Black Lightning

by John Saul

  “If you can go down there, so can I,” Anne shouted back. “It’s my daughter, remember?” Before Mark could protest further, she started picking her way down the muddy road, steadying herself against the trunks of trees, grabbing at the shrubbery when she felt her feet skid on the slippery mud.

  It wasn’t until she was halfway down the twisting lane that she realized she hadn’t even thought about the possibility that she might be wrong; that Glen—the real, loving Glen—might be with Heather, rather than merely the body of her husband, now fully controlled by a monstrous, vengeful Richard Kraven.

  An image of the monogram Kraven had carved into the flesh of each of his victims leapt into her mind, and she visualized Heather, her chest cut open, her lungs and heart—

  No!

  Not Heather! It couldn’t happen to Heather—she wouldn’t let it happen to Heather!

  A strangled sound of fear, fury, and frustration rose in her throat, and she bolted ahead, terrified that even now the motor home might be parked at the foot of the lane.

  Terrified that Richard Kraven might already have begun his work.

  CHAPTER 69

  “It won’t hurt, you know.”

  Heather tried not to look at the man who no longer bore any resemblance at all to her father.

  He’d pulled the motor home off the road into a picnic area, a spot so secluded that even if a car passed on the road a few yards away, she knew the van probably wouldn’t even be noticed. And if someone did see it, why would they come to see if something was wrong? People parked motor homes everywhere, and nobody ever thought about what might be happening inside them.

  The man had pulled all the curtains closed and turned on the generator.

  Heather hadn’t dared even to move out of the passenger seat.

  Part of it was the look in the man’s eye. The warmth she’d always seen in her father’s eyes, the gentle love she’d always felt when her father looked at her, was gone. The eyes that now stared cruelly from her father’s face had a dead look to them, glazed over as if hiding the fact that there was no soul behind them, no human spirit that might show her any kindness. Was it that look of death that had made her slowly come to believe he hadn’t lied to her, that he truly was Richard Kraven?

  She knew what Kraven had done, knew how many bodies had been found in the area to which this man who was not her father had brought her tonight. She’d read the descriptions of the corpses they’d found, their breasts torn open, their hearts ripped out. It was what he’d meant when he said he wanted to touch her heart, and as the meaning of the words sank in, her terror had inexorably paralyzed her.

  She couldn’t run, couldn’t bring herself even to try to bolt from the motor home. He would catch her before she even reached the door. And even if she made it out into the raging storm, what would she do? Where would she go?

  He was getting something out of one of the cupboards now. A plastic bottle, filled with a liquid. He’d taken a rag out of a drawer, and was soaking it now with the liquid from the bottle.

  She could smell it, smell the fumes that were filling the confines of the motor home.

  He was moving toward her, holding the rag in his hand, his eyes fixing on her the way those of a rattlesnake fix on its prey in the moments before it strikes. She felt hypnotized by his gaze, and when he reached out to press the rag over her nose and mouth, her fear robbed her even of the power to turn away.

  Taking a deep breath, Heather closed her eyes and prayed that Richard Kraven hadn’t lied to her, that at least she would feel nothing as he reached inside her body to touch her heart.

  Touch her, and kill her.

  CHAPTER 70

  Anne burst out of the mouth of the dirt road, stumbling as her foot struck a rock hidden by the blackness of the night and the thick grass of the meadow. Mark Blakemoor caught her arm, steadying her, even as he played the brilliant beam of a halogen light over the area. Despite the rain, there were still a pair of curving tracks where the grass had been crushed by the weight of a car driving through it recently. “This is the place Kevin told us about,” he said, almost shouting to make himself heard above the howling wind.

  “But where are they?” Anne cried. “You said they’d be here—”

  “I said we’ll find them, and we will!” Mark replied. He moved closer to the river and played his light on the opposite bank. A moment later he found what he was looking for—the pile of stones Kevin said his father had been looking through. Mark started toward the river, keeping the light steady on the rocks, and even before he’d waded into the stream, Anne knew what he was going to do.

  “Are you crazy?” she shouted. “You’ll never make it—you’ll drown!” But he ignored her words, striding into the river, slowing down only enough to make sure of his footing on the rocky bottom. She stood shivering in the rain, her soaked clothes clinging to her skin as the rain sluiced over her, her teeth chattering, her eyes glued to the bobbing beam of the halogen flashlight. After what seemed like an eternity, but couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, he was back.

  “Come on,” he said, his voice taking on a new urgency. “I think we might be running out of time.”

  “You found him, didn’t you?” Anne asked as they started back up the road, half walking, half scrambling through the mud, clinging to each other and whatever else they could find to keep themselves from sliding backward down the slippery track. “You found Danny Harrar.”

  Blakemoor nodded, seeing no point in trying to keep what he’d found from Anne. He’d been so certain he’d find nothing in the pile of rocks, that even if the knife Glen had found that morning were indeed Danny Harrar’s, it meant nothing more than that the boy had dropped it somewhere along the river long ago. What he’d found beneath the rocks, though, had finally convinced him that however bizarre Anne’s theory might sound, it was at least an explanation for something he could rationalize no other way. And if it was Richard Kraven that Heather was with instead of her father …

  Even the veteran homicide detective couldn’t bring himself to think about what might be happening to her.

  Both of them panting, they finally arrived back at the car. “You drive,” Mark told Anne, getting into the passenger seat. “I want to concentrate on the radio. I can’t believe that by now this whole area isn’t crawling with cops!” As Anne started the car, put it in gear, and headed up the road, Mark Blakemoor grabbed the radio’s microphone, attempting to raise the police dispatcher. Another sheet of lightning tore at the darkness, and a roar of thunder drowned out the static that was all that emerged from the radio’s speakers.

  Anne struggled to see through the rain-streaked windshield. The wipers couldn’t even begin to keep up with the wind-driven torrent running down the glass in wide rivulets. Mark suddenly grabbed her arm. “Stop the car!”

  Startled by his command, Anne shifted her foot from the accelerator to the brake, hitting it so hard the car lost its traction, the rear end fishtailing wildly before she released the brake, steered into a skid, and felt the tires grab the wet pavement. As the car rolled to a stop, Mark cranked his window down and stuck his head out into the force of the storm. “Back up,” he cried, his words all but inaudible, immediately carried away by the wind. Her heart pounding, Anne carefully began backing down the slope. Suddenly the headlights caught a sign with the familiar symbol of a picnic table.

  Was it possible? Could Mark have seen the motor home?

  Before she could ask him, he was back on the radio, once again desperately trying to make himself heard through the interference of the storm.

  CHAPTER 71

  Heather felt as if she were drowning.

  She could barely breathe, and her mind felt fogged.

  But she could hear something.

  A steady rumble, as if a train were going past.

  Suddenly there was a flash of light, and a terrible crash, and the fog began to disperse.

  The motor home.

  She was in the motor home
with her father—no, not her father!—and there was a storm.

  Frightened. She was terribly frightened. So frightened she hadn’t even been able to move when the man had held the rag over her mouth.

  All she’d been able to do was take a single, deep breath, hold it as long as she could, then let herself go limp, as if she’d passed out. But it hadn’t worked. The man kept the rag over her face, and finally she had to breathe in the fumes, and she felt herself starting to pass out. Somehow, she’d managed to hold still, not to struggle, not to give any sign at all that she was still even half conscious.

  More of the fog lifted, and finally she could open her eyes a tiny bit, just enough to see.

  The motor home had changed. Everywhere she looked, everything was blurry, as if covered by some kind of thick not-quite-transparent plastic.

  A movement caught her eye, a movement just below her range of vision. She shifted her eyes slightly, and then she saw it: poised above her breast was a hand.

  The hand held a knife.

  A razor-sharp knife that was moving closer and closer to her.

  Her eyes refocused on the face beyond the knife. Her father’s face!

  A scream rose in her throat and instantly erupted from her mouth. “No! Dad! Oh, God, no! Dad, don’t!”

  As Heather’s howl of terror crashed against his eardrums, Richard Kraven froze, the knife with which he’d been about to make the first perfect incision into Heather Jeffers’s flesh hovering a fraction of an inch above the pale skin of her breast.

  Deep within his mind, something stirred.

  As the girl on the bed screamed again, the being inside him, the being he thought he’d succeeded in crushing, surged back into consciousness.

  For Glen, it was like being jerked out of a deep sleep. One moment there was nothing, and the next he was fully awake. Then, as Heather cried out to him again, all the nightmares he’d had since his heart attack came rushing back to him. All the fleeting images coalesced into a terrible picture of blood, carnage, and death.

  And now, in his hand, he held a knife, poised above his daughter’s naked breast, and even as he struggled against the terrible force inside him, he felt an almost irresistible urge to use the knife.

  To cut Heather’s skin and flesh.

  To expose the bone beneath.

  Do it! Richard Kraven’s voice screamed inside his head. Do it now, before it’s too late! As Richard Kraven recovered from the shock of Heather’s sudden scream, Glen felt the power of Kraven’s evil begin to take him once again. Gathering himself together, he seized control of his body for a moment, and hurled himself away from the bed into the farthest corner of the tiny bedroom. “Run!” he screamed. “For God’s sake, Heather, get away from me!”

  Instinctively responding to her father’s voice, Heather scrambled off the bed, darted down the narrow passage to the salon, then fumbled with the door for a moment before she managed to yank it open and stumble out into the night. From behind her she heard a great bellow of rage, and then, ahead, a pair of headlights suddenly went on, trapping her in their beam like an insect caught on a pin. For a split second she felt a wave of panic rise up inside her, but then, over the howling wind, she heard a voice calling to her. “Heather! Oh, God, Heather!” Sobbing with relief, Heather broke into a lurching run, and a second later felt her mother’s arms close around her.

  Howling with rage, Richard Kraven hurled himself after the fleeing girl, then stopped short in the door to the motor home as the glare of headlights momentarily blinded him. Instinctively ducking away from the light, he retreated back inside, but almost instantly realized his mistake.

  The motor home was a trap with no way out except the door he’d just jerked shut!

  Leaping back to the door, he shoved it open, then raced out into the blackness of the night, escaping the twin cones of light coming from the automobile just as the first shot was fired, the crack of the exploding shell sharp in his ears, the dull sound of it slamming into the flimsy wall of the motor home almost lost in the wind. “Freeze!” he heard a voice shout, but he ignored the command, racing away into the darkness.

  Suddenly another beam of light hit him. He tried to dodge away from it, but it held steady on him no matter which way he turned. Following his instincts, he ran directly away from it, but now was aware of someone following him, chasing him.

  He feinted to the right, then cut left, and for just a second he was out of the light. But he was running blind now, his pupils not yet dilated, and then he slammed into something.

  His hands groped at it, and just as the white light of the halogen flashlight found him again, he realized what it was. A fence, its wire mesh rising up eight feet from the ground. On the other side was a narrow ledge of rock before the steep bank fell away to the river below.

  If he could get over the fence, put it between him and his pursuer, he might still escape. Ignoring the pain as the wire cut into his fingers, Richard Kraven began climbing.

  He was at the top, one of his legs already swung over to the other side, when Mark Blakemoor caught up to him, leaping up onto the fence to grab at the one leg that still hung just within his reach. The fingers of both Mark’s hands closed on Richard Kraven’s ankle, and then a scream of agony erupted from Kraven’s mouth as he was jerked down onto the top of the fence, the twisted ends of the wire digging into his testicles, sending spasms of agonizing pain throughout his body. His back went rigid and he thrust his arms toward the sky. Suddenly the night was illuminated by one more bolt of lightning, reaching down from the clouds, searching for the closest point to the ground.

  It found Richard Kraven, flashing down to strike his hands, burning its way through his body as it raced down into the fence.

  Mark Blakemoor’s body went rigid as the voltage shot through him, but as the electricity finally found the ground it sought and faded into the earth, he dropped to the ground and lay still.

  As the roll of thunder the lightning had generated faded, a new sound could be heard above the whistling of the wind through the trees. The wail of sirens grew louder, and then, as flashing red and blue lights raced toward the picnic ground, the rain finally began to ease and the wind to die away.

  A moment later two police cars pulled to a stop, their headlights illuminating the macabre scene at the fence. As their doors slammed and their occupants raced toward the body that lay on the ground, Anne Jeffers stood next to Heather, holding her daughter close.

  She barely heard the questions someone was asking her, was only dimly aware of the men kneeling by the still form of Mark Blakemoor.

  Her own eyes were still fixed on the top of the fence where the body of the man who had been her husband still hung. Then, as she watched, the weight of the body tore itself loose from the fence, dropped to the other side, and disappeared over the edge of the bank. If it made any sound as it fell into the river below, Anne didn’t hear it.

  The last of the rain stopped falling, and the wind finally fell completely still. An eerie quiet came over the night. Her arm still wrapped protectively around Heather, Anne made her way through the crowd of people crouched around Mark Blakemoor. She gazed down at him, and for just a moment she was certain that Mark, too, was dead. But then his eyelids fluttered briefly and opened.

  His eyes met hers. Their gaze held for a moment, and for just an instant Anne thought she saw exactly the same kind of twinkle in Mark’s eyes that had so often been in Glen’s, back before his heart attack. Then the look disappeared and she was once more looking into the eyes of the detective who had just saved her daughter’s life.

  “He’ll live,” she heard someone say as Mark managed the tiniest of smiles, then let his eyes close again.

  “It’s over,” Anne murmured into her daughter’s ear. “It’s over, darling, and we’re all right. All of us.”

  More chilling tales of suspense from

  JOHN SAUL

  THE MANHATTAN

  HUNT CLUB

  MIDNIGHT VOICES

&
nbsp; Available in bookstores everywhere.

  Published by Ballantine Books.

  THE PRESENCE

  by

  JOHN SAUL

  You can run but you can’t hide. You can lock your doors but you’re not safe. You can scream but you can’t escape from John Saul’s newest chilling tale of supernatural and psychological suspense. No one can outrun the evil of The Presence. Its dark, vaporous soul will permeate every corner of your imagination until there’s no more breath to scream.…

  BEWARE

  THE PRESENCE

  by John Saul

  Published by The Random House Publishing Group.

  Available in bookstores everywhere.

  A master of supernatural suspense, John Saul knows what transpires in the black folds of night—and who will be touched by

  THE RIGHT HAND

  OF EVIL

  by

  JOHN SAUL

  The hellish day of

  reckoning has arrived

  at bookstores everywhere

  from Ballantine Books.