"Come, then," she said, shaking off her disquiet and moving toward him. "I'll help you to bed."
"Not yet. I'm too wound up to sleep. Play something for me."
"Papa—"
"You brought your mandolin. I know you did."
"Papa, you know what it does to you."
"Please?"
She smiled. She could never refuse him anything for long. "All right."
She had catty-cornered the mandolin into the larger suitcase before leaving. It had been reflex, really. The mandolin went wherever Magda went. Music had always been central to her life—and since Papa had lost his position at the university, a major part of their livelihood. She had become a music teacher after moving into their tiny apartment, bringing her young students in for mandolin lessons or going to their homes to teach them piano. She and Papa had been forced to sell their own piano before moving.
She seated herself in the chair that had been brought in with the firewood and the bedrolls and made a quick check of the tuning, adjusting the first set of paired strings, which had gone flat during the trip. When she was satisfied, she began a complicated mixture of strumming and bare-fingered picking she had learned from the Gypsies, providing both rhythm and melody. The tune was also from the Gypsies, a typically tragic melody of unrequited love followed by death of a broken heart. As she finished the second verse and moved into the first bridge, she glanced up at her father.
He was leaning back in his chair, eyes closed, the gnarled fingers of his left hand pressing the strings of an imaginary violin through the fabric of his gloves, the right hand and forearm dragging an imaginary bow across those same strings but in only the minute movements his joints would allow. He had been a good violinist in his day, and the two of them had often done duets together on this song, she picking counterpoint to the soaring, tearful, molto rubato figures he would coax from his violin.
And although his cheeks were dry, he was crying.
"Oh, Papa, I should have known ... that was the wrong song." She was furious with herself for not thinking. She knew so many songs, and yet she had picked one that would most remind him that he could no longer play.
She started to rise to go to him and stopped. The room did not seem as well lit as it had a moment ago.
"It's all right, Magda. At least I can remember all the times I played along with you ... better than never having played at all. I can still hear in my head how my violin used to sound." His eyes were still closed behind his glasses. "Please. Play on."
But Magda did not move. She felt a chill descend upon the room and looked about for a draft. Was it her imagination, or was the light fading?
Papa opened his eyes and saw her expression. "Magda?"
"The fire's going out!"
The flames weren't dying amid smoke and sputter; they were merely wasting away, retreating into the charred wood. And as they waned, so did the bulb strung from the ceiling. The room grew steadily darker, but with a darkness that was more than a mere absence of light. It was almost a physical thing. With the darkness came a penetrating cold, and an odor, a sour acrid aroma of evil that conjured images of corruption and open graves.
"What's happening?"
"He's coming, Magda! Stand over by me!"
Instinctively, she was already moving toward Papa, seeking to shelter him even as she herself sought shelter at his side. Trembling, she wound up in a crouch beside his chair, clutching his gnarled hands in hers.
"What are we going to do?" she said, not knowing why she was whispering.
"I don't know." Papa, too, was trembling.
The shadows grew deeper as the light bulb faded and the fire died to wan glowing embers. The walls were gone, misted in impenetrable darkness. Only the glow from the coals, a dying beacon of warmth and sanity, allowed them to keep their bearings.
They were not alone. Something was moving about in that darkness. Stalking. Something unclean and hungry.
A wind began to blow, rising from a breeze to full gale force in a matter of seconds, howling through the room although the door and the shutters had all been pulled closed.
Magda fought to free herself from the terror that gripped her. She released her father's hands. She could not see the door, but remembered it having been directly opposite the fireplace. With the icy gale whipping at her, she moved around to the front of Papa's wheelchair and began to push it backward to where the door should be. If only she could reach the courtyard, maybe they would be safe. Why, she could not say, but staying in this room seemed like standing in a queue and waiting for death to call their names.
The wheelchair began to roll. Magda pushed it about five feet toward the place where she had last seen the door and then she could push it no farther. Panic rushed over her. Something would not let them pass! Not an invisible wall, hard and unyielding, but almost as if someone or something in the darkness was holding the back of the chair and making a mockery of her best efforts.
And for an instant, in the blackness above and behind the back of the chair, the impression of a pale face looking down at her. Then it was gone.
Magda's heart was thumping and her palms were so wet they were slipping on the chair's oaken armrests. This wasn't really happening! It was all a hallucination! None of it was real... that was what her mind told her. But her body believed! She looked into her father's face so close to hers and knew his terror reflected her own.
"Don't stop here!" he cried.
"I can't get it to move any farther!"
He tried to crane his neck around to see what blocked them but his joints forbade it. He turned back to her.
"Quick! Over by the fire!"
Magda changed the direction of her efforts, leaning backwards and pulling. As the chair began to roll toward her, she felt something clutch her upper arm in a grip of ice.
A scream clogged in her throat. Only a high-pitched, keening wail escaped. The cold in her arm was a pain, shooting up to her shoulder, lancing toward her heart. She looked down and saw a hand gripping her arm just above the elbow. The fingers were long and thick; short, curly hairs ran along the back of the hand and up the length of the fingers to the dark, overlong nails. The wrist seemed to melt into the darkness.
The sensations spreading over her from that touch, even through the fabric of her sweater and the blouse beneath it, were unspeakably vile, filling her with loathing and revulsion. She searched the air over her shoulder for a face. Finding none, she let go of Papa's chair and struggled to free herself, whimpering in naked fear. Her shoes scraped and slid along the floor as she twisted and pulled away, but she could not break free. And she could not bring herself to touch that hand with her own.
Then the darkness began to change, lighten. A pale, oval shape moved toward her, stopping only inches away. It was a face. One from a nightmare.
He had a broad forehead. Long, lank black hair hung in thick strands on either side of his face, strands like dead snakes attached by their teeth to his scalp. Pale skin, sunken cheeks, and a hooked nose. Thin lips were drawn back to reveal yellowed teeth, long and almost canine in quality. But it was the eyes, gripping Magda more fiercely than the icy hand on her arm, killing off her wailing cry and stilling her frantic struggles.
The eyes. Large and round, cold and crystalline, the pupils dark holes into a chaos beyond reason, beyond reality itself, black as a night sky that had never been blued by the sun or marred by the light of moon and stars. The surrounding irises were almost as dark, dilating as she watched, widening the twin doorways, drawing her into the madness beyond...
...madness. The madness was so attractive. It was safe, it was serene, it was isolated. It would be so good to pass through and submerge herself in those dark pools... so good...