as we kiss, our bodies are practically seamless. I’m certain that if I leave even an inch of space, the woman from the news will slip between us.
* * *
The girl has no face.
Where her eyes and nose and mouth should be, there is only skin. A flat plane of flesh stretched tight as a mask.
Bent at the waist at a forty-five-degree angle, her body looks crooked. Not wholly human. Her head is tilted down, toward my feet. She stretches out her arms. Lurches and lurches toward me.
Her fingers twitch as she reaches out, trying to grab or scratch or gouge me. She’s so close, I can almost feel her nails piercing my skin.
But now, hunched over, she stops. Lifts her head—slowly, agonizingly—toward mine. And as I stare at her, bracing myself for that grotesque mask of skin, I open my mouth to scream.
I shoot upward in bed, gulping for air in the dark. My hair is stuck to my neck, my lips trembling, the sheets bunched in my fists.
The nightmare is back. The same one I’ve been having since I was a kid, once every few months.
I look over at Eric, who hasn’t stirred. Sometimes he sleeps right through it, especially when the whir of the AC drowns out the sharpest of my gasps.
My heart knocks hard, and I slip out of bed, head to the bathroom. I’ve learned how to drag myself from the powerful suction of that dream: splash water on my face, stand beneath the light, stare into the sink until reality clicks into place.
But something is different this time. Water drips from my chin, I see it swirl away, but my heart is still pounding.
What is it? What is it?
I go against instinct, allow myself to reel the nightmare back in. I play it again, starting at the tips of her fingers as they come so close. Her hands are the same, trying to grasp me. Her arms are the same, extending with urgency. Her body is bent as it always is. But now as the face tilts up—I have to cover my mouth so I don’t cry out.
Where there was skin, there are eyes, green as summer leaves. A nose dotted with freckles. A mouth forming words I can’t hear. And her hair, always dim and unremarkable, is suddenly bright as fire.
Moments pass. Maybe minutes. After the initial shock of it, I relax. I’m only dreaming of Astrid Sullivan because I saw her on TV, because my thoughts were tangled up with her right before bed. That’s what Eric would say. Dr. Lockwood, too.
But I look at my fingers. They’re gripping the lip of the sink, knuckles white. My arm is taut, the bandage on my wrist peeled back. As if I’ve been scratching in my sleep. As if my body knows something my mind hasn’t caught up to yet.
I force myself to picture it again. And again and again, until I’m sure of what I’m seeing. Those hands—empty. Beseeching. Open as wide as a mouth gasping for air. That face—Astrid’s. And with her features filled in, I see her actions differently, too. She wasn’t trying to hurt me, like I’ve always thought. She was asking—no, begging—for help. Because as I play back the images in my head, recall her moon-wide eyes, I see it so clearly: the girl isn’t terrifying; she’s terrified.
My jaw falls slack. The itch on my wrist flares.
I watch the questions solidify on my face, reflected in the mirror in front of me. The nightmare that’s haunted me for so many years—what if it hasn’t been a nightmare at all? Hasn’t even been a dream?
What if, all this time, all these nights, it’s actually been a memory?
Excerpt from Prologue of Behind the Red Door: A Memoir by Astrid Sullivan
You think you know the story. You’ve seen the news coverage, the magazine articles, the true crime episodes dedicated to the Astrid Sullivan Case. You’ve read about the man in the mask, the weeks I spent locked in a basement—gray and dim but for its bright red door. You’ve heard about the curb I was left on, two blocks from my family’s home in Foster, New Hampshire.
There are many things you don’t know, details the police didn’t release and urged me not to speak of. “We always withhold some key information,” they explained. Something about it being easier to find and interrogate suspects. Something about maintaining the integrity of the investigation. For a long time, I played by those rules, trusting what