Killing Red (2 page)

The night that Grubb buried Annie Sykes he watched and waited behind a cover of young trees. For more than forty-five minutes the child did not move, and Grubb could easily have assumed she was dead. But somehow the killer knew that wasn’t the case.

Grubb didn’t make a habit of sticking around after disposing of his victims, and none of the other bodies were dealt with in such a public manner. Annie was different. She had been more resistant and stubborn than the others. From the moment he’d snatched the ten-year-old, there was something about her he found unsettling.

Annie wasn’t buried in the traditional sense. Grubb had taken her limp body to a clearing in a small patch of woods a couple of miles from his house. There he opened a hole in the cold dirt just big enough to fit the child in head first, past her shoulders and almost up to her elbows, but not all the way in. He then meticulously fastened her head to the ground by putting a dog collar around her neck and securing it with tent spikes. But that was just a precaution and a bit of symbolism. The job of terminating Grubb’s tenth victim belonged to what should have been a lethal mixture of depressants that he’d injected into Annie’s thin veins.

From the withering tree branches above, to the lifeless autumn soil below, death was at home in this place. Something about that gave Grubb a rare feeling of tranquility. A sense of relief was slowly beginning to come over him as the minutes passed and he detected no movement that would suggest the child was still breathing. That changed when he saw Annie’s small body twitch.

At first, Grubb told himself it was just a trick of the full moon’s light. He had carefully measured out the right amount of each of the three drugs, then added a little more. But she twitched again, then again, and Kenny Lee Grubb was frightened for one of the few times in his life.

A curtain of sweat gathered along Grubb’s brow, though he was anything but warm. He quietly circled around the edge of the woods as the child struggled to free herself, too spooked by the way she appeared to have come back to life to get any closer. Then suddenly she was free. When she rose from the dirt, Grubb became convinced he was watching a ghost. He had believed all along that this child was more evil than the others, and this confirmed it.

Of the many images in Grubb’s life that would haunt anyone else, the one that lingered most was of Annie Sykes standing in that field, covered in dried blood and fresh dirt. She looked around, then looked in his direction. Pretending she didn’t see him, Grubb thought. Toying with him. Evil.

With as little movement as possible, he searched the area immediately around him until he found what he was looking for. Autumn was only a few weeks old, but dead leaves had already covered much of the thick, three-foot length of broken branch that lay just beyond Grubb’s reach.

He took a cautious step in its direction, while keeping his eyes on the child, then leaned down and picked up the heavy shaft of cold wood. Grubb squeezed his makeshift weapon until his palms burned, and he liked the way that felt.

Then he tightened his grip even more and began searching for the best angle from which to attack.

Annie’s mind was racing with questions. What time was it? How long had she been there? Why did someone bury her head in the ground? Maybe the rest of her didn’t fit. Maybe someone needed a bigger shovel to open a larger hole for the rest of her. In that case, they’d be back. Soon.

Where was she? She removed enough dirt from her eyes to be able to look around and see it was a clear night, but none of what she saw looked familiar. Maybe she was in a faraway place, or it could be she was in the backyard of that house.

Wait, what house? She remembered. The one where the man who always smelled like he’d been sweating a lot had taken her. Annie thought that she’d seen the same tall man at her school a few times. Now she remembered more things about him. Things that she never wanted to think about again.

Annie decided that she wasn’t going to be scared any more. Just like her dad had taught her when she was younger, and couldn’t go to sleep without a night-light because she was certain there were monsters in the world, and something horrible hiding in the dark. She’d reluctantly accepted her father’s view that the monsters were created in her mind, and learned how to take charge of her fear and gradually make it go away.

It was time to shove those fears aside and go home. But she stood up too quickly, and pain flared across her chest. In the moonlight, Annie saw that the front of her dress was stained dark brown with dirt and sweat. It was the same dress she’d been wearing since the last time she was home. For a moment Annie worried her mother might get angry with her for ruining it. She tried to pull the cloth away from her cold skin, but that hurt more than anything.

Annie looked down at her bare feet and saw that the hole her head had been buried in wasn’t as deep as she’d expected. The spikes that pinned the collar to the ground were barely visible. Only a small portion of each was exposed, the rest had been swallowed up by dirt. Annie knew she could never have pulled them out, and was proud of herself for having figured out another way.

The clearing she was standing in was surrounded by what looked like a forest. The onset of fall had not yet stripped the trees all the way down to their skeletal limbs. A fierce wind blowing though the leaves startled her. Then she heard a sound that was not made by the wind. Then another.

She was not alone.

Annie thought about trying to stand as perfectly still as she could and maybe whoever or whatever was out there would not see her. A crackling sound, then another, closer, and Annie knew she had to start running—now.

To her left, Annie saw a small opening through a collection of thin trees. She ran faster, until the wind was rushing past her face. As she weaved through the narrow trail, a tangle of unforgiving, sharp branches tore at her bare ankles. Ignoring the pain, she headed for a path just a little to her right. Every few strides, one of her feet would land on something coarse, but Annie knew she couldn’t let that slow her down.

Annie wanted to look back, but thought better of it. Then she realized that whatever was after her wasn’t trailing behind, it was just on the other side of a long row of trees on her right. It was running
with
her, no more than thirty feet away.

Nothing that her mom or dad had ever taught Annie could keep her from being afraid now. Why did Dad send her into that store all by herself? Was it because he believed Annie was old enough, or because he didn’t want to interrupt the conversation he was having on his phone? Why had he left Annie unprotected, giving that man the chance to talk a young girl into going to the storage room, then out the back door?

Can’t think about that now. It’s getting closer
.

Out of the corner of her eye Annie thought she saw the monster cut through the row of trees and move in behind her. Without slowing down, Annie allowed herself a quick glance back, and saw she was right. Whatever was chasing her appeared to be made of shadows and night. It was tall and fast, and Annie thought she’d seen that one arm was longer than the other. But then she understood what she’d really seen. The monster was holding something long and thick up over its head. And it was closing in on Annie—fast.

Annie felt the footsteps closely tracing her own, and realized she could not outrun it. There was no place to duck into, no gap in the bushes and trees, so Annie decided to make an opening. She rushed into a tiny space between two thick bushes, kept her balance, and pushed through what seemed like a forest of angry branches, until she finally came to a clearing on the other side.

She willed herself to run faster than she ever had before, but nearly tripped over her own feet. Through the muck that the sweat from her brow had carried into her eyes Annie saw a building in the distance, beyond the scattered lights of a parking lot. Running toward the first sign of civilization she had seen in a long time, Annie thought she heard the monster yell something, but couldn’t make out what it was and didn’t care.

Monsters trick you with their lies.

The building was getting closer now, and beyond it Annie saw a row of homes, but nothing that she recognized. As she came up around the side of the building, Annie realized that the noises of the night, real and imagined, were gone. She heard her heavy breathing, then the sound of her small wounded feet slapping the pavement.

A moment later she was standing under the large well-lit sign above the door. It was the kind of small store her mom and dad shopped at when it was late and they needed to get something after all the other places had closed. She couldn’t remember ever seeing this one before, though.

When she reached the doors, Annie turned and looked back toward the woods for the first time. She could barely make out a vague shape within the darkness of the trees. And though she could not see its face, Annie was certain the monster was staring back at her.

Dominic Delacruz wasn’t supposed to be at the store that Tuesday, the one he would refer to as
That Night,
for the rest of his life. One of his workers had called in sick, another needed to leave early, and he didn’t like his son to work on school nights. That meant Dominic had to fill in until his replacement arrived at 5:00
A.M
.

It was just shy of midnight, and he had almost finished stocking the magazine rack when he noticed the small figure standing outside the store, just beyond the reach of the automatic door sensor. Moving closer, Dominic saw it was a girl in a dress, and he immediately knew something wasn’t right. Her long hair appeared to be matted down, like something was covering it, and she wasn’t wearing a coat, though it could not have been more than thirty-five degrees out there.

The fact that she was alone was certainly unusual, but Dominic figured that the girl had probably raced her father or mother from the car to the door. Or maybe something was wrong.

She wasn’t moving, just standing in place. Though Dominic was free of superstitions, he decided at that moment that if ghosts really did exist, this child could be the genuine article.

That thought chilled him to the core.

Walking toward the front, he was just a few feet from the door when the child abruptly turned and quickly entered the store. She stopped when she saw Dominic, and he froze at the sight of her stained dress and muddy legs.

Through the dirt that covered her head he could see patches of what appeared to be vibrant red hair. He instinctively reached forward and wiped some of the filth from the girl’s face, then stopped, thinking that some of this might be evidence of a crime.

“I need your help,” she said suddenly, though it seemed like getting those few words out was hard work for the child.

Dominic squatted down to her eye level.

“What is your name?”

“I need your help,” she repeated, and looked back toward the door. This time Dominic saw the terror in her eyes. He could almost feel her fear, and realized whatever was happening might not yet be over.

Dominic touched her arms and was stunned by how cold they were, as though she’d been lying in a grave. He took off his work smock and wrapped it around her shoulders. That’s when he noticed the deep scratches on the child’s arms and how the dress stuck to her trembling body in those areas where it seemed to be painted a shiny dark brown.

He stared at the wounded child for a moment until he thought he saw something move outside of the store. Dominic slowly walked in the direction of the movement, each step measured. He stopped before reaching the automatic door sensor, and carefully studied the area just outside the front of his store, but saw only darkness beyond the parking lot lights. There had been several frightening nights back when he owned a store in Chicago, but nothing that had prepared him for this.

Dominic thought about taking the child into the back room, hidden away from whoever might still be out there. But he didn’t want to let her out of his sight. So he walked her to the narrow stretch behind the counter and told her to sit down on the floor, which she did without hesitation.

After another long look in the direction of the parking lot, Dominic reached into a small drawer under the register, pulled out the .44, and checked to make sure it was loaded. Dominic knew that whoever had done such terrible things to this little girl would be looking for her, and maybe already knew exactly where she was.

He dialed 9-1-1, and did his best to explain what was happening. After he hung up, Dominic wondered if he should offer her some ice cream, or anything. That could wait.

“You’ll be all right now,” he said to the girl without taking his eyes off the door or loosening his grip on the gun.

That was sixteen years ago, and not a night has gone by since without Dominic thinking about that frightened, broken little girl. Sometimes, when he’s alone at the store late at night and the door opens, it startles him for just a moment and he imagines that she’s about to walk in again.

Then Dominic goes home and prays for the gift of forgetting. But that prayer never gets answered.