John Saul - Perfect Nightmare

The servant straightened up and regarded her with a serious face. “I’m so very sorry about your husband and daughter.” His eyes seemed to bore into her for a moment, and then, abruptly, he turned away. “Sleep well,” he said. A moment later he had vanished from the room and closed the door.

Alone again, Kara took off her clothes, put on the robe that had been left on the bed, and went to the bathroom. Everything she could possibly need was laid out on the marble counter that surrounded the sink, right down to a fresh toothbrush, still in its box. But as she began to brush her teeth, Neville Cavanaugh’s words kept echoing in her mind.

I’m so very sorry about your husband and daughter.

Perfectly normal words that she must have heard a hundred times in the last week.

I’m so very sorry about your husband and daughter.

The same words almost everyone she’d seen had spoken in one form or another.

I’m so very sorry about your husband and daughter.

Then what was it about Neville Cavanaugh’s words that bothered her?

I’m so very sorry about your husband and daughter.

She climbed into bed.

I’m so very sorry about your husband and daughter.

She reached for the cup of warm milk.

I’m so very sorry about your husband and daughter.

She picked up the cup.

I’m so very sorry—

And then it came to her.

It wasn’t the words at all.

It was the way he’d said them.

Neville Cavanaugh had spoken the right words, but he hadn’t sounded sorry at all. Instead, he’d simply spoken the words he knew he’d be expected to say.

Kara raised the cup to her lips.

I’m so very sorry—

As Neville Cavanaugh’s cold voice came back again, Kara Marshall put the cup back on the nightstand, untouched.

Paralyzed!

She was paralyzed, and she couldn’t breathe, and she was blind!

A wave of panic rose inside Lindsay, and she instinctively opened her mouth to scream, but instead of hearing her terror erupt in a howling cry, her mouth filled with air and her head felt like it was going to explode.

Then she began to choke.

Now the wave of panic towered higher, and as she struggled to control the choking and regain her breath, her gorge began to rise and her mouth was filled with the bitter taste of bile.

She was going to drown!

She was going to throw up, and choke on her own vomit, and drown!

The thought triggered a reserve of energy buried deep inside her, and she made herself swallow, made herself force the contents of her stomach back down through her esophagus. But even as the bile receded from her throat, her body began to tingle from lack of oxygen.

Why couldn’t she breathe?

Tape!

There was tape over her mouth.

She focused her mind, willed herself to banish the panic, drove away any thought but the need to breathe and slowly released the air in her mouth through her nostrils and sucked a fresh breath in through her nose, down her throat, into her lungs.

The wave of terror that had all but killed her subsided.

She took a second breath, then a third.

Her mind began to function again.

Not blind, she told herself. Just in the dark.

And not paralyzed, either.

Just taped to the chair — her arms to its arms, her legs to its legs. But at least the burning pain she’d felt earlier — the pain she’d thought she couldn’t bear at all — was gone.

But she had borne the pain, and was still alive, and could still think, and—

A faint sound, nearly inaudible, slithered into her consciousness, and for a moment she wondered if she’d heard it at all. But then she heard it again, and knew what it was.

The door at the far end of the tunnel was opening.

Approaching footsteps, clearly audible, moving closer.

Asleep, Lindsay told herself. Pretend to be asleep and he’ll leave you alone.

Then, out of the darkness, she had what seemed a vision — no, not a vision, she realized, but a memory.

Of Shannon, unconscious, sprawled on the floor.

Sprawled on the floor, and being kicked — kicked until her neck was broken, and her head slammed against the wall like a rag doll in the hands of a furious child.

And if she pretended to be asleep now, it would happen to her, too. So she would be awake, and face whatever new chapter in her torture was about to begin. But her mouth was so dry her tongue had swollen and felt like a wad of cotton, and every time she blinked, her eyes felt as if they were coated with sand.

Maybe, after all, it would be better to die.

He was coming up the stairs now, and once again the terrible panic to which she had awakened only a few moments ago threatened to overwhelm her.

No, she silently cried out to herself. Be strong. Be stronger than Shannon. Be stronger than him!

Again the panic receded, but the cold terror in Lindsay’s soul only tightened its grip as first a beam of light and then the dark form of her tormentor rose out of the trapdoor in the floor.

“Good morning,” he said, the softness of his voice carrying a menace that made Lindsay’s heart falter.

Now she saw that he’d brought a large box with him.

“It’s a special day,” he said as he set it on the table. “A special day for all of us!” He ripped the tape from Lindsay’s mouth, and she gasped in pain, but choked off the accompanying cry that might give her captor satisfaction.

The flashlight went out, and a moment later he began to light candles, until the chamber was filled with flickering illumination. As the light grew brighter, Lindsay saw Shannon’s body, still lying on the floor, her head in a pool of dried blood. A cry rose in her throat, and she squelched it before any sound could escape, and turning away from Shannon, caught sight of Ellen Fine.

Ellen’s eyes were fixed on her, boring into her, and though her mouth was still covered with tape, Lindsay understood the message Ellen was trying to convey as clearly as if she’d spoken it aloud.

The plan, Ellen’s eyes were saying. Don’t forget. Give him what he wants, and wait.

Forcing herself to act against every instinct inside her, Lindsay twisted her lips into a smile and whispered a single word through her parched lips. “Please?” The man’s eyes fixed on her, and she managed to utter three more words. “I’m so thirsty.”

“This isn’t your party,” he said, his voice hard. “This is my celebration.”

Lindsay glanced at Ellen, whose eyes were open and watching.

When the room was lit by nearly two dozen candles, the man opened the box and began removing its contents, carefully placing each object on the tiny table.

A birthday cake, complete with candles.

Party hats, the kind of brightly colored, foil-covered cones Lindsay and her friends used to have at all their birthday parties.

Toy horns, and whistles from which paper tongues extended when you blew them.

And finally, small paper plates, plastic forks, and napkins that matched the plates.

The man arranged everything on the table, looked at Ellen, then at Lindsay. In the flickering candlelight, the grotesquely scrawled smile on his surgical mask seemed to come alive, making Lindsay’s skin crawl as he leered at her. “It’s my birthday,” he said. “So we’re going to have a party!”

He picked up the little hats and put one on, bringing the elastic band down over both his masks, giving him the look of a maniacal clown that Lindsay knew she would see in her nightmares for the rest of her life.

Wordlessly, he put a hat on her head, then one on Ellen's, and Lindsay was barely able to control her urge to twist her head away from his touch.