Текст книги "I Am Death"

Автор книги: Chris (2) Carter

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Текущая страница: 30 (всего у книги 47 страниц)

Twenty-One

Four days earlier

The man sitting in seat 9A was, by cabin crew standards, the perfect passenger. As he boarded the plane, he smiled politely at all the attendants and then waited patiently for the passengers crowding the aisle in front of him to place their hand luggage inside the appropriate compartments. There was no trace of annoyance from him, no exasperated folding of the arms, no irritated ‘excuse me’s, and no uncomfortable shifting from foot to foot. Once he’d taken his seat, he hadn’t asked for a single thing, not even a glass of water.

Despite all the stewardesses onboard flight number 387 from Sacramento to Los Angeles being young and very attractive, there had also been no flirtatious looks from passenger 9A, nor any awkward attempts at cheesy pickup lines.

The man had caught the attention of Sharon Barnard, the youngest of the three stewardesses on board, and she was curious about what he did for a living. His clothes gave little away; a dark-gray suit and a crisp white shirt with a perfectly knotted black-and-white tie. He could’ve been just another businessman, like half the passengers on that early morning flight, but he was missing all the typical gadgets – the briefcase, the laptop computer or tablet, and the smartphone.

While some passengers read, some slept, some worked, some played games on their tablets or listened to music, passenger 9A did nothing. He kept his seat in the upright position, his hands together in his lap and his eyes forward, staring straight ahead. At first Sharon wondered if he was meditating, but when she walked past his seat and asked him if he’d like anything to drink, he answered her immediately and courteously, saying that he was all right. She asked him if he was going to Los Angeles on business, and he replied that he was returning from business. He lived in Los Angeles.

That had brought a smile to Sharon’s lips.

‘Tom,’ Sharon said to the head steward, who was also her best friend and housemate. ‘What do you think of that guy in seat 9A?’

Tom smiled at her teasingly. ‘Are you asking me if he’s gay, darling?’

Tom Hobbs was twenty-three years old, very attractive, single and gay. One of his biggest talents was his sixth sense for spotting other gay males without even speaking to them. He stepped out from behind the partition and casually looked down the aisle.

‘Yep, he’s one hundred percent hot,’ he replied. ‘I clocked him as soon as he stepped on to the aircraft.’ Tom smiled again, then pouted his lips at Sharon. ‘And I can see that so did you.’

Sharon didn’t look embarrassed. ‘As you’ve said,’ she replied, ‘he’s hot.’

‘No doubt there, and you might just be in luck, honey,’ Tom continued. ‘Because he’s definitely straight.’

Sharon smiled. ‘You really think so? He hasn’t looked at any of us girls.’

‘Oh, I’m positive, darling.’ Tom glanced at 9A again. ‘Yep, that man likes pussy.’

‘No wedding band either,’ Sharon said.

Tom grinned at her. ‘Look at you, you vixen, scouting the customers and all, way ahead of the competition. I like your style.’

‘You better, I’ve learned it from you.’

Tom lifted his hand for a high-five.

Sharon slapped it.

‘Though,’ she said, ‘I can’t help thinking that he looks familiar somehow.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. Maybe it’s the eyes, or that strong chin, but I keep on thinking that I have seen him before. Do you remember seeing him on a previous flight at all?’

Tom looked at passenger 9A once again. ‘Umm, no darling. A hunk like that, I would definitely remember if I had.’

Sharon also didn’t think that she had seen him on a previous flight, but she was almost certain that she had seen him before somewhere.

‘OK,’ she said, moving things along. ‘So what do you think he does for a living?’

When flying together, Tom and Sharon sometimes played a guessing game over a few chosen passengers. It helped pass the time.

‘Umm.’ Tom wiggled his head from side to side for a second. ‘He definitely works out. You can tell by his arms. His biceps are about to rip through his sleeves. But he also comes across as the calm type. Nothing seems to bother him, and he has one hell of an intense stare. Have you checked those big brown eyes?’

Sharon nodded. ‘Oh yes.’

Tom smiled again. ‘Silly me for asking. Well, I’d say he’s either a psychologist, or some sort of therapist . . . maybe sports.’ He then mimed a shiver. ‘Ooh no, even better, I’d say he’s a sexual therapist.’

‘Psychologist.’ Sharon liked that thought.

‘Cabin crew, please take your seats for landing,’ the announcement came through the speakers.

Less than ten minutes later the Boeing 757 touched down on runway two at Los Angeles International Airport.

Once again, passenger 9A waited patiently for all the other passengers in front of him to collect their hand luggage and clear the aisle. As he walked past the crew at the front of the plane, he gave them all a single courteous nod and mouthed the words ‘thank you’. His eyes sought no one in particular and Sharon felt a little disappointed. She had a special smile, coupled with a sexy wink prepared just for him. All she could do was watch as he walked away. She really would’ve liked to get to know him a little better.

What she had no way of knowing was that passenger 9A already knew everything he needed to know about Sharon Barnard.

Twenty-Two

Hunter’s cellphone rang less then ten seconds after he had stepped back into his office at the Police Administration Building.

‘Robert, where are you?’ Captain Blake said as soon as he answered.

‘Just got back to the PAB, Captain, why?’

‘Is Carlos with you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I need to see you both in my office – right now.’

When Hunter and Garcia got to the captain’s office, she was sitting behind her desk, attentively looking at something that was lying flat on her desktop. From where they were standing, neither detective could tell what it was.

‘OK,’ she said, finally lifting her stare to meet theirs. ‘First question – are we really dealing with some sort of ritualistic killer here?’

‘It’s too soon to tell, Captain,’ Garcia replied. ‘As things stand, there’s not enough evidence to say for certain either way.’

‘How about the positioning of the body?’ she countered. ‘Set out to look like a five-point human star? Isn’t a five-point star a pentagram? And aren’t pentagrams widely known to be associated with devil worshiping and all?’

‘Not exactly, Captain,’ Hunter replied.

Captain Blake looked at him and waited. He said nothing else.

‘What do you mean, Robert?’ she asked finally.

‘Pentagrams are ancient figures that have been used throughout history to symbolize a number of things,’ Hunter explained, ‘such as strength, unity, power, secrecy. Several different religions have adopted it in different contexts, including Christianity. In fact, the pentagram has long been believed to be a potent protection against evil.’

Both Garcia and Captain Blake looked a little surprised.

‘The symbol that has been associated with evil and devil worshiping,’ Hunter continued, ‘is an inverted or reversed pentagram, with two points projecting upwards, and that’s because an inverted pentagram symbolizes overturning the proper order of things.’

Hunter paused, giving Captain Blake a few seconds to weigh everything up.

‘In our case,’ he added, ‘there’s no way to tell, Captain. Yes, the victim was positioned in a way that resembles a five-point human star, but we don’t know if that star is right side up or upside down, because we have no way of telling what the killer’s point of view was. If we consider the standard geographic coordinates – north being up and south being down – then the victim was not left in an upside down position.’

Captain Blake frowned at Hunter.

‘Her head was pointing north,’ he explained.

‘I’m actually scared to ask how you know all this about pentagrams, Robert,’ Captain Blake said, sitting back on her chair.

Hunter shrugged. ‘I read a lot.’

‘But of course you do.’ Her eyebrows arched sarcastically. ‘OK,’ the captain lifted her right hand, accepting Hunter’s argument, ‘for now, let’s forget the pentagram shape and focus on the body itself. Doesn’t specific victim positioning suggest some sort of ritual?’

‘Usually, yes,’ Garcia agreed. ‘But as I’ve said before, Captain, right now we don’t have enough evidence to be sure either way. What if this killer positioned the body that way just to try to make us believe that he really is a ritualistic killer, just to send us down the wrong path? He seems to be smart enough to be able to come up with something like that.’

Captain Blake chewed on that thought for a couple of seconds.

‘How about a cult?’ she asked, getting up from behind her desk and moving around to the front of it. ‘Could we be dealing with some sort of cult here, instead of a single individual?’

‘No,’ Garcia replied. ‘We’re not dealing with a group or any sort of cult here, Captain. This is a single individual.’

‘You sound very sure.’

Garcia proceeded to tell Captain Blake everything that the autopsy examination had revealed. She listened to his account without interrupting, her expression changing according to the level of surprise or disgust she was feeling at what was being said.

‘So this note the killer left lodged inside the victim’s throat,’ she said when Garcia was done, ‘it was written in blood?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Whose blood, the victim’s?’

‘We don’t know yet,’ Garcia answered. ‘That’s what we’re expecting it to be. We should hopefully get an answer from the forensics lab sometime this afternoon.’

‘I’m a little confused,’ the captain said, lifting a hand again. ‘How does that answer my question as to why you sounded so sure that we’re not dealing with a cult here, Carlos?’

‘The note.’

The penny finally dropped.

‘I Am Death,’ Captain Blake said in a half-whisper. ‘Not We Are Death.’

Hunter nodded. ‘This guy’s got an ego, and a big one. This is his work, his “masterpiece”, no one else’s, and he really wants us to know that.’

One didn’t need to be a detective to pick up the look of deep concern on Captain Blake’s face. A concern that clearly went beyond Garcia’s account of the autopsy findings.

‘Captain,’ Hunter asked. ‘What’s going on?’

Captain Blake reached for something on her desk.

‘A fucking hell of a lot.’

Twenty-Three

Captain Blake picked up a small, see-through plastic bag, which was what she had been looking at when Hunter and Garcia entered her office a few minutes earlier. Inside the bag sat a 4x6 Polaroid photograph. She handed it to Hunter and Garcia.

‘Here, have a look.’

Garcia took the bag and turned it over so they could see the image. The photograph was of Nicole Wilson.

‘What the hell?’ Garcia’s gaze paused on Hunter for a split second before moving back to his captain. ‘How did you get this?’

‘I didn’t.’ Captain Blake leaned against her desk. ‘The mayor did.’

There was a hesitant moment as both detectives exchanged another concerned look.

‘The mayor?’

‘Yes. He received it earlier this morning, via FedEx.’ She reached for plastic bag number two and handed it to Garcia again. ‘As you can see, it was marked as ‘‘urgent – private and confidential”.’

Hunter and Garcia checked the FedEx wrapper.

‘Tyler Jordan?’

‘Bogus name, as expected,’ the captain replied. ‘Bogus address as well. Apparently it’s a boarded-up shop – everything else still needs to be checked.’

‘Did the mayor know Nicole Wilson?’ Hunter asked.

Captain Blake shook her head. ‘According to him, he’s never seen her before. But we all know that public safety has always been at the forefront of Mayor Bailey’s campaign, so once he saw that picture he immediately got on the phone to Chief Bracco. Bracco left this office about five minutes before you got here. That’s how I have these. He wanted them to go to forensics ASAP, but I wanted you to see them first.’

‘Does the chief know that Nicole Wilson’s body was found in the early hours of this morning?’ Hunter asked.

‘He does now.’ Captain Blake paused and drew in a deep breath. ‘But that’s not all.’

Hunter and Garcia’s attention moved from the photo and the FedEx wrapper back to her. Once again, she reached for something that was on her desk – a third see-through plastic bag.

‘The photo came with a note,’ she said, handing the bag to Hunter.

The white piece of paper that sat inside the plastic bag had a crease down its center where it had been folded in half. Like the note found in Nicole Wilson’s throat, the words had been handwritten, but this time not in blood. The killer had used a red ballpoint pen.

People in this city put their trust in law enforcement agencies like the LAPD, and sometimes even the FBI, to keep them safe, to help those who can’t help themselves, to right them when they’re wronged, to protect them, and to seek justice no matter what.

Those agencies are supposed to be the best of the best. The experts when it comes to reading people and discerning good from evil. But the truth is that they only see what they want to see. And the problem with that is that when they play at being blind men, people suffer . . . people get tortured . . . and people die.

So now I have a question. If any of these so-called experts stood face to face with someone like me, if they looked straight into my eyes, would they see the truth inside me? Would they see what I have become, or would they falter?

The woman in the picture certainly saw it. She felt it on her flesh.

And before the sun rises tomorrow, someone else will see it and feel it too. And trust me, what she’s been through is nothing compared to what is still to come, unless these so-called experts are able to stop me.

Well, are they?

FOR I AM DEATH.

‘Jesus,’ Garcia said after reading the note a couple of times over.

‘And from what you’ve told me so far,’ the captain said, ‘I guess we can confidently say that he’s not bluffing.’

Silence filled the room for several seconds. Garcia was the first to break it.

‘What I don’t get is, why the mayor? This note refers to law enforcement agencies like the FBI, and ourselves, nothing really to do with the mayor’s office. If Mayor Bailey didn’t know Nicole Wilson, why send the picture and the note to his office? Why not send it directly here to the PAB or to Chief Bracco’s office?’

‘I’ve been asking myself that same question,’ Captain Blake said. ‘And with today’s technology, why post it instead of emailing it?’

‘Two reasons,’ Hunter replied, his full attention still on the note. ‘If the killer had emailed it, there’d be no guarantees that the mayor would’ve gotten it. Something like this could’ve easily been automatically flagged as spam or junk mail by some sort of firewall program, and have been completely discarded without anyone actually opening it. No way this killer would’ve run that risk.’

Captain Blake accepted it with a head nod. ‘And the second reason?’

‘The shock effect. The credibility. Seeing a handwritten, original note, and a Polaroid photograph, two tangible items, something that the mayor could actually handle, packs a much bigger punch then something the mayor could only see through his computer screen. It makes the threat a lot more real. That’s also the reason why the killer used a Polaroid, instead of a regular photo.’

Garcia nodded. ‘An attached photo could’ve been Photoshopped to the last pixel. A Polaroid is practically impossible to touch. As Robert said, it gives the killer credibility.’

‘OK,’ the captain agreed. ‘But why send it to the mayor?’

‘Urgency,’ Hunter replied. ‘If this package had come straight here to the PAB and to your office, would you have informed Chief Bracco, or the mayor?’

‘No, of course not.’

Hunter nodded once. ‘And if it had gone straight to Chief Bracco’s office, do you think he would’ve informed the mayor?’

Captain Blake caught up with Hunter’s logic.

‘No,’ she agreed. ‘There’d be no need to worry the mayor. But send it directly to the mayor a couple of weeks before an election, and you start a hierarchical panic chain reaction – the mayor, who’s obsessed with citizen safety, takes it straight to the chief of police, who brings it straight to me.’

‘As I’ve said,’ Hunter added. ‘This guy’s got a big ego, and he wants to play, but he wants to make sure he’s playing against the right opponents. As he wrote on his note – the best of the best – because in his mind, he deserves nothing less. Getting the mayor involved would guarantee he got what he wanted.’

‘Well, so, he’s in luck,’ the captain said, walking back behind her desk. ‘Because you two are supposed to be the best I have.’

Twenty-Four

Night had already recolored the sky by the time Sharon Barnard opened the door to the house she shared with Tom Hobbs in Venice, in the Westside region of Los Angeles. Today she had worked a return flight from LAX to Kansas City, where for three and a half hours each way, she had endured a battery of cheesy pick-up lines and humorless anecdotes, all of them from overweight businessmen who smelled of cheap cologne and did a piss-poor job of hiding their wedding bands.

She smiled in relief as she finally closed the door behind her, put her cabin crew suitcase on the floor and began rubbing the back of her neck with both hands. Her neck and shoulder muscles felt a little stiff, but it was nothing that a long shower followed by a nice bottle of wine and some relaxing music couldn’t fix. And tonight she had the house to herself. Tom had flown to San Francisco that morning, where he’d spend the night, probably partying somewhere in the Castro, the largest gay neighborhood in the USA, before flying back tomorrow afternoon.

Both Sharon and Tom had been away for a day and a half. The house had been locked, all the windows shut and the curtains drawn. With the early August heat, the place felt like a sauna. Sharon opened one of the living room windows before crossing over to the kitchen and grabbing a cold bottle of beer from the fridge to cool her down.

In spite of it not being a career choice she had ever really considered until just a year earlier, Sharon loved her job as a stewardess.

Ever since she was a young girl, Sharon had always dreamed of becoming a nurse, and that was due in part to her obsession with the television series ER. She had the entire collection on DVD. She had watched every episode at least ten times, but still she just couldn’t get enough of it. But ER was not the only reason. Sharon had always had a kind heart, and helping people in need satisfied her in a way that very little else ever did. The interesting thing was that she had never even considered being a doctor, and that was indeed ER and Nurse Carol’s fault – Carol Hathaway had always been her favorite character and she wanted to be just like her. But Sharon was a very down-to-earth person. She fully understood that a nurse’s reality would certainly be very different from the half-glamorous life she saw on the little screen.

With that in mind, Sharon decided to follow the advice of her school counselor and the school nurse, and straight after high school she enrolled herself into the Licensed Practical Nurse program where she showed tremendous talent and aptitude, graduating top of her class twelve months later. Though LPN gave her the initial skills she needed, dealing with real patients would prove to be a whole different ballgame.

Her plan was to try to gain practical experience as a working nurse for at least one year before going back to school and enrolling into the Associate Degree in Nursing program, which would then allow her to become a registered nurse.

Upon graduating from the LPN program, and with the help of two of her tutors, Sharon was immediately offered a nursing position at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, ranked among the top three medical centers and hospitals in California. She jumped at the chance, and was assigned to the neurological ward, commonly known as the coma ward. And that was when everything went sour.

Only six days after she first started working on the ward, Sharon saw the arrival of a nine-year-old black girl named Joan Howard. Joan had been playing alone on the sidewalk right in front of her house when she was practically run over by an eighteen-year-old kid who, just for the fun of it, had decided to see how fast he could go on a bicycle. The bicycle collided with Joan with such force that she was projected forward and through the air several yards. She landed on the road, hitting her tiny head against the asphalt and fracturing her cranium in two places, causing her brain to hemorrhage. The kid on the bicycle was never caught.

‘A miracle,’ the head nurse at the coma ward had told Sharon on her first day on the job. ‘That’s pretty much the only thing that can make most of our patients wake up and get out of here, and trust me, you will probably see some miracles happen right in front of your eyes in this place. But they are very few and far between. What I’m trying to tell you is – don’t get attached, don’t be too human, don’t succumb to your emotions, because it will only hurt you and compromise your professionalism. Be objective. Most of the patients in this ward are half dead. That’s why they’re here.’

And a miracle had been exactly what Joan’s family and everyone else had hoped for. Nothing else could help. The doctors had done all they could do. But as the days started to melt into weeks, and the weeks into months, hope began to fade, except for Sharon, who wasn’t able to follow the head nurse’s advice and had fallen in love with the little girl. Maybe it had been because Joan reminded Sharon of her best childhood friend, who had been murdered when she was ten years old during a gang drive-by shooting, just east of MacArthur Park, where she used to live.

At first, Joan’s father, who was a single parent, would come in every day after he’d finished work and spend several hours by his daughter’s bed, holding her hand, reading her stories, singing her songs, and combing her hair, but soon hope abandoned him too. First he started spending less and less time with his daughter every day, then the visits became less frequent.

Sharon caught up with him one night as he was leaving, and with teary eyes begged him not to desert his daughter. Even without ever having seen one, she tried to explain to him that the sort of miracles that happened in that ward depended as much on the families not giving up on their loved ones as it did on divine intervention. Joan’s father looked like he had aged ten years in just a few months. He said nothing to Sharon. He simply stared at her with heavy, pain-stricken eyes for a whole minute before turning and walking away in silence.

He didn’t come back the next day.

And that was the night Joan passed.

Sharon had been unable to hide her distress after the little girl’s death, and that made her question her willingness to become a nurse. She decided to take some time off and rethink. During her break, her old school friend, Tom Hobbs, suggested that she looked into becoming an air stewardess. Sharon decided to give it a try. She told herself that she had nothing to lose.

That had been just over a year ago, and she hadn’t looked back since.

In her bedroom, Sharon opened another window, turned on the portable stereo system on her bedside table and switched to the radio. ‘Maps’ by Maroon 5 came on and she immediately began swinging her hips to the beat as she sang the words. It was one of her favorite songs. While doing so, she undressed and finished her bottle of beer. She thought about having a second one, but she didn’t handle mixing drinks very well. It usually gave her a horrible headache and a zombie-like hangover, and she was really looking forward to her bottle of wine.

Sharon grabbed a freshly washed towel from the cupboard in the corridor and walked into the bathroom. She got the shower running but didn’t get under it. Instead, she took a step back, faced the mirror above the washing basin and regarded herself for an instant – first her left profile, then the right one. After a few seconds of deliberation, she decided that she was relatively happy with her figure, though, in her mind, there was always room for improvement.

She finally stepped under the shower, leaned forward, placed her forehead against the white tiles and allowed the strong jet of lukewarm water to sluice over her head, shoulders and back. It felt like a dream. As soon as the water came in contact with her skin, her tense muscles began to relax.

Shower over, she wrapped herself in her towel and returned to the kitchen.

Sharon and Tom had quite a nice selection of wine, and tonight she felt like having something fruity and refreshing.

‘Perfect,’ she whispered to herself as she selected a bottle of New Zealand Gewurztraminer from the fridge, uncorked it and poured herself a glass. She had just returned the bottle to the fridge when her cellphone rang. She had left it on the kitchen counter. She closed the fridge door before reaching for her phone and checking the display screen. She didn’t recognize the number.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi, Sharon.’

The male voice didn’t sound familiar to her.

‘Umm . . . Hi. Sorry, but who’s this?’

‘Would you like to take a guess?’

Sharon frowned at the phone. She just wanted to relax and enjoy her wine. She was in no mood to play games with anyone.

‘No, I wouldn’t, actually. And if you don’t tell me who you are, this call is over.’

‘OK, how about if I tell you that I’m the one waiting at the end. Will that do?’

‘Waiting at the end? At the end of what?’

First the voice at the other end chuckled at the question. When it spoke again, the words came out slowly, and in a tone that could only be described as morbid.

‘Life, Sharon. I am the one waiting at the end of life, for I am death.’

Sharon didn’t scare easy, but there was something about this voice that sent a chill trickling down her spine.

‘You know what? That’s one horrible joke, whoever you are.’

‘Who said it was a joke?’

‘Fuck you, you sick freak. Don’t call me again.’ In a burst of anger, Sharon almost slammed her cellphone against the sideboard but she stopped herself just in time.

A few seconds later, it rang again – same number. Sharon just let it ring out.

A few more seconds after the ringing had stopped, a text message came through.

C’mon, answer your phone, Sharon. Don’t you want to play?

Sharon knew that she should just ignore it, but after such a long day her anger got the better of her. She quickly typed a reply.

Go fuck yourself, freakshow. Whoever you are, I’m blocking your number.

Ping.

Just moments after Sharon had replied, a new text message arrived.

You know what? Forget about the phone. Let me ask you something. Did you remember to lock your front door?

Clunk, clunk, clunk.

All of a sudden, the handle on her front door twisted three times in quick succession.

‘Jesus!’ Sharon jumped back, almost dropping her cellphone. Her frightened stare shot toward the door. ‘What the fuck?’

Thankfully, she had locked the door. Ping. A new message.

She looked down at her phone again. Only then did she realize that she was trembling.

C’mon, open the door, Sharon. I’m right outside. Let’s have some fun.

The handle on the front door moved again, this time a lot slower, and only once.

‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’

As Sharon began panicking, her eyes immediately filled with tears.

Ping.

OK, who needs the door anyway? Maybe I can get in some other way.

The pause that followed was suddenly punctuated by desperate fear.

Oh fuck, Sharon thought as the memory came back to her. The window.

Despite how frightened she actually was, Sharon’s survival instincts took over and she exploded toward the living room window. She never knew her legs could move that fast. As she slammed it shut and drew the curtains, her towel came undone and fell to the floor. She was way too scared to care.

Between heavy breaths, her terrified gaze flitted between the door and the window for a long moment. Finally, her brain, which had gone momentarily numb, re-engaged.

What the fuck are you waiting for, Sharon? she told herself. Call 911 now.

She quickly tapped the numbers into her cellphone and pressed the ‘call’ button.

Nothing. No dial tone.

‘What the hell?’ She looked at the display screen. She had not one signal bar. ‘How can this be?’ she yelled at her phone through clenched teeth. Just a moment ago she’d received a new message.

What Sharon had no way of knowing was that every time the caller got off the phone, he switched on his own cellphone signal scrambler.

Instinctively, she stretched her arm out and moved it around, searching for a signal.

Nothing. Not even half a bar.

‘Shit. Shit.’

Her brain turned another rusty wheel.

‘Landline.’

She rushed toward the phone on the counter in the kitchen, but just as she was about to snatch it from its cradle, it rang.

Stunned, Sharon brought it to her ear.

‘Hello?’

‘Let’s play a game, Sharon.’

Sharon froze.

‘And it starts like this. Lights out.’

In that instant, her entire house fell into darkness. Sharon let out another terrified scream. Her eyes circled the room but she saw nothing.

‘Oh my God, what the hell is happening?’ she said into the phone in a shaky voice. ‘Who are you? Why are you doing this to me?’

Sharon still had her cellphone in her hand. She swiped her thumb across the screen and turned on the flashlight application.

‘Do you know what your mistake was, Sharon?’ The voice came through the landline receiver once again.

Sharon could do nothing but breathe hard.

‘You went for the wrong window.’

Terror ripped through her heart as she remembered – her bedroom window.

Panicking and completely out of ideas, Sharon frantically moved her cellphone around. The weak light that came from the tiny flashbulb at the back of it cast shadows everywhere, but as those shadows passed over the door that linked the living room to the corridor, she saw a human silhouette move across it.

The next time she heard the man’s voice, it did not come from the receiver by her ear. It came from behind her.

‘I’m already inside.’