DARK THRILLERS-A Box Set of Suspense Novels (57 page)

All vestiges of the dream world disappeared, wiped from consciousness. Karl's concentration narrowed. All his senses clicked into overdrive. His hearing was acute, his eyes saw everything—the gun in his hand, the sheen of sweat on his forearm, his bare feet moving over the polished wood floor, the doorway he approached, especially the doorway, a maw opening into pitch dark.

He could hear his footsteps crossing the floor, but overriding those secretive sounds was his heart, racketing fast as a jackhammer in his ears.

He put his back to the wall next to the door, the gun held before him and pointing to the ceiling. Suddenly he felt incredibly stupid. He felt like an actor playing a part. He had seen cops do this in a hundred movies and cop television shows. Back to the wall beside the door. Gun gripped with both hands, pointing to the ceiling.

God, if he could just get out of this cabin and to the rental car, he'd go to church, he'd take up religion, he'd get married, Jesus, and settle down and never lie with another woman but Lisa again.

Okay, he told himself. Do what the cops do. Play it straight and maybe you'll live to see morning.

He took a deep breath, swung out into the opening and at the same instant reached through the dark for the wall plate and the switch there. He palmed it up. He expected light to fill his eyes, effectively blinding him for a moment. He even blinked in preparation. But darkness held. The electricity had been disconnected in some way. Hell, hell. Jesus, he thought, you're not listening. I thought we had a bargain. I wish you'd fucking listen when sinners beg for your help.

He had the gun pointed forward, swinging back and forth, hunting a target. His finger on the trigger tightened. It was too dark and there were too many shadows. He forced himself to wait. With the gun still and his breath held, he began to make out the dimensions of the room and the objects in it.

The room stood empty. The front door was closed.

Karl's heart stuttered in relief. And then his gaze was drawn back to the door. It eased open, in eerie slowness. A finger of moonlight crept along the floor like an animal sniffing out a lair.

Karl was in motion without thinking, crossing to the door, skirting the back of the sofa, passing the wing chair. His free hand clasped the doorknob and he jerked the door the rest of the way open.

There was no one there. He stared out into abysmal night. A wayward breeze rushed over him, chilling his bare sweaty chest. He shivered, lowering the gun slightly.

Perhaps he had not locked the door before retiring.

The small voice that was his instinct denied that explanation. He hadn't slept with his doors unlocked in years. He never failed to lock doors, most especially since his troubles had begun. Besides, the electricity was off. His enemy was here, he couldn't pretend otherwise, too dangerous to try fooling himself.

He stepped out onto the porch and when he did, the voice spoke. It was modulated and reasonable. It was male. It caused Karl to swivel toward it and pull the trigger without hesitation.

The resounding of the gunshot made his ears ring. He ducked back inside the semi-safety of the threshold. He might have just killed someone and the thought made his knees weak. He held onto the door facing to keep himself steady.

Just as he was about to step out again to find the dead or wounded body, the voice came again, closer.

"Because of you she killed my babies. They were mine."

The accusation was so fantastical, so nonsensical, that Karl lowered his head to think it over. Killed the babies? A man had babies and someone killed them? Because of him?

Had to wrap his mind around this because if he didn't he was lost in the whirlwind.

Then it came to him. It was like the sudden exposure of a cow's carcass in the middle of a ballroom of costumed people. The understanding swept over Karl with such ferocity that he opened his mouth and an utterance of disbelief passed over his lips.

"Catherine," he whispered.

"Catherine got an abortion after she left me. She left me for you. She killed our children for you. Did you think you could run far enough away to lose me? The ends of the earth aren't far enough."

Oh God, who had Cat been dating before him? Why couldn't he think? He knew about the abortion, he'd accused her of an immoral and selfish act in that regard. But he had not known the father. She wouldn't talk of it and he hadn't pressed her. He had convinced himself it was none of his business. That was her life before him. The pregnancy was her mistake and the abortion her decision. Millions of women aborted their pregnancies every year. Some used abortion as a weird form of birth control. Catherine had been pregnant with twins, but he'd had no business to be involved in that part of her life.

"Who are you?" he asked, now easing the door closed until there was but a crack six inches wide that he could hear through. He would not go out into the dark again and chance being the victim in this face-off. He was no cowboy, he wasn't even familiar with this goddamn gun. The Beretta scared the shit out of him. The first shot he had squeezed off had made his heart lurch. He was glad he hadn't killed the stranger on Cam's porch.

"Answer me," he repeated. "Who are you?"

"I'm The Body."

"The body?" Something in Karl's brain recoiled at the idea anyone would reply that way to a straightforward question of identity.

"The Body that floats on the water, dead. Dead. Dead. The Body that was rejected from the cunt's womb. I am the body of revenge for life ended cruelly."

"You're fucking crazy, man. I had nothing to do with Catherine's decision. You're in the wrong universe. Now leave me alone before one of us gets . . . hurt!"

The door slammed in Karl's face, causing his last word to come out a pained shout. His nose broke, crushing the cartilage to the side of his face, and immediately gushing blood. Lightning shot from the middle of his face into the center of his brain. He saw a sharp new sun, as if a floodlight had been turned on behind his eyes, and he couldn't see. He staggered back, bringing his hand up to his nose while at the same time his gun hand was pulling the trigger of the Beretta again and again and again. The shots were like cannons, booming and filling the room, reverberating off his head in successive violent waves. The gun barrel kept jerking up, to the side, down, and up again. He was crazy with fear and blindness and adrenaline.

He heard the man laughing and he swung to where he heard it and emptied the magazine until he was pulling a dead trigger, clicking it and clicking it like some mechanical toy gangster.

He backed up to the sofa. Blood covered his mouth so that when he breathed in a hot copper-tinged river filled his mouth and was spit out again.

Now there was a silence so loud, punctuated by his own gagging and spitting, that he twitched and turned this way and that, hoping for his vision to adjust.

The voice came from behind him. "It's her fault," the man said, and plunged something sharp, something wide, into Karl's flesh at the back of his waist. In that deadly moment, Karl twisted, throwing himself to the side and away, pulling his weight with one hand along the sofa back and the knife caught him in the muscle and fatty tissue, piercing all the way through to the front of him.

Now he jerked forward and the knife slid out, cutting deeper, and he was moving through the room to the bedroom, grabbing for the door, slamming it at his back and throwing his weight against it while he fumbled in the dark for the lock.

A thump hit the door, the body on the other side pushing as if the door had not yet been shut and now Karl had the lock in place.

Refill the magazine of the Beretta, that's what he had to do and fast, if he wanted to live. He ran into the end of the bed, bounced off, felt along it to the nightstand and reached into the open drawer. He had the cardboard casing off the cartridge box. He slumped onto the side of the bed, unmindful now of the blood flowing freely from his nose and the burning in his side. He worked out the magazine in the Beretta, grabbed a hollow-point from the cartridge box, dropped it. Fuck.

Now there were stealthy sounds coming from the locked door to the bedroom and the man on the other side was talking, but Karl wasn't listening. He heard a name, Michelle, and shut out the rest, picking up another hollow-point and managing to get it into the magazine, then another, and one more before he heard the door opening. Three. He had three chances to save himself.

He could see as well now as if the lights had been glowing overhead. He jammed the magazine into the bottom of the gun, turned, pointed, and pulled the trigger.

Once, twice, three times. The shots were right on, aimed perfectly, the gun held steady as the blasts ignited the room with sound, cordite smoke, and death.

The man was almost to the bed when it happened, almost upon Karl, his right hand raised, the knife descending. The hollow-point cartridges drove through gut and chest and knocked the man back, taking him onto his heels and off his feet and finally onto his back on the floor.

Karl rose from the bed, moaning as if he were the one shot, and went to his knees beside the prone body. He saw the hands were empty. The man had dropped the knife.

~ * ~

He was bleeding profusely, the front of his pullover darkening with blood. Karl knew him. It was Jackie Landry. The lead for Cam's movie. The actor who was playing the part of the victim; he was playing Karl's role.

Jackie turned his head to the side. Karl saw the glitter of his eyes and halted with his hand inches from the wounds. He didn't know what he was about to do, staunch the wounds? Change reality? Wave his hands over the body and heal it miraculously?

He drew back his hand and put it over the cut in his side and squeezed to hold it shut. This was for shit, this was fucking hell and for what? For insanity, he realized, it was a ballet from an asylum.

"I shouldn't be dying for her," the man said.

"She didn't do anything to you," Karl said. "I didn't do anything to you. This was no way to make things right."

The man turned back his head to stare at the ceiling.

Karl put aside the gun and this time he did reach over and place both his hands on the entrance wounds pumping blood from the dying actor.

~ * ~

In so many ways this was not following the script. He might have expected to die, for the villain died in the last reel, villains always died. Hollywood would have it no other way, but it should not have been at this man's hands, not here, not now, not without winning anything he had worked so diligently to win.

He focused on the ceiling and felt his heart bump his ribs and then clench, as if someone had reached inside and took it in a fist.

He called to her for help, pleading in prayerful silence that he not be left alone with this last scene. She came to him as he ended his plea, emerging as smoke from the rafters overhead, drifting down feathery soft and quiet, the way ghosts do. She rested on his torso, leaned over and stroked the tears from his cheeks with both her small hands.

"Come play with me," she said. "I've missed you so much."

He blinked away the tears and in his mind he answered. "I'm coming. I'm coming, Michelle. Help me now."

He strained forward and it surprised him that he came up from the floor so easily, wrapping his arms around his sister, and with her, drifting skyward and away.

47

"Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy gets the Catholic Church. America gets Hollywood."

Erica Jong, How To Save Your Own Life

Karl stood with Lisa at the back of the theater. She was his bride and this was the first film they had seen together as a couple.

They had risen during the last scene and slipped to the back to stand with their arms around one another to watch the final moments of the premiere of Pure and Uncut.

It was difficult to watch the movie, but he did it for Robyn and for Catherine and for Olivia, and most of all, for Marilyn. She had been brilliant in it, even though her part had been cut short by her death. He thought she might have won an Oscar for Best Supporting.

It was most difficult of all to watch the screen when Jackie Landry was on. He was twenty feet tall and beautiful and brilliant. He was better than any actor Karl had seen in a drama in ten years. The audience knew, by the time the movie premiered, that Jackie was a murderer. Although Cam wanted to believe his film drew a packed crowd because it broke the mold and would usher in the new technology of movie-making, the truth was more sinister.

They had come to see the killer. The real killer. Jackie's insanity ensured that Cam's movie would break all box office records.

When the music swelled and the end credits rolled, the audience roared with thunderous applause. They began to noisily release themselves from the hydraulic platform seat belts and fill the aisles. Karl turned away and led Lisa out to the lobby. Though the wound in his side was completely healed, he still favored it, leaning a little, feeling the pucker of the stitched flesh.

Cam stood in the lobby with a woman who might have been picked up from a downtown bar. She wore a strapless, black, floor-length gown and too much makeup. It was obvious that Cam adored her.

Karl walked over with his hand extended. Cam took it, grinning to show the spaces between his big teeth. "I heard them," he said. "It's a fucking hit. Didn't I tell you?"

"It was great, Cam."

Cam turned to Lisa and took her hand. "I hear this is your wife."

Karl introduced her, smiling from ear to ear. She thought she might be pregnant and every time he looked at her he thought her radiant as a sunset.

"Karl's one lucky sumbitch," Cam said fondly.

The lobby filled and people crowded around Cam to congratulate him. Karl took the opportunity to take Lisa's hand. They slipped to the door that would lead them outside into the neon world that was the Hollywood night.

Once on the sidewalk, moving away from the waiting limousines and their drivers, Karl said, "I'm glad it all ended happily. It was a good movie, don't you think so?"