Jennifer Hillier: Creep

He rattled the handle again but it didn’t budge. There was only one way to find out what the door was concealing. Insanely, Monty Hall’s voice from that old game show Let’s Make a Deal echoed in his head. What’s behind door number one?

Damp with sweat, Morris stood back as far as he could before hitting the wall behind him. Aiming the Remington, he took a deep breath and pulled the trigger.

The sound was louder than anything he could have anticipated. Bits of wood flew everywhere, one fleck hitting Morris’s cheek just below his eye socket. The rifle’s crack was scary and exhilarating. Obviously, he’d never fired a rifle inside a house before; it was crazy to think he’d just done it in Wolfe’s house in the middle of the night. The neighbors had to have heard that. The old biddy next door was probably ripping out her curlers.

The door handle was gone. In its place was a huge, gaping hole. Morris kicked out his foot and the door swung open easily.

It was a basement. Morris was stunned. Nothing on the outside of the home indicated the house even had one. A set of stairs covered in gray industrial carpet led straight down to the bottom. His heart accelerated once again. Nothing good could be down there.

“Sheila!” he yelled at the top of his lungs before fear could overtake him. Trotting down the stairs as fast as his stiff knees would allow, he felt half out of his mind with panic. A few steps down, he yelled again, the rifle cocked and ready. He had three rounds left. If Wolfe was holding Sheila captive, he wouldn’t hesitate to pump all three of them into the bastard’s body. “Sheila, are you down here?”

As if to answer his cry, he heard a whimper, a small sound, a pitiful sound, but it pierced his heart.

Sheila.

Turning the corner into the main room, not waiting to fully process what he was seeing, Morris aimed the rifle and fired.

U nrecognizable voices were speaking in hushed tones when Sheila awoke, but it was the strong smell of antiseptic that told her she was somewhere new.

“I’m telling you, Kim, it was the creepiest shit I ever saw,” the man said in a low voice. “All these masks, like real human faces, lined up neatly. A whole shelf of them. At first I thought they were actual heads with the eyes gouged out. I didn’t think they could make masks that looked so real. Sick motherfucker.”

“What about the wall?” The female was whispering, but there was no mistaking the horror in her voice. “Jesus, they think there could be a dozen women inside there. And those are the ones he kept. Who knows how many others there were?”

Sheila blinked, her eyes crusty with sleep. A pretty blonde was sitting at her bedside, wearing a fitted jacket, a small black notebook in hand. Her young face was expectant, and she was staring at Sheila with an intensity that was frightening.

“Stop looking at her like that.” The dry, male voice came from somewhere in the corner of the room. “You’re gonna scare the shit out of her.”

Too late. The panic of not knowing where she was had already begun to ball up inside her. What was this place? Was Ethan here? Where was Morris?

The blonde put her hand gently over Sheila’s fingers. “It’s okay. You’re safe.” A smile lit the younger woman’s pretty features. “Welcome back, Dr. Tao.”

Sheila turned her head and saw the medical equipment, the light-mint-colored walls, the large window with the blinds rolled all the way up. A snippet of sunshine streamed into the room through a hole in the clouds. Her hand was stinging and she looked down. An IV needle was burrowed into the back of her hand near her bruised wrists. The tears came then.

“I’ll give you a minute.” The blonde retreated into a shadow before Sheila could say anything.

A nurse clad in cheerful pink scrubs entered the room. She headed briskly toward Sheila, checking the monitors. “She’s awake? How wonderful. Hi, honey.” She dabbed gently at Sheila’s cheeks with a warm, moist cloth. Turning to the man and the woman in the corner, she said, “You two wait outside until the doctor’s had a chance to look her over.”

They didn’t move fast enough and the nurse jerked her thumb. “Out. Now. ”

The story came out in a steady stream, though Sheila honestly didn’t feel there was much to tell. She was so, so tired, and she thought at one point she might have actually fallen asleep midsentence. If she had, the police detectives who had come to take her statement were polite enough not to say so. The young, kindly doctor-Sheila couldn’t remember his name-had explained that her crushing fatigue was normal after such a stressful experience, and he advised her to sleep as much as she needed to. They’d given her a mild sedative, which helped stave off the bouts of panic. There were no dreams.

The doctors had left, the detectives were gone, and the nurse had dimmed the lights in the room. Visiting hours were over and the hospital was quiet. The clock on the wall told Sheila it was 9:00 p.m., but time felt meaningless to her. She lay on her side, her back to the door, staring out the window at the moon. She wished to God the sun-which she hadn’t seen for three weeks until earlier today-would come back out. The darkness was awful.

It was coming back to her in bits and pieces. Ethan was dead. Morris had come for her. And Morris had killed him-he’d shot Ethan in the back with his hunting rifle. If he’d come a second later, it would be Sheila downstairs in the morgue.

It would be weeks before the bodies encased in cement at the Lake Stevens house could be removed and identified, assuming they could be identified. Sheila had told the detectives what she knew about Marie, the homeless woman, and also about Diana St. Clair. It turned out they already knew.

They also knew all about Ethan’s girlfriend, Abby Maddox. Abby had cut the throat of the private investigator Morris had hired, the man who’d been instrumental in helping to find her. Then she’d escaped the police station. Amazingly, Abby had missed Jerry’s carotid artery. The officer on duty at the precinct had found him only a few minutes later and was able to stop the bleeding before the paramedics arrived.

Why she had tried to kill him was anybody’s guess.

Thinking about the private investigator now, Sheila choked back a sob. Poor Jerry. He’d been her student a long time ago and she hadn’t seen him in years. A hard worker, juggling school with career. She and Marianne had been meaning to get their men together for a double date for a while now, but it had never happened. Careers got in the way, and there’d been no time for socializing beyond therapy sessions and cups of coffee. And now Marianne’s husband was in critical condition because of Sheila. The guilt was consuming.

She had done this. She had brought Ethan Wolfe into their lives.

The door to her room opened. Surprised, she rolled over to see who it was. A police officer was posted twenty-four hours outside her door, so it was probably just a nurse coming to check on her, but her palms were already sweating. Abby Maddox was still out there. While the police weren’t convinced that Ethan wasn’t equally or even totally responsible for the dead bodies in the basement of the Lake Stevens house, Sheila believed everything Ethan had told her. Abby had killed those women. There were many unanswered questions, but about this, she was certain.

But it wasn’t Abby in her room. It was Morris. In the dim light, he was just a shadow, but she would know the outline of his face and body anywhere.

It was the first time she’d seen him since that day at her house before his business trip, the day before she’d been kidnapped. A lifetime ago.

“I didn’t think you’d come.” Her breath caught in her throat, and she was ashamed at how pitiful and small she sounded. “I can’t say I’d blame you.”