Perfect Nightmare

Chapter Fifty-two

“Patrick!”

The voice seemed to come from far away.

It was calling his name, screaming at him: “Patrick!”

And again, louder: “Patrick!”

Patrick wanted to answer, but it was as if he was asleep and couldn’t wake up; as if someone were calling him in a dream, and even though he wanted to respond, to call back, he couldn’t.

He couldn’t do anything; couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, could barely even breathe. It was as if he was bound in something, as if spiderwebs were wrapped around him, webs so fine he couldn’t see them, but that nonetheless held him in their grip.

The voice came again, howling out his name, and Patrick struggled to free himself from the bonds at least enough to speak, to let whoever was calling to him know that he was there. And he was there, he knew it. He was not asleep, though he felt as though he was; not caught up in a nightmare, though it seemed as if a nightmare was what it had to be.

The voice screamed his name yet again, and his mind began to focus. There was light all around him; but not bright light, not the light from the chandelier in the library or the lamp by his bedside.

Candlelight.

That’s what it was: candlelight. Glowing all around him, bathing the room in a warm, golden glow.

Now the room itself came into a strange kind of focus. A small room, with small furniture.

The playhouse! That’s where he was — the playhouse halfway down the lawn, where Claire and her friends —

Claire!

Was that who was calling him? He looked around, trying to see if his sister was there, but he couldn’t quite see out of his own eyes. Something seemed to be blocking his vision.

“Go back to sleep!” a new voice whispered, and this time Patrick recognized it right away: it was his own voice. But how could it be, since he hadn’t spoken and wasn’t asleep? The voice inside him spoke again: “Go on. Go back to sleep. You want to go back to sleep. I know you want to go back to sleep, and so do you. So do it. Do what you want to do, and then I will do what we want to do, just like I always have.”

As the voice whispered to him, Patrick felt himself starting to relax, to obey it and drift into the dark and gentle quiet of sleep.

But then he heard the other voice calling to him again. Not Claire’s voice, but a familiar voice, a voice he knew.

A voice he liked.

“Patrick! Patrick, what are you doing?”

Kara!

Kara Marshall! That’s who it was. And he was holding her, his arms wrapped so tightly around her, he was hurting her. But what was she doing in the playhouse? No one ever went into the playhouse anymore, not since he’d boarded it up. Even his daughters had never been allowed in the playhouse. But now Kara was here and—

“She doesn’t belong,” the other voice — the voice inside him — said. “She shouldn’t be here, and neither should you. Go back to sleep and let me do what we want to do. Go back to sleep, and I will make everything all right. And no one will ever tell.”

Tell? Tell what? He shoved Kara aside and twisted his head as she crumpled to the floor. Then, for an instant, it seemed that the hand covering his eyes fell away, and he saw the girl sprawled out on the table, lying on her back, staring up at him with terrified eyes.

Why?

Why was she afraid of him?

Then he saw the girl in the chair, the girl whose head was lolling over, the girl who wasn’t moving at all.

And another one.

A young woman, who looked familiar. She was bound to one of the little chairs — the chairs Claire and her friends had sat in when they were children.

When they were children, and they’d brought him in here, and—

The vision of what had happened here so many years ago began to take shape in his mind, and he wanted to turn away, to disappear back into the cradling arms of unconsciousness, where the terrible memories of the past could do him no harm.

“That’s right,” the voice in his head urged him. “Go to sleep, Patrick. Let me deal with it. I dealt with it then, and I’ve dealt with it all our life and I will deal with it now. And you won’t be any part of it. Not any part of it at all!”

As the voice whispered to him, and Patrick felt the bliss of unconsciousness wrap him in its comforting darkness, he was barely aware of yanking from the wall the heavy iron poker that Kara Marshall had swung at him a moment earlier.

Kara could hear Patrick’s voice, but the words made no sense. Who was he talking to? Since he’d let her tumble to the floor, he hadn’t looked at her. Now, with the poker gripped in his right hand, he was gazing around the room as if he didn’t know where he was. And when he spoke, the words didn’t make any sense. Deal with what? What was he talking about?

Then she saw something in his eyes change, and it was as if she was looking at a completely different person. This wasn’t the Patrick Shields she knew. This wasn’t the man who had been at her side so much of the last two weeks, lending her the strength to cope with everything that had happened to her. His features were the same, but this wasn’t Patrick. It couldn’t be!

“Patrick!” she screamed again. “Patrick, for God’s sake, help us! Help me!”

The face looming above her winced as if something had struck it, and then she saw something different in the eyes again.

She saw Patrick…

As Kara’s voice pulled him back again from the brink of the blissful oblivion of unconsciousness, Patrick saw the macabre scene around him in terrible clarity, but this time he shut out the dark whisperings inside his head and let the images — and the memories they called up — speak for themselves.

The memories he’d buried so deep and for so long that he’d forgotten they were there suddenly leaped up at him, dancing and weaving in the flickering candlelight in a dark ballet he wished he could turn away from but knew he could not.

In his mind, he went back to the last birthday party he could remember being held in this playhouse. He’d been six, and his real birthday party — the one his mother held for him — had ended hours ago. He’d been in his room when Claire came to tell him she had a special present for him — a present she and her best friend had in the playhouse.

He’d followed her eagerly, wondering what the present was, and when they were in the playhouse, there were candles burning.

Just like now.

And Claire’s friend had been lying on the table.

Just like Lindsay Marshall was lying on the table now.

“We’re going to play house,” Claire explained as she locked the door with the key, then put the key in her pocket. “Only we’re going to play it the way real grown-ups play it.”

He hadn’t understood at first, but then, when Claire started taking his clothes off, he began to understand.

Then Claire started touching him, and so did her friend, and then—

He didn’t want to remember any more of it, didn’t want to remember all the things they’d done to him, the way they’d tied him to the table so he couldn’t fight back, or even move. It wasn’t just his arms and legs they’d tied. No. They’d tied thick twine in places they shouldn’t have touched him, and then pulled it tight.

So tight he could still feel the agony in his groin.