The Fire Witness

56

Caroline wakes up on the sofa. She sits up and looks around the empty room. A few embers are glowing in the fireplace. She realizes that everyone else has gone to bed and just left her sleeping.

She gets up and looks out the window. She can see the water beyond the fishing huts. Everything is silent and still and the moon, behind a few wisps of clouds, shines over the ocean.

She opens the door and feels the cool air of the hallway on her face. The shadows are deep and she can barely make out the doors to the girls’ bedrooms. She can hear a bed creak. Caroline walks into the darkness, the floor icy cold beneath her bare feet. She stops when she hears someone softly moaning. The sound is coming from the bathroom. She tiptoes there, her heart pounding. The door is slightly ajar. Someone is inside and Caroline can hear the moan again.

She peeks through the gap.

Nina is sitting on the toilet seat with her legs wide apart and her face expressionless. There’s a man kneeling on the floor with his face burrowed between her thighs. She’s opened her pajama top and he’s squeezing her breast as he licks her.

“You should be done by now,” Nina whispers.

“Okay,” he says, and gets up quickly.

As he pulls some toilet paper off the roll and wipes his mouth, Caroline can see that the man is the security guard.

“So where’s my money?” Nina holds out her hand.

The guard starts digging around in his pocket.

“Damn it, I just have eighty,” he says.

“You told me you had five hundred.”

“What am I supposed to do? I only have eighty.”

Nina sighs and takes the money.

Caroline hurries away and slides into her own cold little bedroom. She closes the door and turns on the light. She can see herself reflected in the black window and realizes that she’s visible to anyone outside. She stands to one side as she pulls the blind down, so she can’t be seen. For the first time in a long while, she feels afraid of the dark. She leans against the wall, suddenly remembering Tuula’s light blue eyes as she talked about various serial killers. She knows Tuula was frightened and only wanted the others to be scared too when she said that Vicky had followed them to the fishing village.

Caroline decides to forget about brushing her teeth. Nothing can induce her to go back out into that cold hallway.

She moves the chair to the door and tries to wedge its back under the handle, but it’s too short. She gets a stack of old magazines from the bookshelf and puts them underneath the rear legs until the back reaches the handle at an angle.

She thinks she hears someone outside in the hallway and a shiver runs up and down her spine.

There’s a sudden bang behind her. The window blind has snapped up and is now spinning.

“Oh God.” She sighs and pulls it back down.

She stands still in the room and listens. Then she turns off the ceiling light and hurries into bed, pulling the quilt tightly around her. As she waits for the sheets to warm up she stares fixedly at the door.

She thinks about Vicky Bennet. Vicky, who seemed so shy and withdrawn. Caroline doesn’t think that she really did that awful thing; she just can’t wrap her mind around that. Before she can force her thoughts in another direction, she remembers the sight of Miranda’s crushed skull and the blood dripping from the lamp shade.

There are footsteps in the hallway. They fall silent for a moment, then start again. Whoever it is stops outside her door. Caroline can hear the faint scrape of the door handle being pushed down. Then it stops. She shuts her eyes and prays to God, who loves little children.