Night Visions Read Online Free PDF Page A

then at the neatly folded bill on the table. “All right.”
    He settles back into the chair with a strained smile and motions to the deck.
    She passes her hands over the upturned cards and closes her eyes. Part of her is afraid of returning to the darkness, but she wants to get this over with quickly.
    â€œThe thing following you is very old. And there is a smell…something rotten.” She winces from the stench, then starts seeing faces—each twisted by fear. Tears falling up from their eyes. One after another, they rush forward with muffled cries. She doesn’t know whether or not she is talking anymore. Her body seems to be moving through an unfamiliar hallway. She is in someone’s home—blood splattered in arcs on the walls, across family photos, a light switch, a child’s crayon drawing of a purple tree and two stick figures holding hands. She stops to unlock the entryway door. Light reflects in a mirror to the left, and she turns. It’s not her. It’s him, the customer, in the mirror looking back at her. She hears heavy breathing and distant notes struck on a piano.
    Lost in these visions, she doesn’t see the customer turning his head away from the cards and reaching into his black coat. He pulls out two long knives. Lurching out of the chair, he extends his arms across the table and tries to slice an oval-shaped mark into her chest. The knives pierce the skin of her breasts, pushing her backward. She feels her body hit the floor. With his left hand, he flips the table sideways and towers above her.
    He leans down, as if to whisper something, and his face becomes feral. Teeth bared. Eyes bulging with intensity and saliva stringing from his mouth. He sucks in his breath with a hiss. Wildly, instinctively, she kicks her legs out, hitting his left shin and knee. He falls on top of her. Air explodes out of his mouth—his lips almost touching her ear and his coarse, unshaven face scraping against her cheek. He is still.
    She can feel the sticky warmth of his blood seeping through her shirt and mixing with her blood. She turns her head and vomits. The apartment is almost entirely dark now, and through the pounding in her temples, she listens to the nighttime noises of the street outside. Car engines and loud conversations, bicycle bells and jackhammers. They seem far away. She thinks about calling the police, getting help. But not yet, she tells herself. I need rest.
    I need sleep.
    OCTOBER 4, 1982
3:20 P.M.
    She doesn’t remember calling the police—only that they are in her apartment when she wakes. The skin on the customer’s face looks like an ancient slab of marble, and one of the coroners touches it before zipping up the body bag.
    Detective Jacobs scribbles something in his notepad, then asks for the discarded clothes. She leads him to the bedroom, where he lifts them off the floor with latex gloves and places them in a plastic bag. She doesn’t recognize her white top, which is still damp with blood.
    â€œChris…tina” He writes slowly and with strained concentration. “C-a-s-t-i-n-e-l-l-a. You must be Italian.”
    â€œHow could you tell.” She leans back on the couch and looks at the poster of Italy hanging on the wall behind him. Her head is still throbbing, and she worries about passing out. “I feel dizzy.”
    â€œThe paramedics are going to take you to the hospital now. You hit your head pretty hard in the struggle, but the wound on your chest is superficial.”
    The taped bandages above her chest itch, and she looks down at the front of her shirt. No blood seeps through the white gauze.
    â€œI’m still unclear,” Jacobs continues, “as to how you stabbed him.”
    â€œI…I didn’t. He fell, I think. I’m not sure.”
    He waits for her to say more, but she simply lowers her head.
    â€œYou need some rest, Miss Castinella. Hopefully, you’ll be able to remember more about what