She was abruptly aware of her nakedness. Dripping. Vulnerable. She sharpened her hearing, trying to determine what the sound was.
It was nothing. Nothing. You’re alone and jumpy.
The house is empty. It always is. Just two cats. Maybe they made the sound. Maybe they knocked over a lamp, or a stack of books. They’ve done that before.
The steam curled around her, but she had the sensation the water was no longer warm, that it had turned icy. She took a deep breath, shut off the shower, and stood in the stall, listening. Then, instantly, she thought: If someone is out there, switching off the shower will tell them I’m about to get out. She jammed her finger twisting the shower dial back on, and she jumped as too-hot water spilled over her back.
Conflicting thoughts screamed inside her head.
It was just anxiety. Nothing was there.
Straighten up. Step out. Act your age. Stop behaving like a child.
She turned the shower off a second time. The air seemed cold to her, as if a window was open.
This is a cliché. Like a bad horror film. There should be a dark John Williams Jaws-like score playing relentlessly in the background.
Then a more complicated thought: Did you shut down the alarm properly?
She went over in her mind’s eye every step of the procedure, pushing each button of the security code, seeing the LED lights go from red to green. Did they? She was stifled by uncertainty. She could hear her own voice echoing within her, shouting advice, insisting, You’re acting like a fool. Get out. Get dressed. Get the day going.
But she remained locked in position.
She thought, The noise came after I shut off the alarm. Was someone waiting for those indicator lights to change color?
It took Karen an immense amount of willpower to step from the shower and grab a towel from the rack by the door. She wrapped herself up and then paused to listen again. She could still hear nothing.
Dry off. Go get your clothes. Dab on a little makeup. Come on, just like every day. You are hearing things. Hallucinating noises. You’re on edge for no reason. Or yes, there is a reason, but it’s not a real reason.
The water was pooling beneath her feet and with a terrific effort that made her gasp out loud, she rapidly dried herself off, then dragged a stiff brush through tangled hair so quickly that had she not been so unsettled, she would have shouted at the self-inflicted pain. She stopped. This is crazy. Why am I brushing my hair if someone is waiting to kill me? She gripped the brush handle like a knife and kept it in her hand as if it could be a weapon. Then she hurriedly approached the bathroom door that led into the bedroom. Closed, but not locked. A part of her wanted to simply lock the door and wait, but it was the flimsiest of locks, just a turn-button on the handle, and wouldn’t prevent the weakest, most incompetent intruder from breaking in.
Karen imagined him on the other side of the door, listening for her, just as she was listening for him.
She could not picture a person. All she could imagine were shiny white bared teeth: an image from a children’s story.
Then, just as swiftly, she told herself that she was being ridiculous. There’s no one there. You’re just acting nuts.
Still, it took another surge of will to open the door, then step into the bedroom.
It was empty-save for the two cats. They lounged on the bed, already bored.
She listened again. Nothing.
Moving as quickly and as quietly as she could, she grabbed at her clothes and pulled them on. Underwear. Bra. Slacks. Sweater. She slammed her feet into her shoes and stood up. Being clothed reassured her.
She went to her bedroom door. Again she paused to listen. Silence.
Small noises seemed to surround her: a ticking clock; the scratch of one of the cats shifting position on the bed; the distant sound of the heating system switching on.
Her own labored breathing.
She imagined that no noise would be way worse, and then she told herself that this made absolutely no sense. No fucking sense, she thought.
It’s my goddamn house. I’ll be damned if I’ll let anyone…
She stopped. She picked up her cell phone from her bureau, flipped it open, dialed 911, and then poised her thumb over the call button.
This made her feel armed, and she began to slowly walk through the house, holding the cell phone like it was a weapon. Kitchen empty. Front foyer empty. Living room empty. Television room empty. She went from room to room, each quiet space both reassuring her and making her more nervous. At first she couldn’t bring herself to throw open a closet door; a part of her expected someone to jump out. The rational part of her warred with this sensation, and with another large effort she tugged open each closet, only to be greeted by clothes or coats or piles of stray papers.
She was hunting for a noise. Or evidence of a noise. Something that would make the fear that surged through her make some rational sense. She could find nothing.
When she was finally half-persuaded that she was alone, she went back to the kitchen and poured herself a cup of hot coffee. Her hand shook slightly. What did you hear?
Nothing. Everything. She let the coffee fill her, let the adrenaline rushing through her ears settle. She wondered, Can a letter make a noise? Can an anonymous threat make a sound?
In an erratic mix of tensions, Karen grabbed her coat and headed out to her car to go to work. In her confusion and anxiety, for the first time in years she neglected to put out the cat food.
7
Jordan walked across the campus in the early evening gloom, going back to the library, a distant redbrick building with bright light flowing from large plate glass windows that threw odd cones of illumination across the grassy lawn. The cold breeze seemed to predict a change in the weather-but it was impossible for her to tell whether it would worsen or improve.
Like most students out after the night started to tumble around them, she had been pacing quickly, slightly hunched over, bent to the task of getting from one brightly lit spot to the next, as if time spent on the dark pathways was unsettling or dangerous. She thought, It probably is, but found herself slowing nonetheless, like an engine running out of fuel, until she finally stopped dead in her tracks and pivoted around, surveying the world around her.
It was all familiar, all alien, at the same moment.
She had spent nearly four years on the prep school campus, yet it did not seem like home.
She could see inside dormitories-she could name each one. Behind the windows, she saw students bent over textbooks, or sitting around in conversation. She recognized faces. Shapes. An occasional loud voice that seemed to come from nowhere, but which she knew emanated from some dorm, pierced the night, and it seemed to her that she knew who was speaking but just couldn’t quite connect a face to the elusive sounds. From adjacent walkways, she could hear footsteps, and she could make out the darkened forms of other students. Some of the shrubbery and the trees seemed to catch the light that came from the student center or the art building in their swaying branches and toss it haphazardly across the lawn, as if taunting her with shadows.
She thought, In the real fairy tale, the Big Bad Wolf tracks Little Red Riding Hood through the forest. Nothing stops him. Nothing gets in his way. He’s like relentless. He fucking knows everything she’s going to do before she does it. It’s like he’s at home and she’s just a stranger in the woods. She’s got no damn chance at all. Not even when she thinks she’s safe because she gets to Grandmother’s house, because the wolf is already there and pretending to be the person she thinks can protect her.