by Lotta Smith
Perhaps I was desperate to cleanse my soul before coming face-to-face with my final moment in this world. Not that I was terribly afraid of dying, but getting killed by having my eyeballs poked out was totally freaking me out. After all, I had never anticipated my life being ended in this kind of a brutal way. Nor had I ever imagined dying before turning thirty.
I was scared of the pain, and just thinking about losing my eyeballs placed me at my wits’ end. But what scared me the most was the fear and devastation I imagined I was going to feel.
I closed my eyes again. I didn’t want to see the killer return to off me for good.
“Nunc et in hora mortis. In hora mortis nostrae. In hora morrrrrtiiisss nooostraeee!”
Half choking with emotion, I was screaming the public domain Latin lyrics at the top of my lungs.
“Kelly, I’m sorry to disturb you in the middle of your very emotional moment. But you know what? I like you better when you’re not screaming.”
A familiar voice butted in to my yowling, but I kept singing. I was determined to let no one ruin my final moment. If the voice wanted to insult my singing style, just let it dis me.
“In horrrra morrrtiiiiissss nostrae!”
“Um, Kelly…” The person cleared their throat and said, “Will you stop that? And don’t tell me you’re singing. You need to work on the keys and tunes and everything.”
I opened a slit of one eye, opened it wider, and then unclenched the other eye. The next thing I knew, I started screaming like Janet Leigh from the movie Psycho.
“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeekkkk! OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGAWD! I’m seeing Karen’s ghost! Oh, Karen, I understand you’re not satisfied with my failed attempt to save you, but please do not possess me right now. I’m having enough trouble without getting hexed.”
“Kelly, puhleeeeze.” Karen, or rather, Karen’s phantom sighed, tapping the floor with one foot. “Has it ever occurred to you that I may be a person instead of a dissatisfied ghost?”
“Are you?” I squinted my eyes, trying to grasp the situation better.
“Of course.” She nodded.
She took the knife Alan the Eyeball Snatcher had left on the table, hurried to my behind, and cut the duct tape off my hands and legs with an unbelievable efficiency for a phantom, or an eight-year-old.
“OHMYGOD, you’re alive!” I clung to her in a bear hug.
“Assuming I won’t die from choking right here, right now,” she replied with a gasp.
“Sorry.” I let her go. “So what happened?” I asked—maybe demanded was the more appropriate term.
“It’s a long story.”
“Make it short, will you?” I said, thinking my upbringing’s not all that bad considering I didn’t forget to say “will you?” in an emergency like this.
“Long story cut short, I happen to see visions,” she said.
“As in?”
“As in I have extrasensory perception, a.k.a. ESP, which enables me to see something that is not happening in front of my eyes but that is definitely bound to happen or has happened in the past.”
“That is…unbelievable,” I muttered. But her explanation sort of made sense.
“I know. That’s a part of my ridiculously excellent academic performance. I tend to get high scores on tests ‘coz I’m seeing the correct answers in my mind’s eye. Okay, so there were times I wondered if my test taking style counted as cheating, but I can’t help it. Still, even with ESP, not everyone can perform multiplications and divisions before turning two. In a nutshell, it’s a gift and a curse. When I was younger, I often felt sad at times when I knew a frenemy before even meeting that person. But I’m trying to make it positive, like my visions help me keep myself away from troubles and frenemies.
“Nowadays, I’ve been seeing vision after vision, and that totally drove me crazy. Anyway, so I came to meet Alan following my vision, and foolishly I got caught, and when I woke up, I was at the musician dude’s studio. Yves, was already dead and Alan was determined to kill me as well and abandon my body with that of Yves’s to make it look like he killed me before killing himself. So I had no choice but to offer the killer to use me as bait to lure you. And boy, it worked and here I am.”
“But what about the blood detected from the sock at Yves’s place?” I pointed out. The blood made us believe she had fallen victim to violence.
“I had a nosebleed. Got a little bit too panicky when I saw Yves. It was the first time for me to see a dead body. And when I get freaked out, I tend to get nosebleeds. So I caught the blood with my hands. And smeared it over one of my socks, my bad,” she said matter-of-factly. “I persuaded Alan to keep me nice and alive so he could lure you after closing the Eyeball Snatcher case to lower the alert level from both law enforcement and the social perspectives. Even though the amount of blood was not large, I figured that the bloody sock made good evidence indicating that something terrible had happened to me. In fact, you thought I was dead, right?”
My jaw dropped. I was at a complete loss for words. After a couple of seconds, I managed to say, “You’re impossible, Karen. You could have gotten yourself killed!”
“I know. That’s why I staged my own death.” She shrugged. “Now that he’d got you and everything, it was just a matter of time until he decided to kill me. You know what? That guy is a psycho. So I dangled myself from the doorjamb with a scarf, and I lost my pulse.”
“Excuse me? How can you lose your pulse?” I asked in total awe. Now I wasn’t all that sure whichever of them, Karen or Alan, was scarier.
“Yup, anybody can lose their pulse with a little trick, you know. Buy two soft tennis balls, put one ball under each of your armpits and squeeze tight. Voila, you’ve got cold, pulseless arms due to compromised circulation. I was a bit scared he’d searched for the pulse in my neck, because I can’t lose that one. Anyway, I went on with my plan. I knew I wasn’t going to die because I saw a vision of me walking out of this house escorted by police officers.”
Then she grinned ear to ear. “So, now that you’ve arranged a police raid and everything. We’re safe and we’ve got the killer, ready to have justice to be served.”
“Police raid?” I blinked. “What police raid?”
Jeez Louise, something was not quite right.
Chapter 37
Slumped on the cold hard floor, I saw him walking away from me. His back getting further and further indicated that my first and last opportunity ever to make my dream come true was slipping away from my fingertips.
“I want my assistant back.” His words created a burning twinge in my heart. The way he spoke and his tone of voice when he talked about Kelly annoyed the hell out of me. He referred to her as if she was his possession or something. He had the gall to demand her back, as if he already owned her.
He turned the corner, leaving my sight as I lolled there. I was miserable.
Hissing and roaring through my gritted teeth, I managed to stand. The mere thought of just lying there, doing nothing but seeing that bastard ruin my plan, was unacceptable. Kicking off my shoes to kill the sound of my footsteps, I sprang into action.
Having my hands still tied behind my back made it difficult to execute my project, but then again, I had the home advantage. I also knew the knife I’d left on the basement table could cut me free in a second.
I knew what I had to do: Disable the bastard, free myself from the stupid restraint, and then reincarnate my mother using Kelly.
Reaching the knife in the basement before the annoying PI was the key.
I travelled the corridor without making a sound. I reached the corner and caught a glimpse of the PI’s back. He was about to open the door to the stairs to the basement where I kept Kelly. It was now or never. I rushed to the door. It was already shut and my hands were tied behind my back, but I opened it using my elbow and my shoulder. Good thing I installed a lever handle instead of a doorknob.
With a desperate determination and a sharp aim, I jumped from the top of the stairs.<
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Chapter 38
“What police raid?” I asked her. I was clueless.
“I’m talking about this police raid, which is taking a place right now. You heard the beeps, didn’t you?” Karen crossed her arms.
“I heard that, yeah.”
“So I assumed you arranged a police raid with something like a GPS device before you got yourself dragged in here.” She tilted her head to the side, eyes sparkling with hope. “You arranged the raid, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“But you called Mr. Archangel, right?”
“No.” I shook my head. “He called me, but it was just five seconds before I got zapped. And guess what? You don’t get to communicate very well within five seconds.”
“Excuse me?” Her eyebrows shot up. “Why didn’t you call Mr. Archangel or the police?”
“You told me not to tell anyone, especially not the police or Michael Archangel.”
“Come on, you’re supposed to have at least called Mr. Archangel. Haven’t you learned that ‘Don’t tell anyone’ is a code actually meaning ‘Tell everybody’?” she snapped.
“All right, so I should have called my boss, even though Archangel and the police, much less the feds, are not currently on the greatest terms on the account they are accusing him of failing to save you and letting Yves kill himself. Otherwise, I’d have notified them and your mom. Especially your mom. The news of your possible death devastated her so much, and she totally regrets she thought of sending you to summer camp in the first place.” I immediately wished to take my words back. For the first time, Karen seemed to be in real shock.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s not your fault. You couldn’t tell me to call backup when he was by your side, listening to every word you uttered.”
“It’s okay. I’m peachy and dandy. At least, I don’t need to go to that snobby summer camp,” she said nonchalantly, lifting her chin. “And it looks like we’re gonna make it out of here unharmed.”
“So?” I asked, expectedly.
“So, what?”
“How many police officers do we have here right now?”
“I don’t know. How could I know?”
“How about using your psychic ability to get an idea?”
“For your information, it’s not like I have much control over my visions. Come to think of it, suppose I see visions nonstop 24/7, that’d drive me crazy. Besides that, if I had more control with my visions and I could see anything I wanted, it wouldn’t be very good for my karma. Albeit that’d save me lots of movie money. Some things are better left unseen, you know.”
“In short, you have no idea what caused the alarm?” I clarified.
“Exactly.”
I groaned at her answer.
Then came a big thud!
Chapter 39
I had the timing, the element of surprise, and in the narrow stairway, he had no way to prevent me from falling on top of him.
I leaped off the top of the stairs. As he looked back, our eyes met for a brief moment. Quickly, he searched for a space to escape, but time ran out.
His hand reached for the inside of his windbreaker as he jumped to dodge me, but I caught one of his legs before he recovered his balance. He tried to kick me aside, but lost his balance. Gravity kicked in, and everything happened in a heartbeat.
Entangled, we freefell down the stairs. The world stopped revolving and every move was in slow motion.
The two of us fell at least ten steps onto the hard, concrete platform; I landed on top of him. I heard a snap and hoped I didn’t break anything. Then came a deafening silence.
Stunned by the impact of the fall, for a second, my heart stopped beating. After taking a deep breath and checking that nothing was broken, I jumped up. The PI tried to get up as well, but couldn’t stand. I ambled to the door.
“Don’t move,” he called to me. Then I heard a metallic click.
Stopping in front of the door, I looked back. He was holding a big gun.
“You can’t shoot me,” I told him. “This wall is thin; you’ll shoot your assistant as soon as you shoot me.” I used my elbow to push open the door leading to the room. Behind the door awaited my mother and the woman soon to host my mother’s soul.
“I can try,” he said, but didn’t fire a round.
I turned on my heels. All I needed was to cut the damned plastic restraint so I could get rid of the PI before he recovered. Then I could relax and get what I deserved.
I opened the door. Without looking back, I said, “You can’t shoot, unless you want to kill Kelly yourself.”
Then I hurried inside.
Chapter 40
“OMIGOD!”
We gasped in unison when we heard the thud!
“Omigoditshim!” Karen shriek-mumbled. “Or someone else. The probability of whoever opens the door being Alan is 50 percent and being someone else such as a police officer is 50 percent. Talk about a paradox. I hope it’s not him, but—Omigod, what should we do if it’s him?”
In the next few seconds, I looked around the room in search of something…anything with the potential to become a weapon.
The knife was a perfect weapon, except this particular knife might have been previously used to murder defenseless women. Just because the police had found a bloody knife at Yves’s place didn’t mean the knife in front of me was brand new. I was afraid of touching it for the fear of contaminating a potential evidence. Then again, the knife might not be all that useful, especially if Alan returned with a bigger knife…or a gun. Still, I was more than keen to find a better option, and I took a quick glance around me.
The wrought iron chair I had been tied to had potential to be a good weapon. Just swinging it around and whacking the killer in the head seemed as if it could do the job, but I wasn’t all that sure of my aim. I had zero trust in myself when it came to properly hitting the target. The last time I swung a golf stick with the intention of hitting the fixed ball, the five-iron I swung with all my might flew high in the sky and dove straight into the lake. As the iron stick sank, a gator—it was a golf course in Florida, the state you can meet and greet free roaming gators practically everywhere—involved in the accident floated upside-down on the surface. All the while, the ball had stayed on the tee. I had no idea how I could aim and actually hit a moving target when I couldn’t even hit a sitting target very well.
I grabbed my purse and dumped the contents on the table. There was a towel hanky, a packet of facial tissues, lip gloss, mascara, a bottled water, a bottle of Purell, a mirror, tweezers, an overstuffed wallet, keys on a key fob, and my cell phone from the Stone Age. I pushed the power button and was surprised when the phone revived. It was a miracle my phone had survived with only a scar instead of getting demolished to bits and pieces. I had no idea why Alan had bothered to spare my phone, let alone return it to my purse. Maybe like many other serial killers, he couldn’t resist the compulsion to collect his victims’ belongings as souvenir. Obviously, calling 911 wasn’t the best option.
My right hand hovered over the scattered items and grasped the little bottle of Purell.
I took a look at the candles. The fire was burning. My mind was set. I had to do whatever I could do.
“Hide somewhere far from me and stay hidden and behind me,” I told Karen. “Don’t even think of coming in front of me. You don’t want to get burnt, and I mean it literally.”
She looked me in the eyes briefly and muttered, “Do I want to know what you’re up to?” But she skulked to the farthest corner of the room. “I’m ready.” She covered her face with her hands.
I removed the cap off the Purell. Holding the burning candles in one hand and the open Purell bottle in another, I waited. Sitting on the metal chair I was previously tied to, I stayed still in silence.
My mind was calm with Zen-like tranquility.
The door squeaked and opened a slit. A brush of cold air caressed my cheeks. The door opened wider and Alan showed up. When I saw his face, I felt w
hat little hesitation I’d had disappear. He was a madman.
As I sipped Purell, it slid over my tongue.
Taking a couple of steps into the room, he looked at the table and then at me. “What are you doing?”
The door closed behind his back as he took one more step toward me. “What the hell has—?”
Before he finished the phrase, I squirted out Purell from my mouth at the candles. It caught fire, flying like a fire dragon with a vengeance. Burning Purell mercilessly assaulted him and caught the front of his fleece shirt.
It was true that cooking while wearing fleece could be pretty dangerous. Once ignited, the fire on the fleece shirt spread out so fast, and before I could say eenie, meenie, minie, moe, he was covered in flames and burning like kerosene-soaked toilet paper.
For a moment, he gawked at me, as if he couldn’t believe what had happened to him. As his gaze moved from me to his own burning self, his face froze in a shock. It took a moment for him to open his mouth and start screaming like the wet and dying Wicked Witch of the West. Shrieking, he dove onto the concrete floor and started rolling like a squirming earthworm.
Running away from burning Alan, I hurried to Karen in the back of the room. Eyes shut, we held on to each other without uttering a sound, as if that was the only way to survive. Shaking, I deeply regretted having torched Alan in the doorway, blocking our exit until he stopped burning. Neither of us moved until the door reopened and the sound of irregular footsteps echoed.
I turned and saw Michael Archangel limping toward us. Actually, it took me a couple of seconds to realize it was him, since he was dressed like a guy from a SWAT team and carrying a gun.
“Hello, ladies. Mind if I crash your party?” he asked, putting the gun back in the shoulder holster inside his windbreaker. Not saying a word, Karen and I nodded like bobbleheads.
Then he took a glance at the murderer now haplessly lying flat on the hard floor. The only thing that indicated he was still alive was occasional rise and fall of his chest.
