Silence.
He waited. One minute. Two minutes.
Nothing.
There was no sound except the snapping of the rain against the windows and the drumming of it on the roof.
Only three hammer blows this time. Harder than any that had come before. But only three. Almost as if someone were playing games with him, taunting him.
* * *
Shortly before midnight, in room 316, the girl laughed softly in her sleep.
Outside her window, lightning pulsed, and the night flickered, and the darkness seemed to gallop for a moment, as if it were a huge and eager beast.
The girl turned onto her stomach without waking, murmured into her pillows. “The ax,” she said with a wistful sigh. “The ax….”
On the stroke of midnight, just forty minutes after she had fallen asleep, Carol bolted up from her pillows, trembling violently. As she struggled out of the grip of her nightmare, she heard someone say, “It’s coming! It’s coming!” She stared wildly, blindly into the lightless room until she realized the panic-stricken voice had been her own.
Suddenly she could not tolerate the darkness one second longer. She fumbled desperately for the switch on the bedside lamp, found it, and sagged with relief.
The light didn’t disturb Paul. He mumbled in his sleep but didn’t wake.
Carol leaned back against the headboard and listened to her racing heart as it gradually slowed to a normal beat.
Her hands were icy. She put them under the covers and curled them into warming fists.
The nightmares have got to stop, she told herself. I can’t go through this every night. I need my sleep.
Perhaps a vacation was called for. She had been working too hard for too long. The accumulated weariness was probably partly to blame for her bad dreams. She had also been under a great deal of unusual stress lately: the pending adoption, the near-tragic events in O’Brian’s office on Wednesday, the accident just yesterday morning, the girl’s amnesia for which she felt responsible…. Living with too much tension could cause exceptionally vivid nightmares of the sort she was experiencing. A week in the mountains, away from everyday problems, seemed like the perfect medicine.
In addition to all the other sources of stress, that day was approaching, the birthday of the child she had put up for adoption. A week from tomorrow, the Saturday after next, would mark sixteen years since she had relinquished the baby. Already, eight days in advance of that anniversary, she was burdened by a heavy mantle of guilt. By the time next Saturday rolled around, she would most likely be thoroughly depressed, as usual. A week in the mountains, away from everyday problems, might be the perfect medicine for that ailment, too.
Last year, she and Paul had purchased a vacation cabin on an acre of timbered land in the mountains. It was a cozy place—two bedrooms, one bath, a living room with a big stone fireplace, and a complete kitchen—a retreat that combined all the comforts of civilization with the clean air, marvelous scenery, and tranquility that could not be found in the city.
They had planned to get away to the cabin at least two weekends every month during the summer, but they had made the trip only three times in the past four months, less than half as often as they had hoped.
Paul had labored hard to meet a series of self-imposed deadlines on his novel, and she had taken on more patients—a couple of really troubled kids who simply could not be turned away—and for both herself and Paul, work had expanded to fill every spare moment. Perhaps they were the overachievers that Alfred O’Brian had thought they might be.
But we’ll change when we have a child, Carol told herself. We’ll make lots of time for leisure and for family outings because creating the best environment for our child is the job we’re looking forward to more than any other.
Now, sitting up in bed, the grisly nightmare still chillingly fresh in her mind, she decided to start changing her life from this moment on. They would take off a few days, maybe a whole week, and go to the mountains before the recommendations committee’s meeting at the end of the month, so they would be rested and composed when at last they met the child who would be theirs. They couldn’t take off this coming week, of course. She would need time to reschedule her appointments. Besides, she didn’t want to leave town until Jane Doe’s parents showed up and properly identified the girl; that might take a few more days. But they ought to be able to carve a large chunk of time out of the week after next, and she made up her mind to start nudging Paul about it first thing in the morning.