Endless Night (2 page)

Evelyn swung her legs down from the mattress. She stood up and took a long stride to step over Jody’s chest.

“You’re really going?” Not waiting for an answer, Jody said, “I’ll go with you.” As soon as Evelyn was out of the way, she sat up. Evelyn kept walking. “Hold it. Jeez.”

She stopped and waited.

On her feet, Jody asked, “Do you have a robe I can wear?”

“I thought you were supposed to be hot.”

“I am hot. But what if Andy’s up and around?”

“Don’t worry, he’s not. Nothing wakes him up.”

Evelyn pressed a shoulder against her bedroom door and turned the knob. When she stepped back to pull the door open, Jody did a quick shuffle to avoid being stepped on.

Evelyn swung the door open wide.

And grunted.

Jody heard a quick, wet punch.

Something poked her belly. She sucked in her breath, drawing in a stench like week-dead rat, and stumbled backward as Evelyn seemed to leap straight up in the middle of the doorway. But it wasn’t a leap. On her best day ever, she couldn’t have leaped so high. Her head struck the top of the door frame.

This isn’t happening, Jody thought.

No.

Huh-uh.

No way.

But she could feel a small trickle of blood sliding down her belly. Untouched by her loose hanging nightshirt, it dribbled on downward to her groin. It felt very real.

So did the blood she heard splashing as it fell from Evelyn. Very real.

And the stink of rot was real, too. For a few days last summer, Jody had smelled much the same disgusting odor after a rat had died behind a bathroom wall at home. Dad hadn’t been willing to demolish the wall to retrieve the carcass. So they’d had to wait it out.

This smells just like death.

This can’t be happening.

Evelyn hung there limp, head drooping sideways, bare feet nowhere close to the floor, a blob of darkness growing on the back of her nightgown. From the middle of the blob protruded a pointed silver tongue.

Before Jody could make sense of what she was seeing, Evelyn glided away from the doorway and vanished into the corridor.

Jody stood frozen.

She couldn’t move or scream. She couldn’t breathe.

The shape in the darkness looked like a man. A big man. An obese man. His pale head was smooth, probably hairless. Though somehow he didn’t seem to be naked, every part of him that Jody could see had the same gray hue as his head.

The act of swinging Evelyn’s body away from the doorway had turned him sideways.

Jody couldn’t see the shaft in his hands. She knew it had to be there, though. Maybe six feet long.

Her best friend was hoisted on its point.

As she watched, numb, the man marched off.

He didn’t see me!

Oh my God, oh my God! He doesn’t know I’m here! Evelyn was standing in the way, and ...

I’ve gotta get out of here!

But then she wondered if it might be safer to hide. No. Maybe he’ll be back. Maybe he’ll search the whole house. Maybe he’ll set it on fire before he leaves.

Gotta run!

Get dressed first? She
wanted
to get dressed. In just the nightshirt, she felt exposed and vulnerable.

But what if he comes back while I
’m ... ?

Besides, there was money in a front pocket of her jeans—a whole handful of coins. Bound to jingle if she picked up the jeans.

Gotta just go. The hell with my clothes.

She crept forward. Crouching, she peered around the door-frame.

The man with Evelyn was halfway to the end of the hall, framed by a yellow glow that came from the lighted doorway of the master bedroom.

The rotten odor had faded, but still hung in the air, sweet and filthy.

It’s him, Jody realized.

How can he smell like that?

I don’t want to know, she told herself.

He looked as wide as a refrigerator. He seemed to be dressed in shaggy scraps and tatters that swayed with the motion of his lumbering walk. He carried Evelyn in front of him, on the end of his spear, her head near the ceiling.

As he neared the lighted doorway, he lowered her slightly. He swung her to the right. He marched her into the bedroom, followed and disappeared.

They’re all dead! Evelyn, her mom and dad—Andy? What about Andy?

The boy’s door, straight across the hall from Jody, was shut.

She glanced both ways, then scurried for his door on hands and knees.

He would be no help to her. She knew that. What help could a twelve-year-old kid be in a situation like this? Especially a kid Andy’s size. But she didn’t want his help. She wanted to get him out of the house.

A terrible thing to wake him, though. It might be a kindness to let him sleep, safe from the knowledge that his family had been destroyed.

She would be waking him up into something too horrible to understand.

She knew that she might not be able to save him, anyway.

They might both end up getting killed.

She would stand a better chance of survival, herself, if she let him sleep and made her break alone.

What the hell, she thought.

A voice inside her head, sounding very much like her father, told Jody,
Go for broke, honey.

Reaching up, she gripped the door knob. She turned it. The latch gave out a
tunk
that made her wince. She pushed the door. As it swung inward, she crawled into Andy’s dark bedroom.

She got to her feet and eased the door shut.

Leaning back against it, she tried to catch her breath.

In this room, the curtains were shut. Blurred smears of light glowed along their edges. Jody could see little more than the vague shape of Andy’s bed. She couldn’t even be sure the boy was in it.

She listened. She heard the wild pounding of her own heartbeat. And she heard Andy breathing.

Slow, easy breathing.

He’s either asleep or faking it, Jody thought.

From somewhere in the distance came a sound of quiet music. The main song from Cats. Was it coming from Mr. & Mrs. Clark’s bedroom? Had that monster turned on their radio ?

What’s he doing in there?

“Andy?” she whispered.

No answer.

She didn’t dare turn on a light.

Bending over and sweeping her arms from side to side, she made her way carefully toward the bed. Her bare feet pushed into a soft heap of blanket on the floor. Her hands found the top sheet. Following the edge of the mattress, she sidestepped along the end of the bed, then up its side.

She sat down on the mattress. She reached toward the middle and lowered her hand. It settled on warm, bare skin.

Andy’s chest. She felt it rise against her hand as he inhaled. She felt his heartbeat.

What if it’s not Andy? What if it’s someone like ...

Of course it’s Andy, she told herself.

“Andy?” she whispered. She jostled his chest.

“Mmmm.”

“It’s me. It’s Jody. You’ve got to wake up.”

“Hmmm?”

She found his lips with her other hand. “It’s all right. Just don’t yell or anything.”

“Jody?” His voice sounded husky. “It’s you? It’s really you? Oh, man.”

“Somebody’s in the house.”

“What?”

“We’ve gotta get out.”

“Who’s in the house?”

“Some kind of—I don’t know. A maniac.”

“We’ve got a
maniac
in the house?” He sounded more astonished than alarmed. “You mean like Freddy or Jason or something?”

“I mean the real thing.”

“Where?”

“Never mind. Let’s go.” She gave his chest a gentle slap, then stood up.

“Jody?”

“We’ve gotta hurry.”

“Before the
maniac
comes for us?” She couldn’t see his face. From his tone of voice, however, she suspected that his initial confusion was gone. He sounded as if he might be aiming a sneer at her.

“I’m not kidding, Andy.”

“Yeah, sure. Man, you had me going for a second. Just for a second, though. Man. Thanks a lot. I’m really amused.” And then he bolted upright on his bed and shouted, “REALLY AMUSED, EVELYN. HA HA HA!”

Jody felt as if she had been kicked in the heart.

“Shut up!” she cried out in a hoarse whisper. “What’re you
doing?
You just got us killed!”

Chapter Two

“Oh, come on,” Andy muttered. “You can quit your little game. I’m used to Evelyn pulling junk on me, but I thought you were better than ...”

His voice stopped when Jody slapped the light switch. She whirled around.

Andy squinted against the brightness from the ceiling bulb. “Hey.” He was sitting cross-legged on his bed, covered to the waist by a white sheet.

“What’ve you got?” Jody asked.

“Huh?”

“A knife? You got a pocket knife or ... ?” She spotted a baseball bat propped against a comer near his window. She ran for it.

“Jody!”

“He’s coming!” Unless maybe he didn’t hear Andy’s yell. With the bedroom door shut and the music going down in the other room, maybe ...

“Who’s coming?”

“The killer!” She grabbed up the bat with both hands. A Louisville Slugger.

“Hey, come on. Cut it out.”

As she rushed for his bedroom door, she warned, “You’d better get up.”

“Oh, sure. I’m not wearing anything, in case my dumb sister forgot to tell you.”

She swiped at the switch. Darkness clamped the room.

“Thanks,” Andy said.

“Shhhh.” Jody raised the bat overhead. It was a good, solid bat, but not awfully heavy. Certainly not heavy enough to make the muscles of her arms tremble and flutter this way.

She listened.

To her heartbeat and fast breathing. To a sigh from Andy.

She heard no sound of music. She heard no footsteps.

Maybe he left. Maybe he left before Andy shouted.

But she didn’t think so. That would be too good to be true. Like waking up and realizing all this had been a nightmare.
You’re not gonna get off that
easy. This was bad stuff, worse than she had ever imagined possible, and she knew somehow that the worst was ahead.

If only I had my pistol. Just a little .22, but ...

“Evelyn’s gonna bust through the door in a mask, isn’t she? That spooky one she got last Halloween.”

What’ll it feel like, getting a spear through the guts?

This is what I get for trying to help someone, she thought. And then she felt ashamed of herself.

Dad does this stuff every day.

God, if only he were here now!

That’s just what Evelyn had said, she remembered. And a couple of minutes later, the spear had picked her up.

It got me, too, she realized. The same point.

Just a little poke. She could feel the wound now, a small sore place just below her navel and a little bit to the right.

Got me after going all the way through Evelyn.

“Jesus,” she murmured.

“What?”

“Nothing. You’d better get dressed.”

“I’m not moving. If I start to get dressed, you’ll turn the light on. Where’s Evelyn? What’s she doing, hiding someplace with a camera?”

He’ll lose his attitude fast, Jody thought, if I tell him she’s dead.

No, he’ll think it’s part of the gag.

Besides, she couldn’t tell him. She knew she couldn’t force herself to say the words.

What’s taking the goddamn monster so long?

Maybe he isn’t coming. Maybe he’s gone.

Fat chance.

What am I doing here?

Waiting and bleeding, she thought.

Correction, not bleeding. From the feel of things, the wound had quit leaking. There seemed to be a single strip of blood, no longer going anywhere but making her skin itchy underneath it. The strip went down from the wound to the hollow at the top of her leg, then ran along the hollow at a downward angle to her groin.

Now that she was thinking about it, the itch got worse.

She wanted to rub it and wipe the blood away.

Her hands were busy holding the baseball bat overhead.

Just my luck, the second I let go ...

The door swung slowly inward.

Jody caught a whiff of the death stink. She held her breath.

As the door opened more, a dim mist of light spread across the room. The edge of light found Andy’s bed, crept toward him, revealed him sitting cross-legged.

His mouth fell open.

His back straightened.

He began to make a quiet, very high-pitched humming sound, a soft whine of panic as if he ached to scream but didn’t dare.

A shadow blotted out the fan of dull light.

A floorboard in front of Jody creaked.

Go for broke, hon!

She chopped the Slugger down with all her might.

She’d played enough hardball with her dad to know the sound and feel of a good hit with the fat of the bat. This was a very good hit. This was a home run.

The thock of the blow was followed by a grunt, then muffled thumps which Jody figured were the man’s knees hitting the carpeted floor, then a softer sound which had to be his torso landing, then another thump—his face making contact.

Jody swept her forearm up the wall until it flipped up the light switch.

The man lay face down, motionless on the carpet. The top of his hairless head was a collapsed, bleeding gully.

Jody shut the door fast.

“Oh, God!” Andy blurted. He was standing near the foot of his bed, prancing on the mattress to keep his balance, clutching a pillow to his groin. “Oh, God, what’s going on? Look at him! Look at him!”

Jody stood over the intruder, holding her bat high, ready to strike again if he should move.

He had come in with a machete, not a spear. It was still in his hand. Its blade was smeared with blood. Blood also speckled and smudged both his arms, his back and rump and legs.

“Hit him again,” Andy said.

“Shhh.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Everything,” Jody whispered. “It isn’t him.”

“Huh?”

“It isn’t him. This guy’s skinny.”

“Look at his butt.”