Perfect Nightmare

  Kara frowned. “I told you last night—I’m going into the city to see some more apartments and have lunch with your father.”

  Lindsay’s eyes followed Mark Acton as he moved around the living room, making tiny adjustments to the furniture and carefully leveling the pictures on the walls. “What time is this open house going to be finished?”

  Kara frowned as she watched Lindsay stare at the agent with open hostility. “Honey, where are your manners?” She shrugged apologetically to the agent, but he waved it off.

  “I just don’t want to come home and have a bunch of strange people here,” Lindsay said, her tone annoying Kara.

  “Not a problem,” Mark assured her, exaggeratedly ignoring the teenager’s hostility. “I’ll be finished by early afternoon.”

  “And I should be home by five,” Kara said, her voice tightening as Lindsay’s expression only darkened further. “Mark will be gone and I’ll be home. Will that suit Your Highness?”

  Stung by her mother’s words, Lindsay turned and fled back up the stairs.

  Kara sighed, knowing she’d handled Lindsay badly. But she was late and still had a lot to do, and for once Lindsay would just have to take care of herself. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, more to herself and the departed Lindsay than to the real-estate agent.

  “Moving is hard on kids,” Mark said. “I know.”

  “It’s hard on everybody,” Kara said.

  Then Lindsay came running down the stairs again, purse slung over her shoulder, book bag in hand. She stopped short and turned to face Mark Acton without a trace of the hostility she’d shown only a moment before. “I’m sorry,” she said, almost shyly. “I didn’t mean to be rude—I just don’t like people in my room.”

  “It’s all right,” he replied. “Nobody likes having strangers in their house. Unfortunately, it’s just part of the game. No way out of it if we’re going to sell this place.”

  “Nobody’s going to go through my stuff, are they?” Lindsay asked, her voice anxious.

  “Lindsay!” Kara said.

  But once again Mark Acton appeared unoffended. “It’s okay,” he told Kara. “It’s a fair question.” He turned back to the girl whose prettiness was now marred by a worried frown. “The only people who will be here are professional Realtors. Wednesdays are the traditional days for Realtor open houses. There will be a caravan coming through from each real estate office, and they’ll be in and out very fast. They probably have fifteen listings to look at today. Believe me, nobody is going to touch anything.”

  “You’re sure?” Lindsay fretted.

  “I’m positive.”

  “And you’ll be gone by five?”

  He nodded. “Definitely. Probably by noon—one at the latest.”

  Kara picked up her purse from the hutch and steered her daughter toward the door. “And I’ll be home by five, too. Then we can work on your social skills,” she added pointedly, earning herself a glare from Lindsay.

  “Have a good day,” Mark said.

  “It’ll be a good day when you bring us an offer,” Kara replied. As they walked out into a clear cool morning, she squeezed Lindsay’s arm. “It’s going to be okay,” she said.

  “I know,” Lindsay sighed. “And I’m sorry. I’m trying—I really am.”

  “I know you are, sweetheart.”

  “How about if I go to Dawn’s after practice?” Lindsay suggested as she got into the car. “Could you pick me up?”

  Kara opened her door and got in, too. “Oh, Lord, do I have to?” she pleaded. “Even after I get back from the city, I’ve got to get groceries and go to the cleaners and half a dozen other things. Can’t you just come home after practice?”

  Lindsay hesitated, then decided further argument would be useless. “I guess,” she mumbled. As her mother backed slowly out of the driveway, she asked, “Are you and Dad going to see the raven again?”

  Kara hit the brake and stared at her. “The raven? What on earth are you talking about?”

  A grin curled at the corners of Lindsay’s mouth. “You know—that woman we were with on Sunday. Between her voice and that black coat, she seemed just like a great big raven.”

  Kara laughed. “Well, thanks a lot for that!” she said. “Now I’ll never be able to look at her again without thinking of a big black screeching bird. And the sad part is, you’re right!”

  A few minutes later they pulled up in front of the high school. “Just don’t buy anything ugly, okay?” Lindsay said before getting out, trying to control the tremor in her voice.

  Their eyes met, and Kara knew how hard it was for her daughter to put on a brave face. “I promise,” she said, reaching over to squeeze Lindsay’s hand. Then she grinned. “Raven!” she repeated deliberately, before both of them would have dissolved into tears. “Mean, but a perfect description. Wait until I tell Dad.”

  A moment later she pulled away, leaving Lindsay standing at the curb, watching her go. In the rearview mirror, Kara could not see the tear running slowly down her daughter’s cheek.

  Mark Acton was feeling great. The open house was over, and now he was at Fishburn's—the pub where half the agents in Camden Green seemed to hang out—with his third stein of beer sweating in front of him.

  Around him, people he knew were bragging noisily about the huge deals they’d put together, but Mark knew it was mostly bullshit—three-quarters of the people in Fishburn’s had never sold a house for over a million, and that included him. And the Marshall place wasn’t going to go for anywhere near a million, either, despite the granite countertops in the kitchen and the nice furniture Kara Marshall had filled the place with.

  Not that the open house had gone badly—it hadn’t. By eleven-thirty three caravans had come through, with Rick Mancuso and the Century 21 crowd as well as the bunch from ReMax.

  And it wasn’t just caravans coming through, either—there had been a fairly steady stream of independent brokers and agents as well, and he’d done his best to make sure every one of them left their cards in the rosewood bowl he’d set on the table in the entry hall. He gave out a lot of flyers and talked to as many of them as he could, and more than a few of the drop-ins told him they’d be calling for an appointment to show it to a client. The Marshalls would be very happy with his report.

  But mostly he’d done what he liked to do best when he was doing a brokers’ open: wander around, getting the feel of the place. He had figured out years ago that not only did every house have a unique feel to it, but so did almost every room in every house. The trick was to determine which rooms felt best and which worst, and then plan future tours so you got the bad rooms out of the way early and progressed steadily to the best ones. It was a strategy that had kept him at his agency’s Million Dollar Roundtable every year for almost a decade, and it would work perfectly for the Marshall house, because it didn’t have any bad rooms.

  It was one of those houses that just felt good, and he’d known almost from the moment Kara and her daughter—Lindsay? Yeah, that was her name, Lindsay—had left him alone and he made his first quick tour, that it wasn’t going to be hard to sell. He’d adjusted Kara’s canisters and then gone into the living room, where he automatically picked a bit of lint from the carpeting and rearranged the pillows on the sofa and wing chairs. And just standing in the living room, he’d known. This was exactly the kind of place he himself wished he lived in.

  Nothing in any of the other rooms had changed his mind, especially the kid's—Lindsay's.

  He’d stood still in that room for a while, and it seemed he could feel her presence, and it felt good.

  Pretty room for a pretty girl.

  Then car doors started slamming outside, and he’d straightened the stack of color flyers one more time, checked his tie and his name tag, and put on his professional smile.

  He opened the door, and the event began.

  The hours had gone by quickly, and he listened to the same comments and answered the same questions, to the point where they almost bec
ame meaningless:

  “Nice listing, Mark.”

  “This place’ll sell in a heartbeat.”

  “What’s the asking price?”

  Over and over again he had patiently repeated every detail to every agent, all the time keeping an eye on the steady stream of agents who cruised through the downstairs, opening every door and checking the cabinets, then glancing quickly into the garage before heading upstairs to get a feel for the rest of the house.

  What was it about garages? Mark wondered now as he drained half his third stein of beer. But of course he knew—garages were boring. And they were boring because people didn’t live in them. That’s what everyone wanted to see at an open house. The places where people lived.

  After the agents came back downstairs, they’d checked out the kitchen one more time—always the kitchen, because that’s where people spend most of their lives—then dropped their business cards in the rosewood bowl on their way out and picked up flyers.

  He knew that the more flyers they picked up, the better they liked the house.

  And today they’d taken a lot.

  Over and over, in the lull between each caravan, Mark went back through the house, moving things back to the exact places they’d been, doing his best to keep the house as the Marshalls had left it that morning. After all, even though almost everybody loved poking around in strangers’ houses, nobody liked having strangers poke around in their own. So he always did his best to make it look as if no one—not even he himself—had been there at all. When the Marshalls came home, everything should look exactly right.

  It had been late in the day when Sam Cousins and Ike North showed up. He knew they’d be there at the end of the event so they could all go to Fishburn’s together. And he’d been especially pleased when they came down from their tour of the second floor and Ike spoke before they even hit the landing at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Is this going to be open on Sunday?”

  Mark nodded.

  “I’ll bring some people by. I wish I could get them in tomorrow, but they’re in the city and won’t be able to make it until the weekend.”

  “You’ll be lucky if this place is still available on Sunday,” Sam Cousins put in.

  Music to Mark’s ears.

  “So,” Ike said, glancing around at the house, empty now except for the three of them. “Fishburn's?”

  Mark nodded. “Meet you there. I have to lock up, so order me a cold one.”

  Alone, he’d gone through the rooms one last time, turning out all the lights, checking to see that the doors were locked and everything was exactly as it had been that morning. At the top of the stairs, he went first into Kara and Steve’s bedroom, then their bath. Everything looked good. He turned out the lights and closed the door, then did the same with Steve’s study and the guest room.

  Then he’d gone to Lindsay’s room and smiled as he turned out the light and closed the door, knowing that this was the room that would sell the house. It was neat and tidy, and you could almost feel the girl who lived in it. A sweet girl—a girl the Marshalls were fortunate to have.

  At the front door, he’d picked up his briefcase and the rosewood bowl and looked around one last time. Everything looked perfect, and he felt great.

  And now, as he drained the third stein of beer and ordered a fourth, he still felt great.

  Great, and lucky that the Marshalls had chosen him to sell their house.

  Chapter Nine

  I didn’t expect the house to smell so sweet.

  Nor was it the fake smell of rose petals in a bowl, or the kind of canned aroma of baking bread that so many agents fill houses with nowadays—as if anybody really bakes bread anymore! No, the house today was filled with the scent of love and harmony, and the moment I walked through the front door, I could feel the warmth of affection as well.

  Some houses fairly reek of suspicion or wariness or anger, and in an instant you can feel the misery of the family who lives there.

  Even worse, some houses have no fragrance at all—the poison of indifference hangs in the air.

  But not the house I went to today—the house I found on the Internet last week that set me to tingling from the moment I went on the video tour.

  This house has balance. Wholeness. Wholesomeness. Here there will be no religious icons on the walls, no evidence of secret perversions hidden beneath the mattresses.

  That is the wonderful thing about being utterly nondescript; it is almost the same as being invisible. And being invisible is like being God.

  Today I had nearly a whole day of being like God, and the feeling was sublime. As I moved from room to room, seeing everything, touching everything, feeling everything, no one noticed me at all.

  Though people were milling around me nearly every moment I was in the house, it was as if I was utterly alone.

  Alone with her.

  And everything—everything—was perfect.

  A calendar hung on the kitchen bulletin board next to some snapshots. One photo was of a blond girl in a cheerleading uniform, and the moment I saw the picture, I knew.

  I knew her.

  I’d always known her.

  She was so obviously the one who lives in the girlish bedroom on the second floor whose every detail I memorized from the tour on the Internet.

  And according to the wall calendar, this coming Sunday there would be an open house.

  Below that, written in a slightly different hand—a girlish hand—was another notation: “Cheerleading practice.”

  And then another notation, written small and by yet a third hand: “House-hunting. Dinner at Café des Artistes?”

  So it will be Sunday. What could be more perfect?

  After seeing her picture and reading the calendar, I moved with newfound purpose through the first floor rooms just slowly enough to seem nothing more than a mildly interested agent, then headed up the stairs to steep myself in the aura of my new love—my perfect child.

  The instant I walked into her room, I knew that she was the focal point, the absolute center, not only of this house, but of this family.

  The lovely aroma that imbued the whole house was strongest there in her room, and I wanted to sink into the soft comfort of her bed, to run my hands over the sheets that enveloped her body every night, to feel myself sinking not just into her bed, but into her.

  Yet I restrained myself.

  I had to be patient.

  My digital camera—one so tiny it can be concealed in the palm of my hand—captured every aspect of the room, but when I turned to her bed, I couldn’t quite restrain myself.

  I let the back of my hand run across her pillow, and as my skin touched the place where her head had lain, I could feel the residue of her psychic aura.

  Oh, yes! It was her!

  In that moment, I knew that my instincts had been right: this is the one! It isn’t just the way she looks, but everything else as well.

  After I touched her pillow, I touched everything else, too: the things on her desk, the photos on her dresser, the stuffed animals on the windowsill.

  I opened her drawers and touched the soft silky garments she wears next to her skin.

  Surely it was only natural to slip a pair of her panties into my pocket, given how they soothed my tortured soul.

  With my fingers clutching the silken garment that was hidden in my pocket, I drifted invisibly down the stairs and out the door.

  And in all the time I was in the house, nobody spoke to me.

  It was as if nobody even saw me.

  Indeed, it was as if I hadn’t been there at all.

  Just as it always has been—no one seeing anything.

  As I made my way home, I held those panties pressed to my cheek, barely able to contain my euphoria.

  Then, with her image clear in my mind, I crushed her panties in my fist.

  Oh, yes—this is the one.

  This is the girl, and finally I shall have her.

  Soon. Very soon.

&nbs
p; I can barely wait for Sunday.

  Chapter Ten

  Lindsay paused on the sidewalk, gazing at the house across the street. From here, it looked no different at all. It was still her house, still the familiar house she had grown up in.

  The house that held all her secrets.

  Yet even in the bright light of the sunny spring afternoon, something about it had changed. And she knew what it was.

  All day long, people she didn’t know and would never know had been wandering through the house.

  Strangers.

  Going through her room.

  Going through her things.

  Just the thought of it made her shudder, and now that she was across the street, all the horrible thoughts and feelings that had been plaguing her as the day crept by came flooding over her once again.

  Except now they were even worse.

  Throughout the day, she had been so preoccupied with the idea of strangers milling through her house and her room and her things that she’d found herself behaving completely different than usual as she walked through the halls at school. Where she’d always reached out to everyone she knew, touching their shoulders or their arms or even just brushing against their fingertips as they passed, today she didn’t want to touch anybody else.

  Then, when she’d gone to Dawn’s house after practice and tried to explain how she was feeling, Dawn hadn’t gotten it at all.

  “They’re just real estate people,” Dawn said. “It’s what they do. They don’t even care what’s in the house, as long as they can sell it.”

  “It’s creepy,” Lindsay declared, thinking of Mark Acton. But then she told Dawn about the Raven and they both started laughing, and for a few minutes she felt better. In fact, by the time she left Dawn's, the whole thing seemed silly.

  But now she was home, and all her creepy feelings were back, only there was no place else to go.

  Remembering that her mom should already be home, she crossed the street, walked across the lawn and onto the porch, and unlocked the front door.

  The house smelled different.