I'm anticipating, that's all. Anticipating the sound of that bell in this stillness. He's probably gone to sleep after all and it will startle him awake.
But that wasn't what she was afraid of. She had been nervous, scared in some deep and diffuse way ever since she had found it so hard to stay awake, but this sharp fear was something new, something which had solely to do with those small tracks. Tracks that were the size-Her mind tried to block this thought, but it was too tired, too slow.
-of Gage's feet.
Oh stop it, can't you stop it?
She reached out and twisted the bell.
Its sound was even louder than she remembered, but not so musical-it was a harsh, choked scream in the stillness. Rachel jumped back, uttering a nervous little laugh that had absolutely no humor in it at all. She waited for Jud's footsteps, but his footsteps did not come. There was silence, and more silence, and she was beginning to debate in her own mind whether or not she could bring herself to twist that iron-butterfly shape again, when a sound did come from behind the door, a sound she would not have expected in her wildest surmises.
Waowf... Waow!... Waow!
"Church?" she asked, startled and puzzled. She bent forward, but it was of course impossible to see in; the door's glass panel had been covered with a neat white curtain. Norma's work. "Church, is that you?"
Waow!
Rachel tried the door. It was unlocked. Church was there, sitting in the hallway with its tail coiled neatly around its feet. The cat's fur was streaked with something dark. Mud, Rachel thought, and then saw that the beads of liquid caught in Church's whiskers were red.
He raised one paw and began to lick it, his eyes never leaving her face.
"Jud?" she called out, really alarmed now. She stepped just inside the door.
The house gave back no answer; only silence.
Rachel tried to think, but all at once images of her sister Zelda had begun to creep into her mind, blurring thought. How her hands had twisted. How she used to slam her head against the wall sometimes when she was angry-the paper had been all torn there, the plaster beneath torn and broken. This was no time to think of Zelda, not when Jud might be hurt. Suppose he had fallen down? He was an old man.
Think about that, not about the dreams you had as a kid, dreams of opening the closet and having Zelda spring out at you with her blackened, grinning face, dreams of being in the bathtub and seeing Zelda's eyes peering out of the drain, dreams of Zelda lurking in the basement behind the furnace, dreams-Church opened his mouth, exposing his sharp teeth and cried Waow! again.
Louis was right, we never should have had him fixed, he's never seemed right since then. But Louis said it would take away all of his aggressive instincts.
He was wrong about that, anyway; Church still hunts. He-Waow! Church cried again, then turned and darted up the stairs.
"Jud?" she called again. "Are you up there?"
Waow! Church cried from the top of the stairs, as if to confirm the fact, and then he disappeared down the hall.
How did he get in, anyway? Did Jud let him in? Why?
Rachel shifted from one foot to the other, wondering what to do next. The worst of it was that all of this seemed... seemed somehow managed, as if something wanted her to be here, and-And then there was a groan from upstairs, low and filled with pain-Jud's voice, surely Jud's voice. He's fallen in the bathroom or maybe tripped, broken a leg, or sprained his hip, maybe, the bones of the old are brittle, and what in the name of God are you thinking of, girl, standing down here and shifting back and forth like you had to go to the bathroom, that was blood on Church, blood, Jud's hurt and you're just standing here! What's wrong with you?
"Jud!" The groan came again, and she ran up the stairs.
She had never been up here before, and because the hail's only window faced west, toward the river, it was still very dark. The hallway ran straight and wide beside the stairwell and toward the back of the house, the cherrywood rail gleaming with mellow elegance. There was a picture of the Acropolis on the wall and (it's Zelda all these years she's been after you and now it's her time open the right door and she'll be there with her humped and twisted back smelling of piss and death it's Zelda it's her time and finally she caught up with you) the groan came again, low, from behind the second door on the right.
Rachel began to walk toward that door, her heels clacking on the boards. It seemed to her that she was going through some sort of warp-not a time warp or a space warp but a size warp. She was getting smaller. The picture of the Acropolis was floating higher and higher, and that cut-glass doorknob would soon be at eye level. Her hand stretched out for it... and before she could even touch it, the door was snatched open.