Darkness Falls (15 page)

He put up no resistance—the sedative at work, no doubt—but he obviously did not want to go in there. And, based on his still accelerated heart rate, he was nervous as hell about it.

“Don’t!”

Caitlin turned to see, of all people, Kyle. He was holding a gun on everyone in the room.

Silently, Caitlin cursed Larry. He had said he was going to get Kyle released—there wasn’t any physical evidence to support a charge of murder, which may have made legal sense but sure didn’t make Caitlin feel any better—but he shouldn’t have let Kyle just walk in here with a gun.

“Take him out of there,” Kyle said to Murphy.

For his part, the doctor looked frightened out of his wits.

“Kyle—” Caitlin started.

“Do it!”

He turned to look at Caitlin.

And then Caitlin believed that he knew what he was talking about. That whatever had haunted Kyle all these years was the exact same thing that haunted Michael now. And that they should
not
put him in the tank if Kyle said they shouldn’t.

Caitlin moved to the tank and helped Michael out of it.

“Okay, the three of us are leaving,” Kyle said.

This rather surprised Caitlin, and her first thought was that she would have liked to have been consulted on the matter. She had to remind herself that she and Michael were as much hostages of that gun in Kyle’s hand as Murphy, the nurse, and the orderly.

“I’ve got a car downstairs—”

Before Kyle could continue, he was grabbed from behind by someone who expertly disarmed him and tackled him.

It was Matt Henry, who struggled to keep the squirming Kyle still on the hospital floor while another officer held a gun on both of them.

“Stop resisting!” Matt said through clenched teeth.

Something in Matt’s tone must have gotten through, because Kyle, just like that, stopped resisting and allowed himself to be cuffed.

As Matt hauled Kyle to his feet, he started to read Kyle his rights, but before he could advise Kyle of his right to remain silent, Kyle abrogated that right by yelling at the top of his lungs: “Don’t let them put him in the dark, Caitlin! Michael’s right! It lives in the dark!”

He kept screaming as Matt and the other officer took him out.

Caitlin stared at the door Kyle and the two cops had gone through for several seconds after they left, even after the echoes of Kyle’s dire warnings had faded into the hospital walls.

“Ms. Greene?”

Coming out of her stupor, Caitlin looked over at Murphy.

“We can proceed now.”

Noting that the doctor’s voice was a good deal shakier than it had been, and also not having the first clue what he was talking about, Caitlin asked, “What?”

“With the procedure.”

Caitlin stared again after the departed Kyle Walsh.

She’d been on such an emotional roller coaster these last two days. First thinking of Kyle, tracking him down, putting her hope in contacting him. Then even more confidence, thinking his arrival—and his apparent connection with Michael on first meeting—might signal something better. Then despair as his murder of Ray Winchester was revealed, not to mention the fact that he had hidden his past from her.

There was no reason for her to trust him.

There was every reason not to trust him.

Yet she said, “No.”

“Ms. Greene—”

“I think Michael’s had enough excitement for one day, don’t you?”

Murphy apparently couldn’t think of an argument for that.

Besides, it wasn’t as if the tank was going anywhere. There was always tomorrow.

Right now, Caitlin needed to relax and to think. No Larry, no Kyle, no doctors, no cops, nothing. Just her and Michael for a little while.

Then, maybe, she’d be ready to try again.

Or not.

As he slammed the door of the cage in Kyle’s face, Matt Henry said, “Let’s see your lawyer get you out of this one.”

He sounded entirely too self-satisfied as he said it. Kyle might have shared the glee if he thought it would do any good.

But Matt was happy because he thought he’d caught a murderer.

Kyle knew that the murderer was still out there.

And had been for more than a hundred and sixty years.

In response to Matt’s smart-ass comment, Kyle said, “That’s gonna be kinda tough, since my lawyer’s in a couple of pieces out on Ponus Avenue.”

“Is that a confession?”

Kyle stared at Matt for several seconds, trying to figure out how best to answer the question.

Finally, on the in-for-a-penny-in-for-a-pound logic, Kyle put his hands on the bars and stared right at Matt, hoping like hell that he sounded convincing.

“Okay, I’m gonna give this a shot. I saw something when I was ten. It looks like a cross between a drowned rat and a burn victim. Now Michael’s seen it, and it’s after both of us.”

Matt stared right back at Kyle.

Then he took out his baton and ran it quickly across the bars. Kyle barely got his hands out of the way in time.

Sighing, Kyle said, “That’s what I thought you’d say.”

Matt turned to walk away. Kyle decided to keep going anyhow.

“How many unsolved murders have you had here? Not just this year but for the last hundred? How many of them involved kids, as either the perpetrators or the victims?”

Matt stopped then.

Seeing his chance, Kyle went on, talking faster.

“I saw her when I was ten. Now Michael’s seen her. And she’s coming for both of us!”

Matt turned around.

He hadn’t hesitated because he believed Kyle. He’d hesitated because he had come to the conclusion that Kyle wasn’t psychotic, he was just insane. The look in his eyes was one of pity.

“You’re crazy, Walsh.”

Kyle felt as if he had deflated. Of course no one would believe him. If he were Matt, he wouldn’t believe it, either.

“Crazy,” he said to no one in particular, “isn’t what it used to be.”

Matt ignored this comment, instead continuing to his desk. He picked up the phone and punched in a number.

After a moment: “Pop? We got him.”

Then the power went out.

fifteen

Tonight would be the night. The prodigal had returned. The new boy was primed.

And she was tired.

It would all come together tonight.

She had taken petty revenges here and there, of course. Colin O’Donnel died in a shipwreck. Reverend Pitman left the ministry and went missing after departing Darkness Falls, never to be heard from again. Jacques Delacroix died in a mysterious accident involving shipping crates.

William Ames and Emma Jackson left a suicide note at the lighthouse. Their bodies were never found.

John Ames drank himself into an early grave. His wife committed suicide a month after her son disappeared.

The town never truly recovered. She had seen to that.

The town, however, still survived.

For a while, she was content with that, as it gave her the opportunity to torment those who had killed her—as well as their descendants.

And any who saw her paid the ultimate price.

Few did, though. She had no idea what powers had created her, but the strength of the legend of the Tooth Fairy—a legend that only existed because of her—had shaped her new form. Just as Matilda Dixon had avoided the light in life and urged others not to peek at her hideous form, the thing that Matilda Dixon had become was forced to avoid light, and any who peeked and saw her hideous form was free for her to destroy.

For a time, it was enough. It was enough to torment and to kill and to wreak havoc on Darkness Falls.

However, it was finally time to end it once and for all.

It was a simple matter to plunge the town into lovely darkness. She had taken a long time to understand how electricity had been so completely harnessed, but after a century, she finally got the hang of it.

Michael knew.

Kyle knew.

The others, though, would never know what hit them . . .

“What in the hell is going on in my town tonight, Matty?”

Matt Henry didn’t really have a good answer to his father’s question as the latter bounded out of his office. Amber emergency lights bathed the squad room in an eerie low glow, enough for them to see the closets where the flashlights and lanterns were housed.

“It’s just a power outage, Pop. We’ll probably need to deal with looters and the like. Nothing to worry about.”

Matt said those words, but he didn’t entirely believe them. A glance out the window showed that
no
lights were on
anywhere
in Darkness Falls.

It wasn’t natural. It
felt
wrong.

Walsh’s bullshit story about a monster would have been much easier to dismiss if three different eyewitnesses hadn’t sworn they saw something similar to “a cross between a drowned rat and a burn victim.” They were also all sufficiently drunk that Matt was willing to discount their testimony as unreliable.

But Walsh couldn’t have known about those eyewitness accounts.

Besides, there was something in the air. Something beyond the usual saltwater tinge that always hovered in every nook and cranny of the town.

“Guys?” Walsh said from the cage. “You might want to get in here with me.”

As if to punctuate Walsh’s point, a loud crashing sound came from the file room.

Matt glanced around. Everyone was accounted for—Drew, Batten, Hawkins, Lipinski, Pop, and Matt himself were all in the squad room—so if someone was in there, they weren’t authorized.

To Andy Batten, he said, “Go see what that is.”

“You
go see what that is.”

Great,
Matt thought,
everyone’s jumpy.
He had really been hoping this was his imagination, but Batten was as spooked as Matt was unwilling to admit that he was.

“Hey, I outrank you.”

“Then lead by example,” Batten said. “Go see what that is.”

Matt decided not to bother arguing. It was probably just some kid running around loose.

At night.

When there was no history of such a thing in town in recent times.

“Take a flashlight,” Walsh said from the cage.

“Shut the hell up, Walsh.”

Matt sighed then. The emergency lights didn’t work in the file room.

“Andy, give me your flashlight,” he said reluctantly, not wanting Walsh to think Matt was buying into his crap.

Then again, maybe Johanssen had come back from his dinner break early and not told anyone and went into the file room. That room didn’t have emergency lights, after all.

Matt opened the door, leaving it open, for all the good that would do. The shelves were piled high and deep here. Most of it was stuff from before 1999 when they finally got computerized. The Darkness Falls Police Department finally entered the twentieth century just in time for the twenty-first—and in time for the Y2K scare. But, while everything in the last three years was on the computer, they hadn’t had the budget to put all the older stuff into the system.

Unfortunately, this meant two things. One was that leaving the door open did no good whatsoever, because there were so many shelves and bookcases full of
stuff
that ground-level light simply did not travel very far. The other was that the flashlight didn’t help much beyond a few feet in front of him, either.

So far, the flashlight wasn’t showing him anything he wasn’t expecting: files, more files, chairs, a wall-mounted phone, some more files, boxes, yet still more files, and a window that looked out onto—at the moment—total darkness.

Matt tried not to think about how many of those files were open missing-child and child-homicide cases.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught something moving toward him . . .

It leaped into the air.

Right at Matt.

Matt cried out as he quickly dropped his flashlight, unholstered his weapon, and fired a shot.

Then the figure barked at him.

Quickly reholstering his weapon, he watched as the dog ran off into the deep dark corners of the file room.

“Matt? You okay?”

Turning, Matt saw Drew, Hawkins, and Lipinski running up to him, weapons out, concerned looks on the faces that he could see as he shined his flashlight on them. Hell, he wasn’t sure how many of them there actually were.

“Somebody go tell Andy I shot at his dog.”

Drew looked aghast. “You shot Luca Brazzi?”

“I shot
at
him.” Matt sighed. “The dog was quick. I missed him.”

Matt braced himself for the inevitable.

Sure enough, all three of them burst into guffaws.

Kyle had no idea why those three goons who ran in after Matt were laughing, but he knew that it couldn’t have been good. It probably meant that they found something stupid and inconsequential.

Which meant they’d let their guard down.

And then she’d get them.

Sure enough, Batten made a wiping-his-forehead-in-relief gesture and said, “I guess everything’s okay.”

Then Kyle saw it.

Or, rather, saw
her.

She was heading straight for the cop.

“Batten, get in the light, now!” he cried.

Before Batten could even make a smart-ass comment, she struck.

Kyle couldn’t make out the specifics—it was already pretty dark in the squad room, and she, of course, stuck to the shadows—but he did see Batten being grabbed, heard the horrible buzzing noise, then winced as he heard an awful crunching.

They were the noises he had heard when Larry died.

Matt and his three goons came running out of the file room just as the captain came back out of his office.

“What the hell happ—”

Before Captain Henry could get an answer to his question, the broken body of Officer Batten flew over his head.

Kyle caught a glimpse of her, a quick flash as she ran past the emergency lights.

“What the hell is that?”

“Kill it! Kill it!”

The cops all opened fire. The bullets tore through everything in sight: the desks, the computers, the files, the chairs, the emergency lights, everything except her.