Oh, God.
Maybe he was inside. Waiting.
Gooseflesh broke out on her skin. She should call out to someone, but if she did, she would be restrained, medicated…or worse. Stop it, Faith. Don’t get paranoid! But the glittering eyes in the closet watched her. She felt them. Wrapping one arm around her middle, the other folded over it, she scraped her nails on the skin of her elbow.
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
But maybe this was all a dream. A nightmare. Wasn’t that what the nuns had assured her in their soft whispered voices as they gently patted her hands and stared at her with compassionate, disbelieving eyes? A dream. A nightmare of vast, intense proportions. Even the nurse had agreed with the nuns, telling her that what she’d thought she’d seen wasn’t real. And the doctor, cold, clinical, with the bedside manner of a stone monkey, had talked to her as if she were a small child.
“There, there, Faith, no one is following you,” he’d said, wearing a thin patronizing smile. “No one is watching you. You know that. You’re…you’re just confused. You’re safe here. Remember, this is your home now.”
Tears burned her eyes and she scratched more anxiously, her short fingernails running over the smooth skin of her forearm, encountering scabs. Home? This monstrous place? She closed her eyes, grabbed the headboard of the bed to steady herself.
Was she really as sick as they said? Did she really see people who weren’t there? That’s what they’d told her, time and time again, to the point that she was no longer certain what was real and what was not. Maybe that was the plot against her, to make her believe she was as crazy as they insisted she was.
She heard a footstep and looked up quickly.
The hairs on the backs of her arms rose.
She began to shake as she saw the closet door crack open a bit more.
“Sweet Jesus.” Trembling, she backed up, her gaze fixed on the closet, her fingers scraping her forearm like mad. The door creaked open in slow motion. “Go away!” she whispered, her stomach knotting as full-blown terror took root.
A weapon! You need a weapon!
Anxiously, she looked around the near-dark room with its bed bolted to the floor.
Get your letter opener! Now!
She took one step toward the desk before she remembered
that Sister Madeline had taken the letter opener away from her.
The lamp on the night table!
But it, too, was screwed down.
She pressed the switch.
Click.
No great wash of light. Frantically, she hit the switch again. Over and over.
Click. Click. Click.
She looked up and saw him, then. A tall man, looming in front of the door to the hallway. It was too dark to see his features but she knew his wicked smile was in place, his eyes glinting with an evil need.
He was Satan incarnate. And there was no way to get away from him. There never was.
“Please don’t,” she begged, her voice sounding pathetic and weak as she backed up, her legs quivering.
“Please don’t what?”
Don’t touch me…don’t place your fingers anywhere on my body…don’t tell me I’m beautiful…don’t kiss me…
“Leave now,” she insisted. Dear God, was there no weapon, nothing to stop him?
“Leave now or what?”