As she did her rounds, her safety check of home sweet home, she ruminated about a new life, far away from Chapel Hill, far away from everything terrifying and bad that had happened here. Hell, I’m living a Hitchcock movie, she thought, if Alfred Hitchcock had stayed alive long enough to see and react to the madness and horror of the 1990s.
Exhausted, she finally climbed into bed. Yuck. She felt stale bread or cake crumbs against her legs. She hadn’t made the bed that morning.
She wasn’t accomplishing much lately, and that made her angry, too. She’d been on a proper schedule to complete her intern year this spring. Now she didn’t know if she’d make it by the end of summer.
Kate pulled the covers up under her chin—in early June. She was getting soooo buggy. Her anxiety wasn’t going to stop while the monster Casanova was on the loose out there, she knew. She thought about killing him. Her first and only violent fantasy. She imagined going to Wick Sachs’s house. An eye for an eye. She remembered the appropriate passage from the Book of Exodus. Eidetic memory, right.
She really wished that Alex had stayed, but she didn’t want to embarrass him in front of Sampson. She wanted to talk to Alex the way they always did, and she wished he was with her now. She wanted to be in his arms tonight. Maybe more than just in Alex’s arms. Maybe she was ready for more. One night at a time.
She wasn’t sure what she believed anymore, or if she believed in anything at all. She was praying lately, so maybe she did believe. Rote prayers, but prayers all the same. Our Father who art… Hail Mary, full of… She wondered if a lot of people did the same thing. “I do love the idea of you, God,” she finally whispered. “Please love the idea of me back.”
She couldn’t stop obsessing about Casanova, about Dr. Wick Sachs, about the mysterious, disappearing house of horror, and the poor women still trapped there. But she was so used to the continuous, terrifying nightmares that she finally drifted off to sleep, anyway.
Kate never heard him come into the house.
CHAPTER 93
TICK-COCK. Tick-cock.
Tickory, dickory, cock.
Kate finally heard a noise. A floorboard creaked on the right side of the bedroom.
Tiny, tiny sound… but unmistakable.
That wasn’t her imagination, wasn’t a dream. She sensed that he was there in her bedroom again.
Let it be a crazy thought; let it be a scene in a nightmare; let this whole past month be a nightmare I’m having.
Oh Jesus, oh God, no! she thought.
He was in her room. He’d come back! This was so bad that she couldn’t make herself believe it was happening.
Kate held her breath until her chest ached and threatened to cave in. She never really believed he would come back.
Now she realized that was a terrible mistake. The worst of her life, but not the last one she was allowed, she hoped.
Who was this extraordinary madman? Did he hate her so much that he would risk everything? Or did he think he loved her so much, the sick, pathetic bastard?
She sat tensely on the edge of the bed and listened intently for another sound. She was ready to spring at him. There it was again… a tiny creak. It was coming from the right side of the room.
Finally, she could see the full, dark silhouette of his body. She gulped air greedily and almost gagged.
There he was, goddamn him to hell.
A powerful, hateful energy, like currents of electricity, surged between them. Their eyes finally met. Even in the darkness his eyes seemed to burn through her. She remembered his eyes so well.
Kate tried to roll away from him, from his first strike.
The blow came fast and hard. He hadn’t lost his quickness. Excruciating pain ripped through her shoulder and down her left side.
Karate training kept her moving somehow. Sheer stubbornness. A will to live that was becoming her trademark. She was off the bed. Up on her feet. Ready for him.
“Mistake,” she whispered. “Yours, this time.”
She saw the outline of a
body again. This time against the moonlight streaming in a bedroom window. Fear and loathing gripped Kate. Her heart felt as if it might stop, just pack it in on her.