Seven words were all it took. Seven words to dispel any illusions Nelson might have had about how easy it would be to surrender, to play Simon Says until it was time for Simon to go. Seven words to prove to him that they’d all lied-his parents, his shrinks, his support groups-when they’d assured him that his fears were phantoms and his phobias the products of disordered emotions, not a malevolent universe.
Seven words: I think it’s time for a game.
“Game? What kind of game?”
Simon, rummaging through his getaway satchel, ignored the question. “C’mon, it’ll be like old times.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Nelson.
Simon looked up sharply. “Why, Nellie, was that a joke? I didn’t think you had it in you.”
Nelson tried another tack. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t be very…These medications I’m taking…I’m afraid they’re not exactly conducive to…you know….” His voice trailed off miserably.
“Not a problem,” Simon reassured him. “The game’s evolved way beyond that-it’s not about sex anymore.”
Nelson didn’t like the sound of that at all-if the game wasn’t about sex, what was it about? — but he’d as soon have sawed off one of his own fingers with a rusty nail file as ask for clarification. “I really don’t think my psychiatrist would-”
“Nellie?”
“Yes?”
“Hush now.”
Nelson hushed.
The game began in the dark for Nelson, blindfolded with one of his own bandannas and locked in his walk-in bedroom closet with his hands tied behind his back. The irony of the situation did not escape him: Nelson had installed external locks on every closet door in the house to allay his own childhood fear of closets as potential hiding places for bogeymen and burglars.
He had no way of telling how long he’d been in there before Simon came for him again. Long enough for two anxiety attacks, the first more acute, the second of longer duration. Pounding heart, vertigo, shortness of breath, hysterical paresis, feelings of dread so intense that a vasovagal syncope would have come as a blessing-unfortunately, Nelson wasn’t subject to syncopes.
During the paretic phase of the second attack, as he lay on the floor of the closet with his hands tied behind him, the muscles of his legs so weak and trembly he might as well have been paralyzed, Nelson’s ears registered the snick of the closet door being unlocked.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” called Simon, cheerfully.
No fucking way. His legs still too weak to propel him, Nelson dragged himself in the opposite direction, away from the door, away from the voice, humping like an inchworm until he could hump no farther, and curled up hyperventilating in the far corner of the closet, waiting to learn what fresh hell Simon had in store for him.
He would have to wait a little longer, though-the door never opened. Instead he heard footsteps padding across the bedroom carpet-retreating footsteps.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Simon called again, from the hallway this time, and again Nelson told himself no fucking way. But they both knew he’d be coming out eventually-his claustrophobia would see to that.
If there was a more terrifying, more vulnerable feeling than tottering forward through total darkness with your hands tied behind you, Nelson told himself, he’d just as soon not know about it. Every few steps he’d stop, listen. The only sounds in the bedroom were Nelson’s own ragged breathing and the furious pounding of his heart.
All the silence meant, of course, was that Simon was waiting for him elsewhere in the house. But if so, Nelson began to realize, even if Simon was standing right outside the bedroom door, then his old friend had miscalculated for once. Simon must have failed to notice that the bedroom door was reinforced with steel to make it fireproof and furnished with a dead bolt, in the unlikely event an intruder ever succeeded in breaking into the house.
Suddenly Nelson couldn’t get enough air; he felt as if his heart were about to burst inside him, spattering the inside of his chest cavity with blood and shredded muscle. Another panic attack? No-it was hope, a sensation far less familiar to Nelson. All he had to do, he told himself, was get that stout door between himself and Simon, throw the bolt, and there’d be no way Simon could get to him.
Easier said than done. Shuffling out of the closet in what he desperately hoped was the direction of the door, Nelson tried to remember whether the dead bolt was set low enough for him to be able to reach it with his hands tied behind him. There wouldn’t be time to fumble around for it in any case, he realized-he’d have to locate, slam, and bolt the door all in one motion if he was to have any hope of keeping Simon on the other side. Which meant he needed to turn around and back toward it.
Again, easier said than done. As Nelson executed a tentative about-face (turn too far or not far enough, he knew, and he’d be wandering around the bedroom, disoriented, until Simon came to fetch him) and began to inch backward toward the door, it occurred to him that at least he had learned the answer to his earlier question: there was indeed a more terrifying, more vulnerable feeling than tottering forward into the darkness.
Nelson’s ciliary radar-the tiny hairs on the back of his arms and neck-whispered a warning just before his bound hands bumped against the back of the bedroom door. It was already closed, he realized, hope surging again-and again, the sensation was nearly indistinguishable from panic. He slid his hands up and down along the crack of the door; at the apex of his reach his fingers brushed the cold iron of the dead-bolt fixture, but the bolt itself was too high for him to grasp. He hunched forward, wrenching his arms higher and higher up his back until his shoulders felt as if they were about to dislocate, until at last he was holding the little round knurl of the bolt between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.
Working backward with his hands crossed behind him at the wrists was doubly disorienting; with his arms torqued painfully and his shoulders wrenched in their sockets until the shoulder blades felt as if they were sticking out like angel wings, Nelson finally managed to rotate the bolt upward, slide it into its socket, and rotate it down again, then collapsed on the floor, simultaneously exhausted and exhilarated. You did it, he started to tell himself, you-
Then he knew. Nothing had moved in the bedroom, not a scrape, not a rustle, but all the same, he knew. “You’re in here, aren’t you?”
“Oh, yes,” said a voice in the darkness.