All the Wicked Girls
Page 33
He remembered her cheeks burning, her eyes darting up, around.
“I heard it again.
‘Jessica.’
Still a whisper, but louder this time.”
Her words tumbled out.
“I dropped the glass. I picked up the monitor and pressed the button. I calmed when I saw Harry, fast asleep on his back, with his hands above his head. He’d slept that way since he was a baby. I must have imagined it. Just a voice in my head. That’s what I kept telling myself, because that’s what you do . . . you rationalize. I watched him until the screen faded. I placed it back onto the nightstand and forced myself to lie down. I thought I was going mad, Jim. I thought I’d call my mother in the morning and tell her. Then maybe the men in the white coats would come and cart me off someplace.
I couldn’t get back to sleep. I kept thinking, what if I hadn’t imagined it? What if there was someone in Harry’s room? The scan button. I had forgotten about the scan button. I reached for the monitor again. There’re four arrows on the side of it, so you can move the camera around. I pressed the right arrow. The camera swept along his bed and past his toy chest, his rocking horse, and his ride-on car. I hoped that it didn’t make a noise when it moved. He’s only just started to sleep through the night, a big deal for a boy who used to wake every few hours.”
He could hear her fingers clawing at the table as the panic began to take hold.
“The camera reached the far wall. I scanned back again. And then, just before it reached his bed, I saw something. The camera swept back to Harry’s face. He looked so calm, Jim, so peaceful.”
She spoke quietly, almost in a whisper.
“I pressed the arrow intermittently. It jerked slowly right.
Again, I pressed it. Again, it jerked.
Again and again . . .”
She paused, struggling for breath.
He’d wanted to break then, had moved to, then stopped himself.
“And then it settled on the rocking chair in the far corner of the room.
I saw a shape in the chair, but it was too far away to make out.
I knew that it shouldn’t be there.
Every night I sit Harry on my lap and read him a story in that chair. I strained my eyes trying to see what it was.
I pressed the zoom button and watched as the shape slowly became something that I recognized.
A man.
A man in my son’s room.”
Her voice shook savagely.
“The man was wearing a clown mask.”
He swallowed then, felt his own throat dry.
“I screamed, dropped the monitor, and grabbed the phone.
I put it to my ear. The line was dead . . . the storm outside. I walked across the bedroom and stopped when I felt something wet beneath my feet. I was about to scream again when I saw the glass on the floor. Water. I had spilled my water.”
The clawing was louder now, faster.
“I crept down the first flight of stairs, wiping the sweat from my eyes.
I walked along the hallway and into the kitchen. I had left the blinds up, could see the rain falling outside. I saw the knife block. I reached for the largest, the carving knife. As I walked down the final flight of stairs I stopped and listened.
My heart was pounding so fast, Jim, it was all I could hear.
Thump.
Thump.
Over and over.
I took a breath and ran for the door, pulled the handle down, and burst into the room.
I hit the light switch and screamed, gripping the knife so tightly that my fingers turned white. I looked at the rocking chair.
No clown.
And then I looked at my son’s bed.
I dropped the knife and fell to my knees.
My son wasn’t there.
He was gone.
Harry was gone.”
Jim rubbed his eyes, his shoulders tight as he exhaled heavily.
He sat in the dark for a long time, listening to her cry, willing himself to stop the tape.
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First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Zaffre Publishing
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Copyright © Chris Whitaker, 2017
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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ISBN: 978–1–78576–151–5
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