The faceless man smiled revealing his pointed teeth. The torment he’d withstood would at last be rewarded. He had withstood so much, persisted in the face of innumerable individuals who sought to hurt him. Procuring a home next to Melissa’s for surveillance purposes had been among the many ordeals he had braved to be near her, so close to friendship. He shivered as he remembered what he’d been through.
He had hidden in the wooded area behind the homes in Melissa’s neighborhood and watched, waiting to see whether a welcoming person stood out from the rest, someone who would invite him into their home and understand his objective though he could not explain it. But few people milled about in the evening and by day, the street was virtually deserted.
After two days of deliberating and wrestling with his overall distrust of all humans, the faceless man, about to give up, spotted an elderly woman stepping out of her home and onto her porch to retrieve her newspaper. Someone had callously thrown it in the bushes that hugged her entryway. He had watched as she toiled and labored to get down her steps and then strained to reach her paper. All the while, he had noticed how her kindly face never pursed in anger; she never shouted an explicative, just grunted softly. With a tuft of wooly, white hair perched atop her head, doughy skin that was deeply lined, she looked soft and gentle like a rumpled pillow, worn but wonderful. And her house bordered Melissa’s.
The elderly woman turned out to be a disappointment as all other had that he’d encountered. Her appearance was not representative of her personality. He had not been particularly shocked to find she was cruel.
He was shocked, however, when she first attacked him with a mop, and then a rolling pin. She swatted and whacked with speed that contradicted the network of creases that marked her skin. She had beaten him with vigor.
The faceless man had tried to calm her, make her see he did not intend to harm her, that he simply needed a place to rest and spy on her neighbor, but the inability to speak complicated matters. He’d had no choice but to shove her off of him; she simply would not stop hitting him.
He had learned many things since leaving Dr. Franklin Terzini’s laboratory. Among those many things, he had discovered that elderly people such as Melissa’s neighbor were brittle. They were brittle and mean.
Her meanness and brittleness had been her demise.
He felt a shiver pass through him once again as he recalled his interaction with the old woman, how she had been so unpleasant, so hurtful toward him. Tears began to threaten as he felt genuine pity for himself.
He fought back his sadness, refused to shed one more tear for the cruel and despicable people of the Earth. He would not fret, had no time to. He had more intriguing things to think about, to dream about. Melissa Martin was in his field of vision. Gabriel had left without speaking to her. He had simply watched her as the faceless man did, only closer.
But Gabriel would undoubtedly return. Surely creations like them could never turn their backs on someone willing to accept them, to embrace them.
The faceless man resolved to act immediately. Delaying would only give rise to opportunity for Gabriel to take her from him. He would not allow that to happen. Melissa would not only be his friend, she’d be his savior. She would deliver him from a life of loneliness and isolation, of torture and ridicule. He had seen her benevolence in action, had witnessed her magic. A boy had been to her house at the same time as Gabriel. He was tall and long-limbed with black hair that prickled unnaturally from his scalp. He had come to her sad and broken, had cried to her. She did not scream or curse or attack him with mops or kitchen tools. Melissa embraced him and made him feel better. He was certain she would do the same for him.
The only obstacle that remained was finding a way to explain his feelings to her, to make her understand he wanted friendship and acceptance, that he wanted love. Thus far, surprising people with his friendship had not gone as he’d intended. As it turned out, human beings did not favor surprises.
Chapter 18
Eric Sala left Melissa’s house feeling equal parts relieved and apprehensive. Though he had taken a calculated risk and entered through the front door of her home, he did not dare endanger himself by repeating such an action. After explaining to her the nature and severity of his worries, she offered him an exit through the family room at the rear of the house.
He had traveled on foot. Parking his car three blocks away, leaving it inconspicuously sandwiched between a mobile home and minivan, Eric had traversed a considerable stretch of woods, crossed one of her neighbor’s backyards and walked up the remainder of her street to her front door. Such precautionary measures had been necessary then, were necessary still.
The sun had set about an hour ago. Clouds had filled in where navy expanses should have dazzled with infinite celestial jewels. The evening sky was dark, darker than usual. Mist clung to treetops. The air was cool but balmy. A preternatural silence had befallen the surrounding area. Eric wondered if the fog had acted as a blanket of freshly fallen snow would have, muffling and quieting everything in its wake; it seemed as though the rain were falling soundlessly around him.
He cut across Melissa’s small backyard and went directly into the woods beyond it. After crossing a small seasonal stream, swollen with the wealth of spring rain the area had seen and residual winter snow that had long since melted, Eric moved deeper into the woods. He was immediately swallowed by the abundance of growth around him. Branches, crisscrossed at every turn, threatened to gouge his eyes, undergrowth tugged at his pant legs and fog gathered conspiratorially, disorienting him and robbing him of his vision.
A branch snapping behind him sliced through the milky mist and echoed through the void. Eric’s pulse quickened, as did his pace. Certain that someone was pursuing him he moved faster, clumsily jogging through a riot of twisted, entangled branches. Sweat dappled his clammy skin as he looked over his shoulder. Movement behind him, unseen but distinct nevertheless, skyrocketed his racing heart rate. He began to run.
With each foot momentarily off the ground in each step and his nearly nonexistent sense of depth perception in the darkened and shrouded woodland, Eric tripped. He toppled face-first to the ground below. He never saw the fallen tree in his path.
Facedown on the ground, he did not move right away. He paused briefly and remained as still as he could. He listened for the sound of footfalls, but heard nothing over the rush of blood against his eardrums. Once he felt confident that he was not being tracked, he rose to his feet, brushed the debris from his clothes and sprinted to the edge of the woods where his car waited on an unfamiliar street in a neighborhood that was not his.
Street lights illuminated the pavement but reflected against the thickening fog. The sound of his own footsteps lulled him into thought. He began to replay his conversation with Melissa. He wondered whether he’d made a mistake by telling her, yet felt it necessary to unburden himself. He reasoned that it had been necessary to share what happened with her. After all, she had been there when Kevin, Chris and John had been killed. She was part of everything he’d been through.
But something about his visit with her left him feeling unsettled. He could not quite pinpoint what it was, but something did not feel right. As he mulled her reaction over, he came to the realization that Melissa had not reacted as he’d expected her to, the way anyone else would have. In fact, other than tearfulness, she hadn’t had much of a reaction at all. He had assumed she would think he’d lost his mind and need a tremendous amount of convincing. He had thought he’d have to talk to her more than once to make her understand. To his surprise, she had accepted everything he had to say, even the things he’d speculated. Nothing had shocked her. She had been upset, but by no means as shocked as he’d anticipated.
One point she had impressed upon him was the necessity of going to the police. She had suggested he go right away, even offered to go with him. Eric knew he could never go to the police, and though she had seemed to fully comprehend the magnitude of the situation, as well as its
utter weirdness, Melissa could not have possibly understood the danger he was in. If he were to go to the police, he was sure he’d be killed. He had seen the look in their eyes as they mercilessly executed the guys from the club, their maniacal, crazed expressions. She hadn’t been there. She had no way of knowing. But she’d believed him, and having someone to share his fears with did help.
Eric felt slightly buoyed as his car came into sight. Just where he’d left it, his dented Ford Escort waited between the vehicles he parked it between. Nether Kevin, Chris nor John waited against it. In a few hundred feet, he would be behind the wheel of his car and on his way home.
His faint glimmer of optimism was dimmed, however, when he became aware of a presence. He did not see who loomed ahead, but felt another with him. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled as he heard footsteps against the pavement. They began slowly at first, then picked up in pace quickly. Whoever was coming had undoubtedly seen him, and was coming right at him. Faster and faster, the sound rushed toward him. With nowhere to run to and few places to hide, Eric ducked between two garbage cans at the end of a car-filled driveway. He crouched just in time to see a pair to light-up running shoes gallop passed him.
A jogger, he thought. A jogger going for an evening run had advanced and nearly scared him to death. Relieved, Eric arrived at his car; he got in and locked the doors, then started the engine. He raked his hands through his hair and smiled. He would be home in a matter of minutes.
He pulled out of the space he’d parked his car, a small niche between a behemoth camper and a minivan, and drove to his house. He could not wait to walk in the front door and head straight upstairs. His parents would certainly be home, his mother in the kitchen experimenting with a new recipe from the food network, his dad leaning against the counter telling her all about his day. He longed for the sounds of chatter, of laughter, of home. He would strip out of his soiled clothes dirtied from his fall in the woods, take a hot shower and join his parents for a much-needed dose of normality.
Eric couldn’t help but smile, a rare expression he seldom produced in recent days, as he parked across the street from his house. Each window was illuminated. The outline of his parents was framed by the kitchen window. He locked his car doors and trotted toward his house.
As he stepped on to his driveway, a car turned on to his street. Headlights blinded him temporarily. He froze as he discerned the make and model of the car. It was a black Infiniti G37 Sports Coupe, and it belonged to Kevin Anderson.
Kevin pulled into Eric’s driveway and opened the door. And he was not alone. Chris and John occupied the passenger seat and back seat respectively.
“What’s up man?” Eric asked and tried to sound nonchalant.
“Nothing, man, nothing at all,” Kevin said tightly. “We’re just heading out to get some beers and hang, thought you’d like to join us,” Kevin suggested, but the tone of his voice implied that he was not suggesting that Eric join them, but rather ordering it.
“I can’t tonight. My parents are home and they’ve been on my shit about my grades. You know how that is,” Eric attempted.
“Don’t be a punk. Blow off your parents or tell them you’re going to a study group or something. Or better yet, don’t tell them anything,” Kevin said testily.
“I don’t know, man. I think they’d freak out,” Eric replied.
“Who gives a shit? Aren’t you going to be eighteen in, like, two months? Come on! Stop being a punk and get in the fuckin’ car,” Kevin commanded.
Eric knew he could not refuse them, that refusal would imply disrespect, and he knew what happened to those who disrespected them. His only chance of survival would be to go out with them, play along with whatever game they were playing, and pray that they did not know of his meeting with Melissa earlier.
Reluctantly, Eric agreed to go with Kevin, Chris and John.
He climbed into the back seat of Kevin’s car and glanced at his house. He saw the basketball hoop in the driveway and remembered exhausting himself when he was nine, trying to perfect his layup so he could show his dad when he returned from work. He saw his mother’s rosebush out front just beyond the porch. He remembered planting it there as a Mother’s Day’s surprise for her five years earlier and how she enjoyed clipping the blooms and filling the house with vases of crimson roses. He had grown up in the house and made so many memories there.
Eric heard the automatic lock engage in Kevin Anderson’s car, saw his parents’ silhouettes in the kitchen window and, with a tear rolling down his cheek, realized he’d never see them again.
Chapter 19
Melissa had watched as Eric dashed across her backyard and into the wooded area behind her house. He disappeared into the thicket quickly, his gait like that of a deer, graceful, agile, and frightened.
He had shared with her information that compounded her worst fear; that Kevin, Chris and John had returned from death and were more dreadful than before. Her hands trembled still. She wondered if they’d ever stop trembling. She wanted nothing more than to run upstairs and tell her father everything, beg him to stay with her and not drive two and a half hours away from her for a weekend poker tournament. But she knew that it was not an option. She could never tell her father about Kevin and the others. She could never tell him about Gabriel, Terzini or Eugene either. To do so would all but guarantee her father would have her committed to a mental health facility.
Instead, she hugged him tightly and watched as his taillights trailed down her street and vanished out of sight.
Her house suddenly felt far larger than it actually was, and far more vulnerable. She set about fortifying every entry point. Starting with the front door, she engaged the deadbolt then moved to the backdoor off of the family room and to the door that led to the garage. She then went to the basement and double-checked that the casement windows had been closed and locked after her father’s workout. When satisfied that the basement was sufficiently secured, she shut the light and returned to the main level of her house.
The curtains in the kitchen billowed. She did not remember opening the kitchen window but shut it immediately and locked it nevertheless. Drops of water stippled the sill. The late afternoon drizzle had graduated to wind-driven rain. She watched from the recently closed kitchen window as it whipped and lashed treetops in her neighborhood before checking the remaining windows in the living room and dining room.
Once all were closed, she ascended the staircase to call Alexandra and make plans for her to spend the weekend with the Georgopoulos family. She would then gather her toothbrush and other personal effects, pajamas and a few outfits and head over to Alexandra’s.
She looked to her desk and saw that her cell phone did not rest on its charger. She did not see it on her bed either. As she scanned her room she realized it could be anywhere, lost in a sea of clothes and shoes strewn about the floor. She began to pick up articles of clothes from the floor, frustrated by her lack of housekeeping, when a tapping sound startled her.
She paused, dropped the clothes in her hands and listened.
Then she heard the tapping sound again. It came from near her desk. She froze and held her breath, waited for the sound again.
The taps sounded again in quick succession, and it came from her window.
Her heart beat wildly. She could think of only one person who had tapped on her window, and that was five months ago. Excitement fluttered in her stomach as she quickly smoothed her hair with her hands and walked to the window. She was certain that Gabriel waited on the other side of the glass; that he had returned from whatever exotic destination he called home for nearly half a year after hearing of Kevin, Chis and John’s return and had returned to protect her.
The dimness of early evening combined with the brewing storm outside prohibited Melissa from seeing anything in the glass but her reflection. She immediately crossed the room and moved to the window where the tapping originated. She placed both hands on the casing and pressed her face to the pane. She gue
ssed that Gabriel, wanting to surprise her, had backed away and off to the side. Melissa did not want to delay their reunion any longer. If Gabriel waited on the other side of the glass and had been responsible for the tapping as she suspected, she refused to waste more time. She immediately threw open the sash and then the screen. She stuck her head out. Rain beat against the roof of the garage. But she did not see him.
Crestfallen, Melissa had erroneously believed he awaited her beyond her windowpane. In all likelihood, a branch, propelled by the gusting wind, had been responsible for the tapping. Leaving the screen open, she closed the sash and resumed her search for her cell phone.
As she rifled through her untidy room, she heard tapping at the window once again. Cautiously heartened, she went to the window without hesitation. This time, a face stared back at her.
Shock briefly deprived her of voluntary movement, rendered her speechless. The world went silent around her. She did not hear the rain and wind; she did not feel the balmy breeze blowing against her skin.
The face that looked back at her was neither Gabriel’s nor her own reflection. It was monstrous, inhuman, and moving closer. It reached its arm at her spread its webbed fingers outstretching its hand toward her. Instinct screamed for her to back away as the world regained sound. Each noise resounded loudly, echoing and reverberating at an amplified volume.
She took two steps backward, sheer fright commanding her back, away from the hideous beast that advanced. Her feet became entangled in a pile of clothes and suddenly she was falling. She put her hands out to her sides, reaching blindly for something to hold on to, but grasped papers on her desk with her fingertips. She felt the back of her head meet with the wood of her bedframe before everything went black.
***
The faceless man fretted as he watched Melissa tumble backward and hit her head against the wooden frame of her bed. He did not want to believe misfortune had befallen him again. He refused to believe he would not even be offered the opportunity to propose friendship to her before she went still forever as the others did. He immediately rushed through her window and into her bedroom and put his face close to hers. He felt her breath on his face. She lived! And he would have his chance with her.
Planet Urth Boxed Set Page 111
