John Saul - Faces of Fear

As her vision began to fail her, Risa managed a slight nod.

The pressure on her neck eased slightly, and Conrad began to move her toward the dressing screen.

Even if she could scream, she knew no one would hear her. The house was empty, except for Alison, who was two floors away.

Without a struggle, Risa let him walk her through the door that lay behind the screen.

THE PRESSURE ON RISA’S NECK EASED JUST ENOUGH THAT SHE DIDN’T black out, and Conrad’s grip on her arm kept her from falling even though her knees were buckling.

Stay calm, she told herself. Stay calm and save Alison.

Having moved her through the door behind Margot’s changing screen, he slammed it shut behind him.

Looking around, it seemed she’d sunk into a nightmare.

Everywhere she looked there were tanks filled with a greenish fluid, and objects floating in them.

Grisly objects.

Objects that looked as if they had been cut away from human corpses.

Or living human beings.

“My laboratory,” she heard Conrad say. “This is where I do all the truly important work.” His stress on the penultimate word sent a chill through her. “Interesting, aren’t they?” he said as his eyes followed her gaze to the objects in the tanks. “They don’t look like much at the moment, but wait until tomorrow.” Risa, repeating the two words— Keep calm —over and over in her mind, tore her eyes away from the tanks. “T-Tomorrow?” she rasped, her throat raw from the pressure of Conrad’s arm.

“Alison’s surgery,” he said, still moving her through the laboratory and into the operating room, where motion-sensitive switches turned on blindingly bright overhead lights.

Risa blinked in the sudden glare, saw the operating table, an IV stand, monitors, instrument trays already laid out — everything a surgeon would need.

All of it there.

All of it ready.

She struggled to comprehend what she thought she’d heard him say.

Alison’s surgery?

What was he talking about?

Then her mind flashed back to the photograph of Alison in Margot’s dress.

Then further back, to the television special she’d watched that evening.

“No,” she whispered, barely able to hear her own choking voice.

Instead of answering her, he strong-armed her into a metal chair, then bound her arms and legs to it with surgical tape. She saw him step out into the laboratory and tap at a computer keyboard. A moment later one of the large wall-mounted monitors on the wall of the surgery room came to life.

As Conrad returned from the laboratory, Alison’s face, at least three times larger than life, appeared on the monitor.

Risa gazed at the image of her beautiful daughter.

“It’s her features,” he said. “That’s the problem — nature was not as kind to her as it should have been.” Risa felt her blood run cold.

“Now you’ll see how God intended Alison to look.” He flicked some kind of remote control toward the computer in the laboratory and the image on the monitor began to change.

As Risa watched in growing terror, Alison’s face slowly morphed into a perfect replication of Margot Dunn.

“You see?” Conrad said, his glistening eyes fixed on the monitor. “That is what God intended, and that is what I am going to do.” Risa’s belly churned, and for a moment she thought she might throw up.

“It’s going to be quite simple,” he went on. He pressed the remote again, and Alison’s face reappeared, this time with black ink marks around her eyes, her nose, and her lips. “And her ears, of course,” he said. “All the soft tissue. That’s the wonderful thing about Alison — her underlying bone structure is perfect. The moment I met her, I knew. It was as if I could see right through her flesh to the perfection of her bones.” Risa struggled against the surgical tape that bound her to the chair. “No,” she whispered, her voice hoarse. “Not Alison. I’m not going to let you—” “ Let me?” Conrad cut in, wheeling around to face her, his eyes glittering as they bored into her. “You should be thanking me!” Risa gazed up at him, no longer recognizing the man she’d married. It was as if Conrad had become someone else, someone gripped in an obsession she’d assumed was only a fading memory.

Margot.

He was consumed with her, and she was dead, and now he was going to re-create her.

And make Alison — her daughter — disappear.

Risa scanned the room, looking for a weapon.

If she could knock him out — if she could get out of the surgery and the lab and call the police—“You’ll thank me,” Conrad said. “And so will Alison.” “No,” Risa said again, struggling harder against her bonds. “I won’t—” “You won’t do anything,” Conrad said, as if instructing a child. “It’s too late for that now. It’s not up to you. It’s up to me.” Now all the doubts she’d ever felt about Conrad flooded back.

The night in Paris, when he’d called her Margot.

The shrine in the basement that no woman would ever have built to herself.

His careful seduction of Alison, until she actually wanted him to cut into her body, to make it different.

To make it beautiful.

And she’d let it happen. She —not Alison — had let it happen. She never should have married Conrad, never should have moved into his house, never should have let him so much as look at her daughter, let alone touch her.

Cut her.

Change her.

“No!” she screamed now, her guilt coalescing into pure fury. With a sudden lunge, she tore free from her bindings, her rage lending her more strength than she could have imagined. She hurled herself toward the tray of surgical instruments, reaching for a scalpel or a pair of scissors or anything else that came to hand.

Cut him!

That’s what she had to do.

Cut him, as he was going to cut Alison.

Cut him, before he could cut Alison.

Cut him, and kill him, and—

The chair, still bound to her right leg, caught on the corner of one of the cabinets, and she lost her balance. She felt herself plunging forward and threw out her arms to break her fall, and — Conrad’s arm was once again around her neck, and he was squeezing. Once more the blackness gathered around her, and once more she tried to force herself to stay calm, to do whatever she had to do to save Alison.

Too late.

The blackness closed in, and she felt herself slipping away.

“Alison,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry…so very sorry….”

• • •

CONRAD SWITCHED OUT the last of the lights in the laboratory. It had been a long, complicated day, and he could feel the exhaustion in his bones.

He needed sleep.

A good night’s sleep, given the surgery he would perform tomorrow.

A few minutes later he gently opened Alison’s bedroom door and peered inside.

A pink nightlight softly illuminated the girl’s young, elastic skin. Her breathing was slow and regular, and he knew that her strong young body would easily withstand the many grueling hours of surgery ahead.

It would be worth it.

Worth it for her, and worth it for him.

Alison Shaw would be more beautiful than she had ever imagined she could be.

And finally, Margot would once again be his.

“Tomorrow, then, my love,” he whispered.

Closing the door, Conrad Dunn went to bed.

ALISON FELT THE DIFFERENCE THE MOMENT SHE ENTERED THE DINING room the next morning. Somehow, it seemed larger and emptier than usual. Conrad sat at the head of the long table, and the morning sun was bright on the garden outside the French doors. But there was no sign of her mother, nor did Maria appear with her orange juice as she always had. Then, as she slipped into the chair at her usual place, she noticed that her mother’s place wasn’t set for breakfast.