Dean Koontz - The Mask

A few minutes later, at two o’clock, Carol went to the hospital. In the gift shop off the lobby, she bought a deck of playing cards and a miniature checkerboard with nickle-sized checkers that all fit neatly into a vinyl carrying case.

Upstairs, in 316, the television was on, and Jane was reading a magazine. She looked up when Carol entered, and she said, “You really came.”

“Said I would, didn’t I?”

“What’ve you got?”

“Cards, checkers. I thought maybe they’d help you pass the time.”

“You promised you wouldn’t buy me anything else.”

“Hey, did I say I was giving these to you? No way. You think I’m a soft touch or something? I’m lending them, kid. I expect them back. And whenever you return them, they’d better be in as good condition as they are now, or I’ll take you all the way to the Supreme Court to get compensated for the damage.”

Jane grinned. “Boy, you’re tough.”

“I eat nails for breakfast.”

“Don’t they get stuck in your teeth?”

“I pluck ‘em out with pliers.”

“Ever eat barbed wire?”

“Never for breakfast. I have it for lunch now and then.”

They both laughed, and Carol said, “So do you play checkers?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

The girl shrugged.

“Nothing’s come back yet?” Carol asked.

“Not a thing.”

“Don’t worry. It will.”

“My folks haven’t shown up, either.”

“Well, you’ve only been missing for one day. Give them time to find you. It’s too soon to start worrying about that.”

They played three games of checkers. Jane remembered all of the rules, but she couldn’t recall where or with whom she had played before.

The afternoon passed quickly, and Carol enjoyed every minute of it. Jane was charming, bright, and blessed with a good sense of humor. Whether the game was checkers, hearts, or five-hundred rummy, she played to win, but she never pouted when she lost. She was very good company.

The girl’s charm and pleasing personality made it highly unlikely that she would go unclaimed for long. Some teenagers are so self-centered, spaced out on drugs, bullheaded, and destructive that when one of them decides to run away from home, his decision often elicits only a sigh of relief from his mother and father. But when a good kid like Jane Doe disappears, a lot of people start sounding alarms.

There must be a family that loves her, Carol

thought. They’re probably crazy with worry right now. Sooner or later they’ll turn up, crying and laughing with relief that their girl has been found alive. So why not sooner? Where are they?

The doorbell rang at precisely three-thirty. Paul answered it and found a pallid, gray-eyed man of about

fifty. He wore gray slacks, a pale gray shirt, and a dark gray sweater.

“Mr. Tracy?”

“Yes. Are you from Safe Homes?”

“That’s right,” the gray man said. “Name’s Bill Alsgood. I am Safe Homes. Started the company two years ago.”

They shook hands, and Alsgood entered the foyer, looking with interest at the interior of the house. “Lovely place. You’re lucky to get same-day service. Usually, I’m scheduled three days in advance. But when you called this morning and said it was an emergency, I’d just had a cancellation.”

“You’re a building inspector?” Paul asked, closing the door.

“Structural engineer, to be precise. What our company does is inspect the house before it’s sold, usually on behalf of the buyer, at his expense. We tell him if he’s buying into a heartache of any sort — a leaky roof, a cellar that floods, a crumbling foundation, faulty wiring, bad plumbing, that kind of thing. We’re fully bonded, so even if we overlook something, our client is protected. Are you the buyer or the seller?”

“Neither,” Paul said. “My wife and I own the place, but we aren’t ready to sell it. We’re having a problem with the house, and I can’t pinpoint the cause of it. I thought you might be able to help.”

Alsgood raised one gray eyebrow. “May I suggest that what you need is a good handyman. He’d be considerably cheaper, and once he’d found the trouble, he could fix it, too. We don’t do any repair work, you know. We only inspect.”

“I’m aware of that. I’m pretty handy myself, but I haven’t figured out what’s wrong or how to fix it.

I think I need the kind of expert advice that no handyman can give me.’

“You do know we charge two hundred and fifty dollars for an inspection?”

“I know,” Paul said. “But this is an extremely annoying problem, and it might be causing serious structural damage.”

“What is it?”

Paul told him about the hammering sounds that occasionally shook the house.

“That’s peculiar as hell,” Alsgood said. “I’ve never heard a complaint like it before.” He thought for a moment, then said, “Where’s your furnace?”

“In the cellar.”

“Maybe it’s a heating duct problem. Unlikely. But we can start down there and work our way up to the roof until we’ve found the cause.”

For the next two hours, Alsgood looked into every cranny of the house, poked and probed and rapped and visually inspected every inch of the interior, then every inch of the roof, while Paul tagged along, assisting wherever he could. A light rain began to fall when they were still on the roof, and they were both soaked by the time they finished the job and climbed down. Alsgood’s left foot slipped off the last rung of the ladder, just as he was about to step onto the waterlogged lawn, and he twisted his ankle painfully. All that risk and inconvenience was for nothing because Alsgood didn’t find anything out of the ordinary.

At five-thirty, in the kitchen, they warmed up with coffee while Alsgood filled out his report. Wet and bedraggled, he looked even more pallid than when Paul had first seen him. The rain had transformed his gray clothes — once a variety of shades — into a single, dull hue, so that he appeared to be wearing a drab uniform. “It’s basically a solid house, Mr. Tracy. The condition is really topnotch.”

“Then where the devil did that sound come from? And why was the whole house shaken by it?”

“I wish I’d heard it.”

“I was sure it’d start up at least once while you were here.”

Alsgood sipped his coffee, but the warm brew added no color to his cheeks. “Structurally, there’s not a thing wrong with this house. That’s what my report will say, and I’d stake my reputation on it.”

“Which puts me right back at square one,” Paul said, folding his hands around his coffee cup.

“I’m sorry you spent all this money without getting an answer,” Alsgood said. “I really feel bad about that.”

“It isn’t your fault. I’m convinced you did a thorough job. In fact, if I ever buy another house, I’ll definitely want you to inspect it first. At least I now know the trouble isn’t structural, which rules out possibilities and narrows the field of inquiry.”

“Maybe you won’t even hear it again. It might stop just as suddenly as it started.”

“Somehow, I suspect you’re wrong about that,” Paul said.

Later, at the front door, as Alsgood was leaving, he said, “One thought has occurred to me, but I hesitate to mention it.”

“Why?”

“You might think it’s off the wall.”

“Mr. Alsgood, I’m a desperate man. I’m willing to consider anything, no matter how farfetched it might be.”

Alsgood looked at the ceiling, then at the floor, then back along the hail that lay behind Paul, then down at his own feet. “A ghost,” he said quietly.

Paul stared at him, surprised.