Don't Read After Dark: Keep the lights on while reading these! (A McCray Horror Collection)

by McCray, Carolyn

Finally, his sister was moving again. The big question—Was the island big enough to outrun Evan?

  * * *

  Diana Dahmer slipped again as shadows chased him.

  “Help!” he screamed. Where was the cop? Why wasn’t he protecting him like he promised? The least the bastard could have done was give him a gun.

  He looked over his shoulder and turned back only in time to see the sword arced from a tree and slice his neck. Clutching the wound, feeling his warm blood pulse out between his fingers, Dahmer sank to his knees.

  Evan jumped down from the tree, slowly circling Dahmer as he bled to death.

  “I saw you die,” Dahmer croaked out.

  “Saw?” the teen sneered. “You were hiding, dude.”

  “I heard—”

  Evan ripped the front of his shirt and knocked his knuckles against something hard. “It is amazing what a vest and a little PCP can do for your stamina.”

  This wasn’t happening. Where was his manager? Crap! Where was his dealer? And why did his stupid mother have to name him after a martyred saint? Dahmer tried to crawl away, but Evan leapt in front of him.

  “Julian. Julian. Julian. Where do you think you are going?”

  Evan grabbed Dahmer by the hair and jerked his head back, laying the sword against his neck. “You should really appreciate the irony here.” He slid the cold metal along Dahmer’s neck. “This blade is even duller than the one I picked out for you.”

  Dahmer screamed as Evan began sawing.

  * * *

  Paxton used the sleeve of his wet coat to dampen out a flame on the unconscious girl’s back. Frannie, her skirt on fire, was rolling around, frantically trying to douse the flames. Connor had disappeared over a ridge, his right pant leg aflame.

  Cinder and ash still rained down upon them. Their only saving grace was the steady, pouring rain that flooded most of the wreckage. Paxton made sure that Frannie was not on fire.

  “Watch her,” he instructed as he headed off to find Connor.

  “Wait!” Frannie yelled, grabbing him by the cuff. “Did you hear that?”

  A faint scream rose above the howl of the wind.

  “Stay here!” Paxton yelled, as he raced toward the woods.

  Would this night never freaking end?

  * * *

  Cecilia plugged her ears with her fingers, but still she could hear the scream that pierced the night. Then, as abruptly as it had begun, it stopped. Nothing but the sound of heavy raindrops filled the air.

  She clung to Michael as the moments dragged on.

  Jeremy whispered, “We need to head deeper into the woods.”

  “But … But shouldn’t we check …” Cecilia couldn’t even finish the sentence. What would they check on? Another dead body?

  “No, we are heading in exactly the opposite direction of that sound,” Jeremy said.

  Before she could agree, a figure crested the hill. There was no doubt who it was. Not with the bloody sword hanging from his hand.

  “You should listen to your little brother, Cec,” Evan said. “He’s got almost as devious a mind as I do.”

  Michael tried to step in front of Cecilia, but he nearly pitched forward. Cecilia drew him into her arms. Jeremy, however, took a step back.

  “You don’t want to do this, Evan,” her brother pleaded. “I’m the only one who really knows you …”

  Evan laughed. “And you think that matters to me? How, exactly?”

  Jeremy’s eyes darted from Evan to Cecilia. “I am so sorry.”

  Then her brother turned and ran. Full-out ran away.

  “Jeremy!” she screamed, but all she saw was his back as he fled.

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Evan chided. “Guess all the men in your life leave you, Cec. Too bad.”

  “Not me, you sophomoric freak.”

  Evan looked Michael up and down. “You don’t count. You can’t even stand up on your own, let alone run away. But, give you time....”

  Cecilia felt light-headed, and not in the good way. Fear had overrun her. All the running and crying and trying to stay alive had sapped her soul.

  Tears streamed down her face. “Just get this over with, will you?”

  “Oh, not so fast, my dear,” Evan cooed, as he stepped closer. “I have a nice little cave picked out for you so that I can take the next three days to really enjoy myself.”

  Cecilia knew that Evan meant each and every word. That if he got ahold of her, she too would become an unwilling martyr. She didn’t want to be mourned. She wanted to live. Michael tensed beside her. He too must have known that the end was near.

  “Never!” he said, as he charged forward.

  Evan easily evaded Michael’s unsteady attack and stabbed him through the belly. Michael stumbled back to Cecilia, the sword sticking through his side. “Okay, that really hurt.”

  Was it the way Evan laughed, the warm blood on her hands, or God himself who gave Cecilia the strength to strike out? With all the fury she had bundled inside of her, at her mother, at even her father, Cecilia backhanded Evan.

  The boy’s head snapped around as he went sprawling backward. She looked down on Evan, shaking, not believing what she had done.

  “Take the sword,” Michael urged.

  “I can’t!”

  Michael grabbed her hands and put them around the hilt. “You can.”

  As Evan rose, wiping the blood from the side of his mouth, Cecilia closed her eyes and pulled. The blade slid out from Michael’s body as if it were butter. Michael crumpled to the ground. Dear God, was he even still alive?

  Evan tackled her from the side before she could check. Cecilia elbowed him in the side, but he grabbed for the sword. They rolled down the hill until they splashed into a gulley. Cecilia scrambled up, holding the sword with both hands as Evan taunted her.

  “Cecilia, you know that you want your death to be a masterpiece.”

  “You know what?” Cecilia said, digging her heel into the dirt. “I am getting really tired of boys telling me what I want.”

  Pushing off her back leg, she lunged forward as hard as she could. Evan tried to evade her, but he slipped in the puddle. He looked so surprised when the sword went straight into his belly. All the way to the hilt.

  They stood there for a moment, nose to nose. Her fingers trembled on the handle, but Cecilia did not let go.

  Then Evan smiled. “If I die, you die with me.”

  He lashed out and latched his fingers around her neck. He squeezed until she couldn’t breathe. Choking, Cecilia shoved the sword in deeper but Evan just laughed, as if the pain delighted him. Cecilia let go of the sword and clawed at his hands, but they were like a vise. A crazed, high, demented vise.

  The world pulsed before her. Then, like a shade being drawn, her vision blurred at the edges, until she could only see a pinpoint before her.

  Evan whispered into her ear, “I always win, bitch.”

  Then a shot rang out, and blood spattered from Evan’s forehead. His finger gripped tighter for a fleeting moment, then went slack. Cecilia shoved him off of her as she slumped to the ground.

  As Cecilia wheezed in air, Michael crawled toward her, but Jeremy was the first one at her side.

  “Cec!” he cried dropping to his knees. “Are you okay?”

  “I thought you’d … I thought …” she tried to croak out.

  I’d leave you in the lurch? No way! I knew we needed some firepower.”

  Paxton walked up, but stopped to nudge Evan with his foot.

  “Is he dead?” Cecilia asked.

  “Will be,” her uncle answered. Then he shot Evan in the head.

  “Um …” Jeremy said. “Not that I am complaining, but isn’t that going to be difficult to explain to your supervisors?”

  But her uncle only shrugged. “Like I care right now.”

  Cecilia didn’t care either as she hugged Michael, Jeremy, and then Paxton as he joined them. Cecilia was going to keep hugging them until she finally felt warm again.

  C
HAPTER 12

  The rain was finally letting up as the EMTs loaded Michael onto the gurney. The ambulance met them on the dock. It had taken Paxton firing off about a dozen red emergency flares that they found in the boathouse, but the yacht finally came back for them.

  White, yellow, red, and blue lights greeted them as they docked. Now, when they probably needed them the least, everyone showed up for the party.

  Cecilia couldn’t complain, though. She liked having several dozen people swarming around. She squeezed Michael’s hand as they rolled him toward the waiting ambulance.

  “All right, Miss. This is as far as you can go,” the EMT said.

  Cecilia turned to her uncle. “Please? Can’t I go with him?”

  But Paxton put his hand on her shoulder. “They’ll take good care of him, Cec.”

  Michael squeezed her hand back. “Go. I’m going to be tied up for a while. You know, surgery and all.”

  “Oh, Michael,” Cecilia nearly sobbed. “I—”

  But he put his finger to her lips. “A kiss is all I ask for.”

  Cecilia brushed his face with the back of her hand as she leaned over. Their lips, his cool, hers warm, met. She didn’t even mind the tickling of his goatee. She pulled back a bit.

  “Don’t leave me.”

  He kissed her again, and then whispered, “I didn’t back there. I won’t, ever.”

  She wanted to press her lips his again, but the EMT rolled him away. Paxton pulled her back. “They say he’s going to be okay. Just, you know, a couple hundred stitches richer.”

  Cecilia allowed her uncle’s arms to enclose her as she leaned against him. She had never thought of Paxton as her rock, but right now he was. Cecilia watched as hundreds of teens and their parents were reunited. Cries of joy mingled with cries of sorrow, as sad parents searched the crowd for their children—in vain.

  So many had lost so much. But as Jeremy rushed forward to join in the embrace, Cecilia realized she had gained so much as well.

  * * *

  Paxton fished the key from his pocket and opened the front door. He wasn’t quite sure what kind of reception Susan was going to give him, but he didn’t care. Paxton let Cecilia and Jeremy in first, and then gently closed the door behind them. They all walked into the kitchen to find Susan pouring herself a drink.

  “Where have you been?” she slurred. “I’ve been worried sick about you!”

  “For what?” Jeremy countered. “The whole ten minutes you’ve been conscious?”

  “Jeremy!” Paxton barked. “I’ll handle this.”

  Susan went to stand, but nearly spilled the whole bottle of wine. Cecilia rushed over to her mother.

  “Jeremy, don’t make this any harder—”

  “Oh, no!” Jeremy stated. “Not after everything we’ve just been through! I can’t take this—”

  “You won’t have to,” Paxton stated firmly. He guided Cecilia away from her mother, and then herded both kids toward the staircase. “You two go to bed. I’ve got this.”

  “Uncle Pax, you don’t understand,” Cecilia said. “She’s going to need—”

  But Paxton cut her off. “I know what she needs.”

  Did he ever. The kids didn’t know it, but he had grown up in far worse circumstances. Both he and Susan had. He knew all too well what an unreformed drunk needed. “Now. Go. To. Bed.”

  They both looked at him as though he were crazy. “Scram!” he added, sending them scurrying up the stairs.

  Paxton turned to his sister, who was still trying to pour that glass of wine. He took the bottle away from her.

  “Give me that!” she slurred, but Paxton set the bottle on the counter and sat down next to his sister.

  “Susan, we need to talk.”

  His sister snorted. “I don’t need any of your sanctimonious lectures, Pax.”

  “You are right. You don’t. So I am just going to tell you how it is going to be. Either I move in here, or the kids move in with me.”

  And the possibly half-starved cockatiel, but he would cross that bridge when he came to it.

  “So we are in our knight-in-shining-armor mode,” Susan sneered. “I am sure it will pass by the morning.”

  Paxton took his sister’s hand. “I’m not joking, Susan. You are going to get some help, and I am taking charge of the kids.”

  She snatched her hand back. “You don’t have the right.”

  He leaned back in the kitchen chair. “You don’t think that, as a detective, that I can’t get temporary custody of the kids? If you do, then you are drunker than I thought.”

  Tears sprang to his sister’s eyes. “I’m as bad as Dad, aren’t I?”

  “No,” Paxton answered. “No, Susan, but you are pretty messed up, and those kids deserve better. From both of us.”

  He got up as Susan sobbed, and held her. Paxton was as much to blame as Susan. He had seen her teeter after her husband’s death. He had seen the signs, but he pulled back into himself. A part of him refused to live that life again.

  Paxton knew that none of this was going to be easy—for any of them. He had seen their father try to give up the bottle more times than he could count. But after the island?

  Nothing seemed quite so daunting anymore.

  * * *

  Cecilia put her arm around her brother as they sat just out of sight on the stairs.

  “You know what?” she asked Jeremy.

  “What?”

  “I think we are going to be okay.”

  Her brother hugged her back. “Maybe, but not until I dump everything Dahmer in my life!”

  They both jumped up and ran into his room. The Dahmer shrine took on a whole new creepy level. It felt so very good to tear down all those stupid posters and stomp on the CDs.

  Nearly frenzied, she and Jeremy purged the room of anything black and sinister. Finally, they stood in a barely recognizable room. The walls were a light blue, except, of course, where the paint stuck to the tape, revealing white underneath.

  “So? How are you going to decorate now?” Cecilia asked her brother.

  “I was thinking about old-school Pokemon.” Jeremy said, and then he tilted his head. “And I’m gonna start listening to the Carpenters.”

  “You and me, Jeremy,” Cecilia agreed. “You and me both.”

  Rook: Let’s Stop the Apocalypse, People

  PROLOGUE

  General Samuel Houghlin watched out of the helicopter’s window as the craft bobbed and weaved, trying to stay out of the heated firefight below. The force of the helo’s blades allowed brief glimpses of the battle and bent double the leaves of the jungle’s trees. The army’s dark green uniforms and the guerrillas’ camouflage blended in with the tangled vegetation. Only the bright red smears of blood made it possible to see which way the fight was tipping.

  Not their way, that was for sure.

  Houghlin remembered an old sergeant’s warning when he took command here years ago. “Africa is a harsh mistress.”

  How right the grizzled old man’s predictions were. Sympathies within the local governments were about as fickle as the governments themselves. With each coup, citizens got a whole new set of would-be dictators, or worse, the politicians calling themselves “reformers.”

  Which was exactly how they landed in this incredibly untenable position. A rebel had declared himself king—and had enough fighters to put that claim to the test. Somehow, his forces had swept nearly fifty miles to the west within days, as the army proved ineffective to stop him. And that put this horrific fight just steps from an American archaeological dig.

  Houghlin had no real authority here. He was an advisor only. With two Somalian pirate hostage situations off the coast and rioting in Cape Town, the soonest an American extraction team could get here was in forty-eight hours.

  He had strongly urged the government to send a squad to extract the archaeologist, but it looked like Houghlin had just sealed these soldiers’ fates. The rebels had taken this evacuation mission as some sort of recon for
ce and had dealt them a swift blow.

  “Sir, we have got to pull out,” Emmeret, his assistant, stated as a bullet pinged off the helo’s metal rotor. “We just have to hope the team can stay holed up until reinforcements arrive.”

  But after the garbled, frantic call Houghlin received from the lead researcher, Houghlin wasn’t sure if the greater danger to the archaeologists was outside the cave or within.

  * * *

  Professor Hoshi Sanu felt the claw sink into the flesh of his shoulder, and then tear. He screamed, but who could hear him over their own cries? Then the beast retreated into the shadows whence he had come. Clutching the wound, trying to stanch the bleeding, Sanu stumbled.

  The cave’s damp floor crumbled beneath his feet, nearly knocking him over. Only crashing into the rough-hewn rock wall stopped his tumble. His glasses long ago knocked away and trampled in the chaos, Sanu squinted into the flickering torchlight. Maybe two other people were still in the cave with him. Where were their guards? But in his blurred world, he could not tell. Were the rest of his students dead? Or worse, had they been dragged into the shadows with the beast?

  He had dug in Africa more times than he could count, encountering snakes the size of drainage pipes and lions so bold that they would stroll through his camp, but never had he seen any creature like that which attacked them now. It was more cunning than a wild animal and stronger than any man.

  “Where is it?” whispered one of his students, Chad Fallon.

  Before Sanu could answer, the beast grabbed hold of Chad and shook him like a rag doll. His student used the only weapon available to him—a backpack. With all the force the young man could muster, he swung the heavy pack and hit the beast squarely on the nose. It reared, blood pouring from its snout, and howled.

  The beast looked like a hyena, only it walked upright like a man. But this was no human, as its eyes glowed red. It towered over the injured student. Sanu knew he had no chance, but he could not let Chad die while he crept along the cave wall. Sanu went to move forward, but another student screamed.

  “Get back!”

  It was Kadie Mannson. She held a sputtering kerosene lantern. She hauled back, and just as the beast lunged for Chad, she hit it squarely on the chest. The glass shattered, engulfing the beast in flame.