by L. T. Vargus
Something in the sound changed then. First there was a pair of squeaks, some metallic squawking, sort of shrill. This same sound repeated itself. Familiar.
Then the roar of the faucet cut out all at once, and the silence grew to fill the emptiness, swelled into something huge and striking and strange, something that made Darger’s skin pull taut into goose bumps.
She knew now that the first sound had been the knobs twisting, that the woman hovered over her just now. This was it, then.
Darger wrenched free of the water, pushing herself up onto her knees, relieved to find at least some strength returned to her limbs, arms reaching out to grab for something that wasn’t there.
The emptiness around her seemed wrong. It had to be wrong. The water sluicing down from her hair made it hard to see.
Movement caught the corner of her eye, and she weaved out of the way of Kathryn Porter’s punch, a right hook intended for her jaw. The miss carried Porter a step to her left, off balance, and Darger got a good look at her.
Porter had morphed into something new, something awful. Eyes opened wide and psychotic. Lips curled up to expose the teeth. She looked like something rabid, something possessed.
Darger’s hands moved to her holster as Porter tottered and moved to regain her balance, but the leather flap at her side was empty. Her gun was gone. Of course.
Her eyes snapped to Porter’s hands, to the dark solidness gripped in the one that hadn’t struck out at her. But no. Not her gun. It was a knife.
Darger plunged forward, a diving thrust that launched her out of the tub and delivered a shoulder-first blow into Porter’s ribcage. She drove her left forearm into Porter’s throat while her right hand looped around the wrist to keep the knife at a distance.
The momentum of the hit seemed to arrive a beat later than the initial impact, and whatever hold gravity had on them tipped out of control then.
Toppling. Floating.
Darger felt a weightlessness. Reality tilting.
And then they crashed down, teeth and bones rattling. Porter’s back took the brunt of the collision with the linoleum, her legs somehow folded up beneath them.
Darger’s wind left her. Knocked out as soon as they hit the ground. A screaming void seeming to implode her chest, leaving it empty and useless and paralyzed, but she didn’t panic.
She scrambled to get her weight onto the arm holding the knife, pinning it to the floor with her knee, feeling the flesh and bones of the forearm pinched and sinewy under her bulk.
They grappled. Ripping and flexing and twisting.
Porter clawed with her free hand, fingernails gashing at Darger’s cheek, wrenching away wads of flesh with each stroke, leaving grooves of blistering pain everywhere they touched.
Darger fought to get the other knee around Porter’s torso to fully trap her. She brought her hands to Porter’s ears, fingers wrapping around them, tangling in her hair, grasping her by the back of the head.
And she rocked up and down a few times. Lifting that cranium and slamming it down. Bashing the back of the woman’s skull into the linoleum floor like she might break it open here and now and be done with this.
Each hit shook the cabin floor, the pounding echoing everywhere around them, the sound itself somehow violent.
The crazed look in the girl’s eyes seemed to soften, seemed to dim. A glazed quality now occupying them.
Her lights were going out.
But then Porter bucked her hips. She came alive again. A wild thrashing thing between Darger’s legs. The second big thrust dislodged Darger from her perch, loosened her grip, and the follow-through flung her up and off entirely.
Reality tilted again. Floating. Toppling.
Darger crunched down on her shoulder in the bathroom doorway. Confused.
She flopped a moment like a fish before she disentangled her limbs and got her feet underneath her. Then she stood and shuffled toward the living room.
She needed to find the gun.
Chapter 61
Darger scrabbled over the wood plank floor, head swiveling to scan every surface. Her mind suggested places to look, flashed pictures of her 9mm in every possible location. The coffee table. The kitchen counter. On top of the TV. But they were all empty. Blank.
Can’t find it. Can’t find it.
Her hand dug in her pocket as she searched, feeling for her phone, but that was gone, too.
And then Darger moved fully into the living space and the legs came clear, jutting out from behind the small dining table. Fowles. He sprawled in the same position — belly up, his motionless body stretching over the line where the living room and kitchen met, his torso still tucked out of her view.
Darger held her breath as she rounded the corner, the entomologist’s upper body slowly coming clear to her. She didn’t know why she did this. Maybe she hoped to hear the tiny rasp of his breathing, hoped to notice the tiny patter of his pulse in his neck or the rise and fall of his chest. Some tiny detail that would prove he was still here, still alive — something so minuscule it would surely require total silence to observe. Even the little moans of the wood floor under her feet seemed possible hindrances to knowing the truth.
The body lay utterly still, though. A stationary thing, stagnant to a dramatic degree. And the words that popped into Darger’s head didn’t seem to offer promise, either.
Lifeless.
Inert.
The face looked a little off. Waxy and puffy and limp looking. Closed eyelids more gray than normal, a shade that reminded her of the blue-gray Crayola she had as a kid. She tried to stop herself from thinking it, but he looked like a body laid out in a casket, maybe one who could use a touch-up from the makeup artist.
She knelt alongside the fallen figure. And a dissociative tingle started at the back of her neck and spread over all of her flesh. Pulled her outside of herself, almost outside of her body. Detached. Apart. She would watch this moment rather than live in it.
Her hand reached out for Fowles, an act that seemed to be happening more than something she was doing, the orders coming from elsewhere. Her fingers and thumb rubbed themselves together in little circular motions as they approached the entomologist, and then the digits splayed to touch the neck.
Cold. His flesh was cold. Cold and soft.
And no stirring persisted within this skin, no beating or thrumming or pulsating in the great blood vessels strung along the length of his throat. Nothing at all.
Fowles was dead.
The world fell as quiet as it had ever been. Hushed and hollow.
She drew her hand away from the corpse’s chill, brought it to her own neck all warm and palpitating.
She blinked. Twice. Three times.
And then she remembered herself and went for his holster, throwing back the flap of sports jacket in the way.
Empty.
No holster.
Shit.
She remembered the stupid little gun case in his car. His hands were likewise empty.
No gun. Of course Porter would have taken that too. Now what? Think.
Keys. Fowles drove. She needed his keys.
She dug in his pockets, realizing only then that her own keys were gone. She could feel their absence in her pocket like a missing tooth. That probably meant….
No keys in Fowles’ pants pockets. Just a wallet and a wadded-up Kleenex. Porter had taken their keys. The notion made her stomach feel swollen and empty at the same time.
She moved to his jacket. Nothing in the side pockets, but a bulk protruded from the inside pocket.
His phone.
No keys, but it was something. She could call for help.
Where the fuck was the gun?
She pawed at Fowles’ phone, part of her sure that it too would fail to work, the screen forever remaining blank, but after a beat, the little display glowed back at her, bright white.
Before she could check for a signal, the gun made itself known at last.
The crack split everything in t
he small cabin open. A piercing, impossible sound, a metallic click accompanied by the explosive noise of the muzzle blast and the little snort of the flash.
And glass burst somewhere just over Darger’s head. The window over the kitchen sink. Shards of it spilling down around her and shattering on the floor.
She wheeled.
Kathryn Porter stood in the bathroom doorway, the 9mm leveled, arms flexing, finger squeezing again.
The microwave door shattered now. Clear plastic splintering away from the entry wound. The light inside clicking on in confusion.
Darger scrabbled over the plank floor once more, shuffling from kneeling to standing in stuttering stages like some beast trying to master running upright.
More glass exploded. A front window this time.
It wasn’t until she hit a sprint that the pain in Darger’s head made itself known. The hurt wobbled her. Made her remember that cast iron skillet coming for her skull. Turning everything black.
But she fought through the wooziness, found a rhythm with her steps. Crashed through the screen door, picking up speed.
And she was out, out of the cabin, down the front steps, into the night.
She loped out into the woods, out into the dark.
Chapter 62
You lick your lips. Shock still settling over you.
And that final image plays over and over in your skull:
The girl stumbling down the front steps and the woods just swallowing her up. Gone. As soon as she’s out the door, the dark takes her whole. A wall of black that consumes her.
You blink in the face of it. Eyelids cinching closed hard and popping back open even harder. Electricity buzzes in the sockets around them. Little tendrils of current that splotch the edges of your vision.
She escaped. Disappeared into the gloom. This is the thing that could not happen. Could not. The unthinkable. And you just watched her vanish like some magician’s trick.
You can taste the defeat in the stomach acid creeping up the back of your throat. Astringent and sour.
They’ve tried to get away before. Scraped and clawed and struggled. But you were stronger. Smarter. You handled them.
You need to handle this one.
If not, the world will know you. Know who you really are. And all will be lost.
You don’t think now. You step forward and squeeze off another shot and then another. Firing bullets through the doorway into the void, out into emptiness, your arm bucking at the gun’s force, flailing like a limp thing, a small thing. You don’t like it.
And you stagger on a few more paces. The fever of all of this so hot in your head that you can’t think straight, can’t move right. Legs feel heavy, numbed out like that novocaine feeling you get just before the dentist takes the drill to you. Dead numb.
You stop at the threshold, standing in the place where inside gives way to outside, where the dark snuffs out the light.
Can’t see shit. Can’t feel shit. Not from the waist down, anyway.
You just breathe in that dark like smoke. Feel its chill enter through your mouth, through your nostrils, saturating your chest with each wet flutter of respiration. Thick twirls of vapor filling you and emptying you, rushing in and out.
Hot liquid flushes through your skull. Hatred lurching and sloshing around in there. Frothing up into a lather.
And your finger trembles on the trigger guard. The gun twitching in your hand, intricate little movements like a dancing marionette. An object that wants to thrash and buck and come alive.
You want to destroy. Anything. Everything. You want to fire again and again. Empty your magazine out into the dark. Empty your magazine into your skull. Spend it all and be done.
But no. No. You need to save the ammo.
You let the gun fall to your side. A bulk at the end of your dangling arm.
It’s not over yet. She’s out there somewhere. You still have reason to hope.
You pat the lump in your left hip pocket with your wrist, and it jangles. Still there. The car keys. So she won’t be getting far, will she?
And you lick your lips. Stand up a little straighter. Steel yourself to give chase.
Yes. Chase. That’s all it is. The cat and the mouse carrying out their roles. They were born to it.
And part of you thinks it’s all just a game now, isn’t it? She wants it this way. Wants to play hide-and-go-seek. That’s all.
When you take that next step, the dark devours you, and you’re not worried anymore. You just have to win, that’s all.
You adjust your grip on the gun at your side, press forward into the blackness.
Ready or not, here I come.
Chapter 63
Darger darted through the forest, not really thinking about avoiding the trees in the dark so much as letting her instincts guide her away from the blackest shapes. The phrase “run to daylight” popped into her head, though it wasn’t entirely accurate here. Anywhere emitting moonlight, however, she raced toward, constantly redirecting her shoulders to the faintly glowing places.
Branches clawed at the opened up places on her cheeks, where Porter had scratched her. She barely noticed the stinging pain. She kept running, much more conscious of the rasping of her lungs and the burning in her thighs.
And the cold. She’d been cold in the cabin, but out here, the night air clung to all of the wet places. Sunk into her skin. Leeched the last remaining warmth from her blood.
Her steps went choppy now and then, the grade underfoot slanting up and down at random, throwing off her equilibrium. She hit a low spot and jammed her left knee. It broke the rhythm of her steps, and then she was falling forward more than she was running, arms spinning wildly at her sides to try to balance things out. She stumbled along for several yards before she was able to catch herself and hit the accelerator again.
Distance. She just needed to put some distance between her and the psycho with the gun and then she could call for help. The phone waited in her left pocket, rattling against her hip with each step, just itching to be used.
She ran until the foliage tangled up around her ankles and pulled her down, the sense of falling somehow more terrifying in the dark. The landing jolted her arms and legs, slammed her teeth together, flashed bright white in her head. Pain crawled upward from her wrists and knees, but she was OK. Roughed but uninjured. She picked herself up and kept on.
After bursting through a cluster of firs, the boughs taking turns whacking at her face and chest, she sensed the woods thinning some around her. An opening ahead. And beyond that, something sparkling like silver in the moonlight.
The river.
Soon she hit the water’s edge where she veered left to run along beside it. The river babbled next to her, and the way here was clear. No trees. Little growth. Just smooth rock and patches of moss.
She ran along the riverbank for a long time, let herself get fully winded, and then she pulled up. Leaned over and rested her hands just above her knees, mouth wide open, sucking in great lungfuls of air.
This was far enough. This would work.
It had to.
She fished the phone out of her pocket.
Chapter 64
You pick your way through the trees and foliage, moving with care. Soundless for the most part. Gun clenched in your sweaty palm.
A creeping shadow in the night.
Waves of panic wash over you as you press deeper into the darkness. Fevered notions that she has gotten away, sprinting through the forest like some Olympic runner. You picture her hurdling deadfall without slowing down, pole vaulting ravines. If so, it’s already over. You’ve already lost.
But deep down, you think not. She took a good wallop to the head, a cast iron skillet to the skull. More likely hiding than running, she is. You hope so anyway.
The woods seem malevolent at night. All those crooked shadows bending down from the tree branches.
You sense a dark force present here. Something that was around before any of us and will be around
long after we’re gone. A wild, thrashing, violent thing. Something that got inside you, maybe. Wormed its way beneath your skin when you were small. Took root there and pushed you to be who you are, how you are, what you are. Something that put all those bad thoughts in your head.
You stop. Listen. Thought you heard something move. A snapping branch. The crunch of dead leaves.
But the silence rises up around you. Vanquishes everything. Keeps the whole world still.
You duck under some pine boughs to get through a tight cluster of them and keep going.
And finally the river wobbles ahead. A fluttering in the blackness. Little ripples catching the moonlight.
Your gut tells you that you will find her near the water. Screams it in your ears without words. Just feelings and pictures that gush into you from the nowhere, project themselves on the black screen hung up all around.
You walk along the bank now, on top of the great rocky crags that line the water. Treading carefully. You know from experience that the slate-like surface of the stone can get slippery in places, especially where the moss grows.
The air feels colder along the river’s edge. Wet and heavy and chilling.
But the cool of the night makes no match for the heat rolling off of you in waves. Every cold breath comes back out of your chest all hot and sticky. Your hatred makes a furnace out of you. Cranks the knob to burn it all, inside and out.
And you think that hatred alone can sustain a person like this, keep them warm with fever, keep them agitated, keep them pressing ever onward into the dark night of existence. Food. Sleep. None of these matter when hatred gets hold of a person’s heart. No. Only hate can drive a being this way. The restless ones who walk the night, who find no satisfaction here.
It almost seems like you should be able to smell her. A predator like you should be able to pick out her fear from a few hundred yards out, track the stench right to her.
And then you see it. Some glow up ahead, a hundred yards or so from where you stand. A beacon. A sign.
