Frank De Felitta - Audrey Rose

A sound woke her. She keened her ears, listening. She heard the rain, very softly, against the window. And even softer at first, the faint patter of feet—mincing, tiny steps, and the terrible twittering voice: “Daddydaddydaddy-hothothothot— ” rising, fading, then rising again, louder: “Hothothothot!”

Janice shook the sleep from her eyes and looked at the clock. 10:05. She had dozed off after all.

The voice suddenly rose to a shriek, became chambered, “HOTHOT HOTHOTHOT!” reverberating, grating across the corridor into Janice’s ears. She covered them with her hands and heard the rush of blood and the pounding of her own heart. The telephone!

—Fists pounding, beating at—something!

Her hands shaking, Janice turned over the directory and sought “KAPLAN.” Her fingers had trouble staying in the holes as she dialed.

—Scratching, ripping sounds—tearing at—what?

“Dr. Kaplan’s service, hold on, please—”

“Damn!”

Seconds passed, then a minute.

“HOTHOT HOTHOTHOT!” The screaming shook the house.

“Dr. Kaplan’s service, thank you for waiting—”

“Dr. Kaplan, please!”

“Is it serious?”

“Yes!”

—Pounding, tearing, beating—

“Name?”

“Janice Templeton.”

“Phone number?”

“555-1461.”

“The doctor will call you shortly.”

“Hurry, please, it’s an emergency!”

—Scraping, bruising, scratching, shouting—

Janice dropped the receiver on the cradle and pushed herself off the bed and made her way to the door.…

“HOTHOTHOT HOTHOTHOT!” echoing, rebounding, filling the hallway with madness and terror, lashing out at Janice with shattering impact, rushing to meet her as she stumbled past the staircase and across the corridor to the bedroom door still closed as she had left it. She paused, panic growing in her, then pushed it open and stared into the sound-consumed darkness.

“ HOTHOTHOT HOTHOTHOT” blasted into her face, pitifully sobbing out the words in choked, agonized throat-rasping bursts!

Vague outlines appeared in the darkness as Janice’s terrified eyes sought to adjust. The specter was at the window, flailing white sleeves and bandaged hands digging, scratching at the Chinese screen, prodded, impelled by the continual, unabating “HOTHOTHOT!”

“Oh, God—the screen!” Janice heard herself gasp and, reaching for the light switch, illuminated the room.

Her hands jerked up to her eyes. “No! Oh, God!” she said, nearly voiceless, her eyes blurring with dizziness. “Oh, dear Mary, Mother of God, No!” she cried, feeling a deep nausea rising within her.

For at the window stood her child, screaming, beating, tearing at the Chinese screen, ripping at the varnished and painted canvas with the nails of her hands, now bandageless and exposed, the scorched and blistered fingers bleeding from her superhuman efforts to tear through the barrier and reveal the thing she both craved and hated, desired and feared— the window, her symbol of hope and despair, of horror and salvation, the fires of hell, the doorway to heaven— her unattainable goal .

“Ivy—dear Mary!” Janice tried to say the names—to link them together in a cry of desperate appeal to the powers above, to seek the intercession of the Mother of Jesus in this her moment of severest agony—but her voice wouldn’t work, refused to obey her brain’s command, and all that emerged was a soft and abject sob.

“Help me,” she cried to herself. “Dearest Mary, help me to help my child!”

Her hands clenched and unclenched, the nails of her fingers biting deeply into the flesh of her palms, as she struggled to keep from fainting.

“Dearest Mary, Mother of God,” she whispered chokingly.

The telephone rang, barely audible beneath the sounds of hysteria surrounding her. She felt something that was dying inside herself flicker back to life, energize her numbed, inert body into action. Finding her legs, she turned and stumbled out of the room and headed for the telephone in her bedroom, where the bellowing screams followed her with increasing intensity.

“Has the doctor reached you, Mrs. Templeton?” the woman’s voice asked.

“What? No!” Janice snapped back.

“Well, he’s en route from the hospital and will call you the moment he gets home—”

“ HOTHOTHOT HOTHOT !” The screaming voice suddenly grew stronger, and the patter of naked feet emerged into the hallway, running—

Janice froze. The door! She had left the bedroom door open !

There was a flicker of silence—a heartbeat’s suspension of all sound—followed by the awful noise of the small body tumbling down the staircase, descending to the floor below with a scream that coincided with Janice’s scream as she dropped the phone and plunged headlong into the hallway and up to the railing. Her hands clutched the fanciful balustrade to steady her weak and trembling body.

The child had landed in a light, crumpled ball of flesh and flannel and was just getting to her feet as Janice forced herself to peer over the railing. Miraculously, the fall seemed not to have injured her seriously, for she was up in a flash, scampering and twittering about the living room, reviving the same plaintive diatribe: “Hothothothot daddydaddydaddy hothothot—” Driven by the same desperate need to escape the torments of the all-consuming flames that still burned hot and bright in the foreground of her unconscious, she rushed toward the long bank of windows overlooking the rain-soaked city and began making her fearful, fretting obeisances at them.

“Daddydaddydaddy daddydaddydaddy hothothothot!”

Janice descended the stairs, clinging to the railing, feeling her way down with her hands, unable to tear her eyes away from the frightening apparition below.

Ivy was now standing before the near window, in profile, whimpering in terror, her bleeding hands making undulating, praying-mantis motions toward the dreaded glass, seeking, yet repelled by its proximity. Descending closer to her, Janice could see that she had not escaped from her fall entirely unharmed. The left side of her face was badly bruised, and a thin line of blood trickled from her nose.

A sudden misstep. Janice fell down the remaining three steps, descending to the wooden floor and landing heavily on her hands and knees. The clatter and noise of the fall and the accompanying scream elicited no reaction whatever from the child, whose agonized and haunted eyes remained totally locked in the grip of her own terrible plight at the window. “Daddydaddydaddy hothothothot!”

Spears of pain shot up through Janice’s legs, drawing sobs from her lips, yet she did not seek to rise from her knees.

—It was correct that she be on her knees, for wasn’t this the attitude of penance, of contrition and confession, and acts of reparation?

Forcing her body upright, so that her full weight might be brought to sustain itself on the points of her sore and aching knees, Janice heard the words come tumbling out of her in a torrent of passion. Clear, bell-like, plucked intact from the forgotten halls of childhood, her voice spoke out to the God of her one and true faith.

“Oh, my God! I am heartily sorry for having offended thee, and I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all because they offend thee, my God, Who art all-good and deserving of all my love.…”

“HOTHOTHOT HOTHOTHOT—!”

The child’s voice rose to a shriek as she drew back from the window in horror and, spinning about, went stumbling across the room toward the far bank of windows, climbing desperately over chairs and other pieces of furniture as they got in her way.