The Mask by Dean Koontz Page B

now.
    “She might have been on drugs, too,” Weatherby said. “Too damned many kids fool around with dope these days. I swear, some of them’ll swallow any pill they’re given. If it isn’t something that can be swallowed, they’ll sniff it or stick it in a vein. This kid you hit might have been so high she didn’t even know where she was when she stepped in front of your car. Now, if that’s the case, are you going to tell me it’s
still
somehow your fault?”
    Carol leaned back in the seat, closed her eyes, and let her breath out with a shudder. “God, I don’t know
what
to tell you. All I know is…I feel wrung out.”
    “That’s perfectly natural, after what you’ve just been through. But it isn’t natural to feel guilty about this. It wasn’t your fault, so don’t dwell on it. Put it behind you and get on with your life.”
    She opened her eyes, looked at him, and smiled. “You know, Officer Weatherby, I have a hunch you’dmake a pretty good psychotherapist.”
    He grinned. “Or a terrific bartender.”
    Carol laughed.
    “Feeling better?” he asked.
    “A little bit.”
    “Promise me you won’t lose any sleep over this.”
    “I’ll try not to,” she said. “But I’m still concerned about the girl. Do you know which hospital they’ve taken her to?”
    “I can find out,” he said.
    “Would you do that for me? I’d like to go talk to the doctor who’s handling her case. If he tells me she’s going to be all right, I’ll find it a whole lot easier to take your advice about getting on with my life.”
    Weatherby picked up the microphone and asked the police dispatcher to find out where the injured girl had been taken.

    The television antenna!
    Standing in the attic, staring up at the roof above his head, Paul laughed out loud when he realized what was causing the pounding noise. The sound wasn’t coming out of the empty air in front of his face, which was what he had thought for one unsettling moment. It was coming from the roof, where the television antenna was anchored. They had subscribed to cable TV a year ago, but they hadn’t removed the old antenna. It was a large, directional, remote-control model affixed to a heavy brace-plate; the plate was bolted through the shingles and attached directly to a roof beam. Apparently, a nut or some other fastenerhad loosened slightly, and the wind was tugging at the antenna, rocking the brace-plate up and down on one of its bolts, slamming it repeatedly against the roof. The solution to the big mystery was amusingly mundane.
    Or was it?
    Thunk…thunk…thunk
…
    The sound was softer now than ever before, barely audible above the roar of the rain on the roof, and it was easy to believe that the antenna could be the cause of it. Gradually, however, as Paul considered this answer to the puzzle, he began to doubt if it was the
correct
answer. He thought about how loud and violent the pounding had been a few minutes ago when he had been in the kitchen: the entire house quivering, the oven door falling open, bottles rattling in the spice rack. Could a loose antenna really generate so much noise and vibration?
    Thunk…thunk
…
    As he stared up at the ceiling, he tried to make himself believe unequivocally in the antenna theory. If it was striking a roof beam in precisely the right way, at a very special angle, so that the impact was transmitted through the entire frame of the house, perhaps a loose antenna
could
cause the pots and pans to clatter against one another in the kitchen and could make it seem as if the ceilings were about to crack. After all, if you set up exactly the right vibrations in a steel suspension bridge, you could bring it to ruin in less than a minute, regardless of the number of bolts and welds and cables holding it together. And although Paul didn’t believe there was even a remote danger of a loose antenna causing that kind of apocalyptic destruction to a wood-frame house, he knewthat moderate force, applied with