Michael Prescott - Stealing Faces

“The mask of self,” Kaylie murmured, watching him with narrowed eyes.

Cray registered surprise with a subtle lift of one eyebrow. “You’ve read my book? How delightful.”

“Didn’t read it. I wouldn’t — I would never…”

She had to take a breath. It was hard to speak in complete sentences. Her thinking was all cloudy. Her head ached.

“I’m disappointed to hear it. I’d hoped to include you among my readers.” Cray leaned back in the plastic chair, and his smile widened. “Now, of course, there’ll be no chance of that. No chance and no hope, Kaylie — no hope for you at all.”

Such familiar words, an echo of her memories from twelve years ago.

Back then he had been a younger man than the John Cray who sat in the room with her now, a John Cray with a goatee and bright mischievous eyes. He had come in for therapy three times a week, and in each session he had told her there was no cure for her illness, no hope of improvement, and no chance that he would ever let her go.

And though she had been shell-shocked by trauma, though she had been numb inside and confused — even so, she had sensed the undistilled evil in him, and the hatred, raw and pungent. Only later had she thought to ask herself why he hated her, and why he was so desperate to keep her at Hawk Ridge, away from the outside world.

“You’ve been our guest for one week,” Cray was saying quietly, hands folded in his lap. “Doesn’t it feel longer? How desperately you must yearn for your freedom. For escape, Kaylie. Escape — a sweet dream, isn’t it? Or perhaps not a dream after all.”

This surprised her. It was not what she’d expected him to say.

“Why not?” she whispered. “Why not… a dream?”

“Because there may be a way out.”

She tried to draw a breath, but her throat was tight, and she managed only a cough.

Cray rose abruptly from the chair. Smiling, he approached her. He reached out with one hand, and though she tried to retreat, he was too fast for her. With his long fingers he cupped her chin and tilted her head to face him.

“That’s what you want, I’m sure. A way out. To flee all this, to be liberated. What’s the alternative? Only to linger in this sunless, airless room for months and years and decades. And you know what will happen in that case, don’t you?”

He bent lower, his eyes locked on hers.

“You’ll go insane.”

A shudder ran through her, a spasm of the fear that seemed to come out of nowhere at times and harass her. Involuntarily she shook her head.

Cray smiled. “No? You don’t think so? But it’s true, Kaylie. It will happen. It’s happening already. Isn’t it?”

He released her chin and stepped back, but even now she could not look away from him, because he had named it just then — named her real terror.

Not death. Death was nothing.

Insanity.

“You know I’m right,” Cray said. “You’ve been hearing voices, haven’t you? Perhaps seeing things that can’t be real? You try to think, but your thoughts are all tangled. After so many years of telling yourself you’re not crazy, it turns out that you are.”

I’m not! she wanted to scream, but she heard Anson’s low growl: Who are you kidding, girl?

Anson, who’d deserted her. Anson, who was in her head, calling her names like bitch and whore.

“You’re losing your mind,” Cray said, and Anson echoed him: Losing your mind, that’s for sure.

“Not true,” she muttered, and finally she found the strength to break eye contact with Cray. “Not, not, not.”

Cray paced before the bed, remorseless as a shark. “Of course it’s true. You’re sliding into the precipice, and who’ll save you?”

She squirmed farther back on the bed, until she was pinned against the wall, Cray before her, roving, roving.

“Will I?” Cray asked. “Will anyone? No one can save you, Kaylie.”

At the foot of the bed, he stopped abruptly, his voice dropping to a hush.

“Unless you save yourself.”

She listened, rapt.

It was so tempting to think that somehow she could save herself… that she was not powerless… that there was something, anything, she could do.

Cray folded his arms. “You’re interested, I see. Good. Then let’s talk about your escape.”

She won’t escape, Anson said cruelly. She’s right where she belongs.

A new voice seconded the thought. That’s for damn sure.

Justin’s voice.

Oh, God, was he here too? Was he inside her?

He couldn’t be. He was dead. She’d killed him. She’d shot him, watched him die….

“You’re a clever girl, Kaylie. You’re good at getting out of a jam.”

Which one was that? Anson? Justin?

No, it was Cray. Live and in three dimensions, not a disembodied voice. She focused on him, because he was real.

“Now you’re in the worst jam of your life,” he said, “and you’ll need all your cleverness to see your way clear. Last time, as we both know, you escaped via an air duct. An air duct similar to that one. See it?”

Her gaze followed his pointing finger to a rectangular aperture in the ceiling.

“But that option’s foreclosed in this instance,” Cray added sadly. “I’ve told the staff to check the vent cover daily for any sign of tampering. Last time, as you recall, you spent many nights loosening the screws by hand. Such a slow, tedious undertaking. What patience and determination you showed. Admirable, really. But not to be repeated, Kaylie. We’re more vigilant now. At the first indication that you’ve been at work on the vent, you’ll be in a straitjacket — or strapped to the bed. Do you understand me?”

Kaylie nodded. She knew it was true. She’d seen the orderlies check the vent cover with a flashlight every morning since she’d been unstrapped from the bed.

“So you can’t get out that way. As for the door, it’s always locked, of course. And there’s no window. No exit, then. Or so it appears. Still, there is one thing a clever girl could do to free herself from this predicament. Surely I don’t need to spell it out for you.”

Did he expect her to solve this riddle unaided? She tried to reason her way to an answer, if there was one. Vent, door, window… another way…

“Oh, but I forgot.” Cray grinned at her with cruel solicitude. “Your brain’s sick, isn’t it? Then I guess I’ll have to do your thinking for you. Well, consider.”

He leaned forward, propping himself on the bed with an outstretched arm.

“We’ve had no escapes from the institute since you were our guest. But we have had one almost equally unfortunate incident.”

Kaylie waited.

“The patient in question was a young man who found a most creative way to release himself from his torment. It involved a bedsheet, like this one here.” Cray snagged a fold of the rubber sheet between two fingers. “And that vent I mentioned. The vent cover, with its metal grillwork, is quite securely fastened to the ceiling, and just high enough above the floor that if a person were to stand on the commode and loop one end of the sheet through the grille bars, then take the other end, take it and tie it in a slipknot around her neck… her slender, fragile neck…”

Kaylie understood.

This was the gift Cray offered her. It wasn’t enough that he had put her in this room, ravaged her life, made her a pariah and a fugitive. No, he wanted to finish the task of demolition he had begun — to finish it not by his own hand, but by hers.

Anger cleared her mind for the moment, and she saw why Cray had allowed the nurses to unstrap her from the bed, the wheelchair. He needed her ambulatory, at liberty within the cell, so that no artificial restraint would prevent her from taking her own life.