The Menace Within

by Ursula Curtiss

  A feather of sound that would have been buried in the night’s earlier wind brushed against the light beginning of sleep. It had a guarded quality which inanimate materials could not achieve, suggesting a muffled nudge, and it had not come from the deep interior of the house where Rosie slept. It had come from somewhere much closer than that.

  Amanda sat up with instinctive caution, eyes roaming the darkness which was not quite absolute, and dropped instantly, soundlessly back, because she had seen what must have sent that crippling roar of blood to Mrs. Balsam’s brain.

  Chapter 7

  A human shape was growing impossibly up out of the floor to the side of the kitchen, moving black against almost-black stillness.

  Amanda, her own heartbeats tumbling, pressed herself tightly into the couch, as immobilized and nearly as will-less as a rabbit at the stooping approach of a hawk. It seemed to her that her presence was stamped all over the dark, and that at any moment, at the end of a mincing prowl down the step and across the room, a pair of hands would come thrusting over the back of the couch.

  The pulse of blood in her ears at this incarnation of all the unrecognized fears of childhood had made her briefly deaf. Gradually, she became aware of an infinitely careful progress which was not so much sound as the flawing of silence, and then a tiny, trembly vibration.

  A gulp of light registered faintly on the living room ceiling. The shape risen From the floor—a man, said Amanda’s bared senses—had opened the refrigerator door.

  Infinitesimal click as glass touched glass, tremor of metal as something was slid across a shelf: Amanda realized that in the guest room she would have heard none of this; she would have been peacefully asleep.

  And she should not have thought that, because as if she had sent some desperate mental signal a breathy little voice called anxiously, “Manda?”

  Dear God. Rosie stirring, turning, discovering that the broad friendly shaft of light over the end of her strange bed was gone, coming now in all innocence to betray Amanda. Would she venture into alien darkness on her tottery little legs? Amanda clenched her hands helplessly—and Rosie had advanced along the hall.

  “Manda?” Subdued, but growing frightened.

  The dim light vanished as the refrigerator door was pressed rubberily shut. This time the almost soundless progress was swift, and it was unmistakably flight. The muffled nudge that had halted Amanda’s slide into sleep was repeated, this time with finality.

  Silence, broken by Rosie’s first forlorn sob. Amanda eased herself off the couch, whispering, “Here I am, Rosie,” even before she tiptoed across the rug and into the dimming wash of gold at the doorway. She picked up the child, blessing the quality of voice which would have led the man to believe that it was addressing someone a safe distance away, and went swiftly into the guest room.

  Her heart had steadied somewhat, because that monstrous black shape—for the moment at least—had been as frightened of discovery as she, but her hands shook badly over the dressing of Rosie; had her tiny clothes really contained all these buttonholes before? She thought disconnectedly that if she were required to sign her name right now she couldn’t, with any kind of legibility.

  In fact, she was having trouble with simple shoelaces. “We’re going to my house just as soon as I get dressed, Rosie. Come on. . . .”

  She couldn’t drive in these ill-fitting slippers, and she had probably used up less than a minute and a half with all her fumbling. Going fast and very quietly into her aunt’s bedroom, she flung off the robe and got into her suit, misbuttoning the jacket, and put on her shoes. It came as a scald to realize that her coat and handbag were still in the living room along with Rosie’s blanket, so that she had to go back into that violated darkness— and that the telephone was ringing like an alarm bell.

  Amanda stood paralyzed. Answer it and breathe an urgent message, at the same time publishing to the undoubtedly listening man the fact that there was someone awake and knowledgeable here? How far would she get before he exploded out of hiding at her?

  “The telefoam,” whispered Rosie in reproach, and Amanda whispered back, “But we won’t answer it.”

  This drew the wonderful, abashed, nobody-knows-but-us smile; still, it seemed a nerve-fraying eternity before the ringing stopped. He would be convinced now, wouldn’t he, that that very small and distant voice had retired into sleep again?

  Which would of course, realized Amanda, thunderstruck, embolden him to re-emerge from what could only be the cellar and continue his interrupted exploration of the refrigerator. Cellar. That was what Mrs. Balsam had been straining to say, that was the warning in her mutely burning stare at Amanda’s announced intention of coming here tonight, that was behind all her terror. She hadn’t even known that she owned a cellar, imcomprehensible though that was; had said when she sold some of the furniture from the bigger house in the Heights, “I’d keep some of these things if I had any storage space at all.”

  And then to see through the window a man materializing out of the floor at the end of her kitchen, making a mockery of locks and keys—

  A trapdoor, thought Amanda, trying to take some of the horror out of this. And—not fleeing when the coast was clear that afternoon, but returning to his underground habitat—he must be the escaped convict, bafflingly possessed of a fact which Mrs. Balsam did not know, biding his time until the police hunt had slackened in intensity.

  A man who had made that bid for freedom, and been successful so far, would be very alert to the possibility of danger with someone demonstrably awake during his venture up into the kitchen. Amanda deliberately did not think of him listening, concentrating, just under the floor. Instead, she placed in her mind the exact location of her handbag with the all-important car keys: on the end table with the two stamped letters which had triggered this whole situation.

  She whispered imperatively to Rosie, “Stay here, I’ll be right back,” and tiptoed down the hall and into the living room. Her heart began a helpless acceleration, because after the lighted glow of the bedroom it was like entering a black cave which might or might not contain an animal with its head up, sniffing. She skirted the end of the couch, trying to walk weightlessly, remembered that there was an armchair at an oblique angle to it a few feet away, negotiated that passage, put her hand cautiously out and down.

  A pottery ashtray rocked sharply on wood, and it was all Amanda could do not to sob like Rosie, and then her fingers touched leather. She seized the handbag, turned with a little more certainty, gathered up her coat and then the plaid blanket as she passed the couch again, had to be careful to confine herself to a walk because even this carpeting wouldn’t drink up all vibration and they wouldn’t be safe until they were in the car with the doors locked and the engine running.

  Rosie was sitting obediently on the hassock in Mrs. Balsam’s bedroom, her eyes round with bemusement. Amanda plucked her car keys out of her bag, dropped them into her coat pocket for easy location in the dark, and deployed the blanket with a reassuring smile. “Here we go,” she said, and lifted the child and tiptoed to the patio door.

  Apple was there, wagging her tail in greeting, and this time her companion was not a Doberman pinscher.

  The restaurant was the blackest Justin had ever been in, punctuated by orange-shaded table lamps which created an impression of lights at sea. He held Lucy’s arm firmly, and not only because of the leg-breaking obscurity which contained two steps down. “You’ll feel better when you’ve had some food,” he said.

  “Oh, but all those cheese and crackers,” said Lucy vaguely, being seated with some difficulty.

  One cheeseless cracker, Justin remembered, because when the female magician had finally produced a platter of stuffed olives and cubes of Cheddar and crackers there had been what amounted to a genteel stampede. The wounded woman in lavendar chiffon had been helped to a good deal, solicitously. The sneakered man responsible for the navy-blue bump on her shin and the coffee table propped up with books had discreetly vanished.
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  The menu here was written on the label of a jug in trembly and indecipherable script, and as Justin peered at it without success a waiter arrived, jaunty in patched jeans. “Something from the bar, sir?” he offered alertly, observing Lucy’s lolling head.

  “Just something to eat, at the moment. What’s quickest?”

  The waiter said with disdain that there was a chefs salad with julienne—

  “We’ll have that,” said Justin summarily. “Where is the telephone?”

  He was told. He said to Lucy, “Will you be all right while I make a quick call?” and, upon her glassy assent, picked his way through the midnight gloom to the single booth at the back.

  A fat man in a tiny Tyrolean hat was in possession. Justin, normally civilized in such matters, patrolled mercilessly back and forth because his need to hear Amanda’s voice suddenly outstripped his need for food. Where was she, two nights before Christmas? (Well, where was he? Out with Lucy Pettit. Amanda wouldn’t be able to reach him if, undone by the sentiments of the season, she tried. In which case, in any case, the thing to do was demolish the salad, drop Lucy off at her apartment with all possible speed, and go home and listen to his telephone not ringing.)

  The fat man emerged from the booth, staring hard and unpleasantly at Justin, who said, “Sorry, urgent matter,” and took his place. He tried his trio of numbers again, letting Mrs, Balsam’s ring the longest in case she had gone to bed, but nobody was home anywhere.

  Examine this. Was he suddenly determined on Amanda out of a sophomoric whim, merely because she was unavailable? No. There was nothing sophomoric about his feeling for Amanda.

  The salad had arrived in his absence. Lucy was gazing at hers oddly. Justin said encouragingly, “This looks very good,” and used salt and a pepper grinder the size of a young pillar. He lifted his fork, although he was almost hungry enough to do without one, and Lucy, forehead glistening ominously, said, “Justin, you will have to get me out of here. I mean right now, this minute.”

  There was no mistaking her; equally, there wasn’t time to try to break the secret code on the jug. Justin put down too much money for a pair of chef’s salads no matter who the chef was, said briefly to the waiter who accosted them suspiciously in the murk a few moments later, “We’ve paid. You will rue any delay, believe me,” and made it outside with Lucy, just.

  “My name is Peter Dickens,” said the man on Mrs. Balsam’s patio, “and I live—” he cocked his head at a far twinkle of lights “—over there. I don’t know whether you’ve been listening to the radio, but I thought the lady who lives here ought to know that a man’s been seen in the neighborhood who they think—”

  He’s here in this house, in the cellar,” blurted Amanda uncontrollably, because—open-featured, clean-shaven, reliably clad in a fawn raincoat over a dark blue blazer and slacks—this was exactly the kind of neighbor who would stop by with a friendly warning. “I don’t know how he got in, but I saw him not ten minutes ago and I’m on my way home to call the police. Thank you anyway. Apple—”

  “We can save time by calling the police from here,” interrupted the man. He had very clear candid blue eyes, and in some way, without actually brushing past her, he was starting to enter the house.

  “No, thanks,” said Amanda sharply and with feeling. “I’m not staying here a second longer.”

  She stepped forward, forcing him back, pressing in the lock button on the knob so that she could close the door safely behind her. She was unprepared for the gloved finger that came up to tickle Rosie under the chin. “Cute,” said the man. “Is she yours?”

  There was something very wrong about this swift transition from the courteously helpful to the personal. There was also something wrong about the glove, skin-fitting and semitransparent. “Good night,” said Amanda, cool with a tremendous effort; she was just beginning to realize what she had done by her impetuosity. This was a menace related to the one inside, because no well-intentioned stranger would come to the side door of a house which looked from the road as if its occupant had retired for the night. Would he have forced his way in if she hadn’t obligingly turned the knob for him?

  And the Afghan, she thought, stomach tightening with fear, had all the protection value of a canary. She said, “Excuse me,” attempting again to get by him, and his teeth flashed whitely at her.

  “Excuse me, ”he said, and like lightning, before there could be any question of a struggle, he had taken Rosie from her and walked into the house.

  Because no voices had been raised, Rosie, handed frequently about from nurses to doctors in her short life, simply peered back with wildly questioning eyes. “It’s all right, Rosie,” Amanda managed, and followed, closing the door.

  She had turned out the hall light earlier, and something warned her hand away from the switch. In the faint reflected glow from the patio it was still an astonishment to her that this safe-looking man was actually holding Rosie. She said in a steady voice, preserving the strange calm, “If that—the other one has to get away, he can have my car keys and what cash there is in the house.”

  She suspected as she spoke that the offer was useless, but it had to be made. “Get me a scarf,” said the man unheedingly.

  And now there was no doubt about it: His was the voice which had been surprised at hers on the telephone. Amanda, going instantly into her aunt’s bedroom because as long as he had possession of Rosie she would have to do as she was told, thought she knew what the scarf was for. “I saw him,” she had said in that first disastrous impulse, but from the panic in her manner and the fact that she was there at all, clearly poised for flight, it had been a fast glimpse, unreciprocated. She wasn’t to be allowed another look at the man in the cellar. Rosie, of course, did not count as a witness at all.

  Still, how did he dare let her out from under his eye, even with a child as hostage? Many Southwesterners— Amanda guessed a predominance—kept a firearm in the house, for hunting or target practice or self-defense. She did not, out of a fell conviction that before she could bring herself to squeeze the trigger the weapon would have been snatched away and turned against her, and neither did Mrs. Balsam, but how could he be sure that she would not emerge from the bedroom with a revolver or a rifle?

  He knew the house, or Mrs. Balsam, or both.

  He knew the house very well indeed. He had been able to put his hand on the key to the bedroom door almost without pausing, because the lock had just clicked decisively.

  Amanda, at the bureau, dropped folds of navy chiffon back and ran to the door, recognizing belatedly the peculiarly unburdened feeling of her left wrist. The handbag she had slung there after picking up Rosie had been dislodged by that swift maneuver over the child.

  She wrenched at the doorknob in spite of the evidence of her ears. Mouth against the crack, she called, “Please, won’t you at least let her in here with me?”

  Silence; Rosie must still be too bewildered, or by now too frightened, to cry. She was to be the guarantee of good behavior on Amanda’s part while the man in the cellar was spirited out of the house. They wouldn’t, would they, take her with them as a continuing safeguard?

  Remembered television and newspaper scenes shot dementedly through Amanda’s head, of babies being used as living shields; with guns at their heads; being held threateningly over the edges of rooftops. Her hands were gripped together so fiercely that they hurt. She relaxed them, drew a few deep shaky breaths, left the door briefly to turn on the bedside clock radio to a thread of sound.

  By this time the police would have done a thorough canvassing of the remaining escapee’s relatives and friends; mightn’t that have led them to the man who called himself Peter Dickens? But how could they ever connect him to Mrs. Balsam’s house? (And if only she had said to him, at the patio door, “Thank you, but my aunt is away and Tm just leaving,” she and Rosie would be on the road to home right now.)

  That did not bear thinking about. Music came on, and from its nature this was the station that had news bre
aks at frequent intervals. Amanda went back to the door again. Now there was a faint neutral sound, which might have been someone talking steadily or water running at full force; it seemed to have no variation.

  The music stopped, and a woman disk jockey said smoothly, “Wasn’t that pretty? Oh-hhh, my. At the top of the local news, the second of two state penitentiary escapees at large for nearly forty-eight hours has been captured by police. That bulletin just in, no details as yet. In the search for Ellie Peale, the clerk abducted from a convenience store also two nights ago, a Corrales man was questioned but has been released. State Representative David Esquibel, under pressure because of his stand on wilderness—”

  Amanda’s shocked hand went out and snapped the radio voice into silence. Who, then, did the cellar hide? A man with an even more desperate need for sanctuary because he had taken a young girl with whose face the whole city was now familiar? Had Amanda herself, earlier, been pan-broiling steak and mushrooms and tomatoes obliviously while under her feet Ellie Peale was being prevented from crying out? Or could no longer cry out?

  Quivira Road, the location of the convenience store, was a good eight miles away. This house was isolated, and two nights ago Mrs. Balsam had been summoned out of it because the palomino mare was loose. Set loose? With another decoy call tonight?

  Amanda moved on trembling legs to the bedroom door. From the other part of the house was the sound of a sudden sharp impact, and now, at last, Rosie began to cry.

  Chapter 8

  As of late that afternoon, there was one fresh piece of information in the background of the Peale case. It was far from reassuring.