It slid in its raw grooves. It gaped a great mouth to let winter in.
Every house door knocked and yammered its hinges and sills.
The gust snuffed out lamps in every room.
“No electricity!” said Mother, years ago. “No gifts from the town! Self-sufficiency’s our ticket! Give and take nothing.”
Her voice faded in the past.
No sooner had the oil lamps whiffed out than fear took fire to blaze brighter than logs and hearths, than slumbering coals, in each room.
Alice felt it burn from her cheeks with a ghastly light. She could have read books by the terror that flamed in her brow.
There seemed only one thing to do.
Rushing en masse, each room, a duplicate of the one above or below, four people flung themselves to their doors, to scrabble locks, throw bolts, attach chains, twist keys!
“Safe!” they cried. “Locked and safe!”
All save one moved this way: the maid. She lived but a few hours each day in this outrageous home, untouched by the mother’s wild panics and fears. Made practical with years of living in the town beyond the wide moat of lawn, hedge, and wall, she debated only an instant. Then she performed what should have been a saving, but became a despairing, gesture.
Yanking wide the kitchen door she rushed into the main lower hallway. From far off in darkness the wind blew from a cold dragon’s mouth.
The others will be out! she thought.
Quickly, she called their names.
“Miss Madeline, Miss Alice, Mrs. Benton, Mr. Robert!”
Then turning, she plunged down the hall toward the blowing darkness of the open window.
“Miss Madeline!”
Madeline, pinned like Jesus to her linen-room door, rescrabbled the locks.
“Miss Alice!”
In the library, where her pale letters capered in darkness, like drunken moths, Alice fell back from her own shut door, found matches, relit the double hurricanes. Her head beat like a heart gorged, pressing her eyes out, gasping her lips, sealing her ears so nothing was heard but a wild pulse and the hollow in-suck of her breath.
“Mrs. Benton!”
The old one squirmed in bed, worked her hands over her face, to reshape the melted flesh into a shocked expression it most needed. Then her fingers splayed out at the unlocked door. “Fool! Damn fool! Someone lock my door! Alice, Robert, Madeline!”
“Alice, Robert, Madeline!” the echoes blew in the unlit halls.
“Mr. Robert!”
The maid’s voice summoned him from the floor, trembling.
Then, one by one, they heard the maid cry out. One small dismayed and accusing cry.
After that the snow touched the roof of the house softly.
They all stood, knowing what that silence meant. They waited for some new sound.
Someone, treading slowly on nightmare softness, as if barefoot, drifted along the halls. They felt the house shift with the weight now here, now there, now farther along.
Two phones stood on a far library desk. Alice seized one, chattered the hook, cried, “Operator! Police!”