Jerry heard another sound. Not in front of him. Above him. He wanted to ignore it. Sheri was in front. He and Ann had to get to her, he and Ann….
Where was Ann’s hand? She had been touching him constantly. Where was her hand?
He turned.
Ann wasn’t there. She wasn’t anywhere.
Jerry flicked the flashlight upward, following the beam with his eyes, knowing somehow what he was going to see.
Ann’s feet.
Ann’s body
Hanging.
“Ann!”
He jumped up, trying to grab her. She was too high.
Ann started to kick.
“Ann!” Jerry screamed again, and ran to the stairs, taking them two and three at a time.
How could this have happened? he wondered as he ran, a portion of his brain seizing on the question as being of critical importance, even though the only real issue was whether he could get her down. And that same part of his brain knew that the noose must have been there, ready for them to pass by. The Killer waiting at the second floor, dropping the loop precisely as Ann passed under, then hauling her up so quickly and quietly that Jerry didn’t even notice her absence at first. Not until –
Too late?
– that sound had alerted him.
He was on the second floor. Ann was kicking and squirming, her fingers working to get between the noose and her neck and clearly failing. And Jerry saw something tied to the banister ten feet away: a thick rope. It was tied to the balustrade, then looped over one of the exposed ceiling beams and then down it went to the noose that was rapidly choking the life out of his wife.
Jerry was there in an instant. He tried to untie it one-handed, but it was impossible. The knots were too thick, too tight.
He put down the flashlight, kept trying.
Ann was still kicking.
Jerry kept pulling at the rope. But now, though he had two hands to work with, he was basically working in complete darkness. And the rope was so… damn… tight.
He finally abandoned the knot and picked up the flashlight again. Started to hammer at the knot and banister with the flashlight, thinking – if what his panic-soaked mind was doing could be called thinking – that he would loosen one or the other.
Nothing.
He turned the flashlight on Ann. She was dying. Her face and lips blue, her eyes bulging and her tongue starting to protrude. Kicking, trying to get her fingers under the rope. Frantic, but even the level of frantic energy was lessening as the oxygen was cut off.
She abandoned the attempt to get the noose off and reached for Jerry. He reached out for her. Grasped only air. He leaned over the banister, forcing himself so far over that he was only inches away from overbalancing and falling.
Ann was still too far. Her fingers scraped the air only centimeters away from his own outstretched hands. He tried reaching with the flashlight, hoping that she would be able to grab it. Her fingers brushed it. Touched it more solidly.
The flashlight illuminated her face. He saw hope. He smiled at her. She couldn’t have seen his face, not behind the flashlight, but she smiled back.
Then her eyes widened. Not in happiness, not due to lack of oxygen.
Fear.
Jerry, still leaning out over the railing, glanced back to see… the Killer!
It was just a shape, just a dark shadow in the hall behind, but there was no mistaking who it had to be.
Jerry shrieked and arched his back, trying to pull himself to a more solid position, but he had no time.
No time.
The Killer ran at him, and Jerry felt two strong hands seize his legs and flip them up. Over.
Jerry was weightless. His fingers, still outstretched, finally brushed Ann’s hands.
Then the moment of zero-gravity ended.
Jerry fell. He fell forever. Fell and fell and fell, and finally hit bottom and was enveloped by the softest sense of silence he had ever known.
70
Jerry’s eyes fluttered open and for a single, glorious moment he knew – knew – that it was all a dream.
Then that moment ended. Oddly enough it was the memory of the picture, the pregnant girl, that reminded him where he was and what was going on.
The house. Confined. Sealed with the family, like a premature tomb. Drew. Sheri. Ann –
He bolted up, sitting up though every bone and muscle in his body shrieked at the motion. He realized that he was somehow still holding onto the flashlight.
Unless the Killer put it in my hands, he thought. Unless it’s part of the sick bastard’s plan for me to have a flashlight.
That made sense: certainly everything else of use in the house had been either removed or destroyed.
Jerry shook his head. He was getting sidetracked. Concussion? Probably.
He looked at the flashlight. The bulb was still lit, though considerably weaker.
How long was I out?
How long was she hanging?
The last thought seemed to come from someone else, as though a psychic watcher had injected the idea into Jerry’s mind, but with it a wave of panic seemed to wash away his confusion, leaving him in pain, in terror, but clear of mind.
He looked up.
Ann hung above him. She had lost a shoe in her struggles, and Jerry cast his light about and saw it a few feet away.
She was dead, there was no question. She wasn’t moving, not even swaying.
She’d been dead for a while. A long time.
Just me, he thought. Me and Sheri.
Sheri….
He stood, holding onto the wall and the banister when his legs threatened to give out from under him. He felt his head, and his fingers touched hard, crusted matter that could only be blood. It felt like a shattered helmet all over his head. He must have bled copiously, and when he shined the flashlight at where he was laying, he saw the outline of his head and right shoulder in a coagulating puddle of blood.
He was no stranger to blood, but he suddenly felt nauseous. Another symptom of concussion, he knew. But he also knew that the Killer was hardly likely to call a timeout on whatever devious game he was playing in order to let Jerry seek medical attention, or even have some time to recuperate.
And sure enough, as soon as he thought that he heard that same sound, that same whimper that had drawn him and Ann down the hall in the first place.
He wondered if it was always the Killer’s intention to murder Ann in the hall, or if he was simply going to kill whoever went second.
Jerry thought for a moment he was just wasting time thinking this, either because he was afraid to continue his search for Sheri or just because his concussed brain was incapable of concentrating on a single issue. Then he realized that no, it was far from a waste of a time. He had to figure out how this maniac ticked, didn’t he? Had to figure out what was happening if there was any chance of getting his family through it.
What’s left of my family.
The whimper came again. Louder, more urgent.
Jerry forced himself to stand up unaided. His daughter was all he had left.
He walked down the hall. The office was only twenty, thirty feet away, but it seemed to recede as he approached it, like he had suddenly found himself in the darkest part of Alice’s Wonderland. A fantasyland where physics did not rule, where the darkness was king and if you took a single misstep… off with your head.
He felt something on his side and almost spun into it before he realized it was the wall. He had veered into it. Jerry pushed himself away and shook his head. A new surge of nausea came with the movement.
Don’t turn your head like that again, Jer-Jer.
The sounds were coming from the office, louder and louder. And again Jerry knew that this had all been predetermined, that he was without volition, a puppet being operated by the hands of a dark puppet master.
But knowing this did not change anything. Did not change the fact that he had to get to the office. Had to open the door. Had to see.
&nb
sp; Jerry waited until he was fairly sure the nausea had passed. Then moved as quietly as he could to the office. At least it wasn’t moving away from him anymore. The door just stood in the jamb. Waiting.
He eased up to it. Reached out. Gripped the knob. Slowly. Didn’t want to make a sound, not even shaking the knob in its own housing.
He turned the knob. Prayed for hinges that had been oiled.
Then pushed the door open.
71
The door swung open. Slowly, quietly.
Jerry had thought maybe he would rush in. If Sheri was there alone, he’d free her and they’d get out somehow. If the Killer was there with her, he’d rush the bastard, get the upper hand.
But of course, those were the actions of a man, not a puppet. Not a marionette with strings far too short for even the illusion of freedom.
So the door opened.
And Jerry stood.
After a moment, he stepped in, the flashlight held slack in his hand. He could feel his face rippling under the combined weight of the shock and horror he was feeling.
His desk had been pushed aside, leaving a large clear space in the center of his office.
An arena. Like the Roman circus.
In the middle of the space, Sheri stood on a short footstool. Her ankles were tied together, her hands bound behind her back. A rope went from her wrists to a heavy ceiling fan above her.
“Daddy,” Sheri whispered.
And behind her: the Killer. He was holding a bulky flashlight that he had pointed straight at Jerry, so he wasn’t much more than the outline he had been throughout everything that had already happened. But he was here. Not running, not attacking. Not killing. Just standing.
Though Jerry noticed at that moment that there was a glint in the Killer’s free hand: a knife. Probably the one he had used to slit Drew’s –
Don’t go there.
Still, the thought pushed enough anger into Jerry’s veins that he was able to take a reasonably straight step toward Sheri.
The Killer reached out. Pushed his knife against Sheri’s upper arm, and she gasped as a trickle of blood appeared. Jerry froze.
“I’ve been watching you,” the Killer said.
As he spoke, the TV in the office flicked on. Jerry heard clicks behind him and knew that, again, all the televisions in the house were coming to life. As though the Killer wanted to drive his message home not just to the family, but to the house itself.
The television in Jerry’s office was medium-sized but big enough to clearly show hidden surveillance shots of the family. In the house. The shots were quick, cutting from shot to shot so fast Jerry barely got a sense of what he was seeing. But it was enough.
Drew playing video games in his room….
Sheri brushing her hair in her bathroom….
Ann talking on the phone….
Jerry reading a research book in his office….
And on and on and on. Scenes of weeks – months – of surveillance played in a disorienting series of flashes.
In the office, the Killer shifted his knife away from Sheri’s arm, now pressing on her back with it. She tried to pull away from it, but could only move a few centimeters forward before her feet were hanging off the edge of the stool on which she stood. She groaned, and Jerry could see that as she shuffled away from the knife her arms were being pulled higher behind her. Too high. If she fell off the stool, the weight of her body plummeting could pull her shoulders right out of her sockets.
“Tell us about yourself, Sheri,” said the Killer.
“Daddy?” said Sheri. She didn’t know what to do, he could tell. Jerry moved toward her.
“Tell us, Sheri, or you won’t like what happens.”
She shook her head. Started to cry.
Jerry took another step toward her. His Princess. In the movies, things like this were shaken off, no big deal. In real life, he was looking at a truly devastating injury. If Sheri fell hard enough, she could be looking at years of surgeries and therapies before she could use her arms or shoulders again… and even then, they’d likely never be the same.
“Daddy?” Sheri whimpered. There was a wealth of meaning in the words. Daddy save me, Daddy help me, Daddy are we going to get out of here, Daddy I’m afraid to die, oh Daddy.
“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. We’ll be okay,” said Jerry. Another thing no one told him about parenting: how much of it involved lying. Yes, there is an Easter Bunny. Yes, Santa exists. Yes, I’m sure everyone will treat you wonderfully at the new school. Yes, the other kids will all like you.
Yes, we’ll get out of this alive. We’ll be okay.
Still, he continued the lie. “We’ll be okay. I promise, we’ll get –”
The Killer moved, shifting behind the light he held.
The televisions all changed. And suddenly they no longer showed random flashes of the family’s life. No, they showed something much more frightening.
And once again, Jerry felt a part of his universe pull apart and spin away as he watched the TV screen.
72
At first it was nothing unusual. Just another surveillance camera view of the house, this time of Sheri. She was in her room, seen from the back as she typed on her computer.
She spoke. “Come on, pervo. You want it, pay up.”
The computer beeped. “Goddam right, payment approved,” said the stranger on the screen, the girl masquerading as his daughter.
In the office, Jerry looked at Sheri, at his real daughter. She was crying. “Princess?” he said in confusion.
On the TV, Sheri adjusted a webcam attached to the top of the computer. A webcam Jerry couldn’t remember seeing there before. Then, after adjusting it, Sheri stood. She was wearing a pink miniskirt. So short it was almost a belt. And then she started writhing and dancing in front of the webcam. Stripping.
Jerry remembered the headless girl, the stripper they saw on the computer when this all started, when they tried to use the internet, and again when they had first seen the video of the outside of their house. He remembered Sheri’s face. The shock when she had first seen it.
Because it was her.
He looked at Sheri. His Princess? Doing… this?
He wasn’t going to watch. Drugs, even infidelity were one thing, but he couldn’t stand this.
Then there was a knocking at the door. Coming from the TV, and Jerry’s already fallen stomach spiraled even lower.
On the TV, Sheri looked at the door in fright. “Hold on, I’m not dressed!” she called. She killed the computer screen, then quickly shoved her stripper outfit and the webcam in the hidey-hole behind the picture on her wall, then darted into her bed. She pulled the covers up around her neck. “Okay, it’s safe.”
And just as with Drew, just as with Ann, Jerry had to suffer through the realization that he was watching his daughter the night before this had all started. Which meant that either the Killer had waited for a night when lightning struck thrice and everyone was involved in their secret sins, their secret vices… or it was just something so normal, so literally everyday that he could have started any time and gotten the same result.
Jerry thought it was probably the latter.
“Hey, Princess,” he heard his own voice say on the television. “Hitting the hay early?”
The Killer muted the scene, but allowed it to continue playing, forcing Jerry to bear silent witness to the rot that had crept into every room of his once-perfect dream.
The Killer leaned in close to Sheri, though still hidden behind her, still cloaked by the glare of his light. “Not a princess at all, are you?” he whispered. Sheri whimpered but didn’t answer. The Killer moved, and must have pressed against her with the knife again, because she cried out and shuffled another millimeter forward on the stool, shrieking again as the strain on her arms increased. “ARE YOU?” shouted the Killer.
“I’m… not… a princes…,” Sheri gasped between sobs.
The Killer moved again. Sheri swayed forward, clearly bei
ng pressed by the knife, but just as clearly having nowhere else to go. Literally at the end of her rope. She started screaming, not stopping this time as whatever infinitesimal slack that remained ran out and the pressure on her arms became both unending and unbearable.
Jerry watched dully. He didn’t know what to do. He felt slow, stupid. He was suddenly catapulted back to the first year of his residency, a week he had been on call more days than he could remember, a day he suddenly found himself staring at a patient, a syringe in hand, weaving on his feet and no idea what he was supposed to do next. Too tired.
Strangers Page 21