John Saul - Perfect Nightmare

But it wasn’t enough — more than half the candles remained lit.

He blew again, and then a third time, and finally the last candle sputtered out.

As his eyes moved malevolently from Lindsay to her, her fury and frustration finally overpowered her terror.

“Happy birthday!” she screamed, the words rasping as they erupted from her swollen throat. “Happy birthday, and go to hell!”

His head snapped up and he glowered at her, rage burning in his eyes.

“Why don’t you just die?” Ellen cried, her voice trembling. “You’re never getting your wish, so why don’t you just die and go to hell!”

The blow came so fast, Ellen had no time to turn away. His fist slammed into her jaw hard and she felt it dislocate, the pain so intense she lost her breath as a fiery red glow of agony enveloped her. Still taped to the chair, she toppled over and her head crashed against the floor.

Emily. Oh, Emily. Only the thought of her daughter kept Ellen from letting herself slip into the unconsciousness that was the only thing that could assuage the pain.

Then he was kneeling next to her, and Ellen braced herself for the next blow. But instead, when he leaned close, his lips next to her ear, he whispered, “You’re supposed to help me. Why didn’t you help me? That’s all I wanted — just for you to help me. But you didn’t help me — you let them do whatever they wanted, and I had to pretend like I liked it! So now we all have to pretend. Every one of us…”

Ellen tried to pull away, but when she moved her head, a stab of pain shot from her broken jaw and a faint scream escaped her lips. She saw the duct tape back in the man’s hands, and in mute paralysis watched helplessly as he tore a long strip from the roll.

As he pressed the tape over her mouth, the pain in her broken jaw burned through her, the shattered bones grating on each other. And for the first time since this nightmare began, Ellen found herself silently praying for the release of unconsciousness.

Unconsciousness, or even death.

As she lay helpless on the floor, the man rose to his feet and moved toward Lindsay. Crouching low, he reached out and gently began to caress her breast. “Now you’re going to know what it was like,” he whispered, and his fingers tightened on Lindsay’s nipple. “Now you’re going to feel everything I felt, and we’ll see how you like it!”

As his fingers dug into Lindsay’s body, and the agony in her own threatened to overwhelm her, Ellen Fine clung to the one thought that could give her the strength to keep on living.

Emily… Emily… Emily…

Nothing, Kara told herself. You heard nothing, because there’s nothing to hear.

Yet even as she silently repeated the words, the sounds of the night enveloped her, seemed to close in on her with every step she took as she left the terrace steps and moved into the darkness that lay over Cragmont. The waves lapping on the shore, the wind sighing and whistling among the trees and in the eaves of the unfamiliar buildings scattered over the grounds, all of it seemed to warn her to go back to the house, whispering that there was nothing here for her to see.

Nothing, at least, that she would want to see.

She glanced nervously back over her shoulder, but the silhouette of the great house looming against the even darker blackness of the sky did nothing to reassure her, and for a moment she almost imagined she could hear the groaning of whatever vast unseen mechanism it was that drew the stars across the sky.

But the singing — if singing it had truly been — was gone, and as she drew the robe tighter around her against the chill and darkness of the night, Kara was no longer sure she had heard it at all.

Off to the left, almost invisible against a backdrop of hedges, the Shields family mausoleum crouched in the darkness, and Kara paused to gaze at its limestone walls.

She shuddered.

Could the sounds she’d heard, which she’d been so certain were voices singing, possibly have come from inside it? She remembered, then, what Patrick had told her about waking up a couple of weeks ago to find himself inside the mausoleum, cold and shivering in front of the crypts that held all that was physically left of his family.

Had he been drawn back there tonight? Could it have been Patrick she’d heard, keening his grief alone in the confines of this cold stone structure? Kara hurried forward and a moment later stood before the wooden door that was the mausoleum’s entrance, its great panels appearing even larger than the doors of the house itself.

A heavy lock hung from a hasp, and even without touching it, Kara knew it was firmly latched.

As she stood on the crypt’s cold stone steps, the night sounds deepened and once more seemed to circle closer. She stepped away from the mausoleum, but even when she stood in the middle of the path that led back to the great open lawn, the first tendrils of claustrophobia began to crawl around her.

She turned back to gaze at the mausoleum, and a vision of Steve’s ashes — still on the dining room table in her deserted house — rose before her eyes.

She shuddered again.

Don’t be silly. Don’t be hysterical. Nobody is singing out here, and there’s no way Patrick or anybody else is inside the mausoleum.

She turned around, intending to start back toward the house, but a small building off to the left caught her eye.

A building that appeared in the darkness to be an almost exact miniature of the enormous main house that stood at the top of the gently sloping lawn.

As she gazed at it, Kara realized what it was.

A children’s playhouse.

The playhouse where Chrissie and Jenna would have played when they were little girls.

Perhaps even where Patrick and Claire had played when they were children, too.

Kara stepped off the path and started across the grass, which was glistening with dew in the moonlight. Though the dampness quickly found its way inside her loafers, she barely noticed the chill in her feet.

She drew closer.

The playhouse had been boarded up, its door and windows covered with heavy plywood.

Of course. After the tragedy, Patrick would have been no more able to bear the sight of the playhouse than he could his daughters’ rooms.

Kara gazed at the building for a while, shivering at the memories that must lurk in its closed-off corners. A wind came up then, flapping the robe that was all that covered her bare legs and jerking her out of her reverie. Turning away from the playhouse as she’d turned away from the mausoleum a few minutes earlier, she resolutely headed back toward the house.

But just as she was mounting the steps to the terrace and the conservatory beyond, she heard it.

Muffled, but distinct.

A shout!

The shout of a woman!

Kara whirled, goose bumps rising on her arms, and then her grandmother’s voice echoed in her head: “Someone’s walking on my grave.” She banished the thought as quickly as it came, and strained her ears, listening.

Nothing.

Nothing but the waves and the wind, whispering in the darkness. Quickly, she hurried up the steps, crossed the terrace, and turned the handle on the door, but before she could push it open, it was pulled from within.

Neville Cavanaugh stood in the partially open doorway, fully dressed, gazing down at her, his eyes cold and suspicious. Flustered, she blurted out the truth before she even thought about it: “I heard noises.” His expression didn’t change, though he opened the door wider and stepped back so she could come in. “Like singing,” she went on. “I thought it was… Oh, God, it sounds so silly now, but—” She faltered, but Neville only raised his eyebrows and waited. “I thought someone was singing ‘Happy Birthday,’ ” she finally managed. “And someone was yelling.”