Afterlife - Douglas Clegg [67]
“You were screaming,” he said. “In your sleep.” Then Julie realized that she lay there naked, the
covers thrown off the bed, her pajama bottoms pulled down around her ankles. Quickly, Joe looked away, and Julie reached for the bedspread, pulling it up over herself.
Chapter Seventeen
1
After Rick and Joe and dog left for the city again, Livy asked to talk to her in private. Julie went with her to her room, and Livy shut the door behind her.
“What’s up?” Julie asked.
“He came into my room last night,” Livy said. “Who?”
“Daddy.”
“Honey, it’s not Daddy. You know that.”
“It is,” Livy said. “But he told me you wouldn’t
believe me. He told me he was going to come for his family and that he loves all of us and not to cry.” “Livy, it was a dream you had.”
“Maybe,” Livy said, looking at her curiously as if she didn’t believe a word that her mother said.
“There’s nothing to be scared of. We have the burglar alarm. We have the NannyCam. Don’t be frightened by these dreams. You’re safe.”
“I’m not scared anymore,” Livy said. Then, she went to open her bedroom door again, and went down the hall to the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.
Julie sat down on Livy’s narrow bed and looked up at the NannyCam on the bookshelf by the door. She went to get the videotape from the previous night.
2
She fast-forwarded through the tape of the hallway NannyCam. Joe and Rick stumbled back and forth to the bathroom at the end of the hall. Matt got up to use it. And then, nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Empty hall. Bedroom doors either shut or slightly ajar.
And then, a movement through the hall.
Julie felt her heart leap into her throat. Adrenaline pumped through her veins. She paused it—looking to make sure that it wasn’t somehow Joe or Rick. That it was someone else.
It was a tall man with broad shoulders, but she couldn’t make out much else. It was like a dark shadow moving in the hallway, obscuring the nightlights as it went.
And then, it passed Livy’s bedroom.
It kept going down the hall.
Straight down the hall to Julie’s room, pushing the door open slightly.
Then, the shadow passed into her room.
It could not have been a shadow, she knew. It was someone. Some man.
Some stranger had gotten into her house and had gone into her bedroom.
And then the NannyCam’s videotape went to static as if it had shut off prematurely.
3
She checked the burglar alarm, made sure it was operational. Checked all windows. Double-checked the locks on the doors. Grilled both Matt and Livy when they got home from school in case there was any joke going on, but she didn’t tell them what she’d seen.
Then she asked Matt to move the wires and the videotape equipment for the NannyCam to her bedroom. They put one on her dresser, to the left of her bed, aimed for a shot of her entire bed. Then, the other one on the doorway. When Matt asked what it was about, she told him it was just an experiment to see when she snored because she had to see if it was sleep apnea or not. He didn’t quite get it, but he didn’t ask her too many more questions after that.
She couldn’t fall asleep that night until five a.m., because every time she started to close her eyes and drift off, she thought she heard a noise and woke up. She ended up sleeping all day, and then getting up that night to try it again.
She looked at the tapes of the first night, anyway. But there was nothing. It was too dark in her bedroom. She could just make out her sleeping form. Then it went to morning, and she fell asleep. Light came through her window. The clock’s display read: 6:20 a.m. Matt and Julie would probably be waking up. Nothing happened. The light came more fully up, and Matt came in to get her out of bed.
The next night, again, she had trouble sleeping. She took an Ambien, and did something she knew was stupid. She had a glass of the wine that Rick and Joe had left behind. Sleeping aid and booze, she thought when she watched the video later: nice descent into pathetic, Julie.
That night, she had the dream of the dead man, again,