Eddie thought about it a moment longer.
Saw himself doing the Bundy thing.
And stayed right where he was.
Shit, he was tired of running. Tired of fighting. The crazy flight to freedom that had begun at one of the several checkpoints Below had taken too much out of him. Just getting this far had required a nearly superhuman effort. He was drained. Out of gas. Which was why he’d fallen asleep in such short order. He yawned, rubbed his bleary eyes, and slumped back against the wall.
How long had he been out?
Ten minutes?
Fifteen.
Just long enough to slip into dream mode.
Hell, he thought, I could sleep again right now.
Let the little goth girl bring the reinforcements.
Maybe they’d do him the favor of killing him while he slept. He felt ready for that ultimate acquiescence. He’d prefer an eternal sleep to another six months-or longer-Below. He was beginning to think he might even prefer it to a renewed effort to get out of this place, mostly because escape didn’t seem possible. He suspected he was a rat in a glass-covered maze, and The Master was watching his every move, laughing softly to himself at each of Eddie’s hopeless attempts to extricate himself from this nightmare.
The hell with fighting this impossible battle.
Better just to sit here and await the inevitable.
But as Eddie sat there considering surrender, he was troubled by thoughts of how far he had come, how tantalizingly close those visions of freedom regained had seemed to becoming reality. The prospect of just giving up ignited an ache in his heart, pangs of regret that taunted him like the remarks of crude schoolyard bullies.
Yeah, Eddie, take the easy way out.
You wouldn’t want to put yourself out.
You fucking wimp.
What’s the big deal, anyway?
It’s only your life we’re talking about.
He thought about being free again. A free man in a free land. He thought again about how things would change if he ever accomplished that goal. He knew one thing-his days with the company were over, regardless of whether they would take him back after an extended and unexplainable absence. The idea of surviving this insane place only to plunge back into the corporate realm was laughable. He would liquidate whatever property and holdings remained, sell all his personal possessions, and venture forth into the world. He would savor every sunrise and every sunset. He would visit other lands all over the globe. He would find that island girl or one very much like her. Most of all, he would never take anything for granted ever again.
The closet door swung open again, admitting a sliver of light.
Something pointed and hard struck his shin.
It felt like the tip of a high-heeled shoe.
“Ouch.”
He looked up and saw the face of the mute girl.
She was alone.
Well, that was curious. Where were the reinforcements? Where was lisa the housekeeper?
Why am I not dead? he thought.
The mystery deepened as she beckoned him forward with a bent forefinger.
Eddie cleared his throat. “Um … you want me to get up?”
She nodded.
Eddie sighed. “Sure, whatever.”
Something vaguely like a smile touched the corners of her mouth, and he didn’t even detect a spark of malice in it. Then she swirled out of the room again, leaving Eddie to ponder the bewildering turn of events.
Enigmatic, Eddie thought.
God, I hate that in a woman.
Eddie walked out of the closet and entered the bedroom. The girl was sitting at a small round table in a corner of the room. She looked up as he stepped into the room. There was an unoccupied chair next to her. Eddie steeled himself for any weirdness that was about to ensue, and sat down next to her.
There was a pad of paper on the table, pink teenage girl’s stationery. The girl’s gaze shifted to the empty page before her, dipped a pen in an ink quill, shook it, and began to write.
Eddie grunted. “Huh … a quill pen. How … retro.”
Eddie wanted to slap himself-the weirdness of the situation had apparently rendered him incapable of intelligent discourse.
She turned the pad toward him, fixed him with a serious gaze, and tapped the top page with the pen.
Eddie looked at what she had written.
YOU ARE PROBABLY WONDERING WHY I HAVEN’T SUMMONED THE MASTER.
Eddie raised an eyebrow. “Well, now that you mention it, yeah.”
She repositioned the pad and wrote some more. Eddie’s eyes followed the words as she penned them with finely turned strokes.
BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT HERE BY CHANCE.
Eddie was suddenly apprehensive again, recalling the passing thought he’d had at the last checkpoint-that he was being herded instead of chased. Well, here was the first inkling that bit of intuition wasn’t so far off track.
He tried to keep the fear out of his voice as he said, “So … why am I here?”
She dipped the quill in ink and wrote some more.
I SUMMONED YOU.
Eddie gaped at her. “But… why?”
I AM NOT READY TO TELL YOU THAT, she wrote.
Eddie squinted at the infuriating words. “Not… ready… to … tell… me.” He cleared his throat. “Well, that’s just great. You let me know when you can spare a minute to clue me in to whatever sadistic game you and The Master are playing.”
He started to get up.
“Meanwhile, I’ll catch some shut-eye.”
She hissed at him, displaying rows of perfect teeth as white as oysters-movie-star teeth. Eddie’s upward motion ceased, and his eyes widened at the incongruous sight. She was one of the loveliest women he’d ever seen, possessed of a delicate beauty that made his little soldier want to stand up and salute, and yet she looked so vicious.
So deadly.
He sat back down.
The feral quality vanished from her face, and her attention returned to the page of pink stationery, where one slim, pale hand was again spinning beautifully rendered handwriting from margin to margin at a startling speed. She filled half the page, then turned the pad toward him.
Eddie read with mild interest some dry biographical information about the girl, but boredom gave way to shock and terror as his gaze moved down the page.
Her name was Giselle Burkhardt, and she’d first come to this place in 1973, when she’d been seventeen years old and a senior in high school.
Eddie’s brow wrinkled at that bit of impossible information-Christ, the girl looked seventeen right now, thirty years after the claimed date of her arrival in The Master’s world.
But that was easy to swallow compared to what came next.
She’d been on what was to be her last vacation with her family before embarking on a new phase of her life-college in New England. The car carrying her parents and younger brother experienced engine trouble east of Chattanooga, and her father had been forced to pull off the highway. Thus began a long night of terror that culminated with the mutilation deaths of her parents. Her brother was taken to another room, and she was chained and stuffed in a crawl space, where she remained until The Master was ready to initiate the second phase of her indoctrination. She was removed from the crawl space and tortured by Ms. Wickman until she was screaming her willingness to do anything to end her agony.
Her brother was brought before her.
She remembered how heartbreakingly brave he’d looked as he stood there trembling.
It hadn’t been easy.
She wanted Eddie to know that.
But the pain was more than she could take. And she knew they could keep inflicting pain every bit the equal of what she’d already experienced-and perhaps worse-should she refuse to do their bidding.
She didn’t refuse.