Malevolent

by Searls, David

  Patty snaked the top half of her body out the ragged opening and looked down. Far down. She drew herself back into the attic, dizzy from the view. What was she doing? She’d wisely reconsidered dropping from her bedroom window minutes ago, but now she’d very nearly launched herself from a spot another twelve feet higher. Facing that same landing zone of relentless asphalt.

  She eased her head out once more and studied the face of the building for footholds. Found none. But if she dangled from her fingertips on the sill before letting go, it would put her another five and a half feet closer to the ground. She swung one leg over the sill and winced as it snagged on the mauled screen. She was still in her skirt from work and the screen tore effortlessly through her panty hose. White scratch tracks formed on her flesh and turned pink before breaking open and releasing thin smears of blood. Nothing like the smear that would become of her body once the asphalt drive stopped her fall. Maybe she’d merely smash a couple ankles, better than getting riddled with bullets if she stuck around.

  With one leg jutting out the open window, Patty calmed her harsh breathing and made herself listen for what she really didn’t want to hear. The squeal of the obstinate little door against its tight jamb had ended moments before, and now she could feel a slight draft as fresh air made its way up the staircase from the closet.

  The Alice-in-Wonderland door was open. Where was psycho-cop?

  Waiting for me to jump, Patty realized with a burst of insight. She wants to make it look like suicide. Which made no sense at all, with all of the bullet holes and destruction down there, but the suspicions wouldn’t go away—Melinda Dillon didn’t want to come up after her. She wanted Patty to jump.

  She heard sounds at the foot of the stairs. Harsh breathing. Someone shifting quietly. Waiting.

  Patty looked longingly at the neat row of backyards seen clearly from up so high. Four or five lots to her right, kids played basketball under a naked rim. A high school girl was getting a backyard bikini tan in another. None of them looked up at her. She could scream, she supposed, but what would that accomplish? Could be fifteen, twenty minutes before anyone decided the crazy woman might need help. Couple hours after that before the police actually arrived. She’d be dead by then.

  Patty blinked. Tore her gaze from the outside world, so far away, and refocused on her immediate threat, at the bottom of that staircase.

  Reluctantly, she climbed back in and stepped away from the window. She softly closed the shutters and tiptoed to the middle of the attic room. She took brief hold of the lightbulb, but it was hot to the touch. She followed its thin chain with her eyes. It was so long that someone had looped it once around a hook fastened to the ceiling to take up enough slack that it wouldn’t dangle too low. Rising on her toes, Patty grabbed the chain and whipped it free of the hook. Now she was in possession of a pendulum that hung just a couple feet from the dusty floor.

  She cradled the bulb tenderly under one arm, took hold of the three-wheeled grocery cart with the other and pulled both objects with her toward the attic’s darkest recess.

  Too loud! The rusty cart groaned, its wheel-free leg gouging the floor. Patty winced as she lifted the cart as high off the ground as she could manage, stopping only upon reaching her hideaway corner. She hunched with the lightbulb held hanging on its chain and the grocery cart beside her.

  Now came the hard part. Turning off the light switch.

  In total darkness now, she could hear squirrels prancing across the roof, boards creaking with age and psycho-bitch shuffling impatiently in the closet below. Patty waited, her lacerated eyeball grinding excruciatingly every time she blinked.

  Then one sound stood out. One she’d been both awaiting and dreading. Melinda Dillon was coming. Patty held her breath. A steady stream ran down her face, a trickle of salt tears and ruined eyeball.

  A weak wash of light came up the stairs along with the sociopathic detective. Patty could dimly make out the light chain, its path from the ceiling to the lightbulb which she grasped. She knew that the woman coming after her had only to follow the chain’s trail from ceiling to corner to find her.

  She should have counted treads. She knew there were six steps altogether, but she hadn’t thought to count the cautious footsteps as they came toward her.

  Then the need for counting was over as a form took shape in the darkness, a roving patch of void that was bigger and darker than the void surrounding it. This darkness froze at the head of the stairs.

  Patty shook so hard she could hear the light chain jingling all the way up to its mounting on the ceiling. And now she could hear the growing excitement and anticipation in Melinda Dillon’s breathing, and knew the murderous cop wouldn’t remain statue-still much longer. At the same time, Patty became aware of her own breathing pattern—shallow, harsh, too loud.

  The shadow stirred. Patty knew she’d been found in the dark. She hadn’t another second to waste, but what followed—what absolutely had to follow—was the most terrifying aspect of the entire reckless plan. Without doing this part, Patty didn’t have a chance.

  She had to be sure of her target.

  Gripping the lightbulb so tightly in one sweaty hand that it might shatter and dash all hope, she felt again for the on-off switch. Found it. Twisted it to the on position. Yes, it was indeed Melinda Dillon standing there at the top of the stairs, circling the room with her gun hand in search of the source of that yellow smear of light that had looked so intense after the blinding dark.

  Patty pulled the bulb back, ignoring its searing heat on her hands, aimed it and released. It swung like a pendulum, the raftered walls dancing with light and shadow as the bulb swooped low, nearly to the timbered floor, then took off again at the midpoint of its arc and raced for the head of the stairs.

  Raced, more accurately, for the head at the stairs.

  Patty moved sideways and dropped to a catcher’s position behind her cart.

  Her sudden motion, like that of the swinging bulb, caught the psycho bitch’s attention. Her eyes, hand and gun zeroed in on Patty behind the shopping cart. The bullet zinged past her even before Patty became aware of the short, deafening bark of trigger-pull, or smelled the acrid scent of gunpowder as the smoke and displaced dust filled the room. The bullet chewed up cedar behind her at almost the same time the lightbulb shattered against Melinda Dillon’s forehead.

  The look on the bitch’s face—priceless. More befuddlement than pain or fear at having a lightbulb popped on her skull. This shouldn’t be happening, the look said. She backed away.

  Now or never. Patty braced both hands on the crippled grocery cart and shoved it forward. It veered wildly, gouging up floorboard splinters with its missing wheel, taking all of Patty’s remaining strength to control it. If the cart wobbled off course, she was finished.

  It didn’t fail her. It hit the woman dead-on and tumbled her from sight. Melinda Dillon let out an “oof” as she hit the attic stairs. The cart came after her, bouncing down the stairs and ricocheting off walls before crash-landing in the closet below.

  What Patty remembered most was the look of utter confusion just before Melinda Dillon toppled, the look that said she’d never anticipated such a turn of events. It was the memory of that expression that Patty wanted to retain from that moment forward.

  The voice came from below.

  “What is this? Hello? This destruction. What have you done to my home? I should call the police, and I will.”

  “Mrs. Lascic, get out of the house,” Patty screamed down the stairs.

  “I suppose since I own the house, I will get out in my own time,” the woman replied heatedly. “Where are you?”

  Patty closed her eyes, waited for a scream, a gunshot, a thudding body. But heard nothing. Just footsteps as her landlady fell to the task of inspecting the apartment. Patty frantically searched the floor for the gun that might have been dropped by Melinda Dillon. Finding nothing, she crept down the stairs unarmed.

  “What is this, Patty? The damage…what
happened here?”

  Mrs. Lascic met her in the cramped closet, the thought of the two of them in there together nearly bringing Patty to hysterical giggles.

  “The window cracked, furniture tossed around,” the landlady sputtered. “If it was your young man, Tim, I wouldn’t be so surprised. But you, Patty…are you taking drugs these days?”

  Each stood at one end of the upended shopping cart, Patty’s clothing and hangers in piles around them. In a whisper, she said “Mrs. Lascic, did you see her? Is she still—”

  “See who?” the landlady demanded.

  Patty crept past her and peered into her bedroom before entering it.

  “I hear all this noise,” the woman said behind her. “Only instead of shushing when I rap on the ceiling, it gets louder. Running, crashing, furniture dragged across the floor. I even must force my way into the bedroom.”

  “You forgot to mention shooting,” Patty mumbled, her eyes still racing.

  The bedroom door stood open, offering a view into the empty hallway.

  “Shooting? What shooting? My God, if you tell me there was a gun battle I sell the house tomorrow. A shooting fight. My God, what is the world coming to?”

  Her dressing table and chair looked like they’d taken a beating but her bedroom door was intact. Putting her mind on rewind, Patty saw a bloody, splintered hand crashing through it.

  Gasping like a fish in a toxic stream, Patty plopped down on the bed. What’s that Mrs. Lascic had said earlier? Something about having to force her way through the bedroom door. But how could that be the case if the psycho bitch had escaped the room?

  Patty glanced at the windowpane. Cracked, but not broken.

  She jumped from the bed, moved herself and the protesting Mrs. Lascic away from the mattress before crouching and cautiously looking under.

  Dust balls. Nothing else.

  The older woman jabbered away throughout this, but none of it was reaching Patty. Either Mrs. Lascic had reverted to her native tongue or Patty had forgotten how to comprehend English. She couldn’t make sense of any of it.

  She noticed that she had two good eyes once again, her vision as sharp as ever, and pain-free.

  Patty ran through the apartment, sprinted from one gunshot site to another. Found intact wood, intact tile, intact plaster, intact front door lock.

  Again she circled the place, living room to dining nook to kitchen to bedroom. And again. And a third time, running herself dizzy and nauseated until she had to stop in front of her toilet and puke weak strands of lunch into the bowl. She was crying by this time and signaling for Mrs. Lascic not to call the police. She’d take care of the mess, all of which she’d caused. She promised.

  She was having some personal problems at the moment, but she’d work them out.

  She calmed herself down so the sputtering landlady would leave. Alone again, as she’d apparently always been, Patty began to think, and she almost had things figured out by the time Tim came home.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Tim figured his future was behind him when he got home from the disastrous Davenport party and found the steamer trunk open and his music strewn about the floor.

  Of course he’d known he was in trouble even before that moment. Had known it while still in the van and trying to rehearse a story to explain why Patty’s boss and her boss’ husband had not only fired him without pay, but threatened him with legal action.

  You know a gig’s gone south when lawyers get involved.

  When he found his hidden stash of albums and CDs tossed on the floor, he knew the situation had taken yet another turn for the worse. He picked his way carefully over his stuff and snagged a beer from the fridge, noticing the whole house to be a bit messier than usual, and went to look for Patty.

  “Holy shit,” he murmured at what met him in the bedroom. Not Patty, but signs of her having passed that way, and not in a good mood.

  Her traditional approach to anger was to steam rather than erupt, but it sure looked like an eruption had occurred here. The dressing table was slanted out of place against one wall. Drawers were out and crap scattered. The closet door stood open and clothing spilled out of it. Worst yet, the windowpane was cracked and a chair dangled from the sill.

  He found her sitting on the balcony, a pitcher and glass of tea within reach. She sat back far enough that he hadn’t seen her as he came home and she hadn’t called out to him. Another bad sign. She tilted back in the only chair out there and propped her long legs against the wooden rail.

  “Hi,” she said.

  They were on speaking terms, at least. Single-word greeting, anyway. He mentally tore apart her greeting for a clue to her mood, but found nothing. He was on his own here.

  “Jesus,” he said, not much of a conversation-starter, but he had the condition of the apartment in mind. The suspense was killing him.

  She wore sunglasses on the porch, making her all the more enigmatic. She sipped her tea, sat the tall glass on her lap and ran a spoon through it, setting the ice to tinkling. She sipped again, seemed to find it more to her liking. “Nice day,” she said.

  What the fuck?

  “So nice out here,” he said, “whaddya say we break all the windows in the apartment and let the outdoors in.”

  Thinking sometimes offense was the best defense.

  “You’ve noticed your music scattered on the living room floor,” she said.

  Tim still couldn’t read her mood. The voice too calm, and those fucking sunglasses. “I’m going to make enough in just two gigs to pay them off,” he told her, not sure if he believed himself or not. “You didn’t have to wreck the place.”

  “Enough to pay for the music and the bills you told me you’d already paid?”

  Ah, so she’d been through his dresser drawers too.

  She tossed her head at him and Tim knew her eyes would be flashing if only he could see them. She sighed. “It doesn’t matter, Tim.” Her tone of voice seemed to back up her words.

  He leaned against the balcony railing and asked her if she was angry. It should have been a no-brainer, but for some reason he couldn’t get a handle on her emotions. They seemed somehow…muffled.

  “No…yes…not really.” She smiled at her indecisiveness and mulled over her next words. “I’m angry like I’m angry about the war in Afghanistan and a jobless recovery and the size of the federal deficit. I’m angry about all of the time we wasted together, but in the long run nothing’s really wasted. I can hope that’s true, anyway. There were some good times and I finally learned a lot.”

  His first instinct was correct, that he was going to be sent packing. Still, hearing the words stunned him. It was like the difference between theoretically accepting death and getting the doctor’s prognosis. He tried to decide what he was feeling.

  “It’s not like before,” he told her quietly. “You feel cheated by me because I bought the music behind your back—and I’m wrong for doing that—but it’s an entirely different situation than before.”

  Her sunglasses looked at him. “Kayla Cosgrove,” she said. “You can say the name. It won’t make me go off the deep end. Not anymore. I’m stronger now. As for the silly music on the living room floor, that’s just a symptom, not the disease.”

  Disease? What the hell did she think he was?

  He opened his mouth but she shushed him with a gentle wave. “It’s not worth arguing about, hon. I think if you honestly examine your emotions, you’ll find that you’re not all that torn up about this.”

  “About what, Patty? Are we breaking up? I don’t think you’ve thought this through.”

  She picked up her spoon and swirled it through her icy drink again. The rattling sound was softer this time, the muggy afternoon having drained mass from her cubes. “You were never seeing Melinda Dillon, were you?”

  That caught him so off-guard that he could only shake his head.

  “I didn’t think so.” The sunglasses looked away. “That’s how it got me, though. Almost got me. Jea
lousy. Insecurity.” She chuckled at a joke that was invisible to Tim. “I was this trembling little woman trying to forgive and forget and live happily ever after with the dream of a husband, two good careers, a couple kids and a house in the suburbs. Until I got pressed into a corner and found I could be a bit of a psycho bitch myself. I’ll bet the church folks are still buzzing about that.”

  He was lost, and lost no time telling her so.

  “Okay,” Patty said. “Here it is: The ghost of Melinda Dillon—except, she isn’t dead so it can’t really be a ghost—broke in this afternoon and tried to shoot me. Only, the thing couldn’t actually kill me because the bullets aren’t real. The threat’s not real. Not in a concrete sense. But the thing almost got me to hurl myself out the attic window.”

  He wanted to stop her, and yet his own recent experiences got in the way.

  “You see, it becomes whatever can hurt you the most,” she continued. “But the hurt’s up here.” She tapped her skull. “Can you follow that? What it was really trying to do was to get me to hurt myself, only I wouldn’t do it. See, I’m stronger than I ever gave myself credit for. I stood up to it and it wasn’t expecting that from me. I beat the bitch, and so it disappeared and took with it any evidence that it had ever been here. And how was your day?”

  She tinkled the ice cubes splinters in her glass as she took a delicate sip.

  Now was the perfect time, Tim figured, to tell her about his afternoon. To tell her everything that had happened to Griffin and him over the last several days. To show her how his experiences in some way paralleled her own. But what were her own? He still didn’t understand a word of what she’d been trying to tell him.

  He stared at her and said, “Patty, you’re sounding crazy.”

  She laughed brightly. “Yes, I suppose I am. Oh, I almost forgot—how’d the Davenport party go?”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  The guy Griffin privately referred to as the Weasel slunk behind the black curtain at about sundown, as he did most Friday evenings. Griffin was actually glad to see him. If he heard a rustling behind the curtain, he could be fairly certain it was human.