Chapter 19
Belinda stands up behind the desk.
I’ve fallen to my knees, and I hear myself babbling:
“… the door, you have to barricade the door, they were right behind me, you have to lock it or something, have to—”
“Hey, hey,” Belinda says, jogging out from behind the counter and up to me.
“Calm down,” she says, but I grab ahold of her arm and look her in the eyes.
“Please,” I say. “There was someone behind me. You have to lock the door. Now.”
Belinda stares at me. Then she nods, a short, quick movement.
“Okay,” she says. “I’ll do that, then.”
I hear her walking behind me. Hear the clicking of a lock, the slick sound of steel sliding against steel.
It should ease the tension in my body, should allow me to exhale. But I’m still shaking.
There are too many windows. Too many weak points. Too many places where someone could enter, if they wanted to, if they had decided to.
It’s all so fragile, after all. Walls and doors and windows. Held up by no more than a mutual unspoken agreement.
A false sense of safety. A duvet against the monster under the bed.
“All right,” Belinda says, and she sits down on the floor, opposite me. Her legs fold neatly underneath her, and she puts her hands together on top of her thighs.
“What happened?” she asks me.
I just shake my head.
“Okay,” Belinda says. “Try to breathe. Here, do it like this.” She puts her hand at the bottom of her ribs.
“Put your fingers here,” she says. “And then breathe in until you can feel your chest moving with your hand, and then breathe out again. In through your nose, out through your mouth.”
I copy her movement, only now realizing that my hands are so cold my fingers hurt; I can barely feel anything at all.
But nevertheless, I do as I’m told.
I fill my lungs with air, then push it out through my lips.
Belinda does it a few more times, and I feel sensation beginning to flood back into my body. The immediate, horrifyingly pinpointed clarity of adrenaline begins to ebb away, and I start to notice little details.
Belinda isn’t wearing jeans anymore; she’s in a knitted dove-gray cashmere set. She’s taken off her makeup, her cheeks red and her eyelashes pale, and her hair is in a loose bun at the nape of her neck.
“Better?” she asks, and I nod, let my hand fall back onto my lap.
“Good,” she says. “It’s okay. Do you know where you are?”
“Yes,” I say, somewhat confused. “I’m in the reception. At the main building.”
“What is the last thing you remember?” Belinda asks me.
“What … from when?”
“From before you fell asleep,” Belinda says.
I stare at her.
“I wasn’t sleeping,” I say.
Belinda smiles.
“Is this the first time you’ve ever had a sleepwalking episode?” she asks.
“I wasn’t sleepwalking,” I protest.
Belinda frowns. Her forehead doesn’t move, but her eyebrows twitch, and her eyes grow slimmer.
“Of course you were,” she insists, her voice soothing, as though talking to an overtired toddler.
“Your brain might have made up an explanation for what happened, but that’s quite common.
Especially in a new environment. You’d be surprised at how often it happens.
About a month ago, we found a patient walking out of the woods in the morning.
It scared the ever-living crap out of everyone, if you’ll excuse my language. ”
“No.” I shake my head.
“Isobel.” She is patience personified. “Look at you. Why would you be running around this late, in the dark, with no jacket and no shoes?”
She leans over to take a look at my feet and flinches.
“My goodness!” she exclaims. “Your feet. They’re all cut up. I can’t believe that didn’t wake you. I’m so sorry. Let me go get the first aid kit.”
She begins to rise to her feet, but I reach out and grab her arm.
“Wait,” I say. “No. I wasn’t sleepwalking.
There was someone there. Someone was staring in through my window.
I went out to see who it was, but they were hiding.
I heard them, and I decided to come here, and they were following me.
Chasing me.” I swallow hard, the iron taste of fear still lingering in the back of my throat.
Belinda blinks.
“What?” she asks.
“I know it sounds crazy. But there was someone there. It felt like they wanted to … like they were going to hurt me.” I wish I could explain it to her in a way she could understand; wish I could convince her I’m not lying, neither desperate for attention nor sleepwalking.
“We can make up a lot of things in our minds when we’re tired.” Belinda shakes her head, but her voice is wavering, just slightly. Something in my face or my voice must have gotten to her.
“I didn’t make it up,” I tell her. “I saw someone. There was someone there.”
“It might have been one of the other patients,” Belinda says. “We always recommend taking a walk if you have a hard time sleeping.”
“But what possible cause could they have had to just stare in through my window like that?” I try to reason. “Someone might have come through the woods. There are no fences in that direction.”
For a moment, I see something in her eyes. A flicker.
Not fear. But, perhaps, doubt. Doubt in what she, herself, is saying.
But then it’s gone.
“How about this,” Belinda says, rising into standing and holding out her hand. “I’ll go and have a look out the door, okay? And if there’s someone there, we’ll call the police.”
“No,” I protest, but she’s already up and walking, and I scramble to get to my feet. “Don’t do that—”
With a swift, efficient click, Belinda has unlocked the door and swung it open.
For a second, I’m so convinced that someone, the terror from my nightmares, will come swinging in through the door that I actually see it. I see something huge and dark and monstrous, bursting in with the cold wind.
But I blink, and it’s gone.
Belinda takes a couple of steps out on the first step of the low stairs and looks around. I see her shoulders falling, her spine straightening.
When she turns around, her eyes are mild, her tone secure, but I swear there’s something like relief in her posture.
“Come on, Isobel,” she urges me. “Come out here and take a look.”
I don’t want to. But I get up, my feet stinging so badly I hiss, and limp on over to the door.
I lean out.
It’s calm and silent. I can see the parking lot from where we are standing, the gates like thin, metallic saplings in the distance.
“There’s no one here, Isobel,” Belinda assures me. “It was a nightmare. That was all.”
She walks back in and shuts the door again.
“It’s okay,” she says. “Like I said, it happens all the time.”
When she smiles, teeth exposed and eyes flat, I want to tell her that she’s wrong. I want to tell her that there was someone there, that I wasn’t the only person who saw them.
But I can’t.
Because in order to do that, I would have to tell her that Armin saw them, too. I’d have to tell her about the phone. And the note left under my door.
And as Belinda keeps smiling at me with what must surely be feigned gentle patience, another thought worms its way out through my mind.
Her cheeks have reddened. As though through exertion. Or cold.
And she is wearing shoes. Soft, sturdy sneakers. They aren’t making a sound against the floor.
Maybe no one was chasing me after all. Maybe that part was all in my mind.
Maybe the person standing outside the window, watching me talk to Armin, instead snuck back to the main building on the other side, and waited there until I arrived, as though she had been there the whole time.
I won’t leave your side.
A different kind of chill floods my body.
“Come on,” Belinda says. “Let’s get some Band-Aids on those feet, huh? I have some wound cleaner in the first aid kit. We don’t want you getting an infection.”
I follow her, wordlessly, into the lounge, let her clean my bleeding scrapes without making a sound, as I watch her calm, steady hands bandage up my feet.
She gets me a pair of shoes from the lost and found, two sizes too big, so that I can get back to my cabin without hurting my feet any worse than I already have, and I thank her, eyes downcast, mouth set in a firm line, as though ashamed.
Better to let her think she’s convinced me. Better to let her think I’ve accepted the party line.
On the way out, Belinda once more takes her place behind the reception, and she waves cheerfully at me, a little smile on her lips, like we’ve just shared a joke.
The printer is sitting right behind her.
When I get back to the cabin, my door is still hanging slightly open. I draw a deep breath and push; it swings inward without a sound, hinges perfectly oiled.
Everything is as I left it. The little lamp on the bedside table still casting its warm glow over the bed, the blanket half on the floor. My shoes are where I kicked them off in the corner.
Still, I go into the bathroom, pull the curtain all the way back, inspect the shower. I get down on my hands and knees and look under the bed.
Nothing.
It’s only when I turn around and survey the floor that I realize what is missing.
My illicit iPhone, the one I dropped on the rug, is nowhere to be found.