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“It was more than just some goddam picture!” Rosie cried.
“It was left there for me, and it was more than just some goddam picture! It went into some other world! I know it did, because I’ve got her bracelet!” She turned her head, looked at it, then ran over to the nighttable and snatched it up. It felt heavier than ever. And hot.
“Rosie,” Bill said. She could just make him out, holding his hands against his throat. She thought there was blood on his mouth.
“Rosie we have to call the-” Then he cried out as bright light washed the room… except it wasn’t bright enough to be the hazy summer sunlight she had expected. It was moonlight, flooding out of the open closet and washing across the floor. She walked back to Bill with the armlet in her hand and looked in. Where the closet’s back wall had been she saw the hilltop, saw tall grasses rippling in a soft and intermittent night breeze, saw the livid lines and columns of the temple gleaming in the dark. And above all was the moon, a bright silver coin riding in a purple-black sky. She thought of the mother fox they had seen today, a thousand years ago, looking up at such a moon. The vixen looking up as her cubs slept beside her in the lee of the fallen trunk, looking raptly up at the moon with her black eyes. Bill’s face was bewildered. The light lay on his skin like silver gilt.
“Rosie,” he said in a weak and worried voice. His lips continued to move, but he said no more. She took his arm.
“Come on, Bill. We have to go.”
“What’s happening?” He was pitiful in his hurt and confusion. The expression on his face roused strange and contrasting emotions in her: wild impatience at his slow, oxlike responses, and fierce love-not quite maternal-that felt like a flame in her mind. She would protect him. Yes. Yes. She would protect him unto death, if that was what it took.
“Never mind what’s happening,” she said.
“Only trust me, the way I trusted you to drive the motorcycle. Trust me and come. We have to go right now!” She pulled him forward with her right hand; the armlet dangled from her left like a gold doughnut. He resisted for a moment, and then Norman screamed and hit the door again. With a cry of fear and rage, Rosie renewed her grip on Bill’s arm. She yanked him into the closet and then into the moonlit world which now lay beyond its far wall.
Things started to go seriously wrong when the bitch pushed the coat-tree in front of the stairs. Norman got tangled in it somehow, or at least the London Fog he’d liked so much did. One of the brass coathooks somehow ran right through a buttonhole, neatest trick of the week, and another was in his pocket, like an inept pickpocket groping for a wallet. A third speared one blunt brass finger into his much-abused balls. Roaring, cursing her, he tried to lurch forward and upward. The hideous, clinging coat-tree refused to let go of him, and even dragging it along behind him proved to be an impossibility; one of its claw-feet had somehow hooked the newel post, clutching like a grappling-hook and holding like an anchor. He had to get up there, had to. He didn’t want her locking herself and the cocksucker with her into her little bolthole before he could get there. He had no doubt he could break the door down if he had to, he’d broken down a shitload of them in his years as a cop, some of them pretty tough old babies, but time was becoming a factor here. He didn’t want to shoot her, that would be too quick and far, far too easy for the likes of his rambling Rose, but if the course he was ru
“Put me in, coach!” the bull cried from the topcoat pocket.
“I’m ta
“Viva ze bool!” he cried, and wriggled out of the topcoat. He lunged forward again, gun in hand. The damned coat-tree snapped under his weight, but not before trying to drive one of its goddam hooks through his left knee. Norman hardly felt it. He was gri
“You don’t want to play with me, Rose.” He tried for his feet and the kneecap the coat-tree had poked buckled under him. “stop right where you are. Quit trying to run. I only want to talk to you.” She screamed back at him, words, words, words, they didn’t matter. He resumed crawling, going as fast as he could and being as quiet as he could. At last he sensed movement above him. He shot his arm out, seized her left calf, dug in with his nails. How good it felt! Got you! he thought, savagely triumphant. Got you, by God! Got-Her foot came out of the dark with the unexpected sudde