Creep - Jennifer Hillier [127]
“Sheila!” he yelled at the top of his lungs before fear could overtake him. Trotting down the stairs as fast as his stiff knees would allow, he felt half out of his mind with panic. A few steps down, he yelled again, the rifle cocked and ready. He had three rounds left. If Wolfe was holding Sheila captive, he wouldn’t hesitate to pump all three of them into the bastard’s body. “Sheila, are you down here?”
As if to answer his cry, he heard a whimper, a small sound, a pitiful sound, but it pierced his heart.
Sheila.
Turning the corner into the main room, not waiting to fully process what he was seeing, Morris aimed the rifle and fired.
CHAPTER : 43
Unrecognizable voices were speaking in hushed tones when Sheila awoke, but it was the strong smell of antiseptic that told her she was somewhere new.
“I’m telling you, Kim, it was the creepiest shit I ever saw,” the man said in a low voice. “All these masks, like real human faces, lined up neatly. A whole shelf of them. At first I thought they were actual heads with the eyes gouged out. I didn’t think they could make masks that looked so real. Sick motherfucker.”
“What about the wall?” The female was whispering, but there was no mistaking the horror in her voice. “Jesus, they think there could be a dozen women inside there. And those are the ones he kept. Who knows how many others there were?”
Sheila blinked, her eyes crusty with sleep. A pretty blonde was sitting at her bedside, wearing a fitted jacket, a small black notebook in hand. Her young face was expectant, and she was staring at Sheila with an intensity that was frightening.
“Stop looking at her like that.” The dry, male voice came from somewhere in the corner of the room. “You’re gonna scare the shit out of her.”
Too late. The panic of not knowing where she was had already begun to ball up inside her. What was this place? Was Ethan here? Where was Morris?
The blonde put her hand gently over Sheila’s fingers. “It’s okay. You’re safe.” A smile lit the younger woman’s pretty features. “Welcome back, Dr. Tao.”
Sheila turned her head and saw the medical equipment, the light-mint-colored walls, the large window with the blinds rolled all the way up. A snippet of sunshine streamed into the room through a hole in the clouds. Her hand was stinging and she looked down. An IV needle was burrowed into the back of her hand near her bruised wrists. The tears came then.
“I’ll give you a minute.” The blonde retreated into a shadow before Sheila could say anything.
A nurse clad in cheerful pink scrubs entered the room. She headed briskly toward Sheila, checking the monitors. “She’s awake? How wonderful. Hi, honey.” She dabbed gently at Sheila’s cheeks with a warm, moist cloth. Turning to the man and the woman in the corner, she said, “You two wait outside until the doctor’s had a chance to look her over.”
They didn’t move fast enough and the nurse jerked her thumb. “Out. Now.”
The story came out in a steady stream, though Sheila honestly didn’t feel there was much to tell. She was so, so tired, and she thought at one point she might have actually fallen asleep midsentence. If she had, the police detectives who had come to take her statement were polite enough not to say so. The young, kindly doctor—Sheila couldn’t remember his name—had explained that her crushing fatigue was normal after such a stressful experience, and he advised her to sleep as much as she needed to. They’d given her a mild sedative, which helped stave off the bouts of panic. There were no dreams.
The doctors had left, the detectives were gone, and the nurse had dimmed the lights in the room. Visiting hours were over and the hospital was quiet. The clock on the wall told Sheila it was 9:00 p.m., but time felt meaningless to her. She lay on her side, her back to the door, staring out the window at the moon. She wished to God the sun—which she hadn’t seen for three weeks until earlier today—would come back out. The darkness was