She stepped back, opened the door wide, and they went inside.
***
In the attic of the clifftop house, in the king-size bed, Bruno woke, screaming.
The room was dark. The flashlight batteries had gone dead while he’d slept.
Whispers.
All around him.
Soft, sibilant, evil whispers.
Slapping at his face and neck and chest and arms, trying to brush away the hideous things that crawled on him, Bruno fell off the bed. There seemed to be even a greater number of bustling, skittering things on the floor than there had been on the bed, thousands of them, all whispering, whispering. He wailed and gibbered, then clamped a hand over his nose and mouth to prevent the things from slithering inside of him.
Light.
Threads of light.
Thin lines of light like loose, luminescent threads hanging from the otherwise tenebrous fabric of the room. Not many threads, not much light, but some. It was a whole lot better than nothing.
He scrambled as fast as he could toward those faint filaments of light, flinging the things from him, and what he found was a window. The far side of it was covered by shutters. Light was seeping through the narrow chinks in the shutters.
Bruno stood, swaying, fumbling in the dark for the window latch. When he found the lock, it would not turn; it was badly corroded.
Screaming, brushing frantically at himself, he stumbled back toward the bed, found it in the seamless blackness, got hold of the lamp that stood on the nightstand, carried the lamp back to the window, used it as a club, and glass shattered. He threw the lamp aside, felt for the bolt on the inside of the shutters, put his hand on it, jerked on it, skinned a knuckle as he forced the bolt out of its catch, threw open the shutters, and wept with relief as light flooded into the attic.
The whispers faded.
***
Rita Yancy’s parlor–that was what she called it, a parlor, rather than using a more modern and less colorful word–almost was a parody of the stereotypical parlor in which sweet little old ladies like her were supposed to spend their twilight years. Chintz drapes. Handmade, embroidered wall hangings–most of them inspirational sayings framed by penny-sized flowers and cute birds–were everywhere, a relentless display of good will and good humor and bad taste. Tasseled upholstery. Wingback chairs. Copies of Reader’s Digest on a dainty occasional table. A basket filled with balls of yarn and knitting needles. A flowered carpet that was protected by matching flowered runners. Handmade afghans were draped across the seat and the back of the sofa. A mantel clock ticked hollowly.
Hilary and Tony sat on the sofa, on the edge of it, as if afraid to lean back and risk rumpling the covering. Hilary noticed that each of the many knickknacks and curios was dustfree and highly polished. She had the feeling that Rita Yancy would jump up and run for a dust cloth the instant anyone tried to touch and admire those prized possessions.
Joshua sat in an armchair. The back of his head and his arms rested on antimacassars.
Mrs. Yancy settled into what was obviously her favorite chair; she seemed to have acquired part of her character from it, and it from her. It was possible, Hilary thought, to picture Mrs. Yancy and the chair growing together into a single organic-inorganic creature with six legs and brushed velvet skin.
The old woman picked up a blue and green afghan that was folded on her footstool. She opened the blanket and covered her lap with it.
There was a moment of absolute silence, where even the mantel clock seemed to pause, as if time had stopped, as if they had been quick-frozen and magically transported, along with the room, to a distant planet to be put on exhibition in an extraterrestrial museum’s Department of Earth Anthropology.
Then Rita Yancy spoke, and what she said totally shattered Hilary’s homey image of her. “Well, there’s sure as hell no point in beating around the bush. I don’t want to waste my whole day on this damn silly thing. Let’s get straight to it. You want to know why Bruno Frye was paying me five hundred bucks a month. It was hush money. He was paying me to keep my mouth shut. His mother paid me the same amount every month for almost thirty-five years, and when she died, Bruno started sending checks. I must admit that surprised the hell out of me. These days it’s an unusual son who would pay that kind of money to protect his mother’s reputation–and especially after she’s already kicked the bucket. But he paid.”