by Jack Kilborn
“STOP STOP STOP GOD STOP STOP!”
Sal touched his chest. The pain in his gut had shot up into his heart. Who was Maggie yelling at? What was happening to her? He stuck the oars in the locks, turned around on his seat, and began to row.
“NO NO NO NO STOP NO!”
Sal had to get home. He hadn’t rowed in years, maybe decades. When the Evinrude refused to work, Sal would pop the cover and futz around until it started again. Sometimes it took an hour. Sometimes he had to flag down another boat and get a tow back to his dock. But rowing—never. That was for young men or those without patience. But he had to get to Maggie and had to get to her now.
“PLEASE PLEASE GOD PLEASE GOD!”
Sal’s chest and arms screamed at him. His lungs were two burning bags, unable to get enough air. His back and his knees pleaded with him to stop, to rest. But Sal kept rowing. He glanced painfully over his shoulder, saw he was less than fifty yards away.
“KILL ME! KILL ME! KILL ME!”
Sweet Jesus, Maggie, what is happening? Sal’s arms shook, and he could barely lift the oars out of the water, but he kept the rhythm, kept the pace.
Stroke.
Stroke.
Stroke.
Stroke.
Each stroke closer to home, closer to the woman he loved.
I’m coming, honey. I’m coming.
Sal hadn’t thought anything could be more terrifying than his wife’s screams. But he was wrong. It was much more terrifying when the screams stopped.
Sal put his entire body into one final stroke, and momentum took him to his pier. He fumbled with the line, hooked it to a cleat on the dock, and then pulled himself out of the boat.
“Maggie!” His shout came out more like a wheeze.
On wobbly knees, Sal shuffled up to shore, toward his house. The door was open wide. Maggie would never leave it like that. Someone was in their house. Someone doing something terrible to his wife. He looked around for a weapon. On the porch, next to the tables, he saw the two-by-four. He used it to club fish before he filleted them. Sal picked it up, reassured by its weight. Then he went into the house.
The living room and kitchen were empty. He smelled burned popcorn, and something else. Something he’d smelled before, but never so strongly.
Blood.
“Maggie! Where are you!”
No answer. He went up the stairs as quickly as his old legs could carry him, up to the bedroom.
Something was sprawled out on the bed.
“… kill … me …” it said.
Sal couldn’t understand what he was seeing. It didn’t look human. When he realized what had been done, that the thing on the bed was what remained of his wife, the board fell from his hand and hit the floor with a dull thud. He was barely aware when someone came up behind him and pressed a blade to his throat.
“You must be Sal,” the man whispered. “We need to talk.”
Ashburn County Sheriff Arnold “Ace” Streng had just settled down in his easy chair for a cup of microwave chili and a marathon of MythBusters on the Discovery Channel when his cell phone rang. He set the chili on the TV table next to his chair and squinted through his reading glasses at the number. His phone blinked FIREHOUSE 4.
Safe Haven.
Streng sighed. Safe Haven required a forty-minute drive, and it probably wouldn’t be anything more than a cat in a tree or some campers annoying the residents with their fireworks. He hit the accept button.
“This is Streng.”
The line disconnected. Streng brought the phone closer, saw he had two black bars indicating reception. It flickered to one bar, then back to two. Good enough. The fault was probably on the other end. Why anyone in this county voluntarily used cell phones was beyond Streng’s comprehension. A typical three-minute conversation usually involved being dropped eight or nine times. Streng often joked that instead of cells he was going to give his deputies tin cans tied together with string.
The phone rang again. Streng craned his neck so the phone was a precious two inches higher up, that much closer to the satellite signal.
“This is Streng.”
“Sheriff, it’s Josh VanCamp from the Safe Haven fire station. We have, um, a situation here.”
Josh was a good kid, tall and strong like his late father. Kid was probably a misnomer—Josh had to be over thirty. But Streng was nearing seventy, and that meant he considered almost everyone a kid.
“Is this an emergency, Josh? I’ve got my old carcass parked for the evening.”
“It is, Sheriff. There’s been a … helicopter crash.”
Streng didn’t know of anyone in the county who owned a helicopter. He looked longingly at his chili. The cheddar cheese he’d crumbled on top had melted perfectly.
“A helicopter? You’re sure?”
“I’m standing at the wreckage site. And there’s been some … fatalities.”
Streng sat forward in his chair. “People are dead?”
“Two.”
“Did you call for an ambulance?”
“Uh, no. They’re dead, that’s for sure.”
“Where are you at, Josh?”
“Off the big lake, on Gold Star Road, two and a half miles down. I brought the tanker. Fire’s under control. We’ll keep the lights on so you can find it.”
“Gold Star, you said?”
Streng hadn’t been down Gold Star in a while. The last time was to visit his cousin Sal Morton. They’d caught some walleye, tilted a few back, and promised to do it again real soon. That had been two months ago. Streng had planned to call him, see how things were going, maybe set up a date to get on the lake once more before it got too cold. They’d been close friends since childhood, and it was wrong they didn’t try harder to stay in touch.
“Yes, Sheriff. Should I call the staties?”
Streng considered it. The state police were the ones who dealt with highway accidents, but Gold Star was a private road. They wouldn’t want jurisdiction any more than he did.
“No, this is ours. I’ll be there in half an hour. Anyone with you?”
“Erwin.”
“Tell him not to touch anything. Same goes for you.”
Streng hung up, then pulled himself out of the recliner. He dipped his spoon into the chili, blew on it, and took a single bite. Delicious. Then he put the cup into the fridge, strapped on his sidearm, and went out to his Jeep Wrangler, reminding himself that he only had three more weeks until retirement. Then it would be someone else’s job to take care of these late-night calls, and he’d be able to enjoy a little chili in peace.
Erwin Luggs made up for his deficiencies in the brainpower department by being helpful, dependable, and an all-around nice guy. He didn’t have the strong jaw and athletic build of his buddy Josh, but his oversized frame and an abundance of hair accentuated his friendly demeanor. The ladies thought of him as a big, cuddly teddy bear. One particular lady, Jessie Lee Sloan, liked him so much that she had agreed to be his wife, and their wedding was set for next month.
The wedding troubled Erwin, because it was costing a lot more than he originally thought. He had the part-time-fireman gig and taught gym at the junior high nine months out of the year, but Jessie Lee had just added a string quartet to the growing list of wedding expenses. Even without totaling up the final numbers, Erwin knew he’d need at least two more jobs to cover all the bills.
But all thoughts of money, and the wedding, and Jessie Lee, vanished as he stared into the cockpit of that chopper.
“Don’t look at it,” Josh told him.
“I can’t help it. Never saw nothing like that before. You?”
Josh was staring past the wreck, into the dark of the forest surrounding them. He shook his head and spat.
Erwin asked, “Which head belongs to which, you think?”
“Coroner will figure it out.”
“Must have been the helicopter blades, right?”
Josh didn’t answer. Erwin stepped away from the wreck, but his eyes di
dn’t leave it. Their fire truck—a three-thousand-gallon tanker parked a few yards away on the sand road—had its emergency lights on, teasing the crash site with alternating flashes of red and blue. Erwin and Josh each held flashlights, but even with those and a full moon they couldn’t see everything at once—the trees were too thick.
When they arrived, the fire had mostly gone out by itself. A few of the nearby pines had been scorched, but the rain from two days ago prevented anything major from starting. Debris littered an area of about twenty yards in every direction, though it was hard to see because their flashlights weren’t powerful enough. The smoking shards of metal were out of place in the woods, making it look like an eerie alien planet. Erwin didn’t like it.
He backed up until he could no longer see the corpses in detail. A twig snapped, to his right. Erwin startled, focusing his light into the woods next to him, wondering what deer or coon was curious enough to come and see the wreckage. As his beam played across the trees he saw a brief glint of two eyes, which quickly vanished.
Erwin looked over at Josh. His partner had approached the cockpit and was peering in reverently. Erwin glanced back to the woods. The eyes couldn’t have belonged to a deer, because these were side by side. A bear? Maybe, if the bear was standing up. But Erwin knew bears, and the whole forest shuffled when a bear moved past. Erwin craned his neck forward, listening.
The woods were silent. Erwin had the uncomfortable feeling that the eyes were still there, watching him.
“Hello? Someone there?”
He felt foolish saying it, and even more foolish when no one answered. Erwin moved the flashlight to and fro, trying to penetrate the trees, but saw nothing. Could someone have survived the wreck? Someone hurt and unable to answer? He glanced again at Josh, saw that he was busy examining the inside of the chopper, and decided to investigate on his own.
The woods became very dark, very fast. The canopy screened out the full moon, and the thin beam of his flashlight worked like a theater spot, illuminating only a small circle and nothing else. Erwin moved slowly, respectful of his environment. In his teenage years he’d disturbed a badger on a late-night hike through the forest, and the bite he’d taken on the knee still ached when it rained. It had been the scariest moment in Erwin’s life, and he’d been unable to fight back, his muscles locked with fear.
Since then, Erwin avoided confrontation of any sort. He stopped playing sports. He walked away from fights. Thinking of himself as a coward was much easier to deal with than the horror of being attacked.
Movement, to the left. Erwin got the flashlight there in time to see something black dart behind a large oak. Too tall for a bear. A person?
He opened his mouth to say something but didn’t make a sound. If it was a person hiding behind the tree, why were they hiding?
Erwin took a step closer, feeling his arms go goosepimply and adrenaline tingle in his bowels.
Then a deer came crashing out of the woods.
Erwin reached out his hands to ward off the impact, dropping his flashlight, bracing his legs. The blow came weaker than he’d anticipated. Weaker, and warmer. The deer’s head connected with Erwin’s chest but didn’t push back. It just sort of stopped—as if he’d been tossed a football—and then came a spray of heat that stung Erwin’s eyes.
He took two steps backward, the deer collapsing at his feet, kicking out its legs like it was still running. Then it jerked twice and became still.
Erwin rubbed his eyes, realizing the heat was liquid, and the liquid was blood. He found his flashlight in a bush a few feet away and it was also soaked in blood, the smears on the lens making it cast red light. Hand shaking, he pointed it at the deer and saw a three-foot gash in the animal’s side, so deep it cut through the ribs.
“Josh!” he yelled, though it came out as more of a croak.
Then he heard something else moving in the woods.
Sal Morton hadn’t cried in more than thirty years, but he was crying now. The shapeless, bleeding thing that his wife had become continued to twitch and gasp on the bed beside him, and rather than allow him to end her agony, the intruder forced Sal to answer a series of inane questions.
“I don’t know.”
“When was it?” The man’s foreign accent was heavy, his voice breathy and almost feminine.
“A long time ago. Years.”
“Where?”
Sal eyed his wife, watched her undulate. How could she even still be conscious?
“Please. Just kill her. Kill us both.”
“Where were you?”
“In town. At the hardware store. Jesus, please, can’t you let her die?”
The man did something with his knife, and the thing that was Maggie mewled like a sick kitten.
Sal reached for her, touched her, and this prompted more screams. He pulled back his hands and clenched his fists, shaking so badly he almost fell off the edge of the bed.
The man appeared amused.
“Will killing her help you focus?”
“Yes. Dear God, yes.”
“Then go ahead.”
The man offered Sal a pillow. Sal stared at it and wondered for the hundredth time if this was really happening, if this was real. Only a few minutes ago he was fishing, pondering the activities for the upcoming holiday weekend. Perhaps they would eat out, then see a scary movie to celebrate Halloween. But life changed when he walked into that bedroom. The whole world changed. He wasn’t ever going to a movie with Maggie again. Instead, he was going to murder her. Could he do it? Did he have the strength?
Sal closed his eyes, tried to picture Maggie the first time he saw her. A blind date. Sal could no longer remember who had set it up, but he remembered every second of their evening together. Maggie had worn a pink dress, her hair all styled up, and she giggled when she met him, obviously as pleased with his appearance as he’d been with hers. They’d gone bowling and had a wonderful time, even though neither of them possessed any skill or even particularly liked the game. Every year since then, on their anniversary, they’d go bowling. November fifteenth. Just a few weeks away.
“I can’t.” Sal dropped the pillow.
“You love her.”
“Yes.”
“She’s suffering. See?”
The man did something unspeakable to Maggie, and he kept doing it. Sal tried to shove him away, but the intruder had muscles like brick. Maggie made a sound that didn’t sound human, a gurgling moan of pure agony.
“Stop it! Please stop it!”
The man didn’t stop. He smiled.
“Only you can stop it, Sal.”
Crying out, Sal took the pillow and pressed it hard against what was left of Maggie’s mouth, putting his weight on it, trying to drown out her screams, her pain, her life.
She twitched under him, an oddly intimate sensation that reminded Sal of lovemaking. He sobbed and sobbed, and the twitching went on and on, and Sal couldn’t tell if it was her or him anymore, but he wasn’t going to stop, wasn’t going to check to see, had to make sure that she was safe, make absolutely sure that she didn’t hurt anymore.
“You killed her,” the man said. “You can get off her corpse now.”
Sal didn’t move. He felt a piercing grip on his shoulder and was tugged backward, the bloody pillow still held tight in his old hands.
Maggie’s ruined face was still, her remaining eye staring dully at Sal.
Then her chest shuddered and she gasped, sucking in air.
“Well,” the intruder said. “She’s a tough one.”
Sal squeezed his eyes closed, clamped his hands tight over his ears. He couldn’t take anymore. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. This isn’t how their lives together were supposed to end. He’d always pictured a quiet, peaceful death for them. Going to sleep and never waking up. Slipping in the shower and a quick bump on the head. Dying in a hospital bed, the morphine drowning out whatever killer lurked in their elderly bodies. Not like this. Not awful like this.
“He
re.” The man handed Sal his knife. “Put it in her heart.”
Sal held the knife like he’d never seen one before. Maggie’s chest rose and fell, accompanied by a wet, rattling sound. He reached out tentatively, gently laying his fingers on her breastbone.
“Right there. Press down hard, so you get through the ribcage.”
Sal focused on the spot, trying to block out the reality of the act. This wasn’t his wife. He wasn’t killing her. This was a normal, routine task, like filleting a fish. A job that needed to get done. Unpleasant, but necessary.
Sal pushed down on the knife, forcing it in to the hilt, making himself stone for her sake. He held it until Maggie’s heart ceased to beat, until the vibrations in the knife’s handle stopped.
“That did the trick.” The intruder clapped him on the shoulder. “Congratulations, killer.”
The moment descended on Sal, pierced him. He cried out, an ineffectual curse at the universe for letting this happen, and then tried to pull the knife from his wife’s chest so he could plunge it into the monster who caused this. Sal tugged, but the knife stayed put.
“This knife is meant for more delicate work and has no blood groove,” the intruder said. “You have to twist it to break the suction.”
He demonstrated. There was a sound like an infant suckling. The man freed the blade and then wiped it clean on the bedsheets.
“Now let’s try to concentrate on answering my questions.”
Sal’s body shook, but he thrust out his chin at his tormentor.
“No. I won’t do it.”
Darkness seemed to spill out of the intruder’s eyes.
“Yes, you will. You think you know pain, old man? You know nothing of pain. You’ll answer every question I have and beg me to ask more of them.”
“No,” Sal said, folding his frail arms, silently swearing on Maggie’s head to not give this bastard the satisfaction. “You won’t get anything out of me.”
It took less than three minutes for the intruder to prove Sal wrong.
• • •
Fran Stauffer dumped the used coffee grounds into the garbage can beneath the cash register and wondered—not for the first time that night—why she had traded shifts with Jessie Lee.
