by Dan Padavona
Yet his plan had backfired. All I needed to do was find the phone and call for help.
I edged off the wall and crept toward the staircase. It was darker above than in the living room.
I bit my tongue each time my weight came down on a stair. My hand slid along the banister, shoveling away dust.
The fates were kind to me. The stairs remained quiet until I was safely upon the landing.
It was freezing upstairs without the space heater running.
One door stood open: the shattered door at the end of the hallway. We’d left our bedroom open when we pulled Donna down the stairs. Now it was closed.
I bypassed the master bedroom and bathroom and crept to our room. My hands trembled as I turned the knob.
I slipped inside and closed the door, drawing ragged breaths into my chest. Gambling the light wouldn’t be seen under the door, I turned on the flashlight and swept the beam across the room. The bed, the boarded window, the stash of cleaning supplies in the corner all looked untouched. The closet door was closed—had it been before?—and as darkness outside the beam seemed to sweep in on me, I flashed the light at the door and carefully approached.
A floorboard groaned. I stopped, panting and sweating as I listened for someone climbing the stairs.
When silence followed, I opened the closet and shined the light inside.
No phone. Just vermin droppings and a pile of insulation where something had made a nest.
I checked under the mattress and lifted the box spring.
Dammit.
It wasn’t in our bedroom.
The phone rang. It sounded loud in the dark.
Where? The master bedroom?
I hoped to hell it wasn’t in the attic.
The phone continued to ring as I cracked open the bedroom door. The jagged blade-feeling in my lungs warned me not to follow the siren song.
Another trap. I felt sure of it.
As I slipped down the hallway I pushed an ear against the wall. No, the phone wasn’t in the master bedroom. It was above me in the attic. Which meant the killer was probably there, too.
This was my best chance to find Becca.
Let the killer think I’ll walk into his trap. We’ll be gone before he realizes his mistake.
I turned back and checked the open bedroom at the end of the hall. The bloodstain on the mattress was larger than I’d feared. The floor was streaked in dark shadows where we’d dragged Donna from the bed.
Becca wasn’t inside.
I caught my breath when the phone went silent for a few seconds. Then it started ringing again.
More places to hide existed in the master bedroom. I whispered Becca’s name, got down on all fours and checked under the bed. She wasn’t in the closet or behind the dresser. Nor was she inside the bathroom. Which left only the downstairs to check.
Where are you, Becca?
I stood at the top of the landing as the phone continued to blare. The stairs to the attic led up to the left. Death waited up there.
The ringing stopped for good.
I remember the tight pull in my chest and the sweat dripping off my fingertips as I scuffled toward the banister.
It was too dark to see if the attic door was open or closed.
A black shape lurched across the floor. I nearly shouted before I realized it was my own shadow rendered in a thin shaft of moonlight through the bathroom window.
Something thumped inside the attic.
I hurried down the stairs to find Becca.
“Becca.”
Each time I whispered her name my eyes shot to the top of the landing. I hadn’t heard the attic sounds in a while.
I craned my neck inside the fireplace, plenty big enough for Becca to hide inside. It smelled of soot and ash. The wind made moaning sounds up the chimney.
After checking the den and kitchen, I knew there was only one choice left if she was still inside the house.
She was in the basement.
Why the basement, Becca?
I eyed the shattered cellar doorway, tilted askew on broken hinges and hanging like a broken jaw. The death scents were sharper. I prayed Becca wasn’t down there, hoped she’d fled the house.
I knew she hadn’t. The killer wouldn’t allow her to leave the house. If he was still inside, she was, too.
All I saw was black down the stairs. Knowing the risk I was taking if the killer was in the basement, I lost my nerve and turned on the flashlight.
The light ricocheted off cobwebs and painted deformed shadows across the stairs.
God, those stairs were steep. The warped sagging of the boards made me wonder how they’d held our weight.
“Becca.”
Still no answer.
I started down the steps to the pitter-patter of debris showering off the stairs. My feet were like thunder on the old boards.
Halfway down the stairs, I swept the light across the basement, amazed again by its vastness. I saw the webbed washer and dryer, the junk pile, the water heater and storage cabinet.
I whispered her name and again heard the dead silence of that subterranean hole.
A plank snapped underfoot. I pitched forward into the washer and dropped the flashlight.
Something crawled across the pocked metal surface toward my hand. I scrambled backward on all fours and snatched up the flashlight. My pulse raced. I felt thankful the only stair to snap had been at the bottom.
But there was still the climb out of the basement to worry over.
The ceiling groaned overhead. I couldn’t tell if the sound came from the living room or the kitchen.
I moved as fast as I could in the dark, stepping over debris as unseen hazards snagged my shoelaces and tried to trip me up.
I avoided the water heater and cabinet. No way Becca would hide beside a pile of dead bodies.
As the light swept across the back wall, it caught movement in the corner.
A person, curled into a ball and shivering.
Becca.
I rounded a broken worktable and hurried to her. When I touched her shoulder she jumped as though electrocuted. Her eyes were wide and vacant.
“Becca, it’s me.”
A cry shuddered from her throat. I didn’t see any sign of recognition in her eyes.
“It’s me—Steve. Concentrate on my voice. It’s going to be all right.”
I pulled her into my arms. She trembled like a frightened baby animal that had never encountered humans.
If she was in shock, I didn’t know what I could do for her in what little time I had.
Another thump came from above. Dirt sprinkled my face.
“I need you to listen to me. I can’t carry you. You’ll have to walk if you want to get out of here.”
“The car.”
I met her eyes, which gained focus as footsteps moved overhead.
“Yes, yes,” I said, whispering. “We need to get to the car. You had the keys. Do you remember?”
She glanced uncertainly around the dark as though waking in an unfamiliar room.
“Do you remember?”
Her hands jumped in panicked movements through her jacket down to the pockets of her blue jeans. A jingling sound came as she patted the pocket.
“I remember. I have them.”
Relief flooded over me.
“Good girl. Now I need you to stand up and help me get out of here. Can you do that?”
She shook her head violently.
“Yes, you can,” I said.
“No. He’s upstairs. The Midnight Killer. Jesus Christ, Steve, he’s been in the house the whole time.”
Someone walked through the kitchen.
“Listen to me. He’s trying to lure me upstairs with my phone. Did you hear it ringing?”
She nodded.
“He was in the attic before,” I said. “He might go up again if he doesn’t think we’re downstairs. I found the bedroom doors closed, so he must believe one of us is upstairs.”
She stared at
me. I could see she wasn’t completely lucid yet, still working through the shock.
“We’re trapped down here. There’s only one way out, and he’s waiting for us.”
I glanced around the basement, realizing it would be pretty hard for the killer to find us in the dark if we kept quiet.
“I’m not going to die tonight, Becca. And neither are you.”
“We should have just driven away. If we hadn’t moved the body…”
“Stop. How could we have known someone was inside the house?”
She went quiet, lips still moving as though carrying a conversation with herself. A desiccated cockroach was stuck in her hair. I brushed it away.
“I better turn off the light,” I said.
Fright flashed in her eyes.
Red and orange stars flared over my eyes with the sudden absence of light. Then everything went black.
I painted a mental map of the basement—the locker off to the left, one junk pile in front of us and another near the middle of the basement, the bottom of the stairs somewhere back near the washer and dryer.
The old stairs gave us one advantage—we’d hear the killer coming.
Yet it remained oddly silent as we sat in the dark.
Minutes ticked past. I felt Becca shivering as we sat shoulder-to-shoulder.
“You think he’s still in the kitchen?” she whispered.
I hadn’t heard him in a long time, but something told me he was up there waiting for us. It made me think of alligators lying in the murky dark for hours, preternaturally patient, waiting for prey to wander by.
“Only one way to find out,” I said. “Still got your knife.”
The switchblade snapped up.
My knees popped as I rose. She hooked her elbow with mine, and we began to shamble back toward the stairs. I followed the memorized map, afraid I’d slam into one of the junk piles and give us away.
“I can’t see,” she said.
“Me neither. But we know the stairs are ahead. Keep moving.”
I fought the temptation to flick on the flashlight. If the killer was at the top of the stairs, he’d see.
My knees felt locked. Fear has a nasty way of freezing the joints, making it impossible to flee when the monster crashes out of the dark.
Quiet carried down the stairs. Maybe he’d gone upstairs.
It seemed we’d shuffled through the dark for hours when my leg brushed against the washer. The feel of cold metal through denim made me flinch.
I felt along the washer until I butted up against the wall.
“We made it,” I said.
I saw only black from the bottom of the stairs to the top. The killer might have been standing in the cellar doorway without me knowing.
“Careful. I busted the bottom step on the way down.”
We inched forward until my shin touched the broken plank.
“I feel it,” she said.
“Step over, nice and quiet.”
I imagined her leg lifting over the broken board in sync with mine. I swallowed when my foot reached the next step. There was a slight scuffling noise, hopefully not enough to draw attention. Glancing up, I still couldn’t see the kitchen or what waited at the top of the stairs.
A few steps up, my foot missed the stair. I felt a moment of vertigo, the dark spinning end over end as my hand reached out for a rail that wasn’t there. Becca grabbed me. How she sensed I’d lost my balance I’ll never know. I would have fallen to my death.
We kept climbing. Climbing and listening.
Then she nudged me in the ribs, and I glanced up to see the gray outline of the kitchen.
My heart was in my throat. Becca thrust the switchblade before her. I held the flashlight, butt end up, prehistoric man armed against dangers in the dark.
We stood at the threshold.
Something rhythmically banged inside the living room. The broken front door. The refrigerator stood to our left. I couldn’t see around it.
We walked backward into the kitchen’s center as moonlight glinted off the faucet. I kept waiting for the killer to lunge at us from behind the refrigerator.
Something hard clipped my hip, and I hauled myself around, ready to bring the flashlight down on the killer’s head. I’d backed into the door knob.
Through the window, the backyard was slashes of gray and black. The objects were sharp and exaggerated by the moon.
We were almost out of there. It felt wrong. It felt too easy.
As though someone dared us to walk through that door.
Becca must have felt it, too. She glared at the knob as if a cobra coiled around it.
The steady beating of the broken front door sounded like a time bomb ticking.
I’d rather die outside than in this hell.
I pulled open the door.
We stepped into the night and carefully shut the door behind us. Becca fished the keys from her pocket and held them in one hand, the other gripping the switchblade. Somehow this alarmed me. I was about to warn her to keep them in her pocket when she strode away, keeping to the shadows along the house.
The clouds had vanished, and the stars were as sharp as the cold. The chill dragged the breath out of me.
A moment of anxiety that the Subaru wouldn’t be there squeezed my heart, but when we turned the corner, the car sat where we’d left it, aglow in the moonlight. We were almost to the car when a clump of grass tripped Becca. She landed face down on the frozen ground.
“What’s wrong?”
She looked hysterical.
“The keys. And the switchblade. I dropped them.”
I swallowed a curse, jumped down to my knees, and felt through the grass. The lost items were probably right under our noses, but the dead grass grew up to our shins and swallowed everything it caught.
“Dammit, Steve. Why can’t I find them?”
I swept the light across the grass, felt around some more.
They were gone.
I glanced over my shoulder. The back door stood closed. Darkness pressed out from the windows.
“Stay calm,” I said, seeing her eyes well up. “They have to be close.”
Another minute of searching doused my hope. I was about to give up and suggest we flee down the hill when the light caught the glint of metal. I plunged my hand into the frosty overgrowth and came up with the switchblade.
“Got the knife,” I said.
We redoubled our efforts in a small perimeter around where I’d found the switchblade. A few seconds later Becca gasped and fished out the keys.
“I can’t believe I did that,” she said. “I almost stranded us.”
I gave the house one more look and ran for the car.
Throwing open the door, I slid into the passenger seat with Becca behind the wheel. Her hands shook as she sifted through the keys, then she found the right one. I worried something would go horribly wrong—the engine wouldn’t start or the car would flop along on slashed tires.
But when she turned the key, the engine hummed and the headlights lit the backyard.
I felt the clock ticking. The killer must have heard.
I looked over my shoulder at the desolate strip of road as Becca shifted into reverse.
A face crashed against the windshield. Glass imploded.
Becca jerked the wheel. The car bounced over a hummock and veered across the grass.
The rear bumper slammed into a tree. I pitched forward and whacked my head on the dashboard.
The car ricocheted off the tree, and a crunching sound came from the undercarriage.
Becca screamed.
I turned and saw Donna’s face against the windshield. Her lips were bulbous and fish-like, puckered against the impact point. She bled and silently screamed, staring with the whites of her eyes.
Her head lifted and slammed back down against the glass.
I was too scared to move, didn’t understand what I was seeing as glass pellets rained onto my lap.
Then I saw a shadow looming over h
er, a man gripping Donna’s bloody hair.
The Midnight Killer.
Becca shifted into drive and gunned the engine. The wheels spun helplessly. A tree stump was wedged under the car, suspending us.
The killer smashed Donna’s face into the windshield again. The glass burst inward. Donna’s head plunged through the opening, jagged spikes shredding her neck.
Blood poured onto my legs.
I looked up and saw the clown face of The Midnight Killer glaring down, head tilted in curiosity.
He towered over the hood, a monster out of a nightmare.
I moved one shaking hand to the door handle. He watched me, the axe thrown over one shoulder. Donna’s body lay splayed across the hood, a few bloody strands of tissue connecting her head to her torso.
Lunatic eyes gazed through the mask’s eye holes. I was paralyzed.
My hand trembled on the door handle. I knew the axe would rip my head off as soon as I stepped from the vehicle.
He caught Becca glancing at the driver-side door and circled to the front of the car.
Taunting us. A cat-and-mouse game.
He ran the hair-matted tip of the axe blade across the hood. It made a fingernails-on-chalkboard squeal.
Becca was sobbing, nearly delirious. I looked into the night. Miles of wilderness stood between us and sanctuary.
“He can’t chase both of us at the same time,” I said. “I’ll try to distract him—”
“No. I’m not leaving you.”
I thought I could rock the car off the stump if I was behind the wheel. I’d have to talk her through it.
“Gun the engine.”
She did.
“Harder,” I said.
The Midnight Killer grinned and rounded the car toward Becca. The motor roared, the wheels whirred.
“Reverse!” I yelled.
She threw me an uncertain look, then shifted the car into reverse and stomped the accelerator.
I felt the car lurch, but the wheels were still in the air.
The killer came at the driver-side door, axe raised.
“Forward!” I yelled.
She shifted. The car rocked. I thought I felt one of the tires catch the ground.
I told her to reverse again. The Subaru slammed down. Tires caught rock and dirt, peppering the killer with debris.
The bumper slammed against the tree. Becca bounced her chin off the steering wheel. Blood streamed out of her mouth.
