John Saul - Perfect Nightmare

Now he was cleaning her the way he had before, and Lindsay cringed, shutting her eyes tight, as if blocking out the sight of him could also block the vile touch of his fingers on her skin.

Mama… she silently cried. Come find me, Mama.

“Come with me,” the black figure with the grotesque mask said when he was finished wiping her skin.

Lindsay felt the shackles around her wrists loosened, and for just an instant, hope surged. But a second later, as she realized she was too weak even to attempt to flee, that brief flicker of hope died away.

The fingers of his right hand closed on her arm like the jaws of a vise and he pulled her up from the mattress, pinning her easily to the wall with a single arm. She tried to resist, but the last of her strength seemed to have drained away and all she could do was force a scream that emerged as little more than a nearly inaudible whine.

“Quiet,” he commanded. “I’ve brought you something new to wear.”

With utter incomprehension, she gazed at the scrap of cloth he was holding in his free hand then realized that it was a dress.

A dress for a doll.

Using a string he’d run through both arms of the tiny dress, he tied the garment around her waist.

The skirt of the dress barely covered her groin.

Holding her up as if she were an invalid, he walked her to the door through which he’d carried Shannon a few moments ago. If he let go, she knew she would fall.

And she knew that if she fell, he would simply drag her along behind him as if she were a broken doll whose dress was all she now wore.

But he didn’t let go. Instead he steered her through the door, and into a dark, damp, cold tunnel that reeked of mold and mildew and rot.

Lindsay tried to keep up, tried to keep her legs moving with him, tried to keep her feet on the ground, but half the time they seemed to drag on the floor as he hauled her along.

They came to a set of wooden stairs, and he surged up them, his viselike fingers still closed on her wrist in an unbreakable grip. Her legs and feet banged on the treads as he half dragged her up the stairs and through a trapdoor, into another room.

It was here that Lindsay saw Shannon stretched across a low table, her wrists and ankles taped to its legs. She was bone thin, her long brown hair matted into tangled strings. A filthy scrap of a doll’s dress that must once have looked like the one she herself now wore was all that covered her.

Shannon’s eyes stayed closed, and Lindsay didn’t know if she was even conscious.

Her mouth was covered with shiny silver duct tape upon which the man had painted the same grotesquely leering red smile that was spread over his own mask.

“See how much she likes it?” the man whispered. “I’m going to make you like it, too.” As Lindsay gazed at Shannon in mute horror, the man forced her down onto one of the child-sized chairs that circled the table.

He bound her wrists together behind her, and her ankles to the chair legs with the same duct tape he’d used to bind Shannon to the table. Finally, he put a wide strip of tape over her mouth.

He pulled a red marker from one of the pockets of his black raincoat, and Lindsay knew without being told that soon her mouth would look like Shannon’s and his own.

“It’s important for us all to smile at each other,” he said softly as he worked. “It’s how we know we love each other, isn’t it?”

When he was finished, he capped his red marker, then roughly brushed a tear from her cheek. Crouching down beside her, he looked into her eyes. “Isn’t this fun?” he said, his voice now so cold it made her shiver. “All of us playing, just like we used to!”

Then he rose to his full height and stood behind her. He ran his fingers over her cheek. “So sweet…” His fingers roamed down her neck and shoulder to her breast. “So pure…”

Lindsay wanted to scream, wanted to twist away from his touch, wanted to lash out at him. But she was bound helplessly to the chair, and even if she could scream, there would be no one except Shannon to hear her.

So she did nothing at all. She held absolutely still, refusing to acknowledge his touch, refusing to give him the satisfaction of any reaction at all.

Abruptly, he pulled his hand away.

He gazed at her for a long moment.

And finally he spoke.

“You’ll learn,” he said softly. “You’ll learn the same way I learned.”

He turned away from her then and knelt down close to Shannon.

And as Lindsay stared in shocked horror, he began to do to Shannon all the things Lindsay had only imagined him doing a few minutes before.

She turned away, and an instant later, his hand slashed across her face. Her mouth filled with the coppery taste of blood as one of her teeth sank into her cheek.

“Watch,” the man commanded. “How can you learn to love me if you don’t watch?”

Her cheek stinging, her eyes flooding with tears, her soul gripped in a terror worse than anything she’d ever known, Lindsay watched in utter silence as the man went about his “lesson.”

Finally finishing with a sigh that seemed more a release than any kind of ecstasy, he rose back to his feet and loomed once more above her.

“You see?” he asked, holding her chin and tipping her face up so she couldn’t avoid looking at him. “We love each other. That’s why we’re smiling. Because we all love each other, and we like playing together.” He slit the tape that bound Shannon’s ankles and wrists with a pocketknife, then lifted her up like a rag doll. With one arm around her waist, the other holding Shannon’s arm around his own neck, he dragged her to the hatch leading to the stairs.

Lindsay knew that in a few moments he would be back.

He would be back for her.

Mama, she silently cried one more time. Come and find me, Mama…

Neville Cavanaugh put the first of the garden’s lilies in a vase and set it gently on the breakfast tray. Even though Mr. Shields was still sleeping in the library, at least he seemed to have finally regained a little of his appetite. Perhaps if he rapped on the library door— But before he could finish the thought, let alone pick up the breakfast tray to act on it, the kitchen door opened and Patrick Shields himself walked into the kitchen.

And this morning he wasn’t wearing his pajamas and bathrobe. Rather, he was freshly showered and shaved, wore a pair of loose-fitting white linen trousers and a black polo shirt, and was looking fitter and more chipper than Neville had seen him in months.

Since the day before Christmas, in fact.

Wherever Patrick had gone two nights ago, Neville thought, it must have done him a lot more good than he himself would have thought possible.

“Good morning, Neville,” Patrick said. “Think I’ll eat in the conservatory this morning. It’s such a beautiful day.” Neville took the tray to the conservatory, where the remains of his own breakfast still littered the table. He set the tray down and then began to tidy up.

Patrick Shields picked up the newspaper that Neville had taken to reading himself since his employer had shown little interest in it in months.

Neville set out his employer’s breakfast, then piled his own dishes on the tray and waited for the paper. Patrick glanced up at him.

“I think I’ll just read it, today, thanks.” His eyes went back to the story Neville himself had been reading half an hour earlier. The story about the girl who had disappeared, Lindsay Marshall. “Have you heard anything else about this girl?” he asked.

“No, sir,” Neville responded as he dusted crumbs off the table. “Just what I’ve read in the paper.”