John Saul - Perfect Nightmare

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.