by Stant Litore
“An old man this time,” she said hoarsely. “He’d cheated on his wife, years ago. He’s in one of the houses.”
“How do you know this?”
She sat up, looking very pale. With her clean hand she pushed her hair back. Matt drew in his breath a moment at the sight of her, her breasts soft in the dark, but then the smell of rot returned, fiercer than before, and he had to fight not to gag.
“I always know. Come on, we have to hurry. He doesn’t move after a kill. Not for hours. He stays with the body.”
Matt hesitated.
“You’ll just have to trust me,” she pleaded.
He caught her wrist. “I was good at trusting once. Now I’m not.”
“Tough,” she said.
He held her gaze, searching her eyes for some sign of madness or a lie or some impending betrayal. At last he grunted and got to his feet, pulling her up with him. If she was right, he had to act. And it wasn’t as though he had a better lead.
He cast a glance at their clothes where he’d discarded them on the stable floor, and sighed, his breath white on the air. Shirt, pants, underwear, all frozen stiff in their crumpled shapes. He took the wool coat and draped it around Adette’s shoulders; she gave him a grateful look. Then he got up and went to see what he could find. He’d found a coat; maybe there’d be another. Or gloves. Or overalls. Or something. He would have been self-conscious about stalking naked across the stable, but now that he was out from under that coat and away from Adette’s body heat, all he could think about was the cold floor burning his feet and the way the cold air bit at his bare chest and his balls.
And that rot.
He kept thinking of that, too.
He’d slept with her. Despite the cold, he hardened a little at the memory. She hadn’t smelled like rot then. The decay had come while she slept. While she dreamed.
He stopped, leaned his hand against the stable door, the grain of the wood rough against his palm.
She’d woken up claiming some knowledge of the killer. The killer, whose face was more rotten and vile than any he had ever seen. The dream had to be the key. But what did it mean? The maggots and the festering morbidity that Matt had seen in the faces of evil from one coast of the country to the other… that was a presaging of violence. It wasn’t a contagion. It certainly didn’t spread through dreams, while people slept.
What the hell was going on?
To his surprise, he did find a pair of overalls. Three, in fact, folded in a small crate with some other stable supplies, in the corner near the door. And a row of rubber boots. He shook his head, impressed. So not all his luck was bad. No gloves, but the deep pockets in those overalls would do.
He tossed two pairs of overalls to Adette and pulled the third on quickly. It was too big—whoever had owned this stable had been a heavy man. But he could fix that. He found some twine hanging on the wall and a hacksaw on a shelf. He began cutting lengths. Glanced at Adette, caught his breath. She looked… very appealing, stepping into those overalls, her long legs, her breasts. There was something sensual about watching her slip into them.
“Put them both on,” he called softly. “Keep you warm under that coat.” He lifted a few lengths of twine. “We’ll use this to belt it. And there are boots.”
She nodded.
Matt went to the heap of their frozen clothes, pried his jacket loose, peeled open the pocket, grimacing at its brittle cracking. There were items there he’d need. It took him a moment, but he got them out and tucked them into his overalls pocket. Hopefully the warmth of his body would thaw them. He walked back to the door, bent and tugged two of the boots on (also too big), and took up his ax. The heft of it, the solid, cold haft in his hand—it was a reassuring thing. A tool for cutting the rot out of wood or out of a human body or out of a town, cutting away whatever festered. Something he could trust to do its job. A piece of home and family and good memory that would neither turn to bury its edge in his heart nor disappear. He took a breath and pulled open the door.
Outside, snow had taken the forest and eaten it, devouring all its traces of where men or animals had been. The snow had stopped falling, and Matt glanced about, looking carefully for any prints, but nothing had been near the barn recently. Nothing that left tracks, anyway.
He couldn’t start thinking like that. But this forest, this lake, gave him the willies. That bit of rot in Adette’s shoulder, that gave him the willies. Nothing was right here. Probably nothing had been right here for a long time, even before Richard’s arrival. This looked like one of those places where people went when they wanted to leave their memories behind. A secret locked in the basement of every house, a regret shut into every attic. Matt had known places like this. They were not Mr. Dark’s killing ground—these people didn’t want to go on a rampage, they wanted to bury themselves and only themselves, quietly and out of sight—but it was the perfect hunting ground for a serial killer who liked to visit his victims in their own homes and then take his time.
Adette gestured to her right, out along the bank. “Over there,” she said.
Matt looked at her.
“I knew where he was when I woke. When he…”
“When he killed,” Matt said.
Her eyes were guarded.
“You’re going to have to tell me later how you do that,” he said. “Come on.”
He struck out across the snow, ax in his right hand. Adette walked beside him, still pale except for her nose and ears, already red with cold. Occasionally she nodded to the left or the right, and they veered. Matt tried to walk as silently as he could in the snow, but that was a lost cause. He blew out his breath in a long streamer of fog, as though he were a steamboat turned into a man, and reflected that the killer probably wasn’t out in this deep, bone-biting cold to hear him. He was in a wooden house, and if he was smart, if he was very smart, he was under a heavy wool blanket.
“Is it always this cold up here?” Adette hugged herself.
“Don’t know. I’m not from here.”
“Where you from?”
“Not here.” A few more steps in the snow, and he took a breath. “Adette, this night. I enjoyed—”
“Didn’t happen,” she cut in quickly.
“What?”
“Didn’t happen.”
He turned to look at her, saw her face flushed. Though that might have just been the cold biting at her cheeks. Not for the first time, he thought what a strange thing it was that a man and a woman could be so intimate, one nestled inside the other, yet so alien to each other also.
After a moment, he nodded. “All right.”
It had been a long time since he’d wanted entanglements, either. Perhaps she was like him, burdened with some terrible secret that kept her alone, some riddle that was uniquely hers. But Matt didn’t like riddles he didn’t have answers to.
“Your vomiting. And your vision. Dream. Whatever it was, back there in the stable. Tell me about that.”
“Nothing to tell.”
“Well, you don’t want to talk about sex. Let’s talk about the other thing on my mind.”
Silence.
He held on to his patience. Tightly. “Look. I’ve been following this guy for three days, and the pursuit already got me nearly killed last night. God knows what’s going to happen when I actually run into him.” Matt glanced down at his ax, at the keen edge of it, seeming even sharper in this cold. Despite his words, he had a pretty good idea what was going to happen. “I need to catch him before he kills anyone else.”
“Who are you?” she said.
He looked at her. She was lovely, standing there in the snow. He swallowed. “I’m the man who’s going to stop him. And that means I need to know what you know. If you know anything. If you aren’t just crazy.”
“Maybe I am crazy.” An edge to her voice.
He shook his head.
“That’s what you’re thinking. She’s just some crazy bitch. Carries a knife almost as long as her forearm. Out on those docks with no reason to be.
Almost kills you for rescuing her. Fucks a total stranger.”
“Thought you said that didn’t happen.”
She seized his shoulder, and he stopped, faced her. Her breath in the air between them. Her eyes cold with anger.
“I’m not crazy,” she said.
Matt glanced at her shoulder, but if there was any rot there, it was hidden beneath her coat. Was that what he’d seen? That she was harmless, but might kill in a burst of madness? That there was evil lurking within her but for now it was only the smallest germ, not the full, raging plague he’d seen rotting Richard Oslo’s face off?
He took her hand in his, felt how small it was. How small she was. Despite himself, he blushed. She had felt… good… during the night. Small in all the right ways.
“You’re not crazy,” he said. “God only knows what you are. I sure don’t. I wish you’d tell me.”
She looked back at him for a long time without blinking or lowering her eyes. Then she swallowed. “Have to wait for the second date,” she said. Her hand left his, and she stepped past him. He watched her, standing with his ax in the snow.
A few footsteps from him, she stopped. Cocked her head to one side. “That one,” she said.
Ahead through the trees, the warm gold of a porch light against the kind of hulking shadow whose outlines were hidden by the dark but that could only be a house.
“All right.” Dropped to a whisper. “Let’s do this.” Tightened his grip on the ax.
There are different kinds of silence. There’s a silence that is a shared thing, a comfort. There is an uncomfortable silence between lovers, a silence loud as a hurricane wind, sweeping into each of their hearts and knocking everything loose from its place, tearing as it goes. There is the old, dead silence of a place long abandoned. And then there is the empty quiet that comes after the rasp of death in the throat.
This house had that kind of silence.
The windows of the house were dark, all but one upper room, probably a bedroom. He tested each step, putting his foot down, careful not to make the porch creak. Adette came up behind him—on his left so as not to encumber his ax—and he could tell she was holding her breath.
Matt placed his hand on the doorknob, gave her his “Are you ready?” look, saw her small nod. Her eyes wide.
He turned the knob.
Nothing. Locked.
He let out his breath slowly. Of course it was locked. What reason anyone living had out here to lock their doors, who knew. A killer, on the other hand…
“I don’t suppose you know how to pick a lock.” He mouthed the words, almost a whisper.
Adette shook her head.
So he could break the door, or knock. Matt considered the stout wood. Knock it was, then.
But even as he lifted his left hand to rap at the door (his left, so that he could keep a tight grip on the ax in his right), the knob turned and the door swung open. Matt stopped with his hand half-raised, staring. All the breath sucked out of his body.
The woman who stood there, silhouetted against the light from the hall—he knew her. He knew her. This was a woman he had spent years of his life with, a woman he’d carried in his arms to bed and with whom he’d imagined having children. A woman he’d loved.
It was Janey.
8
But not Janey as he remembered her. Her face was distorted, the skin peeling loose from her cheeks to reveal rot beneath. Her eyelids bulged outward from her eyes and the lower eyelid squirmed. Even as Matt watched, a few maggots wriggled out and fell to land on Janey’s cheek. His stomach twisted, and the evil that radiated from her body was like a screech against the edge of his mind.
“Like hell,” he gasped. Lifted the ax.
His dead wife’s eyes widened in shock. She swung the door shut, slamming it right into the blow of Matt’s ax. The wood cracked and splintered viciously. With a shout, Matt shoved his boot against the door, rattling it, and pulled his ax free. Swung it again, again, chopping the door apart. His blood loud in his ears. That wasn’t his wife. Couldn’t be. Something was using her face, like a mask. Grief and rage choked his throat, and he swung the ax furiously.
Adette shouted something at him, but he ignored her. In moments, he had his hand through the gap he’d torn in the door, and he was fumbling for the deadbolt. He wrenched the door open, nearly ripping it from its hinges, the rage hot in his blood. But then he was gazing down a dark hallway, and his first impulse to charge in swinging his ax died. He took a breath, stepped over the threshold, ax lifted and ready.
“Careful,” Adette whispered, over and over like a mantra. “Careful, careful.” Her knife was out and it glinted in the starlight reflecting off the snow.
“Shhh.”
Janey. This thing—person—if this was the person he hunted—it—he—had stolen Janey’s face. His Janey.
He hadn’t known he could be this angry. The fury clenched about his heart.
He tried to still the roar of blood in his ears, held his breath. He needed to listen. A footstep, another man’s breathing: that might tell him where his quarry had fled. His eyes on the dim hall, he crouched and, one at a time, removed his boots. Behind him, Adette did the same. Then slipped quietly down the hall, his palms sweating around the haft of his ax. Adette stayed close at his back, her breathing fast and shallow. He could almost smell her fear. A door to his right, dark. He peered in cautiously, ax held high and ready. The outlines of sink, toilet, shower curtain. He gave that curtain a hard look, thinking of his ax. Took a step forward, ready to bring the ax down through that curtain like the wrath of God.
Only a flicker of movement to his left warned him. He dodged. A fist went by his ear. A grunt from Adette, a glimpse of her doubled over from a boot to her gut. Matt swung the ax at that silhouette in the hall, but the man caught his wrist, and he was strong. Pulling Matt forward, he slammed his back into the wall of the stairwell. Matt didn’t let go of the ax. He could hear Adette wheezing, hear his blood thunder in his ears, see the glint of the killer’s eyes in a round face.
Andy’s face.
He knew that face.
It was Andy.
With one hand the killer fought to wrest away his ax. His other hand took Matt by the throat and squeezed. The world went gray, fading. Matt kicked wildly at his assailant. A brief glimpse of cold eyes. Maggots writhing over the killer’s wrist, wriggling sickly against Matt’s hand where he clutched him, trying to break the killer’s grip on his throat. Matt weakened, his sight failing.
Then a shout from the killer and he leapt back, releasing Matt to slide down the wall to the floor. He lay there clutching his throat and heaving for air. His throat and lungs were fire. Someone leapt over him and, glancing up, he saw two shadows racing down the hall, and the flashing glimpse of a blade.
Crucifix Girl.
Raggedly, he breathed in huge gulps of air. Forced himself up onto his elbow. Get up. He had to… get up. Had to help Adette.
A loud crack—wood striking wood—at the back of the house.
Then she was at his side, as though summoned by his thoughts. Getting her shoulder under his arm. Helping him to his feet.
“I’m fine,” he muttered, taking in great gulps of air. “I’m fine now. Where is he?”
“He ran,” she said simply.
Matt looked at her in the dark. In her right hand she held that ornate knife. Dark blood dripping slowly from its tip. She’d cut him, at least.
Matt could still see Janey’s face… and Andy’s… so clearly in his head. What the hell. “I’m going nuts,” he whispered.
“Join the club.” She stepped into the darkened bathroom. Matt heard the rolling of toilet paper. Then she stepped back into the hall, swabbing the knife clean with the paper before crumpling the bloody paper and tossing it to the floor. Matt stared at it a moment. Wondered suddenly whose home this was, whose door he’d broken.
He glanced down to the kitchen. Put his finger to his lips.
Adette shook her head, mouthed t
he word Gone.
He moved down the hall anyway. He tried to step quietly, but the old floorboards creaked and complained beneath his feet, each step loud as an alarm to his ears. Breathing quicker, he walked faster, deciding stealth was useless.
When he entered the kitchen, he felt the blast of cold and understood. That sound of wood clacking against wood: that had been the back door.
The killer had escaped him.
The door still swung loosely, having been thrown open with force. In that sharp rectangle cut out of the world, Matt saw snow and cedars and footprints leading toward the trees. And a few dark spots on the snow, blood pulled from Oslo’s body by Adette’s knife. Matt leaned back against the fridge, felt his hands shaking from the adrenaline reaction. Lowered the ax. “Damn it.”
“Footprints.” A hushed whisper. “We can follow him.”
“Maybe.” Matt sighed. God, he was tired. “He’s been careful so far. He’s probably already covering any trail now that he’s under the trees. Come on.” He pulled a small roll of blue plastic from his pocket, unwrapped the rubber band that contained it, stowed the band in his pocket, rolled out two pairs of medical gloves. Handed one to Adette with a solemn look. Already he had chopped a hole in the front door, and he’d have to swab the doorknob clean of fingerprints; he might as well take care not to leave any more. Out in this remote place, who knew how long it would take before someone realized a killer had been here. Certainly not until morning. Maybe not for days. But Matt didn’t need to take chances.
Adette slipped the blue gloves onto her hands, her face troubled.
“He left in a hurry,” Matt said. “Let’s check for the victim and find anything Oslo might have dropped, anything that might tell us where he’s heading next.”
9
The stair was steep, its top lit by the glow from a light in one of the rooms upstairs. Matt tapped Adette’s shoulder lightly, then started up, each step creaking beneath his weight—loud as a gunshot in the silent house—until his face was damp with cold sweat. He felt a rush of old, remembered fear. A child’s fear of an empty house and dark things lurking in it. What if the killer hadn’t left? What if he had doubled back, crept up there, to wait for him? Matt’s grip tightened around his ax. No. No prints in the snow had led back toward the house. And if there was something up there, waiting for him, it would have his ax to deal with.
