was no answer, no footsteps coming to help her. She waited, then she banged the door again, with her fist this time, then both fists. And she called out, louder. She hammered with her fists and cried out for Ralph, until she realized that her hands hurt and her throat was sore.
Fear stole over her slowly, stealthily, like delayed shock. She became aware that she was fighting uselessly to hold it back, a Canute-like struggle that she couldn't win. Fear, like pain, she knew, would always overwhelm you in the end. You had to let it, but find something to cling to while it passed-even if no more than the idea that it would pass in the end.
But suppose it didn't? Suppose the fear stayed, became a permanent, eternal, tortured scream with no escape…?
No! That was panic, it wouldn't last. Just the first wave…a wave, a wave…a wave by definition couldn't last forever…
A sound came from the wall as though a small explosive charge had detonated in it. She turned with a gasp, trying to identify the spot that it had come from. Before she could, there was another-from somewhere else, but still behind the tiled and mirrored surfaces and in the fabric of the walls themselves. It was a sound like she had never heard before, a subtle, dangerous, insinuating thing. There was something hypnotic in the way, with each repetition, it became increasingly impossible not only to identify its source, but even to be sure that the source was not inside her own head.
Then something happened that she knew for sure she was not imagining. It started with a different sound, a scratching noise, like claws on slate or glass, the kind of noise that made you cringe and set your teeth on edge.
This time she knew where it was coming from. The sound was localized in a way the previous ones had not been. She found herself drawn as though by some magnetic force toward the mirror set into the wall behind the twin adjoining sinks. She saw her own reflection clearly enough, and that of her surroundings, including the door still firmly closed behind her.
But it was not on the image that her gaze was focused: rather, on the glass itself in which the image lay. Something, she sensed, was happening there. And just as swiftly as she sensed it, so the words began appearing- ragged, slightly wandering lines scratched into the silvery reflecting surface on the back of the glass, as though traced by some unseen hand, but in a place where no hand could possibly have been.
The letter “H” came first. Before it was complete, others began appearing simultaneously, as though each was being separately engraved in lines that hung in space at some intangible point between herself and her reflection.
She watched in awful fascination as the message was spelled out. At first she didn't understand. For a split second she thought it was in some strange language. Then she realized it was English, written backward, as though by someone on the other side.
The message was:
HELP ME
Her head swam and she felt herself falling in some strange way into herself, imploding, losing form and focus. She grabbed for something, shook herself; it was all right, she would hang on, it would pass.
A thick mat on the tiled floor broke her fall. She felt a jolt to her knee, then another to her elbow and arm. She pushed herself up. She was unhurt, but aware now that there was no escape, not even into unconsciousness, from what was happening.
HELP ME!
“Help me! Ralph, help me!”
She was on her feet now, pounding at the door, rattling the handle and tugging it toward her. Quite suddenly it opened, seemingly of its own accord, neither resisting nor yielding to the pressure she was putting on it. There was no click of any latch or lock; it just opened and released her.
Ralph was entering the room on the far side as she stumbled, white faced and terrified, from the bathroom. He ran to her.
“Jo-what happened?”
“Didn't you hear me?”
“I didn't hear anything. Are you all right?”
“Let's just go, now-right now, please.”
57
It was barely seven-thirty when Sam's phone rang the following morning. He was already on his second pot of coffee and cut short Ralph's apologies for calling so early.
“What's happened?” he asked, sensing the tension in the other man's voice.
“That woman you were looking for last night? She paid us a visit after you'd left. It seems that she'd also paid a visit to Joanna's parents.”
“And-?”
Ralph hesitated. “I think it would be better if we talked face to face. Joanna and I are in a hotel right now, but I can be at the house in twenty minutes. Can you meet me there?”
Ralph Cazaubon was waiting on the steps of number 139 when Sam got out of his cab. He looked tired and nervous, very different from the self-assured and confident individual who had opened the door the previous day.
“Thanks for coming over, Dr. Towne.” He pulled a key ring from his pocket and gave a vaguely apologetic laugh as he unlocked the door. “I told myself I'd wait outside until you got here so you could see everything exactly as it was, untouched since last night. But the truth is I'm just plain scared to go in there on my own.”
“Anybody in their right mind would be,” Sam said, trying to conceal his own nervous impatience.
Something appeared to be blocking the door, because Ralph couldn't push it all the way back. When Sam followed him through the gap and into the hall, he saw the coat stand lying on its side.
“That was the first thing that happened. The noise it made woke us up.”
Sam nodded, as though only marginally interested in details of this kind. “Tell me about this woman,” he said. “Describe her to me.”
He listened solemnly as Ralph did so. When he was finished he nodded again. “That's her. Did Joanna see her, too?”
Ralph shook his head. “Not then. When Joanna came into the room the woman wasn't there anymore. We thought she'd just slipped out of the house. But then when all this started…” He gave an odd sideways glance at Sam, as though unable or too embarrassed to look him in the eye. “She was a ghost, wasn't she?”
“If I knew for sure I'd tell you. But I don't.”
Ralph looked at him again, more directly this time, as though trying to decide whether Sam was telling the truth. Whatever decision he came to, he kept it to himself. “Come through here,” he said abruptly, moving toward the drawing room, “you'd better see this.”
He stopped dead when he got there, muttering an obscenity under his breath and staring in dismay at what confronted him.
Sam looked past him into the room. It was a scene of devastation. Chairs and furniture were overturned, light fittings had been torn from their sockets and dangled on the ends of electric wire, every ornament and picture in the place had been smashed. Even the carpet and backing had been ripped up in places to reveal bare floorboards.
“It wasn't like this when we left,” Ralph said. “Just the big mirror that was over the mantel. We both saw it lift off the wall and fly across the room.” He pointed. “You can see where it landed. But the rest of this…” He spread his arms in helpless incomprehension.
“You said ‘not then’ when I asked if Joanna saw the woman,” Sam said. “Does that mean she saw her later?”
“She saw something-in that mirror over there. She came into the room and saw the reflection of a woman over my shoulder. By the time I turned it was too late, the mirror was already flying across the room.”
“Did she describe the woman?”
