There were footsteps from the first floor.
Joe reached down, patted his hip pocket for his cell phone, but it was gone. Dammit, he’d left the thing in the truck. He deplored the feel of it on his thigh while he worked, but couldn’t he have just this once kept it with him?
The footsteps sounded once more, and something about them made his fears intensify, something even beyond the mere fact of them. His mind raced. He was in the same room with two corpses, and though whoever was downstairs could hardly believe he was the one who’d done it—the bodies were already decomposing, after all—the person might think he had committed the crimes and had simply returned to the scene to marvel at his handiwork.
Joe swallowed.
“Oh fuck,” he whispered. The idea was so obvious, so grisly that he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it immediately. Whoever was downstairs was the killer! Or killers, he amended. The ones who’d done this to Harold and Sadie had taken their time, had reveled in their abhorrent artwork. Of course they’d want to see Joe’s reaction to it. Right before they butchered him.
Joe cast feverish glances about the bedroom, praying he’d happen upon an object with which to defend himself. He spotted a lamp, several picture frames on the wall. A wooden cross hung over the Hawkinses’ bed.
If I wanted to perform an exorcism, that might come in handy.
Sweat dripped off his chin, poured in runnels beneath his sodden shirt. His ass felt like it’d been dipped in cooking oil.
He cast a glance toward the double closet doors, considered for a moment rummaging through them. But what did he think he’d find in there? Nothing but nightgowns and trousers and scrapbooks. Harold didn’t strike him as the kind of guy who owned a gun, and Joe strongly doubted Sadie had amassed much of an arsenal. He could borrow one of her large knives from downstairs, but downstairs was where the footsteps were.
Where the killers were.
The images flashed through his mind: the tattooed man, the one named Shannon, clawing to get into Joe’s truck that day on the bridge… Scarface, the rangy one, smashing Joe’s window with a rock…the look of hatred on their—
Something brushed the heel of his work boot. With a startled yelp, Joe spun away from the snake, the damned thing flicking its tongue and veering toward him like a faithful mutt. Joe backed through the open doorway, scarcely registering how seething the temperature was out here, the way the air churned and skirled around him. Joe wheeled toward the stairs, for a moment completely unmindful of everything else, his mind concentrated wholly on escaping the snake. It was at least five feet long, coal black and as broad as Joe’s wrist. He had no idea what species it was, but the thing looked as poisonous as could be. Joe hustled down the steps, his movements so frantic that his work boots slipped several times. He reached the bottom, looped toward the foyer, but as he moved through the living room, he realized that something was amiss, even beyond the murdered man and woman upstairs, even beyond the snake and the inexplicable heat.
By the time Joe had reached the foyer, he’d finally realized what it was.
The entryway was as black as pitch.
Which made no sense at all. Because it was the middle of the day, and unless someone had tarpapered the windows or he’d missed mention of some rare solar eclipse, there was no earthly reason for it to be so dark this early.
And the door, Joe had left it open. He knew he had. Despite all he’d seen upstairs, despite his throbbing heartbeat and the sneaking suspicion he’d voided his bladder somewhere between the top of the stairs and the bottom, despite the mind-shattering guilt brought on by the idea that all of this was somehow his fault…despite everything, he was still certain he’d left that door open. The air now so smoldering he was afraid he’d lose consciousness, Joe swayed toward the door. Grasped the handle.
Hissed in surprise and pain at the way the knob seared his flesh. With a cry he jerked his hand away, stared through the gloom at the knob, half-expecting the brass to be glowing red. But it wasn’t. It was just appallingly hot. And his hand—he was certain he’d need medical treatment for it. He thought of Sadie’s outstretched fingers, looking for all the world like they’d been cremated. He thought of the scorch marks all over her nightgown, the blisters on her pallid skin. Joe turned away from the door, thinking vaguely of escaping out the rear of the house, when he discovered the figure watching him from the hallway.
Backlighted as it was by the windows at the rear of the house, Joe could only make out the shape of the person and not the features. The figure stood a mere ten feet away, motionless, the head tilted slightly forward, which threw the face into deeper shadow. But God help him, Joe didn’t need to see the face to know who this was. He could see the roasted flesh of the shoulders, the way the skin had separated from the dermis and curled up like strips of bacon. The smell hit him then, and it reminded him disgustingly of hog roasts, of something spitted and rotating, something licked by eager tongues of flame. Joe cast a desperate glance at the door to his right, which he knew led to the kitchen. It was surely unlocked. There was surely a way to evade this apparition, to escape into the blessed coolness of the day. Joe stepped over and grasped the knob, forgetting his experience of only a moment before. Grimacing, he pulled away and glanced at his hand. The blisters that had begun to form on his palm popped open, the clear liquid splattering all over his fingers, his wrist, dripping from his quivering hand into the pooled darkness of the foyer.
And it grew hotter. The heat swarmed over him, choking him, like boiling hot oil funneled down his throat. He’d been in a sauna once, had managed to remain inside the thing for nearly twenty minutes. And when he’d felt the sweet kiss of the air outside that wooden sepulcher, he’d vowed to never repeat the experience. Only this was a thousand times worse. Because there was no glass door promising him release. There was no light at all. Only there had to be, because he could still make out the ruin of his hand, could still see a string of his saliva drooling down toward the palsied, quaking fingers.
Joe’s breath caught in his throat. The bacon smell, it had—
Joe turned and looked into the staring white eyes of Angie Waltz.
He shrank away, his mouth stretched in a soundless shriek. His shoulder blades cracked the rigid door, his legs failing. Joe slid down, the unspeakable heat searing his skin, the white eyes of the figure tracking him all the way to the floor. It staggered forward, loomed over him. Its movements were jerky, unnatural, but the white gaze never wavered, never left the slightest doubt as to the thing’s intent. It was Angie, he knew, Angie who’d scared Sadie Hawkins to death, who’d transformed Harold into the gnarled abomination up there on the bed. Angie who’d brought with her the serpent now slithering toward him, the one he heard but could only barely distinguish in the deepening murk. The air continued to beat against him, assaulting him like the oily wings of ravens, and he could no longer breathe, could no longer do anything but avert his eyes. He’d been trapped. He knew that now. Angie had somehow lured him out here and arranged this macabre torment, this nightmarish demise. Joe realized he was weeping, but he no longer cared. He only wished he were home, wished he could hold Michelle and Lily one more time.
Joe lay there in a trembling ball, his eyes squeezed shut, whispering his wife’s and daughter’s names over and over, like an incantation. He expected at any moment to feel the ruthless fingers of Angie Waltz close over his throat. Or the muscular length of the snake to coil around his body. Either way it came to the same thing—an ending. Of everything. Of life, of his dreams of being the kind of man his family deserved, of undoing his father’s failure.
Joe waited. His breath still came in short bursts, but he realized his throat no longer burned with every inhalation. Yes, it was definitely cooler now than it had been moments earlier, but what did that mean? That he was dead? That Angie had sewn branches into his arms or burned his fingers to ashes?
Reluctantly, Joe
opened his eyes.
The foyer was as it had been when he’d arrived. Further, the temperature felt positively frigid, though he suspected it was merely normal. Joe turned and saw with surprise that the front door was open. He got totteringly to his feet and had to steady himself against the wall while a wave of dizziness gusted through him. Joe sucked in deep lungsful of air, his sweat-soaked clothes clinging to him like icy parasites.
As soon as the room stopped cartwheeling, Joe trudged to the door and let himself out. He expected at any moment for the door to slam shut, for Angie to reappear and shatter the peaceful illusion, but he reached the porch unscathed. What was more, the day had brightened outside, the overcast gray having given way to a muted amber.
Joe didn’t take time to admire the weather. Moving as fast as his body would allow, he hurried down the walk, grimly intent on retrieving his cell phone and calling Copeland. He’d make sure to tell Copeland to bring an officer or two out here with him. Even if what Joe had just witnessed had been a hallucination, whoever had done this to the Hawkinses were bad news. In fact, Joe decided, fifteen feet from his truck now, maybe he should wait until he’d driven safely away before calling. The killers could still be prowling the woods.
Joe slowed as he reached the truck.
It had been real, hadn’t it? He was certain it had been real, but then again he’d been sure that Angie Waltz and her staring white eyes were about to murder him two minutes ago. Yet even if what he’d witnessed in the foyer wasn’t true, surely what he’d seen upstairs had been.
Hadn’t it?
He thought so, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to return to the murder scene to confirm it wasn’t a hallucination. No, he’d call Copeland. Joe would leave out the part about Angie Waltz, the equatorial heat, everything except the dead bodies.
And the snake. He didn’t want Copeland to discover the snake on accident. Even if the thing didn’t bite the police chief, Copeland would never forgive him for leaving out that little detail.
Joe took a deep breath, reached out, and yanked open the Tundra’s front door.
And saw what lay on the seat.
For a long moment all Joe could do was stare. Then he bent over with his hands on his knees.
Oh Christ, he thought. Oh my holy Christ.
The triangle of yew branches framed Joe’s cell phone, which he’d left on the dash but had somehow moved to the gray felt of the seat. Whoever had moved the phone had turned it on too. Had gone into Joe’s pictures.
The faces of his wife and daughter smiled up at him.
Part Four
Blaze
Chapter Sixteen
Copeland stared at him from the driver’s seat of the cruiser. “That’s the craziest goddamned story I’ve ever heard.”
Joe had expected that, so the response didn’t elicit any anger in him. Hell, he’d have responded the same way had Copeland come to him with a similar tale. Not to mention the fact that the big cop had spent the past seven hours investigating a double-homicide, being bullied by a mayor who seemed to regard the murders as somehow Copeland’s fault, being usurped by the county sheriff, and knocking on the doors of the Hawkinses’ neighbors in what Copeland no doubt knew were futile attempts to get to the bottom of the mystery.
Parked at the top of Joe’s driveway, they had a great view of the white garage doors and little else. Joe wished Copeland would turn off the engine and roll down the windows, but the big cop apparently wanted privacy in case any of the neighbors were eavesdropping. At least Copeland had the air going.
Copeland was still glaring at Joe. “You gonna add anything to that account, because I know you’re not sadistic enough to leave me with nothin’ but snakes and ghosts and houses turning into ovens.”
“It’s what happened.”
“Bullshit.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“I don’t care, you don’t blame me. I care about the fact that the closest thing I’ve got to a witness is sounding like a patient in a sanitarium.”
Joe stared back at him evenly. “Absent of the fact that I’m the one who found them and might be incriminated in the crime, why would I make a story like that up?”
“You make it sound like that first part’s no big deal. The incriminating thing.”
“Hey, I liked Harold and Sadie. A lot.”
“I know you did. And you know where that gets us?”
Joe turned all the way in his seat to face Copeland. “How long do you suppose they were dead before I found them?”
“Better part of a week,” Copeland said. “The only thing that proves is you didn’t kill them today. Who’s to say you didn’t do it several days ago and come back to bask in the glory of your accomplishments?”
“Who’s to say I did?”
“Can you account for your whereabouts this entire week?”
“You saying I need to?”
“You might.”
Joe’s cheeks burned. “You’re telling me you think I did it?”
Copeland made a face, flapped an angry hand. “Hell no, I don’t. I’m just wanting to eliminate you from the list of suspects so I don’t have to worry about any charges of bias toward my office.”
“I told you it was a bad idea having beers together.”
“Yeah, and I didn’t know you were gonna start finding dead septuagenarians.”
“Good word, but Harold was in his eighties.”
“I was talking about Sadie, asshole. We both know this wasn’t a random killing. There’s no way someone would drive all the way out to the boonies, take all that time to perform pine tree cross-stitch—”
“Yew tree.”
“—on Harold Hawkins’s arms, tattoo his face, if there weren’t some serious motive beneath all of it. And it’s not like the old couple had any real enemies. Unless, that is, they pissed off someone down at the bingo parlor, and one of Sadie’s blue-haired friends decided to exact some retribution.”
“Sadie didn’t play bingo.”
“How the hell you know? You two had something going, maybe after Harold went to bed?”
“That’s not very funny.”
“And you can just cut me some fucking slack. I got up at five-thirty this morning, and it’s going on eleven at night. I had a plain salad for lunch, skipped supper, and am pretty goddamned pissed off about the way my day has gone. I’m not even officially on the case anymore. Those pricks from the county act like I’m the black Barney Fife.”
Joe held up the yew branch he’d found on the seat of his pickup. “What do you make of this?”
“Not a hell of a lot, other than the fact that I’m glad you didn’t tell anyone but me about it—you didn’t, did you?”
“Uh-uh.”
“You’re not as dumb as I thought then. For a moment there I wondered if maybe you posted about it on Facebook, put it on your blog.”
“I don’t get into that stuff.”
“One of the few things I like about you.”
“It ever occur to you that if I’m telling the truth, my day has been pretty shitty too?”
Copeland gave him a dead look. “You ever had to roll a corpse over so the coroner can examine his shit-smeared ass?”
“I don’t do it often.”
“And I thought the smell in there couldn’t get worse. You shoulda seen those sheets. Maggots and diarrhea and—”
“Can we just skip that part?”
“Hell no, we can’t skip it. You only have to hear about it, I had to be there at ground zero, the guy’s cold, rotten flesh splitting around my fingers…”
“Didn’t you wear gloves?”
“Man, you have any idea how thin those things are? I might as well have used Saran wrap.” Copeland shivered. “I can still feel that stuff on my fingers.”
“So what did Sharon say?”
“I told you—”
“I know what you told me. You told me her and her buddies from the graveyard are the ones who did it and they’re gonna do the same thing to everyone who’s nice to you.”
“It’s the truth.”
“You need to lay off the horror novels.”
“What, and read Nicholas Sparks instead?”
“Piss off.”
Joe chuckled softly. It felt good. It was the first time he’d laughed all day.
Copeland’s eyes shifted to something behind Joe. “She doesn’t look happy.”
For an insane moment Joe was sure it was Angie Waltz, her huge white eyes and charred face shoved right against the passenger window. He whirled, a little moan escaping from his open mouth.
Michelle stared back at him, one eyebrow raised.
Joe sagged in his seat, a hand pressed to his chest. Beside him, Copeland was laughing so hard his belly jiggled. Joe reached out, thumbed down the window.
“You two all right?” Michelle asked.
“I’m fine,” Copeland said through his laughter. “That husband of yours, he might need a change of underwear.”
“Shut up,” Joe muttered. He looked at Michelle. “Having trouble sleeping?”
“What do you think?”
Copeland leaned toward her. “Joe tell you the same story he told me? Snakes and dead women?”
“I believe him.”
Joe looked at Michelle in surprise.
Copeland said, “You believe Angie Waltz clawed her way out of her grave, killed Harold and Sadie, made a solar eclipse in their entryway, then decided to let Joe off the hook?”
Michelle pursed her lips. “I amend my original statement. I believe that Joe believes it.”
Joe’s surprise faded.
“Thank God there’s another rational person in this town,” Copeland said.
Michelle saw the way Joe was looking at her. She sighed, bit her lip. “How about you two come in and drink a beer? You guys look like a couple of teenagers out here about to start necking.”
The Nightmare Girl Page 19
