Children of the Storm (19 page)

    

    She lay in the center of her bed, wearing blue jeans and a blouse, foregoing the comfort of pajamas so that, if Hurricane Greta should come close during the night and a rush for the storm celler was indicated, she would be presentably dressed. She could not seem to find a comfortable position, and she kept twisting and turning, lying now on her back, now on her side-though never on her stomach, since, with her back to the room, she kept feeling that someone was sneaking up behind her, an unreasonable fear, since the room was locked. The metal buttons on her jeans pressed into her hips, and her sore neck throbbed slightly -however, most of her discomfort was mental, not physical.

    The day had passed, and she had not yet written out her resignation. Of course, even if she had written it, there was no one to give it to, for Joe Dougherty had not returned from California as she anticipated he would when she first considered quitting. And even if he were here, he would be locked in like the rest of them, isolated both by the madman's actions and by the pressing weight of the tropical storm which was rapidly closing in on them like a heavy blanket, a hard and musty and uncomfortable blanket.

    She wanted out of this gloomy place. Since she had come here to forget her dead grandmother and her long-gone parents, she had had more occasion to be reminded of them, instead, than she would have had if she had remained in Boston. She wanted out.

    She thought about Rudolph Saine, glum and duty-bound, of his concern over Leroy Mills' mother, of his sentimental recollection of his own son-of what kind of fiend he just might be, below the dependable and somewhat attractive surface…

    And Mills, dark and watchful, reluctant to talk about himself, giving an air of secrecy, of quiet planning and careful calculation…

    It was useless.

    She suspected everyone.

    Everyone except herself and Bill Peterson. And if she wanted to be fair about it, she would have to add Bill to that list, for she had no proof that he
wasn't
the madman. What a mess, what a tedious and awful mess this whole thing had become. Where were the parties she had expected, the people who knew how to enjoy life? Why, instead, was she surrounded with these gloomy people, in this gloomy place? What was her punishment for?

    In time, growing increasingly nervous and farther from sleep by the minute, she took a sleeping tablet and lay down again, finally succumbed to the gentle drug and fell into a chiaroscuro world of vivid nightmares that formed in her mind, one after the other, haunting her fitful sleep.

    

    A screaming banshee woke her.

    She sat straight up in bed.

    Even when she had rubbed her eyes and was fully awake, the banshee continued to scream, its voice high and sharp, its cry a sickening ululation without meaning.

    For one awful moment, she thought that it was one of the children screaming in pain and terror, and she was certain that the madman had done the impossible, had gotten into their room and overpowered Saine and taken out his knife…

    Then she realized that what she heard was the wind, an incredibly powerful wind that was tearing at the windows and hammering across the roof of Seawatch more than a story overhead, a wind so relentless that the walls must be standing only by the power of a miracle. When she lay still, trying to feel how the house was taking it, she thought she sensed a distant tremor in the floors and walls.

    She looked at her bedside clock and saw that it was a quarter to five in the morning, Tuesday.

    She got out of bed, somewhat wobbly from the sleeping pill, and went to the windows, pulled open one of the shutters on a vision of Hell: rain dropping straight to the earth like a curtain of bullets, heavy and thunderous; the nearest palms bent nearly to the ground, like humbled worshipers, one or two of them already uprooted and leaning preposterously with the wind, kept from crashing over entirely by nothing more than a few random taproots; in the distance, closer than it should be, whiter than it should be, the sea danced high and threatening.

    As she watched, mesmerized by the natural fury, a palm branch struck the window, driven there by the wind, made a hairline crack in the glass and was whirled away.

    Startled, realizing how easily the window might be broken, she swung the shutter into place again, bolted it.

    At the same moment, above the maniacal cry of the storm, someone knocked at her door.

    She went to the door, leaned wearily against it, her ear pressed to the teak, and she said, “Who is it?” But her sore throat had produced only a vague sound, and she was forced to repeat herself.

    “Rudolph!” Saine shouted.

    She fumbled with the lock, slipped it out of place, and swung the door wide open.

    He was standing in the hallway with both the children, one of them clutching each of his huge hands. They were pleasantly excited by the unexpected drama Hurricane Greta had provided, still somewhat sleepy-eyed, but waking up fast, cute and achingly innocent in their animal-decorated pajamas.

    “What is it?” she asked.

    Saine said, “The storm's here, or almost here. We're retreating to the cellar.”

    “Is it that bad?”

    “You can hear it. And it'll be worse, shortly.”

    “What's the radio say?”

    “I don't think we could get anything on it,” Saine said.

    “Of course,” she said, feeling foolish.

    “I'll grab warmer clothes for the kids,” he said. “Be ready when I come back for you.”

    “What should I bring?”

    “Toothbrush and a jacket,” he said. Then, with the children still in tow, he hurried back down the hall again.

    She was ready when he came back, and he escorted her toward the main stairs. When they were halfway there, a window smashed in one of the second floor rooms behind them.

    Sonya said, “Shouldn't we see about that?”

    “We can't fix it now,” Saine said. “The shutters are tight enough to hold back most of the water. And Mr. Dougherty can afford some damage.”

    They started down the stairs, to begin a new day. Sonya knew it was going to be the worst day yet in Seawatch.

    

    

    The rest of the household was already in the kitchen, drinking hot coffee and making a quick breakfast out of rolls, butter and jam. They all wore jackets or windbreakers and looked as if they expected to make a long and unpleasant journey. None of them was pleased by the prospect of one or two days in the storm cellar while Seawatch was blown into so many sticks of matchwood around them.

    “Sleep well?” Bill asked, bringing Sonya a cup of coffee with sugar and cream, as she liked it.

    “Fairly well,” she said. She knew that she had had nightmares, but at least she could not remember what they had been. Except for the bloody-mouthed banshee which had really been the wind.

    “We'll be all right,” he assured her.

    “It sounds so strong, the wind.”

    “Last weather report, before the radio became just a big static machine, said a hundred and twenty mile-an-hour winds at the roughest points of the storm, and waves already over the seawall at Guadeloupe. But Seawatch was built to endure that kind of thing, not forever but for as long as it takes Greta to pass through.”

    “I hope you're right.”

    “I am.”

    She said, uneasily, “It's now that you expected something to happen-to the kids.”

    “They're not safe in the storm cellar yet,” he said, watching the two cheerful youngsters as they chattered at Bess Dalton, pulling their jeans and shirts on over their pajamas. “But I think I might have been wrong. I hope I was. If we can just get through this storm, until there's a chance of help getting here from the mainland-”

    Henry Dalton and Leroy Mills began to remove blankets from a closet near the storm cellar door, and then transferred these bulky items into that small, concrete room.

    “What are those for?” Sonya asked.

    Peterson said, “If our generator gets knocked out and there isn't any power for the auxiliary heaters, it can get chilly in a damp, concrete room -even in the tropics.”

    Sonya wondered how the kids, who had twice before gone through this, could still look upon it as a valuable and exciting experience, and she wished she had a little of their verve.

    “Sonya?” Helga called, from the table in the center of the room, surrounded by containers of food and the makings for sandwiches.

    “Yes?”

    “Would you help me make some sandwiches and get food ready? We don't want to have to come out of there more than's necessary.” She nodded toward the cellar.

    “Sure,” she said, getting up. “I'm sorry I didn't think to offer help. I guess I'm not myself.”

    “Nor are the rest of us,” Helga said. She had rarely been so talkative. Now, as if realizing her sudden volubility, she silently set to buttering and mustarding slices of bread.

    Bill Peterson came over and helped the two women until, in ten minutes or so, the sandwiches had all been made, the fruit and pastries and other foodstuffs packed into several cardboard boxes which he carried into the concrete bunker. He passed Helga as he came back from his last trip, offered to take the final carton she held, and was amused when she refused. “I'm done out here,” she said. “I'm not coming out again until the sun shines.” She scurried away from the roar of the wind and rain which had picked up noticeably in the last five minutes.

    Besides themselves, only Bess, Rudolph and the children remained in the kitchen and, in a moment, Rudolph went off with the youngsters, down the main hall toward the stairs.

    “Kids!” Bess said.

    “Where's he taking them?” Sonya asked.

    “They were all for the big adventure, tough little warriors and all that. Now, when it comes right down to it, they want all their pacifiers to keep from bawling their heads off.”

    “Pacifiers?”

    “Rudolph had to take them to their room to get their favorite stuffed animals and their games.”

    Sonya smiled. “That makes me feel better. I hated to see the kids being more courageous than me.”

    “And than me,” Bess said.

    Something large and solid was blown against the back door of the mansion, made a booming sound like a cannon.

    “Probably one less palm tree standing in the woods,” Bess said.

    Surprised, Sonya said, “I knew the wind could uproot them-but I didn't know it could blow them around like twigs.”

    “Oh, easy, easy!” Bess said. “And before it sweeps through here and blows me away like a twig, I'm heading for the cellar.” She scuttled across the kitchen and through the heavy, white door.

    As soon as she was out of sight, Bill said, “I don't like this at all.”

    “What?”

    “The kids upstairs at a time like this,” he said, his face a mask of concern.

    “Rudolph's with them.”

    “That doesn't make me feel better.”

    “Everyone's in the cellar, otherwise,” she said. “No one else is upstairs with them.”

    “Blenwell might be.”

    She wanted desperately to prove his fears were foolish. “How could Blenwell have gotten into the house? It's locked up like a drum, with all the downstairs windows shuttered.”

    “He could have a door key.”

    “How would he get it?”

    “How did he, evidently, get one to the New Jersey house?” Bill asked. He took hold of her hands. “Go to the cellar with the others.”

    “Where are you going?”

    “Upstairs. Blenwell could surprise Rudolph. But he couldn't surprise and overpower the two of us.”

    Sonya shook her head, amazed, and she said, wonderingly, “Half of the people in this house are as courageous as a dozen mountain climbers rolled into one.”

    “I'm not courageous,” he said.

    “Sure,” she said.

    “Not really. All I do is what has to be done, by someone, sooner or later. I learned that lesson from my brother: a man must do what is clearly needing done; if you run away from something unpleasant, it only runs after you.”

    “I didn't know you had a brother,” she said.

    “A very dear one,” he said.

    “You never mentioned him before.”

    He smiled strangely, as she had never seen him smile before, and he said, his voice rapid now, as if anxious to finish the conversation and get upstairs, to help Rudolph with the kids, “Oh, yes. My brother Jeremy is one of the best men that I've ever known. He's not afraid of anything at all.” He squeezed her hands and ran across the kitchen, toward the main hall. “Go to the cellar! Now!” he shouted, over his shoulder, competing with the booming voice of the storm.

    Then he was gone.

    Sonya stood in the same spot where he had left her, as if she had been rooted to the spot.

    The uprooted palm tree slammed against the back of the house a second time, leaving a hollow echo in the kitchen.

    Finally, she took a step toward the safety of the storm cellar, but stopped long before she reached it. She knew, without being able to say how she knew, that the crisis was upon them and that, in a very short time, perhaps within the next few seconds, the long-awaited disaster would have come to pass…

    

    As she watched the kitchen clock, Sonya felt as if someone had managed to interfere with the proper flow of time, and that a minute was passing only a fraction as swiftly as it was meant to, as it always had before. Indeed, each second was more like a minute, and the long red sweep hand on the clock face appeared to crawl forward about as fast as a child might be able to move a stirring stick through a bucket of New England molasses.