Sarah heard a noise in the backyard and she and Josh both rushed into the kitchen to retrieve their weapons. Sarah reached her Sig Sauer first and already had it cocked when Harry knocked on the sliding door.
“What happened? What’s going on? Are you okay? Sarah?” Detective Lassiter asked.
“It’s just Harry. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Okay. Good night. Everything will be fine.”
Sarah hung up the phone and put it in her pocket; then she uncocked her weapon and opened the door for the detective.
“Sorry about the noise. Your back fence was a little higher than I thought. I fell on my ass trying to climb it. I think I might have smashed one of your sage bushes.”
“That’s okay. Come on in.”
Harry dusted himself off and stepped into the kitchen.
“So, I guess we’d better all get some sleep. There’s no way he’s going to come in with all these lights on.”
“I wish it was that simple. He doesn’t seem to care if the lights are on or not. He doesn’t care if it’s day or night. The only thing that seems to matter to him is that we’re sleeping. He won’t attack while we’re awake.”
“But how does he know you’re sleeping if all the lights are on?”
“That’s what we’ve been trying to figure out. We think he might be sneaking into the house when we’re not at home and waiting until we fall asleep. Either that or he’s got some kind of monitoring device set up in here somewhere.”
“You mean like a camera or a listening device?”
“I don’t know. But he always seems to know when we’re sleeping.”
“We checked the whole house tonight to see if he was hiding in here somewhere,” Josh said.
“That would be pretty ballsy of him,” Detective Malcovich said.
“He’s doing it somehow.”
“Maybe he’s psychic? We are saying that he can bring people back from the dead, right? Precognition wouldn’t be too much of a stretch from that,” Sarah said.
“Or maybe he’s got some kind of a connection with you both now? Maybe he’s psychically linked to you somehow now that he’s resurrected you both?”
“I’m sure there’s probably something a little less supernatural at work than that,” Josh said.
“I don’t think we can rule anything out right now. What we’re dealing with here is something completely extraordinary.”
“Maybe. I’m too tired to think about it right now. I’m going to bed. Good night, Detective.”
“Just call me Harry.”
“Okay, Harry. Good night.” Sarah turned and walked upstairs. She heard Josh downstairs saying good night to Harry and showing him where the bathroom
and the refrigerator was. “Josh? Make sure you bring our guns up with you. I don’t think I can sleep without mine.”
“Okay, I’ll bring it. Good night, Harry.”
Sarah was about to get in the bed. She had just pulled back the covers when the rancid smell of curdled blood assaulted her nose. She had almost forgotten about the blood in the mattress. The technicians from the crimescene unit had cut three huge two-foot- by-two-foot squares out of the mattress for evidence but had left the rest of it. They had taken the fitted sheets but left the comforter and had even pulled the covers back up like they were trying to make the bed. It didn’t make any sense. There was something almost gruesome about it. Sarah looked down and only then did she notice that they had done the same with the carpet. The big clean spots were gone. Where they had been there was now just bare wood. It was time for a new mattress and a new carpet. There was no way she could sleep on that thing. Sarah collected her pillow and left the room. Josh was coming up the steps when she passed him in the hallway.
“I can’t sleep in there. It smells like rot. All the blood in that mattress is starting to reek and the police technicians cut it all up. I don’t know why they didn’t just take the whole thing. There ain’t shit we can do with what’s left of it. The whole thing smells like blood.”
Goose bumps raced across her flesh as she realized that she was talking about her own blood and remembered how it had been bled out of her. She went into the guest room and crawled into the queen-size bed wondering how Josh was going to fit in there with her. Josh tucked the Sig Sauer under her pillow and put his own weapon on the nightstand.
“Good night, baby. I guess we don’t need to get that Rottweiler now.”
“Let’s just hope that Harry still has some bite left in him,” Sarah said, then kissed Josh on the lips and rolled over to go to sleep.
Dale could hear the detective snoring in the next room. He’d panicked when Sarah and her husband had come home and begun searching the house for him. When the detective had arrived, he was certain that he’d be discovered. But they had missed him. The detective had talked about killing him if he found him in the house and so Dale had decided to slip out as soon as he was able. He’d been waiting ever since for the detective to finally go to sleep. It had taken longer than he had expected.
At some point Dale had fallen asleep and, as usual, he had dreamed of his mother. This dream was different than the rest, however. This one felt more like a latent memory, a recollection of something long-suppressed. He felt the emotions almost immediately, before anything had happened, a crushing fear and sadness came down on him along with the taste of metal and the smell of blood and his mother’s tea leaf-scented perfume and perspiration.
“Why are you killing me, Mom?”
Tears raced down his cheeks as Dale watched his mother standing above him, clubbing him in the head with the hammer. He could feel each concussive impact. He could see the world fading into darkness and taste the coppery twang of blood on his tongue, feel it
leaking from his ears and plugging his nostrils. He was awakened by the sound of his own sobs.
Dale sat in the dark, worried that he’d given himself away with his crying, expecting to be dragged out from beneath the sink at any moment by Sarah’s Neanderthal husband and the detective and murdered right there on the laundry room floor. His face was still wet with tears, the dream still vivid in his mind. But Dale knew that it had been more than just a dream. He knew it with near certainty. His mother had tried to kill him. Somehow, his mother had beat him with a hammer, had nearly murdered him, and he had no memory of it until now. His mother had hated him. She had tried to kill him and then she had burned herself alive and tried to take him with her. No one loved him. No one ever had. The only way he had ever gotten anyone to show him any love was when they were dead or dying, when he had them at his mercy.
So be it.
He wiped the tears from his eyes and yawned silently. The past was the past. There were more immediate issues to contend with rather than whining over his dead mother.
She didn’t love me, then fuck her. That hateful bitch!
Above him, everything was quiet. He had no way of knowing if Sarah and her big apelike husband were really asleep but he knew they were completely aware of him now. They had caught him on film. They even suspected he had been hiding out in their home. And they had guns. And now there were three of them. He would have to very careful.
Dale’s arms and legs were beginning to tingle from the loss of circulation. His limbs had started to go to sleep and now he didn’t trust them to hold him when he stood. He had been folded up in the cabinet beneath
the laundry sink for hours, waiting for his chance to slip out quietly. Now he was thinking that he might not go so quietly after all.
Dale slowly pushed open the cabinet door. He had folded himself into the small cabinet like a contortionist. He pulled his leg from where it had been bent beneath him and slowly unfurled himself from beneath the sink. His legs tingled maddeningly with pins and needles shooting up and down his limbs. They felt as if they were made of wet tissue, and Dale had to steady himself by holding on to the sink while he waited for the blood to flow back into his extremities.
He thought about Sarah and her perfect body, those big tits with the big swollen nipples, that tight wet pussy, and that gorgeous face. He wanted her so badly every muscle in his body was tensed, sinews pulled tight, trembling with the force of his desire. He could feel the erection surging in his boxers. He didn’t care anymore about the detective, about getting caught, or even getting killed. He had to fuck Sarah Lincoln again. He needed her, wanted her more than his next breath, his next heartbeat. He didn’t think it was possible for him to live without her. She was perfection.
Dale reached into his pants and began to stroke himself as he remembered fucking Sarah in her sweet little ass, between those big lovely breasts, ejaculating his seed on her perfect porcelain doll face. Dale knew he was not a well-endowed man. The one time a woman had given herself to him willingly it had ended with her laughing at him, ridiculing him for his diminutive size. Well, it hadn’t completely ended that way. The real end had come when he’d plunged a knife into her neck and gave her a tracheotomy, carving a hole in her esophagus just big enough for him to stick his little cock in and
rape her throat. Then he had brought her back to life and driven her home smiling and grinning the entire time. He had even shaken her father’s hand when he dropped her off. That had been the last time he’d allowed himself to try to date a woman the “normal” way. He now saw his talent as what it was, a gift from God. It had been given to him to make up for all the other things God had failed to give him. It was his compensation for being born to parents who were meth addicts, for being so frail and sickly, skinny and pale, for having such a tiny penis. He could fuck anyone he wanted now, no matter what he looked like. All he had to do was sneak up on them…and kill them. Then he could bring them back to life just like Jesus did.
Dale took a few steps away from the sink to test his shaky legs. His feet still felt numb but it no longer felt like his legs were going to collapse underneath him. He stretched his arms and wiggled his fingers until all the tingling sensations went away; then he pulled out his hammer and slowly cracked open the laundry room door.
The old, fat detective with the ponytail was sitting on the couch in his wrinkled suit with a pillow behind his head and his face pointed up to the ceiling, mouth open, snoring like a grizzly bear. He was clutching a fleece blanket in his lap. His Glock was still tucked under his arm in a shoulder holster. Dale calculated his chances of creeping out of the laundry room, across the great room and into the living room without waking the detective and then killing him before he could pull out that gun. The chances weren’t good. But Dale knew that he was going to try it. There was never a question. He would do anything for one more night with Sarah.
The first floor in the Lincolns’ house was all stained concrete with a glossy polyurethane coating. The floor was slippery but at least it didn’t squeak like a wooden floor or make that tapping noise that tile floors made when you walked on them in your shoes. But they weren’t completely silent. Dale slipped off his shoes and began tiptoeing across the hard floor in his socks. His heartbeat was thundering in his chest and sweat drenched the handle of the claw hammer in his left hand, as well as the curved and serrated diver’s knife in his right. The saliva in his mouth had dried up and his eyes felt watery. He stared intently at the detective’s face, prepared to bolt for the front door if the man woke and knowing he would never make it.
Halfway across the floor, only three or four yards from the detective, Dale decided that if the man woke up he would rush him with the knife. He was fairly confident that he could gut him like a fish before he could pull that gun from its holster. But Dale had never taken on a grown man before unless he was ambushing him in his sleep. Men intimidated Dale and a guy as big as this detective would probably put up a good fight. He might even wrestle the knife away from Dale and use it on him.
Dale swallowed hard and his legs began to tremble. Perspiration soaked his T-shirt and ran down his forehead into his eyes. He wiped away the sweat with the back of his hand and crept closer. Now he was so close he could have been on top of the detective in three quick steps if he needed to. He was sizing up the big man, trying to decide where to plunge the knife in first if he had to defend himself or where to cut him when he reached him to silence him and take him out before he could
fight or make a sound that might wake up the rest of the house. The last thing Dale wanted was a fight.
Two more steps and the detective’s eyes opened. Dale almost screamed. He plunged the knife into the side of the detective’s neck so hard the blade completely submerged in his flesh up to the hilt. Blood sprayed from the wound and the detective’s eyes bulged. Both of his hands flew up to the knife in his throat and a gurgling and wheezing sound came from his mouth. He started to rise up from the couch, groping for his weapon with one hand while holding his throat with the other. Dale clubbed him with the hammer and the detective fell back onto the couch. Dale hit him again and one of the detective’s eyes spilled out of the socket and drooled down his cheek like an oyster shucked from its shell. The next blow caved in the left side of his head and the next one dislodged a piece of his skull, flinging it across the room and revealing a patch of the detective’s gray matter.
The detective’s remaining eye had rolled up into his skull and his body began to convulse. Dale placed a pillow under the detective’s feet so his spasmodic fit wouldn’t make too much noise and wake Sarah or her husband. The big man was still making that wet, asthmatic wheezing sound. Dale grabbed the knife protruding from the detective’s throat and began to saw through his windpipe, cutting his esophagus in half and nearly decapitating him. The corpse finally ceased its Saint Vitus’s dance and lay still. Dale put his foot on the man’s chest for leverage and then yanked the knife out of his throat. He wiped the blade off in the detective’s graying hair and turned toward the stairs.
This was the tricky part. There were two stair treads
that squeaked and Dale could never remember which ones they were. He tried to walk on the edge of each stair instead of stepping in the middle to eliminate the potential for a squeak that would alert Sarah and her husband. If he had to flee the house, he wouldn’t be able to bring the detective back to life. That would be murder and Dale knew that murderers went to hell. Worse was the fear that if he murdered someone and defied God’s law, then God might take away his gift. He had to make sure that didn’t happen.