The Suicide Club

Only with the juxtaposition of the two did she realize what must have happened. She knew from school that when a fluorescent bulb failed, its dying was accompanied by a distinctively unpleasant smell.

Relieved to have arrived at an explanation for both, she crossed the foyer and headed toward the kitchen. Although she didn’t have a replacement bulb on hand, she could at least verify that the old one had gone bad.

When she reached the entrance, she could see moonlight shining through the glass half of the back door. She normally pulled the café curtains across it at night, but that was something else she must have forgotten.

Without bothering to test the fluorescent, which had been her intent in coming here, she walked across the pale tile, her heels echoing with every step, and drew the fabric over the glass. Then, through force of habit, she checked the lock and the dead bolt. Both were secure.

She turned, the burned-out bulb almost forgotten now that her eyes had adjusted to the darkness. The familiarity of the room was reassuring. A little exasperated with her initial unease, she started back across the tile.

Although she’d brought papers home this afternoon, she decided she was too tired to mark them. All she wanted to do was crawl into bed and go to sleep. She’d already taken a shower before she’d dressed for the meeting. She wasn’t going to take another. At least not tonight.

She turned off the light in the front foyer and then, in the darkened house, moved down the hallway to the bathroom doorway. She reached inside the small room, flicking the switch up. She resisted the urge to put away the few items of makeup she’d left out on the counter as she’d gotten ready. Wasted effort since she’d use them again in the morning.

She continued down the hall to her room. Without turning on the overhead, she slipped off her heels and carried them to the closet. The carpet seemed to massage her tired feet.

She’d hung the hangers for her suit and the silk shell she was wearing over the top of the door. She took them down, dropped her shoes inside, and then stripped down to her underwear, carefully re-hanging each item as she took it off.

Finally, she took out a nightgown and carried it with her to the bathroom. As she entered the room, she again caught a whiff of something that didn’t belong.

Whatever it was, it was so faint she forgot about it as she walked over to the counter. She leaned forward, peering into the mirror. Although her skin had always been one of her best features, especially for someone with her coloring, it looked sallow. Tiny lines had begun to form at the corners of her eyes, and the delicate area beneath them was dark.

Too many nighttime hours spent thinking about what Jace Nolan had told her. And a few spent thinking about Jace Nolan himself. Which was sad. And a little desperate.

No wonder Shannon and her students were interested in pairing her up with him. The words “last chance” flickered through her mind before she ruthlessly denied them a place.

She straightened, reaching behind her back to unfasten her bra and lay it on the counter. She took off her panty hose, standing on one foot and then the other, and put them into one basin of the double lavatory. She set the stopper before she turned on the water and added a squirt of shampoo.

Only then did she push her panties down over her hips and thighs, allowing them to fall to the floor. She scooped them up, placing them on top of the discarded bra.

After she’d slipped on her nightgown, she used baby oil and tissues to remove her makeup and then brushed her teeth. As she was turning to go back to the bedroom, the small pile of underwear caught her eye.

She grabbed the panties and bra in one hand, carrying them over to the wicker clothes hamper. More decorative than utilitarian, it held less than a week’s worth of laundry.

Intending to lift the lid with her left hand and toss the clothes she was holding in, she bent over the basket. Again that hint of something unpleasant assailed her nostrils.

Although it was definitely stronger over here, the smell was still faint. Not chemical, she thought, as her fingers grasped the edge of the top. This was something earthy. Slightly rank. Like mushrooms. Or decay.

She had already begun to raise the lid of the hamper when she became aware of the sound inside. A sizzle, like bacon frying or like someone rustling papers—

Rattles. By the time her brain had put it together, it was too late to stop the muscle contraction in her arm, which had continued to lift the lid.

The split second of realization had been enough, however, to cause her to jerk her upper body backward, allowing the top to fall as the body of a snake exploded out of the hamper.

Stumbling backwards, she felt rather than saw it strike. Too quick to be seen by the naked eye, the power of its momentum seemed to literally disturb the air between them.

Despite the lid she’d dropped on top of it, the rattler’s ugly, triangular-shaped head had easily cleared the top of the basket. Before she could think of a way to prevent it, the rest of the squat, powerful body trailed over the rim.

She knew enough about snakes to know this one didn’t have to be coiled to try for her again. And that the range of its strike could be as much as half its length. Despite the panic clawing at her chest, she continued to put distance between the rattlesnake and her bare feet and legs.

By now it had flowed down onto the tile. As Lindsey backpedaled, it began to re-coil. Head now erect, the snake’s cold, black eyes seemed to fasten on its prey. At the same time, the tail lifted and began to tremble, its ominous warning echoing off all the hard surfaces of the bathroom.

Unable to tear her eyes away from the deadly, seductive movement, Lindsey located the edge of the bathroom door with a hand that shook. She stepped out into the hall, pulling the door with her so that it slammed shut before the snake could make another attempt to reach its warm-blooded target.

The episode had occupied only seconds. One of those “life flashing before your eyes” moments, when you knew with absolute certainty you were going to die.

Despite the seeming safety of the wooden barrier between her and the snake, Lindsey’s breath sawed in and out through her open mouth. Somehow she had managed to escape. And, as incredible as it seemed, without being bitten.

Before she had time to fully relish what a miracle that was, her eyes focused on the crack of light beneath the door. A gap big enough for the rattler to slither under?

She had no idea how wide that would need to be. But she couldn’t take a chance.

The only thing worse than knowing there was a venomous snake inside her house was knowing that and not knowing where it was. If she followed her instincts to put more distance and more doors between them, and the rattler got out of the bathroom, they might never find it.

And she would never again spend another night here.

Realizing she still held the wadded underwear in her hand, she bent and began gingerly to stuff them into the crack under the door. It quickly became apparent that was not enough fabric to fill its length. Even if it had been, those wisps of nylon didn’t seem substantial enough to create a strong enough obstruction if the snake tried to push through.

There was nothing else close enough that she could reach it without taking her eyes off the ribbon of light at the bottom of the door. She fought a renewed sense of panic as she tried to figure out what she could use to keep the rattler trapped in the bathroom.

The comforter on her bed would be both large enough and heavy enough to block the opening. To get it, she’d have to leave the hallway. Could the snake get out in the few seconds it would take to retrieve the spread and bring it back here?

That was a risk she would have to take. Otherwise, she might still be out here in the dark hall when she discovered that there was room enough for him to work his way through that crack. That possibility was enough to end her paralysis.

She bolted for the bedroom, throwing the light switch at the end of the hall as well as the one in her room. She grabbed the comforter and sprinted back, her eyes searching the gleaming hardwood floor in front of her as she ran, looking for a darker streak than those revealed by the grain of the wood. One that moved.

When she reached the bathroom door, she threw the spread down in front of it. Then, on her hands and knees, she crammed the thick, quilted material into the crack.

Even when she’d blocked the last bit of light escaping from the bathroom, she wasn’t convinced she’d created a sturdy enough barrier to keep the snake confined. Once more she made the trip to her bedroom.

As her bare feet made contact with the carpet, she had a flashback to the first time she’d entered this room tonight. Her feet had been bare then, too, except for her hose. And she hadn’t turned on the overhead light.

What if the snake had been in here, rather than in the hamper? What if she’d stepped on it in the darkness? Even as she looked for something to reinforce her makeshift barricade, she shivered at the thought.

And then she froze at the next one. Her rational mind had, in the last few minutes, given way to the far more primitive part of her brain, the one that viewed the creature in her bathroom with the same primordial fear her ancestors had.

Admittedly, this was snake country. One Alabama city held a rattlesnake roundup each year, capturing hundreds from among the scrub. It was certainly not unheard of for snakes to get inside a house. But inside a closed hamper?

There could be only one explanation for that. One she didn’t want to think about.

Someone had put the rattlesnake inside that basket, where, angered by the confinement, it had waited until she’d come into the bathroom. Highly sensitive to the body heat of prey, it had been coiling to strike even while she’d hesitated, her hand on the lid of the hamper, trying to identify what she smelled.

And she’d been right about that, too. It had been something far more alien than a burned-out fluorescent bulb.

In spite of not wanting to take the next step in this chain of logic, its conclusion was already inside her head, impossible to deny. If someone had put a snake in her laundry hamper, then it was possible the one she had trapped in the bathroom wasn’t the only rattler inside her house.

As her terrified gaze swept the cream-colored carpet surrounding her, she knew that if there were others they’d be hidden, as the first had been.

In the drawer she’d taken her nightgown from? In the closet where she’d hung up her clothes and put her shoes? Or somewhere she would never think to look until it was too late?