It Knows Where You Live Read Free Page B

component of which had the same three words printed along its spine.  
    She turned left, away from the overwhelming sight, and walked into the other room.
    Terry was still on the bed, but the other woman—the alternative Nancy—was no longer there. She had left behind her copy of the book.
    Horror Stories
    Nancy approached the bed and picked up the book. She opened it to the inaugural story, the one without a title. The opening lines had changed from those she’d seen before, when she had first discovered the book. She began to read the prologue out loud:
    “It begins with a man and a woman in a room. It always begins this way; has done since time immemorial. A couple, a pair of lovers on a bed in a single room, sprawled across the mattress, their bodies still slick with sweat from a bout of lovemaking. Words of passion still tremble on their lips like hummingbird wings. The lights are low. All is silent. Then, abruptly, one of them speaks...”
    Below her, curled up on the bed where Terry should have been, something with a strange, muffled voice began to read along with her.

 
     
     
     

    It was quiet when Berger got off the phone. He sat at the dining table, his hand still clutching the receiver even though he’d replaced it in its cradle, and stared at the wall. The wall that was part of his house: the same house that would soon belong to the mortgage company unless he managed to think of a solution fast.
    The woman on the phone had been polite, even friendly, but the message she relayed was terrible: pay your outstanding mortgage or we’ll repossess the property. Berger had been expecting the conversation for weeks—had even been putting it off because he was unable to face it. But now it was out of the way he felt strangely liberated, as if a handful of unseen tethers had been disconnected from his body. The sensation did not last; within seconds he felt once again encumbered, tied down by the weight of his responsibilities. Freedom, he thought, was a perishable illusion.
    He glanced sideways, out of the window and into the garden. At first he thought there was a woman standing out there on the lawn, her body leaning at an odd angle, and then he realised it was merely a reflection of his wife in the glass. The sight triggered something in his mind; a memory of a dream he might once have had. Then this illusion—like so many others—dissolved.
    “Tell me we won’t lose the house.”
    Sophie stood behind him, framed by the kitchen doorway. He could not be sure how much of the conversation she had overheard, so decided to be honest. “I promise you I’ll do everything I can to prevent it.”
    She moved towards him, her arms going around his shoulders from behind. The skin of her hands was cold against his cheek; her thin fingers rubbed at his stubble as if struggling to break through and touch him deep inside. “I know you will. You’ve never let us down.”
    He wished he could cry, but that wasn’t the kind of man he aspired to be. He’d been trained to keep everything locked down inside, to swallow the pain and soldier on. Even at the end, just before his death, Berger’s father had refused to talk about the heart condition that was slowly breaking him apart.
    He stood up and turned to her, somehow managing to summon a smile. “We’ll be okay, Sophie. You just concentrate on keeping the boys happy and I’ll sort out everything else.” The world seemed to shift around him, as if tightening its grip, and he stepped back and headed for the door. “I have a job to go to—one of the few on our books. We can talk more about this later.”
    Sophie nodded, hugging herself despite the spring morning being warm and bright. Standing there in the slanting daylight, she looked miles away, part of another world.
    Berger drove north towards Otley, taking the back roads as much as he could. The rush hour was over but traffic was still heavy on the motorway. He was due at a house located near the airport to fix