Perfect Nightmare

  Lindsay warily eyed the OPEN HOUSE sign the agent had left leaning against the garage, as if it were a cobra coiled and ready to strike at her. The wind had come up, bringing with it a cloud that was even darker than her mood, and now a few raindrops were falling on her bare arms. It was as if spring had vanished back into winter, with late afternoon darkness closing in around her. She rubbed her arms, shivering, but even as she tried to warm herself, she knew the chill she was feeling came more from the solid evidence the forgotten sign provided that people—strangers—had been in the house all afternoon.

  And now, knowing that, she didn’t want to go inside.

  She wanted to turn away and go somewhere else.

  Anywhere else.

  She looked up and down the street, but the yards and sidewalks were empty, and nowhere did she see a neighbor with whom she could strike up a conversation, putting off the moment when she would have to go into the house.

  Maybe even cadge a dinner invitation, without having to explain. And she wasn’t about to tell anyone that, and sound like a little girl too young to be left at home by herself.

  Besides, she’d come home to an empty house dozens of times—maybe hundreds! Except that today was different. Today—

  “Stop it!” she whispered to herself, rubbing her arms again, then walking determinedly up to the front door to let herself in with her key.

  And felt once more the urge to turn around and walk away, to go somewhere else—anywhere else—until her parents came home.

  Again she conquered the urge to flee, turned the key, and let herself into the house.

  Silence.

  She scanned the living room, and everything looked exactly as it had this morning, almost as if nobody had been there at all. Feeling calmer, she went to the kitchen.

  The agent had left a note on the counter. Dozens of people had been through the house—dozens! But that was a good thing, Lindsay reminded herself. It was what they wanted! And maybe one of those dozens of people would buy the house and she’d never have to go through this again.

  She took a deep breath and looked at the clock. Five-thirty, on the dot. Her parents would surely be home by ten. Four and a half hours wasn’t a big deal—she’d do a little homework, watch a little TV, and maybe make a plate of nachos. . . .

  She turned on the television, more for the background noise than because she wanted to see the news, and made herself go through the rest of the downstairs.

  Except for the note from the agent and a few flyers that still lay on the dining room table, the house looked exactly as it always had.

  And it would be the same upstairs, she thought.

  Everything would be exactly as she’d left it, and no one would have gone through her drawers, and there would be nothing wrong at all.

  Except she still didn’t want to go up to her room, and found herself gazing at the stairs with the same feeling of dread with which she’d looked at the house itself only a few minutes ago.

  And she felt even colder than when she’d been out standing in the chill and drear of the rainy afternoon.

  “Stop it!” she commanded herself again, barely realizing she was speaking out loud to an empty room. “You’re just freaking yourself out.” The sound of her own voice somehow making her feel better, she got a Diet Pepsi from the refrigerator, and then mounted the stairs.

  Her room looked exactly as she had left it. She sniffed, and thought she could still smell traces of the strange odor that had hung in her room on Wednesday.

  No, she told herself. You’re just imagining it!

  She went to her underwear drawer and slowly opened it. The tiny scrap of paper she’d left balanced on the front edge was still there.

  Undisturbed.

  Her drawer had not been opened.

  See? she told herself. Nobody went through my stuff.

  She picked up the fragment of paper with a wet fingertip, shook it off into her wastebasket, and felt much better as it dropped away.

  The closet door was closed tightly, as she always left it. When she was little, she had always been afraid that the bogeyman was in the closet, and whenever she called out to her parents to tell them how afraid she was of the person in the closet, her father would march right to the door and pull it wide open while she cowered in the big mahogany bed, clutching the covers around her neck.

  And of course there had never been anyone—or anything—in the closet.

  Now, as she stared at the door, those childhood terrors came flooding back, but she forced them aside, took a deep breath, and did as her father had always done. She walked right over and opened the closet door wide.

  And, as always, there was nothing there.

  No bogeyman, or anything else, either. She smiled then, realizing how silly her fears had been.

  And still were! That was it—she’d been afraid that somehow the bogeyman—who had never been anything more than a figment of her own childish imagination—had somehow gotten into the house when it was open.

  Stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid! There was nothing to be afraid of, and never had been. She was older now—almost grown up. How could she have been so dumb as to let herself be afraid of the bogeyman?

  Suddenly, things were back to normal, her fears fell away, and she felt so good, she almost wanted to dance. Flipping on the CD player, she took a drink of the soda, then did a couple of pirouettes that weren’t quite in time to the music. But who cared? Everything was fine again.

  She perched on the edge of her bed and rested one of her feet on the step stool that still stood next to the mahogany four-poster, even though she hadn’t had to use it to climb into the high bed for years. She untied her shoes, pulled off her socks, and dangled her feet for a moment, then slid off the bed and took the socks to the laundry hamper.

  A second later her shorts and T-shirt joined the socks.

  Clad only in her sports bra and bikini panties, she stuck one foot in a slipper that lay by the bed, then looked for the other one, fishing around under the bed with her bare foot, feeling for it. How far could she have kicked it last night?

  She got down on her knees and was about to reach under the bed for the wayward slipper when her cell phone rang. It startled her, and she banged her knuckles against the hard mahogany of the bed frame as she jerked her hand back. With one slipper on, and sucking at her stinging knuckle, she flopped onto the bed and reached over to pick up the phone from the nightstand.

  “Hey,” Dawn said before she’d even spoken. “You okay?”

  “I guess so,” Lindsay replied, shaking her hand, then pressing it against the pillow to try and ease the stinging. “Are you at your dad's?”

  “Yeah, we just got here. Sheila’s making dinner and Robert isn’t up from his nap yet.” She hesitated, then: “You sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Lindsay insisted. “I just banged my hand, that’s all. At least it’s the same one I twisted my wrist on last week.” She gazed dolefully at her knuckle, which was already turning black and blue. “So what’s your dad doing? How come you’re not having ‘quality time'?”

  Dawn groaned. “He’s working, of course. Said he had reports he had to e-mail in before tomorrow morning. He’ll be finished by dinner, and then we’ll eat, watch 60 Minutes, and then I’ll go home. It’s so totally stupid. I wish we both could have just gone to my house.”

  “I do, too,” Lindsay confessed. “Ever since Mom and Dad decided to sell it, I hate it here. I—”

  “Oops,” Dawn interrupted. “I’ve got another call. Want to hold?”

  Lindsay hesitated, then: “I guess not—I need to change and figure out what to do till Mom and Dad get home. I just wish—”

  “Okay,” Dawn said, and Lindsay could tell by her voice that she was already thinking about the other call. “See you tomorrow.” Dawn clicked off, and the cell phone went dead in Lindsay’s hand. She put it back onto the charger on her nightstand, feeling bleak at how far away they were moving and the difference th
at would make in her friendships with Dawn and everyone else.

  She looked down at her feet. One slipper on, one slipper off. Somehow, the lost slipper suddenly seemed appropriate—one of her slippers was just as lost as she felt, and the other was right where it was supposed to be.

  Just like her. Supposed to be right here in Camden Green, but half of her already feeling lost in New York.

  Sighing, she knelt down once more to fish the other slipper out from under the bed.

  And smelled it again.

  That awful, disgusting, musky odor that had filled her room on Wednesday, but that her mother hadn’t been able to smell.

  Now it was back, and stronger than—

  With sudden, horrifying certainty she knew, and all her terror came crashing back in on her.

  He was in her room.

  Now.

  Under her bed—the bed that had always been her final refuge, the one place where she felt utterly safe.

  And he was there.

  Waiting.

  Paralyzed, Lindsay knew she had to move, knew she had to scream, to run, to get out.

  Get out!

  Now she could hear him breathing.

  Her heart pounded so hard, she thought it was going to explode, and her mind raced. But panic was already overwhelming reason, and her terror seemed to have utterly sapped her of the ability to move or even cry out. . . .

  Chapter Sixteen

  “I liked the place on West Eighty-eighth,” Kara said as Steve pulled onto Route 25A and headed out to the north shore of the Island.

  “What wasn’t to like?” Steve asked, turning on the windshield wipers as rain began to dribble from the clouds that had been gathering. When the wipers did little more than smear the city grime across the windshield, he sprayed them with cleaner, which barely helped. “Except that we can’t afford it,” he sighed.

  “I know, but—”

  “No buts, Kara.” He glanced over at her. “I knew we shouldn’t even have looked at that one. It’s out of our price range, and I don’t see the advantage in trading one bad situation for another.”

  “You got a raise,” Kara argued, but Steve could hear more hope than certainty in her voice. “If we get a good price for the house and give up your city apartment, I don’t see why—”

  “Maybe after a year or so,” Steve interrupted. “Maybe after I see how my promotion works out, and get another raise, and we’re back on our feet again.”

  “After a year?” Kara echoed. “What would be the point? By then Lindsay will be off to college and we won’t need anything that big. And the way prices are going in Manhattan, we could sell it at a big enough profit to buy ourselves something really terrific!”

  Steve sighed. He’d liked the apartment, too. It was big and bright and airy and had everything they’d hoped to find. But it was a quarter of a million more than the absolute outside limit of what they’d agreed they could afford. “I just don’t see it. I mean, it’s perfect, but so what? We just don’t have the money.”

  “But it has granite countertops in the kitchen—” Kara began.

  “Granite countertops—or the lack of them—aren’t going to make the difference in our family! Besides, we’ve already had those, we’ll have them again. Just not right now, okay?”

  Kara sighed in defeat and closed her eyes. She had a headache from looking at too many apartments that were just too small, too dark, too old-fashioned, too modern . . . too . . .

  Too not their house on Long Island.

  Steve slammed on the brakes and her eyes snapped open again. A river of red taillights flashed ahead of them, reflected on the wet pavement, and a hand with an uplifted middle finger was waving at them from the small sports car that had cut in just ahead of them, forcing Steve to dodge to avoid rearending it.

  And now the jerk was flipping them off!

  “This commute is something I’m not going to miss,” Steve said through clenched teeth. “It’s a wonder more people don’t get killed out here.” He glanced at Kara, then reached over and patted her knee reassuringly. “Hey, things are going to be okay—we’ll find the right place, and we didn’t get killed just now, and in the end everything’s going to be fine.” When Kara made no response, he squeezed her leg, then returned his hand to the steering wheel. “Why don’t you give Lindsay a call?” he suggested. “Tell her we’ll be home in another half hour or so.”

  Kara dialed Lindsay’s cell phone, but all she got was Lindsay’s voice mail. “Hi, honey,” Kara said, leaving a message. “It’s nine-twenty and we’re on our way home. We should be there around ten.” After a slight hesitation, she added, “Call my cell when you get this, okay?” She clicked off.

  Steve, frowning, looked at her. “Isn’t she supposed to keep her cell phone on?” Kara nodded, but Steve wasn’t sure she’d heard him. “That was the deal, right?” he pressed. “We’d pay for the phone if she’d leave it on so we could reach her?”

  Kara chewed at her lower lip, then pressed the speed dial digit that would connect her to their home phone.

  On the fourth ring the answering machine picked up, and she pressed in the code that would let her listen to any messages that might have been left.

  Nothing.

  “She’s probably in the shower,” Steve said. “Or maybe she left us a note.”

  “Maybe,” Kara agreed, but she didn’t believe it. In fact, she had a feeling that something was wrong. “Maybe I ought to call Dawn's,” she said, as much to herself as to Steve.

  He glanced over at her again, hearing the worry in her voice. “Hey, come on, honey—nothing’s wrong.”

  “She’s not home, and her cell phone’s not on,” Kara replied. “That means—”

  “That means she’s seventeen,” Steve broke in, hearing a note of panic creep into his wife’s voice. “She could be at Dawn's, or she could have gone to a movie, or she could be any number of other places. Her phone might even be on but she’s just in some dead spot—God knows, half the time I can’t get any reception at all in Camden Green.”

  And I know when something’s wrong, Kara told herself. I always have. As traffic thinned and they picked up speed, she looked out into the dark countryside, rain sliding past the window, and tried to tell herself she was wrong, that it was just the cumulative discouragement of the entire day that was getting to her. And it wasn’t just the apartment hunting, either. It was the prospect of having to turn into an urban corporate wife, spending more and more time with people like the Bennetts, who had managed to make even a dinner at Café des Artistes a miserable experience. Maybe she was just tired, and upset with everything that was going on in their lives, and there was nothing wrong at all.

  She closed her eyes and tried to quiet her mind.

  But it didn’t work.

  Something was wrong.

  Something was terribly wrong.

  Suddenly all she wanted was to be home.

  Home with Lindsay.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I must write down every detail of what happened, lest I forget even the tiniest fragment of this perfect day.

  My planning was flawless, of course. The spot I’d found for the car was as secluded as I’d remembered, and as deserted as the rest of the area. People are so predictable.

  When I entered the house, it was also exactly as I had anticipated. People were wandering through every room, thinking they were seeing everything, but in actuality seeing nothing. When I first entered, I saw the agent in charge standing on the stairs, talking to two people who were of absolutely no interest to me—too young to have children yet not old enough for any other role. The agent looked right at me, but I knew even as his eyes scanned me that he was dismissing me.

  As they always dismissed me.

  If he held any memory of me at all from that disinterested glance, it has long since faded utterly away.

  Perfect.

  I drifted invisibly through the house, awaiting my opportunity, and when I finally came to her room,
it was empty. It was less than a second before I had slipped under the bed.

  Under the bed!

  It is such a cliché that I knew the moment I saw the huge old-fashioned mahogany four-poster on Wednesday, it would make the perfect hiding place.

  The trick, I had been afraid, would be to stay awake as I lay waiting for her, but as I smelled her delicate fragrance, I could almost feel her all around me, and it was enough.

  I knew I would not sleep.

  And it was marvelous, hiding under her bed. Marvelous to lie hidden only inches away as people wandered through the room. I watched their feet and listened to them talk about the house and the family who lived there. I was particularly thrilled when someone mentioned her—talked about how well she kept her room, how pretty she was in her photographs. It was exactly as people described the others, thinking they were perfect when I knew what they really were.

  I found one of her bedroom slippers. Pink, it was, and well-worn. I held it to my cheek, feeling the softness of its silk, and filled myself with the scent of her feet.

  And as I pictured her perfectly formed foot nestling into that glove-soft slipper, I crushed the slipper in anticipation of crushing the foot itself, just as I crushed her panties on Wednesday last.

  And heat poured through me.

  As the hours passed, I fantasized that she was sleeping in the bed above me, mere inches away, with no idea how close I was.

  And then at last the house fell silent, and I was alone.

  Alone with my passion and my fantasy, and the knowledge that soon the fantasy would become reality.

  I’m not sure how long it was before I finally heard the front door close, but the moment it did, my heart began to pound so hard that I found it hard to breathe.

  She turned on the television.

  I don’t like that.

  I felt my groin begin to ache as I heard her slowly come up the stairs, and as I watched her feet as she padded into the bedroom, opened a drawer, and sighed, I felt myself begin to harden. . . .

  A moment later she sat on the bed, and the mattress sagged and touched my chest. It was incredible—I could almost imagine it was her fingers themselves touching me. Then a shoe dropped, and then the other, falling to the floor with a carelessness that I like no more than the sound of the television. Once her shoes were off, she stood up, turned on her music and danced a few steps, her naked feet only inches from my face.