after Linda Dawson’s death. She came in once a week, every Wednesday.
She also did some babysitting for him; in fact, she’d been here last
evening, watching over Penny and Davey, while Jack had been out on a
date.
This morning, she let herself in with the key that Jack had given her,
and she went straight to the kitchen. She brewed a pot of coffee and
poured a cup for herself and drank half of it before she took off her
coat. It was a bitter day, indeed, and even though the apartment was
warm, she found it difficult to rid herself of the chill that had seeped
deep into her bones during the six-block walk from her own apartment.
She started cleaning in the kitchen. Nothing was actually dirty. Jack
and his two young ones were clean and reasonably orderly, not at all
like some for whom Nayva worked. Nonetheless, she labored diligently,
scrubbing and polishing with the same vigor and determination that she
brought to really grimy jobs, for she prided herself on the fact that a
place positively gleamed when she was finished with it. Her father-dead
these many years and God rest his soul-had been a uniformed policeman, a
foot patrolman, who took no graft whatsoever, and who strived to make
his beat a safe one for all who lived or toiled within its boundaries.
He had taken considerable pride in his job, and he’d taught Nayva (among
other things) two valuable lessons about work: first, there is always
satisfaction and esteem in a piece of work well done, regardless of how
menial it might be; second, if you cannot do a job well, then there’s
not much use in doing it at all.
Initially, other than the noises Nayva made as she cleaned, the only
sounds in the apartment were the periodic humming of the refrigerator
motor, occasional thumps and creaks as someone rearranged the furniture
in the apartment above, and the moaning of the brisk winter wind as it
pressed at the windows.
Then, as she paused to pour a little more coffee for herself, an odd
sound came from the living room. A sharp, short squeal. An animal
sound. She put down the coffee pot.
Cat? Dog?
It hadn’t seemed like either of those; like nothing familiar. Besides,
the Dawsons had no pets.
She started across the kitchen, toward the door to the dining alcove and
the living room beyond.
The squeal came again, and it brought her to a halt, froze her, and
suddenly she was uneasy. It was an ugly, angry, brittle cry, again of
short duration but piercing and somehow menacing. This time it didn’t
sound as much like an animal as it had before.
It didn’t sound particularly human, either, but she said, “Is someone
there?”
The apartment was silent. Almost too silent, now. As if someone were
listening, waiting for her to make a move.
Nayva wasn’t a woman given to fits of nerves and certainly not to
hysteria. And she had always been confident that she could take care of
herself just fine, thank you. But suddenly she was stricken by an
uncharacteristic twinge of fear.
Silence.
“Who’s there?” she demanded.
The shrill, angry shriek came again. It was a hateful sound.
Nayva shuddered.
A rat? Rats squealed. But not like this.
Feeling slightly foolish, she picked up a broom and held it as if it
were a weapon.
The shriek came again, from the living room, as if taunting her to come
see what it was.
Broom in hand, she crossed the kitchen and hesitated at the doorway.
Something was moving around in the living room.
She couldn’t see it, but she could hear an odd, dry paper, dry-leaf
rustling and a scratching-hissing noise that sometimes sounded like
whispered words in a foreign language.
With a boldness she had inherited from her father, Nayva stepped through
the doorway. She edged past the tables and chairs, looking beyond them
at the living room, which was visible through the wide archway that
separated it from the dining alcove. She stopped beneath the arch and
listened, trying to get a better fix on the noise.
From the corner of her eye, she saw movement. The pale yellow drapes