Perfect Nightmare (24 page)

Then what was it about Neville Cavanaugh’s words that bothered her?

I’m so very sorry about your husband and daughter.

She climbed into bed.

I’m so very sorry about your husband and daughter.

She reached for the cup of warm milk.

I’m so very sorry about your husband and daughter.

She picked up the cup.

I’m so very sorry—

And then it came to her.

It wasn’t the words at all.

It was the way he’d said them.

Neville Cavanaugh had spoken the right words, but he hadn’t sounded sorry at all. Instead, he’d simply spoken the words he knew he’d be expected to say.

Kara raised the cup to her lips.

I’m so very sorry—

As Neville Cavanaugh’s cold voice came back again, Kara Marshall put the cup back on the nightstand, untouched.

Chapter Forty-eight

P
aralyzed!

She was paralyzed, and she couldn’t breathe, and she was blind!

A wave of panic rose inside Lindsay, and she instinctively opened her mouth to scream, but instead of hearing her terror erupt in a howling cry, her mouth filled with air and her head felt like it was going to explode.

Then she began to choke.

Now the wave of panic towered higher, and as she struggled to control the choking and regain her breath, her gorge began to rise and her mouth was filled with the bitter taste of bile.

She was going to drown!

She was going to throw up, and choke on her own vomit, and drown!

The thought triggered a reserve of energy buried deep inside her, and she made herself swallow, made herself force the contents of her stomach back down through her esophagus. But even as the bile receded from her throat, her body began to tingle from lack of oxygen.

Why couldn’t she breathe?

Tape!

There was tape over her mouth.

She focused her mind, willed herself to banish the panic, drove away any thought but the need to breathe and slowly released the air in her mouth through her nostrils and sucked a fresh breath in through her nose, down her throat, into her lungs.

The wave of terror that had all but killed her subsided.

She took a second breath, then a third.

Her mind began to function again.

Not blind,
she told herself. Just in the dark.

And not paralyzed, either.

Just taped to the chair—her arms to its arms, her legs to its legs. But at least the burning pain she’d felt earlier—the pain she’d thought she couldn’t bear at all—was gone.

But she had borne the pain, and was still alive, and could still think, and—

A faint sound, nearly inaudible, slithered into her consciousness, and for a moment she wondered if she’d heard it at all. But then she heard it again, and knew what it was.

The door at the far end of the tunnel was opening.

Approaching footsteps, clearly audible, moving closer.

Asleep,
Lindsay told herself.
Pretend to be asleep and he’ll leave you alone.

Then, out of the darkness, she had what seemed a vision—no, not a vision, she realized, but a memory.

Of Shannon, unconscious, sprawled on the floor.

Sprawled on the floor, and being kicked—kicked until her neck was broken, and her head slammed against the wall like a rag doll in the hands of a furious child.

And if she pretended to be asleep now, it would happen to her, too. So she would be awake, and face whatever new chapter in her torture was about to begin. But her mouth was so dry her tongue had swollen and felt like a wad of cotton, and every time she blinked, her eyes felt as if they were coated with sand.

Maybe, after all, it would be better to die.

He was coming up the stairs now, and once again the terrible panic to which she had awakened only a few moments ago threatened to overwhelm her.

No,
she silently cried out to herself.
Be strong. Be stronger than Shannon. Be stronger than
him
!

Again the panic receded, but the cold terror in Lindsay’s soul only tightened its grip as first a beam of light and then the dark form of her tormentor rose out of the trapdoor in the floor.

“Good morning,” he said, the softness of his voice carrying a menace that made Lindsay’s heart falter.

Now she saw that he’d brought a large box with him.

“It’s a special day,” he said as he set it on the table. “A special day for all of us!” He ripped the tape from Lindsay’s mouth, and she gasped in pain, but choked off the accompanying cry that might give her captor satisfaction.

The flashlight went out, and a moment later he began to light candles, until the chamber was filled with flickering illumination. As the light grew brighter, Lindsay saw Shannon’s body, still lying on the floor, her head in a pool of dried blood. A cry rose in her throat, and she squelched it before any sound could escape, and turning away from Shannon, caught sight of Ellen Fine.

Ellen’s eyes were fixed on her, boring into her, and though her mouth was still covered with tape, Lindsay understood the message Ellen was trying to convey as clearly as if she’d spoken it aloud.

The plan,
Ellen’s eyes were saying.
Don’t forget. Give him what he wants, and wait.

Forcing herself to act against every instinct inside her, Lindsay twisted her lips into a smile and whispered a single word through her parched lips. “Please?” The man’s eyes fixed on her, and she managed to utter three more words. “I’m so thirsty.”

“This isn’t your party,” he said, his voice hard. “This is my celebration.”

Lindsay glanced at Ellen, whose eyes were open and watching.

When the room was lit by nearly two dozen candles, the man opened the box and began removing its contents, carefully placing each object on the tiny table.

A birthday cake, complete with candles.

Party hats, the kind of brightly colored, foil-covered cones Lindsay and her friends used to have at all their birthday parties.

Toy horns, and whistles from which paper tongues extended when you blew them.

And finally, small paper plates, plastic forks, and napkins that matched the plates.

The man arranged everything on the table, looked at Ellen, then at Lindsay. In the flickering candlelight, the grotesquely scrawled smile on his surgical mask seemed to come alive, making Lindsay’s skin crawl as he leered at her. “It’s my birthday,” he said. “So we’re going to have a party!”

He picked up the little hats and put one on, bringing the elastic band down over both his masks, giving him the look of a maniacal clown that Lindsay knew she would see in her nightmares for the rest of her life.

Wordlessly, he put a hat on her head, then one on Ellen's, and Lindsay was barely able to control her urge to twist her head away from his touch.

When the hats were secured to both of them, he lifted Shannon’s limp body from the floor and placed it in her chair.

She toppled forward, her lifeless face smashing onto the table.

“Sit up!” he demanded, pulling Shannon’s body straight. But as soon as he let her go, she fell forward again. Wordlessly, he pulled her up once again, and this time wrapped a loop of tape around her chest to keep her upright.

One side of Shannon’s face was flattened from where it had been pressed against the floor for hours, the blood that pooled in it giving it the look of a bruise.

One of her eyes was open, staring blankly at Lindsay.

Lindsay turned her eyes away as their tormentor put a party hat on Shannon’s head and drew the elastic under her chin.

“Isn’t this fun?” he asked, his voice going cold as he turned toward her. “Are we all happy?”

Lindsay forced herself to smile, feeling her lower lip crack as it stretched, and all she could think of was water.

But there was no water.

There was nothing but the cake, and the grotesque hats, and the terrifying figure whose visage was now looming only a few inches from her eyes.

“You’re not smiling,” the man whispered as he jerked her head back by her hair and leaned still closer to her face. She tried to look away, but he spoke again, his whispered words lashing at her like tiny whips. “Look at me!” His voice trembled with fury as he ripped off a length of duct tape and slapped it over her mouth, then used an almost ruined red felt-tip marker to scrawl the smile he’d just demanded. Then, his anger unassuaged, he put another length of tape over Lindsay’s eyes, and drew two new ones on the tape, smearing her smile as he worked so it twisted upward into a grotesque sneer.

When he was done, she sensed him pulling back, admiring his handiwork. “Better,” he said. “Now you look happy.”

As Lindsay tried to sense what was happening, her tormentor turned to Ellen. “Are we all happy?” he asked.

Doing her best not to betray her fear, Ellen managed a nod.

“Very well, then,” the man said. He flicked his lighter on again and began to light the candles on the cake. “I hope you brought me presents,” he said. “You know how much little boys like their presents.” When all the candles had been lit, he stood back and admired the macabre scene. “Good,” he crooned. “Good.”

Lindsay, blinded and muted by the tape over her eyes and mouth, sat absolutely still, silently praying that by doing nothing, she might escape her captor’s notice, at least for a moment or two. Then he spoke again, and she knew her prayers had been in vain.

“Sing,” the softly menacing voice demanded. “It’s time to sing!”

Her heart began to race as she thought of what he might do if she didn’t comply. But how could she? Not with—

A searing pain ripped across the lower part of her face, and for a moment she thought her lower lip had been torn away along with the tape. Then the tape across her eyes was stripped away, too, taking most of her eyebrows and lashes with it. Despite her determination to show no fear, a whimper rose in her throat, but even as it escaped her lips, the man who loomed above her began singing.

“Hap . . . py . . . birth . . . day . . . to . . . you . . .” He enunciated each syllable as if it were a separate word. “Hap . . . py . . . birth—” He cut the song off mid-word, his eyes flashing as he glowered at Ellen. In a blur of motion, he reached out and ripped the tape from her mouth as furiously as he’d torn it from Lindsay’s seconds ago. “Now you can sing. Now we can all sing.” His hand moved, and it was a second or two before Lindsay realized what he was doing: conducting, as if he was the choirmaster and she and Ellen Fine the choir.

She heard Ellen clear her throat, and though Lindsay wasn’t sure she could muster up even a single sound, she was terrified of what might happen if she didn’t.

“Sing!” the man demanded. “Sing to me!” Suddenly, he picked up the burning cake and thrust it into Lindsay’s face. “Sing!” he shouted as she recoiled, the burning candles scorching her brows. “Sing!” the darkly leering figure demanded again. “Hap . . . py . . . birth . . . day . . .”

Her cheeks were stinging from the hot wax that had splashed onto them, but she forced herself to ignore the pain. “To you,” Lindsay picked up, willing her barely audible voice into unison with Ellen.

The man nodded, then pushed the fiery cake toward Ellen.

“Louder!”

Lindsay and Ellen struggled to find the strength to continue. “Happy birthday to you,” they sang together.

The man wheeled and thrust the partially crushed cake at Shannon. As Lindsay watched helplessly, Shannon’s hair sizzled and began to burn, filling the air with acrid smoke and the stench of burning hair.

“Sing!” he demanded as Shannon’s hair continued to burn.

Lindsay and Ellen raised their voices higher as the flames consumed Shannon’s hair, but as the flames died away and they came to the end of the song, so too did their voices.

“Sing it again!” their torturer demanded. “Louder!”

Despair began to overcome the determination that until now had made Lindsay’s terror almost bearable. She knew there was nothing she would be able to do to satisfy this creature who had snatched her from what should have been the safety of her home, and in the end she—and Ellen—were going to die. Die here, in the flickering candlelight, like Shannon had died before them.

No one was going to come for them; no one was going to save them.

Lindsay looked at Ellen, but Ellen’s eyes had gone almost as blank as Shannon's.

“Sing!” the man howled. “Louder! Louder!”

Knowing it might well be her last act, Lindsay sucked in a breath and tried to sing along.

Chapter Forty-nine

K
ara tossed restlessly in the unfamiliar sheets on the unfamiliar bed and breathed deeply of the sweet, fresh, but equally unfamiliar ocean air. Utterly unable to sleep, she opened her eyes to gaze once more around the perfectly decorated guest room that looked almost magical in the moonlight pouring through huge windows that overlooked the Sound. Given the luxuriousness of the satiny sheets, and the almost cloudlike support of the bed, she should have fallen asleep the minute she first snuggled into the warm cocoon the down comforter provided. But she hadn’t; indeed, rest seemed far away—no more attainable here than it had been last night at home. But at least here she was somewhat removed from the agonizing memories of her own house, and could lie in the soft warmth of the bed and think about what she might do next.

But all she could think about were Steve and Lindsay.

Steve, who would never be back, and Lindsay, who—

She cut the thought off, but it was already too late. Slowly, over the last week, she had come to accept the reality of Steve’s death, but the thought that Lindsay, too, might already be dead was far too painful to dwell on, even for a moment.

She closed her eyes and tried to think of her family’s happiest times. All kinds of images rose out of her memory: summer days frolicking on the beach, and Christmas shopping in Manhattan, a day that always ended with dinner at the Sea Grill at Rockefeller Center, where they would all watch the skaters twirling on the ice beneath the great glittering Christmas tree.

The week five years ago when they’d gone to Orlando and seen every square inch Disney World had to offer.

And Lindsay’s birthday parties, always filled with dozens of her friends.

Even now Kara could picture those occasions as clearly as if they’d happened yesterday. She remembered Lindsay’s first birthday, when her daughter wore a little pink ruffled dress and sat in her high chair, wide-eyed, a big piece of angel cake all to herself, while the adults all sang.

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you . . .

The memory was so vivid she could almost hear it now, more than fifteen years later.

Happy birthday, dear—

Suddenly, it seemed she was actually hearing their voices, and she sat bolt upright in bed, listening.

She turned to the open window.

Nothing but the sound of the surf and a few gulls crying in the night.

As a chilly breeze wafted over her, she lay back down and pulled the comforter close around her body. Of course she hadn’t heard anyone singing “Happy Birthday.” It was a trick played on her by an exhausted mind. If she could just get to sleep . . .

She closed her eyes and tried to calm her mind.

She breathed slowly and deeply, concentrating on the freshness of the salt air.

Happy birthday to you—

The lyrics rose in her mind again, faint, but not so faint that they didn’t sound real.

She got out of bed and went to the window. The wind had picked up, and she could hear the clatter of rigging from sailboats bobbing on mooring buoys just offshore blending with the sighing of the wind through the trees.

Somewhere, a cat yowled in either fear or fury.

And, all but completely masked by the other sounds, she was certain she could hear what sounded like voices singing.

Could it be? Or was she finally losing her mind?

She stood at the window, trying to sort out the possibilities. Had her mind actually gone around the bend, or was it possible that someone—a neighbor?—was truly having a birthday party in the middle of the night? Impossible.

She listened again, straining to hear, but now all she heard was the wind, and the rigging, and the birds.

But she knew all possibility of sleep was gone.

She pulled on the robe Neville Cavanaugh had left on the bed for her, slipped her feet into her shoes, opened the door and stepped out into the silent hallway.

The immense house nearly overwhelmed her with its massive, solemn presence; the only sound was the steady ticking of the grandfather clock in the great foyer below.

Standing there, her eyes were drawn to the door across from her own.

Jenna’s room.

Crossing the broad hallway, she turned the handle and slipped inside the girl’s room, then closed the door behind her.

When she turned on the light, she saw that it was a mirror image of Chrissie’s room, and not so different from Lindsay's, except for its generous proportions.

Kara moved slowly through the room, looking at all the things a teenage girl values: stuffed animals, CDs, posters of singers.

And books. Like Lindsay, Jenna was a reader.

Kara went to her bookshelf, thinking that if she could find something to read, it might help her sleep.

She scanned the titles until she came to a volume at the very end of the shelf that bore no title at all. She pulled it out and opened it.

A photo fell from the front of the book to the floor. As she bent to pick it up, she realized what the book in her hand was.

Jenna Shields’s diary.

Straightening up, she stared at the script that covered the first page. Jenna’s hand was even and nice. Kara flipped quickly through the pages. Jenna had filled her diary not only with the events of her young life, but with her dreams as well.

Had Lindsay kept a diary? If she had, she’d hidden it well enough that neither she nor the police had been able to find it.

Jenna hadn’t hidden hers at all. In fact, she’d left it right on the bookshelf where anyone could have found it.

And now Kara had.

She bent down again and picked up the photo, and her heart chilled.

She must be wrong, she thought. It had to be a trick of the light. She took the picture over to Jenna’s desk and turned on the study lamp to see the photograph more clearly.

It was of the entire Shields family: Patrick, Renee, Jenna, and Chrissie.

And Jenna Shields looked enough like her own daughter that she and Lindsay could have been twins.

Eyes blurring with tears, Kara looked away, wiped them with the sleeve of her robe, and thinking she must have been mistaken, looked once more at the photograph.

But no. It was almost as if Lindsay herself had somehow slipped into this photograph of a family that was not her own.

Instead of putting the photo back in the journal, Kara slipped it into the pocket of her robe, then replaced the book on the shelf exactly where she’d found it, turned out the lights, and stepped out the door.

Fully awake now, she didn’t want to return to her room, so she slipped as quietly as possible down the massive staircase, through the marble foyer, and into the conservatory.

Hoping the alarm system wasn’t turned on, she unlocked the French doors and went out onto the terrace overlooking the lawn and the Sound. The grounds were bathed in silvery moonlight, the air crisp and clean, and the sky ablaze with stars. A perfect night.

A perfect night that was shattered by a muffled shout.

The shout of a man!

Transfixed, Kara strained her eyes to see into the darkness, searching for the source of the shout.

Then she heard another sound.

Singing?

It
was
singing.

Once again it sounded like “Happy Birthday.”

Unconsciously clutching the lapels of the robe tightly around her neck, Kara started down the steps toward the lawn.

T
hey were going to die.

Shannon was already dead, and now they were going to die, too, and it was all her fault.

She’d failed!

How could it have happened? When she’d devised the plan—when she’d explained it so carefully to Lindsay and Shannon—she was sure it would work. There were three of them and only one of him, and even though Shannon had already been half starved to death, she and Lindsay should have been able to overpower this man. But they’d failed.

Now, as she watched the surrealistic scene swirling around her, Ellen Fine realized why it had failed.

Their captor was utterly, completely, insane.

A lunatic, waving his arms in the flickering candlelight and demanding that all of them—even Shannon—sing to him.

Sing to him!

How much time had she wasted thinking she was dealing with someone whose mind was even faintly rational?

And now Shannon was dead, Lindsay was on the verge of dying, and if she didn’t do something soon, she herself would die, too. And even if they all died, it still wouldn’t be over. This . . . miscreant, this lunatic, this
monster,
would only find new victims to torture in their place.

But he didn’t even know that he was torturing them.

He thought he was loving them.
Loving them!

Loving them, as he held them captive in the darkness, barely feeding them, not allowing them to slake their thirst. Maybe none of it was real. Maybe it actually was a nightmare. Maybe this tiny chamber with its undersized furniture and thick coating of filth and stale musty air that was now so smoky her eyes were stinging and running wasn’t real at all.

Maybe it wasn’t the man who was insane. Maybe it was her! Maybe she was hallucinating all this, hallucinating the candles and the cake and the song that seemed to go on endlessly and—

One of the candles on the cake flickered as it burned down to the frosting, and the man abruptly stopped singing. “Wish time,” he said, his voice turning cold as his eyes fixed on her. “And I’m going to wish for the same thing I always wished for.”

He tilted his head toward the ceiling, and Ellen realized he was drawing in a deep breath, puffing up his lungs like a six-year-old boy about to show off at his own birthday party. Finally, when his lungs were full, he bent over and blew on the candles, the ski mask bulging out under the force of his pent-up breath.

But it wasn’t enough—more than half the candles remained lit.

He blew again, and then a third time, and finally the last candle sputtered out.

As his eyes moved malevolently from Lindsay to her, her fury and frustration finally overpowered her terror.

“Happy birthday!” she screamed, the words rasping as they erupted from her swollen throat. “Happy birthday, and go to hell!”

His head snapped up and he glowered at her, rage burning in his eyes.

“Why don’t you just die?” Ellen cried, her voice trembling. “You’re never getting your wish, so why don’t you just die and go to hell!”

The blow came so fast, Ellen had no time to turn away. His fist slammed into her jaw hard and she felt it dislocate, the pain so intense she lost her breath as a fiery red glow of agony enveloped her. Still taped to the chair, she toppled over and her head crashed against the floor.

Emily. Oh, Emily.
Only the thought of her daughter kept Ellen from letting herself slip into the unconsciousness that was the only thing that could assuage the pain.

Then he was kneeling next to her, and Ellen braced herself for the next blow. But instead, when he leaned close, his lips next to her ear, he whispered, “You’re supposed to help me. Why didn’t you help me? That’s all I wanted—just for you to help me. But you didn’t help me—you let them do whatever they wanted, and I had to pretend like I liked it! So now we all have to pretend. Every one of us . . .”

Ellen tried to pull away, but when she moved her head, a stab of pain shot from her broken jaw and a faint scream escaped her lips. She saw the duct tape back in the man’s hands, and in mute paralysis watched helplessly as he tore a long strip from the roll.

As he pressed the tape over her mouth, the pain in her broken jaw burned through her, the shattered bones grating on each other. And for the first time since this nightmare began, Ellen found herself silently praying for the release of unconsciousness.

Unconsciousness, or even death.

As she lay helpless on the floor, the man rose to his feet and moved toward Lindsay. Crouching low, he reached out and gently began to caress her breast. “Now you’re going to know what it was like,” he whispered, and his fingers tightened on Lindsay’s nipple. “Now you’re going to feel everything I felt, and we’ll see how you like it!”

As his fingers dug into Lindsay’s body, and the agony in her own threatened to overwhelm her, Ellen Fine clung to the one thought that could give her the strength to keep on living.

Emily . . . Emily . . . Emily . . .