Perfect Nightmare

beyond even hearing. The man’s voice rose querulously. “I’m not having a good time,” he said. “Perhaps I shall have to discipline you.”

He rose from his chair, went to Shannon, and picked up her cup of hot water. Then he lifted her head by clutching her hair and tried to pour the scalding water into her mouth. It dribbled down off the tape and ran — red with the ink from her grotesquely painted smile — onto her chest.

As the scalding water hit her skin, Shannon’s body convulsed and her eyes snapped open. A muted moan penetrated the cotton in her mouth as she tried to scream, but the tape over her lips all but silenced it. “Drink your tea,” the man demanded. “Drink it!” Abruptly, he shoved Shannon, and her chair went over backward. “And you,” he said wheeling around to glower at Lindsay. “I thought better of you — I thought you had manners!” He came toward her, moving slowly, and Lindsay’s heart started to hammer. She couldn’t get enough air through her nostrils, and for a moment thought she was going to pass out.

“Drink your tea,” he demanded.

There was nothing she could do but nod eagerly, doing her best to communicate that she would.

She would if she could.

“You will play with me!” the man cried. “You will play whatever I want to play. Don’t you understand? You have to play with me!” Suddenly, he was behind her, cutting through the tape around her wrists and ankles, and with a terrible clarity, she knew what he was about to do.

Then, exactly as she had foreseen it, it happened. He hauled her to her feet and threw her onto the little table. She felt shards of china cut into her as she landed on the tea set, and the sugar bowl and creamer shattered beneath her weight.

As he loomed over her, she saw her chance. While he fumbled with his pants, she brought her foot up, smashing it directly into his crotch with a kick so hard its strength surprised even her.

She saw the shock and pain in the man’s eyes as he doubled over and fell to the floor, writhing and groaning.

Instantly, Lindsay rolled off the table, scrambled to her feet, and raced to the chamber’s tiny door.

Too late, she saw the hasp and padlock.

As he struggled to get back to his feet, she darted to the trapdoor, stumbled down the stairs, and plunged through the darkness of the tunnel until she came to the room where he kept them when he wasn’t toying with them in the playroom.

Now she heard him stumbling behind her, and tore the tape and cotton from her mouth as she tried to make herself move faster. But she could hardly see in the gloom, and if she tripped—

Her thoughts were suddenly cut off by a sharp pain in her back. She whirled, and there he was, right behind her, holding a ski pole as if it were a fencing sword. As Lindsay cowered, he jabbed at her, the point at the end of the pole jabbing first her leg, then her stomach. She squealed and tried to turn away, only to feel the next jab in her side.

He was working his way higher, moving toward her face.

Her face, and her eyes.

“No!” she begged, hunching over, trying to protect herself.

The point of the pole was dancing around her now, and then she grabbed the end of it, trying to jerk it away from him, but he pulled back hard and she lost her footing.

Crying out in terror and agony, she crumpled to the floor. A moment later the man had her and was dragging her toward her mattress.

Then she was lying on her back, gasping and staring up at the terrible smile painted on the mask.

“I’m angry,” he said. “So angry I’m going to punish you. I don’t want to, but I have to.”

“Just let us go,” Lindsay said. “Please, just leave us alone.”

He gave no sign of even hearing her as he cuffed her to the wall. Then, as she watched helplessly — hopelessly — he held her water bottle high above her and let the water slowly pour out of it onto the floor.

“Bad girl,” he said, as if talking to a recalcitrant puppy. When it was empty, he tossed the bottle into the corner and disappeared back into the tunnel.

As she lay panting on the mattress, fighting the pain in her body and the terror in her soul, Lindsay heard the terrible words begin to echo in her mind yet again.

I’m going to die… I’m going to die… I’m going to die…

And slowly, as the rhythm of the words took over her mind, Lindsay realized that maybe she no longer cared.

Maybe death would be better than whatever the man was planning to do with her next.

For the first time, she began to sob.

Chapter Thirty-four

Useless, Dawn D'Angelo thought. It’s all useless. We should all be out doing something! The problem was, there wasn’t anything else to do, so she and the rest of Lindsay’s friends were gathered in Sharon Spandler’s office, getting everything ready for the vigil tonight. A vigil, Dawn thought. Like she’s dead.

She gazed down at one of the three hundred copies of Lindsay’s junior class picture — three hundred copies that she’d been pressing one by one onto buttons to pass out at the vigil tonight — and struggled not to start crying again. Crying, she reminded herself, wouldn’t do Lindsay any good at all. And maybe — just maybe — the vigil would attract enough attention from the TV people so that someone, somewhere, would recall seeing Lindsay sometime during the last week.

Taking a deep breath, she carefully placed one of the miniature pictures facedown onto the button blank, placed the back piece onto the picture, then leaned her weight down on the lever that crimped the pin together with Lindsay’s image protected beneath a layer of transparent plastic. She pulled the pin from the machine and assessed her work.

Straight.

Perfectly centered.

Lindsay looked beautiful, her hair long, her makeup perfect, her face surrounded by dark green letters that read FIND LINDSAY along with the 800 number the Marshalls had set up. She added the pin to the box holding the hundred-odd others she’d already completed and set up the next one.

The rest of the cheerleaders were gluing Lindsay’s photograph to signs, and as she watched them, Dawn wondered if they felt as frustrated as she did that there wasn’t something more they could do. Somehow, all this seemed… she searched her mind for the right word, and finally one came: useless. While Lindsay was going through whatever horrible thing had happened to her, all she and the rest of her friends could do was make buttons and posters and hold a candlelight vigil.

Like a vigil was going to find Lindsay!

Tina McCormick sighed, put down her last poster, and looked at Dawn as if she’d read her thoughts. “This isn’t going to do any good at all, is it?” she said.

Oddly, hearing her own thoughts spoken out loud instantly transformed Dawn’s frustration into anger. “Don’t be stupid, Tina. Of course it is. The problem is, we can’t do enough!”

“We can only do what we can do,” Sharon Spandler said, setting six boxes of candles on the table between Tina and Dawn. “At least that’s what my grandma’s always saying. Can you start passing these out, Tina? Consuela says there’s already almost a hundred people in front of the gym.”

As Tina left and Dawn began putting together another pin, Hugh Tarlington, who had taken over as principal of Camden Green High only last fall, peered into the room from the doorway. “How are we doing?”

“We’re ready,” someone said.

Dawn pressed down on another button.

“Good,” Tarlington said. As the rest of the girls began trooping out the door past the principal, their arms full