Malice (23 page)

Four cats and nearly a half dozen dogs, stacked one on top of the other. One of them looked disturbingly like a Siberian Husky. His face twisted sourly when he realized the husky was probably Mrs. Grady’s dog. The one Small had come asking about on that first day they met. The eyes gazed at him and he turned away. Beside it was the shepherd Lysander had seen him dragging across his lawn that night.

On a set of shelves to his left were vials filled with a cloudy liquid. Inside were pale, almost translucent body parts. He couldn’t tell if they were human or animal.

Before him was a raised platform draped with a black sheet. It might have been an altar or an operating theatre.

And on this altar was the body of a dead rabbit. White fur stained red. Its insides were torn out. Lysander leaned closer. The brown patch of fur on its head he recognized: the same kind of patch Necra had, and the sudden stinging certainty filled him with rage. His hands curled into fists.

You sick fuck! You sick motherfuck!

In his mind he could hear the reverend’s laughter.

A knife lay on the table. He forced himself to examine the blade. For a tantalizing second, his spirits rose. Was this the weapon that murdered Derek and the others? If it was, he would snatch it and present it as evidence. But it was a small paring knife and not the large one he had seen the reverend use before. Muttering to himself, he threw it back onto the table with a clatter and tugged out his walkie-talkie. He was about to tell Sam what he had found, about to ask her what he should do with the cat. He paused instead and rested the walkie-talkie on the table. No, that kinda news would only upset her, he knew. He would find the evidence the cops were too incompetent to find on their own and help put this bastard away forever. Through the darkening storm cloud of anger that was rolling over him, Lysander failed to notice the tiny red light on his walkie-talkie flicker and then go out.

When Samantha saw the white Cadillac drive down the street and then pull into the driveway, she felt the hairs on her neck stand on end. She fumbled inside the deep pocket of the fur coat and came out with the walkie-talkie.

The reverend got out of his car and stood there, looking up toward a second-floor window.

She struggled to keep her voice cool and collected. “Lysander, he’s back! Lysander!”

It was too dark to tell for sure what Small had or hadn’t seen, but something about the way he was staring told Samantha it wasn’t an overflowing eave that had caught his attention.

The reverend started briskly toward the back of the house.

Sam began to panic. She said urgently, “Oh God, Lysander. Can you hear me?”

The reverend reached the fence at the rear of the house, and when he turned, his eyes raked the overgrowth.

She dropped to the ground. Had she been too loud? He must have heard her, she was sure of it. But her body was abuzz with adrenaline, and it was difficult to be certain. He stood at the edge of the woods now, scanning. She lowered herself even more and held her breath. If he started running after her, she didn’t know what she’d do: die of fright or trip over the long-ass jacket she was wearing. Jittery laughter trickled out of her and she clapped a hand over her mouth. When she was sure the feeling had passed, she peered out again and saw that he was gone. She spoke into the walkie-talkie:

“Lysander, if you can hear me, get out now. He’s coming inside the house. He knows you’re there.”

The ninety seconds that followed were the most agonizing of Samantha Crow’s life.

She bit her nails furiously, spitting out black polish in clumps.

I can’t just leave him in there.

She sprang to her feet and made her way to the reverend’s back door. It was swaying back and forth when she found it. She stepped tentatively into the darkness. She let her hand slide along the wall to guide her. First over smooth painted walls, then to a doorway and a new room. She came to a set of wooden cupboards and heard a sudden clank and a rattle as she hit a rack of kitchen knives suspended from a magnetic track. She groped at the knives, removing what felt like the largest one, gripping it in her right hand. Her breathing must have sounded like a violent gale screaming through a deep canyon, broadcasting her location to everyone in the house. But she was inside now, and there was no turning back. On her right, she found a flight of stairs that led to the second floor and past that, a living room cluttered with old furniture draped in white sheets.

Her eyes were beginning to adjust.

Somewhere in the house, a grandfather clock was clanging. It chimed ten times, deep and hollow. She stood suspended, clutching the knife.

She noticed a shadow at the end of the hallway. Fear slipped around her neck like a noose and cinched tightly. She waited, staring.

The shadow didn’t move.

She blinked and still it remained.

Had she not seen a coat rack in the hallway with a long garment hanging from one of the hooks? And hadn’t it been in the corner, between what she thought was a bathroom and an office? The dark mass took on the form of a coat rack and the realization that her mind was spinning her in circles helped to ease her fear. The grip on the knife in her hand slackened a little.

She could hear movement upstairs. A warm trickle of light was coming from one of the rooms.

“Lysander,” she called out softly, hesitantly.

The sound of rustling footsteps. But not from upstairs.

She glanced down the hallway and a hot panic gripped her.

The coat rack was gone.

She looked behind her and screamed when she saw the face.

A closed fist struck the side of her head, knocking her off her feet. Samantha stumbled backward, hitting the small of her back against one of the risers. A flash of pain shot up her spinal column. Hands grabbed her ankle and yanked her down the stairs. Panic blunted the pain and she lashed out with her feet and then swung wildly with the knife until she managed to break free. She sprang frantically to her feet and reached for the banister. She was going to run upstairs and shut herself inside the room with the light. Surely Lysander was in there. But before she could get more than a stair length away, a hand closed around a clump of her hair and wrenched it back. Her head snapped, and for one terrible moment her legs dangled in mid-air. She screamed in wretched agony and her voice redounded through the house as she crashed onto the tiled floor.

He was standing above her now and she could see him clearly.

The light from a passing car outside turned the reverend’s face into a skull with two cavernous sockets.

Pain flared high in her right leg. She looked down and saw that the tip of her own knife had bitten into her thigh. The reverend reached behind him and produced a long bone-handle knife. His thin, cracking lips parted with anticipation. She screamed as she tore the knife from her leg and sank it into his left knee where the joint met the kneecap. The knife made a popping sound as it sliced through muscle and tendon. The form wailed and crumpled on top of her, smacking her head onto the hard linoleum tiles, and with that the world faded into darkness.

***

Lysander was just emerging from behind the closet, Necra’s mutilated body cradled in his arms when he heard Samantha’s voice calling him faintly from downstairs.

Then a scream, like a gust of violently cold wind, shot up the stairs. Jesus’ head snapped toward the sound.

Lysander dropped Necra and lunged for the door. Jesus was smiling behind him now.

With a shuddering boom, the door slammed shut in his face. He grasped the knob with both hands, rattling it back and forth. The door was locked. He backed away and lowered his shoulder. He charged the door with his full weight and heard a loud boom and a splintering crack.

He took a step back and went at it again. Any second now the door would give. But the urge to look behind him was becoming too great. He glanced over his shoulder, and in the same instant he wished that he hadn’t.

Jesus’ tiny face was stretched wide with raving madness. He could see the tiny mouth flapping open and shut, and from it came the sound of hissing static. Jesus’ arms began flapping wildly at the elbow. He was trying to free himself, Lysander saw, and the very idea made his throat go bone dry.

Lysander put his shoulder down and ran blindly ahead. He hit the door and it collapsed before him, sending him stumbling onto a bed of splintered wood. He scrambled to his feet and tore downstairs, jumping two risers at a time. At the foot of the stairs lay Samantha: her hair matted and a streak of thick purplish liquid splashed across her face.

No, God. No!

He turned her over. Her eyes sprang open: two peeled grapes in a sea of blackness. And with a chilling scream she swung the bone-handle knife at his face.

***

The reverend was standing over her, shaking her. The knife was somehow still in her hand, and she shrieked as she swung it at him again. She missed, but she knew he had felt the wind against his face. The reverend was screaming for her to stop. The very idea of him pleading confused her. Something different about his voice deepened her bewilderment. Slowly, Lysander’s face, pale and terrified came into focus. The tension went out of her like air out of a balloon, and she fell back to the floor with a dull thump. Lysander bent down, slid his hands underneath her and grunted as he heaved her up and over his shoulder. His frame staggered for a moment as he took her weight onto him and then stabilized as he began moving sluggishly toward the front door.

A trail of spattered blood led off toward the kitchen.

“I got him,” Samantha said hoarsely. “I nailed that bastard!”

She could hear Lysander fumbling with the locks on the front door. In her dazed state it sounded to Samantha like there were dozens of them.

“Oh, please hurry up!” she begged him.

The reverend came around the corner like an angel of death. Black suit. Pale, dead face. His left pant leg was turned up at the knee and dressed with a tattered and bloodstained dishrag. In his right hand he carried a long knife. His left tugged at his pant leg, nudging it forward like a sack of rotting food.

Bent over Lysander’s shoulder, Samantha felt her heart catch in her throat. “Oh God, Lysander, he’s coming!”

The locks were a chaotic mass of confusion. Some turned and clicked, others just spun round and round in useless circles. His mind was racing. ‘The big tall ship goes round and round. Round and round. Round and round …’ He shifted Sam’s weight on his shoulder and nearly fell backwards.

With sickening dread, the thought of Jeffrey Dahmer came to him. The serial killer had used a host of dummy locks to confuse his victims as they tried to flee.

Samantha was wiggling so much now he was certain he would drop her. His trembling hands fumbled over the locks.

“Lysander!”

He looked back and what he saw made him blanch. The reverend was ten feet away, limping toward them determinedly. His face a mask of sick pleasure. His lunatic eyes wide and pallid. Lysander reached the bottom lock and turned it. It rotated and clicked. The reverend raised his knife and brought it down, cutting through the air. Samantha screamed. The door began to open and then stopped abruptly. There was a chain Lysander hadn’t seen. The blade bit into hard oak, not an inch from Lysander’s right ear. The reverend struggled to free it as Lysander, still carrying Sam, staggered away.

They got maybe fifteen feet before Lysander felt his legs give in.

“Can you walk?” he screamed.

“Maybe ...”

Lysander stopped and leaned forward. Samantha stumbled onto her feet. They were heading for the kitchen, the way they’d come in, but the reverend was ready for this. He had gone around the other way to cut off their escape. He stepped out in front of them. Lysander skidded to a stop and they ran the other way.

Samantha’s voice was electrified with fear. “We’re trapped!”

Through the dimness, Lysander made out a room down the hallway. It had a window, he was sure of it. They could barricade themselves in and break the glass.

“This way!” he shouted.

She followed, staggering behind him.

They slipped inside and slammed the door. They hadn’t bothered to check whether the reverend was behind them or not. Lysander leaned against the door. Beads of perspiration rolled down his forehead blotting his vision. Both of them breathing heavily.

Throbbing pain thumped in every part of Sam’s body. She looked down at her right thigh and saw the hole in her jeans where the knife had stung her. Her entire leg felt like it was on fire.

Lysander’s eyes were adjusting to the dimness of the room. There was no window, only three walls cluttered with old photographs.

He cursed under his breath.

Sam came near. “I don’t hear him. Do you think he’s still out there?”

Lysander tried listening, but deathly silence reigned outside.

“There’s no way out of here,” he said gravely. “Except through this door.” He scanned their surroundings. “Sam, check for a phone. We’ll call your dad.”