Dark Creations Boxed Set (Books 1-3)

by Jennifer and Christopher Martucci

  Chapter 18

  Eric Sala left Melissa’s house feeling equal parts relieved and apprehensive. Though he had taken a calculated risk and entered through the front door of her home, he did not dare endanger himself by repeating such an action. After explaining to her the nature and severity of his worries, she offered him an exit through the family room at the rear of the house.

  He had traveled on foot. Parking his car three blocks away, leaving it inconspicuously sandwiched between a mobile home and minivan, Eric had traversed a considerable stretch of woods, crossed one of her neighbor’s backyard and walked up the remainder of her street to her front door. Such precautionary measures had been necessary then, were necessary still.

  The sun had set about an hour ago. Clouds had filled in where navy expanses should have dazzled with infinite celestial jewels. The evening sky was dark, darker than usual. Mist clung to treetops. The air was cool but balmy. A preternatural silence had befallen the surrounding area. Eric wondered if the fog had acted as a blanket of freshly fallen snow would have, muffling and quieting everything in its wake; it seemed as though the rain was falling soundlessly around him.

  He cut across Melissa’s small backyard and went directly into the woods beyond it. After crossing a small seasonal stream, swollen with the wealth of spring rain the area had seen and residual winter snow that had long since melted, Eric moved deeper into the woods. He was immediately swallowed by the abundance of growth around him. Branches, crisscrossed at every turn, threatened to gouge his eyes, undergrowth tugged at his pant legs and fog gathered conspiratorially, disorienting him and robbing him of his vision.

  A branch snapping behind him sliced through the milky mist and echoed through the void. Eric’s pulse quickened, as did his pace. Certain that someone was pursuing him he moved faster, clumsily jogging through a riot of twisted, entangled branches. Sweat dappled his clammy skin as he looked over his shoulder. Movement behind him, unseen but distinct nevertheless, skyrocketed his racing heart rate. He began to run.

  With each foot momentarily off the ground in each step and his nearly nonexistent sense of depth perception in the darkened and shrouded woodland, Eric tripped. He toppled face-first to the ground below. He never saw the fallen tree in his path.

  Facedown on the ground, he did not move right away. He paused briefly and remained as still as he could. He listened for the sound of footfalls, but heard nothing over the rush of blood against his eardrums. Once he felt confident that he was not being tracked, he rose to his feet, brushed the debris from his clothes and sprinted to the edge of the woods where his car waited on an unfamiliar street in a neighborhood that was not his.

  Street lights illuminated the pavement but reflected against the thickening fog. The sound of his own footsteps lulled him into thought. He began to replay his conversation with Melissa. He wondered whether he’d made a mistake by telling her, yet felt it necessary to unburden himself. He reasoned that it had been necessary to share what happened with her. After all, she had been there when Kevin, Chris and John had been killed. She was part of everything he’d been through.

  But something about his visit with her left him feeling unsettled. He could not quite pinpoint what it was, but something did not feel right. As he mulled her reaction over, he came to the realization that Melissa had not reacted as he’d expected her to, the way anyone else would have. In fact, other than tearfulness, she hadn’t had much of a reaction at all. He had assumed she would think he’d lost his mind and need a tremendous amount of convincing. He had thought he’d have to talk to her more than once to make her understand. To his surprise, she had accepted everything he had to say, even the things he’d speculated. Nothing had shocked her. She had been upset, but by no means as shocked as he’d anticipated.

  One point she had impressed upon him was the necessity of going to the police. She had suggested he go right away, even offered to go with him. Eric knew he could never go to the police, and though she had seemed to fully comprehend the magnitude of the situation, as well as its utter weirdness, Melissa could not have possibly understood the danger he was in. If he were to go to the police, he was sure he’d be killed. He had seen the look in their eyes as they mercilessly executed the guys from the club, their maniacal, crazed expressions. She hadn’t been there. She had no way of knowing. But she’d believed him, and having someone to share his fears with did help.

  Eric felt slightly buoyed as his car came into sight. Just where he’d left it, his dented Ford Escort waited between the vehicles he parked it between. Nether Kevin, Chris nor John waited against it. In a few hundred feet, he would be behind the wheel of his car and on his way home.

  His faint glimmer of optimism was dimmed, however, when he became aware of a presence. He did not see who loomed ahead, but felt another with him. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled as he heard footsteps against the pavement. They began slowly at first, then picked up in pace quickly. Whoever was coming had undoubtedly seen him, and was coming right at him. Faster and faster, the sound rushed toward him. With nowhere to run to and few places to hide, Eric ducked between two garbage cans at the end of a car-filled driveway. He crouched just in time to see a pair to light-up running shoes gallop past him.

  A jogger, he thought. A jogger going for an evening run had advanced and nearly scared him to death. Relieved, Eric arrived at his car; he got in and locked the doors, then started the engine. He raked his hands through his hair and smiled. He would be home in a matter of minutes.

  He pulled out of the space he’d parked his car, a small niche between a behemoth camper and a minivan, and drove to his house. He could not wait to walk in the front door and head straight upstairs. His parents would certainly be home, his mother in the kitchen experimenting with a new recipe from the food network, his dad leaning against the counter telling her all about his day. He longed for the sounds of chatter, of laughter, of home. He would strip out of his soiled clothes dirtied from his fall in the woods, take a hot shower and join his parents for a much-needed dose of normality.

  Eric couldn’t help but smile, a rare expression he seldom produced in recent days, as he parked across the street from his house. Each window was illuminated. The outline of his parents was framed by the kitchen window. He locked his car doors and trotted toward his house.

  As he began walking up his driveway, a car turned onto his street. Headlights blinded him temporarily. He froze as he discerned the make and model of the car. It was a black Infiniti G37 Sports Coupe, and it belonged to Kevin Anderson.

  Kevin pulled into Eric’s driveway and opened the door. And he was not alone. Chris and John occupied the passenger seat and back seat respectively.

  “What’s up man?” Eric asked and tried to sound nonchalant.

  “Nothing, man, nothing at all,” Kevin said tightly. “We’re just heading out to get some beers and hang, thought you’d like to join us,” Kevin suggested, but the tone of his voice implied that he was not suggesting that Eric join them, but rather ordering it.

  “I can’t tonight. My parents are home and they’ve been on my shit about my grades. You know how that is,” Eric attempted.

  “Don’t be a punk. Blow off your parents or tell them you’re going to a study group or something. Or better yet, don’t tell them anything,” Kevin said testily.

  “I don’t know, man. I think they’d freak out,” Eric replied.

  “Who gives a shit? Aren’t you going to be eighteen in, like, two months? Come on! Stop being a punk and get in the fuckin’ car,” Kevin commanded.

  Eric knew he could not refuse them, that refusal would imply disrespect, and he knew what happened to those who disrespected them. His only chance of survival would be to go out with them, play along with whatever game they were playing, and pray that they did not know of his meeting with Melissa earlier.

  Reluctantly, Eric agreed to go with Kevin, Chris and John.
r />   He climbed into the back seat of Kevin’s car and glanced at his house. He saw the basketball hoop in the driveway and remembered exhausting himself when he was nine, trying to perfect his layup so he could show his dad when he returned from work. He saw his mother’s rosebush out front just beyond the porch. He remembered planting it there as a Mother’s Day’s surprise for her five years earlier and how she enjoyed clipping the blooms and filling the house with vases of crimson roses. He had grown up in the house and made so many memories there.

  Eric heard the automatic lock engage in Kevin Anderson’s car, saw his parents’ silhouettes in the kitchen window and, with a tear rolling down his cheek, realized he’d never see them again.