She forced herself to take a deep breath. She was not a helpless victim. Anna Winter would never go down without a fight.
She scooped up her purse and pulled out her handgun. The metal weight settled into her palm, cool and familiar. Anna let out a quiet exhale. She didn’t understand what had happened, how she had become locked in this nightmare twisted version of reality, but she was not defenseless.
Anna squared her shoulders and stepped out of the bedroom. The hallway was dark, no windows to let in any natural light. To Anna’s mind it seemed to have grown impossibly long. On edge, she crept over to the landing, setting down each foot as quietly as she could manage. Her hackles were raised, instinct screaming danger: run! She darted a quick glance behind her and felt sure for the space of a heartbeat that she would see the towering form of the nun right behind her, poised to shove her down the stairs.
The hallway held only darkness.
Anna began a cautious decent down, one hand on the railing to steady herself while the other held her gun at the ready. Her first priority had to be to get out of the house. As much as she wanted to give into the cocktail of emotions churning in her stomach there would be time to fall apart later.
She tried to be as stealthy as possible as she made her way through the foyer to the front door. She twisted the brass knob and pulled at the door.
It was locked.
Anna huffed slightly and resisted the urge to repeatedly kick the door in her frustration. She hadn’t truly expected it to be that easy, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t hoped.
A light clicked on upstairs, drawing Anna’s attention back the way she had come. Anna frowned, her gun pointed out in front of her. A pained moan in a woman’s voice came from somewhere else in the house. Anna couldn’t tell if the sound was coming from upstairs or from somewhere on the ground floor.
“Help me,” the woman’s voice implored.
“Hello?” Anna called out.
She didn’t trust the voice, but she also didn’t want to ignore it if someone else was stuck in this nightmare with her. Worse, the voice was strangely familiar, but Anna couldn’t quite place it. Had Donna possibly come back?
“HEEEELLLLLLP!” The woman suddenly screamed.
Hacking and coughing filled the air, the wet, glottal sounds of someone trying to force themselves to throw up. It was a sound that Anna knew all too well. She remembered it with the phantom taste of bile in the back of her own throat. Cautiously, and against her better judgement, Anna headed back up the stairs.
“Help me…please!” The woman sounded weaker, her voice hoarse and raspy.
“I’m coming,” Anna replied.
The hallway again seemed to stretch out to eternity. The bare, off-white walls felt like they twisted off at odd angles that existed only in dreams. The effect was making her dizzy, forcing her to keep one hand on the wall for balance.
She glanced into each doorway as she passed them, flinching slightly in expectation of another violent assault. Each time she felt like she saw a flash of something. A bible on an altar. A nun kneeling to pray. A polished silver crucifix, spotted with blood. Then she would blink and the image would be gone, leaving her staring at nothing but empty rooms with unnatural lines of space.
Anna followed the sounds of piteous moaning back into the bathroom, holding the gun out in front of her as she gingerly peered around the corner. She expected another flash-image before the bathroom took on the same subtle-wrongness that pervaded the other rooms.
It took her a few moments to process what she was seeing. On the floor in front of her, Anna watched herself convulsing. Her clone was dressed in dark pants and a loose over-shirt on top of a black tank in the exact same manner as Anna. The clone’s shirt, however, was sweat soaked and dotted with little flecks of vomit. A bottle of pills laid next to her on the ground, its contents gone and cap scattered. Her clone looked up at her with a pleading expression.
“I didn’t mean to,” she said to Anna.
Anna dropped to her knees and set the gun aside. She cradled her clone’s head in her lap.
“No, no…” Anna whispered.
She could almost feel the room spinning around her. Her limbs suddenly felt heavy and sluggish in a way that Anna tried so hard to pretend she’d forgotten. She frantically rifled through her clone’s pockets, reasoning to herself that any clone of hers must have a phone somewhere.
“You knew I’d relapse,” the dying Anna on the floor said.
Anna shook her head in a violent negation as she pulled the cell phone free.
“No, I’m gonna get you help,” she told herself.
“You let this happen,” the other Anna reached up to grasp her wrist before Anna could bring the phone up to dial. “It’s too late.”
Anna continued to shake her head in denial.
“You survived this once, you’ll do it again!” She told the other Anna desperately.
The other Anna just gave a wet hack as she shivered on the tile.
“Tell Lex I still love him,” she whimpered.
Anna recoiled from her doppelganger, horror and disbelief written across her face.
“What did you say?” she demanded.
That wasn’t true. She did care for Lex in some way, pity him certainly, but love had died out a long time ago. Teenage Anna had loved the fact that Lex loved her more than she actually loved him.
The other Anna looked up at her with a suddenly twisted expression before fading into nothingness. Anna felt a sliver of fear slide down her spine. It was the only warning she got before the nun’s fingers wrapped tight about her neck.
Anna felt herself being lifted off of the floor. She kicked wildly, hands trying to pry the fingers away from her throat. She could feel the chilled rasp of the nun’s breath against her ear. Cold, nothing alive could possibly be that cold. She spluttered, trying futilely to draw air into her lungs. She didn’t have the strength to wrench her way free this time.
A glimmer of a desperate plan came to her. Anna let herself go limp. Her captor released the choke hold on Anna’s throat. She let herself fall to the floor, keeping her eyes screwed shut. She could feel the presence of the nun hovering over her prone form.
It took everything she had to force herself no to shiver as she felt two fingers caress her chin. Anna concentrated on slowly inching her hand across the floor to where she had set her gun down. She just had to stay calm. She could get out of this.
As the fingers withdrew Anna could feel something else being pressed against her throat. It was as cold as the fingers had been, but this was somehow smoother. And sharp.
Anna felt the rough metal of the gun grip beneath her own fingers and almost smiled. She opened her eyes and brought the gun up, shooting the nun straight though the center of her forehead. The specter staggered back, unharmed but obviously startled by the surprise assault. The nun dropped the bright silver crucifix she’d be preparing to stab into Anna’s throat.
Anna seized the precious few moments of the nun’s surprised retreat and scrambled to her feet. She backed away towards the stairs, firing on the nun. The specter seemed frozen, standing fixedly in place as Anna made it to the bottom of the stairs. Once her feet were both back on the hardwood floor of the ground level, Anna ceased shooting and bolted for the back door.
Locked. Locked. Locked.
She abandoned the door and looked for another option. Anna tried every window. The latches refused to budge. She was still trapped.
She pressed her face against the cool glass of one of the windows framing the back door. Tears were pricking at the corners of her eyes and her stomach felt full of lead. How was she supposed to fight this? She didn’t understand what was going on, couldn’t even make sense of what she saw.
She thought about the other Anna, lying on the floor of the bathroom. Overdosed, dying of pills she should have never taken. Had that been real? Was this nightmare nun just her mind trying to cope with her own de
ath? Anna couldn’t imagine why she would do such a thing. Not now when she had so much good to look forward to.
Maybe it had been too much good.
Movement in the backyard pulled Anna’s attention away from the dark spiral of her own thoughts. A man stood in the shadows of a tree. He was scruffy and gothic in a way that Anna hadn’t dressed in years. Spiked jewelry and even darker eyeliner than she had on. She recognized him at once. He shouldn’t be here.
Anna pounded her fist against the window.
“Lex!” She screamed. “Lex, over here!”
Lex drew closer and looked up at her with a forlorn expression.
“I’m sorry, Anna. I had to see you.”
Anna chose to ignore that. “Get me out of here!”
“What?”
“I’m stuck. Get me out of here!”
Lex looked bemused, as if he couldn’t quite work out what Anna was trying to ask him.
“What do I do?” He asked.
“Break the window!”
Anna tried to point at the decorative rock landscaping around him as best as she could through the glass. Luckily Lex seemed to catch on quickly. He stooped and grabbed a large grey rock out of one of the flowerbeds.
“Stand back,” he shouted.
Anna immediately backed away from the window. Lex started to pull back his arm in a motion to send the rock sailing into the glass back door…and stopped. He looked down at the rock, suddenly contemplative.
“Actually…” he murmured, almost to himself.
Anna pounded on the door again. This couldn’t be happening.
“Lex, please!”
Lex looked up at her, his eyes suddenly hard.
“Why?” He asked.
“Why?” Anna repeated in a strangled tone.
Lex half-shrugged. “You never helped me.”
“What are you talking about?”
Lex’s eyes narrowed further.
“You hung me out to dry.”
“Now is really not the time to talk about this, Lex,” Anna pleaded. “Get me out of here. Please.”
“I just got out rehab, Anna,” Lex continued, as if he hadn’t heard her. “They said you went during the divorce. You left me behind, saved yourself, and tore apart our family!”
How dare he make it seem like he was the victim?
“I did it for Claire!” Anna yelled at him.
“You robbed her of her father!” Lex screamed back.
“It was for her safety!”
“Don’t give me that bullshit! You were popping pills, too!”
Lex discarded the rock back into the flowerbed, crushing some of the bright flowers beneath it.
“We were a team and you abandoned me, Anna,” he said in a choked voice.
“Please, Lex, just call the police,” Anna cried.
“Sorry. Shit catches up to you,” he said philosophically, pulling a cigarette out of his pocket and lighting it up.
“I can’t wait until you relapse,” he added nastily.
He took a deep drag off the cigarette as he stepped right up to the window. He let out a stream of smoke right in Anna’s face before fading away into nothingness.
Anna screamed in denial and pounded on the glass. Hot tears trailed down her cheeks as she tried to break it. She took a half step back, brought the gun up and fired. She flinched as the bullet ricocheted. With a cry of rage she threw the gun at the glass. It clattered to the floor and skid away from the momentum.
She was still trapped.
Anna pressed her face against the window, sobbing in earnest now. Cold metal pressed against the back of her skull. The barrel of her own gun now held against her. Anna just continued crying. She was out of ideas. Out of hope.
“STAY,” the inhuman voice behind her demanded.
Anna didn’t move, didn’t turn to face the specter of the nun behind her. What good would it do?
CLICK. Silence.
The chamber was empty.
The gun clattered back to the floor as the nun faded away. Anna slid down the window, panting harshly. She couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything except try to pull oxygen into her lungs. She wasn’t even sure she was relieved any more.
Ding-dong!
The doorbell? Anna used the door to pull herself back to her feet, grabbing the empty gun as she went. What trick was her mind playing on her now, she wondered?
Chapter 6:
Anna tiptoed carefully though the dining room as the doorbell rang again. She peered around the corner as she heard the sound of the front door swinging open. No specter from her past stood on the threshold. No nun shrouded in darkness. It was a young man. He was dressed in ratty working clothes with a worn baseball cap over his unruly brown hair. In his hands he was holding a toolbox.
“Mrs. Winter? I’m here to fix the pipe?” He called out, half-stepping hesitantly into the empty foyer.
Donna’s maintenance man! Anna felt a fresh surge of hope flood into her veins. She charged into the room.
“Don’t close the door!” she shouted.
The young man didn’t expect anyone to come running at him full-tilt. He let out a startled shriek and took a step back, just as the door closed on him. His toolbox crashed down as he was pinned, half in and half out of the house.
“Shit!” Anna said.
She pulled hard on the door, trying to pry it open further to free him. It wouldn’t move. Something was trying to force it closed and only the maintenance man’s body stood in the way. Anna tried shoving him bodily back outside into safety but he was wedged tight.
“My toolbox,” he grunted. “Wedge it into the door! It’ll give me room.”
Anna grabbed the plastic box and shoved it in over his head before trying to shove him back outside.
“Ow! Ow!” he protested. “Pull me in!”
“You don’t want that,” Anna said seriously.
He looked at her with earnest eyes.
“I know what I’m doing! Pull me in!”
“I’m stuck in here!” Anna tried to warn him.
“I know! It’s the nun!”
Anna blinked, surprised, and pulled him inside.
Both of them scattered away from the door as the plastic toolbox shattered under the pressure and flung tools out in every direction. The maintenance man rubbed at his ribs where he had been crushed, moaning in pain.
“Are you okay?” Anna asked.
She wasn’t really sure what to say. She had about five hundred questions she wanted to ask him. How’d he known about the nun? And why the hell would he want to be on this side of the door?
He looked up and offered her a sheepish smile in response.
“I’ll live. You?” he asked.
There was no way Anna could answer that question accurately.
“I’m fine,” she said instead.
“How long have you been stuck?” He asked.
Like that was a normal question. Who was this guy?
“About an hour.”
“You’ve met Sister Catherine then?”
Anna assumed that was the name of the nun.
“She’s a real bitch for woman of God,” Anna muttered darkly.
A loud thud sounded upstairs. They both turned to look up at the ceiling.
“Busted pipe?”
“Apparently,” Anna replied with a snort.
The young man smiled gently at her.
“I wish it were that simple.”
Anna couldn’t stand it anymore. “What’s going on?”
“The nun,” he said, as if it were obvious. “She wants to kill you.”
“No shit,” Anna said dryly.
“Her name is Sister Catherine. She’s—”
His explanation was suddenly cut off as something tried to drag him towards the stairs. Anna clung tight to his arms, throwing her weight backwards to fight against the force that pulled against him.
The nun
reappeared at the top of the stairs. Her face contorted into a rictus of rage as she rushed down the steps at them.
“The garage!” he shouted.
Anna wanted to argue. The garage was on the other side of the house, but he seemed to know more about what was going on than she did. She decided to trust his judgement in lieu of a better option.
Together they sprinted around the stairs and through the living room. The couch slid across the floor at them, forcing them to leap over it to avoid it knocking their legs out from under them.
He grabbed her hand and half-dragged her into the kitchen. They were both forced to skid to a halt before the barricade of tables and chairs in front of them. Stretched across the spaces between the center island and the countertops, the dining room furniture had been woven into an intricate hedge, blocking the way into the garage.
A small part of Anna’s brain was still trying to find some sort of logic in what was happening. How could all the furniture move like that? Moreover, how hadn’t she heard it?
A warning shiver ran down her spine. Anna whipped her head to look.
Sister Catherine was right behind them.
“Look out!”
The cabinets flung themselves open, causing Anna to flinch back. The young man tugged on her hand and pointed hastily at the island. With little other option, Anna followed his mad scramble over the countertop, bypassing the barricade of furniture. They dashed down the short hallway and into the garage, panting hard.
Anna slammed the door shut behind them. She grabbed for anything in reach, piling it against the door. The young man slid to the floor, shrugging off the backpack he’d been wearing.
“That won’t help,” he informed her.
“It’s all we’ve got!” Anna protested, even if she had to admit he was probably right.
“We’ve got our strength and you are wasting yours.”
Reluctantly, Anna turned away to join him on the floor.
“KK,” he offered, extending a hand.
She shook it.
“Anna. I take it you aren’t really the maintenance guy?”
He gave her a wry look. “Actually, I am. I do all of Donna’s houses. That’s how I met Catherine. She’s tried to kill me every time I’ve attempted to fix that pipe.”
Curse of the Nun Page 5