failed to get dirty while the house got clean. She scrubbed the bathroom methodically, and then set about dusting. The house was full of bookcases and her grandmother’s bric-a-brac, so it was nine o’clock by the time she put away the dust rag and pulled the vacuum cleaner from its closet. The vacuum’s businesslike roar filled the house with a satisfying sound, and Catherine maneuvered it around the rooms with unusual care, shifting the furniture laboriously to reach every corner and cranny.
Kitchen floor next, she decided as she looped the vaccum cord. And then I’ll be through.
This evening was a little cooler than the one before, but her shirt was clinging to her back and her forehead felt wet by the time she had moved the chairs around the kitchen dining table.
The good thing about cleaning, she thought, as she turned on the kitchen-sink tap full blast, was that you could think about anything or nothing.
She chose to think of nothing, and the physical work was relaxing. But she was beginning to feel bored by the time she finished the tile floor.
She wrung out the dirty mop, rinsed, and wrung out the excess water again. Usually she put the mop out the side door to dry, but tonight she decided to put it out the back door. The last time, she had forgotten to bring it in for several days. In case she did that again, she wanted it to be out of sight from the street.
With a dirty kitchen towel wrapped around the mop to catch drips, Catherine walked quickly through the den and opened the back door to the night.
After propping the mop upright, she stood for a minute on the steps, looking up at the dark sky. It was cloudy; the stars were blotted out. Catherine hoped that meant rain, but the air didn’t feel right for a shower. It was heavy, but not pressing.
As she stood with her face raised to the night sky, she heard a rustling in the grass.
She remained quite still. Her eyes, still turned skyward, no longer saw the blackness above them. They were blind with concentration. Everything in her was bent on identifying the source of the sound, so like that of feet passing through dry grass.
She thought of the light streaming from the open door behind her; of her outline, presented clearly to whatever was out there in the night.
In that interminable moment she was reminded of dreams she had had as a child, dreams in which danger threatened. In those dreams, she could never decide whether moving with elaborate unconcern or moving like lightning would save her. Some nights she tried one thing, some nights another. Which now? she wondered.
The sound was not repeated. Whatever was out there, beyond the pool of light from her house, was standing as still as she was.
Waiting to see what I will do.
What will I do?
If I move fast, if I show fear, it will be on me, she thought.
The watcher assumed the dimensions of the phantoms of her dreams, enormously big and perpetually hungry- and too awful to have to face.
She turned very quietly and without haste, opened the screen door and stepped inside her house. Very quietly and without haste she shut the heavy wooden door behind her. Then with fingers that were not at all quiet and were extremely hasty, she locked the door and leaned against it. She slid down the door until her rear hit the floor, and there she stayed until her breathing became more regular.
Should I call the police. To say what? I heard something in the grass and I’m scared, Sheriff Galton. I heard something in the grass…
And though she was sharply and clearly glad that no one would ever know she was doing it, she crept on her knees to the nearest window and huddled below it to listen.
A dry whisper in the grass. It had resumed movement.
She raised her head cautiously and peered through the screen. In the light from the window, she saw a bird hopping through the yard. As she watched, it triumphantly pulled a bug from the grass and hopped away with its prey.
“Goddamn! Don’t you know you’re supposed to be asleep?” she asked the bird hoarsely. It was understandably startled and flew off, taking care to retain the bug even in its fright.
Catherine expelled a long breath and slumped against the wall. As she was about to give a self-conscious laugh at her panic, she changed her mind. It wasn’t funny.
I don’t care that I looked crazy as hell, she told her inward critic. I really don’t care.
She sat there for a few minutes, letting her body calm down gradually.
“Oh boy,” she said. “Oh boy.”
She had just scrambled clumsily to her feet when she heard a faint, curious buzz.
She turned her head to one side, trying to identify the source of that half-familiar sound.
The buzz came again, after she had hesitantly started down the hall to her bedroom in obedience to an obscure urging that told her it was the right place to go.
The second time she heard the sound, she recognized it.
It was the buzzer in her father’s old office.
Someone’s calling for him, but he’s not here, she thought. He’s dead.
Her skin crawled.
For a third time the buzzer made its rasping appeal.
“It’s
But he had promised he wouldn’t. She couldn’t recall him breaking a promise. He had been so serious when she had told him never to play a joke on her with the buzzer.
Something was wrong.
When she reached the master bedroom, she half expected to see her father’s head rising sleepily from his pillow in answer to the summons from his office.
She stared at the place where the sound of the buzzer issued, by the bed on the side where her father had slept.
He’s calling me, she thought.
The buzzer fell silent.
Tom, she told herself with an effort. Not Father.
“I am not a fool,” she said. She pulled open the drawer of her bedside table, grabbed her gun, and ran back down the hall.
Catherine didn’t think of the fear that had just let go of her ankles. She was needed, and she had to go, to run, to get there before it was too late.
Out the back door. Fumble with the light switch that would illumine that terrifying yard. A quick scan after the light was on.
The yard was empty.
Running through the grass, avoiding the stepping-stones that would have tripped her in her haste. Through the hedge that seemed to clutch at her.
She was almost at Tom’s back door when she saw that it was wide open. She stopped so suddenly that she wobbled back and forth, and had to struggle to keep her balance. A faint light glowed from the open rectangle. The door ajar to the hot night confirmed her feeling that something was horribly wrong. She held her gun ready.
Not even the eerie sound of the buzzer had been as frightening as that open door was. As she crept closer, she could feel the rush of cooled air escaping from the house.
She eased open the screen door as quietly as she could. It creaked a little and she held her breath.
The doors all along the short hall were shut. The faint glow was coming from the living room, and she was looking at it so fixedly that she failed to see the red splotches against the hall’s white paint, until a thread trickled down from a larger splash. Its tiny movement, slow and hesitant, caught the corner of her eye. She stared at it and wondered if she could move.
There was no sound in the house except the hum of air conditioning behind one of the closed doors. The night, let in through the back door, held its breath.
Because she had to, she began to go forward, her hand against the wall for support. She snatched it away when it encountered wetness.
The hall resembled every nightmare she had ever dreamed. But the thing in the grass had gotten someone else
