She raised her voice. “Kitty-kitty-kitty.”
There was no answering meow. Aristophanes did not, as expected, come running, his tail curled up slightly, eager for his dinner.
“Ari-Ari-Ari! Soup’s on, you silly cat.”
She put away the box of cat food and washed her hands at the sink.
Thunk, thunk-thunk!
The hammering sound—one hard blow followed by two equally hard blows struck close together—was so sudden and loud that Grace jerked in surprise and almost dropped the small towel on which she was drying her hands. The noise had come from the front of the house. She waited a moment, and there was only the sound of the wind and falling rain, and then—Thunk! Thunk!
She hung the towel on the rack and stepped into the downstairs hallway.
Thunk-thunk-thunk!
She walked hesitantly down the hall to the front door and snapped on the porch light. The door had a peephole, and the fish-eye lens provided a wide view. She couldn’t see anyone; the porch appeared to be deserted.
THUNK!
That blow was delivered with such force that Grace thought the door had been torn from its hinges. There was a splintering sound as she jumped back, and she expected to see chunks of wood exploding into the hall. But the door still hung firmly in place, though it vibrated noisily in its frame; the deadbolt rattled against the lock plate.
THUNK! THUNK! THUNK!
“Stop that!” she shouted. “Who are you? Who’s there?”
The pounding stopped, and she thought she heard adolescent laughter.
She had been on the verge of either calling the police or going for the pistol she kept in her nightstand, but when she heard the laughter, she changed her mind. She could certainly handle a few kids without help. She wasn’t so old and weak and fragile that she needed to call the cops to deal with a bunch of ornery little pranksters.
Cautiously, she drew aside the curtain on the long, narrow window beside the door. Tense, ready to step away quickly if someone made a threatening move toward the glass, she looked out. There was no one on the porch.
She heard the laughter again. It was high-pitched, musical, girlish.
Letting the curtain fall back into place, she turned to the door, unlocked it, and stepped onto the threshold.
The night wind was raw and wet. Rain drizzled off the scalloped eaves of the porch.
The immediate area in front of the house offered at least a hundred hiding places for the hoaxers. Bristling shrubbery rustled in the wind, just the other side of the railing, and the yellowish glow from the insect-repelling bulb in the porch ceiling illuminated little more than the center of the porch. The walkway that led from the bottom of the porch steps to the street was flanked by hedges that looked blue black in the darkness. Among the many shades of night, none of the pranksters were visible.
Grace waited, listened.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, but there was no laughter, no giggling in the darkness.
—Maybe it wasn’t kids.
—Who else?
—You see them on TV news all the time. The ironeyed ones who shoot and stab and strangle people for the fun of it. They seem to be everywhere these days, the misfits, the psychopaths.
—That was not adult laughter. This is kids’ work.
—Still, maybe! better get inside and lock the door.
—Stop thinking like a frightened old lady, dammit!
It was odd that any of the neighborhood children would harass her, for she was on excellent terms with all of them. Of course, maybe these weren’t kids from the immediate neighborhood. Just a couple of streets away, everyone was a stranger to her.
She turned and examined the outer face of the front door. She could find no indication that it had been struck repeatedly and violently only moments ago. The wood was not chipped or cracked; it wasn’t even slightly marred.
She was amazed because she was certain she had heard the wood splintering. What would kids use that would make a lot of noise while leaving absolutely no marks on the door? Bean bags or something of that nature? No. A bean bag wouldn’t have made such a horrendous racket; the impact of the bag against the door might have been loud, yes, very loud indeed, if it had been swung with sufficient force, but the sound wouldn’t have been so hard, so sharp.