There was no one in the kitchen except Jud, sitting hopefully by the back door. When he saw Pat his tail switched and his mouth opened, emitting a long moist pink tongue. The chain on the kitchen door dangled.
Pat left the door on the latch, shoving Jud back inside with a peremptory foot when he would have accompanied her. One hurt, irritated yelp followed her; then came silence. Jud was not much of a barker.
As soon as she stepped off the path into the long grass, her shoes were soaked with dew. She had to go around to the front gate. There was no other way through to the next house. A streetlight some distance away sent long shadows wavering eerily across the sidewalk. Pat thought of going back for a flashlight, and decided that on this occasion she had better not risk it.
The night was abnormally still. The click of the latch on the gate as she closed it behind her echoed like a gunshot. She went through the Friedrichs' gate, leaving it open. Shuffling in the darkness, she tripped over a loose brick in the sidewalk and caught at a tree trunk to keep herself from falling.
The backyard was huge, over two acres in extent, spotted by old trees that spread great pools of dark shadow across the moonlit grass. Some were fruit trees; the pale blossoms looked ghostly in the dimness. Pat went toward the apple tree by Kathy's window. She was beginning to feel a little foolish. Perhaps her hunch had been wrong. But when she put her hand on the tree trunk her fingers recoiled from a clammy lump of some wet, sticky substance. Mud. A large chunk of it, lodged in the wedge between the trunk and the first low-set, spreading branch. Someone had climbed that tree, so recently that the earth left by his shoes was still wet. Pat had no doubt whatever as to the identity of the climber.
She wiped her muddy fingers on the seat of her jeans and tried to think what she should do. Kathy's window was wide open. A wisp of white curtain moved in the night breeze. Had there been a screen in that window? She couldn't remember. If there had been, it had been removed; the end of the curtain flailed out through the opening and then blew back.
She couldn't call out. That would really create a crisis. Josef was still awake. The light from his window cut a wide swath across the darkness, touching the edge of the apple tree. She was sure, with the unerring instinct of infuriated maternity, that her son was up there in Kathy's room, and she had no idea what to do about it.
She had little time to debate. As she stood, raging and uncertain, her hand absentmindedly rubbing the rough bark of the tree, she realized that something was happening up above. The window of the girl's room, which had been as black as a cave mouth, began to lighten. The light was not that of any normal lamp; it was a sickly blue-green glow, phosphorescent and ugly. No sooner had she observed it than she heard a muffled crash from the inte rior of the room; then the light was obscured by a dark shape, and she heard voices. They were mere whispers of sound; but she recognized both of them.
"The branch is there by your foot," muttered her son. "I've got hold of you, don't worry… Quick. It's com-ing."
"I'm all right. Hurry, Mark, please hurry…"
The second voice was Kathy's. Staring up, Pat saw a slim dark shape squirm out of the window, attach itself to the tree, and move downward. Her heart was thudding in her breast. As the light above strengthened, turning the open window into a square of unspeakable, nameless color, the sounds from within increased-crashes, thuds… And Mark was in there, with-whatever it was.
Even as her lips parted, prepared to scream a warning, Mark scrambled onto the tree limb. The light was strong enough to illumine his face, giving his skin a livid, corpselike hue.
Kathy slid down practically into Pat's arms, and the older woman clutched at her. Kathy let out a squeal. Then she recognized Pat, in spite of the darkness. "Goodness, you scared me," she said.
"Mark," Pat gurgled.
"He's here," Kathy said coolly, reaching out an arm to touch Mark as he jumped the last few feet, landing with a squashy thud.
"Hi, Mom. What are you doing here? You ought to be in bed."
For the second time that day Pat's voice failed her. It was not only indignation that rendered her speechless. Something other than light flowed from the open window; a finger of sickening cold touched her, weakening her knees, so that she had to grab at the tree for support. And the smell… No, not a smell; it was no phenomenon that could be identified by any normal sense. Its strangeness assaulted all the senses, making her skin crawl and her nose wrinkle, offending even vision by the noncolor of that ghastly light. The very sounds affronted reason, for they were the sounds of objects moving without anything to make them move.
A particularly appalling crash came from the window. It was followed by footsteps, muffled by distance, but clearly audible-running footsteps, and a cry, cut off almost as soon as it began by another crash.
Pat caught her son's foot as he started back up the tree.
"Not that way," she gasped. "For God's sake, Mark!"
The horrid, sickly light was fading, but the aura of foul cold still wafted in weakening waves from the open window. For once Mark yielded to her demand without argument or delay. He slid back down the trunk.
"That was Mr. Friedrichs," he said. "We've got to get in the house. Kathy, how-"
"The front door," Kathy said. She began to run.
She ran like Atalanta, driven by terror. When Pat caught up with her she was on the porch, groping with frantic fingers along the ledge over the door.
"Here it is," she gasped. "We keep a key there in case-"
Mark snatched it from her shaking fingers and inserted it in the lock. But they had forgotten the extra precautions taken by nervous householders. The door yielded only a few inches and then was held by the chain.
"Get back," Mark said. He flung his full weight against the door.
With a crack the chain snapped and the door flew open. Mark plunged in.
The hall was in darkness, but a light shone down the stairs from the corridor above. With the two women in close pursuit, Mark ran up.
They found Josef Friedrichs in the hall outside Kathy's door. He lay face down on the floor, his arms outflung as if he had tried to snatch at something-or ward it off. All around him were the sparkling, glowing shards of what had once been a tall Chinese vase. Pat had noticed it the night before, the exquisite curving shape of it, and the magnificent reds and pinks and greens of a pattern of chrysanthemums and feeding birds. Its carved teak stand was empty.
Kathy's bedroom door was closed; but Pat was aware that the sounds and the breath of sickly cold air had stopped. Thank God for that, she thought; if he's fractured his skull or broken any bones, it would be dangerous to move him… but not as dangerous as to leave him within the range of the unknown force that had invaded Kathy's room.
She brushed the sobbing girl out of the way and knelt by Josef, her skilled hands searching for the signs that would tell her what she needed to know. Some of the broken shards, melancholy in their reminder of broken beauty, lay on Josef's back. Automatically Pat brushed them off.
The vase had struck him on the side of the head, behind his right ear. A lump was already rising, and a thin trail of blood snaked down his neck and under the collar of his shirt. Minor cuts marked his right hand and forearm. But his pulse was steady, and his breathing regular.
Kathy, held in the protective circle of Mark's arm, struggled to control herself. She brushed pathetically at the tears on her cheek with the back of her hand, leaving a streak of mud across her smooth skin.
"He's all right," Mark assured her, stroking her hair. He was obviously more concerned with Kathy's feelings than with her father's wounds; and his mother shot him a look of active dislike before adding her own words of reassurance.