From her chair, she could not avoid seeing a portrait Robert had done of her, on the opposite wall. He could really paint, she admitted reluctantly, but somehow she’d never liked this particular painting.
Now she found herself staring at it. The lights dimmed again, the face in the painting seemed to come to life, the shadows about the cheekbones deepening, the eyes leaping at her, almost glowing.
She caught her breath. Rising, she moved slowly toward the painting. The hurricane pounded against the wails of the house.
Why, she’d never really seen this painting before. Those lean cheeks, the tilted, stubborn chin, the contempt in the violet eyes, the hauteur stamped in the shadowed planes of forehead, cheeks and jaw.
She thought, but I’m not like that at all. How monstrous of Robert to do such a thing.
Chilled, she sank in the club chair again, pushing herself far back in it. Remembering the painting was done just after her father died. She’d been almost prostrated by grief. Robert had stunned her after her father’s death by being almost gay. He had even suggested they sell the house.
“Of all things!” she’d said. “And, I suppose, the Firm?”
And the Firm. Go away together. All she could think was, father built a success here, and Robert mustn’t be allowed to throw it away on a whim such as painting—
She tore her gaze from the portrait, her hands splayed on the arms of the club chair. She listened to the awful whisper of the hurricane; shadows lengthened in her gaze, and nameless dark phantasms bubbled in her mind. Her father’s grave swept by the fury of the storm, the way he’d always said she was his daughter, now he in his loneliness, she in hers...
Her lips trembled. She turned her head again to stare at that horrid painting. She brought her eyes back to the study doorway. Her heart lurched. She was positive she’d left the study door standing open. Now it was closed.
She crouched in the chair, unable to move. A draft of air of course, swinging the door gently closed.
She stood up. After a moment, she went to the study door. There with hand on the knob, she listened, hearing only the throb of the storm. She flung the door open.
It was as if clammy hands laid themselves upon her, tight on her throat. A draft of air might close a door. But it couldn’t do this. She remembered distinctly she’d left the study light burning. Yet now the study was illumined only by the glow spilling wanly from the living room.
She braced herself against the doorjamb. She saw nothing in the study from the living room glow to alarm her. She would walk to the study lamp, unscrew the bulb, certain she’d find it burned out.
With an effort, she took a step. She was three steps inside the study when the whole house plunged in blackness.
She smothered the scream. She clenched her hands tight at her sides, feeling the agony of the pulse hammering at her temples.
In the smothering darkness, she made her way to the end table where she’d laid the candles. She clasped one up, reaching in her pocket for her cigarette lighter. Flame wavered on the candle wick and sent out bleak wan shadows in the living room. She sighed. It was so nice to have light again.
She hadn’t thought of holders and the end table was one of her favorites. But she began lighting candles from the first one, dropping wax to hold them upright, and lining them up on the table. She created a tiny world of light, determined she would spend the night in the club chair, the guttering candles beside her.
She huddled in the chair, feeling cold, with the darkness pressing in damply upon her. There was a lull in the wind, bringing a momentary silence that made her feel as if her brains were being sucked out through her ears. In this silence, she heard the gentle closing of a door...
Bracing her arched back in the club chair, she stared at the study doorway. It was still open. But beyond it — the closet door?
New thrusts of wind and rain enveloped the house with a crash that deafened her. The candles flickered, feeble and impotent. Her eyes caught the first movement in the study, a shifting of shadow against shadows.
She inched her way out of the chair. Realized she was silhouetted starkly against the candlelight. Trembling, she could feel beads of clamminess in her palms as she struck out in a spasm of movement of her leaden arms and pushed over the end table. The candles winked out.
She knew he’d been waiting for the power to fail. Involuntarily, she stepped backward. Then she was stumbling through the suffocating blackness. She knew her beloved house so well, yet for a moment she completely lost her direction.
Blindly, she located the dining room buffet. Her shaking hands sought a drawer. When the drawer was open, her fingers froze and she endured the desperate thought she was going to faint. Beneath her groping fingers, the rest of the set was there, but the long, keen carving knife was gone...
Breath sobbing out of her in soft moans, she made her way along the dinning room wall.
She saw the faint wink of light in there almost like a firefly, as the wan ray of a pencil flashlight touched here and there, seeking her. Coming closer to her. Until it touched her.
She screamed, reeling away from the wall. She clawed her way through a jungle of furniture, down a corridor of night, babbling wildly to herself.
She’d escaped the little light. She was in the kitchen. She remembered the door that opened on the side lawn.
She opened the door. The wind roared in, sending something crashing behind her, needling rain through the screen in a fine, cold spray.
Outside, the wind tore the breath from her, leaving her lungs burning. Gripping her, it hurled her bodily along the side of the house. Stumbling, she landed in a huddle in the wet grass, pushed herself to her knees. Rain streamed down her face, her hair was wet and harsh against her neck and cheeks. Sodden and numbed, she searched for the shadow of the house next door. Just a small expanse of lawn to cross. Then safety, with other people around her.
She moaned as a shadow slashed at her, missed and struck the side of the house, a wet palm frond, torn by the wind.
Reeling to her feet, huddled against the house, she shivered as the wind plastered her wet clothes tight against her.
She saw the wan pencil flashlight again. It too, moved alongside the house, nearing her, winking low to the earth.
Dorothy Janeway knew she could never reach the house next door. I’ll get back inside, she thought, lock all the doors. Lock myself in a room.
She grabbed at the slippery spider-working of thin wrought iron bars that enclosed the patio. Clutching at them, she moved forward until she reached the gate. Opening it, she stumbled into the patio. She found it calmer here, sheltered on three sides by wings of the house. She ran to the portico, rattled the doorknob of the small storage room that opened off the kitchen. It was unyielding, and she remembered: She’d checked every window and outside door when she’d first discovered she was alone. Terror had blanked her mind. Trapped her here in the cul-de-sac formed by the house...
On the wall beside her a yellow spot splashed. She twisted, and the light caught her in the eyes. There was no time to move, not even time to shrink. He dropped the light and sprang upon her, his knife glinting. Even in the raging storm she could hear his breathing. She could feel his hands, clutching at her throat.
“Robert!”
He was smashing her back. She was falling into depths as black and turbulent as the hurricane itself. She thought: There are two hurricanes. One in Nature. One in Robert.
Her head struck something hard. Lights pinwheeled behind her eyes for an instant before they vanished. Dorothy Janeway ceased to hear the hurricane...
Dorothy felt the warmth of crisp white sheets against her body, sunlight against her face, a cap swathing her head down to her ears, which must be bandages. She smelled, faintly, biting antiseptics, knew she was in a hospital.