Terrified (6 page)

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Authors: Kevin O'Brien

Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller

BOOK: Terrified
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C
HAPTER
F
IVE
S
he heard a scream.
Megan was in the bathroom, washing a pair of panty hose in the sink. Another two pairs hung drying on the shower curtain rod. She had her blond hair in a ponytail, and she wore a grape-juice-stained white tee with sweatpants. It was just after eleven.
Someone had phoned about twenty minutes ago. She’d thought it could have been Jade, the barista from Café Z, taking her up on this morning’s offer for refuge from her creepy, abusive boyfriend. Megan hadn’t thought of anyone else who might be phoning at that hour. It had to be a distress call.
But when she’d answered the phone, there had been no response. “Who’s there?” she’d asked.
She’d heard a click on the other end. Then the line had gone dead.
She’d glanced in on Josh, thinking the phone might have woken him. It hadn’t.
But obviously, something else just had. The scream had come from Josh’s room.
Dropping the wet panty hose in the sink, Megan rushed down the hall. She could hear him whimpering. As she came to his door, he let out another shriek.
“What’s the matter, sweetheart?” Megan asked loudly—over his screeching. She wiped her wet hand on her sweatpants before switching on the light. “Josh, honey, I’m here… .”
Clutching his stuffed Teletubby, Dipsy, he sat up in bed with the
Sesame Street
covers half kicked off. He was a handsome little boy. He didn’t look much like his father—thank God. He wore his Seattle Mariners summer pajamas. His curly brown hair was a mess, and his beautiful, big green eyes were wide open as he gaped at her. Tossing aside Dipsy, he reached his little arms out to her.
“Josh, sweetie, everything’s okay.” Megan sat down on the edge of his bed and hugged him. His little body was shaking. “Hush, now,” she whispered.
But he broke away from her and pointed up at the window. “There’s a man!” he cried. “He’s trying to get in… .”
Megan turned toward the small window, but she could only see a reflection of his bedroom light. Flustered, she reached over and switched off the Big Bird nightstand lamp. Josh started whining and he clung to her more fiercely in the darkness.
“Look, honey, there’s nobody—just the same old rosebush that’s always been there,” she told him—and herself.
Every once in a while, he awoke from some nightmare, screaming that there was a man in his room, and Megan always had to remind herself that in addition to glimpsing strange men, Josh also claimed to have seen monsters, lions, a witch, and a snake creeping into his bedroom. Just last week, he’d been certain there was a “nalagator” in their bathroom, because his friend at day care, Danny Riech, told him that a nalagator could crawl up through the toilet and into people’s bathrooms.
Megan studied the rosebush outside the basement window—illuminated by a nearby streetlight. It rustled in the wind and scratched against the glass.
She gave Josh a little squeeze. “C’mon, kiddo, take a look. Nobody’s out there. But I can shut the curtains, and leave a light on in the living room for you. Does that sound okay?”
Biting his lip, he nodded. “ ’Kay.”
Megan kissed the top of his head, which smelled like baby shampoo and saliva. Getting to her feet, she moved to the window and took one last cautious look outside before pulling the red curtains closed. She turned to find him clutching the front of his pajama bottoms and squirming. “Do you need to go potty?” she asked.
With a sigh, Josh shook his head.
“Just the same, why don’t you give it a try for dear, old Mom?”
Megan walked behind him as he headed into the bathroom. Josh stopped to stare at the framed photo on the end table by the living room sofa. The picture had been there for months, but he studied it as if it was brand new. The photo was of a darker-haired Megan with a tanned, thirty-year-old, athletically handsome blond man. She wore a sleeveless, summer lavender dress she’d adored, and he had on a blazer, white shirt, and yellow tie. They stood in front of a cruise ship’s railing at sunset. Slivers of pink, orange, and silver reflected on the water behind them.
There were a few more pictures of her with the same good-looking blond man in her photo album—along with dozens of shots of Josh. In one of those photos, Megan and the man—rosy-cheeked and squinting in the sun—posed near a chair lift at a ski resort. She’d told Josh the man in those photos was his dad, and he’d died in a ski accident. It was her official, and totally invented, story of Paul Keeslar.
In truth, the man in those pictures was very much alive. His name was Sean Hurley. Megan had other photos of him—posing with her brother, Cliff—tucked away in the Nordstrom box in the back of her closet. Also stashed in the same box were snapshots of her and Cliff—and photos of her mother that still made Megan cry when she snuck a look at them.
And she’d saved a couple of
Chicago Tribune
clippings from when Lisa Swann had disappeared.
But there were no photographs of Dr. Glenn Swann. She’d left all those behind.
Megan used Sean’s image to fill the role of her fictional late husband because she and Sean looked so happy together in those photos—maybe even in love, if someone didn’t know better. In truth, she’d gone to these vacation spots with Sean and her brother, Cliff—all the time feeling like a bit of a third wheel.
For the Caribbean cruise where the framed photo had been taken, Cliff and Sean had paid for her room, and even tried to set her up with another passenger—but she hadn’t felt any spark. Cliff and Sean were partners in business as well as in life. The business was a successful dot-com.
In the end, a big chunk of money Sean might have inherited when Cliff died had secretly gone to Mrs. Glenn Swann.
It had allowed Megan Keeslar to start her life in Seattle, supporting her and Josh for two years. Her relationship with Sean had been a bit strained toward the end. Now that the dot-com business was hurting, she wondered if he knew about the money and regretted letting it slip through his fingers. Perhaps he resented her for taking it. She wondered just how much her late brother had told his partner.
With Sean Hurley’s photo always on display in her living room, Megan never stopped wondering. Yet at the same time, she liked having the picture there. It was a link to her past—and she still remembered how her brother had cracked jokes and sung “Sea Cruise” while snapping the photograph.
“Did you and Daddy catch any fishes while you were on the boat?” Josh asked, pointing to the framed picture.
Megan prodded him toward the bathroom. “It wasn’t that kind of boat, honey,” she said. “It was a big, big cruise ship—as big as our whole block… .”
She stood in the bathroom doorway and told him about the luxury liner—its pool, movie theater, and game room. He obviously stopped listening as soon as he finished peeing. He was so fascinated with the toilet’s flush handle lately—and worked the thing as if it were the lever of a dollar slot machine. Mesmerized, he watched the toilet flush and fill up again.
Megan got him back into bed and tucked in. Then she switched off the Big Bird lamp.
He yawned, and clutched his Teletubby. “Mommy, could you look out the window again?” he asked in a soft voice.
Megan kissed him on the forehead. “Sure thing, kiddo.” She started toward the window, but hesitated as she gazed at the closed red curtain. For some reason, she imagined seeing a stranger crouched down on the other side of it, trying to peek in at her little boy. She could envision the man’s ugly hatchet face just inches away from the glass.
Megan told herself she was being silly. She took a deep breath, and then pushed aside the curtain.
“See?” she managed to say. “Nobody, just the same old rosebush. You know, those flowers will be blooming pretty soon.” She pulled the curtain closed again. “Now, you get some sleep, okay?”
“ ’Kay,” he murmured.
Megan gave him another kiss on the forehead. She left his door half open so he’d get a bit of light from the living room. She paused outside, and listened to him sleepily talking to himself—or Dipsy. It was a nightly ritual lately. “Mommy and Daddy watched a movie on the boat, and they swimmed in the pool, but they didn’t catch any fishes. Daddy’s gone to heaven, but he still watches us… .”
Her arms folded, Megan listened outside his door. She could tell Josh was drifting off to sleep. She glanced at the photo of her and Sean on the living room table. She wondered what had happened to him—and what had happened to that lavender dress. With a sigh, she headed back into the bathroom.
She rinsed out the last pair of panty hose, and was hanging them from the shower curtain rod when she heard something—a click. It sounded like the outside basement door opening.
She couldn’t help thinking something was wrong. No one was supposed to use the laundry room after 10
PM
. And she’d gotten that strange hang-up call earlier.
Wiping her hands on her sweatpants, Megan padded through the living room—past Josh’s room and the hall closet—to the front door. She stared at the chain lock fastened on the door. For a second, she thought she saw the doorknob moving. Or was it just the way the light was shining on it? She could hear someone in the annex outside.
She held her breath and checked the peephole. The glass in the viewer made things look slightly distorted and far away in the dimly lit corridor. She saw someone duck toward the laundry room. It was a man in a red sweater.
Megan waited to see the laundry room light go on, but it didn’t.
Mike, her neighbor in the unit above her, was out of town. She would have heard him walking around up there tonight if he’d returned. So—it must have been Bill—of Bill and Laura—the law student newlyweds on the third floor.
She kept wondering why Bill hadn’t turned on the laundry room light yet.
Something was wrong, she could feel it. Maybe Josh really had seen a stranger peering into his window after all.
Megan glanced back toward Josh’s room. Moving away from the door, she crept through the living room and into the kitchen. Her heart was racing. She grabbed the cordless phone from the counter, and then hurried back to the door, tiptoeing as she closed in on it. She peered into the peephole again.
She caught a glimpse of the red-sweater man as he stepped out the basement door. She flinched at the sound of the door shutting behind him. The corridor was brighter. She could see light coming from the laundry room. Megan wondered why Bill had come down there. She didn’t hear the washer or dryer going.
Biting her lip, she unfastened the chain, turned the lock, and slowly opened her door. She clutched the cordless phone in her hand—in case she had to call 911. The thought of getting involved in any way with the police still made her nervous. But right now, she needed to know they were a phone call away if she really needed them. Stepping out to the hallway, she cautiously glanced toward the laundry room—and then at the basement door. The door had a fogged window with crisscrossed wires running through the glass. She didn’t see any shadows moving on the other side of it. She wondered if the door was locked. Or had some stranger just snuck in?
With trepidation, she opened the basement door and tried the outside knob. The cool night air drifted over her bare arms and feet, and she got goose bumps. The outside knob didn’t move. The door was locked.
Megan told herself the man in the red sweater must have been Bill on the third floor. He’d probably come down there to hunt for a missing sock or a T-shirt.
Closing the door again, she listened to the lock click. She glanced toward the laundry room. There was a washer and dryer, a card table, one folding chair, and running the length of the room, two clotheslines—now bare. The white-walled room with its gray concrete floor was a bit gloomy. In a desperate effort to cheer the place up, someone—probably at least a decade before—had put a fake philodendron plant on the sill of the lone small, barred window. Its plastic leaves were faded and bore layers of dust. The same well-meaning soul had probably put up those two framed horrible clown prints on the wall above the washer and dryer—one a Bozo-type clown with red tufts of hair, and the other a sad, Emmett Kelly type wearing a tattered, cock-eyed derby. With the maniacal, painted grin on Bozo, the print actually scared Josh—to the point where he always resisted going into the laundry room with her.
Megan moved to the doorway of the vacant laundry room. She couldn’t blame Josh for letting that clown picture frighten him. She hated it, too. Both the washer and dryer were off, and their loading doors had been left open. Nothing looked different.
She switched off the light, then turned and started back toward her apartment, where she’d left her door ajar. Just a few steps in front of it, Megan’s foot brushed against something. She glanced down at the beige-carpeted floor.
She told herself that Bill must have indeed come down there to collect a load from the dryer. And this piece must have fallen from his and Laura’s laundry pile.
Picking it up, she stepped inside the darkened laundry room again and tossed the stray item on the card table. Then she hurried back into the snug security of her apartment, where Josh was still asleep.

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