You're Next

Chapter 9

The baby monitor, with its soothing blue trim and newborn-soft edges, was designed to project calm. Its red lights – five of them, like an equalizer bar on an old-fashioned stereo – were designed for the opposite effect. An emergency flare, harsh red, coded by man and nature for fire, danger, blood.

The first bar flickered on, then came steady, laying a crimson glow across Mike’s face. Bar one meant static, usually. The color, a perfect match for the alarm-clock digits, currently showing 3:15. Annabel slept soundly, her breath a faint whistle.

Now the second bar joined its counterpart, climbing the ladder, adding weight and force to the alert. With a thumb, Mike nudged up the volume until he could faintly discern the rush of white noise. The air-conditioning vent kicking on in Kat’s room? When he’d last checked on her, she’d been as still as a scone beneath the sheets, tucked in with the polar bear, both heads sharing the pillow.

A muted hush of air leaked from the monitor, a dragon exhaling.

Then a voice, faint as a whisper, sandblasted with static: She looks so peaceful when she sleeps.

Mike went board-stiff, frozen, his thoughts spinning, looking for traction. Was he dreaming?

But then, again, fuzzed at the edges: Like an angel.

He bolted upright, hurling back the covers, Annabel yelping beside him. He was running down the hall, feet pounding the floorboards, his wife calling after him. Skidding through Kat’s door, tensed for combat, fighting for night vision, he took in the room in a single scan.

Nothing.

He slapped the light switch.

Kat sleeping as contentedly as he’d left her. Annabel was behind him now, breathing hard. ‘What? What is it?’ She was whispering hoarsely, though you couldn’t wake Kat with a jackhammer when she was out like this.

‘I thought I heard a voice.’

‘That said what?’ She clicked off the rocker switch with the heel of her hand, and the room fell dark. ‘What did it say?’

He pinched his eyes, the afterglow of the ceiling lamp hanging on in the darkness. He could hear the crickets sawing in the creek bed that ran behind the property line. Annabel stroked his back.

‘I thought it said…’ He was shaking now, rage burned out, leaving behind adrenaline and a vague kind of terror. He felt his muscles, each one individually, taut and bull-strong.

‘What, babe?’

‘“She looks so peaceful when she sleeps.”’ Repeating it put a charge into him, made it real again.

‘You’ve had a lot going on lately.’ Annabel rested a hand on his cheek. Her face held empathy and – he feared – pity. Despite his embarrassment, he was compelled to draw back the curtain and check the window. Locked.

Annabel said, ‘What are you…?’

He made a snorkel mask with his hands, peering through the glass at the dark backyard. ‘The window autolocks, so someone could’ve slipped back out and lowered it.’ From the side he could feel the weight of Annabel’s stare. ‘I’m just saying it’s possible. They could have been in here, whispering at me through the monitor.’

‘Mike,’ she said, ‘who’d want to do something like that?’