Der Schädelring: Thriller (German Edition)

moment and reach out like the long fingers of the past. Just as Mitchell had done.
    The memory of her fiancé's attack flooded through her, made the room grow fuzzy, and she almost lost her balance. Then she shook her head clear. If the Creep were still here, she wasn't going to make it easy for him.
    Julia eased into the room, elbowing the switch up and blinking against the sudden light.
    Her room looked the same, except for the clock. The bed not quite neatly made, Mr. Ned and some CD’s on her shelf, the Jefferson Spence paperback parted open on the bedside table. The window screen was gone, and the lace curtains shifted in the breeze like uneasy ghosts.
    Julia crossed the room and closed the window, sliding the latch into place. Walter was right, the windows were of solid construction. She saw no scars in the frame that might indicate a forced entry. Either she'd overlooked a lock, or some Creep had access to a copy of her house key.
    Without looking at the clock, Julia grabbed it, yanked the plug free of the wall, and tucked it under her elbow. She wondered if, even powerless, the clock's digits still blazed.
    4:06. Why 4:06?
    A thought fluttered at the edges of her memory, like a lost bat that disappeared back into its cave. She had so deliberately kept herself from remembering that the past had become a place that she visited with effort, a place that required a travel agent. She would only go when Dr. Forrest told her so.
    She went back through the house, locked the front door, and then checked all the other windows. She would unpack under the morning sun. For now, she was safe enough. As safe as she could ever be inside her own head.
    Unless someone had a key to her head as well as her house.
    Julia took a plastic shopping bag from the great mound of them under the sink. She slid the errant clock into the bag and tied it tightly closed. She wrapped a second bag around it for good measure and then tucked it under some coffee grounds and an ice cream box in the kitchen garbage. Maybe tomorrow she would find a big rock and smash the clock to bits.
    Killing time. The image was almost funny, but the persistent buzz of adrenaline still tickled the surface of her skin. She felt as if she were being watched.
    Was someone still in the house?
    No, she had checked all the rooms. The attic access was in the bathroom. She'd covered a case in Memphis where a Creep had crawled through the maintenance access of his apartment, climbed over the rafters to the next unit, and drilled small peepholes in the bedroom ceiling. The woman had come home one day to find Sheetrock dust on her bedspread, saw the holes, and called the police.
    The Creep was caught, but the woman never knew how many times he had watched her through his little series of spy holes. A hundred hot showers couldn't wash that kind of violation from your skin. Could the victim ever again undress without a tiny paranoid shiver? How much therapy had the woman needed before she'd quit scanning the ceiling of every room she entered?
    Paranoia was partly a survival instinct. But at some point you had to let it go.
    Julia thought of calling Dr. Forrest. Her wristwatch said eight o'clock, plenty early enough. But she suspected Dr. Forrest had a lover, the man Julia had overheard in the background of several phone conversations. Julia hated to be so needy, so dependent, so demanding of the therapist's time and attention. Most of all, she didn't want Dr. Forrest to tire of her.
    If she could survive the night, she would be okay. If she could survive her life , she would be okay.
    Julia went back through the house to her bedroom. She stopped herself from double-checking the window. An odd buzz sounded in her ears, the near-silent alarm of something amiss. The shelf where the engagement ring was hidden appeared undisturbed, Mr. Ned giving his friendly terrapin grin and books in an alphabetized row. But the top drawer of her dresser was slightly ajar.
    She wasn't a neat freak by any stretch, but she did have a compulsion to close things. Doors. Windows. Lids. Cabinets.
    She pulled open the drawer. Underwear and bras lay in ruffled tangles, a few of them black and red, most boring old beige or white. She dug into the pile, turned it over. The teddy was missing.
    Mitchell had bought it for her in hopes that she would model it. And she would have, if Mitchell hadn’t turned savage. How she had longed for the right moment, a moonlit holiday, maybe, or a romantic anniversary of