Free The Binding by Nicholas Wolff Page B

thi-iink so.”
    “Then why do you double-lock the door?”
    “Because the black-eyed man came once, so he might—”
    “But I thought you’re already dead.” Checkmate, little girl. Nat smirked to himself.
    Her forehead was cut with two worry wrinkles. “But I feel things, Dr. Thayer. The sensation of his grip . . .”
    Her right hand detached itself from the left and began to reach slowly upward. Nat watched it, an ivory, blue-veined hand with a bracelet of green stone falling down the arm as it rose. The hand came up, the fingers slightly bent. Her hair slid soundlessly off her shoulder until it fell in a glossy bunch and hung straight down.
    Nat watched the hand rise as if it were floating of its own will. It finally touched the hollow where the neck met the breastbone, touched lightly the cords of Becca’s throat that stood out through the fabric of the turtleneck, and then began to close on the neck itself. Becca’s eyes rolled back in her head as her eyelids started to close. As Nat watched, her chin rose and she gave a little choking sound.
    “Okay, I think I get it,” Nat said. So she was a dramatic girl. She wanted to win their little game.
    Nat could see the right finger press into the pale line of the carotid artery and the thumb press on the windpipe. He hadnever seen a patient reenact her own choking before and found himself paralyzed with fascination. He went to speak but no words came and he felt suddenly weak. The flesh of her thumb went white as she pressed down on the windpipe, and he heard her breath drawn inward in a gasp.
    “Okay, Becca, you made your point.”
    As if through a fog, Nat reached out for her arm. He half stood and took a step toward the bed. His fingers closed on her thin arm, and he found the muscles were tensed, remarkably strong. He tried to pull them down from his crouched position but was startled to find that the arm stayed locked where it was, the hand pressing her neck harder and harder. Nat caught his breath and reached his fingers around for a better grip, the tips digging against the soft wool of her turtleneck and pushing into her right breast. Her whole body seemed to be filled with tremendous excitement.
    “Enough!” Nat cried, his voice sounding drugged in his ears.
    What the hell was going on here?
    He stood up fully now, his body tingling as if he were standing in an electric field, to give himself a better angle. Becca’s skin was going even paler, and it looked as though the flesh surrounding her eye sockets was turning blue. Angry now, Nat twisted his hand into her breast.
    “ Becca! ”
    She shook her head violently, and her lips parted but no words came out. With a grunt of effort, Nat wrenched her arm away. Becca’s eyelids suddenly fluttered open. The arm went limp in his hand. No, not just limp but dead, the muscles going so slack that he could feel the bone.
    He let her go. Becca’s hands dropped to her lap. Her face was even paler now, not a transparency where the blue lines of her veins were visible but a kind of chalky pallor that seemed to glow with an unhealthy luminescence.
    Nat sat back down, a little out of breath.
    Her head was bowed in front of him, the back of her neck a patch of whiteness between the parted waves of her brunet hair. She looked as if she were waiting for an axe to clip into her spinal column. Docile.
    Was she paralyzed with fear? What was she reenacting?
    “Becca?”
    She sat unmoving.
    “Was this a nightmare that you had?”
    Nothing.
    “Becca, did you dream this?”
    Her head swung back and forth, the hair following a half second later in a long swing, the light playing over its surface.
    “It really happened?”
    She nodded her head yes .
    He had to consider there had been some attempt to strangle her. And the only person in the house was her father.
    “The man who did this. Are you sure it wasn’t someone you know?”
    Nat felt like he was looking down a deep well at a girl who sat stock-still, surrounded