Chain Letter (18 page)

The static on the TV was disquieting, so she restarted the DVD and huddled in the
corner of the couch. Just her luck, the heroes were creeping through the witch’s wicked
woods, about to be attacked by monsters. Although she knew everyone would live happily
ever after, she couldn’t entirely dispel the irrational possibility that this was
a black market version of the story, with a different ending, a violent and bitter
ending.

“Nuts, you’re nuts,” she muttered, picking up the phone and setting it on her lap
like it was a pet that could comfort her. This time she gave Tony thirty rings. No
dice.

She found herself in the garage before she would admit to herself what she was doing
there. The excuse of wanting to
make sure it was locked didn’t fool her. Without checking the garage door, she had
gone straight to the cabinet where her father kept his sporting equipment. He played
tennis, golf, and skied. But his hunting enthusiasm was all that was relevant to her
at the moment.

Where is that bazooka?

She found the shotgun in a maple box at the back on the floor. The black over-and-under
twin barrels were cold to touch. Lifting the smooth oak stock, she marveled at its
weight. From having watched her dad, she knew it split in the middle and took two
shells, both of which were controlled by a single trigger. Once, when she had been
a child, he had caught her playing with it, and although it had been unloaded, he
had yelled at her something fierce, yet not nearly as fierce as her mother had yelled
at him later on. Hopefully dear daddy would forgive her tonight if she brought the
gun in the house to keep her company. When the girls arrived, she could keep it in
the hall closet for handy reference.

She was searching for the box of shells when she heard the knock at the door. Whether
the sound filled her with relief or the opposite was hard to say. Joan was an old
nemesis and was not to be trusted, but Brenda was a good friend. There was no reason
not to welcome her arrival. They’d known each other since childhood. Sure, they’d
had their arguments, quite a few of them lately, but so did all old pals. Then again,
Brenda sure had enjoyed her tasks. Who else of them could say that? She
had suffered the consequence of expulsion from school, but there had been a streak
of strange satisfaction in that also, judging from how she had joked about it afterward.

Alison took a long time to make it from the garage, through the kitchen and living
room, to the front door. And once there, she paused, wondering why they hadn’t rung
the bell.

“Brenda?” she called. “Joan?”

No answer.

Stay cool, don’t freak, you’re not going to die.

She pressed her ear to the door. She couldn’t even hear the rain over the roar of
the blood in her head. “Hello?” she croaked.

Whoever was there, if there was anybody there, was playing it mean. All right, she
was a big girl, all she had to do was . . . what was she supposed to do? She didn’t
know. Turn on the porch light,
yes
, and peek through the glass at the side of the door,
yes
, and be careful she saw them before they saw her,
yes
, and then scream bloody murder.

She had a hard time with the switch, her hands were shaking so. But finally the porch
light went on, spilling a bloody glow on either side of the door. Wishing she had
a miniature periscope, she inched her eyes toward the smoky panels of glass. If this
was a joke they were pulling, Brenda and Joan were sleeping in the garage.

But there was no one there, no one she could see. To be absolutely sure, she needed
to open the door; the house was
more likely to be struck by a meteor than were the chances of her doing that. Yet
she had not imagined the knock. It had been as clear and distinct as . . .

Oh, God.

 . . . the knock at the back door.

She began to pant on air that seemed to turn into a vacuum in her lungs. No one with
any scruples or benign intentions would have gone to the back door. Only psychotics
with masks over their grinning skulls and sharp cutting implements in their greasy
hands used back doors after dark. She’d seen the movies; she knew the score. The hatchet
man would get his due, but only after he’d garroted and dissected a half dozen coeds.
And a character as crafty as the Caretaker, why his quota would be bigger than average,
at least everyone on the list, not to mention a few possible bystanders.

This is only a play, and I am the star, and I had better move my ass!

Two loaded barrels could make her odds a lot better. Picking up her feet, placing
one in front of the other, she plodded back into the living room. The Great and Terrible
Oz was threatening them not to look behind the curtain. I guarantee you, you won’t
like what you see.

She had rounded the kitchen counter and was passing the oven when the knock came again,
loud and insistent. For a moment, what was left of her courage ran out the bottom
of her feet, collecting in a sticky puddle on the floor, preventing
her from budging an inch. Then a slight peculiarity in the origin and quality of the
knocking squeezed its way into her thoughts. As it sounded again, she listened closely,
and it seemed to be coming, not from the back door, but from the far den. Also, the
texture was not of knuckles on wood, but of wood striking itself.

The shutters?

The innocent solution to the deadly dilemma brought a flood of relief. She cracked
a smile big enough to permanently stretch her face and forgot all about the shotgun.
Turning, she hurried back the way she had come, striding into the rear hall and opening
the den door. A glance out the room’s windows confirmed that the shutters were loose
and banging in the wind. Parting the glass, she reached out into the wet night air
and fastened them tightly in place with a metal clasp. She felt about ten million
times better.

The phone rang.

“Tony!” She called, bouncing into the living room toward the couch. She would have
to tell him about the mysterious knocks, leaving out the shutters. Maybe it would
inspire him to come over and spend the night. If that didn’t work, a few nasty suggestions
might bring him running. Too bad Joan was already on her way.

Where were those girls, anyway?

“Hello, Tony?” she said, picking up the phone. “Hello?”

There was breathing, not heavy and pornographic, but
ragged and faint. Her own breathing stopped. The fear she had seconds ago sidestepped
struck her full on. There was nothing to be gained by not hanging up the phone, but
she simply could not bring herself to do it. A childish prayer kept her frozen. As
long as the person was on the phone, he was somewhere else, and he couldn’t break
through the door and split her open like a side of beef. The problem was, he was probably
thinking along similar lines. As long as
Alison
continued to listen,
Alison
was a sitting duck for any attack.

“Brenda? Joan?”

They hung up, but not before she heard what sounded like a sigh. She put down the
phone and instantly picked it up again. When they had moved in, she had memorized
the housing tract’s security number. Their guard, Harvey Heck, was an alcoholic, and
if he was stone drunk right now, he would never forgive himself when he read in the
morning paper about the cute teenager who had bought it while he was on duty.

“Harvey!” she shouted when she heard the tenth unanswered ring. She was on the verge
of cursing his name, when it occurred to her that the Caretaker might have already
paid him a visit. Harvey might be unable to answer. Feeling a despair that threatened
to transform her into a whimpering vegetable, she slowly replaced the receiver.

But it’s not my turn! I would have done whatever you asked!

She had two alternatives: call the police or load the shotgun. Both of them sounded
like fantastic ideas. She got out the
local phone book and it took her four tries to punch out the correct number. Finally,
she reached another human being, an elderly lady with a faint English accent.

“San Bernardino Police Department. May I help you?”

“Yes! My name is Alison Parker and I live at 1342 Keystone Lane in a housing tract
five miles north of the 10 freeway. There is someone trying to kill me! I’m all alone.
PLEASE send somebody . . . Hello?
Hello!
”

The phone was dead. The connection had not been simply interrupted. There was no dial
tone, no static, nothing. And hadn’t it gone dead the second she had started talking?
The police hadn’t even gotten her name.

And she had no idea where she’d left her cell phone.

Clutching her abdomen, she bent over and put her head between her knees. Purple dots
the same shade as the Caretaker’s envelopes danced behind her closed eyes. She was
going to vomit. She was going to faint. She was going to die.

I’ll get you my pretty, and your little dog too.

The TV hummed happily along. The witch’s hourglass, like the Caretaker’s, was running
low. But unlike Dorothy, no one was coming to her rescue. Sitting up and staring at
the screen, she tasted blood in her mouth. She had bitten her tongue.

But I’m the star, I’m not supposed to die.

She forced herself to think. The only way her antagonist could have called one minute
and cut the line the next was by being at one of the places where the phone company
had been
working installing new cables. Several times, while on her daily walks, she had passed
the gray electrical boxes and noticed the numerous available plug-ins. That meant
the Caretaker was definitely in the tract. There was a phone company box up the street.
The Caretaker could be a couple of hundred yards away, and closing in on her.

At the realization that the final confrontation was about to begin, Alison experienced
an unlooked for charge of defiance swell inside. It was not as though her fear left
her—if anything it intensified—it was simply that anger and vengeance demanded equal
time. The cowardly bastard had taken the others unaware. But she was awake, she would
not bleed or burn to death so easily. She had not played the role of the pursued heroine
before but she would play it well. As long as the curtain stayed up.

She ran to the garage. The shotgun was where she had dropped it, cracked open and
ready for loading. Unfortunately, her father’s sporting equipment cabinet was in disarray,
crowded and dark. Digging through wet suits and basketballs and rackets, she couldn’t
find the box of shells. Was it possible that there were none?

She had exhausted the cabinet to the last inch and was considering searching the drawers
beneath the workbench when the lights went out for the third time. Her heroic resolve
of a minute ago swayed precariously. Angry thunder—and now it sounded like the sky
was tearing in two directly overhead—slapped the
garage door, followed by a torrent of falling water. But in her shrinking heart, she
knew the storm was not responsible for the sudden darkness. The power had been cut.
The blackness was as featureless as in a cave ten miles beneath the earth, smothering
her like a demon’s cloak.

The Caretaker could not have interrupted the electricity as easily as the phone lines
unless he had reached the circuits under the metal panel outside the back door. And
a dead bolt would not stop someone who had stolen kids right from beneath the eyes
of their loving families. She had to find those shells!

The magic slippers were always right under her nose.

Her one hand was balancing the gun, the other was squeezing the arm of an old polyurethane
jacket, when something about the jacket began to demand attention she was hardly able
to spare, and the missing clue was stuck on the tip of her mind when a
sudden pounding on the back door
jarred it free. Her dad always wore this coat when hunting! And sportsmen always
liked to keep their ammunition in a handy place.

There were two shells in the coat’s front right pocket. Relying solely upon feel,
she guided the cartridges into the rear of the barrels and, disengaging the safety,
she snapped the shotgun straight. One glance at that maniac’s face to know forever
who he was and then she would splatter his features so his own mother wouldn’t be
able to recognize him.

The garage was strategically a terrible place to be and she
did not entirely want to wait for him to come to her. Positioning the stock into the
soft flesh beneath her shoulder, holding the twin barrels aloft with her left hand
and putting her right finger on the trigger, she silently slipped out of the dark
garage into the dark kitchen, crouching down, using the stove as cover. She couldn’t
even see the end of her weapon and was sorely tempted to turn on the light for a second
to get her bearings. But that would only serve to make her an easy target. The blind
waited a lifetime in the dark. She would be patient. Soon, very soon, they would have
to show themselves.

Her plan lasted exactly two seconds.

The back door convulsed from a splintering blow.

Oh, please, good God, don’t be a bad God.

It sounded like an ax. It wasn’t the Tinman’s ax.

Frantically she began to reconsider waiting. There were a lot of cons. She was depending
on a weapon she had never fired. What if it jammed? What if she missed? There was
an alternative she had never considered before because it meant going outside. But
at this instant, when she knew exactly where the Caretaker was, it didn’t seem like
such a bad move to grab her keys, quietly open the front door, run out to the street
to her car and put her foot on the accelerator and keep it there.

The boom from the second blow of the ax reverberated through the house and promptly
settled the issue. She scurried around the oven and made a beeline for the couch,
catching her purse on the run. The showdown could wait for another
day when she had reinforcements. She hurried to the front door. To undo the stubborn
dead bolt, she had to set down the gun, which she did reluctantly. Careful, lest she
interrupt the Caretaker’s efforts to turn the back door into firewood, she twisted
the lock.