascist, Commie, any damn thing. The towns are bombed out. People are looking for scapegoats and Lotte has to shoot from the hip, get herself smeared and now, hell, on the run.»
«They'll jail her if they catch her. Or kill her, yes, kill her. We're lucky to be here with our own food. Thank God we planned ahead, we saw it coming, the starvation, the massacres. We helped ourselves. Now we help Lone if she makes it through.»
Without answering, he turned to the stairs. «I'm dead on my feet. I'm tired of saving anyone. Even Lotte. But
