The Door to December
Page 23

The Plexiglas that shielded the radio dial suddenly cracked down the middle.
The Sony vibrated so violently that it began to move across the counter.
Laura remembered the nightmarish image that had come to her a few minutes ago: crablike legs sprouting from the plastic casing ...
The refrigerator door flew open again all by itself.
With a hiss and squeak of hinges, with scattered thumping sounds, every cupboard door in the room abruptly and simultaneously flung itself wide open. One of them banged against Earl's legs, and he almost fell.
The radio had stopped emitting selected words from various stations. Now it was simply spewing out a shrill electronic noise at higher than full volume, as if attempting to shatter their flesh and bones as a perfectly sung and sustained high-C could shatter fine crystal.
*  *  *
Ross Mondale sat on a shipping crate and buried his face in his hands, as if weeping.
Dan Haldane was startled and disconcerted. He had been certain that Mondale was incapable of tears.
The captain didn't sob or wheeze or make any other sounds, and when he looked up again, after half a minute or so, his eyes were perfectly dry. He hadn't been weeping after all—merely thinking. Desperately thinking.
He had also been putting on a new expression, a conscious act not unlike exchanging one mask for another. The fear and worry and anger were completely gone. Even the hatred was fairly well hidden, although a dark rime of it was still visible in the captain's eyes, like a film of black ice on a shallow puddle at the edge of winter. Now he was wearing his patented friendly-and-humble face, which was transparently insincere.
'Okay, Dan. Okay. We were friends once, and maybe we can be friends again.'
We were never really friends, Dan thought.
But he said nothing. He was curious to see how conciliatory Ross Mondale would pretend to be.
Mondale said, 'At least we can start by trying to work together, and I can help by acknowledging that you're a damned good detective. You're methodical, but you're also intuitive. I shouldn't try to rein you in, because that's like refusing to let a natural-born hunting dog follow its own nose. Okay. So you're on your own in this case. Go wherever you want, see who you want, when you want. Just try to fill me in once in a while. I'd appreciate it. Maybe if we both give a little, both of us bend a little, then we'll find that we not only can work together but can even be friends again.'
Dan decided that he liked Mondale's anger and unconcealed hatred better than his smarmy appeasement. The captain's hatred was the most honest thing about him. Now, the honey in his voice and manner didn't soothe Dan: in fact, it made his skin crawl.
'But can I ask you one thing?' Mondale said, leaning forward from his perch on the packing crate, looking earnest.
'What's that?'
'Why this case? Why're you so passionately committed to it?'
'I just want to do my job.'
'It's more than that.'
Dan gave nothing.
'Is it the woman?'
'No.'
'She's very good looking.'
'It's not the woman,' Dan said, though Laura McCaffrey's beauty had not escaped his attention. It did indeed play at least a small role in his determination to stay with the case, though he would never reveal as much to Mondale.
'Is it the kid?'
'Maybe,' Dan said.
'You've always worked hardest on cases where a child was abused or threatened.'
'Not always.'
'Yes, always,' Mondale said. 'Is that because of what happened to your brother and sister?'
*  *  *
The radio vibrated harder, faster. It rattled against the counter with sufficient force to chip the tiles—and abruptly floated into the air. Levitated. It hung up there, swaying, bobbing at the end of its cord as a helium-filled balloon might bobble at the end of a string.
Laura was beyond surprise. She watched, immobilized by awe, no longer even terribly afraid, simply numb with cold and with incredulity.
The electronic whine became more shrill, thin, spiraled up, like the tape-recorded descent of a bomb played in reverse. Laura looked down at Melanie and saw that the girl had at last begun to rise out of her stupor. She hadn't opened her eyes yet—in fact, she was now squeezing them shut—but she had raised her small hands to her ears, and her mouth was open too.
Snakes of smoke erupted from the miraculously suspended radio. It exploded.
Laura closed her eyes and ducked her head just as the Sony blew up. Bits of broken plastic rained over her, snapped against her arms, head, hands.
A few large chunks of the radio, still attached to the cord, fell straight to the floor—the invisible hands no longer providing support—and hit the tiles with a clank and clatter. The plug pulled from the wall, and the cord slithered across the counter; it dropped onto the floor with the rest of the shattered Sony, and was still.
When the explosion had come, Melanie had finally responded to the chaos around her. She erupted from her chair, and even before the flying debris had finished falling, she scurried on hands and knees into the corner by the back door. Now she cowered there, head sheltered under her arms, sobbing.
In the silence following the cessation of the radio's banshee wail, the child's sobs were especially penetrating. Each, like a soft blow, landed on Laura's heart, not with physical force but with enormous emotional impact, hammering her alternately toward despair and terror.
*  *  *
When Dan didn't respond, Mondale repeated the question in a tone of innocent curiosity, but his undertone was taunting and mean. 'Do you work harder on those cases involving child abuse because of what happened to your brother and sister?'
'Maybe,' Dan said, wishing he had never told Mondale about those tragedies. But when two young cops share a squad car, they usually spill their guts to each other during the long night patrols. He had spilled too much before he'd realized that he didn't like Mondale and never would. 'Maybe that's part of why I don't want to let go of this case. But it's not the whole story. It's also because of Cindy Lakey. Don't you see that, Ross? Here's another case where a woman and child are in danger, a mother and her daughter threatened by a maniac, maybe more than one maniac. Just like the Lakeys. So maybe it's a chance for me to redeem myself. A chance to make up for my failure to save Cindy Lakey, to finally get rid of a little of that guilt.'
Mondale stared at him, astonished. 'You feel guilt because the Lakey kid was killed?'
Dan nodded. 'I should have shot Dunbar the moment he turned toward me with that gun. I shouldn't have hesitated, shouldn't have given him a chance to drop it. If I'd wasted him right away, he'd never have gotten into that house.'
Amazed, Mondale said, 'But, Christ, you know what it was like back then. Even worse than now. The grand jury was looking into half a dozen charges of police brutality, whether the accusations had substance or not. Every half-assed political activist had it in for the whole department in those days. Even worse than now. Even when a cop shot someone in a clear-cut act of self-defense, they howled for his head. Everyone was supposed to have rights—except cops. Cops were supposed to just stand there and take bullets in the chest. The reporters, politicians, the ACLU—they all talked about us like we were bloodthirsty fascists. Shit, man, you remember!'
'I remember,' Dan said. 'And that's why I didn't shoot Dunbar when I should have. I could see the guy was unbalanced, dangerous. I knew, intuitively, that he was going to kill somebody that night, but in the back of my mind I was thinking about all the heat we were under, all the accusations about being trigger-happy cops, and I knew if I shot him, I'd have to answer for it. In the climate we had back then, I figured nobody would listen to me. I'd be sacrificed. I was worried about losing my job, being booted off the force. I was afraid of destroying my career. And so I waited until he brought the gun around, waited until he pointed it right straight at me. But I gave him just a second too long, and he got me, and because I didn't go with my instincts or with my intellect, he had a chance to get Cindy Lakey too.'
Mondale shook his head adamantly. 'But none of that was your fault. Blame the goddamned social reformers who take sides without any understanding of the goddamned situation we face, without knowing what it's like out there on the streets. They're to blame. Not you. Not me.'
Dan glared at him. 'Don't you dare put yourself in the same boat with me. Don't you dare. You ran, Ross. I screwed up because I was thinking about my own ass—about my pension, for God's sake!—when I should have been thinking about nothing other than doing the job the best way I could. That's why I have guilt to live with. But don't you ever imply the burden lies equally on you and me. It doesn't. That's crap, and you know it.'
Mondale was trying to look earnest and concerned, but he was having increasing difficulty suppressing his hatred.
'Or maybe you don't know it,' Dan said. 'That's even scarier. Maybe you aren't just covering your own backside. Maybe you really think that looking out for number one is the only moral position that makes sense.'
Without replying, Mondale got up and went to the door.
Dan said, 'Is your conscience actually clear, Ross? God help you, I think maybe it is.'
Mondale glanced back at him. 'You do what you want to do on this case, but stay out of my way.'
'You haven't lost a single night's sleep over Cindy Lakey, have you, Ross?'
'I said, stay out of my way.'
'Happily.'
'I don't want to have to listen to any more of your carping and whining.'
'You're incredible.'
Without replying, Mondale opened the door.
'What planet are you from, Ross?'
Mondale walked out.
'I'll bet there's only one color on his home planet,' Dan said to the empty room. 'Brown. Everything must be brown on his world. That's why his clothes are all brown—they remind him of home.'
It was a weak joke. Maybe that was why he couldn't make himself smile. Maybe.
*  *  *
The kitchen was still.
The silence held.
The air was warm once more.
'It's over,' Earl said.
Paralysis relaxed its grip on Laura. A circuit board from the demolished radio crunched under her foot as she stepped across the kitchen and knelt beside Melanie.
With soothing words, with much patting and stroking, she calmed her daughter. She wiped the tears from the child's face.
Earl began picking through the debris, studying the pieces of the Sony, mumbling to himself, baffled and fascinated. Sitting on the floor with Melanie, pulling the girl onto her lap, holding her, rocking her, immensely relieved that the child was still there to be comforted, Laura would like to have wished away the events of the past few minutes. She would have given anything to be able to deny the reality of what she had seen. But she was too good a psychiatrist to allow herself to indulge in any of the little mind games that would minimize this bizarre development; nor would she permit herself to rationalize it away with the standard jargon of her profession. She hadn't been hallucinating. This paranormal episode—this supernatural phenomenon—couldn't be explained away as just sensory confusion, either; her perceptions had been accurate and reliable in spite of the impossibility of what she had perceived. She had not been overlaying a logical series of events with an illogical and subjective fantasy, in the manner of many schizophrenics. Earl had seen it too. And this wasn't a shared hallucination, a mass delusion. It was crazy, impossible—but real. The radio had been ... possessed. Some of the pieces of the Sony were still smoking. The air was thick with an acrid, charredplastic odor.
Melanie moaned softly. Twitched.
'Easy, honey, easy.'
The girl looked up at her mother, and Laura was jolted by the eye contact. Melanie was no longer gazing through her. She had come back from her dark world again, and Laura prayed that this time the girl was back for good, although that was unlikely.
'I ... want,' Melanie said.
'What is it, honey? What do you want?'
The girl's eyes searched Laura's. 'I ... need.'
'Anything, Melanie. Anything you want. Just tell me. Tell Mommy what you need.'
'It'll get them all,' Melanie said, her voice heavy with dread.
Earl had looked up from the smoldering scraps of the radio and was watching intently.
'What?' Laura asked. 'What will get them, honey?'
'And then it'll ... get ... me,' the girl said.
'No,' Laura said quickly. 'Nothing's going to get you. I'll take care of you. I'll—'
'It'll ... come up from ... inside.'
'Inside where?'
'... from inside ...'
'What is it, honey? What're you afraid of. What is it?'
'... it'll ... come ... and eat me ...'
'No.'
'... eat me ... all up,' the girl said, and she shuddered. 'No, Melanie. Don't worry about ...' She let her voice trail away because she saw that the girl's eyes had shifted subtly. They were not entirely out of focus, but neither were they fixed on Laura anymore.
The child sighed and her breathing changed. She had gone back into that private place where she had been hiding ever since they'd found her wandering na*ed in the street.
Earl said, 'Doc, can you make anything of this?'
'No.'
'Because I can't figure it at all.'
'Me neither.'
Earlier, cooking dinner, she had begun to feel better about Melanie and the future. She'd begun to feel almost normal. But their situation had changed for the worse, and now her nerves were frayed again.
In this city, there were people who wanted to kidnap Melanie in order to continue experimenting with her. Laura didn't know what they hoped to achieve or why they had picked on Melanie, but she was certain they were out there. Even the FBI seemed sure of that. Other people wanted the girl dead. The discovery of Ned Rink's body seemed to prove that Melanie's life was indisputably in danger. But now it appeared that those faceless people were not the only ones who wanted to get their hands on Melanie. Now there was another enemy as well. That was the essence of the warning that had come to them through the radio.
But who or what had been controlling the radio? And how? Who or what had sent the warning? And why? More important, who was this new enemy?
'It,' the radio had said, and the implication had been that this enemy was more frightening and more dangerous than all the others combined. It was loose, the radio had said. It was coming. They had to run, the radio said. They had to hide. From It.