The Southern Comfort Series Box Set

by Clark O'Neill, Lisa

  “Unbelievable,” she muttered, emptying various sundries from the vanity. It looked like a drugstore time warp, some products dating back at least fifteen years. She came across a giant can of Aquanet and smiled, thinking of Rogan. The poor kid had been such a good sport.

  Unlike his pain-in-the-ass brother.

  Banishing thoughts of “Don’t ask to borrow sugar” Declan, the resident Grinch of Mount Pleasant, Sadie sat the bright blue can of hairspray aside and continued to fill her trash bag. Old canisters of shaving cream went in, along with half-filled shampoo bottles and a gym sock that had somehow found its way beneath the sink instead of into the hamper. Sadie shook her head over the accumulated flotsam, crawling half inside the deep-set cabinet to reach into the far corners. Her hand stilled when it encountered a fairly new-looking box of condoms, labeled Trojans Magnum XL.

  Huh.

  Sadie had always wondered at the implied meaning behind that particular brand name, given the fact that the Trojan Horse was a ruse designed by Odysseus to sneak his troops into Troy. The image of hundreds of tiny sperm hiding out in the reservoir tip, biding their time until they could launch an attack against unsuspecting ovaries made her suspect she’d inhaled one too many cleaning fumes that day.

  And pathetic as the admission was, considering that she’d just turned thirty, Sadie also had no idea that condoms were produced in a variety of sizes. She’d always thought that they were a one size fits all sort of product, like a muumuu or those plastic rain ponchos.

  Fingers itching with curiosity, Sadie carefully examined the box.

  All the usual caveats and warnings, nothing specific explaining the designation Extra Large. No… size chart or anything, like on packages of socks.

  She wondered exactly how much difference there could be between these and the ones that Rick used, which were just regular, lubricated condoms. Were they talking an inch or two here? Three?

  The thought was weirdly… intriguing.

  She peered into the open flaps of cardboard, noting with some disappointment that the little foil packages looked the same. Sadie tapped her fingers in consternation.

  She guessed she could… open one.

  She glanced guiltily over her shoulder. Just because she was sitting in her childhood home, on the tile that her grandma had scrubbed religiously with an old toothbrush, didn’t mean that…

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Rolling her eyes as she thrust her hand into the box, Sadie snatched one out and ripped it open. And…

  Wow. Okay, maybe she now understood the distinction. Surely it wasn’t that much of a difference, but given the context…

  Sadie stuffed the unfurled condom into the bag just as a noise sounded downstairs.

  For the first time since she’d started working on the bathroom, Sadie glanced toward the window. Dusk had fallen about the time she’d eaten a quick sandwich on the screened-in porch, enjoying both the mild weather and pink sky stretching over the marshlands, but in the hours since she’d come upstairs it had turned a stygian, almost impenetrable black. She’d turned the lights off in the bedrooms after cleaning them, her grandma’s admonitions not to waste electricity echoing in her head like some Depression-era mantra, so the house surrounding her suddenly looked like the inside of King Tut’s tomb.

  Thunder rumbled in the distance as the wind picked up, the tempestuous herald that Mother Nature was gathering her forces to unleash. It blew in off the water and rattled the shutters, tossing the overgrown branches of the surrounding oaks against the house with an almost sadistic glee.

  Within moments the storm moved closer, whipping up a cacophony of menacing sounds, and rain began pattering against the tin roof and slapping aggressively at the windows. A loud boom caused the panes of glass behind her to rattle against their casings.

  The light from the overhead fixture flickered briefly before going out.

  “Oh, perfect,” Sadie muttered, thrusting the trash bag off to the side. It was so dark in the enclosed bathroom that she wasn’t even sure if she had a hand, let alone any hope of seeing it. The only chance she had of getting out of there without causing bodily injury was to make small, calculated movements whenever the lightning flashes briefly illuminated her surroundings. Robbed of vision her other senses became heightened in the dark, and the smell of cleanser and the bleach she’d poured in the toilet bowl seemed suddenly overwhelming.

  Scuttling crab-like in the direction of the bedroom, Sadie turned her head to cough into her shoulder, throat scratchy from the heavy fumes. The scent of fresh linens and Murphy’s Oil Soap which replaced the chemical aroma felt like a breath of fresh air in comparison.

  Rising hesitantly to her feet in the darkness, Sadie considered what to do.

  A glance out the bedroom window indicated the presence of an upstairs light shining next door. So it was probably a tripped breaker responsible for the circumstances rather than an area-wide blackout. Which was something, she guessed. At least she had an idea how to fix this problem, unlike her traitorous car.

  However, the electrical box was in the closet beneath the stairs, meaning that she’d have to venture down into what currently looked like the gaping maw of Hell, without a flashlight, in order to restore household power.

  Good thing she wasn’t afraid of the dark. Not to mention things that went bump in the night.

  What was that noise, anyway?

  Probably just the screen door blowing. It had never stayed quite shut if you didn’t latch it. But nevertheless Sadie’s hackles started to rise. Despite the fact that she’d grown up in this house and was familiar with all its quirks and nighttime noises, there was no question that it suddenly seemed… creepy. Like an old, eerie, derelict farmhouse, the kind on every other B-grade slasher movie featuring chainsaw wielding maniacs and common sense-challenged youth. The kind which took prominence in every ghost tale from her childhood, the ones that inevitably started off with It was a dark and stormy night.

  The kind…

  “Oh shut up, Sadie.” It was positively infantile for her to sit here and scare herself. Cursing herself for being an idiot, she started edging purposefully in the direction of the stairs.

  Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump.

  Sadie froze, listening intently to the sounds coming from downstairs. That was the screen door, wasn’t it?

  Creakkkk…

  It was difficult to distinguish the regular sounds from the creepy, because the storm was now raging overhead. Surely that was what had caught her attention as being an out-of-place noise, a something-that-does-not-belongin-Granny’s-house cadence. Just some chink in the house’s armor as it was being buffeted by the wind.

  Maybe one of the rocking chairs on the back porch falling over.

  The odd creak and thud sounded again, out of tempo with the gusting wind, and Sadie’s heart climbed into her throat. She stood rooted like kudzu to the hardwood floor.

  It sounded like… somebody was moving around downstairs.

  Declan, maybe? Having seen the lights go out, he’d stopped over to check on her?

  Yeah, right. A group of aliens bent on abduction was more likely.

  That creepy scene from Close Encounters of the Third Kind flitted through her head.

  Shit, she’d locked the back door, hadn’t she, when she’d come back in after dinner? Not that the doors had ever been locked around here in her youth, but times changed, and she wasn’t one to take chances.

  Maybe her erstwhile renter, come back to get his stuff?

  Having decided that a rip-roaring thunderstorm was the time to do it?

  Nope, if there was somebody down there, Sadie was sure they must be up to no good. Anyone with honorable intentions did not go skulking around other people’s darkened houses in the middle of heavy rain and lightning, without alerting them to their presence.

  Another thud, what sounded like drawers being closed and opened, finally convinced her it wasn’t her imagination.

  There was somebody else in the house.<
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  “Oh God, oh God,” she whispered, frantically trying to figure out what she should do. She looked around, which was fruitless as it was too dark to really see anything and there was no phone in the bedroom anyway, so she couldn’t dial 911 and…

  Shit. What if they’d cut the phone line?

  What if whoever was down there was responsible for the power outage?

  Fear slithering up her spine like an icy cold serpent, Sadie realized that this could be very, very bad. She didn’t dare risk heading downstairs, because it was simply too dark to see where she was going. Not to mention what she would do if the intruder was waiting for her at the bottom. Given her size and her lack of a weapon, she had no illusions as to who would win any sort of physical confrontation. If the intruder caught her, she’d go down like a lamb.

  Every survival instinct she had and quite a few she never knew she possessed were screaming at her to get out of there. But since fleeing from the house – as in bolting out the front door in terror – was not exactly a viable option, Sadie guessed that she’d have to hide.

  But where? Where? WHERE?

  Where could she hide that the intruder wouldn’t look? Under the bed? In the back of the closet?

  Those were always the first places anyone looked, as she’d learned through many years of unsuccessful games of hide and seek played with the relentless and ruthless Murphys.

  The bathroom? Maybe she could go in there and lock the doors. Buy herself a little time, anyway.

  She pushed the image of Janet Leigh in Psycho right out of her brain. This was her only viable option, and she needed to work with it.

  Creeping back into the darkened room she’d so recently exited, Sadie moved quietly so as not to give her position away. Which worked really well until she accidentally kicked over the can of Aquanet, which went skittering across the newly cleaned tile in a clatter of hollowed-out metal.

  “No. No, no, no…” Squeezing her eyes shut while the hairspray came to a noisy rest against the bathtub, Sadie’s breath backed up in her throat. Marshaling her nerves, she locked the door leading from the hallway, praying that the ferocity of the storm raging outside would cover the sound of both her clumsiness and her thudding heartbeat. Sweat began to pool beneath her armpits while all the saliva conversely dried in her mouth.

  Thunder boomed like angry laughter, causing Sadie to jump.

  The trash bag blocked her from closing the door to the bedroom. Sadie didn’t dare move it lest the shifting contents put up another clatter like that stupid can, so she left it where it lay. She put her hands against her mouth in silent prayer formation, watching the door like a mouse watches a nearby cat.

  Hoping it hadn’t seen her.

  Waiting for it to strike.

  A noise that had nothing to do with the storm echoed in the space outside – she recognized it as the distinctive creaky protest of the bottom stair tread – and momentarily, a faint light shone under the door.

  Somebody was coming up the steps, towards her. And they were carrying a flashlight.

  Feeling every nerve ending she had come alive with pure terror, Sadie edged away until her butt hit the lip of the marble-topped vanity. The cabinets, she thought, rather desperately. Having emptied them of their contents, there was a chance she just might fit inside.

  Thanking God, for once, that she was basically underdeveloped, Sadie reached with her fingertips down behind her legs until she felt the door to the cabinet. Then she carefully lowered herself until she could maneuver her body inside, edging the door closed with painstaking slowness so that it didn’t creak on its hinges, giving her away.

  One of the ties from her stupid sneakers came undone, catching in the gap of the door and preventing it from fully closing. She yanked at it, doing her best to dislodge the tangle quietly. But it was caught in such a way that she couldn’t budge it without opening the door again. No way was she going to risk detection, so she simply scooted as far into the cabinet as she could, hoping no pertinent body parts were visible through the small opening.

  Rick had always told her that she was going to fall and break her neck in her high heels one day, but apparently it was the sensible shoes that were determined to do her in. Sadie watched through the crack for any signs of the intruder.

  The light had moved past the door, obviously headed down the hall, but that didn’t mean that she was out of the woods. No doubt the intruder was simply checking the other bedrooms first, and would work his way into the bathroom eventually.

  What did he or she want?

  He. Almost certainly a man. Women didn’t generally break into darkened homes in the middle of thunderstorms, did they? At least none of the women of her acquaintance.

  Could it be a burglar, believing the house to be empty of tenants? But if so, what were they hoping to steal? There wasn’t even a good quality TV in the house, let alone any expensive equipment or jewelry. Her computer was still zipped in her suitcase.

  Maybe neighborhood kids, looking for a thrill?

  A would-be rapist who somehow knew she was alone?

  Sadie’s stomach lurched and she wrapped her hands around her knees to keep them from knocking, heart pounding so forcefully against her ribs that she feared they were in danger of cracking.

  A noise from her grandmother’s – her – bedroom caused every corpuscle in her blood to turn to ice.

  Someone was rifling through the closet.

  Sadie caught the sob which threatened to escape just in time.

  Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. Please don’t let them come into the bathroom. She felt around with her fingers, trying to find something to use as a weapon, anything that she could spray or jab, but she’d cleaned the cabinet out too damn well. It was just her and her sensible sneakers. Trapped here like the proverbial sitting duck.

  At least if she’d had a pair of her stilettoes, she could have used them to defend herself.

  More thumps and thuds sounded against the closet wall, followed by some muffled cursing that was definitely masculine.

  Yep, there was a strange man in her house.

  Before Sadie had a chance to process the fact that her previous fears were now a certainty, she saw the beam of a flashlight land on the shiny white tiles of the bathroom floor.

  Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.

  A work boot of some sort, brown and large and menacing, followed the circle of illumination until it stood squarely in front of her. It was joined by another, equally large and menacing foot, and as the yellow beam of light moved around, Sadie could see water dripping down the laces. It ran from the plastic tips, heeding the call of gravity, causing a dirty puddle to form on the floor.

  Sadie stopped breathing, stark terror taking hold.

  The flashlight beam examined the bathroom’s nooks and crannies, illuminating the beaded board paneling and bouncing off the newly shined chrome. Pausing briefly to inspect the trash, it finally landed on her shoestring.

  A swarm of spots danced at the edge of her vision, but no way did Sadie dare to breathe.

  As she braced for the inevitable confrontation, prepared to kick the intruder as hard as she could, another voice – another male voice – echoed up the stairs, making her entire nervous system go completely haywire.

  There were two of them in the house.

  Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.

  “What?” said the man in the bathroom, and Sadie jolted so hard she tasted blood. The work boots started moving in the direction of the bedroom, the man calling “Hey, I think somebody’s been cleaning in here,” as he lumbered down the stairs, voice growing less and less distinct. She could detect only jumbled words and phrases like “told you we shouldn’t have waited” and “better hope we find…”

  Sadie started breathing again, fast and short bursts of air that did little to alleviate her panic or provide oxygen to her terror-fuzzed brain. She needed to get out of there. These men – whoever they were – were apparently after something they believed to be here, and were likel
y planning to search the house from top to bottom until they found it.

  It was only a matter of time until they found her instead.

  Knowing what she had to do and that she had very little time in which to do it, Sadie forced, through sheer will, her paralyzed limbs to do her bidding. Climbing out of her hidey-hole was probably the most difficult thing she’d ever done, but somehow her jellied legs began moving. She thrust her body forward, dizzy with fear, and turned to the window beside the vanity. Rain ran in rivulets down the metal roof, and she swallowed hard at the thought of climbing out there. Heights were a serious weakness with her, but compared with rape and/or murder there was really no contest. She released the latch which held the shutters together and eased open the lock.

  It had probably been fifteen years since this window had been opened, and she prayed that it wasn’t swollen or painted shut.

  Grabbing the sash with shaking fingers, she gave it a mighty shove.

  Nothing. It hadn’t moved a single inch. Panic driving her actions now, she quickly readjusted her grip. Come on, come on, come on…

  Exerting herself till she was red in the face, the old wood finally creaked and groaned as it gave in with great resistance. Cold rain pounded through the small opening, slicking her already clumsy fingers. The sounds of the storm grew louder in the room until they drowned out the noises still coming from downstairs. She pushed and shoved, swallowing her grunts of effort as best she could, finally creating enough of an opening that she could wedge her shoulder beneath it. Then she bent her knees into a deep squat and pushed with all her might.

  The window squealed, and started moving.

  Sadie sagged against the sill with relief.

  Until she caught the reflection of light beneath the doorway, and realized the man with the flashlight was coming back upstairs.

  “Shit,” she breathed, pushing frantically, growing soaked. The wind-driven rain felt like fingers of ice clawing at her skin. She finally had the sash open to the point that she could just wiggle herself underneath it, and she virtually dove through, head first. The pocket of her jeans caught a loose nail, hanging her up briefly, until she heard a mighty rip. The nail tore through the pocket, gouging into her butt, moments before she landed hard on the roof.