The Toynbee Convector

Clara was about to cry: Go! Git!

When the phone rang.

“Gah!” gasped Clara Peck.

She felt a ton of blood plunge like a broken weight down her frame to crush her toes. “Gah!” She ran to seize, lift and strangle the phone. “Who!?” she cried. “Clara! It’s Emma Crowley! What’s wrong?!”

“My God!” shouted Clara. “You scared the hell out of me! Emma, why are you calling this late?”

There was a long silence as the woman across town found her own breath.

“It’s silly, I couldn’t sleep. I had this hunch—”

“Emma—”

“No, let me finish. All of a sudden I thought, Clara’s not well, or Clara’s hurt, or—”

Clara Feck sank to the edge of the bed, the weight of Emma’s voice pulling her down. Eyes shut, she nodded. “Clara,” said Emma, a thousand miles off, “you—all right?”

“All right,” said Clara, at last.

“Not sick? House ain’t on fire?”

“No, no. No.”

“Thank God. Silly me. Forgive?”

“Forgiven.”

“Well, then ... good night.”

And Emma Crowley hung up.

Clara Peck sat looking at the receiver for a full minute, listening to the signal that said that someone had gone away, and then at last placed the phone blindly back in its cradle.

She went back out to look up at the trapdoor.

It was quiet Only a pattern of leaves, from the window, flickered and tossed on its wooden frame.

Clara bunked at the trapdoor.

“Think you’re smart, don’t you?” she said.

There were no more prowls, dances, murmurs, or mouse-pavanes for the rest of that night.

The sounds returned, three nights later, and they were—larger.

“Not mice” said Clara Peck. “Good-sized rats. Eh?”

In answer, the ceiling above executed an intricate, crosscurrenting ballet, without music. This toe dancing, of a most peculiar sort, continued until the moon sank. Then, as soon as the light failed, the house grew silent and only Clara Peck took up breathing and life, again.

By the end of the week, the patterns were more geometrical. The sounds echoed in every upstairs room; the sewing room, the old bedroom, and in the library where some former occupant had once turned pages and gazed over a sea of chestnut trees.

On the tenth night, all eyes and no face, with the sounds coming in drumbeats and weird syncopations, at three in the morning, Clara Peck flung her sweaty hand at the telephone to dial Emma Crowley:

“Clara! I knew you’d call!”

“Emma, it’s three am. Aren’t you surprised?”