Sleep Tight

Chapter 34

She was suffocating.

Had Mason known the holes he'd drilled in the refrigerator wouldn't be enough to keep her supplied with air? That would be something he would do, something gutless. Why not just kill her outright? Shoot her, or give her an overdose of his nasty drugs? Instead, he put her away. He shut the door and didn't plan to open it again. Forget about her. Pretend she didn't exist.

It was possible her body would never be found. Her poor mother would keep looking, year after year, waiting for news. And all the while Gillian would be here, stuffed in a fucking refrigerator.

She'd tried to be good. She'd even talked to his dead sister. But it hadn't been enough. No woman would have been enough for him, because no woman could live up to the woman who-was already dead.

She'd been naive enough to think she could get through to him. How idiotic. How childish of her. She wasn't a negotiator. She hadn't been trained to talk someone into giving up. And now, in this eleventh hour, she could admit that after all these years, she was still trying to prove herself to Mary.

The basement was cold and damp, the floor was dirt, the walls wound around like catacombs.

"Gillian!" Mary shouted. "Gillian!"

She and Anthony hurried through the cramped space, ducking under wooden beams, their shoulders rubbing against stone and cement. One pass, and they found Mason's darkroom. No sign of Gillian.

Mary quickly looked around, her gaze moving over the photos plastered to the walls. There was Holly. Charlotte Henning. April Ellison. Underneath some of April's photos was a neatly printed word: bitch.

"Anthony-look." Mary stood in front of an en-larger. Visible in the compartment below the lens were the notched edges of a negative strip. "He must have been developing these."

Anthony immediately fell into action. "Shut off the overhead." He flicked on a red light screwed into a nearby socket.

Mary looked frantically around the room, running her hands across stone and cement block walls. "I can't find a switch!" She grabbed a broom and swung at the dangling bulb, breaking it like a pinata, glass shattering to the floor.

"See if you can locate developing solution," he said urgently. "It should be there somewhere near those trays." He turned on the enlarger light and bent close. "These could be Gillian, but I can't say for sure."

Mary found a jug labeled developing solution and poured it into a plastic tray.

Anthony flicked off the light, then slipped a contact sheet under the metal frame, quickly setting it up for an eight-by-ten. "Here we go." He pushed the timer button. The light clicked on for eight seconds, then off. He pulled out the contact sheet, hurried to the table, and dropped it in the solution.

"Stop bath," he said, looking around.

"Here." Mary handed him a brown bottle.

He poured a small amount into another tray and then added water. "We don't need anything else," he said. "We're not going for quality here. Watch the paper. When the photo is clear, pull it out and put it in the stop bath." He hurried back to the enlarger to make another print from a different negative.

As Mary watched, an image slowly appeared.

A woman.

Dressed in an off-the-shoulder evening gown.

Lying inside something.

A box?

Coffin?

Mary pressed a hand to her mouth.

It was a woman stuffed inside a refrigerator. Both doors were open. A notch had been cut in the freezer compartment, just large enough for a neck; her head filled the freezer, her body the lower section.

"It's Gillian," Mary said, unable to take her eyes from the photo.

Anthony returned to slide in another contact sheet. Using his bare hands, he pulled out the developed print and dropped it in the stop bath.

"Is she alive in the photo?" he asked.

"Yes." Her answer came on one tight, exhaled breath.

Standing opposite each other, they stared at the developing tray, waiting for the second image to appear.

It was a close-up of Gillian's face framed by the freezer. "She's alive in this one too," Anthony said.

Mary spun around, pulling a flashlight from her pocket as she went. Hurrying back through the stone maze, she trained the light on the dirt floor, then the steps that led to the kitchen.

Upstairs, she dived for the refrigerator, jerking it open.

Packed with food.

She slammed the door and ran back to the basement, where Anthony stood bathed in red light, three eight-by-tens spread out in front of him. "There has to be another refrigerator somewhere," she said breathlessly.

He pulled out his flashlight and trained the beam on the developed photos. "We need a clue to the location."

How long could a person remain alive in a refrigerator? Minutes? An hour?

Mary grabbed the photos, one after the other. "This one." She pointed. "Right here," she said, her voice rising. "Isn't that a stone wall?"

Anthony looked closer. "You're right." He was already moving. "Let's check the barn and outbuildings," he shouted over his shoulder. "They probably have stone foundations."

Halfway up the stairs, Mary stopped. Could they have missed something in their initial perusal of the basement? "Go on," she said, hurrying back downstairs. "I'm looking here once more."

He cleared the rest of the steps, taking them two and three at a time. She heard his feet pounding above her head. From outside came the sound of voices. Elliot and his team had arrived.

She and Anthony had gone through the basement quickly the first time. Now, while her heart pounded in her head, she forced herself to move methodically, training her flashlight on every crack and crevice.

Cobwebs. Mildew. Dripping water, falling and running across the ground. A door she'd checked before. She opened it again, shining the flashlight on canning jars of green and yellow beans. She directed the beam down. On the dirt floor was a footprint. A bare footprint. Small enough to be a woman's.

She stepped inside the cramped, smothering room and discovered something that hadn't been apparent from the doorway. The room appeared to be a rectangle about five feet deep. But once inside she saw that it was L-shaped, with the short length of the L turning to the left. At the end of that turn was a small padlocked door.

It was insanity to shoot a gun in such a tight space. She would never have graduated from the Academy if she'd done something so stupid during training.

Mary drew her gun, took aim, and then turned her face away as she squeezed the trigger.

She smelled burnt gunpowder. Her ears rang. When she looked back, the lock had shattered. She grabbed it, hot metal searing her fingers. Ignoring the pain, she jerked the lock loose. It dropped to the dirt floor with a soft thud. She lifted the metal hinge and shoved open the door.

A torture chamber.

A filthy mattress tossed across wooden slats. Handcuffs attached to a framework that made up the bed. She put a harid to her nose. The smell was bad, not like death, but more like an outhouse.

Something caught in her hair. She stepped back to see a shattered bulb dangling in front of her face. She moved the flashlight beam around to the back of the deep, narrow, suffocating space. There, lying on the ground like a coffin, was a refrigerator.

She bolted across the room, shoved open both doors, and shined her flashlight inside.

Visions of another time flooded her brain. Fiona. Dead. Murdered. Blood. Flies. And empty eyes. Those empty eyes…

Gillian was dead.

Her lips were blue, her skin, in contrast to the red satin gown, transparent. Red rose petals had been scattered-they clung to her white flesh.

The flashlight fell from her fingers as Mary dropped to her knees.

Too late. Too late.

She wasn't strong enough to lift Gillian from the tomb, so she leaned over, squeezed open her blue lips, and blew into her lungs.

What are you doing? Do you think you can wake the dead?

She blew another breath, then another, the panic she'd kept at bay until that point rising within her. She could feel the frightened wings beating against her heart, feel a helpless fear coming over her that threatened to shut off her mind completely.

It was a sensation she recalled from her youth.

Make it stop. Make it stop.

She blew another breath. And another.

Waking the dead.

A clatter behind her told her Anthony was there. His flashlight beam careened around the room. "I heard a gunshot. Oh, Christ," he said, spotting Gillian.

Now that Anthony had arrived, she broke down. "She's dead, Anthony!" she sobbed in disbelief. "She's dead!"

Together they lifted her from the refrigerator, the jagged edges of the freezer cutting into the sides of Gillian's neck. Blood beaded.

They put her on the floor, where Anthony placed two fingers against her carotid artery. "A pulse!" He turned to her. On his face was the most amazing mixture of incredulity and happiness. "She's breathing shallowly, but she's breathing!"

"I can't believe it." Mary fell to her knees beside him, an arm across his shoulders. "I can't believe she's still alive." Then she began to cry.

Sunlight hit Gillian full in the face, blinding her.

Was she dead? Was that the bright light they were always talking about?

A dark spot moved across the brightness. Her father? Grandmother?

"Gillian?"

She recognized Mary's voice.

"You're not dead, are you?" she asked, then realized nobody could hear her. She lifted a hand to her face. Something plastic. An oxygen mask.

"Here-" Someone removed the mask.

Gillian's eyes began to adjust to the brightness. The shadow that was Mary became more distinct until she could see her sister smiling at her. The smile was a smile from the past, from a time when they were young and the world was full of promise. She felt air move across her skin, and realized she was outside.

Birds were singing madly, the way they did after a rain.