All at once they heard footsteps rushing up the stairs. Heavy. Not one of the kids.
Julie gripped Wes’s arm.
An instant later their bedroom door burst open. A blinding beam of light stabbed in. “Police! Freeze!”
Wes raised a hand to shield his eyes. “Wha…?”
“Keep your hands where I can see them, Mr. Welsh,” a harsh voice commanded. “You, too, Mrs. Welsh.”
“What’s this all about? We haven’t done-”
“Do as I say and no one will be hurt. Hands up! Now!”
As if in a dream, Wes and Julie raised their arms. The beam played across their faces, traveling from one to the other. In the dimness, Julie could make out the snout of a pistol below the flashlight.
“Get out of bed, Mr. Welsh,” the voice ordered. “Slowly. Take two steps forward and turn around.”
“This is ridiculous. What are we supposed to have done?”
“Now!”
Reluctantly, Wes stood. Hands above his head, he shuffled forward. Turned. Briefly, Julie saw his face. For the first time since she had known him, Wes looked afraid.
The man stood behind Wes. Abruptly, the flashlight beam arced to the ceiling and descended with dazzling swiftness. Julie heard a hollow clunk, as though someone had thumped a melon.
“Uhh…” Wes groaned, sinking to his knees. Again the brutal arc of the light. Wes crumbled to the carpet, twitching like a clubbed steer.
Instantly the beam flicked to the bed. “Don’t make a sound, Mrs. Welsh. If you resist, I’ll hurt your husband.”
“You’re not the police.”
“Shut up.” The man moved to the door and retrieved a small bag from the hallway. He knelt beside Wes. Julie heard the sound of a zipper. This can’t be happening, she thought. In desperation, she considered making a run for it. If she could get to the front door…
Too far. And what about the children?
After placing a knee in the center of Wes’s back, the man reached into his bag and withdrew something. He fumbled at Wes’s hands and feet, then wrapped a strip of cloth around Wes’s head, taking numerous turns. Next he moved to the bed.
“There’s cash in my purse downstairs,” Julie said, hearing the fear in her voice. “My husband has more in his wallet, and there’s jewelry on the dresser. Take whatever you want and go.”
“I intend to.” The man moved closer. Slowly, he played his light over Julie’s body, the beam traveling the revealing fabric of her nightgown from shoulders to waist and back again, lingering on her breasts.
Julie pulled up the sheets.
“Keep your hands raised,” the man said huskily.
Julie lifted her arms. “Please don’t hurt us.”
“I said if you cooperated, no one would get hurt, didn’t I?”
“Yes, but-”
“Didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“I lied.”
“No, please,” Julie begged. “You don’t have to-”
The first blow struck her temple, driving her against the headboard. The second broke the bridge of her nose, sending a warm salty gush onto her face.
At first she didn’t feel the pain. Instead, dazed and disoriented, she experienced a kaleidoscopic burst of light and a confusion of images. She shook her head, trying to clear her vision. For the next few seconds she hung suspended in a limbo of shock and disbelief, feeling her wrists and ankles being fastened to the corners of the bed and a terrible choking gag being wrapped around her face. Moaning, she clung to the belief that this couldn’t be happening to her. To someone else, maybe. Not to her.
When he finished, the man leaned over her. “There’re two little details I have to take care of first,” he whispered, his voice as gentle as a lover’s. “Don’t go anywhere.”
Taking his bag with him, the man disappeared into the darkness. Julie lay stunned, gulping against the seep of blood running down the back of her throat. Sucking air through her gag between swallows, she struggled to clear her mind.
Panicking won’t help. There has to be a way out. Think!
Lifting her head, she could make out Wes’s body beside the bed. He wasn’t moving. Straining, she tried to reach the knots at her wrists. Couldn’t. She fought against her bonds. They held her fast. At last, sobbing with exhaustion, she lay still.
Minutes later the man returned. By then Wes had begun to stir. The intruder stopped to inspect Wes’s restraints, then crossed to the bed. Humming, he set his bag on the comforter.
Numbly, Julie watched as he withdrew a number of cylindrical objects. One he placed on the nightstand, two others he distributed about the room. She heard the strike of a match, smelled the acrid tang of sulfur. A grotesque dance of light and shadow flickered across the ceiling.
Candles.
At that instant, Julie Welsh realized she was going to die.
The man stood beside the bed. “Do you know who I am?”
Julie stared up, her eyes wide with terror. And suddenly she knew, recognizing the soft tones of the man who had dented her fender. She also realized that wasn’t what he was asking.
“Do you know who I am?”
Through tears of helplessness, Julie nodded.
“Good.”
Almost reverently, the man withdrew the remaining contents of his bag. He held up each in turn, rotating it in his gloved hands before Julie’s eyes. They were ordinary objects, household objects: a small scissors, clothesline rope, a length of pipe, a tape recorder, camera, and a short-bladed kitchen knife. Yet as the bag surrendered its items, Julie came to know the horror that was to be hers. Sensing that her terror gave the man pleasure, she tried not to show it… and failed.
After he had emptied his bag, the man picked up the rope, then the pipe and scissors. Humming softly, he turned toward Wes. Helpless, Julie watched as the man dragged her husband to the bathroom door. There he forced Wes to a kneeling position, passed a loop of rope under his arms, and fastened him to the knob. A second rope went around Wes’s throat, the pipe through the coils. Terrible minutes passed. Sobbing, Julie witnessed her husband’s hideous mutilation, able to do nothing.
Satisfied with the results of his surgery, the man returned to the bed and removed his clothes. Never taking his eyes from Julie, he turned on the tape recorder and set it beside the candle on the night table. Next he climbed onto the bed. Leaning down, he whispered in her ear, his breath hot and fetid as he told her what he had done in the children’s rooms.
And then he began.
It started slowly. At first gentle, almost tender, the bites gradually grew in force and urgency, burning across her torso with stinging insistence, no place inviolate. Unable to scream, Julie whimpered and writhed as their ferocity increased, dumfounded by the excruciating sensation of being chewed and bitten and savaged, of feeling human teeth tearing into her flesh. And then came the knife.
For what seemed forever, Julie Welsh drifted through a nightmare of degradation and torture, a netherworld in which the concept of time lost all significance. Instead, she existed from moment to moment, experiencing an eternity of anguish in the passing of a heartbeat. Often she believed she could endure no more, only to experience some renewed misery at the hands and teeth and blade of the man who had come in the night. Occasionally she lost consciousness, suspended in a haze of oblivion where her suffering seemed blissfully distant. Cruelly he brought her back, again and again, returning her to the unfathomable horror of her torment. And as always, when she returned, she saw his malignant, bottle cap eyes floating above her, watching…
Rain beat against the bedroom window, continuing long into the night. The droplets drummed against the glass, streaking like tears across the panes, trickling down in twisted rivulets. From time to time, when the man paused to prepare some new diversion, Julie gazed into the darkness beyond. In a distant part of her mind she wondered when it would be over. She prayed it would end soon.