It

Her heart suddenly skipped two beats in her chest, making her gasp and utter a startled cough. She felt an instant of prison-panic, claustrophobia inside her own body, and wondered if all this terror didn’t have a stupidly ordinary physical root after all: maybe she was going ot have a heart attack. Or was already having one.
Her heart settled, but uneasily.
Audra turned on the light by the bed-table and looked at her watch. Twelve past three. He would be sleeping, but that didn’t matter to her now — nothing mattered except hearing his voice. She wanted to finish the night with him. If Bill was beside her, her clockwork would fall in sync with his and settle down. The nightmares would stay away. He sold nightmares to others — that was his trade — but to her he had never given anything but peace. Outside that odd cold nut imbedded in his imagination, peace seemed to be all he was made for or meant for. She got the Yellow Pages, found the number for the Derry Town House, and dialed it.
‘Derry Town House.’
‘Would you please ring Mr Denbrough’s room? Mr William Denbrough?’
‘Does that guy ever get any calls in the daytime?’ the clerk said, and before she could think to ask what that was supposed to mean, he had plugged her call through. The phone burred once, twice, three times. She could imagine him, sleeping with everything under the covers except the top of his head; she could imagine one hand coming out, feeling for the phone. She had seen him do it before, and a fond little smile touched her lips. It faded as the phone rang a fourth time . . . and a fifth, and a sixth. Halfway through the seventh ring, the connection was broken.
‘That room does not answer.’
‘No shit, Sherlock,’ Audra said, more upset and frightened than ever. ‘Are you sure you rang the right room?’
‘Ayup,’ the clerk said. ‘Mr Denbrough had an inter-room call ‘not five minutes ago. I know he answered that one, because the light stayed on the switchboard a minute or two. He must have gone to the person’s room.’
‘Well, which room was it?’
‘I don’t remember. Sixth floor, I think. But — ‘
She dropped the phone back into its cradle. A queer disheartening certainty came to her. It was a woman. Some woman had called him . . . and he had gone to her. Well, what now, Audra? How do we handle this?
She felt tears threaten. They stung her eyes and her nose; she could feel the lump of a sob in the back of her throat. No anger, at least not yet . . . only a sick sense of loss and abandonment.
Audra, get hold of yourself. You’re jumpin g to conclusions. It’s the middle of the night and you had a bad dream and now you’ve got Bill with some other woman. But it ain’t necessarily so. What you’re going to do is sit up — you’ll never get back to sleep now anyway. Turn on some lights and finish the novel you brought to read on the plane. Remember what Bill says? Finest kind of dope. Book-Valium. No more heebie-jeebies. No more whim-whams and hearing voices. Dorothy Sayers and Lord Peter, that’s the ticket. The Nine Tailors. That’ll take you through to dawn. That’ll —
The bathroom light suddenly went on; she could see it under the door. Then the latch clicked and the door juddered open. She stared at this, eyes widening, arms instinctively crossing over her breasts again. Her heart began to slam against her ribcage and the sour taste of adrenaline flooded her mouth.
That voice, low and dragging, said: ‘We all float down here, Audra.’ The last word became a long, low, fading scream — Audraaaaa — that ended once again in that sick, clogged, bubbly sound that was so much like laughter.
‘Who’s there?’ she cried, backing away. That wasn’t my imagination, no way, you’re not going to tell me that —
The TV clicked on. She whirled around and saw a clown in a silvery suit with big orange buttons capering around on the screen. There were black sockets where its eyes should have been, and when its madeup lips stretched even wider in a grin, she saw teeth like razors. It held up a dripping, severed head. Its eyes were turned up to the