John Saul - Perfect Nightmare

Carefully, she picked her way through the litter strewn over the floor until she got to the door. It was barely ajar, and she reached out with a trembling hand to pull it open.

Ahead of her lay a tunnel, barely high enough to stand up in, just wide enough to let her pass.

In the distance she saw a dim glow, no more than a faint brightening of the blackness that filled the tunnel. How far away? Twenty yards? Fifty? A hundred?

Her hand tightening on the poker so hard her fingers hurt, she started toward that light.

Where did the tunnel lead? As she moved through the darkness, feeling her way along one of the rough walls, she again recalled Patrick telling her about waking up in the mausoleum with no memory of having gone there. Was that where the tunnel led? She tried to gauge not only the distance ahead, but the direction as well. And then, as the light grew brighter, she knew.

The playhouse! The miniature copy of Cragmont itself that stood near the woods between the house and the mausoleum.

The playhouse whose door and windows were boarded up.

Certain she knew what lay ahead, Kara quickened her step, and as the light at the end of the tunnel grew steadily brighter, it began to pulse oddly, almost as if it were energized by a beating heart.

Lindsay’s heart!

“I’m coming,” Kara whispered. “I’m coming.” She quickened her pace, but not enough to risk tripping on the uneven floor of the tunnel and twisting her ankle. When she was still ten or fifteen feet from the source of the light ahead, she heard something and stopped short.

Voices.

She listened, and in the dim light saw what lay ahead.

Another set of wooden stairs, like the ones that had led from the library down into darkness and the dungeon, only this flight led up. Taking a deep breath, Kara moved slowly and silently to the foot of the stairs. Lindsay, she said silently to herself as she gazed at the open trapdoor overhead . That’s all you have to think about. Find Lindsay and get her out of here.

As quietly as a wraith, she mounted the stairs.

What she saw as her eyes cleared the floor was even more surreal than the dungeon she’d come upon earlier. A few feet directly ahead of her, a pair of bare legs were duct-taped to chair legs that had been fastened to the floor with angle irons. Above the legs, she saw a table, also bolted to the floor.

Kara’s eyes shifted, and she saw a figure looming at the end of the table. A figure clad in black.

Then she rose into the room, and the full reality of it made her reel. In the pulsing glow of dozens of candles, two women were tied to miniature chairs. One of them was gazing at her with eyes so empty, Kara knew in an instant she was dead, and the other one’s eyes were filled with a terror unlike anything Kara had ever seen before.

But they were smiling! They were both smiling!

A choking cry emerged from her throat when she saw Ellen’s mouth covered with duct tape, upon which a grotesquely hideous grin had been drawn.

And then she saw Lindsay.

Her daughter was on top of a table as small as the chairs around it, and between her legs stood the tall, black-clad figure, a hideously grinning surgical mask hiding his face.

A partially crumpled birthday cake — the cake she’d seen earlier in the kitchen, she realized — sat on a side table, its candles melted down to blue blobs. And suddenly she knew.

Neville! That was why he’d been skulking around the darkened house! That was why she’d felt him watching her! He’d taken her daughter and—

“Lindsay!” Her child’s name burst from Kara’s lips in an anguished scream.

Lindsay began to struggle on the table, unintelligible cries bubbling from her lips.

The black-clad figure wheeled around, his hands rising as he backed away from Lindsay.

Kara raised the poker. “Get away from her,” she said, her voice low, but carrying enough menace that the figure lurched backward.

“It’s not my fault,” the man whispered.

“Untie her,” Kara demanded, her voice rising. “Untie them all!”

“It’s her fault,” he whimpered, cowering back against the wall. He was pointing at the dead girl now.

A blinding fury surging inside her, Kara swung the poker at the cowering figure. “Untie them!” she screamed as she brought the poker around, its sharp spur aimed at his head. But he ducked away, and the spur intended for the skull of the monster who had taken Lindsay sank deep into the wall instead, hitting it with such force that when Kara tried to pull the spur out, she lost her grip on the poker. Then the man was upon her, wrapping his arms around her, pinning one of her arms to her side.

With her free hand, Kara reached up and slashed at his face with her fingers, trying to sink her nails into his eyes. But again he twisted his head away at the last second, and her fingers closed not on skin and flesh, but on the knitted yarn of his black ski mask.

She yanked hard, jerking away not only the ski mask, but the surgical mask as well.

In the strangely pulsing light of the guttering candles, Kara found herself staring into the face of Patrick Shields.

It was the house itself that awakened Neville. Even before he opened his eyes, he knew that all was not well, that somewhere in the house, something was terribly wrong.

It was a feeling he’d had more and more often over the last few months, when he’d listened to the silence, then risen from his bed to prowl through the house, checking doors and windows, making certain his employer’s realm was secure. Indeed, he’d already made his patrol once this night, and found Mrs. Marshall coming in from the terrace with strange tales of hearing sounds she couldn’t possibly have heard. Of course, he reassured her that it had been nothing more than shore birds, sent her back to bed, then finished his tour of the mansion before returning to his own room and his bed.

He’d slept.

But now he was awake again, and something felt wrong. Then, before he’d thrown the covers back and reached for his robe, he heard it.

The sound of breaking glass.

Instantly, his mind began cataloging the possibilities. Perhaps it was nothing more than Mr. Shields dropping a brandy snifter after trying to medicate himself through another sleepless night. Or perhaps one of the old family photographs that covered so many of the downstairs walls had fallen from its mount.

Except it hadn’t sounded like either a dropped glass or a fallen picture.

It sounded like a breaking window.

Slipping into his robe, Neville hurried silently along the corridor and down the dark stairway that led from his apartment to the kitchen, still trying to convince himself that whatever the sound had been, it was nothing serious.

But even as he moved through the kitchen into the dayrooms, the house whispered that something evil lay nearby.

Emerging into the vast entry hall, he slowed his step and listened, but heard nothing but the ancient clock’s eternal ticking; all around him the house was dark and quiet.

Just as it should be.

Yet still he heard it whispering to him, telling him that all was not as it seemed. Neville crossed the hall and slipped into the conservatory, where only a little while ago he’d met Mrs. Marshall, but now all was well in that room, too, and beyond its great glass doors, a lightening sky signaled the coming of dawn.

And by that light, he could find no broken windowpane whose shattering might have disturbed his sleep.

Neville Cavanaugh moved silently on.

The library doors were locked, which told him that Mr. Shields was once again sleeping there instead of in his room. He raised his hand to rap softly at the door, then changed his mind: if his employer was asleep, he didn’t want to awaken him, at least not until he had discovered what was amiss.