And it was a hell of a picture to have in the back of his mind, especially after a night like this one. Michael found himself reluctant to turn out the lights in the living room, though the glow from the open bedroom door was brighter than his sleeping room usually was.
He threw himself down on the couch, too tired to look for blanket or pillow. His feet were propped on one arm of the couch. It was too short for comfort, but tonight he didn’t care; he could have slept on a stone. He was too tired to think-and that was just as well, because the thoughts foremost in his mind were ugly thoughts. Satanism, possession, werewolves, the dark on the other side…His arm was throbbing. The pain killer was wearing off. He thought about getting up and taking another pill. But the bottle was in his coat pocket and his coat was in the closet and the closet was ten feet away, and that was just too damned far for a man who had been up all night, battling werewolves and witches and…Heavily, Michael slept.
And woke, with one of the wrenching starts that sometimes rouse a sleeper from a dream of falling. He had only been asleep for a few minutes; his muscles still ached with fatigue. Something had wakened him.
Mind and body drugged by the short, annihilating nap, Michael lay quiescent and listened. There were sounds, out in the kitchen. That was what had roused him. Someone was in the kitchen, moving around.
The most logical source of noise was Napoleon. But his sleeping mind was accustomed to the cat’s comings and goings, it would have noted the sounds, classified them, and let him sleep. These were not the noises the cat made when it thudded down into the sink or lapped water or chewed the hard, crunchy bits of cat food. These were small, metallic sounds, like coins chinking in someone’s pocket…a loose metal strip blown by the wind against another piece of metal…knives and forks in a drawer, being shifted…
When he recognized the sounds and identified the key word, his brain refused to accept the conclusion. Maybe Linda had been unable to sleep. Looking for the wherewithal to make coffee or food, she would naturally move quietly, so as not to disturb him.
Then he saw her. The kitchen, out of the direct beam of light from the bedroom door, was very dark. As she moved out into the diffused dimness of the living room, her slim body seemed to be forming out of shadows like a dark ectoplasmic ghost. She stood still for several seconds, as if listening; and Michael remained quiet, not from design, but because his paralyzed body was incapable of movement. There was just enough light to reflect, with a pale glitter, from the long shiny object in her right hand.
Chapter 10
I
SHE MOVED VERY SLOWLY. WHEN SHE REACHED THE couch, she stood motionless for several long moments. He could see the knife distinctly now, it was only inches from his face. It hung from fingers so lax that they seemed about to lose their grip altogether. He could hear her breathing. It was quick and deep, long gasps of effort.
Her fingers tightened and her arm began to move. Up-slowly, in abrupt jerks and starts, as if struggling against a force that tried to hold it. Michael watched in an unholy fascination; the whole bizarre episode might have been happening to someone else, with himself an unwilling and helpless spectator. Now her arm was high above her head. A strained, impractical position for a downward blow…The arm started down.
Michael moved. To his outraged nerves it seemed as if the whole thing were taking place in slow motion: that he had an infinite amount of time in which to act before the knife struck. In an almost leisurely movement his right arm lifted and his fingers clamped around the wrist of the hand that held the knife.
His touch affected her like a jolt of electric current; every muscle in her body stiffened, her wrist twisted frantically in his grasp. She screamed, a thin, high sound that was more like the voice of an animal in agony than anything human. It was the scream as much as anything else that made Michael take more than defensive action. A few more moments of that, and someone would call a cop.
He tried not to hurt her. Rolling sideways off the couch, he pulled her down with him, pinning her kicking legs with his body, his right hand still tight around her wrist, his left fumbling for her mouth. They struggled in darkness; the back of the couch cut off the feeble light from the bedroom. He could feel her struggling, feel the writhing of her lips against his palm. He had half expected the maniacal strength he had read about, but he encountered very little difficulty; she was a small woman, and it took only seconds to immobilize and quiet her. Flaccid and cold under his hands, she lay still. He couldn’t even feel her breathing.
It never occurred to him that her collapse might have been a ruse. He scrambled up. His need for light was more than a need to see, it was a craving for the power that opposed the dark.
She looked like a sick child in a sleep troubled by pain-tumbled hair, pale face, mouth drawn down in a pathetic grimace. She was wearing his old bathrobe, which had helped to hamper her movements; the struggle had torn it open, but she was still wearing her slip and underclothing. Michael revised his comparison. Not a child, no. But she looked pitifully young. The wrist he had twisted seemed too fragile to resist the lightest touch. By her right hand lay his big carving knife.
Michael kicked it out of the way. He knelt down and put his ear to her breast. Faint and abnormally slow, but it was there-the pounding of her heart. He straightened, studying the pale face with a mixture of different terrors. The closed lids veiled the eyes; he wondered what he would see in those eyes when the lids lifted.
After a moment he stood up and went into the bedroom. When he came back, she hadn’t moved. Carefully he wrapped the bathrobe around her; the coldness of her skin and the sluggish pulse suggested shock. Then he set about the rest of the job. His mouth was set in a tight, twisted line as, using the neckties he had brought from the bedroom, he tied her wrists and ankles together.
A pale, ugly dawn was breaking before she came to. Michael had tried everything he could think of to bring her out of her faint-wondering, all the while, whether he really wanted her to wake up. Faces in sleep or unconsciousness were like blank pages; waking intelligence, the expression of eyes and mouth, are what give individuality and character. What would he see when her eyes opened? The face, now familiar and beloved, of the girl he wanted; or the Medea figure who had stood over him with a knife?
He had carried her back into the bedroom and piled every blanket he owned over the waxen body. He had bathed her face and rubbed her wrists. The slow, mechanical breathing did not change; the muscles of face and body remained flaccid. And the night wore on. It seemed to Michael at times as if the sun would never rise, as if some astronomical miscalculation had stopped the earth on its axis. Then the first sullen streaks stained the clouds; and her eyes opened.
Michael saw what he had hoped, but not really expected, to see. His relief was so great that he dropped with a thud onto the edge of the bed. But the realization that dawned in her face, as memory returned, was almost worse than the madness he had feared. Her horror and consternation were genuine; if he had had any lingering doubts of her honesty, they vanished then. Her eyes moved from his face, downward, toward her bound wrists and ankles. They were hidden under the piles of blankets, but he knew she could feel the bonds.
“I’ll take them off,” he said quickly. “I just wasn’t sure…It’s all right now, I’ll get them off…”