Friday, October 19
Morning
By the time Heath emerged from the shower, I was already well into breakfast. He joined me, digging energetically into the stack of pancakes. A lock of wet hair fell over his eye as he ate.
But all I could think of were Luca’s hazel eyes fastened onto mine, his voice in my ears.
Look behind the mirror.
Behind the mirror above the dresser in our room? Or some other mirror? I didn’t know. It was all he’d said.
My pulse was racing so fast now it felt like I was about to kick into a panic attack. I played with my food, pretending to eat, pushing the pancakes and bacon around. I’d broken into a sweat despite the frigid room.
I leapt up. “I’ll be right back.”
“Where you going?” Heath said, working his way through the pancakes.
“I left the book I was reading downstairs.”
“There you go, read a book. Much healthier than worrying about everybody else around here.”
“Back in a sec,” I chirped and scooted out of the room.
In the hallway both trays were still untouched. I still had a chance to make contact with Jerry McAdam. I tapped on the Siefferts’ door, but there was no answer. I moved on to the McAdams’ and knocked quietly.
“Mr. McAdam, it’s Daphne Amos.” There was no answer. I bounced on the balls of my feet. “Jerry, I really need to talk to you. I know you have a phone. So I need you to call the police for me. For Glenys Sieffert, okay? That’s her name. Glenys Sieffert. She and her husband are staying right next door to you. Just call 911, please.”
At the end of the hall, the pocket door was open. Beyond it, I could see that Dr. Cerny’s bedroom door was shut. He was either still inside or he was already downstairs in his office getting ready for the day. In either case, I had a chance to get up to the attic without him hearing me. I gauged the time. Soon Heath would be done eating, and Luca would be back up to collect everyone’s trays. I had to go now.
I made it up the stairs in seconds. The monitors were on, but the Sieffert screen showed nothing. No people. No activity. The room was empty.
The McAdams were eating breakfast.
But how was that possible? I’d just seen both trays still sitting by the respective doors.
I leaned closer. Their faces were hidden, but I could see the meal clearly enough. Soft-boiled eggs in old-fashioned cups and what looked like grapefruit halves. Which was strange, because back in our room, Heath was shoveling down pancakes and bacon.
“What the hell . . .” I said softly.
So Luca cooked different breakfasts for different guests? That was an extraordinary amount of work for one person, and above and beyond providing dietary substitutions. Something about this felt off. Way off. I backed out of the room, headed down the stairs, but stopped dead at the pocket door.
Both breakfast trays still sat outside the McAdams’ and Siefferts’ doors. They looked exactly like they had when Luca had dropped them off, like they hadn’t been touched at all. I hesitated. I knew what I’d just seen—the McAdams eating their made-to-order eggs and grapefruit. Was it possible that in the time it had taken me to climb down the stairs, they’d put the tray back out?
I crept toward the McAdams’ door and the tray, knelt, and lifted one of the metal lids. The plate underneath was empty. Not just cleared of food but absolutely clean, like it had just come out of the cupboard. I lifted the cover off the other plate, and it was the same. A perfectly pristine plate. No food. Nothing.
I unscrewed the lid of the coffee carafe and turned it upside down. Nothing came out. It was completely, utterly empty. I dropped it, ran over to the Siefferts’ tray, and lifted those covers too. The plates were clean.
I flung the covers across the hall. Kicked at the tray, and utensils and glasses and carafe shot in all directions, clattering across the runner and bouncing off the opposite wall. My brain wasn’t computing the images. They didn’t make any sense. Not in the world where I was living and breathing—the dark hallway in a crimson house hidden away on a mountain. Where my fiancé ate syrupy pancakes down the hall like everything was perfectly normal and right.
But it wasn’t. Not by a long shot.
There was something terribly wrong here. Utterly and irrevocably wrong. I couldn’t zero in on what it was exactly, but I did know a few things: I knew Matthew Cerny had led me and Heath to believe we were on a retreat, a weeklong retreat with two other couples . . .
. . . who were nowhere to be found.
. . . who were being delivered trays of empty dishes for their meals.
But the other couples had been here at one point, hadn’t they? I’d met the McAdams, Jerry and Donna, just a few days ago. I’d seen them with my own eyes. Had they left? Gone down to Dunfree, like Reggie Teague, for some reason? But why would they? And why had Glenys and her husband left too?
Was it possible that Heath and I were actually alone here?
I tore down the hallway, charged back up the cramped staircase to the hexagonal attic. Sure enough, on the monitors, the McAdam and Sieffert rooms were buzzing with activity. Mrs. McAdam was making the bed while, across the room, her husband tied his shoes. Mr. Sieffert was pulling on pants, tucking in his shirt, staring at his reflection in the mirror on the closet door. Glenys was nowhere in sight.
I moved closer to the Sieffert monitor. Waited until the bathroom door opened, and a woman emerged, then sat on the bed, her back toward the camera.
It looked like Glenys, but honestly, I couldn’t see her face, only her back and profile. It could have been anyone. Any woman who was tall and slender with lightish hair. The next monitor over, Jerry McAdam—or somebody that looked a lot like him—watched his wife disappear into the bathroom and shut the door. He waited a second, then pulled out his old-school flip phone.
I spun to face the wall behind me. Studied the massive blocks of metal, their complicated faces of knobs and dials and gauges humming and clicking away. It sounded the same as every other time I’d been up here, but I’d just assumed it was part of the doctor’s J. Edgar Hoover setup. And I’d never bothered to really examine it.
Even though it was broad daylight outside, the attic was still dark. I ran my hands over the machinery, and all the way at the end, I found a section of boxy-looking green metal units, stacked four high. They were almost hidden, wedged between the bigger machinery and the wall. Each of them had one vertical slot.
Four in all.
I studied them, waiting for my brain to catch up with what my gut was already telling me. I knew what this was, I did. It was just that I was used to seeing one of these gadgets as a slim black box, sitting on top of a TV, with one horizontal slot and a few buttons underneath. But this was the same thing. It was the exact same goddamn thing.
A VCR.
A whole VHS system connected to the monitors up on the shelf.
I stuck my hand in one of the slots, and my fingers hit plastic. I could feel the mechanism whirring under my touch. I pushed on it, thinking it might release and eject, but it didn’t. I stepped back. Started randomly pressing every button, turning dials and knobs indiscriminately. I hit a black square button and, like magic, one of the tapes popped out from the last slot on the row.
“Shit.”
I pulled it out of the slot and looked at the label. Sieffert, Randall & Glenys—2006.
I practically smashed the other buttons, and another tape popped out. I yanked it out and looked at the label. McAdam, Jerry & Donna—2007. I dropped it, then shoved the Sieffert tape back into the deck. The tape chunked into the player and began to whir.
When I turned back to the monitors, the woman—the Glenys Sieffert doppelganger—was on camera. She was dressed in a sweater and trousers, her hair still dripping from the shower. She stood in the middle of the room, in a block of sunlight from the window, fluffing her hair. I watched her, mesmerized.
I couldn’t believe that I’d missed it. It was so obvious. I’d expected to see the Glenys I knew—I’d wanted to, and so I had. But this woman wasn’t Glenys. She was tall and thin, yes, but her face was all wrong. Her eyes too close together, her nose long and slightly hooked in profile, instead of Glenys’s straight, elegant one.
I felt my breath go shallow, my whole body tingle in alarm. The woman I’d been talking to all week had told me her name was Glenys. Cerny had made sure he had a tape of her look-alike playing at all times on the monitors. All of this was part of a carefully thought-out plan. A plan designed to fool me and Heath.
But why?
What possible reason could Cerny have for hiding the identity of the woman I’d befriended?
I heard a door slam somewhere downstairs. I backed out of the attic and flew down both flights of back stairs just as Luca was entering the kitchen from outside. We each stopped dead at the sight of the other.
I waved at him, wildly, probably looking like a crazy woman. “You need to go. Get out of here.”
He shook his head. I could tell he was worried about me, that he wanted to stay and help, which was sweet. But this was not a time for chivalry. No good could come from either of us hanging around here for one minute longer.
“I’m fine. I’m safe.” I looked over my shoulder. “But Dr. Cerny is crazy—he’s a fucking lunatic—and you don’t need to be in this house with him.” If I could’ve physically pushed him out the door I would have, but he retreated of his own accord, right out the door he’d come in.
I ran back up the stairs and down the hall to Glenys’s room. Correction. Not Glenys, not her room. I squared up to the door, drew in a deep breath, then kicked it as hard as I could. The door rattled in its frame but held fast. Which stood to reason. The thing had been built to last for generations. Twice as thick as modern doors and solid as stone, made from impenetrable, age-hardened oak.
I kicked again, feeling something bitter and strong rise up in me, the fear that had been seeping through my insides since the first moment I’d set foot in this house. It had been leaking from the poisoned well of my past, pooling in all the cracks, drowning me from the inside out. But now, each time my boot struck the door, I felt the fear transform to fury, giving me strength. I closed my eyes and thought of them all.
Mrs. Bobbie. Kick. Mr. Al. Kick.
Omega. Kick. The psychologist. Kick.
Chantal. Kick, kick, kick.
A crack appeared right down the center of the door, and the door banged open so hard, it slammed back and hit me smack on the nose. Eyes watering, I pushed it open again and entered the room.
Or, rather, the suite. The apartment—because that’s what it was—was made up of three identical rooms, just like I’d been seeing on the monitors, only I hadn’t noticed they were actually connected by doors. The doors were opened now, and as I turned a full three-sixty, the realization dawned that the suite ran the length of the entire hall. The room I was standing in was papered in faded brown roses just like I’d seen on the tape, the wood-plank floor worn bare. Cobwebs waved from the ceiling corners and edges of the windowsills. A film of dust covered everything. There was no furniture anywhere in sight. Not a bed, not a table, not one chair. Not even a stray rug or scrap of a curtain. It was completely bare.
No one had been here in a very long time.
I walked all the way through the apartment to the room at the end. It seemed to have been retrofitted for another use. One half was a kitchenette, the other half a makeshift classroom. A large chalkboard with bits of chalk and an eraser in the tray covered the window. I imagined a desk, a child’s desk like the one in the barn, situated in front of it, the board covered in history dates or math equations or diagrammed sentences. I envisioned the sharp point of a pencil as it dug into the soft wood of the desk’s surface. I have no pity.
Against the far wall, in between the two sections, sat a cherry buffet over which hung an enormous, rectangular gilt-framed mirror. The thing was a monstrosity, an overly ornate piece that seemed out of place in this bare, dusty room. I walked to it, drawn to my own reflection. My hair was sticking out all over, wild and frizzing in the humidity, my face flushed. I looked like someone I didn’t recognize. Someone angry and strong and determined. I touched my face, feeling the pressure of my fingertips against my skin.
I backed out of the room, returning to the middle one. This room had the same faded, scarred wood floors, but was papered in grimy gold grass cloth. Along the bathroom door, cut into the vertical wood molding, was a series of pencil marks. A growth chart, a lot like the one Mr. Al made on the garage door of the brown brick house.
So, a growth chart.
A chalkboard.
And a child’s desk.
All of which added up to one undeniable conclusion. Before being used as rooms for Cerny’s patients, they had been someone’s home. A child’s home.
That’s when I heard the music. Frank Sinatra. I looked over my shoulder, back into the bedroom with the faded brown-rose walls. Heath was there, standing in the center of the room, frozen. There was a look of horror dawning across his face. I walked toward him, slowly, as Frank’s velvet purr filled the room.
“Did you turn that music on?” I asked him.
It took a minute for his eyes to focus on me. He didn’t say a word. I walked past him. The iPod was lying on the windowsill, a long, snaking white cable connecting it to a small stereo receiver on the floor below. The iPod was an older generation, one of those oversize models with the big, chunky wheel. I spun the wheel and the screen lit up.
The song title scrolled across the screen: “Why Can’t You Behave?” I hit “Reverse” and saw the playlist. Matthew & Cecelia. All Frank Sinatra songs, scores of them. I felt dizzy.
“Heath?” I turned back to him. He still hadn’t moved. “No one’s been staying in these rooms,” I said. “We’re alone in this house.”
He shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know. But look at this place. He lied to us. Made us think we were here with two other couples. But it was a game. He’s playing us.” I looked at him. “Why did you turn on the music?”
“I don’t know.” His voice was calm, eerily so.
I felt like someone had grabbed my heart and was squeezing it so hard it might stop beating.
“Do you remember it—this song?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “Should I?”
“You said you hated it. You said Frank Sinatra was a deal breaker. Don’t you remember?”
He just stared blankly at me.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“We should go back to the room,” he said.
I took his hand. “We’re not just going back to our room, Heath. We have to get out of Baskens.”
He looked at me, expressionless. “Yeah.”
Somehow I maneuvered him back into our room, grabbed my bag, and started stuffing clothes into it. In the process, I fished out Jessica Kyung’s card and slid it into my jeans pocket. I’d be giving her a call about Dr. Matthew Cerny as soon as I could find a phone. The authorities were sure as shit going to hear about this insanity. In the bathroom, Heath seemed to have snapped out of whatever fog he was in and was gathering our toiletries and dumping them all into his bag.
“We should confront him,” he kept saying as he went back and forth between the rooms. “Get our money back.”
“Forget the money,” I snapped. “The guy’s a whack job. A lunatic. And we don’t need to engage with him. He could be dangerous. He could hurt us. He could hurt Luca. We have to leave.”
“I just think we should take a minute and think. Make a plan.”
“He tricked us, Heath. He set this whole farce up to make us think we were up here on this mountain, in this creepy house, with other people. But we’re not. We’re alone! And, incidentally, not only that, he’s got more cameras hidden around here, which we didn’t agree to. They could be running around the clock, and we’d never know—because he never told us. He’s gone to a whole hell of a lot of trouble to watch us night and day, and it’s not just because he wants to help us. Trust me. The man has got a screw loose. He’s got about a thousand fucking screws loose.” Grabbing a poker from the fireplace, I leapt up onto the bed.
“What are you doing?” Heath said.
“I’m showing him exactly what I think of his game.” I yelled out into the room. “You watching, Doctor? Remember how I said I didn’t do therapy?” I smiled. “Well, I changed my mind. I’m finally ready to express myself.”
I swung up at the lazily spinning fan, missed, then swung once more.
The poker hit the fan with a loud metallic clang. I swung again and again, beating the thing until it began to sway crazily. One final whack, and the blades caught the poker and flung it like a missile across the room. Heath and I both ducked. I snatched it up and headed for a painting. I whacked at it, as hard as I could, and the painting separated from the frame. In the crack between, I spotted a tiny lens and yanked it out.
But I wasn’t done. I circled the room, smashing lamps and pictures and the mirror above the dresser. Things shattered and ripped, fell off the walls, and crashed to the floor. Cameras sprung out of the wall, crazy, high-tech jacks-in-the-box.
I let the poker clang to the floor, panting.
Heath lifted his head from his hands. His face was ashen. “What the hell did I drag you into?”
I grabbed his wrist. “It doesn’t matter. What we need to do now is get the car keys. And get the hell out of here. The keys are hanging on hooks in his office. And get the cell phones too, if you can. I saw Luca—”
“Luca?”
“The cook, the waiter guy. I told him to run. He’s probably gone already. I’ll get the car and bring it around front.”
“Cerny will be in his office.”
“Okay, then. Forget the cell phones. We don’t need them.”
He followed me down the front stairs. We dropped our bags in the front hall, and I followed him to the sunroom. He gently eased the door open and slipped in. Snagging the keys, he tossed them to me. I darted back through the hall to the front door. Outside, I ran for the car. The Nissan was still there, thank God. I looked across the yard. Without the chain, the barn doors gaped open. I ran over.
The knife was wedged between the concrete floor and the rotted wood-board wall, right where I’d kicked it when Heath hadn’t been watching. I grabbed it and ran back to the car, slid behind the wheel, and dropped the knife into the pocket of the door. But what the hell did I think I was going to do with a kitchen knife? Stab Cerny? Or Glenys? If things got dire, would I even have the guts to do such a thing? I guessed I was about to find out.
I turned the ignition, and the engine sputtered. Dammit, not now. I gave it one more go and, thank God, it turned over. Shaky with relief, I shifted into reverse. The next sound I heard, the crunch of metal on metal, made me stomp on the brake. Shit. I’d sideswiped the car next to me, the green Tacoma truck. I bit my lip, then kept going, scraping all the way down the vehicle until I was past it. We were getting out of here, and there was no turning back. Shifting into drive, I swerved around the side of the house just as Heath was striding across the porch with the bags. He climbed in the car.
“I couldn’t find them,” he said. It took a minute to understand what he was saying. Our phones. He wasn’t able to find our phones. But it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was getting away from this place. I punched the gas, and we spun away from the house.