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Terror swirled around her head until she realized she was close to her room.
Room 41. 42. Yes, finally, room 43.
She opened the door to her room, slammed it shut behind her, then dived over to her bed.
Pulling the covers over her face, she felt the cool embrace of the sheets beneath her. It was a place of safety. A place of comfort.
There was a silence. But it felt to Gillian as if something occupied the air near her. She trembled and was certain: She was not alone.
Then she heard the voice of a man, low and unnerving.
My God, it’s in the room, she thought.
She couldn’t see anything with the blanket over her head, but she did hear the footsteps. Slow. Methodical. Nearing the bed.
“Gillian…” the voice whispered.
And she recognized it. Someone she knew.
Pulling the blanket down slowly from her face, the voice now came into view. Yes, someone she knew.A man,she thought.
And she didn’t think he was a demon. At least, he didn’t seem like one.
“Are … are you here to save me?” she asked, relieved.
“Oh, yes,” the figure said, sitting down on the bed beside her. “I’ll help you.”
Thank God, she thought.I am saved from the evil.
The figure reached out with slender fingers and caressed her face gently, smiling. He nodded as if he was seeing all her pain. Seeing all her discomfort.
In some ways, the figure reminded Gillian of her father.
She looked down at the figure’s hands and noticed something white sitting in them.
Gillian only saw it for the briefest of moments. She only realized that it was a coiled-up bed sheet when the figure wrapped it around her neck and twisted it violently.
She could hear the cotton bristle against itself, sounding exactly like a hangman’s noose.
Then the shadowy figure strangled the life from her by twisting the coiled sheet over and over again.
Gillian gasped for breath. She tried to scream.
They got me, she thought as the world faded to darkness, and the cold embrace of death finally washed over her.
CHAPTER ONE
Charlie looked in horror at the faces of his family around their dining table. A place usually of comfort, it was now the setting for a father and husband’s worst fears.
His wife, two children, and brother all had black tape over their mouths to stop them from screaming. Their hands, likewise, were bound by the stuff.
Someone had taken them hostage and tied them up in Charlie’s dining room.
He saw the terror in his wife Angela’s eyes.
Get our children to safety, they pleaded, wide and panicked.
Charlie had been exhausted, having just returned home from his most recent case in Boston as part of the FBI’s Criminal Psychopathy Unit. But the weariness from that case only dulled his senses so much.