The face haunted her, so she bought a shotgun. It cost $129. : A Faint and Eerie Rustling

She has lived alone for the past 18 years in a modest home in Arleta, surrounded by memories: Pictures of a husband who died in his sleep on a rainy night in October. A chipped gold-plated baseball trophy from a son who now lives in Chicago. An afghan from a daughter in Oregon.

The small living room glows faintly from the single light of a table lamp, leaving patches of shadow in the corners. The drapes are tightly drawn, shutting out what remains of the pale, fading day. The room is cast in the colors of the past, sepia-toned, amber-tinted.

As I enter her home, I am struck not so much by the somber nature of the room as I am by the harsh, metal lines of its newest addition.

Mary Crawford owns a shotgun.

It stands propped against a dark-wood piano that divides entryway from living room, in clear view of anyone at the door. She makes no reference to the weapon as she leads me in, turning down the sound of the old Sylvania television set. Its picture plays in silence.

She had been watching the news. And the news these days is of a man they call the Night Stalker.

“I have some root beer,” she says, disappearing for a moment into a kitchen to the right of the living room. Her voice comes to me as I settle in an easy chair her husband once favored. “It’s Hires.”

In a moment she emerges with two full glasses. The burden seems almost too great and I find myself wondering how an old lady who can barely lift two glasses is ever going to be able to fire a shotgun.

She sits across from me and smiles, and then allows me into her terror.

Mary Crawford isn’t her real name. She makes me promise I will disguise her identity and insists on approving the name I use. Crawford is as good as any.

She is 76 years old. Her back is bent from a mugger’s assault a decade ago. A young man beat her senseless when she refused to give up her purse.

The attack left her in terror of the night, imprisoned by the fear that the mugger could strike again. He was out there, she knew, crouched in a doorway, hiding behind a wooden fence at the corner, waiting in the shadows of a pepper tree.

“And now this,” she says, gesturing toward the silent television set. John Schubeck, Tricia Toyota. She stares at them for a moment, certain they are discussing the Night Stalker. “My God,” she says.

We also call him the Valley Intruder. He strikes in the silent, eerie time before dawn, killing and raping, a composite face in the blurred horror of the attack, thin-lipped, wild-eyed.

Mary Crawford is certain she has seen him. So are hundreds of others who, like Mary, have telephoned the police. Sheriff Sherman Block says, “There’s a killer out there.”

“He was in a car in the parking lot at Vons,” Mary remembers. “He stared at me, then was gone Jimminy Cricketts.” She indicates with a gesture the speed of his departure.

The face haunted her, so she bought a shotgun. It cost $129. Mary lives on Social Security and on what her son and daughter send her occasionally. The shotgun is a sacrifice.

I prod gently. Has she ever fired one before? No. Has she ever fired any weapon? No. I doubt that she can, either physically or psychologically. Victims face immense odds. Decent people find it difficult to cause pain. Madmen don’t.

Mary sips at her root beer. Every painful movement emphasizes age and frailty. I picture her alone, a large gray cat curled up at the foot of her bed. The cat’s head jerks up suddenly, listening. Hands reach through a partly opened window. . . .

“I have never slept too well,” Mary Crawford is saying. Has she read my thoughts? “Now I don’t sleep at all.”

The poet Acrisius wrote, “To him who is in fear, everything rustles.” Shadows form faces. A breeze whispers the hushed footfall of a maniac. Something’s out there, something’s coming . . . .

Mary telephoned me when there seemed no one else to call. The police were checking. Neighbors were busy. Grown children were far away.

I can offer little solace but to say that an army of detectives is searching for the Night Stalker. Of 8 million people in the county, the immense likelihood is she will not be a victim.

But still . . .

“Have you ever been afraid?” she asks, smiling slightly from embarrassment.

“Yes,” I say, remembering the war in Korea. “But we learn to live with our fears.”

“It isn’t fair,” she says.

The news breaks for a commercial. Youth dances across the screen in silent pirouette. Strong muscles flex and tense, smiles dazzle.

“No it isn’t,” I say.

The world rustles around us. Old ladies listen. Eyes widen, hearts pound. Have we come down the years to twilight for this? Have we weathered the hard days only to fear the gentle nights?

I can’t answer.

The most I can do, Mary Crawford, is ponder the madness that brings terror like a dream-sound into our quiet homes, and to feel sadness beyond measure that sometimes the faint and haunting rustle in the darkness is real.