Perfect Nightmare

But they hadn’t stopped even then.

They’d put things in him, too — a broom handle and pop bottles and—

He wanted to shut it out, but he couldn’t. As the terrible memories of what had happened in the playhouse so many years ago — not only on his birthday, but so many times afterward — began to unwind in his mind, Patrick felt his sanity beginning to unwind as well. And now the voice was whispering in his mind again, telling him things he didn’t want to hear. But he could no more stop listening to it than he could stop remembering everything that had happened now that the memories had returned. “We liked it,” the voice whispered. “Didn’t we like it?”

“No!” Patrick howled. “It was wrong! It was all wrong!”

“But we didn’t stop!”

“She made me,” Patrick whimpered, cowering back from the kaleidoscope of images and memories that were not only all around him, but exploding in his mind as well. “Claire made me! She and—”

“We liked it!” the voice screamed. “We loved it!”

“It was wrong!” Patrick howled. “Mommy should have—”

“ ‘Mommy’ didn’t care,” the voice snarled. “Look at her — she’s sitting right there, but she’s not doing anything, is she? She’s just smiling and being happy!”

The voice was right! The woman bound to the chair, who looked almost exactly like his mother when he’d been a little boy, was just watching silently, smiling at what was happening.

But she wasn’t smiling, not really! The smile was just painted onto the tape that covered her mouth.

“Kill her,” the voice in his head commanded. “She wouldn’t help you then, so kill her. Kill her now!”

Patrick’s fingers tightened on something in his hand, and he looked down curiously at the poker he was gripping. Where had it come from?

“Patrick! Why are you doing this?”

He looked down at the woman on the floor. What was she doing here? Her face seemed vaguely familiar, but in the confusion whirling in his mind, he couldn’t quite place her. Was she a friend of his parents?

Or had Claire brought her?

But it didn’t matter who she was — if she was a friend of Claire's, she was going to do the same terrible things to him that Claire and Susanna did, and even if she didn’t, she would know.

She would know all the terrible things that had happened.

He raised the poker high.

“Patrick, listen to me!” the woman on the floor shouted. “It’s Kara!”

Kara… Kara… Kara. The name echoed through Patrick’s mind and seemed to bounce off the walls of the tiny playhouse. Suddenly he felt as if he were suffocating. The ceiling was way too low, and there wasn’t enough air, and there were too many candles, too much fire.

Too much fire, like—

Now a new memory burst out of his subconscious.

Last Christmas, in the house in Vermont, the house that had burned.

And now, in the flickering glow of the candlelit playhouse, he could see it all. His girls — Jenna and Chrissie. In their rooms, lying in their beds, deep in sleep. He’d stood at their doors watching them in the moonlight as they slept.

“We had to do it,” the voice whispered in his head. “They were going to tell on us. They were going to tell their mother what we were doing to them—”

“Not us!” Patrick bellowed as the full memory of what he’d done to his daughters exploded in his mind. “You! It was you!”

“I am you!” the voice taunted. “I’ve always been you, doing all the things you wanted to do but were too afraid to do! You’re a coward, Patrick! You’ve always been a coward!”

And finally all the confusion in his mind cleared away, and the playhouse seemed to fade around him. He was back in Vermont, watching as his house and his family were consumed by flames.

Flames from the fire he himself had set.

Flames that had been smoldering inside him ever since he was a boy, and Claire had brought him here, and his nightmare had begun.

His perfect nightmare.

A nightmare so perfect he’d shut it out completely, even while he’d lived it.

All because of—

“We have to kill them,” the voice commanded him. “If we don’t, they’re going to tell, just like Jenna and Chrissie were going to tell! We have to, Patrick! Do it!”

Patrick raised the poker high, its spur hovering over the head of the woman on the floor.

“Kill her!” the voice howled.

And the poker started its downward arc…

“Patrick!” Kara tried to scuttle away, but there was no place to go — she was already pressed against the wall. But as the poker moved toward her, she lunged away, and it slammed into the playhouse’s miniature sideboard instead of her head. As the sideboard shattered, the candles it had supported flew across the room, hot wax spattering everywhere. Patrick raised the poker and swung again, but again Kara ducked away, lurching against the table. More candles crashed to the floor, and now the thick paper covering the windows caught fire, and as the flames began to spread, Patrick paused in his flailing, staring mutely at the growing blaze. Then his eyes shifted to Kara. His lips were working, but the confusion of words that had been pouring from his lips stopped.

“I loved them,” he whispered, his eyes still on Kara. “Believe me. I loved them.” Then, as the flames seemed to reach toward him, Patrick Shields vanished through the trapdoor in the playhouse floor.

As Lindsay screamed in terror, Kara tore at the tape that bound Ellen to the chair, ripping at it with her fingernails until finally one foot came free. Then she went to work on one of her daughter’s wrists, until finally Lindsay was able to jerk her hand loose, roll onto her side and, with her free hand, tear away the tape that bound the other hand. Kara dropped down to the floor to untape the woman’s legs.

“I’ll do that,” Lindsay yelled, jerking her other hand free and ripping the tape from her wrist. “Put out the fire!”

But the fire was now engulfing the tiny chamber.

Patrick shambled through the tunnel, the poker still clutched in his hand, the memories of everything he’d done threatening to overwhelm him with every step, to push him over into an insanity from which he knew he would never recover.

Nor even want to recover.

But not yet… not yet.

Not quite yet.

The tunnel seemed to go on forever, but then he came to the door at the other end, and found himself gazing at Neville Cavanaugh.

For a moment the two men stared at each other blankly, then Neville reflexively stepped back. “Mr. Shields, what are you—” he began. Then he heard screams echo through the tunnel and saw the yellowish glow of fire piercing the blackness at the far end. “Dear God, what have you done!” he cried as the shouts echoing in the tunnel grew louder. Seeing the insanity in his employer’s eyes, he took another step back.

“Not me!” Patrick howled. Blindly, he raised the poker and slashed it down, sinking its iron spur deep into Neville Cavanaugh’s skull. “Not me,” he said again, his voice breaking. “It was never me.”

Stepping over Neville’s body, he lurched across the concrete floor of the basement and staggered up the stairs, into the library, then out through the open door to the terrace.

For a moment he stood perfectly still, gazing out over the broad lawn that swept down to the water. Off to the left he could barely make out the shape of the mausoleum, which was almost hidden by the smoke curling out from the playhouse.

He dropped the bloody poker on the flagstones, and the last details of the nightmare he’d suppressed for so long came starkly into focus.

It hadn’t been a nightmare at all.