Darkness Falls (17 page)

Alexandra went next, running quickly, not paying as close attention to where her feet fell.

Just as one of her feet strayed from the path delineated by the emergency lights, Kyle cried, “Stay against the wall!”

Something hit up against Alexandra, smashing her into the wall. Now it was her turn to scream.

But nothing happened after that. She was completely in the light, after all . . .

Caitlin ran to give her a hand. To her surprise, Murphy was right alongside her. They helped Alexandra up, a process made somewhat difficult by their need to stay within the oh-so-thin confines of the emergency lights’ illumination.

Michael turned around to see what was happening, but Caitlin admonished him, “Keep going, Michael.”

He turned and kept running toward Kyle.

“Take her with you,” she said to Murphy once they got Alexandra to her feet.

Nodding, he guided her along, shuffling down the beam as best they could. Caitlin followed, and behind her, the other nurse brought up the rear of their bizarre, follow-the-light, single-file progression.

“Shit,” she heard Kyle say. “Stop!”

“What’s wrong?” Alexandra asked weakly.

“Kyle?” Caitlin asked. She couldn’t see a damn thing with all these people in front of her.

“There’s still about twenty feet of dark to the end of the hallway.”

Caitlin closed her eyes. Her first thought was that she couldn’t take much more of this. Her second thought was that she had thought that about fifteen things-she-couldn’t-take-much-more-of ago. Maybe she needed to give her resiliency more credit.

“Oh, Jesus.”

It took Caitlin a moment to recognize the panicked tones as belonging to the usually phlegmatic Dr. Murphy.

“In less than a minute,” the doctor continued, “the only thing left’ll be life support.”

“Hurry!” Alexandra cried, as she looked nervously around the corridor.

Another shadow seemed to move. Then another. Caitlin really did not want to be in this corridor any longer than she had to.

Then the emergency lights started to dim some more.

“Kyle—”

“I know,” Kyle said quickly, cutting off any possible admonition from Caitlin.

“Whatever you’re gonna do,” the other nurse said from right behind Caitlin, “do it fast!”

Caitlin couldn’t really see Kyle, but she did see his arm raised, his hand holding a necklace with a sunburst on it. With a start, Caitlin realized it was the charm she’d given him twenty years ago.

Then he threw the necklace forward.

A cracking noise followed, and then the corridor seemed to be a tad—a very small tad—brighter. But any light in a storm, so to speak.

“Let’s go!” Kyle cried, and she could see the top of his head running toward the end of the corridor.

Michael went next—she recognized his footfalls, coming closer together because of his shorter legs.

Then, in front of her, Murphy and Alexandra moved through what Caitlin could now see was a shaft of light provided by the lights in the stairwell beyond the door, shining through the crack made by Kyle’s necklace.

Caitlin held her breath as the doctor and the nurse almost lost their balance and stumbled into the darkness. She didn’t want to think about what would have happened to Alexandra if she had set more than a foot into the darkness, and the nurse and Murphy both had the same thought, obviously, as they struggled mightily to stay in the light.

“Keep moving,” Kyle said.

Turning to the nurse, Caitlin said, “Go.”

The nurse nodded and started down the sliver of illumination.

Then the lights went out.

“No!” Michael cried.

He started to run toward them, but Kyle called his name and grabbed his shoulder, holding him back.

The only illumination now came from the crack Kyle had made, but that was still several feet in front of her and the nurse—and right now, that may as well have been miles, because Caitlin could now feel the creature hovering right behind her, smell the fetid stench that it emitted . . .

“Don’t look at her, Caitlin,” Michael said.

Kyle added, “She won’t kill you if you haven’t seen her. Whatever you do—” He hesitated, then finished: “Don’t peek.”

For some reason, that reassured her. Then she remembered. It was the last thing she had said to Kyle when she left his window when they were kids twelve years ago. It was in relation to the Tooth Fairy coming for his baby tooth.

It was, to her mind, a helluva time to bring up resonances with the Tooth Fairy, but it gave Caitlin the confidence she needed to keep her eyes shut. She hadn’t truly seen the creature, so maybe she’d be safe.

She could still hear the voices of the others, and she was grateful for that, as it drowned out the beating of her heart.

Alexandra said, “Hey, I saw it.”

“Me, too,” Murphy said.

“Is that bad?” Alexandra asked.

“Yes,” Michael said with a finality that chilled Caitlin.

Another silence followed, which Caitlin couldn’t stand. “How close is it?” Then she heard a buzzing sound. “Oh, God . . .”

She heard the voice of the other nurse next to her muttering a Hail Mary. Caitlin had never been much of a practicing Catholic, but right at this minute, she thought the nurse had the right idea.

“Okay,” Kyle said, “now, both of you walk toward me
very slowly,
and don’t turn around.”

Caitlin focused all her energy, all her thoughts,
everything
on just putting one foot in front of the other.

Desperately, she tried to think of something—anything—else, but she couldn’t.

But she still hadn’t attacked her, even though it was dark. Alexandra and the doctor had seen it when the elevator door opened—Caitlin had been too busy running out of it—so that explained why the nurse had been victimized when she strayed. But Caitlin had been safe.

It had to be only a few more feet.

One foot in front of the other.

She could do this.

“I didn’t—”

That was the nurse.

It was followed by a blood-curdling scream that made Michael’s cry when he got the syringe of sedative sound like a whimper.

The crunching sound that followed made Caitlin’s heart beat so fast she feared it would burst through her rib cage.

“Keep your eyes closed, and keep coming, Cat,” Kyle said.“Nothing’s changed.”

Caitlin had a hard time accepting that fact. The nurse—Caitlin didn’t even know her name, didn’t even
like
her that much—was dead. She had seen dead bodies before, of course, starting with Kyle’s own mother in the body bag all those years ago.

But she’d never had anyone be killed right in front of her before.

“Just come to my voice.”

She wanted to scream.

She wanted to run away.

She wanted to die.

Instead, she put one foot in front of the other, kept her eyes ruthlessly screwed shut, and moved toward Kyle’s voice.

“That’s it, Caitlin. Almost.”

Arms reached out and grabbed her in a comforting hug. She opened her eyes to see Kyle, his face unreadable, as it was backlit by the hallway light.

“Can we get out of here now?”

“Works for me,” Kyle muttered.

Kyle led the way into the stairwell. Caitlin followed, holding Michael’s hand, with Murphy and Alexandra bringing up the rear.

That was where the other nurse had been before she—

Caitlin forced herself not to think about it.

Not to think about the crunching of bone and the rending of flesh that cut the horrible scream off in mid—

She forced herself not to think about it while she wasn’t thinking about it.

The stairwell had three distinct pools of light. They were standing in one of them. There was one in the middle and another at the bottom of the stairs, right in front of the rear entrance to the hospital.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Caitlin muttered.

To make matters worse, the pools were getting smaller as the emergency generator continued to run down.

“Okay,” Kyle said after surveying the terrain, “Caitlin goes first with Michael, then the rest of us jump it.”

“Jump
it?” Murphy asked. “Are you crazy?”

“Yup,” Kyle said calmly. “Give me your coat.”

Murphy stared at Kyle for a moment. Then, apparently deciding that Kyle knew what was going on more than he did—an admission Caitlin was quite sure Murphy found difficult—he shrugged out of his white lab coat and handed it to Kyle.

He put the lab coat on Caitlin and said, “Carry Michael under this, and just walk straight across the dark like you did upstairs, okay?”

She nodded. That actually made a certain amount of sense. She was immune to the monster as long as she didn’t see it, and she could keep Michael safe.

At least, that sounded good in theory.

Michael climbed into her arms, and then she wrapped the lab coat around him.

“Just a walk in the park, right?” she said, trying desperately to sound confident and failing miserably.

“Yeah, Jurassic Park,” Murphy muttered.

Closing her eyes, she slowly took the steps one at a time.

This time, she didn’t hear anything. It was all drowned out by the sound of her own heart, which was going about a thousand beats a second.

One step. Then the next. Then the next.

But she took solace in it. After all, if her heart was beating, it meant she was still alive.

Which was more than the nurse or Ray or, if Kyle was to be believed, the city police squad could say.

Another step. Then another.

Michael shuddered in her arms. She took solace in
that
as well. You can’t shudder when you’re dead.

Finally, her feet found flat ground. She had reached the bottom.

Relieved, she opened her eyes to find herself standing in a pool of light right by the back entrance. She let Michael drop to the ground as she took the oversized lab coat off. Looking at Kyle, Alexandra, and Murphy at the top of the stairs, she gave them a thumbs-up.

Murphy looked at Kyle. “Is there any way she can come back and carry us over?”

Both Kyle and Alexandra gave him a look that indicated that they weren’t even going to dignify that with a reply.

“I didn’t think so.” Murphy sighed.

“We all jump together,” Kyle said. “Give it multiple targets.”

Alexandra blew out a breath. “Great plan,” she muttered.

“If you have a better one, now’s the time.”

Nobody had a better plan.

“Then let’s do it.”

They each backed up as far as they could to get a running start.

“On three. One, two—”

They ran to the edge of the pool of light at the top of the stairs and jumped as Kyle finished.
“Three!”

For an instant, Caitlin lost sight of them.

She heard another blood-curdling scream just as Murphy and Kyle landed in the middle of the staircase.

Caitlin closed her eyes and forced herself not to cry as she heard Alexandra’s scream cut off by the same awful crunching sound that had ended the other nurse’s screams forever.

Ray. A jackass, but still not a bad person by any means.

The nurse. Another jackass, but she was just doing her job. She didn’t deserve to die just by the bad luck of being near the rest of them.

All the cops. Good men and women who had protected Darkness Falls.

And now Alexandra. She had been nice to Michael and helped Caitlin help Alfred the cat.

And who knew how many others?

Maybe Kyle’s mom?

This had to stop.

Murphy was going into shock again. “Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit—”

“We got one more. Ready?” Kyle was maddeningly calm.

“No, I’m not
ready!”
Murphy screamed, anger replacing shock, which was probably all for the best, as anger was more conducive to his continued survival. “Didn’t you see what just
happened?
If we jump again, one of us isn’t going to make it!”

“You’re right.”

Murphy blinked, as if he was expecting something else. “ ‘You’re right’?
That’s
your great motivational speech?”

“We go on three.” Kyle may as well have been talking about a softball game for all the emotion in his voice.

Compartmentalization again. Or maybe he really was completely crazy.

“Okay,” Murphy said. “Shit. Okay. On three.”

Again, they got back as far as they could for a running start.

“One, two—”

They started to run forward.

“Three!”

Again, Caitlin lost sight of them for an instant.

Again, a scream, just as a person landed in the pool of light.

It was Murphy.

Then Kyle’s head and arms poked into the light as he slammed into the floor.

Instinctively, Caitlin reached for him, grabbing his arms, trying to pull the rest of his body to safety in the light.

A screeching noise came from the darkness, and then Caitlin saw it.

Saw
her.

Because it was most definitely a “she.” It may not have been human, but it looked as if it might have been once. And it was definitely female.

Then another screech, and she felt tremendous pain in her arm as the demon woman tore into her flesh and then knocked her aside, away from Kyle.

Most of Kyle’s body was still in the darkness.

The creature started to pounce . . .

sixteen

Matt Henry had seen some weird shit in his time as a cop, but tonight definitely took the cake.

He’d dealt with everything from rabid dogs to bar fights to easy-to-solve homicides. He still remembered the time old Philbert Quinn took his shotgun and blew away his television when the Red Sox were eliminated in the 1999 playoffs by the Yankees—except he missed the TV and killed his wife instead. Then there was Marcus Robertson, who took to ending a night of drunken revelry at Bennigan’s by stripping to his birthday suit and wandering the parking lot shouting, “I’m buck nekkid!” at the top of his lungs, a predilection that no amount of incarceration or AA sessions had been able to curtail.

And he’d dealt with all the missing persons and child homicides that remained in the ever-growing piles of unsolved cases.