John Saul - Perfect Nightmare

He turned away from the library and moved to the massive, circular table that stood in the center of the foyer, its intricately inlaid mosaic surface still half obscured by the profusion of yellow tulips that Mr. Shields’s sister had picked.

The tulips that were now past their prime, and should have been thrown away a week ago. Neville stood quietly, seeing neither the faded tulips nor any other visible thing, for his mind was focusing on the house itself. He knew that if he waited quietly, it would tell him of its ills.

It always had; it always would. He understood its subtleties — knew every inch of its molding, every scar in its paneling, even every vein in every slab of its marble, as well as every pleat in every curtain.

He knew every creak, moaning joint, and settled beam. As the decades passed, he had kept this house, and this house had protected him. He thought of himself and this house as partners; they understood one another.

And this night, things were not right with the house.

He could feel its ills deep in his soul.

He waited for the impressions to become more specific, but his impatience clouded any psychic message he might have gleaned, and finally he strode to the staircase and mounted the stairs, his slippers soundless on the marble treads.

The doors to the girls’ rooms were closed, as always.

The guest room door, though, was open, and when he peered inside, he saw only the empty bed, the bedding itself in disarray.

So Mrs. Marshall was up and about again, and no doubt it had been she who broke something. Certain there was nothing else to be found up here, Neville quickly went back down the stairs, searched the rest of the day rooms, and finally stepped out onto the terrace, using the same door in the conservatory through which he’d admitted Mrs. Marshall a while ago. The air was chilly, and Neville clutched at the lapels of his robe with his fingers as he moved down the length of the terrace, checking each of the French doors in turn.

He saw the breech in the last set of doors that opened into the library. A pane of glass next to the doorknob had been broken — smashed in with one of the wrought-iron plant stands of which he had never approved, and for the reason that now confronted him. The plant stand lay on its side in front of the door.

So there had been an intruder.

Neville pushed open the damaged door and stepped into the library, closing it behind him, and as the latch clicked into place, he knew that here, in this room, was the source of the distress that had awakened him.

It wasn’t merely the pervasiveness of Mr. Shields’s grief or the aroma of Mrs. Marshall’s cheap perfume. No, it was something far darker, far more disturbing. But what? The room was vacant and cold, the fireplace barely sustaining a few faintly glowing coals.

Then he saw that the Oriental rug in front of the desk was folded back.

Frowning, he approached it, and stared at the gaping trapdoor.

For a moment all he could do was peer in astonishment at the hole in the floor, barely able to believe his eyes. How many times had the carpet been rolled back over the years? How was it possible that he hadn’t known that a trapdoor was there? As he stared at it, and saw how perfectly the door would drop back into the deeply grooved parquetry design of the floor, he realized that the entire floor had been designed to disguise this trapdoor; closed, it would be all but invisible.

But where did it go?

His brow furrowing deeply, Neville Cavanaugh hurried toward the kitchen in search of a flashlight.

“Patrick!”

The voice seemed to come from far away.

It was calling his name, screaming at him: “Patrick!”

And again, louder: “Patrick!”

Patrick wanted to answer, but it was as if he was asleep and couldn’t wake up; as if someone were calling him in a dream, and even though he wanted to respond, to call back, he couldn’t.

He couldn’t do anything; couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, could barely even breathe. It was as if he was bound in something, as if spiderwebs were wrapped around him, webs so fine he couldn’t see them, but that nonetheless held him in their grip.

The voice came again, howling out his name, and Patrick struggled to free himself from the bonds at least enough to speak, to let whoever was calling to him know that he was there. And he was there, he knew it. He was not asleep, though he felt as though he was; not caught up in a nightmare, though it seemed as if a nightmare was what it had to be.

The voice screamed his name yet again, and his mind began to focus. There was light all around him; but not bright light, not the light from the chandelier in the library or the lamp by his bedside.

Candlelight.

That’s what it was: candlelight. Glowing all around him, bathing the room in a warm, golden glow.

Now the room itself came into a strange kind of focus. A small room, with small furniture.

The playhouse! That’s where he was — the playhouse halfway down the lawn, where Claire and her friends—

Claire!

Was that who was calling him? He looked around, trying to see if his sister was there, but he couldn’t quite see out of his own eyes. Something seemed to be blocking his vision.

“Go back to sleep!” a new voice whispered, and this time Patrick recognized it right away: it was his own voice. But how could it be, since he hadn’t spoken and wasn’t asleep? The voice inside him spoke again: “Go on. Go back to sleep. You want to go back to sleep. I know you want to go back to sleep, and so do you. So do it. Do what you want to do, and then I will do what we want to do, just like I always have.”

As the voice whispered to him, Patrick felt himself starting to relax, to obey it and drift into the dark and gentle quiet of sleep.

But then he heard the other voice calling to him again. Not Claire’s voice, but a familiar voice, a voice he knew.

A voice he liked.

“Patrick! Patrick, what are you doing?”

Kara!

Kara Marshall! That’s who it was. And he was holding her, his arms wrapped so tightly around her, he was hurting her. But what was she doing in the playhouse? No one ever went into the playhouse anymore, not since he’d boarded it up. Even his daughters had never been allowed in the playhouse. But now Kara was here and—

“She doesn’t belong,” the other voice — the voice inside him — said. “She shouldn’t be here, and neither should you. Go back to sleep and let me do what we want to do. Go back to sleep, and I will make everything all right. And no one will ever tell.”

Tell? Tell what? He shoved Kara aside and twisted his head as she crumpled to the floor. Then, for an instant, it seemed that the hand covering his eyes fell away, and he saw the girl sprawled out on the table, lying on her back, staring up at him with terrified eyes.

Why?

Why was she afraid of him?

Then he saw the girl in the chair, the girl whose head was lolling over, the girl who wasn’t moving at all.

And another one.

A young woman, who looked familiar. She was bound to one of the little chairs — the chairs Claire and her friends had sat in when they were children.

When they were children, and they’d brought him in here, and—

The vision of what had happened here so many years ago began to take shape in his mind, and he wanted to turn away, to disappear back into the cradling arms of unconsciousness, where the terrible memories of the past could do him no harm.

“That’s right,” the voice in his head urged him. “Go to sleep, Patrick. Let me deal with it. I dealt with it then, and I’ve dealt with it all our life and I will deal with it now. And you won’t be any part of it. Not any part of it at all!”