Dark Screams, Volume 8 Read online

  Now I had to trail this monster, mongoose after a snake, so I’d know when to strike.

  If I could get that close.

  The Man

  I saw her coming from the first. I looked out the front window when I heard her car bounce off the curb and come to a halt down the block. I slipped to the door and peered out. She leaned over the wheel and I knew that dark hair. It was a shock and stunned me breathless for a few seconds. I knew the driver, Ten’s mother.

  The days after discovering she trailed me, I allowed it. I never glanced back, never behaved as if I saw her car. She, of course, had come for revenge. I hadn’t expected it, but it wasn’t that much of a surprise, either. I just couldn’t figure how she found me. If she could do it, how far behind were the cops?

  That’s the only thing bothering me. Her? She was a delightful mystery to solve. She trailed me for days and there was a smile on my face the entire time. It didn’t mean I wasn’t wary. I knew her whereabouts every second. This did impede the plans for Eleven, however. That number was slipping away as time passed driving to the grocery, the convenience store, the department store, and the park in town. I’d called and arranged a sub for my few classes. A personal matter, I told them, I’d rather not discuss it.

  Murder. Revenge. The taking of a nosy mother who couldn’t give up her daughter. It was definitely personal. The more days I spent waiting for her to get close to me—and I gave her ample opportunities—the closer I felt myself lifting to the surface of the real world. Like the eel burbling up toward the sun from the cool depths, it made me irritated, and finally I thought I would snap.

  I carried the driftwood cane with me everywhere. I’d use it a third time if Ten’s mother would just. Get. On. With. It.

  The Woman

  I was horrified when I realized he knew I stalked him. The swarm let me know. I was around the side of the gas station waiting for him to pay for gas when I was swarmed, and this time the sound accompanying the colors filled with voices. I caught snatches of warnings from men, women, maybe even angels or aliens for all I knew. He knows. He sees you. He’s waiting for you. He’ll murder…

  I suffered faintness and swayed and stumbled back against the station wall. My car was parked in back. I held on to the wall as I clawed my way there.

  He knew.

  He waited for me. He wanted me to come after him. That’s when he’d kill me just as he had killed Cara. My God.

  What could I do but go to the police? Whether they believed me or not, I had to tell them now. If I stayed here much longer, this man would take my life.

  I sat in the car, watching the building in case he came around back to find me. I gripped the big knife, my hand shaking and knuckles white.

  I made it to the Stanford Police station, and on weak legs went inside to ask for a detective. I sat across from him and didn’t know where to start. Then, once I’d begun, I couldn’t stop, the story spilling out of me, words running together, my heart racing, my eyes wide. I tried to calm down. I could see the officer’s discomfort, his disbelief. I began crying, though I didn’t want to, I tried not to. It wouldn’t help me to cry. Just the opposite. I already sounded nuts, and crying only cemented it.

  Blubbering, my voice softened and trailed off until I sat there with a tissue in my hand, my head down, eyes lowered. I didn’t want to see the officer’s face. I knew it would prove how badly my explanation sounded to reasonable ears. A “swarm”? Psychic? Murderer living in their fair town?

  They asked for his address, at least, since I had no name, and after the officer checked it out on his computer, he glanced at me suspiciously. “This man is a psychology professor at Stanford. You know, the research university?”

  I was so stunned my mouth fell agape and I couldn’t speak. A college professor? Of psychology? A killing machine on campus—was that even possible?

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said, drying my eyes and cheeks. My spirit was back. I was strong and I’d have to get to the truth of this.

  “It certainly is ridiculous,” the officer said, standing, hitching up his belt. “Or perhaps incredulous might be closer to it. I doubt very much we have a serial killer teaching psychology here. That would be…be…” He couldn’t finish. He flung out his hand as if shooing a fly. “Ma’am, I’m sorry for your loss. I know about your daughter’s case. Can I drive you to your motel?”

  He wasn’t going to listen to any more of it; he made that clear. He waited for me to rise. But hadn’t he heard of Ted Bundy, who worked as a lawyer? Who had hung out on a campus? Why couldn’t Cara’s killer be a professor?

  It was the Swarms, Psychics, Killers on campus. It was too much, and how could I have thought for a moment he’d protect me? I was the insane one, not my daughter’s murderer. I believed in “feelings” and “signs” and “voices.” I was a threat to one of their finest citizens. He was a prominent man, an intelligent elite. It had all turned in a somersault, leaving me on the bottom.

  My shoulders sagged as he walked me from the office, down the hall, and to my car. I drove back home a hundred miles while watching the rearview mirror. He’d be coming for me. I might as well have put the target big and red on my back. How laughable I was. How…ridiculous my hope for vengeance. I threw the knives on the floorboard and drummed my heels.

  The swarm nagged me all the way home, warning of this and of that. Warning of darkness, of shadows, of sharp things and pointed objects, of the need for safety. Perhaps I should run to Mexico. Fly to Hawaii. No one would believe me. He was a teacher. An outstanding member of society, educated, and known. He was above reproach. This was an abomination. I saw no way out of it, no method to make him pay, and now I had to watch everything. Even with the assistance of the swarm, I didn’t believe I could find a way out of it except to flee.

  The Man

  I thought she might leave town. Yet there she was in her apartment, her shadow behind the blinds treading across the room from wall to wall. I tired of watching her. She was pacing, a mother lion. I needed to kill her. I needed to be rid of the one person in all the world who knew me for what I was and had done—not to mention where I lived. Had she seen me the night of her daughter’s abduction? I’d only been across the street as she’d sprinted past on the opposite sidewalk. I hadn’t seen her glance over, but I’d made one mistake already, and this could be another. She could ruin everything.

  Tense and ready, I stepped off the curb and crossed the street to her apartment complex. She lived on the ground floor, facing an open, empty courtyard. I stood at her door. I reached and unscrewed the door light so the soft night embraced me. I peeked around to the front window, and just then she dragged the drapery edge aside and we were staring into each other’s faces. She flew back, dropping the drapery, and I hurriedly jimmied the door. I’d practiced for years until it was second nature to release a lock. I was inside, the apartment dimly lit, but I didn’t see her anywhere. I turned my head this way and that, listening, holding my breath.

  Then I heard her whisper down the hall and I pulled the goblin cane from my pocket.

  The Woman

  He stood outside! We were inches apart, the window glass between us. His eyes blazed and the swarm threatened to hit. I pleaded in a panicked whisper, “Not now, not now.” I gripped the hefty knife hard and ran. I had carried it every waking moment and was now glad I had.

  I raced for my bedroom, where my cellphone lay on the side table. I heard him behind me, shutting the door. He was inside!

  I waited behind the bedroom door for him to enter the room. I must stand and fight. I hadn’t time to do more than I’d done by dialing 911 and dropping the cell to the carpet to kick it underneath the bed.

  “Hello, Mother,” he said quietly. Goosebumps broke out on my arms, my neck, even my scalp.

  As he cleared the door and before he could swivel his head in my direction, I lunged, burying the knife blade into his shoulder. I’d missed his back, his torso, and I screamed, knowing I’d merely winged him. I je
rked out the knife with adrenaline-laced effort and ran across the room, putting my back to the wall near the bathroom.

  He hadn’t screamed in pain, and in fact the silence was eerie. I’d buried the knife right below the collarbone, down to its hilt. It had to hurt fiercely, but not a sound issued from him. He hadn’t even raised a hand to the wound. I could smell coppery blood and gagged.

  “You killed Cara and I’ll kill you for it,” I said.

  He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew what I knew instantly was the item he’d used to kill my girl. I couldn’t see it clearly, but it was wickedly sharp-pointed. He held it by the top of the shaft. It looked crooked, like him, and it made me lose my breath. The swarm came, the room turned in a tornado of light and sound and color. My brain wanted to shut down. It would be so easy to pass out and let him at me. Get it over with. And then the voices rose, a cacophony shouting that I wake up, that I fight, and if they could, they would help.

  I came back from the near faint and he was halfway across the room, favoring his shoulder. I saw blood dripping across the carpet. I’d wait no more. I’d die and join Cara, I didn’t care, it didn’t matter. I needed a victory.

  I rushed him, the knife raised, and he tried to block it with the strange stick in his hand, but the impact broke it loose, sending it flying to the floor. He balled his fist to strike, but the knife found his gut this time, sinking into his sausage belly. I dragged it out and struck again, not knowing I was screaming at the top of my lungs. The knife was deflected this time and spun like a silver dagger across the carpet, landing near the far wall.

  I backed away, circled the bleeding man with his bared teeth, and made for the hall. When I got to the front door I detected sirens in the distance and prayed they’d come from the 911 call.

  “Stop running,” he said behind me at the entrance to the living room. The door wouldn’t unlatch or open. He’d done something to the lock. I dove around the sofa, got to my knees, then my feet, and hurried back down the hall for the kitchen. I opened the pantry door there and slid inside. I had to hold my breath when I heard his dragging footsteps enter the room.

  Oh, God, I silently cried, help me. The swarm crept over me like a soft, multicolored shawl playing orchestra violins. I had no weapon except canned goods on the shelves. As I looked at them, the cans glowed lime and I saw the absurdity of it. I heard him shuffling, slower and slower. He’d stopped near the kitchen island and I pictured him leaning there to prop himself up. He was bleeding to death. His stomach was punctured and leaking poison into his body.

  Die, I thought, bleed out, die, die now.

  His voice pierced the silence. “Mothers always ruin everything,” he said. I could hear the pain in his voice. He was dying, but slowly, too slowly.

  The swarm hadn’t left me. It lingered around my body with soft colors and only a strain of a single violin.

  “You killed my daughter,” I said. “You stole my girl from me and she was all I had.”

  “You’re a peon, an ignorant worker slave, a…a nothing. So was the girl. I hate you with a rage you can’t imagine. Because of you…”

  The sirens neared and I pushed open the pantry door. I stood in the dark, watching him. He lay across the table, one arm hanging over the edge to keep him anchored.

  “This is what you did to Cara. You stabbed her with your sharp stick and left her to bleed alone in a dirty alley.”

  “A goblin’s cane,” he said, coughing blood.

  “Monster.” I took a couple steps toward him. I understood “goblin’s cane” the way I understood “a swarm.” There were mysterious objects and events in the world no one could explain. Magical elements of good and of evil. It took tremendous effort to deal in either.

  The siren screamed, then abruptly shut off at my front walk. “They’re coming,” I said, leaving him on the table to try to let in the police.

  When they finally knocked down the door and returned with me to the kitchen, when they had the lights on and the house searched, he was gone.

  The Man

  I barely survived. It was close a number of times, and once my heart needed a restart. I had to be secretly smuggled across the border to Mexico for surgery. I haven’t been back to the States for six months. They’re looking for me for extradition, but I’m safe, hidden in a Mexican shack on the edge of a Sonoran desert. A young man I trust helps me. He cooks, cleans, runs my bath, changes my bandages, and administers the medicine. I read psychology textbooks and the philosophy of Nietzsche while I wait to recuperate.

  Everything is gone—my position at the university, my home, even my face. I expected I might need an exit plan if anyone ever made me. I had money stashed, a huge savings, as I never required much. I had medical staff on call and the shack under the shocking sun. I had to have plastic surgery on top of repairing my shoulder and intestines. I’m handsomer now, my jaw harder, my eyes wider, cheekbones higher, and lips fuller.

  She won’t know me when I come for her eventually. The only thing the same is my voice, so when I finally do have her alone and speak to her…she’ll know.

  When she sees the goblin’s cane, she’ll know for sure.

  My lovely number Eleven. She hasn’t realized you can’t deter a fucking genius.

  The Palaver

  Kealan Patrick Burke

  It’s almost time to close, but Oscar Dennihy could have shut the doors at any time during the day and nobody would have noticed. The ornate little silver bell suspended above the door has rung exactly three times today: once when he opened that morning, and twice to announce his departure and return from lunch at the KFC across the street. It will ring once more when he leaves, and that will be that. Once upon a time he’d enjoyed counting the rings. It was as good as counting the day’s take, every second chime a nickel in the till. Now, most days, it hardly rings at all, and the till reflects the silence.

  Failing is his wife’s word for the business now. It’s failing, Oscar. Time to let it go.

  But he can’t, realizes they’ll probably find him facedown on the cheap tile floor one of these days, a pair of scissors still in his hand and his heart just as dead and quiet as the bell above the door. It was his father’s business, and his grandfather’s before him. They were respected barbers, as was Oscar back in the day, the shop nothing less than a modern agora for their customers. But that day is gone now and there is no nobility, no pride in being the man at the helm when the ship is going down.

  There is no hair to sweep up, but he sweeps again anyway, just for something to do, and so that the ill health of The Palaver Barbershop will not be so apparent to anyone who might happen to look in through the big plate-glass window.

  He swishes the soft bristles of the broom around the foot of the hydraulic chair and avoids looking at his reflection in the mirror. It’s difficult. It seems to demand he appraise the sad old man trapped within. But he won’t, no more than he can stand to look at himself in his own bathroom mirror at home.

  He props the broom up against the wall and fiddles with the scissors and combs in their jars.

  I was not always old, he thinks, and smiles sadly. I just woke up one day and there it was.

  He straightens with a soft grunt as knots of discomfort tighten in his back, and he looks out the window, looks past his reflection at the world outside. The sun has darkened to a pumpkin orange and appears to be melting atop the roof of the hotel Marriott across the street. Partially hidden by the large green dumpster out back of the building, a Hispanic cleaning woman smokes a cigarette and watches with tired incomprehension a herd of drunken office workers on the sidewalk laughing and throwing their arms around each other as they seek out their next port of call. Next door, in the parking lot of the KFC, a middle-aged woman in a business suit has one finger to her ear as she talks too loudly into her cellphone. She appears upset. Even from the distance and with the door closed, he can hear her cursing. Oscar doesn’t own a cellphone. He doesn’t even know anyone who does.

 
; To the right of the restaurant, a small Christian bookstore called The Good Book shows a small selection of somber-looking people perusing the rows of shelves, while behind the small counter a bald bespectacled man returns Oscar’s sad gaze, but as there are people in his store, Oscar wonders if that look has a different genesis than his own. Maybe it’s pity, he thinks. Or maybe he’s blaming my lack of business on a lack of faith. He sighs. Or maybe he’s just looking at his own reflection.

  He turns away from the window, folds his arms. Checks his watch. Eleven minutes to closing. He looks around as if expecting customers to materialize from the walls or step from the mirror. Sighs again when none do. At length, he picks up the broom again and gives the floor another sweep.

  It’s time to retire, he realizes. It’s long past time to retire but you’re a stubborn old mule, aren’t you?

  He certainly is, a fact his wife seldom lets him forget.

  I know you love the business, honey, but the minute that new Supercuts opened, it was the death knell for you and you should have cut your losses and run. But you didn’t, and you still won’t, even though pretty soon there won’t be much left to lose.

  He loves Ellen dearly, but she doesn’t understand that it’s not just tradition or habit or a sense of duty that keeps him coming back here every day except Sunday. It’s fear. Fear of waking up without a set pattern to his day, without a schedule to keep him occupied. Fear of having nothing to do. Fear of not waking up at six-thirty, as he’s done almost every day for the past forty-six years, of not wearing a shirt and bow tie and that old familiar long white coat, of not taking the same old route at the same old time to the same old store. Fear of redundancy, of feeling alone whether or not Ellen is there. Fear of failure. Of not knowing how long he has l—