Der Schädelring: Thriller (German Edition)

glass almost disguised the two long scars than ran up her belly and just under the swells of her breasts. Aside from the scars, she was not too bad for an old-timer of twenty-seven. Mitchell certainly found her worthy.
    She went to bed and read some Jefferson Spence and was carried away to a land where the protagonists always drew upon inner reserves to overcome evil obstacles. The clock was still behaving itself, so she set it to wake her early. As she turned off the bedside light, she went over a checklist in her head.
    Doors locked. Windows locked. Curtains pulled closed. Mace in the living room. Baseball bat under the bed, the commemorative Louisville Slugger her adoptive parents had given her for her sixteenth birthday.
    All set.
    Nothing but darkness and the quiet settling of the house. The leaves flapped a little on the trees outside, one of them occasionally brushing against the window screen. The neighbors had cut the music. They were pretty considerate about that, except during their weekend parties.
    She lay in the dark thinking of the morning's episode of paranoia, the wooden blocks, the session with Dr. Forrest, the Satanic murder, Rick. Dr. Forrest. Something during the hypnosis. A memory, crawling from its slumber, fingers reaching from the damp murk of the cellar. Clawing its way out.
    The bad people, around her, touching and hurting her.
    No.
    That memory was for Dr. Forrest's office, where it could be bound by walls. Not here, not in Julia's house, where it could slither out of her ears and under the bed to lie in the beggar's velvet and wait. Wait for just that right moment when Julia was asleep, tangled in the sheets of nightmare. Then it would grab her ankle, open its slathering jaws and—
    She sat up and flicked on the bedside lamp.
    The digital clock moved on, counted its way from the past or toward the future, however you wanted to look at it. Julia watched it for a while, and then picked up her book. Julia read until after midnight. By that time she was thoroughly irritated with Spence's too-perfect heroine and his libertarian worldview, not to mention the obligatory dog chuffing here and there among the pages and occasionally bloated, pompous prose. But the book had helped her forget her troubles. Spence was reliable for that, as solid as a dictionary.
    She tried the pillow again.
    Not so bad this time. She was almost ready to try the dark, but decided to sleep with the light on. Just once more wouldn't hurt.
    She thought of the tape, tried to remember setting the VCR. She could remember. She could see herself punching the buttons, Channel 27. And she'd gotten the hair-oiled preacher from hell.
    Oh, well. Everybody made mistakes.
    Her thoughts spilled into nonsense, Rick's face, the lake at the club where she'd met Mitchell, her dead adoptive parents, a teacher she'd had in the sixth grade who had worn green suspenders, Mickey Mouse, images skipping by faster and faster on the preview screen of dreams.
    She was nearly asleep when she heard a crack outside the window. The sound of a damp stick breaking.
    She held her breath, kept her cheek against the pillow. Listened. Listened.
    A scrabbling sound on the outside wall. How close was the baseball bat?
    It's nothing, Julia. Probably the neighbor's boxer, leaving you a stinky present for tomorrow. Or a raccoon. You live right by the WOODS. Remember wildlife?
    A swashing across the window screen. The boxer couldn't reach six feet off the ground.
    It's a Creep.
    Should she pretend that she hadn't noticed, turn off the light as if preparing to sleep? In the darkness, she could reach the bat unobserved. She could roll to her feet and wait by the window for the Creep to come through. Then—
    What? Whammo , like a steroid-stoked Mark McGwire in his prime feasting on a rookie pitcher's fastball?
    No. She could call the cops.
    The cops.
    First cop: "You see anything?"
    Second cop (playing his flashlight beam on the ground outside the window): "Hmm. Looks like some kind of animal tracks."
    First cop: "What kind of tracks?"
    Second cop: "Damn. I just stepped in dog crap."
    Sometimes a cigar was just a cigar.
    Sometimes noises were only noises.
    She reached out, switched off the light without looking at the window.
    Swash against the screen.
    She couldn't resist looking.
    Eyes.
    A scarce glint of fire on them from the distant streetlight, weak between the curtains.
    But eyes .
    And a face behind them?
    She eased one hand off the bed, tensing, ready to