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Annabel sat in the corner, her arms wrapped around herself. Where did Tommy Tricky go? He had scampered away. He was hiding in the room somewhere. He was watching her, waiting to jump out and eat her.
Tommy Tricky eats bad little girls.
That was what Daddy Ron told her, and Annabel believed him. She started to cry.
The door opened. Annabel’s mother came into the room, looking down at her daughter with sad, defeated eyes.
“Oh, Annabel,” her mother said, “you got Daddy Ron angry again.”
“Mommy, Mommy, you’ve got to save me from Tommy Tricky,” Annabel cried, running to her mother, throwing her arms around her neck.
“Oh, baby,” her mother told her. “Tommy Tricky isn’t real. He’s just something Daddy Ron tells you about so you’ll behave.”
“No, Mommy, Daddy Ron says Tommy Tricky gets very, very angry when you don’t believe in him.”
Her mother stroked Annabel’s hair. “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry he does this to you. But I don’t know how to make him stop.”
Annabel realized her mother wasn’t really there. She was sitting by herself, in a corner of her room at the Blue Boy Inn.
My mother failed me, Annabel realized. She let that monster torment me because she was too scared to stand up to him.
Annabel began to cry harder.
But then she wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her nightgown. She had to get ahold of herself. She wasn’t back in her childhood home; she wasn’t a little girl. She was an adult, and she was in the Blue Boy Inn, and she had to find a way out. She was hallucinating again. She’d thought she’d seen Tommy Tricky. But Tommy Tricky wasn’t real.
Except—except—
Annabel thought of Tammy Morelli.
She says she saw a little man in the basement—like an elf—eating a human arm.
Tommy Tricky eats bad little girls.
All Annabel knew was that she had to get out of there.
She stood. Her legs were moving better now, more easily, with less pain. Whatever drug Jack had given her appeared to be wearing off. Annabel glanced across the room. The clock now read 11:30. She must have been huddled in that corner for about an hour. Her eyes shot over to the window. She couldn’t see anything outside. The snow had collected against the windowpanes. Annabel shuddered. She felt more closed in than ever.
“I can’t give in to my fear,” she whispered. “I have to keep moving.”
Carefully, she walked toward the door. These old doors were flimsy. She could maybe rattle it enough that it would pop open. It was a slim chance, perhaps, but it was all she had.
She tried the knob. And to her great surprise and gratitude, it was no longer locked.
Maybe I’d only imagined it was locked before, she told herself.
Annabel opened the door and stepped gingerly out into the hallway.
The house was eerily quiet. The muffled sound of the storm outside was the only thing she heard. Annabel made her way to the top of the stairs. She had no idea what her plan was. She was barefoot and wearing only a nightgown. But she could think of only one thing to do. Make a mad dash for the front door and—
And what? She had seen the drifting earlier. It came up halfway over the door. Even if she could reach the front door without Jack stopping her, she would run straight into a solid wall of snow on the other side.
She really was trapped.
No. She wouldn’t accept that.
All right then. She’d still make a mad dash down the stairs. But she’d run to the kitchen. Maybe Jack would be in there, waiting for her. But maybe he wouldn’t be. She had to take that chance. Because the phone was in the kitchen. She could call 911. Even if he caught her, if she could just press those three numbers and have the call go through, they’d send someone out. Annabel had to pray that the phone was still working.
She took a deep breath and started down the stairs.
Her bare feet flew over the steps. She seemed to make no sound at all. It was almost as if she were running on air. She made it to the bottom of the stairs. But that was only half the challenge. She continued on without stopping to the kitchen. She could see as she rounded the corner that the kitchen was empty. Yes! Maybe Jack had left. Maybe she was alone in the house after all. She would call the police and—
But when she turned to lift the phone off the hook she saw something terrible.
The phone was no longer there.
It had been taken clean off the wall. All that remained was an empty jack.
“No,” Annabel moaned, and then put her hand to her mouth. She didn’t want to make a sound.
Face it, she heard Daddy Ron’s voice tell her. You’re trapped in there.
Trapped.
Except—
Annabel could almost hear the gears in her mind turning.
Except—she might not be able to get out of the house from the first floor, but the snow had not reached the second. She could jump from a second-floor window. The snow would cushion her fall. If it was packed hard enough, she wouldn’t sink completely into it, and she could, she hoped, trudge through it into town.
Right. With bare feet. With winds that seemed to want to rip the roof off the house.
But what other choice did she have? Wait for Jack to come back and kill her the way he’d killed Priscilla and Paulie? That much Annabel was certain she didn’t hallucinate. She firmly believed she was right about that.
She hurried back into the hallway. Hanging on the hook beside the door she spotted a coat. It was Neville’s, she realized.
Oh, no, Annabel thought. I had thought Neville escaped. But why would he leave his coat?
His car had been gone. That much Annabel was sure of. But he wouldn’t have left in a blizzard without taking his coat.
Not knowing what to think, she grabbed Neville’s coat and slipped it on. She’d need it if she was going to take a plunge into the snow. She could smell her friend’s scent on the coat. It both comforted her and saddened her. Was he alive? What about Chad?
Annabel had never felt so alone, or so frightened.
She made her way back upstairs.
She decided she would go out the window in Cordelia’s room. That was over the small roof that covered the front porch. Annabel could hop to the roof, and then take her leap into the snow. But she needed something on her feet. She’d never make it even as far as Millie’s store if she had to do it barefoot.
She realized that although her own clothes were gone, Jack’s clothes might still be in his closet.
Back inside their room, Annabel paused, looking over at the bed, now pushed aside at an angle. Was Tommy Tricky under there?
Stop it, she scolded herself.
She took a deep breath and pulled open Jack’s closet door.
Yes! His clothes were still there. And a pair of work boots! They would be big on Annabel, but if she tied the long laces several times around her foot, she should be able to keep the boots on during her trek through the blizzard. She sat down on a chair as she pulled the boots onto her feet. For the first time, a real sense of hope filled her. She would get away from here! She would not be trapped!
But then she sensed someone was watching her.
She spun her head around.
Jack stood there, leaning in the doorway, looking down at her with his arms folded over his chest and an enormous smile on his face.
“Where you goin’, baby cakes?”