Before I Wake (12 page)

Arden followed.

They went back through the dining room and living room, up the stairs.

The first floor had been bad enough, with green shag carpet and loud floral wallpaper, but the second floor was even more tasteless.

Same horrid carpet. More wallpaper. Everywhere.

Every single surface shouted at you. Floral stripes of mauve and hunter green. Another room with about ten shades of pink.

Executed for bad taste.

It made perfect sense.

Avocado-green fixtures in the bathroom. It could have been a cool retro look if not for the fact that this wasn’t retro and had been done in total seriousness. A teenage girl had been taking a shower at the time of the slaughter, and had grabbed the shower curtain as she went down.

The plastic curtain was gold.

“The shower ran so long that the well went dry,” the tour guide said. “Just a trickle by the time police arrived on the scene approximately twelve hours after the murders.”

They left the bathroom.

“The nearest neighbors realized something was wrong when the cattle got hungry and started bawling and raising a ruckus.”

The blond officer paused in front of another door. “This is the saddest one.”

The camera turned.

A nursery.

Finally a room that had a bit of taste. Recently redecorated with Peter Rabbit decor. In the white crib lay a dead infant.

“A girl,” the guide said, her voice suddenly tight. “Throat slit. You’d think he could have… I don’t know, smothered her instead.”

She broke down.

The person operating the camera made some kind of noise, some sound of sympathy, but that only made her cry harder.

The screen turned black. Two seconds later the tour guide was back. She’d recovered from her crying fit. In fact, they weren’t even in the house anymore; they were in a barn.

“The father had been out in the field,” the woman explained. “He’d parked the tractor and was heading inside for supper when he was killed.”

A man’s body hung upside down from a rope and pulley.

“We’re going to get the bastard who did this,” the officer said. “Get him and make sure he fries.”

Why was she taking it so personally? Arden wondered. Didn’t she know it was all a game?

The video ended. The screen went blank.

Arden pushed herself up off the floor and was back in the wheelchair just as light flooded the room.

“How are you feeling?” the nurse asked from the doorway, her hand on the switch.

“Better.” Arden smiled. “Much better.” The video had cheered her up. Was that wrong? It didn’t seem wrong.

Nathan Fury stood to the side of the one-way glass, hands in his pockets, waiting in semidarkness. The glass was his window to a small, sterile room with bright overhead fluorescent lighting, industrial gray carpet, and white walls.

As he watched, the door opened and a nurse entered pushing a wheelchair with Arden Davis slumped in the seat.

“She looks bad,” Fury told Harris, who stood nearby, arms crossed at his chest. To Harris’s right, seated at a control panel, was a technician who was there to record and document Arden’s post-dewatering and indoctrination responses.

Arden’s hair was stringy. Uncombed. Her eyes were dark pits. Someone had dressed her in a hospital gown, a lightweight green robe, and blue slippers.

It didn’t seem to be enough clothing.

“She looks pretty good, all things considered,” Harris said. He wore a white lab coat with his name embroidered above the pocket. Beneath the hem of the coat was a pair of razor-creased dress pants and shiny leather shoes.

Was she cold? Fury wondered. She looked cold.

He could barely recall his own “awakening” from isolation. And of course he’d been in the tank. Different situation. New protocol dictated that the subjects experience isolation and deprivation in the comfort of a small Mercy Unit room.

The nurse pushed the wheelchair to the center of the room. She locked the wheels, then leaned forward and patted Arden on the shoulder. “Someone will be in shortly.” Her voice was piped from the microphoned room. “Are you comfortable?”

Arden didn’t respond.

The nurse straightened, glanced up at the glass, turned, and left the room, closing the door behind her.

“Is she okay?” Fury asked.

“We’re watching her vitals. They’re fine. She’s healthy. Strong.”

Fury wasn’t talking about her vitals.

“Her present condition is the result of drugs, stress, deprogramming, and sleep deprivation,” Dr. Harris said. “She’ll come around fairly quickly once the drugs are out of her system. You’ll see.”

Harris motioned to Arden behind the glass. “There you go. She’s all yours. Remember that she’ll be confused. She may not recall certain recent events, but most of that memory loss should be temporary.”

Fury left the control room and entered the follow-up room. Three metal chairs with plastic seats were lined up against one wall. He grabbed a chair and placed it in front of Arden, sitting so they were face-to-face.

“Hi, Arden.” He spoke quietly.

She didn’t react.

He reached for one of her hands. It was like ice. He picked up her other hand and rubbed them between both of his.

She tugged her hands away. “What are you doing?” Her voice was a harsh, annoyed whisper.

“Do you remember me?” He hadn’t meant to word it quite like that.

She had to give it some thought. “The FBI agent?”

“That’s right. Nathan Fury.”

“Fury.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Tired.” Her voice came out a whisper. “I want to sleep.”

“As soon as we’re done here, you can go to bed. I just need to ask you a few questions.” Fury rubbed a hand across his face. “You just saw a film, remember?”

She nodded.

“About a murder.”

Again the nod.

“I want you to tell me what you know about the perpetrator. About the person who committed the crimes.”

She ran a tongue across her lips and stared into space. “A man. A man who’s intelligent.” Her tone was worshiping. “More intelligent than most men.”

Fury tried not to let her unnerving attitude toward the murderer shake him. “Did you notice anything peculiar about the crime scene? Anything that may have clued you in, that may have given you information about the killer?”

She sat there awhile, head down, face hidden by her hair, seemingly staring at the floor. Had she fallen asleep?

“Was it real?” she asked. “Or a movie?”

“It was real.” She’d probably told herself it was a movie just to get through it. Some people did that.

“Okay.” She was silent a moment. “It was Albert French.”

Fury knew they’d fed her fresh information on French—the personal interview done a few days before his execution.

“He would have left there on a blood high,” she said without emotion. “He’ll probably take a few days off. A week, maybe two; then he’ll strike again.”

Unlike serial killers, who sometimes disappeared for months, even years at a time, spree killers, mass murderers, could never get enough. As soon as the blood high wore off, they were at it again.

“It wasn’t French,” Fury said.

“What do you mean?” Her voice rose.

“French is dead. He was executed. The murders you saw on film occurred after his death.”

She raised her head to look directly at Fury. Her eyes narrowed. “I was just talking to him.”

“That was a recording. Made before his execution.”

“You’re lying. He’s not dead,” she insisted. “I can feel him. I’d know if he was dead.”

Her response wasn’t a surprise. The idea of indoctrination was to make the subject feel one with the killer. How else could she get into his head? But it was still unnerving as hell to see her choosing sides.
French’s
side.

She thought the recording had been live. That was understandable, given the circumstances and the fragility of her mind.

Arden stared at him with bruised, intense, burning, fanatical eyes. “Albert French was talking to me in the tank.”

Fury’s stomach dropped. “Wh-what?”

“He was talking to me in the tank.”

“You haven’t been in the tank.”

She was mixing up her most recent visit with that of several months ago. He leaned closer. “You’re confused, Arden.” He spoke softly. “We don’t use the tanks anymore.”

She frowned and seemed to be focusing on something inside her head. “Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“Why should I believe you? Why should I trust you?”

Because I love you
, he thought. “Because I have your best interest in mind,” he said.

The shadow people were running again.

Vera felt the vibration as they raced down the hall.

Her room was dark.

She fumbled on the bedside table, her stiff fingers coming in contact with one of her hearing aids. Lying on her back in bed, she worked the small, awkward piece into her ear.

Footfalls; then she heard the shadow people sniffing at the crack under her door.

Vera wanted to turn on a lamp, but she was afraid the light and noise would attract the intruders, draw them to her. Then they would know she was inside the room and they’d come after her.

If she held very still, maybe they’d move on to another door, another part of the building.

What they wanted with an old hen like her, she didn’t know. What they would want with any of the dried-up residents was a puzzle.

Maybe it was the building that attracted them.

A lot of bad things had gone on inside these walls. A lot of horrible, horrible things.

Bad things left an imprint on a place. The kind of imprint shadow people could sense.

No matter how still Vera remained, she couldn’t keep her heart from racing, from pumping so frantically that anybody would have been able to hear it a block away. And the fear. She was sure she smelled like fear.

The sniffing stopped.

Whatever was out there continued on down the hall.

She forced herself to move, to get out of bed and hurry to the drawer where she kept the knives and scissors.

Residents were discouraged from having sharp things, but to hell with that, Vera had always said.

With a knife in her hand, she stood there breathing hard, barely able to make out vague shapes.

A table.

An overstuffed chair.

The door to her studio apartment was secured with a gadget she’d ordered off the TV. One end went against the door, the other end against the floor. You had to pull a lever to set the whole thing. The lever was hard to pull, and Vera was always afraid she hadn’t gotten it tight enough.

They were coming back.

She could hear them.

Running in a pack.

Mob mentality.

They paused outside her door, all slobbering and out of breath from their mad run.

The doorknob rattled.

Oh, my God.

The knob turned.

The door shuddered, as if something heavy had thrown itself against it.

The shadow people are coming.

Vera backed toward the bathroom. With a jerk, she stepped inside the small space, slamming the door behind her.

No lock.

A safety feature, so employees could get to you if you needed help. Or if you decided to drown yourself, which she’d considered a time or two. Who wouldn’t, in a place like this? But what about the shadow people? Hadn’t anybody thought about them? About keeping them out?

Vera wore thin cotton pajamas. Her feet were bare and the tile floor was cold.

Times like these, she missed her husband.

Simon had been fearless. He’d watched out for her. He would have been able to fight the shadow people.

But Vera was old. Her bones were fragile and her ropy blue veins were close to the surface, just hiding under rice-paper skin. You wouldn’t know it now, but when she was young she’d been quite a looker. She used to swim. Hours a day sometimes, so her body had been hard and strong.

Not anymore.

The door to her apartment crashed open.

She imagined the shadow people searching the room, finding her empty bed.

Footsteps sounded on the wooden floor outside the bathroom.

Since when did shadows wear shoes?

The world was such a strange place, so different from when she was young. When she was a kid, shadows were just shadows. They didn’t move and sound like people.

She’d deliberately left off the light. But that had probably been a bad idea. Shadows were nocturnal. They could see at night, but she couldn’t. A most unlevel playing field.

For some reason, she was no longer afraid.

She’d been staring at death a long time.

Her husband was gone. Her friends were gone. The only people left were ones she could do without, like the daughter-in-law who’d tricked her into coming here.

Bitch.

Oh, she’d much rather have died peacefully in her sleep, but how many people got that lucky?

Very few.

But that knowledge didn’t keep her from putting up a fight. She tried to hold the bathroom door closed, but the shadow was much stronger.

The door flew open.

That’s when everything sped up and slowed down.

The shadow walked upright like a human. It was wearing something—a hooded sweatshirt.

It could have very well been a man. Any man. For a moment she wondered if it
was
a man, if she was confused the way she got confused sometimes.

It grabbed for her and she sidestepped, lifting the knife, plunging it at the dark shape above her, striking nothing but air. Something struck her once, twice, in the chest. The knife slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor.

She felt cold steel against her neck, against her throat. With one swift slicing movement, her jugular was cut.

Air hissed and blood bubbled, erupting and spilling hotly down the front of her pajama top.

So hard to get out blood… When she had that miscarriage and Simon had wrapped her in a sheet and hurried her to the hospital, she thought she’d never get the blood out.

The floor was slick.

She lost her balance; her feet went out from under her.

Oopsie-daisy.

That was okay, because she was sinking fast anyway.

She fell over backward, her legs striking the edge of the claw-foot tub. She grabbed at the plastic shower curtain as she went down.

The world was so much meaner now, so much more disturbing.

She was tired of this life. Ready to leave.

She’d had enough.

Life was crazy; then you got killed by shadow people.