The Girl on the Stairs

by V. J. Chambers

  But she shook herself. “You aren’t there,” she whispered. “You’re in your living room, and it’s not even that cold in here.”

  She clutched the ends of her sleeves, squeezing her eyes shut.

  But she forced herself to stay here.

  Several minutes passed.

  Slowly, she opened her eyes. She was okay. She hadn’t even been thinking about the basement. In fact, she’d almost been getting, well, bored.

  Rachel clapped two hands over her mouth. A tiny tear squeezed out of her eye.

  Maybe she did have the courage after all. Maybe if she took things nice and slow, she’d be able to—

  There was a knock at the door.

  Generally, Rachel ignored people knocking at the door. If someone was coming over, she knew about it. She figured anyone who might be there was making a mistake. Besides, strange people frightened her.

  But right now, she was feeling emboldened and brave. She’d faced the cold living room. Maybe she could face the person at the door as well.

  It was probably someone who was lost, looking for one of her neighbors. She could direct the person down the hall or up the elevator, help them find their friends.

  Her shoulders back, her chin high, she marched over to the door. She undid the four deadbolts and unlocked the door. She opened it wide. “Can I help you?”

  A tall man pushed her backwards into the house. “Rachel Fletcher?”

  No. Nononono. She could feel the animosity, the danger, coming off this man in waves. The one day she’d decided to be brave, this had to happen?

  “My name’s Nick,” said the man, shutting the door. “You and I have a friend in common. He wouldn’t talk to me earlier, but I’m feeling like he might talk to you.”

  *

  “I’m guessing you won’t hang up on me now,” said Nick’s voice on the phone.

  Sam clutched the phone. He was standing in his living room. He’d barely gotten enough sleep after being up last night talking to the police about that girl that Nick had killed from the college. The phone had jarred him awake, and now he felt twitching adrenaline rushing through him. “What the fuck, Nick? That’s not cool. You leave Rachel out of this. She’s got nothing to do with this.”

  “Sam?” said Rachel’s voice, faint and terrified. “Sam, is he going to hurt me?”

  Fuck.

  “Nick, why don’t you just leave her alone, huh? You want to talk to me, I’ll talk. But don’t drag Rachel into it. She’s been through enough.”

  “I thought it was very rude that you hung up on me before, Sam,” said Nick. “Here I was, trying to have a conversation with you, and you just severed the connection. I really didn’t like that. I’m going to kill you for it at some point, but I’m not going to do it now. Not yet. Rachel will have to do instead.” A pause. “Isn’t that right, Rachel?”

  Rachel screamed.

  Panic shot through Sam. He grabbed his car keys from the coffee table and scrambled out of his house. He wasn’t wearing shoes or a coat, and it was cold outside, but Sam didn’t care. Nick had Rachel, and Sam had promised Rachel that he would keep her safe. He had to get to her. He had to stop this.

  “Sam?” prompted Nick.

  “What?” Sam growled.

  “I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t hung up on me. You won’t do that this time, will you?”

  “No.” Sam flung himself into his car and jammed the key into the ignition. “No, I won’t.”

  “Good.”

  Sam started the car. He put it in reverse and started to back out of the driveway.

  “Is that a car engine I hear?” said Nick.

  “I’m coming to get you, Rachel,” Sam said. “Just hang in there, okay? I’m coming to get you.”

  Nick laughed. “Oh, you really do care about her.”

  “Let her go,” Sam said. “Let her go.”

  “Not a chance,” said Nick. “I can promise you this, though, Sam. I promise that I won’t kill her as long as you and I are on the phone together. How’s that?”

  Sam pressed his bare foot down on the gas pedal. He had to get to Rachel’s house as quickly as possible.

  “I said, ‘How’s that?’” said Nick.

  “Fuck you,” said Sam.

  “Well, I don’t think that’s smart. You shouldn’t be insulting me when I have the life of your friend here in my hands.”

  The car surged forward. Sam kept one hand on the steering wheel. With the other, he turned on the Bluetooth speaker. He wasn’t feeling good about this. In the past, nothing he’d done had stopped Nick from killing the other girls. Was he going to be able to do anything to stop this?

  Nick’s voice filled the car, coming through the speaker. “You’re awfully quiet, Sam.”

  “Well, what do you want me to say? You’re trying to kill Rachel.”

  “You brought this on yourself. You hung up on me. Back then, my plan was simply to take that girl, and then to wait. But you wouldn’t cooperate.”

  “You must have had something pretty important to tell me, then.” Sam was pulling out of his development and onto the main road. But he still had so far to go. Rachel’s house was at least thirty minutes away. Of course, he guessed he could speed. If he got pulled over, well then, he’d have to tell the police what was happening, wouldn’t he? He floored it. “What was it?”

  “I didn’t want to tell you anything. I just wanted to talk.”

  “Yeah? Well, you’re talking.”

  “I mean that I wanted us to have a conversation.”

  The car whizzed down the road. Sam was easily going eighty miles per hour. The speed limit here was sixty-five. “What about?”

  “Well, Lola, for starters.”

  “Yeah, you’ve got a one-track mind when it comes to her.”

  “Did you make the first move, or did she?”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake, Nick, I told you before. I’m not doing anything with Lola.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Well, that’s your prerogative.”

  “I know how this is all going down, Sam,” said Nick. “You might not see it, but I do. She’s got you lined up to do something for her. I’m not sure what it is, but she wouldn’t be going to this much trouble if she didn’t need you for some reason. That’s the way she works, you know?”

  “She wants me to write this book.”

  “I doubt that’s it. What would she care about a book?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she wants the rest of the world to understand that you’re the actual psycho, not her.”

  Nick laughed. “Oh, that’s not the way it is.”

  Sam gripped the steering wheel, urging his car to go even faster. “What? You going to tell me you’re not a psycho?”

  “See, you’re doing it again. You’re insulting me. I don’t know why you keep doing that. Rachel, tell him to be nice to me.”

  But Rachel didn’t say anything. Sam heard her moan in the background. The poor girl was probably too terrified to speak. She couldn’t handle stuff like this. Hell, she couldn’t handle leaving her apartment. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  “So, you think Lola’s a very nice girl?” said Nick.

  “I’m not saying she’s sweet and innocent,” said Sam. “But she’s not a killer.”

  “So, you believe her little story. That it wasn’t her idea to kill her parents.”

  “She says she made a comment that you misinterpreted.”

  “One comment?” Nick sneered. “She never shut up about it. It was all she wanted to talk about. And she had all these rules. We never talked about it in front of anyone else. We never talked about it online. Not that it mattered, considering she scrubbed her email inbox clean before we left her house that night. She didn’t want any evidence.”

  Sam furrowed his brow. “What night?”

  “The night I killed her parents. The night I was reborn. The night I thought I earned her love.”

  Sam didn’t say anything. He was trying to figure ou
t if Nick was smart enough to concoct a story like this or if he was telling the truth. Whatever the case, there was no evidence. And even though Dr. Irving had said that Nick wasn’t very intelligent, Sam was starting to wonder. This didn’t seem like the kind of thing that a really idiotic guy did.

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “No,” said Sam, even though he wasn’t sure. “I think you’re lying.”

  “That’s because you’ve already fallen in love with her.”

  “Trust me, whatever I feel about Lola Ward, it’s not love. Not even close.”

  “But you feel something.”

  “Not like that.”

  “Tell me the truth, Sam. You’ve been with her.”

  “No.”

  “You’ve touched her. You’ve seen her skin. I’ve been locked away from her for all these years, and you’ve had her in your arms.”

  The scenery sped by Sam. He careened around curves in the road, driving in the fast lane and leaving the other cars behind. “You want it to be that, don’t you? You can’t accept the fact that maybe she just doesn’t like you. If I stole her from you, you don’t have to blame her.”

  “Of course I blame her. She’s the one who messed everything up,” said Nick. “She turned me in. I still don’t understand why she did that. The plan was always that we’d kill her parents and then go on the run. Always. And we did it. We made it work. But then she turned on me.”

  “Maybe she didn’t actually want you to kill anyone.” Sam was still trying to make sense of it all.

  “She wanted it.”

  “Maybe she was joking,” said Sam. “Maybe you misunderstood her.”

  “She wasn’t joking. She was serious. I knew what she wanted. Back then, she and I were so close, our souls were tangled up in each other.”

  Very poetic. Sam kind of doubted that Nick had made it up himself.

  “See?” said Nick. “This is nice. You and I are really exchanging thoughts here. We’re talking. This is all I wanted.”

  “If it’s all you wanted, then let Rachel go. I’ll talk to you as long as you want if you let her go. Hell, you say you want to kill me. You let Rachel go, and you can have me.”

  “Sam, Sam, Sam. It’s not the right time yet. But that’s very chivalrous of you, offering yourself for Rachel. You must really feel deeply about her.”

  “Yes,” said Sam. “You think I care about Lola, but I care a lot more about Rachel. And Rachel doesn’t deserve this. She’s been through too much already. Just you being there is probably destroying her.”

  “Well, I guess I chose right then,” said Nick. “It was either this one or Daphne. Of course, Daphne was at work, so that would have made getting her alone even more difficult. But I thought Rachel was the better choice. Because you feel more responsible to her, don’t you? Even though you knew your responsibility should have been to Daphne.”

  Sam’s stomach was in knots. He started shaking, and it was hard to keep pressure on the gas pedal. “Don’t talk about Daphne. Don’t you dare talk about—”

  “So many different women, Sam. It’s amazing Lola doesn’t see through you. I can’t believe she doesn’t see that you’re not very reliable. You move through women pretty fast, don’t you?”

  How did Nick even know this stuff? How did he know about his relationships? Had Nick spent time looking into him?

  God, would no one leave his personal life alone?

  “You don’t even understand what real love is, Sam,” said Nick. “But I’m going to educate you. All these years, I’ve been locked up in prison, and I’ve been writing poetry to Lola. Real love poetry. So, if we’re going to be on the phone for an extended period of time, then I think I’m going to read you these poems. I never get the chance to share them, you know.”

  Fine. Poetry was better than threatening Daphne or calling Sam names. And Nick had promised that as long as they were on the phone, he wouldn’t kill Rachel.

  “Roses are red,” began Nick.

  Inwardly, Sam groaned.

  “Your veins are blue,” he continued. “Your hands are cold, and so are you.” A pause. “Well, Sam? What do you think?”

  “Doesn’t sound very romantic.”

  “I have a lot of conflicting feelings about Lola. Ready for the next one?”

  *

  Twenty-five minutes after leaving his house, Sam pulled into the parking lot of Rachel’s apartment complex. He’d shaved some time off of the trip, but not much, even going ninety the whole time. And he hadn’t seen one cop, more’s the pity.

  Anyway, maybe it was a good thing, considering that if Nick had known he was talking to the police, he might have hung up and hurt Rachel.

  But now, Sam was here. He unplugged his phone and put it up to his ear. Nick was still droning on with a particularly long, badly written, and sexually explicit poem about Lola. Sam was pretty sure he even spelled the word ‘come’ C-U-M like some kind of teenage delinquent. Whatever, the poem was terrible, but it meant that Nick was occupied.

  Sam could get up to Rachel’s apartment without Nick even knowing that he was coming.

  What he was going to do when he got there, he wasn’t sure, but he’d improvise. Certainly, if he was there, he could stop Nick. He had to.

  Sam closed the door to his car softly and began to hurry across the pavement. It wasn’t terribly cold that day, somewhere in the lower forties—practically a heat wave at this time of year. He was glad of it. He still wasn’t wearing shoes, and the black top was cold under his feet.

  He scampered over the sidewalk, past the evergreen shrubs in their bed of mulch, past the scattered cigarette butts on the ground, past the signs proclaiming that cars without guest passes would be towed.

  He made it to the door. It was large and glass, and it had the name of the apartment complex, Twin Pines, etched into it. There wasn’t any reason for the complex to be called Twin Pines, of course. There were no pines anywhere in sight.

  Nick was still reading the poem on the other end of the phone.

  Sam opened the door.

  He stepped inside, warm air embracing him but not reaching his frigid toes. The lower level consisted of a carpet-lined hallway complete with doors on each and every side. All the doors were closed.

  Sam dashed past them and headed to the end of the hallway.

  That was where the elevator was.

  He pushed the button to go up.

  He waited.

  Nick stopped reading.

  Sam stared at the elevator.

  “Well?” said Nick.

  “You’re right,” said Sam. “Your feelings for Lola are complicated.”

  The elevator beeped and the doors opened.

  “What was that?” said Nick.

  “A beep,” said Sam, getting into the elevator.

  “Where are you, Sam?”

  “What does that matter?” Sam pushed the button for Rachel’s floor. He had to get to her. If Nick knew he was coming, and he’d lost the element of surprise, that kind of sucked, but the most important thing was that he’d gotten to Rachel.

  “Where are you?” said Nick.

  The elevator began to move.“Look, maybe I’m still driving.”

  “No, I don’t hear the road noise anymore,” said Nick. “You’ve stopped. If you’ve gone to a police station, Sam, then I think you’ll have to understand that I’ll need to hang up.”

  “It’s not a police station.” Damn it, why hadn’t he thought of that? Was he a big fucking idiot or something?

  “Well, you say that, but how can I know you’re telling the truth?”

  The elevator stopped, and the doors opened. Sam rushed out of the elevator. “I’m not at the fucking police station, Nick. I’m coming for you. I’m at Rachel’s apartment.” He tore across the hall to her door. He opened her door. (He still had a key from back when they were sleeping together. He was one of the few people Rachel had ever trusted with one.) He stepped into her living room.

  He noticed
that it was noticeably cooler in there than it usually was.

  And also that it was empty.

  Nick was laughing in his ear. “You thought I stayed in her apartment with her, Sam? How much of an idiot do you think I am?”

  “You’re not here?” Sam strode through the apartment, through the bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen. No one was there. Why had he been so sure that Nick would have kept Rachel at the apartment? Was it only because Rachel never left? He couldn’t picture her anywhere else?

  “And I’m afraid I lied,” said Nick. “I told you I wouldn’t kill Rachel while we were on the phone together, but I’m finding I’m getting bored with all of this. And I feel like you didn’t really like my poetry.”

  Sam froze in the middle of living room. He tightened his knuckles around the phone. “Nick, wait. Don’t—”

  “Say goodbye to Sam, Rachel,” said Nick.

  Rachel’s voice came through the receiver, breathy. “Sam? I wanted be brave today. I tried to be brave.”

  Sam felt dizzy. His whole body felt tingly and too cold. “Rachel…” he gasped.

  The sound of a gunshot ripped into Sam’s ear, an explosion in his ear drum.

  The connection was severed.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Sam was huddled up in the police station, his arms over his head. He kept drifting out, thinking about stupid things, like whether or not he’d turned off the coffee maker in his house, and then he’d remember the gunshot. Rachel.

  And he’d feel like he was falling to pieces again.

  A gentle hand on his shoulder. “Mr. Black?”

  He looked up. It was Cross. “Did you find her?”

  Cross shook his head. “Not yet. We don’t know where he is. We’ve got people scouring the Shepherdstown area, where he killed the other two girls.”

  “But that’s not where Rachel lived. There’s no reason to think he’d go back there. He might have gone… anywhere.”

  “I know.” Cross’s face was drawn.

  Sam was torn. He wanted them to find her. He wanted to know where she was, what had happened. But every second that they didn’t was one more second in which he could believe that Rachel wasn’t actually dead, that she could still be alive. Maybe Todd hadn’t killed her. Maybe he’d only shot the gun to scare Sam. Maybe Rachel was okay…