Twice Kissed - Lisa Jackson [175]
A weapon! You need a weapon!
Anxiously, she looked around the near-dark room with its bed bolted to the floor.
Get your letter opener! Now!
She took one step toward the desk before she remembered that Sister Madeline had taken the letter opener away from her.
The lamp on the night table!
But it, too, was screwed down.
She pressed the switch.
Click.
No great wash of light. Frantically, she hit the switch again. Over and over.
Click! Click! Click! Click!
She looked up and saw him then. A tall man, looming in front of the door to the hallway. It was too dark to see his features but she knew his wicked smile was in place, his eyes glinting with an evil need.
He was Satan Incarnate. And there was no way to escape from him. There never was.
“Please don’t,” she begged, her voice sounding pathetic and weak as she backed up, her legs quivering.
“Please don’t what?”
Don’t touch me…don’t place your fingers anywhere on my body…don’t tell me I’m beautiful…don’t kiss me…
“Leave now,” she insisted. Dear God, was there no weapon, nothing to stop him?
“Leave now or what?”
“Or I’ll scream and call the guards.”
“The guards,” he repeated in that low, amused, nearly hypnotic voice. “Here?” He clucked his tongue as if she were a disobedient child. “You’ve tried that before.”
She knew for certain that her plight was futile. She would submit to him again.
As she always did.
“Did the guards believe you the last time?”
Of course they hadn’t. Why would they? The two scrawny, pimply-faced boys hadn’t hidden the fact they considered her mad. At least that’s what they’d insinuated, though they’d used fancier words…delusional…paranoid…schizophrenic…
Or had they said anything at all? Maybe not. Maybe they’d just stared at her with their pitying, yet hungry, eyes. Hadn’t one of them told her she was sexy? The other one cupping one cheek of her buttocks…or…or had that all been a horrid, vivid nightmare?
Scratch, scratch, scratch. She felt her nails break the skin.
Humiliation washed over her. She inched backward, away from her tormentor. What was happening to her was her own fault. She’d sinned somehow, brought this upon herself. She was the one who was evil. She had instigated God’s wrath. She alone could atone. “Go away,” she whispered again, clawing more frantically at her arm.
“Faith, don’t,” he warned, his voice horrifyingly soothing. “Mutilating yourself won’t change anything. I’m here to help you. You know that.”
Help her? No…no, no, no!
She wanted to crumble onto the floor, to shed her guilt, to get away from the itching.
Fight! an inner voice ordered her. Don’t let him force you into doing things that you know are wrong! You have will. You can’t let him do this to you.
But it was already too late.
Close to her now, he clucked his tongue again and she saw its pointy, wet, pink tip flicking against the back of his teeth.
In a rough whisper, he said, “Uh-oh, Faith, I think you’ve been a naughty girl again.”
“No.” She was whimpering. There it was…that horrid bit of excitement building inside her.
“Oh, Faith, don’t you know it’s a sin to lie?”
She glanced to the wall where the crucifix of Jesus was nailed into the plaster. Did it move? Blinking, she imagined Jesus staring at her, His eyes kind but silently reprimanding in the semidarkness.
No, Faith. That can’t be. Get a grip, for God’s sake.
It’s a painted image, that’s all.
Breathing rapidly, she dragged her gaze from Christ’s tortured face to the fireplace…cold now, devoid of both ashes and the mirror above it, now an empty space, the outline visible against the rosebud wallpaper. They said she’d broken the mirror in a fit of rage, that she’d cut herself. That her own image had caused her to panic.
But he’d done it, hadn’t he? This devil whose sole intent was to torture her? Hadn’t she witnessed the act? She’d tried to refuse him, and he’d crashed his fist into the looking glass. Mirrored shards sprayed, hitting her, then