LITMIR.BIZ

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       No! What are you doing? He’ll see you!

      She propelled herself completely across the room in a series of jerky, panic-stricken movements. When she reached the other bunk beds, she kept maneuvering her small body until she forced herself completely underneath the low bed frame. Once again, she was totally out of sight. I trotted over and peeked underneath. She had scrunched up against the wall, and her breath was coming in huge, but silent, bursts. She closed her eyes and began to pray again.

      You’re hidden! You’ll be safe under there! I sat on the floor by the bed, Indian style. I kept peering down at her to see if she was okay. I hoped she wasn’t going to start sneezing from all the dust.

      Right down the hall, water flooded into the sink. Then it stopped. Eager footfalls. Instinctively, I jumped to my feet and fled to the other side of the room. The dark-haired girl hiding under the bed stopped praying and was silent.

       Here he comes! Don’t make a sound!

      The naked intruder strode back into the large dormitory bedroom, his lower body smeared with blood. He was a carnivorous animal ready to devour the last of his disabled prey, but he was visibly surprised to find the room empty. His cold blue eyes narrowed. He crouched to look under a bunk bed. No one there. Then he searched under an adjacent bed—the exact place where the girl had been hiding a short time before. No one there, either. Frowning, he stood back up. His eyes darted to the bed where the rape took place. Drying blood stained the crumpled sheets. There was an excruciating silence.

      A shrill ambulance siren pierced the stillness, fading as it continued on its way. The intruder stealthily moved across the room toward the bunk bed that concealed the girl. I followed on tip-toes. Abruptly, he stopped. I paused. Like a predatory beast stalking with telepathic senses, he twisted his head slightly to listen. He turned around slowly, but deliberately . . . and looked right at—me! He had sensed my presence! I gasped and my hand flew to my mouth. Can you see me? Please . . . .no!

      My heart began to pound out of my chest! Our eyes locked—and he leered . . . right at me! It made my skin crawl. “So you’ve watched everything, little girl?” he drawled, emphasizing every word. “Too bad I can’t do you like all the others—but you’ll never be able to forget me just the same.”

      I awoke from the dream with a start. I was so scared I couldn’t catch my breath! I looked around my room. I grabbed a handful of my pink blanket to make certain I was really back home and no longer in that dormitory! I could hear my parents snoring loudly in unison. That meant my Mom was okay . . . until the next weekend.

      Shaking, I turned on my bedside lamp. Outside my ruffled curtains, I could see pale strips of light just beginning to streak the dark sky. It was morning. That had been a long nightmare! And I didn’t understand anything that I saw. It was the worst dream I ever had. I was so glad that it wasn’t real . . . and that I was back home. Dorothy’s voice from the Wizard of Oz ran through my mind: There’s no place like home. Boy, was she right about that!

      My cheeks were wet from tears, and I wiped them with the top of my flowered pajamas, pulled on my slippers, and trudged downstairs to the kitchen. I yanked on the door of the fridge, grabbed the orange juice, and drank from the carton. Standing inside the open door, I welcomed the peacefulness of being the first one up that Sunday morning. I placed the carton back on the shelf, closed the fridge, and walked outside through the unlocked front door to get the Sunday paper.

      Although it was the middle of July, I was still shivering with goose bumps from what I had “seen” the night before. How would I possibly erase it from my mind? I bent to pick up the heavy rolled bundle from the front lawn and carried it inside. I dropped it on the kitchen table, untied the string that held it together, and sank into a chair to read the funnies.

      As the Chicago Tribune unrolled, a picture of the man from my dream—was staring up at me! I gasped and my eyes popped from my head. It was really him!

       POLICE NAB KILLER SUSPECT Picture Identified By Surviving Nurse

      Richard Franklin Speck, 24, the ex-convict from Dallas, was seized by police last night . . .

       Chapter 4

       Tangible Proof

      I looked up from the paper in total disbelief. What I had witnessed was real? It had actually happened? How could that be? I grabbed the front page and read further:

      . . . the killer left 32 fingerprints in the bloodstained townhouse where he methodically strangled or stabbed his eight victims after casually sitting on the floor and chatting as they lay trussed up on the floor. Speck was also was identified thru a photograph that was shown to Corazon Amurao, 23, the Filipino exchange nurse who escaped death only because she crawled under a bed and remained quiet and because the killer apparently lost count of the number of women.

      I was stunned! I had dreamt about an actual event? I could feel Speck’s cold blue eyes boring into me from the front page, and it made me shudder. As an all-powerful killer, couldn’t he break out of jail? If he escaped, would he be able to find me? I was the only one—besides his victims—who had firsthand knowledge about the unspeakable events that had taken place. Shivering in fear, I stared down at his paper image. He had seen me—last night—in that apartment. He talked to me. I needed to share all of this with someone . . . and right away!

      “You shouldn’t be reading that,” said my father, startling me. “It could give you nightmares. I’m going to start locking the front door. And I don’t want you going outside anymore without adult supervision.”

      I was concentrating so hard on the newspaper story that I hadn’t heard him come downstairs. I looked up at him. Because his behavior was so ugly, it made him ugly in every way to me. His hair was sticking up in every direction, he had a growth of beard, he wore his thick, nerdy glasses with pointed edges, his old bathrobe hung partially open, revealing his baggy boxers and skinny legs, and his brown slippers were faded and shabby. My dad looked ancient to me. He smelled bad, too, like bad breath, body odor, old booze, and stale cigarettes. I prickled my nose in distaste as he folded the front page section under his arm and searched through the rest of the Tribune. He pulled out the funnies and placed them in front of me. He patted me on the back.

      “I’ll make Swedish pancakes for breakfast,” he called over his shoulder as he trotted double time to the toilet. “It looks like a beautiful day!”

      The irony did not escape me. My father doesn’t want me to have nightmares? Does he realize the trauma he creates every Saturday night? I hated him for what he put the whole family through. And he was acting like nothing had happened the night before. He tried to kill my Mom! At ten, I already recognized that I could never, ever go to my Dad with my spooky nightmare about the killings. From the first time I saw him abuse my mother—when I was five—I lost all of the trust and respect I had for him. What he had done the night before had chipped away at any remaining semblance of love or affection I once had. Emotionally, he was dead to me. I still needed a dad, but the kind of father I really yearned for just wasn’t meant to be. I decided that I would have to father myself.

      A few weeks before, I had made the mistake of asking my Mom if she was ever going to leave my Dad. Very surprised, she responded defensively, “Leave this house that we got just for you kids? Do you know how I have to sacrifice for us to live here? You want to live in the inner city—in a horrible apartment? That’s all I could afford on my own, with my job! Is that what you want? You want to give all of this up? And move away from your friends? To go to a big, dangerous inner city school . . . where they bring knives to class? Is that what you want for your brothers? See—you’re crying! This is why I could never consider it!”

      Neither of my parents ever talked about what happened in our house on Saturday nights. My mom just always gave my dad the cold shoulder for days—erasing him from her emotional

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