You should be laughing because I’m a trained psychiatrist, Nat thought to himself, and I’ve just admitted to you that I think you’re full-on possessed. That is not a normal diagnosis; that is a sign of an unbalanced mind. Laugh for that.
“Maybe,” he said.
“No. Not maybe.”
“Leave that to me. Who is he?”
Her throat worked. “I’ve only seen him in dreams.”
“Then tell me about the dreams.”
Becca closed her eyes, as if the dreams were too painful to go back to. Her fingers began to interlace and then unlace in her lap, a nervous tic he hadn’t seen before. He waited.
“In the dream I was in some hot country,” she said finally, her voice strained. “I could feel my clothes on me, though I never looked down to see them. I wasn’t able to do what I wanted, to look at what I wanted. It was as if . . . as if I was being carried along, remembering something that had already happened and I couldn’t change it. But I was wearing khaki, which was sticking to my neck and my back, with drops of sweat running over my spine. Hot. Almost unbearable. I was wandering through forests, thick. I was far from home and felt anxious. I was searching for something, something I must find or . . . or else.”
“Okay. Go on.”
“I began to feel another heat pressing through the forest. Not a natural heat, not the humidity that you get in a jungle, or so I’ve read . . . but something that pressed against my face and began to turn it red. In the distance I could hear something crackling. Like sticks being broken, or popping open themselves. As I got closer, the noise grew louder.
“Then . . . It’s hard to describe. The jungle trees just dissolved in front of my eyes and I was suddenly standing in a yard. In front of me was a small house, a hut really, but I remember every board as if I’d seen them for years. It was made up of slats, painted white with green trim around the windows. There were white curtains, nice ones, you know, unexpectedly nice for the house, hung in the windows. I had the impression—could I smell them?—that they were freshly washed. The house was well kept. This is a well-kept house, I thought to myself.
“And then, fire. I felt the heat on the left side of my face. Something burning the skin there, as if I’d stepped too close to a campfire. I was about to turn and look when something in my head said, Don’t look, don’t turn. That voice was not part of me; it came from outside.”
She stopped.
“The voice was him?”
Becca nodded, her pale throat working. “I was thinking in the dream, too. I told myself, I’m not afraid. And then I saw the house. And I was afraid. To the left was a man dressed in khaki. His eyes were the eyes of sickness, black, with no pupils or whites, just insect eyes. They were looking at the house, and as I watched him the crackling of the fire rose in my ears.”
Nat said nothing.
“Suddenly, I knew what the man was looking at. There was someone inside the house. The man had put him in there and he was burning.”
Becca spoke faster now.
“I heard a scream and turned back to the house, and the clean white drapes whipped back silently as if a hurricane had blown its first puff of wind and then the window . . . just . . . vomited out a thick belch of smoke. It was black and gray and black, like a tornado twisting and roiling, and it was so thick.”
Becca coughed, bending at the waist. Nat watched her, fascinated.
“Go on,” Nat said.
She shook her head.
“Becca, you have to.”
“I don’t want to remember.” Tears formed in her eyes, and he could see she was grinding her teeth, as if she were in pain.
“Please.”
She shook her head again, took a deep breath.
“Then I heard someone scream. The person in the house was screaming. I turned back to the man, and his mouth was open. And in my ears, the voice saying, DO YOU HEAR THAT?”
Becca clapped her hands to her ears, and her face contorted in pain.
“I sank to my knees onto the packed-down earth of the yard. I remember that, the feel of it under my knees. The man’s head was thrown back in a terrible contortion and for a moment I imagined that his neck was broken but it seemed to be vomiting the smoke that was now pouring out of the house and he heard the dark roar of the flames deep inside. My skin was burning up.
“I wanted to save the man who was screaming inside. I staggered up to my feet and tried to walk around the front of the house. The door blew open and I felt the air suck by me and into the house and the flames inside blew up like gasoline had been thrown on it. I . . . I saw that black holes were beginning to appear in my khaki clothes, like holes were being burned right through. I screamed as the fire leapt to my body and bit into my chest as I reached the first step, then the second. I felt my hair beginning to combust and the air I breathed in was . . . it was made of flame.”
Her hands were shaking violently in her lap.
“Go on, Becca,” Nat urged.
“And then I saw something that made me stop. The inside of the house was a charnel, burned to charcoal along the boards and the floor. There was a table that seemed to stand on legs made of ashes and on top of the table stood . . . a man. The whole body was engulfed in flames, and I saw something spatter down onto the table and sizzle, like a piece of butter in a hot pan. I realized it was flesh, human flesh.”
Becca’s face twisted in disgust.
“The flames were going through me now, right through my body. There was a wooden beam, which ran from one end of the room to the other. And on the rafter there was something hanging visible just above the flames. Why did they leave a cut of meat to cure? I thought to myself. This isn’t a smokehouse, I thought. This is a house for people to live.
“My hair caught fire, and the roots of my hair brought the flames down into my skull. The fire was eating me up, eating into my clothes, eating my skin, and I could feel each little patch of my flesh melting.”
She looked at him, and there were tears in her eyes. She paused, and with her left hand wiped them away. She shook her head. Her nose was growing red with the crying.
“And that’s all I remember. I either passed out, or I died. In the dream, I died, too, just like in real life.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Jimmy Stearns walked quickly around the side of the two-story county building all the way to the morgue door. He arrived out of breath and braced himself against the stone building as he reached for the handle. It was locked. He reached into his left pocket, found only lint and a pack of Life Savers, then switched to his right and pulled out his work keys. He found the right one almost immediately, slotted it into the keyhole, and pushed into the space.
The hallway was lit by sconces on the right and left. Turning, he saw there was nobody out there in the dusk along the path or up on the road, lit by the circular glow of the street lamps. He shut the door, flicked the bolt. The ringing noise of the bolt slamming into the lock hung in the air as he moved down the hallway.
He opened the door to the morgue proper, what they called the cooler, and felt a rush of formaldehyde-laced air push past him. He took a breath and coughed. He hated the smell. He just wanted to get his check and forget about this place for the night.
The room was blue-gray, with the white tiles winking here and there, with streaks of moonlight and the instruments sending out the odd gleam. The examining tables were empty, of course; they had to be washed down and cleaned at the end of every day, all the fluids swirling down the drains. The janitors did that; Jimmy wasn’t responsible.
There was no sound and little light, only the bright yellow line under Elizabeth’s door.
Jimmy thought he would talk to Elizabeth. Surely she’d heard the lock in the door. She’d be scared, all alone here at night.
He approached the door. The frosted glass pane was rippled as well, so everythin
g on the other side was distorted and opaque. He saw the light from her desk was on, not the overhead.
A humming sound, then nothing. Did something move in the right corner of the window? He couldn’t tell.
He felt the knob. The brass turned easily in his hand, and he quietly pushed the door inward, the rippled window sending all kinds of weird shapes to his eye. But nothing could have prepared him for what he saw once the door went moving on its own energy.
It wasn’t a package of scrubs on the desk. It was Elizabeth Dyer. She was laid out, faceup, on the broad wood desktop, and someone had hacked her throat apart.
Jimmy went still. Elizabeth Dyer’s face was paler than he’d ever seen it, the eyes closed, and its muscles were fixed in a look of absolute dread. The lips were pulled back as if in the next moment she would wake up and scream. Her blouse had been torn open to below the breastbone, and he could see the no-nonsense flesh-colored bra. Her legs were straddled over the end of the desk, and one of her black shoes was off, the second toe sticking up through a hole in her panty hose. Her throat glistened red. Blood pooled on the floor, and there was one arcing smear two yards from his right foot.
Jimmy gaped, and a strange thought entered his mind. It was as if he’d come by five minutes earlier and had killed Elizabeth but lost the memory of it and was now witnessing the result of his own work, returning to the scene of the crime. He felt a panic rise in his throat. Did I do this and black out? His head spun, and he reached for the door knob to steady himself.
I didn’t do this, he said to himself. I’m just a guilt-feeling creature who takes too much to heart. He checked his hands. No blood. Of course not.
He took a few spasmodic breaths. Then he looked up in wonder, again studying the body.
Oh Lord, he thought. Not Elizabeth.
He thought of calling 911. Or building security. Or running out to the street and flagging down a cop. Anything to settle his nerves. He took a step, pulling the brass knob behind him. Suddenly, he stopped, hand still on the cool metal. He listened into the room. Nothing stirred. He could hear the industrial ventilating system kick in and begin to suck the air out of the room, but no footsteps of a killer.
Jimmy looked at Elizabeth again. His gaze roamed over her body. His eyes dropped to the desktop, and suddenly he saw a wink of light near her elbow. He stepped closer. It was a scalpel, one from the examining table’s stock, sitting on the desk right next to her elbow. The murder weapon. The tip still had a smear of blood on it, just thickening now as the cool air brought its temperature down.
His eyes went back to Lizzie, to her neck. Then they drifted down to her bra.
She’s gone, he thought. Soon I’ll never see her again. He drew his lips tight against his teeth.
I can get the cops later, he thought. There’s just a few minutes now for us. He took two more steps and was next to the body. He would just take a look at her, up close.
He breathed out and in again. His hand, seemingly of its own accord, reached out and cupped her left breast.
Jimmy made a sound in his throat and walked back to the door, pushed it shut, then moved quickly to the far side of the desk. As he approached, his eyes never left the dead woman’s face, which rotated in the golden light of the lamp as he went around. He stood where she’d been sitting. Her chair was tipped back on the floor a few feet from the edge of the desk.
Jimmy looked down at Elizabeth. She was wearing a knee-length black skirt. It was hiked up slightly from the struggle she’d been in before she died. Little specks of blood dotted her flesh-colored panty hose.
Jimmy studied her midsection just between the round little breasts. Her bra had a clasp on the front. Above it, the red of her savaged neck gleamed in the overhead lamp.
Now he bent to her.
“Elizabeth?” he said quietly.
He reached his right hand up and brushed her hair back. It moved in a wave as he pushed his index finger through it. As he did, he had the oddest impression. It looked to him for just a second like the woman’s right eyelid had twitched the tiniest bit.
Postdeath something or other, they called it. Dead bodies will twitch and burp for hours after death, he knew.
“I wonder who did it,” he said, feeling strange talking to a corpse but quickly getting over it.
He glanced around the room again, the rows of metal shelving full of manila files, the water cooler to the right, the door that led to the lockers, then back down to Lizzie. He could still smell a trace of flowery scent on the air.
He reached down to the desk to steady himself and accidentally touched Lizzie’s left hand. Smiling, he took the hand and pulled her lank arm up and placed it over her chest, where it flopped and landed with a soft thump. Jimmy took a deep breath.
He bent over her, studying her eyelids. What color were her eyes?
“Blue,” he said. “Your eyes were blue.”
He laughed softly to himself.
Suddenly, Jimmy grew still. He cocked his ear away from Lizzie’s body.
He swore someone had just whispered something in the darkness. A scratchy, thin voice. Was it his imagination, or was the sound still hanging in the dark room? He felt a cold terror grip his stomach.
It was something like . . .
Let him . . .
It couldn’t be. Nothing moved in the room. The aisles between the metal shelves were deep in shadow, but nothing stirred there. The air suddenly felt heavy, tense with expectation. Fear ran in Jimmy’s veins like a surge of electricity.
“Mind is playing tricks on me,” he said, laughing awkwardly.
He leaned down to give Lizzie a little kiss. He stopped just before touching her pale lips.
“You’d like that?” he whispered. “Would you like me to kiss you?”
Jimmy swayed a little over the recumbent corpse.
Then the whisper again.
. . . join us.
Suddenly he felt something grip the side of his shirt.
“Wh-what the he—”
He reared back. A voice boomed in the corner.
LET HIM JOIN US.
Elizabeth Dyer’s eyelids opened lazily on two black orbs. Her right hand was gripping his shirt and pulling him into a tight embrace.
“God—!” he cried.
His heart was beating, and a shriek—his own—filled Jimmy’s ears as he pulled away from the body that was rising up off the desk, but Elizabeth’s grip was horribly strong. Panic closed his throat as he heard the clatter of her nails on the wood—the other hand, he knew, grasping for the scalpel. The blade winked as she brought it up, and he bellowed in terror, her face looming up to his, the mouth opening wide as if for a ravishing kiss.
Her eyes. Oh God, her eyes were so dark.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Charlie’s eyes fluttered open. The room was dark. Something had woken him up; he listened for its echo. He hadn’t heard the sound so much as he’d felt it through the air in his mouth, like the bubble there was a little container of quiet that had been . . . upset. Something had made the air in his mouth shake.
He listened. The faucet in the kitchen was dripping. Drip, drop, drip . . .
There, he heard it now. A dull bang that seemed to shiver up the walls of the house and shake them ever so slightly.
His eyes wide, Charlie reached his hand out in the dark to the wall by his bed. The paint was cool. The wall wasn’t moving. Was the noise real? Was someone really trying to knock the house down?
Silence. The hiss of the heat from the vent. Charlie stared at the rug, and suddenly it seemed like a million miles away and scary and the cold light on it was like the light on the moon.
Toom. Charlie’s hand came away from the wall as if it had been burned.
He’d felt it. Something was in the house.
Run to Daddy’s room? It was so far away. The light
shining on the rug was cold and unforgiving. Maybe the thing shaking the house would snatch him before he made it.
He put a bare foot out of his bed and hung it there. The toes tingled, but nothing grabbed them or bit him. After three seconds, it seemed the right amount of time for something to seize the toes if it was there, and Charlie dashed out of the bed, feet making thumping noises on the floor as he ran for his father’s room.
Dark, snow through window, lamps and pictures, he saw them all in the corners of his eyes, but it was the gap of his father’s door that he aimed at. Once you’re in there . . .
He was through.
. . . you’re safe.
He looked at Daddy’s bed, and his throat closed with terror.
The room felt cold. The blankets on the bed were all pulled up and twisted, but his daddy was big and he wasn’t in that bed.
Toom. A little louder. Charlie felt it in the skin of his bare feet on the wooden floor. The tiniest shiver.
It was coming from the basement.
Charlie hugged himself. He didn’t want to go to the basement. He couldn’t go. But now the thought: What if the something has my daddy down there? What if it’s shaking him? What if he needs help?
Charlie scooted to the door and peeked around it down the long hallway. The basement door was a dark rectangle at the end of the hall. The sound came again, and he could feel it move through the air. Too-oom. The tiniest bit louder.
Charlie walked toward the basement door.
Dadddyyy!!! he wanted to scream as he ran for the door. He tore it open but couldn’t move another inch. What if it’s chopping off Daddy’s head? What if it’s stomping his face and making it bloody?
The dark rectangle of the doorway seemed to shiver with the sound. It was definitely down there. Was Daddy down there with it? Did it have his daddy?
He closed his eyes, then opened them. Who could he run for? The Kittingers? No, he didn’t want to go outside. He could call his mommy, but she was a thousand miles away.
Charlie took a step toward the stairs and touched the doorway. He leaned into the darkness. There was no light down here, just the wooden stairs going down into blackness and the glow from the old heater thing in the corner, which threw an orange glow over the edges of things.
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