Chain Letter Read online

  Alison took a long time to make it from the garage, through the kitchen and living room, to the front door. And once there, she paused, wondering why they hadn’t rung the bell.

  “Brenda?” she called. “Joan?”

  No answer.

  Stay cool, don’t freak, you’re not going to die.

  She pressed her ear to the door. She couldn’t even hear the rain over the roar of the blood in her head. “Hello?” she croaked.

  Whoever was there, if there was anybody there, was playing it mean. All right, she was a big girl, all she had to do was . . . what was she supposed to do? She didn’t know. Turn on the porch light, yes, and peek through the glass at the side of the door, yes, and be careful she saw them before they saw her, yes, and then scream bloody murder.

  She had a hard time with the switch, her hands were shaking so. But finally the porch light went on, spilling a bloody glow on either side of the door. Wishing she had a miniature periscope, she inched her eyes toward the smoky panels of glass. If this was a joke they were pulling, Brenda and Joan were sleeping in the garage.

  But there was no one there, no one she could see. To be absolutely sure, she needed to open the door; the house was more likely to be struck by a meteor than were the chances of her doing that. Yet she had not imagined the knock. It had been as clear and distinct as . . .

  Oh, God.

  . . . the knock at the back door.

  She began to pant on air that seemed to turn into a vacuum in her lungs. No one with any scruples or benign intentions would have gone to the back door. Only psychotics with masks over their grinning skulls and sharp cutting implements in their greasy hands used back doors after dark. She’d seen the movies; she knew the score. The hatchet man would get his due, but only after he’d garroted and dissected a half dozen coeds. And a character as crafty as the Caretaker, why his quota would be bigger than average, at least everyone on the list, not to mention a few possible bystanders.

  This is only a play, and I am the star, and I had better move my ass!

  Two loaded barrels could make her odds a lot better. Picking up her feet, placing one in front of the other, she plodded back into the living room. The Great and Terrible Oz was threatening them not to look behind the curtain. I guarantee you, you won’t like what you see.

  She had rounded the kitchen counter and was passing the oven when the knock came again, loud and insistent. For a moment, what was left of her courage ran out the bottom of her feet, collecting in a sticky puddle on the floor, preventing her from budging an inch. Then a slight peculiarity in the origin and quality of the knocking squeezed its way into her thoughts. As it sounded again, she listened closely, and it seemed to be coming, not from the back door, but from the far den. Also, the texture was not of knuckles on wood, but of wood striking itself.

  The shutters?

  The innocent solution to the deadly dilemma brought a flood of relief. She cracked a smile big enough to permanently stretch her face and forgot all about the shotgun. Turning, she hurried back the way she had come, striding into the rear hall and opening the den door. A glance out the room’s windows confirmed that the shutters were loose and banging in the wind. Parting the glass, she reached out into the wet night air and fastened them tightly in place with a metal clasp. She felt about ten million times better.

  The phone rang.

  “Tony!” She called, bouncing into the living room toward the couch. She would have to tell him about the mysterious knocks, leaving out the shutters. Maybe it would inspire him to come over and spend the night. If that didn’t work, a few nasty suggestions might bring him running. Too bad Joan was already on her way.

  Where were those girls, anyway?

  “Hello, Tony?” she said, picking up the phone. “Hello?”

  There was breathing, not heavy and pornographic, but ragged and faint. Her own breathing stopped. The fear she had seconds ago sidestepped struck her full on. There was nothing to be gained by not hanging up the phone, but she simply could not bring herself to do it. A childish prayer kept her frozen. As long as the person was on the phone, he was somewhere else, and he couldn’t break through the door and split her open like a side of beef. The problem was, he was probably thinking along similar lines. As long as Alison continued to listen, Alison was a sitting duck for any attack.

  “Brenda? Joan?”

  They hung up, but not before she heard what sounded like a sigh. She put down the phone and instantly picked it up again. When they had moved in, she had memorized the housing tract’s security number. Their guard, Harvey Heck, was an alcoholic, and if he was stone drunk right now, he would never forgive himself when he read in the morning paper about the cute teenager who had bought it while he was on duty.

  “Harvey!” she shouted when she heard the tenth unanswered ring. She was on the verge of cursing his name, when it occurred to her that the Caretaker might have already paid him a visit. Harvey might be unable to answer. Feeling a despair that threatened to transform her into a whimpering vegetable, she slowly replaced the receiver.

  But it’s not my turn! I would have done whatever you asked!

  She had two alternatives: call the police or load the shotgun. Both of them sounded like fantastic ideas. She got out the local phone book and it took her four tries to punch out the correct number. Finally, she reached another human being, an elderly lady with a faint English accent.

  “San Bernardino Police Department. May I help you?”

  “Yes! My name is Alison Parker and I live at 1342 Keystone Lane in a housing tract five miles north of the 10 freeway. There is someone trying to kill me! I’m all alone. PLEASE send somebody . . . Hello? Hello!”

  The phone was dead. The connection had not been simply interrupted. There was no dial tone, no static, nothing. And hadn’t it gone dead the second she had started talking? The police hadn’t even gotten her name.

  And she had no idea where she’d left her cell phone.

  Clutching her abdomen, she bent over and put her head between her knees. Purple dots the same shade as the Caretaker’s envelopes danced behind her closed eyes. She was going to vomit. She was going to faint. She was going to die.

  I’ll get you my pretty, and your little dog too.

  The TV hummed happily along. The witch’s hourglass, like the Caretaker’s, was running low. But unlike Dorothy, no one was coming to her rescue. Sitting up and staring at the screen, she tasted blood in her mouth. She had bitten her tongue.

  But I’m the star, I’m not supposed to die.

  She forced herself to think. The only way her antagonist could have called one minute and cut the line the next was by being at one of the places where the phone company had been working installing new cables. Several times, while on her daily walks, she had passed the gray electrical boxes and noticed the numerous available plug-ins. That meant the Caretaker was definitely in the tract. There was a phone company box up the street. The Caretaker could be a couple of hundred yards away, and closing in on her.

  At the realization that the final confrontation was about to begin, Alison experienced an unlooked for charge of defiance swell inside. It was not as though her fear left her—if anything it intensified—it was simply that anger and vengeance demanded equal time. The cowardly bastard had taken the others unaware. But she was awake, she would not bleed or burn to death so easily. She had not played the role of the pursued heroine before but she would play it well. As long as the curtain stayed up.

  She ran to the garage. The shotgun was where she had dropped it, cracked open and ready for loading. Unfortunately, her father’s sporting equipment cabinet was in disarray, crowded and dark. Digging through wet suits and basketballs and rackets, she couldn’t find the box of shells. Was it possible that there were none?

  She had exhausted the cabinet to the last inch and was considering searching the drawers beneath the workbench when the lights went out for the third time. Her heroic resolve of a minute ago swayed precariously. Angry thunder—an
d now it sounded like the sky was tearing in two directly overhead—slapped the garage door, followed by a torrent of falling water. But in her shrinking heart, she knew the storm was not responsible for the sudden darkness. The power had been cut. The blackness was as featureless as in a cave ten miles beneath the earth, smothering her like a demon’s cloak.

  The Caretaker could not have interrupted the electricity as easily as the phone lines unless he had reached the circuits under the metal panel outside the back door. And a dead bolt would not stop someone who had stolen kids right from beneath the eyes of their loving families. She had to find those shells!

  The magic slippers were always right under her nose.

  Her one hand was balancing the gun, the other was squeezing the arm of an old polyurethane jacket, when something about the jacket began to demand attention she was hardly able to spare, and the missing clue was stuck on the tip of her mind when a sudden pounding on the back door jarred it free. Her dad always wore this coat when hunting! And sportsmen always liked to keep their ammunition in a handy place.

  There were two shells in the coat’s front right pocket. Relying solely upon feel, she guided the cartridges into the rear of the barrels and, disengaging the safety, she snapped the shotgun straight. One glance at that maniac’s face to know forever who he was and then she would splatter his features so his own mother wouldn’t be able to recognize him.

  The garage was strategically a terrible place to be and she did not entirely want to wait for him to come to her. Positioning the stock into the soft flesh beneath her shoulder, holding the twin barrels aloft with her left hand and putting her right finger on the trigger, she silently slipped out of the dark garage into the dark kitchen, crouching down, using the stove as cover. She couldn’t even see the end of her weapon and was sorely tempted to turn on the light for a second to get her bearings. But that would only serve to make her an easy target. The blind waited a lifetime in the dark. She would be patient. Soon, very soon, they would have to show themselves.

  Her plan lasted exactly two seconds.

  The back door convulsed from a splintering blow.

  Oh, please, good God, don’t be a bad God.

  It sounded like an ax. It wasn’t the Tinman’s ax.

  Frantically she began to reconsider waiting. There were a lot of cons. She was depending on a weapon she had never fired. What if it jammed? What if she missed? There was an alternative she had never considered before because it meant going outside. But at this instant, when she knew exactly where the Caretaker was, it didn’t seem like such a bad move to grab her keys, quietly open the front door, run out to the street to her car and put her foot on the accelerator and keep it there.

  The boom from the second blow of the ax reverberated through the house and promptly settled the issue. She scurried around the oven and made a beeline for the couch, catching her purse on the run. The showdown could wait for another day when she had reinforcements. She hurried to the front door. To undo the stubborn dead bolt, she had to set down the gun, which she did reluctantly. Careful, lest she interrupt the Caretaker’s efforts to turn the back door into firewood, she twisted the lock.

  Did you hear about that girl who was stuffed up her own chimney?

  It was stuck. Something, a bobby pin probably, had been jammed into the lock from the outside. A hard slap could knock it out but she would do almost as well calling out, Going out the front door, sorry I can’t stay.

  A portion of the back door cracked inward.

  She started pounding on the lock. And still, it would not turn. First she had been afraid of someone getting in and now she couldn’t get out. Well, if that maniac could force his way inside, she could force her way outside. Dropping her purse, grabbing the shotgun, she swung the stock into the glass panels that lined the entrance. The resulting jagged hole was tight but she was in a hurry and a scratch was infinitely preferable to a hack. Once again setting down the weapon, she dropped to her knees and thrust her arm outside into the cold air, feeling for the lock. Her fingers had lightly brushed the keyhole—and there was indeed a pin stuck there—when she realized the chopping on the back door had stopped. That meant . . .

  Someone grabbed her arm.

  She was yanked, hard. Her head smacked the door and she saw black holes instead of stars, pain exploding behind her eyes. Had she not been so damn disgusted at being caught so easily, she might have passed out right there and then.

  “Screw you!” she screamed, desperately trying to position her feet against the glass and door where she could use the strength in her hamstrings to push and hopefully get her arm back while it was still attached. But the bastard’s hold was firm and she was too cramped to maneuver her legs into place. After several agonizing seconds of the insane tug-of-war, what finally came to her aid was her own blood. With every yank and pull, the teeth of the cracked glass dug deeper into the flesh of her left arm, bringing a flow of the oily red liquid from her elbow to her wrist, finally causing the Caretaker’s viselike grip to slip slightly. This slip didn’t set her free, but it did give her the space she needed to plant her feet. Throwing back her head, she shoved with every muscle in her body, instantly snapping loose and landing on her butt over ten feet from the door. Dazed, her arm on fire, she climbed up on her elbows, seeing the blurred silhouette of a moving ax through what was left of the glass panels.

  Yeah, I read about that poor girl. What a mess.

  She rolled onto her belly, turning her back to the door, feeling for the gun with her right hand. She would fill the SOB full of lead, she swore to herself, but not just this second. If she turned around now, she knew she would pass out.

  Her bedroom had always been her place of escape when things were not going well and tonight definitely qualified as a bad night. Dragging the shotgun like it was a broken leg, crawling on all fours, she began to pull herself up the steps. She was going fairly fast for a quadruped, but if she could only stand, she would have done much better. But she couldn’t get up and she did not know why, other than that her entire body was a quivering mass of protoplasm. As she conquered the last step, she heard the front door swing open.

  But did you hear exactly what was done to her?

  One more brief postponement of the final shoot-out, and she thought she would be able to pull the trigger. Digging into the carpet with her elbows, slithering like a snake with a broken spine, she squirmed into her bedroom. Throwing the door shut, she fell away from it onto the floor. She was crying, she was bleeding, and she had nowhere else to go.

  No, and I don’t think I want to hear about it.

  He was coming up the stairs, slowly, pausing between each step. She could hear his breathing, just as it had been on the phone, thin and scraping. Whether he was male or female was impossible to tell. The house was new and still the boards creaked with each plodding footfall. That meant either the building contractors had ignored the county codes or else the Caretaker was huge—and maybe not even human. If Fran and Neil had guessed right, she would need silver shot in the shells to stop it, if it could be stopped.

  I’ll tell you, anyway. Hope you’ve got a strong stomach.

  He knew which room was hers. He knew everything about her. The steps came to a halt on the other side of the door. Breathing pushed through the cracks and she thought she could hear a heartbeat, a ribcage pressed against the wood, the beats echoing like radar sent out by a bat, rebounding back to the source, telling him exactly where she lay. If he had a gun, he wouldn’t even have to open the door. He could simply point and fire, and afterward do what he would with her body at his leisure.

  Her blood was everywhere, on the carpet, the curtains, the ceiling.

  One good shot, she told herself, climbing to her knees. If she could get that, she could make her graduation and pick up her diploma in person. The door could stay shut for her, too, and not be a problem. Clapping down on her wheezing breath, she inched forward, hugging the left, where a centered bullet wouldn’t catch her begging.
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  At first, the police weren’t sure if it hadn’t been an animal.

  She propped herself up on the wall behind the door and held the shotgun straight out like it was a weight bar she was doing exercises with, pointing the muzzle toward the exact middle of the door, squeezing the trigger to within a millimeter of contact. The malevolent breathing puffed on, inches away, and all she had to do was close that millimeter. But she couldn’t do it. A sudden memory flattened her will.

  The day after the first letter had arrived, Joan had approached her and Fran in the school courtyard. They had fought, as they usually did, and Joan had warned her to keep her distance from Tony. In response, she had laughed. “Why, will I be hurt?” And Joan had smiled and said, “Remember, you have been told.”

  The same line in the letter.

  Joan was the Caretaker. She was a kidnapper, a pyromaniac, and a murderess. But she was also a sick girl, and Alison simply could not pull the trigger.

  “Joan,” she whispered, “I know it’s you.”

  The breathing quickened. Alison pulled the gun back and let it hang at her side. “I know you hate me,” she said. “I know I’ve given you a lot of reasons to hate me. But I do want to help you.”

  The door bumped slightly, as if Joan had let her head fall against the wood. Alison felt perhaps it was a sign of surrender. Then the doorknob began to turn.

  “Don’t!” she shouted. The knob stopped. “Don’t come in. I’ve got a gun. I don’t want to hurt you, but if you come in right now, I’ll shoot.”

  The breathing stopped. Joan must be thinking, so Alison started to think some more herself. Pity, like all virtuous feelings, was delicate and quickly scattered by a strong gust of reality. Fran had disappeared without a trace. Kipp’s blood had soaked all the way through his mattress to the floor. And what had been left of Neil had been hard to sort out from what had been left of the house. Joan was ill, true, but Joan was still awfully dangerous.

  And they say she almost got away.