The Dark Descends Read Online Free PDF

inclined forward: the movement suggested nothing so much as preparation for the descent of the blade.
    Absurd. But Joyce felt her flesh shrink with revulsion. "Not at all," she said, with too much fervor.
    "I'm so glad." The rabbit's teeth were bared in a timorous smile. "I'll make a real effort to keep the radio low. That's a promise."
    "Thank you, Miss Bancroft."
    "Word of honor. Cross my heart and hope to die." Charlotte Bancroft made a quick half turn that sent her circular skirt billowing. "Nice meeting you, Mrs. Chandler."
    Impossible to echo that civility—the words stuck in Joyce's throat. "Good evening," she said austerely, turned, pushed her door open, put a foot over the threshold.
    "Oh, Mrs. Chandler—"
    Joyce looked back to see Charlotte Bancroft facing her again, head inclined forward, blue eyes, wide with curiosity, peering through the open door. "Yes, Miss Bancroft?"
    The pointed tongue darted out, moistened the upper lip, moistened the lower lip, retreated. "If I should happen to forget and get too loud again, you'll be sure to let me know, won't you?"
    "Certainly."
    "I'm so glad. Bye-bye, Mrs. Chandler." Another half turn, another billow of skirt, and Charlotte Bancroft strode to the stairs and began to ascend. Her heels were loud on the treads.
    Joyce went back into her apartment, closed and locked the door, put up the chain, then stood with her back against the wall, listening to the clatter recede. She felt drained. It had been an unpleasant encounter, no two ways about it. Disquieting as well, though she couldn't quite put her finger on why. The woman had certainly been civil enough. No trace of the defensiveness people often displayed when requested to curtail what they regarded as their rights. No indication that she found the request for quiet out of line. Rather, she had seemed eager to bend over backward to be obliging. Overly eager, in fact. Was that the trouble?
    A door slammed, and now the clatter was right above Joyce's head. She felt goose flesh rise on her arms. Why? She wasn't the nervous type, and nothing about the encounter warranted such a reaction.
    Or did it? Something about the woman had been profoundly disturbing, something quite apart from the aura of born victim she exuded like body odor, so that one felt guilt pangs for not stretching out a hand to pat her on the head.
    An element of calculation in the parade of abjectness? Was that it? No, it was something less abstract. Something more definite, more—
    Joyce had it now: the remark about her having had company the night before. So Charlotte Bancroft had known that someone had moved in below her when she turned up the volume of her radio to a level that had, by her own admission, provoked complaints from people in the past. How did that fit in with her eagerness to oblige? And what did she mean about "happening" to forget and get too loud again? How could she "happen" to forget? Surely she could not blast off the way she had blasted off last night without being aware that—
    To hell with it. Why look for trouble? The woman had promised to lower the volume of her radio, and that was that. Very likely her blasting off last night had been prompted by nothing more complicated than a desire to see how much she could get away with. As for the alleged forgetfulness, well, it was possible she kept the radio so loud in the first place because she was hard of hearing. God knew the thought of a handicap came readily to mind in connection with a specimen like Charlotte Bancroft.
    Unfair, of course. Just because the poor soul looked like something kids torment on Halloween, it was hardly necessary to ascribe to her all the world's disabilities and peculiarities. She didn't have to be hard of hearing or addicted to talking to herself or perishing with loneliness or burning up with curiosity about other people. The sooner the old wives' tales about women living alone getting funny in their ways were forgotten, the better. After all, she herself