The Hunting of Malin

by Sean Thomas Fisher

  Chapter23

  Lisa wasn’t the next to die and neither was Holden or Roxanna. Incapacitated by fear, Malin watched the killer slash at Brandy’s face with the box-cutter. The lightbulb hanging overhead flickered with Brandy’s high-pitched scream. Blood slung from the blade, splattering a basement wall and if the pretty waitress could’ve ran for her life she would have but the ropes binding her wrists to a rusty wheelchair prevented that from being a viable option. Even so, she tried just the same. Hiding beneath a hood, the killer stepped back and watched her feeble struggles barely move the chair. Malin couldn’t see his face but, somehow, she knew it was Roscoe. Could smell his scent in the musty air.

  Forcing a small breath into her lungs, she reminded herself that the spiders crawling around her bare feet weren’t real. That this was just a dream and she was on her couch, safely asleep beneath a warm blanket. But she could still use this to her advantage. The visions may be horrid blasts from the past but they had to tell her more than where to find the next body. They had to tell her who was beneath the hood, who was responsible for this river of death, and this was her chance to find out. Stumbling, she backed into a dented washing machine and his hooded eyes snapped over to her, turning her legs to rubber bands. The bare bulb stuttered again, making shadows jump across his face. Leaning against the washer for support, a horrifying slideshow of Claymation type sequences flashed before her: The killer’s snarl. Brandy’s writhing. Blood dripping from the boxcutter. He stared at Malin and her heart thundered as she stared back. Could he see her? Had she, somehow, been pulled into the vision? Maybe she wasn’t as safe as she thought. He wouldn’t tolerate a witness and, besides, he liked it. Something moved past the small window behind her and, without warning, he turned back to Brandy and balled her hair into a fist before angrily slitting her throat. Severing her carotid artery, blood squirted onto her work shirt and pooled in her lap as Brandy convulsed in the chair with her elbows and knees violently flapping. Malin’s hand found a pipe wrench on the washer. Her trembling fingers coiled around the cold, flaky metal as the man took a step back to survey his handiwork like an artist upon finishing a masterpiece. Unlike Malin, Brandy began to relax. Her chin dropped into her chest and moonlight danced off the blood spurting from her neck.

  Unable to breathe, Malin watched the sick bastard step behind Brandy and fashion a slipknot from an old laundry line. The wrench was heavy in Malin’s hand, but not as heavy as her legs. She could barely move, let alone lift the pipe wrench. It was useless anyway. This was just a dream and she knew it. He couldn’t see her and she couldn’t stop him. This atrocity had already happened. But that didn’t keep her from shuddering when he looped the homemade noose over Brandy’s head and planted a work boot against the back of the wheelchair. Wrapping the line around his gloves, he set his jaw and pulled hard, tearing open the slit in her throat with a sickening sound of ripping skin. Blood, as dark as the feeling eating a hole in Malin’s heart, shot from her neck, spraying the unfinished basement walls and dusty shelves. Chest heaving, he let go and staggered back against a wire rack as if he’d just injected a speedball into the crook of his arm. He bent over and held onto the shelf for support, moaning with an orgasmic wave of ecstasy rolling through him.

  This was his drug and, sensing her opportunity through a veil of madness, Malin raised the wrench high above her head in both hands and darted across the filthy concrete floor with a battle cry pouring from her mouth. He looked up as her bare feet slapped through a pool of gore. The bulb flickered. Slipping, her feet flew out beneath her and she landed on her back, knocking the air from her lungs. For a long, dark moment, she could only blink at the ceiling. Breath refused to come. Limbs numb and unresponsive. Her heart pounded in her ears and she was trapped inside her own body. A car honked outside and she wondered how long it would take for someone to find her. Then, just when she thought she would suffocate to death, a sliver of air tunneled into her lungs. And then another. And another. Pulling a blanket from her sweaty face, she inhaled deeply and sat up, realizing where she was and that, just like the others, it was too late to help Brandy now.

  Chapter24

  Holden drove fast, looking over at Malin in the passenger seat like a worried husband rushing his pregnant wife to the hospital in the dead of night. Streetlights flashed across his sleepy face, turning him into somebody else. “Are you sure it was Brandy?”

  Malin wiped away the tears stinging the scratches in her cheek. “I’m sure.”

  “But why? She’s a brunette; it doesn’t fit his M.O.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t get it.” He turned back to the interstate, thinking something over with the city lights fading in the Bronco’s mirrors. “He genuinely seemed to like her so why kill her? Besides, it would lead the police right to him.”

  “I don’t know, Holden!”

  He inhaled a calming breath and released it. “If you’re right about this and we find…”

  “Did I do something wrong?”

  Looking over at her, his eyebrows slanted. “What do you mean?”

  “You haven’t called or anything for a few days and I’m just wondering if I did something to upset you.”

  Returning his attention to the roadway, his knuckles turned white against the steering wheel. “I’ve just been busy with work and my investigator licensing.” He signaled and got over to the left, jumping on the gas and passing a lazy eighteen-wheeler. “And then the whole time, trying to wrap my mind around everything without going…”

  “Yeah, me too,” she said, bailing him out of any further explanation. Malin didn’t blame him. It was a hell of a way to start a relationship – if that’s even what this was. She thought picking up with someone just before Christmas was awkward, but dead girls and dreams… Sitting up, she pointed off to the right. “Get off up here.”

  He signaled and got over, glancing at a group of abandoned houses that had fallen into a serious state of disrepair after the previous owners fled the noisy interstate running through their front yards.

  “So, Brandy hasn’t been at work in how long now?”

  At the end of the ramp, Holden took a sharp right, tires screeching. “I don’t know, a few days maybe. She’s part-time and I didn’t even notice her absence until you said something.”

  “How’s Roscoe been acting?”

  “Normal I guess. You haven’t heard from him?”

  “No.” Malin swallowed hard, her mind rising above them, watching the topless truck navigate the unlit city streets. Why would Roscoe kill someone with such a close connection? Holly and Amber seemed so random but this was just plain sloppy. Malin didn’t get a good look at his face in the vision but she knows it was him. Just like she knows there’s a dead girl in the basement of one of these deserted houses and that was on Malin. She saw this coming. The dream of Roscoe and Brandy on a first date was a warning she failed to heed. Hovering above the Bronco like a drone, Malin spread her wings and soared, moonlight painting her outstretched arms in glowing silver.

  “Malin!”

  She blinked herself back into the truck and jerked forward, the lap belt cutting into her waist as they came to a sudden stop. “What’s wrong?” she asked in a panic, whipping her head about.

  “What just happened? Did you have another vision?”

  “No, I-what do you mean?”

  “You just blanked out for like a full minute.”

  “Oh” she replied softly, realizing they were stopped in the middle of the street. “Just thinking I guess. You’re right about this not making any sense.”

  He looked her over for a few seconds as a warm breeze rustled the leaves of the tall trees hovering around them. “Which one is it?”

  Scanning the deserted houses on Holden’s side of the truck, Malin tried to catch a glimmer of something that would trigger her senses. Something that would tell her which way to go. Two hunchbacked raccoons crept from a bush and disappeared beneath a ramp snaking back and forth up to
a front door. Her eyes narrowed, transporting herself back into that dank basement with a rusty wheelchair and the metallic smell of blood. “The one with the ramp,” she said, directing Holden to the cracked driveway of a two-story house with a sagging roof and crumbling front porch.

  The Bronco bounced up the weedy drive and came to a stop. Holden turned the engine off and sat there, craning his neck to take the place in while a symphony of crickets and locusts played on from the bushes and trees consuming the house. “Well, I guess if we find Brandy in the basement, then we’ll know it’s Roscoe for sure. She must’ve told him to get lost or something and he snapped. Crimes of passion happen all the time.”

  “Crimes of passion? He barely even knew her.” Malin studied the house and, somehow, knew this was the right one. Knew they’d find Brandy with her throat slit in the basement with a noose hanging from her neck. Victim number three. The house looked alive, the peeling paint decaying skin and the broken windows eyes to nowhere. It was watching them. Knew they were here, woken from its slumber. Malin slouched down in the seat, wishing the truck’s top was up to protect her from those eyes.

  “If she’s in here, we leave immediately and call Brolin.”

  “That should go over well.”

  “Don’t I know it.” Holden stared at her in the silvery light, gaze pinching into slits. “Your mom should seriously think about getting her cat declawed. That’s really bad.”

  She winced as her fingertips found the scratches running down the side of her face, heat creeping up her neck. “It was my fault for trying to pet her. No one pets that cat and lives to tell about it.”

  Nodding faintly, he deliberated something that, in the end, he decided to keep to himself. “Ready?”

  “No,” she replied, pulling on the door handle. The subsequent creak was so loud in the quiet, a warning signal she tried to ignore. There was something in this house. Something that would haunt her for the rest of her miserable life. But, for whatever reason, this was her cross to bear and bear it she would. It was the least she could do. Those girls suffered much more than Malin had. They were the victims here, not her. And if she could help, she owed it to them to try, even if it cost her life.

  Holden got out and straightened the paddle holster on his hip, waiting for Malin to haul herself from the truck. She followed him up the handicapped ramp, careful to avoid a jagged hole in the rotting wood. Not surprisingly, the front door was cracked open, the doorframe splintered from where some bored teens kicked it in once upon a time. Holden clicked on a flashlight, lighting up an old penny littering the doormat. Squinting in the glow, he bent down and frowned. “1964,” he muttered, reaching for it.

  Malin dropped a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t,” she whispered, pulling him back up.

  She nodded to the door and he nodded back, pushing it open with the barrel of the gun. The door swung inward on rusty hinges, its sharp screech piercing the night. Cautiously entering the house, the first thing Malin noticed was the rancid stench. The next was the 1960s-furniture scattered about the living room. The place was a disaster zone with the scent of spoiled chicken and human feces swirling in the air, a pit-stop for junkies and hobos who’d left their careless marks over the years.

  Her eyes followed Holden’s flashlight around the outdated room, gut tightening as the circular beam reflected off the broken glass in an old television sitting so low to the ground it looked more like a dresser with a fish tank in the middle. The tattered green couch matched a broken armchair, both covered in garbage and mystery fluids. Dated copies of Life and Mad Magazine adorned the stained carpeting, nestled amongst a horde of empty liquor and cough medicine bottles. Holden jerked the light to the ragged individuals watching them from across the room. He took aim with the gun, spiking Malin’s adrenaline. Bracing for a loud blast, she released a pent-up breath upon realizing it was just their terrified reflections trapped in a horizontal mirror hanging over the fireplace.

  “Jesus, talk about creepy,” Holden whispered, swinging the beam to a record player console that must’ve weighed a thousand pounds. With the wooden lid torn from its hinges, the needle sat on a sheet of frozen pizza cardboard somebody drew circles on to create a vinyl record that would never play.

  Malin kicked a Burger King bag out of the way, the receipt taped to the outside still white and crisp. “It looks like somebody’s been here recently.”

  “Vagrants and vandals.” Holden wrinkled his nose as they inched into the kitchen. “Man, that is really bad.”

  Gagging a few times, Malin narrowly tossed up her dinner. The kitchen was just as ancient and destroyed as the living room, a twisted snapshot of the past. With the door hanging by a single hinge, a multitude of stains grew inside a pink fridge tucked in the corner. Broken dinner plates crunched beneath their feet and Malin shivered as she watched a roach crawl across the toe of her boot. Holden stepped on the bug with a stomach-turning crunch and something made a noise in the basement. Jerking the flashlight to a scuffed-up door next to a gas range missing its knobs, he exchanged a cautious look with Malin before tiptoeing closer. Quietly opening the door, he recoiled from the smell before sending the beam down a thin flight of stairs, lighting up an unfinished basement more fitting for a dungeon on Game of Thrones.

  “Okay, that’s definitely not a good sign,” he said, holding his breath against the unsavory odor.

  The stairs creaked like an old woman’s bones on a snowy night, making the hairs go up on Malin’s arms. She wanted to turn and run because death was waiting for them down there and this wasn’t her responsibility. She didn’t ask for this curse, nor did she deserve it. Holden dropped the light to his feet, examining some fresh-looking scratches running across the gray-painted steps – long scratches like someone was dragged down them against their will. Holden looked at Malin and swallowed thickly before heading down into the shifting abyss.

  At the bottom of the stairs, she realized she was clinging to the back of his belt and let go. Her eyes followed the light to a beat-up washer and dryer that sparked a painful glimmer in her mind. The dead brunette tied to a rusty wheelchair sparked a fireball. A rat jumped from the chair’s arm and scurried across the room, knocking over an empty paint can and vanishing behind a furnace draped in cobwebs and dirt. Brandy sat motionless with her head down and dried blood caking her black work shirt with The Office printed across it in swirling white letters. The loose end of the noose cinched around her neck dangled between her legs, pooling around her blood-soaked Nikes. Edging closer, Holden used the flashlight to push on her forehead, making her face glow white.

  “Don’t,” Malin whispered, hanging onto his belt again.

  Brandy’s head fell back and kept falling, making a wet tearing sound and stopping just short of decapitation. Through unblinking eyes, the new waitress stared upside-down at the wire shelf behind her, head connected by a thin flap of skin on the back of her neck and a scream stuck on her lips.

  “Sonofabitch!” Holden stumbled backwards, tripping over a portable oxygen tank and falling to the ground in a plume of dust.

  The flashlight flickered, giving off unforgiving glimpses of the bone white spinal cord jutting from Brandy’s mutilated neck. Malin looked away but it was too late for that, the graphic image already branded into her mind for all of eternity. It was the worst scene yet because, even if only for a passing moment, she’d seen this young girl alive at the bar. Witnessed the pink in her flesh, the radiance in her smile and it tore at Malin’s insides.

  This one was different.

  Doubling over, she sprayed vomit on the spiders crawling around her combat boots. Her vision blurred and someone said something in a deep voice that sounded muffled by a pillow. A hand landed on her back and she smacked it away, pivoting on her heels and sprinting for the stairs. The smell alone was bad enough but the noose… How could anyone be so cruel? So wicked? Evil lingered in the air like the smell of singed hair and he was still here. She could feel him watching. Flying up the stairs without
looking back, her foot crashed through a weakened step, skinning her chin against the jagged wood. Pain exploded in a hot flash behind her eyelids, turning the night to day. Crying out, she wiggled free, scraping her leg again in the process.

  “May!”

  Ignoring the voice, she kept climbing. She had to get out of there and right fucking now before whatever was inside this house got her too. Something was still here. Something not of this world. A nebulous presence that weighed upon her shoulders like bags of wet cement as she bolted through the kitchen and slid into the living room, nearly falling to her palms. The garbled voice came again, this time from a thousand miles away. The person standing across the living room stopped Malin in a panic, sending a burst of blood straight to her head that turned everything fuzzy. When she moved, he moved. Recognizing her frazzled reflection in the mirror, she didn’t even have time to curse herself for being so stupid for the footsteps climbing the stairs behind her. Lurching past the record player, she rolled an ankle on an empty bottle of Popov and slammed against the front door, issuing a painful cry before yanking the door back and nearly clipping her nose.

  Outside, she galloped down the ramp and cut a hard left through the overgrown yard. Without looking back, she sprinted down the uneven sidewalk out front, fueled by ragged breaths and suffocating fear. Boots slapped against the pavement, ankle flaring with pain. Tears clouded her vision as she ran like something was after her. Something deadly. Two blocks later, a vehicle jumped the curb and skidded to a stop, blocking her path. Holden sprang out and wrapped her in a bear hug from behind. She kicked and screamed while ghosts of neighbors past quietly watched from the decrepit houses lining the moonlit street.