by John Saul
Maybe she’d do them now.
She started toward the sink, then froze.
The noise!
It was coming from the basement. But hadn’t O'Reilly or Murphy said that everything was all right down there?
She hesitated, part of her wanting to go back upstairs, get Emily, and get out of the house again right now. They could go back to the Sanchezes’ and take Ramon up on his offer.
Except that it was almost two in the morning, and Ramon would insist they call the police again, and then she’d look like a fool once more.
Maybe she should just go back to bed.
Thunk!
She jumped at the sound, and now the urge to get Emily and flee the house was almost irresistible. She turned and took a half step toward the door to the living room when she heard it again.
Thunk!
And now she knew what it was! One of the little windows that opened into the three light wells that were spaced around the perimeter of the cellar! That was it—that had to be it.
She opened the door to the basement, felt the draft, and silently cursed O'Reilly and Murphy.
The basement’s okay, my ass! A window was open, and they hadn’t even noticed it.
Now she could hear it. Squeak, bang—squeak, bang! The wind was blowing it open and closed, open and closed.
She was about to go down and close it, then hesitated.
She had never opened a basement window, not as long as she’d lived in the house.
Could the cops have opened it?
Why?
Maybe they’d opened it while checking it, and just forgotten to latch it again.
The stairs were dark. A string hung from the lightbulb, but when she pulled it, nothing happened.
Damn. Was she going to have to go down there in the dark? She had no idea where her flashlight was. Packed away somewhere, probably, along with every spare lightbulb, which meant she couldn’t even change the burned-out one.
She should just go back to bed and forget it. But there were boxes in the basement, too, and the last thing she needed was for rain to come in and ruin them.
Taking a deep breath, she started down the stairs. The dim shaft of light from the kitchen door illuminated nothing more than a narrow area at the bottom of the stairs, and barely lit even that. Still, it was better than operating in total darkness.
She went down one stair at a time, slowly, almost lost in her own shadow, careful not to lose her footing. A broken leg or twisted ankle was something she needed even less than a bunch of rain-soaked boxes. She tried to visualize where everything was on the floor so she wouldn’t step on or trip over something. But no visualization came to mind—all she could remember was that she’d stacked boxes everywhere.
The concrete floor was far colder on her bare feet than the wood floor of the bedroom had been, but she ignored the chill and followed the sound to the far corner. Sure enough, barely visible in the faint light leaking from the top of the stairs, she saw a window flapping loose.
She closed it and locked the handle down securely.
Then she turned and made her way back through the maze of boxes in less than a quarter of the time it had taken her to get to the window.
She ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and firmly closed the basement door behind her.
And it was over.
The banging was silenced and she could go back to bed.
She took a deep breath, crossed the kitchen and turned out the light.
Then, in the darkness of the living room, she heard another sound.
And heard it a second too late.
The arm snaked around her neck from behind, and before she could make a sound, a hand clamped something over her nose and mouth.
Something soft, and wet.
Something with a scent that made her want to vomit.
She struggled now, struggled for breath, struggled to yell for Emily, struggled to run, to kick, to rip the hands away from her face.
But like hearing the sound itself, it was all too late. She was already out of breath, and against her own will she inhaled the fumes deeply into her lungs.
She felt her knees weaken, and with a last thought of her baby sleeping so peacefully upstairs in her bed, Ellen began to drop away into the darkness.
A way out!
There had to be a way out.
Kara’s breath rasped in her throat as she raced barefoot through the tunnel.
A tunnel so dark she couldn’t see its walls. But she could feel them, feel them surrounding her, closing in on her. And where was the tunnel’s end?
Maybe it had no end! Maybe she was going to race on forever through the blackness but never get anywhere. Nor could she turn around, or even stop, because the man was behind her. The man in black, who was chasing her. So she had to keep going, keep going forward, forward through the tunnel that had no light at its end.
She could only hope—pray—that it did end, and that there would be a way out when she finally got there.
Suddenly—impossibly—the tunnel narrowed. It was getting smaller, colder. Now she was running crouched over, her head brushing the ceiling, her back burning with pain, every muscle in her body screaming in agony.
Out, she told herself. Have to get out . . . please get me out. . . .
The tunnel narrowed still further, and now her shoulders scraped against its cold walls as she dragged herself onward.
Then she heard him behind her—close behind her. “Angel,” he whispered, his voice a gentle, almost seductive breeze that flowed over her like cool water. “Come to me, my angel. . . .”
“No!” she yelled, but her voice sounded muffled even as it echoed back to her from the still-narrowing walls.
The cold walls that were pressing against her now.
Moaning almost inaudibly, she forced herself on, but now her feet felt so heavy she could hardly move them. But what did it matter? If the tunnel had no end, she would never get there anyway.
Hope began to fade.
And now she needed water. She needed—
Abruptly, she stopped short, sensing something ahead of her, blocking her way.
The man? No! He was still behind her.
The darkness began to lift, and in the faintest of gray light, she saw it.
A door! A huge door, unimaginably large, made from planks as big as tree trunks, bound together with thick iron straps.
And a latch! A latch she could touch, that fit perfectly in her hand.
But a latch that would not open!
Behind her, she felt the man drawing closer, smelled his fetid breath on the back of her neck.
Her fingers felt numb as she fumbled with the latch. Panic was threatening to overwhelm her now, and she could feel the man’s hands reaching out to her. In another second his fingers would close around her throat and then—
And then she had it!
The door swung open, and beyond it lay a room filled with light so bright it momentarily dazzled her.
In the center there was an object, something she almost recognized, but not quite.
She moved closer.
It was a twisted mass of metal from which faint wisps of smoke were rising.
A car!
That was it—a wrecked car! But—
Something rolled out of the smoldering wreckage, coming to rest only inches from her bare feet.
A ball?
No, not a ball.
A head.
Steve’s head!
She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out. Then a voice echoed in the vastness of the room. “He didn’t suffer,” the policeman said as he leaned down to pick up Steve’s head.
Steve’s eyes opened as the policeman raised his head up so it was even with her own. “Playing house,” he said. His dead blue lips twisted into a grimace of a smile, and blood oozed from between his shattered teeth. “She’s playing house.”
A scream welled up in Kara’s throat and she opened her mouth to set
her anguish free.
And sat straight up in bed.
Utterly disoriented, stunned by the vividness of the dream, Kara put her hands to her head in an attempt to still the dizziness that had seized her. Feeling the lentil soup she’d had for dinner begin to rise in her gorge, she hurled herself out of bed, and barely made it to the bathroom before the soup spewed through her throat and out her mouth.
She crouched, gasping, next to the toilet, and finally her head began to clear. The porcelain felt cool against her burning cheek, and she stayed where she was, slowly emerging from the shadows of the nightmare. Finally, when her breathing returned to normal, she stood up, moved to the sink, and cupped her hands under the faucet. She rinsed her face, washed out her mouth, then drank thirstily from her cupped hands. Only when she was sure the nausea was completely over did she straighten up and stare at herself in the mirror.
“I’ll never survive this,” she whispered to her reflection. But even as she formed the words, the response rose in her mind: Why would I want to?
Wrung out, Kara shuffled back to the bedroom. A late night infomercial was on the television she hadn’t bothered to turn off when she went to bed, and now it provided just enough background noise to muffle the echo of the emptiness of the house.
Kara crawled back under the covers, still wearing the pajamas, the bathrobe, and the thick pair of fuzzy socks she’d put on before going to bed the first time, but they did nothing to protect her from the cold knowledge that Steve would never again reach for her in the night.
He’d never rub her back after getting up to go to the bathroom.
He’d never pull her close for a cuddle in the darkness of night, murmuring in her ear.
If she could wrap an insulating quilt around her bathrobe under the covers, she would have, but there were no more quilts, so instead she wrapped her arms around her chest and gave in once more to the terrible agony of her loneliness, and the fresh crop of tears that came with it.
In the emptiness of the house, the tears were her only company, and she let herself sob until even that comfort was exhausted.
When the crying was over, the numbness came back.
But so did the answer to the question that had come into her mind as she’d gazed into the mirror a few minutes ago, considering her own survival: Why would I want to?
Because of Lindsay, of course.
She had to survive for Lindsay.
And Patrick Shields had survived worse.
He had survived, and she would, too.
Clinging to that belief, Kara picked up the remote and switched off the television.
The silence of the empty house closed around her, but as she closed her eyes, she knew that tonight, at least, she would dream no more.
Emily had to go to the bathroom.
She climbed out of bed and walked, half awake, out the bedroom door and turned left, just like she had a million times before.
And ran smack into a wall.
By the time she was awake enough to realize what had happened, she was sprawled on the floor, crying.
“Mommy?” she called. “Mommy!”
No answer.
For the first time in Emily’s short life, there was no answer.
But she didn’t really hurt, either. Not enough to make her cry, anyway. She hiccuped a couple of times, then rubbed her eyes and gingerly touched her forehead, where a new bump had grown, right in the middle. Then she rubbed her bottom where she’d landed after her forehead had hit the wall.
Her bottom didn’t really hurt, either.
And she still needed to go to the bathroom.
She looked around, peering into the darkness, trying to figure out what had happened. Then she remembered: she’d gone to sleep in her mother’s bed.
So the bathroom was the other way.
She turned around, found the bathroom, and sat on the toilet until she was sure there was nothing left. Then she wiped herself carefully, flushed the toilet, and went back to her mother’s bed.
It was empty.
“Mommy?” Emily called, more puzzled than frightened.
No answer. She climbed back into the bed, found the warm spot where she’d been sleeping, and snuggled down.
But where was her mother?
She sat up and called out again, a lot louder this time. “Mommy!”
Nothing but the sound of the wind and the rain outside.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Emily said out loud, repeating the words her mother had spoken to her so many times when she’d awakened from a bad dream, or heard thunder outside, crashing so loudly it shook the house. Now the sound of her own voice speaking her mother’s words comforted her. “She’ll be back in a minute,” she went on. “That’s what she always says, ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’ ”
Then she remembered what had happened earlier, when her mother had been really scared and they’d gone to the neighbor’s house. But the police came, and then everything was all right. So now, if she got really scared and her mom wasn’t home, she knew what she would do. She would go back to the neighbor’s house, and they’d call the police for her.
But not right now, because she wasn’t really scared. She was a big girl, a brave girl, and besides, her mother would be back in a minute.
The minutes ticked by, each one of them feeling like forever, and Emily began to feel like she was going to start to cry if her mom didn’t come back to bed pretty soon. She stuck her thumb in her mouth—something she never let her mother see her do—and snuggled down right in the middle of the big bed.
Somehow, it didn’t feel quite as lonely there.
Then she decided to tell herself a story, the way her mother did when she couldn’t fall asleep.
“Once upon a time,” she whispered to herself, “there was a brave little girl. . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she decided to start over. “Once upon a time . . .” she whispered, but once again her words trailed off.
A moment later Emily’s thumb slipped back into her mouth, her breathing grew slow and rhythmic, and her eyes gently closed. . . .
And in her dreams, her mother was cuddling her close, just the way her mother was supposed to.
In her dreams, everything was perfect. . . .
Chapter Forty-three
Rick Mancuso sank the spike of the Open House sign into the soggy earth at the corner, two blocks from the Fine house, tamped the mud with his foot, then stepped back. The sign tilted a couple of inches but held; good enough for the few hours he needed. If it fell over by four, so be it. Satisfied, he checked his watch.
Ten of two, which meant he was running late. Normally, he liked to be at his open houses at least half an hour early, just to make certain everything was in order. And Ellen Fine had a little girl; kids in a house—even just one—usually meant the house wouldn’t look as good as it should in order to sell quickly, and since Rick liked quick sales, he didn’t mind spending half an hour putting a place straight.
Not today—there wouldn’t be time, so he’d have to trust that Ellen Fine had done her job. Giving the sign one last desultory adjustment, an adjustment that failed almost as soon as he made it, he slammed the trunk of his car, then drove the two blocks to Ellen Fine’s house and parked across the street. Even though it was small—real small—the house still had good curb appeal, looking more like the “cottage” he’d described in the ad than he actually remembered. The grass was nice and green and looked freshly mowed, and the trees that lined both sides of the street were almost fully leafed out. There were even a few daffodils still blooming along the walk. Nice—very nice: the rain last night had made everything fresh.
As he crossed the street, he saw Emily looking out the upstairs window. He waved at her, but she had already disappeared, leaving only a wisp of swaying lace to show that she’d been there at all. Rick punched another Open House sign into the lawn, picked up his briefcase and the folder of flyers, and headed up the walk.
Usually clients were so anxious ab
out open houses that by the time he was on their porches they were at the open door, waiting. But not this time. He rang the bell.
Nothing.
He pressed the button again, then once more.
Nothing.
No sound from inside at all; no music, no “I’ll be right there” call from the bedroom or kitchen.
Just silence.
But Emily was there—he’d seen her. Feeling faintly uneasy, Rick knocked hard on the door. “Ellen?” he called out. “Ellen, it’s Rick. For the open house?”
And still he heard nothing at all from inside the house.
He tried the door.
Locked. And today was the day she’d promised to have a key for him so he could put a lockbox on. What was going on? Ellen Fine hadn’t struck him as the kind of mother who would leave her child alone in the house. Besides, her car was in the driveway.
The basement! That was it; she was down in the basement doing laundry—the last thing he needed at an open house—and she just hadn’t heard the bell or his knock or heard him when he called out.
He walked around the side of the house and tried the kitchen door.
Unlocked and unlatched.
Standing ajar, in fact.
Rick pushed on the door and it swung wide. He stuck his head in. “Hello?” No answer. “Ellen? It’s Rick Mancuso.”
Now the silence from inside felt eerie. And then the stories he’d heard, about some agent or another—always nameless, of course—being shot by a homeowner who had forgotten about a showing appointment, came to mind.
Gazing around the kitchen made him even more uneasy. There were dirty dishes in the sink and uncooked potatoes in a cold frying pan on the stove. A carton of eggs sat on the countertop along with a jar of peanut butter and another of grape jelly.
He didn’t think Ellen Fine would have left this kind of mess in the kitchen, even if no open house had been planned.
