Der Schädelring: Thriller (German Edition)

scream, to reach for the Louisville Slugger, the phone, anything.
    The eyes were gone.
    She lay in her own sweat, trying to convince herself that she'd imagined the eyes, that she was safe as milk. Dr. Forrest warned her about letting her fantasy world intrude on reality. Dr. Forrest wasn't going to like hearing about nonexistent eyes at her bedroom window.
    The wooden blocks had been real. But, if she closed her eyes, she could picture herself selecting them off the toy rack, paying the cashier, taking them home and arranging the letters on her table. Then forgetting so she could scare herself later.
    That sounded crazy, multiple-personality loopy, and she was not ever going to be crazy. Dr. Forrest wouldn't let her. Better to pretend that the blocks had never existed. No Creep played tricks on her except the one inside her head.
    Julia would leave that part out of the journal she would start in the morning. And if she didn't want to imagine eyes at her window, the best thing was to shut her own eyes and watch the imaginary silent movies on the backs of her eyelids.
    For a moment, she longed for Mitchell’s presence in the bed beside her. Better the devil you know.
    She lulled herself into a shallow, exhausted sleep by the second reel.

 
     
    CHAPTER SIX
     
    " How many did you say?" Julia asked.
    The manager of the animal shelter took a draw on his cigarette, exhaled, and made a futile attempt to brush cat fur from his sweater. "About thirty or so. Might not seem like much, but if you're the pet owner . . . "
    Thirty dogs and cats reported missing in the last two weeks. The leathery old man who'd walked her through the shelter and let her take pictures with her digital camera leaned against the fence, flicking his ash to the gravel. Five dogs pressed their noses against the chain links, only one wagging its tail. The rest looked like lifers, fur dull, ears drooping from the boredom of chronic confinement.
    "We usually get about three reports a week," the manager said, his voice rough from half a century of smoke. "Most of them are killed by cars, of course. Some just plumb run off, but a dog or a cat is a lot smarter than you think. But, just lately, a hell of a lot of them been lost, if you'll pardon my French."
    "I don't speak French," Julia said. "That's a hell of a language."
    The man laughed, coughed.
    Julia wrote some notes on her pad. "Has this ever happened before?"
    "Not since I been here, ten years," he said. "I'd just as soon you leave that part out of the story. The people who did our stories before focused on what important work we do, how much we rely on donations, that sort of thing."
    "A warm and fuzzy piece?"
    "Yeah." He knocked the fire from his cigarette butt, stomped it out, and put the butt in the pocket of his coveralls. The strong smell of animal waste rose with the shifting of the wind. The man didn't seem to notice. "We got enough problems here, as you can probably imagine."
    "Let me guess. The county funds only a tiny portion of your operation, but they impose all kinds of regulations. Not to mention all the state laws you have to follow. Then there are the outbreaks of parvo and feline leukemia and mange and fleas and heartworms. And the only thing you get out of it is, every once in a while, somebody comes by and adopts one of these guys."
    She reached her fingers through the fence and rubbed the nose of the nearest dog. It licked her fingers and gazed at her with morose, questioning eyes. She looked away before the guilt could finish its journey from her heart to her brain.
    "That's about the size of it," the man said. "A lot of people don't give a second thought to the way animals are treated. I just wish I could take them all home with me."
    The manager's eyes misted a little. Julia averted her eyes and scanned the wedge of sparse woods, the river, and the Elkwood wastewater treatment plant on the neighboring property. The mountains rose in the distance, red and gold and orange with the changing of the leaves. The clouds were high and thin in the sky.
    "Okay, warm and fuzzy it is," Julia said. "Just a question. Off the record, of course. Why do you think so many animals are missing?"
    The man reached into his pocket as if for another cigarette, but brought his hand away empty. "I used to live down in Austin, Texas," he said. "One morning a few farmers on the outskirts woke up to find some of their animals dead. Dogs, cats, a few lambs, even a cow. Had their throats cut. The cops