The Cat's Pajamas

“Mother, shut up!” Alice swayed and chanted. “Open your doors. All of us. We can do it! Now!”

“He’ll get me!” screamed Madeline.

“No, no,” said Robert. “It’s no use, no use!”

“The door, my door, unlocked,” cried the mother.

“Listen, all of you!”

“My door!” said the mother. “Oh God! It’s opening, now!”

There was a scream in the halls and the same scream on the phone.

The others stared at the phones in their hands where only their hearts beat.

“Mother!”

A door slammed upstairs.

The scream stopped suddenly.

“Mother!”

If only she hadn’t yelled, thought Alice. If only she hadn’t showed him the way.

“Madeline, Robert! Your guns. I’ll count five and we’ll all rush out! One, two, three—”

Robert groaned.

“Robert!”

He fell to the floor, the phone in his fist. His door was still locked. His heart stopped. The phone in his fist shouted, “Robert!” He lay still.

“He’s at my door now!” said Madeline, high in the winter house.

“Fire through the door! Shoot!”

“He won’t get me, he won’t have his way with me!”

“Madeline, listen! Shoot through the door!”

“He’s fumbling with the lock, he’ll get in!”

“Madeline!”

One shot.

One shot and only one.

Alice stood in the library alone, staring at the cold phone in her hand. It was now completely silent.

Suddenly she saw that stranger in the dark, upstairs, outside a door, in the hall, scratching softly, smiling at the panel.

The shot!

The stranger in the dark peering down. And from under the locked door, slowly, a small stream of blood. Blood flowing quietly, very bright, in a tiny stream. All this, Alice saw. All this she knew, hearing a dark movement in the upstairs hall as someone moved from room to room, trying doors and finding silence.

“Madeline,” she said to the phone, numbly. “Robert!” She called their names, uselessly. “Mother!” She shut her eyes. “Why didn’t you listen? If we had all of us at the very first—run out—”