by Blake Pierce
They disappeared into the blackness of the corridor, floor creaking with every step. When silenced resumed, it was broken by the sound of laughter. She couldn’t see another soul, but she could hear one. Keys jangled, then a prison jailer manifested from the darkness. He tapped his keys against the bars, dangling them in front of Ella like food to a starving animal. This time, she recognized the face.
“Mark,” she said. “It’s you.”
“Yes, it’s me. Who did you think it was?”
“What’s going on? What am I doing here?” Ella cried.
“Look out the window.”
Ella turned to the back wall, only now noticing a small rectangular pane of glass behind the bars. She pushed her face as close as she could to it. Outside, on a long stretch of grass, stood the gallows. Two guards pushed Ella’s new friend towards it, all while she tried to escape their clutches. She couldn’t, and once she was on the platform, she seemed to accept her fate.
Ella turned back to the jailer. “When’s my turn?” she said. “I’m next in line.”
Mark threw his head back and laughed again. “Good one. Sorry, Agent Dark, but the noose is too good for you. I’m afraid you’re staying in here forever,” he said as he vanished back into the darkness. In her immobile dream state, Ella couldn’t respond, only accept the punishment. She turned back to the window to see the woman, now with a bag over her head, wait inertly for her fate to come.
And amazingly, Ella envied the woman.
BANG.
She heard the drop worlds away in her own reality. Her body jerked, and she suddenly woke up in a motel bed somewhere in Delaware. The relief came in a heavy wave. She wasn’t in a nineteenth-century prison cell. She was free. No one had been hanged.
“Christ,” she said aloud, catching her breath. Why did it feel so real? It was only a nightmare.
She heard the bang again, the same one as when the gallows trapdoor opened. She wondered for a second if she wasn’t still in a dream world, but confirmed she wasn’t when she saw her earthly belongings. Her bag, her pistol, those red and yellow drapes. Something here was making a noise, and this time, it wasn’t the window.
Ella stepped out of bed, finding her room freezing cold. She hurried into the bathroom and checked for any leaks, or maybe an adventurous mouse. She switched the light on and saw nothing living. Just a toilet, bath, sink and empty trash can.
Back in the main room, she switched on the lamp and moved to the door. She had sudden déjà vu from her last case. She peered through the peephole out into the dim corridor, waiting for her vision to adjust to the darkness.
When it did, she felt her body go numb. Someone stared back at her. A figure was standing right outside her door.
Midnight adrenaline started up, and Ella ran back and grabbed her pistol off the nightstand. Her hand was on the doorknob a second later, and she pulled it open and stepped out in one swift movement. She aimed her pistol in one direction, then jerked the other way.
Just empty space.
She didn’t dream this. She couldn’t have. Two eyeballs stared at her when she looked through that peephole. She would bet her life on it.
Then why didn’t she hear them run? Where were they now?
In the long corridor, Ella felt as exposed as she could possibly be. There were places for people to hide along here. She’d be safer in her room.
She retreated back but stopped when she saw something that wasn’t there before.
A piece of paper had been stuck on the door. An envelope. Ella gripped her pistol and did one last scan of the area. When she was confident no one was around, she tore the envelope off the door and went back inside her room.
The envelope was blank but unsealed. She pulled open the tab, reached in and unfolded a piece of writing paper.
When she saw the words, she suddenly envied the hanging woman again.
You didn’t think I’d forgotten about you, did you?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
This one was going to be a little harder than the others, he realized. There were no easy entry points, no isolated areas to take cover in. It was one am, so the rabble were asleep, but that just meant his activities were the only sounds to potentially wake up curious neighbors. The house was detached so he could sneak around the sides but doing so still came with great risk.
It had been a long time since he’d been here. He could hardly believe the old man still lived in this place. He must really love this town.
But what a fool, the old man. That just meant finding him was much easier than he thought.
He checked the houses for any lights and saw only one at the far end of the row. He slipped down the side of the old man’s house and found the only thing blocking his exit to the garden was an iron gate. He gently shook it to ensure it wasn’t loose, then used the handle as a foothold to launch himself over it. He cleared it in one movement, hitting the lawn feet-first on the other side. Barely a sound was made in the process.
He hid under the cover of the brick wall, peering around to see a glass door leading into the lounge. A new addition, the man thought. It didn’t look like this years ago.
The TV was on, some old film by the looks of it, flashing the room shades of gray. Opposite the TV, the old man lay on the couch beneath a blanket. Given his age, probably long asleep by now.
The door handle rejected his intrusion. Locked. But seeing this garden now, although it was much different than he remembered, brought back an abundance of familiarities. He’d stand around in here while the men did business inside, wandering around, kicking dirt and climbing on the old man’s statues. He never thought he’d see this part of the town again, or even wanted to, but under these circumstances, it was more than acceptable.
Then he remembered that little place the old man called his den.
With his head down and hood up, he hurried past the window to the other side of the garden. Muscle memory brought it all back in seconds. Leading down below the kitchen was a very thin set of stairs, down to the zone where this once-young man feared to tread. It was a tight squeeze, and there was a metal trash container at the bottom; he skirted around it without breaking the silence of the night.
The looming red door was his obstacle, but luck was in his favor when he saw the brass key lodged in it. He turned it, causing a heavy clink, then waited to see if his clatter had disturbed anyone inside.
Thirty seconds passed. A minute.
He decided it was safe. He gently pulled on the door handle but found it was jammed, probably from years of going unopened. He removed his knife from his jacket, wedged it between the cracked and jimmied the door free from its restraints. It popped open, and the air from the basement instantly engulfed his senses.
He stepped inside, feeling like he’d cracked open a museum vault. When he shone his mini-flashlight on the possessions inside, he realized it was basically as he thought. This was the room where the old man’s relics came to die. It had all the makings of a typical basement: old furniture, rusty power tools, bags of cement gone hard. But between these distinct pieces were sacks of what the old man would have once called collectibles. They spilled out onto the floor in graceless heaps, and he couldn’t help but bend down and inspect them. Some of them looked familiar, maybe ones he’d seen in his own collection, but he left them be. He had no care for them. There were more pressing matters to attend to.
The wooden staircase was his next point of call. Just by the sight alone he could tell they were prone to creakiness, so he stepped lightly and kept himself away from their center. At the top, he unbolted the door and found himself in a dark hallway. He hadn’t seen this place in a long time, but the layout was exactly the same as he remembered. His flashlight exposed the same clock, the same wallpaper and the same gothic mirror as back in the day. It looked like old man Barry’s tastes hadn’t changed after all these decades.
The carpeted floor muted his journey from the hallway to the lounge, and there he saw the object of his desire, lying inertly on the couch
with a remote control in his hand. What a sad sight. This is how he’d die, in front of an old black and white film that he’d probably seen a thousand times already. Even sadder was that this man probably wouldn’t be missed by anyone. A cheap funeral and a small gravestone, and in the next few years, someone would say his name for the last time.
Just in time for his final breath, the end credits of the film began to roll. Old Barry lay with his mouth half-open and one arm hanging off the side of the couch. The man gripped his blade again and prepared himself. This part wasn’t easy. It needed to be precise to create minimal mess. If he was off by an inch, things could go very differently than he planned, and the old man wasn’t exactly in an optimal position. The couch was right up against the wall too, so he couldn’t maneuver behind to get the finest angle.
He lowered his glimmering blade down to the man’s fat neck, expanding and retracting in time to the symphonic music on the film score. He wanted to hear his voice again, maybe look him in the eye before he ended his life. But doing so was a risk that wasn’t worth taking. Dead was more than enough.
But then, his hand suddenly spasmed, pushing the blade against the man’s flesh but not with enough force to do anything. The room flashed new colors, and a resounding voice bellowed from behind him.
The film had ended and moved onto commercials, causing a sudden change in volume dynamic. Panic tempered his calm detachment until his whole core shook with dread. It all happened in a split second, and when he looked back at his would-be victim, his eyes were now wide open.
“Argh!” the old man screamed in his face, kicking his arms and legs out in a series of clumsy but effective movements. He jerked up to a sitting position and hammered on his assailant’s skull with wild fists. The man cowered backward, collapsing against the wall and thrashing his blade around with reckless abandon. He felt it connect with flesh, but in the sudden change of dynamic, couldn’t tell exactly where.
The old man toppled backward, hitting the couch arm and briefly losing his balance. The attacker flung towards him blade-first, sinking his weapon deep into the old man’s stomach. Jets of liquid gushed from the wound, dousing them both and the yellow carpet below in warm blood. Penetrating the fleshy tissue of the stomach was a new sensation to him, much softer, like chopping up raw pig’s belly. Retracting the knife brought fresh streams of blood out into the open, and the old man clutched his wound with both hands as he succumbed to the scathing pain.
His target lay on the couch again, kicking his legs in a vain attempt of protection. By now, the man’s DNA must be all over this house. The revelation brought an airtight grip around the handle of his knife, which he pushed with full force into the man’s throat. He felt stale breath against his face, but he didn’t let go until the old man became completely motionless.
What a mess, he thought. This frail old soul had caused him more difficulty than the others combined. Had he been sloppy? Did he make mistakes? The end goal had been achieved but not the way he wanted, and that awareness induced a bout of anger that burned his temples.
He growled in rage, then release the fury in the form of a gutting stab wound to the man’s heart. “Goddammit,” he screamed. “You deserve this. For everything you ever did. I always hated you. I wanted you dead years ago.”
He yanked out the blade like he was pulling Excalibur from the stone. He took a step back and analyzed his handiwork, not happy with any of it. He reached into his bloody jacket, grabbed what was supposed to be the jewels in the crown and held them before the old man’s eyes. At least they were a perfect fit. He pushed them in until he felt the eyeballs squelch, then repositioned his eyelids to keep them in place.
Seconds later, he was back out in the night.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ella lay down and in her mind’s eye, saw a carousel of men’s faces go round and round. First there was Jimmy Loveridge and Alan Yates, then Mark joined the ride, then Byford and Daniel Garcia. The last one, the one that seemed to switch positions each rotation, was Tobias Campbell.
She sat up and looked at the note on her nightstand, filled with some irrational fear that the note might have some ominous secrets it hadn’t yet revealed. The clock told her it was six am and she’d been sitting here for hours now. That meant someone had come to her room in the middle of the night to deliver this to her.
Would there be CCTV? Could she ask the desk clerk if he saw anyone? Or would that just make the whole thing more real? Right now, this could be a hoax, or maybe Mark toying with her? The stress combined into a wave of burning dread that clogged her head with unneeded worries. For the past two weeks, she’d done everything she could to forget about Campbell. Since he’d sent the letter to Mia explaining their deceit, she prayed that her ordeal with him had come to an end. Maybe doing that was enough to quench his thirst for manipulation. She couldn’t remember the handwriting from the other letter so she couldn’t compare it, but she had a sinking feeling in her gut that he was behind this.
She looked at the facts. Tobias Campbell was in an underground prison cell, and he would never see the light of day again. He’d been awarded five life sentences, so the chances of parole were practically zero. Not to mention the fact that the courts would never release such a notorious serial killer back out into the wild. The backlash they’d get would be too severe to be worth it.
But Campbell had followers, disciples. A spider at the center of a web was how Mia described him, so he could no doubt get to her if he so desired. She’d already discovered that firsthand when he’d left a dead animal on her doorstep last month.
But why her? What did he want with her? There were billions of people he could toy with, much easier targets than her too. Was this all because she invited him into her life? Because she wanted to learn from him, so this was his twisted way of making it happen?
Ella got off the bed and went over to the nightstand table. She caught her reflection and hated the sight staring back at her: bags beneath her eyes, blotchy skin, even a stray gray hair nestled among the black. It wasn’t the look of an average 29-year-old woman; it was the look of a woman in the middle of a crisis.
She scrutinized the handwriting more closely. You didn’t think I’d forgotten about you, did you? The words were straight with no slant. The apostrophes bowed slightly to the left. The dots and crosses were penned in a straight line. There was no curvature on the k. The n’s had sharp corners instead of arches. From her limited graphology knowledge, this was the handwriting of a middle-aged man. Tobias was fifty-one. It could easily be his. She had to compare it with the old letter to find out for sure.
Where had she put it? Like everything else that meant something to her, she’d put it in the gray box in her wardrobe. Maybe Jenna could retrieve it for her and send a picture.
As she grabbed her phone, another concern jumped into her head. What if this wasn’t a threat at all? What if this was something else?
What if this was a request? Did Tobias want to see her in person again?
The idea chilled her nerve endings to the core. The idea of stepping in that prison again was enough to make her wretch after everything he’d put her through. Once was enough, twice was reprising the role of the fool, but three times was absolute absurdity. She wasn’t going to play his games anymore, and if he was coming for her, so be it. Whether it was him, one of his minions or anyone else, she’d be ready and waiting with a chamber full of bullets for the unlucky bastard who found her.
But she had to know if this was him or not. If she had an answer, she could prepare herself for what might lie ahead. If it was a mystery, it would eat her up. She scrolled through her contacts until she found Jenna’s number in her phonebook, but just as she was about to push CALL, a different number flashed up on the screen.
A cell number, one she didn’t recognize.
“Hello?” she answered.
She knew the voice. It simply said, “There was another murder last night.”
Ella pinched the root of her n
ose and sighed. Another layer of grief to the pile.
“I’ll be right there, Sheriff,” she said.
***
Ella and Byford got to the crime scene at just after seven am. The home of Barry Windham was located at 23 Hartshone Avenue, a suburban neighborhood tucked away behind a Newark Reservoir. The home in question was located on the end row but visibility from the surrounding homes was high.
“Not as discreet as the other houses,” Byford said, straightening his tie as they exited the car.
“No. On first impressions, he must have targeted this house specifically.”
“Agreed. Let”s see what we have.”
Uniformed police officers bordered the garden to keep away onlookers. At the gate, Ella and Byford flashed their badges to the officer in charge. He waved them through.
“Hold on,” he said. He clicked on his radio and pulled it to his mouth. “Feds are here.”
A second later, Sheriff Hunter appeared at the front door and waved the agents up. The red ring around his eyes suggested he hadn’t slept well for a while, Ella thought.
“We got a bad one,” Sheriff Hunter said. “Bloodbath.”
The dread began to mount. In a situation like this, the absolute best-case scenario was that the crime scene mimicked the others down to a tee. Patterns were easier to follow than chaos. If things were different, it meant the killer was evolving or experimenting, both of which made things much more difficult for investigators.
“Masks and gloves please, ladies and gentlemen.” Sheriff Hunter handed them the hardware. They put them on and walked into the home, first entering onto a carpeted hallway. The smell of coppery blood took center stage, overwhelming the faint aroma of mahogany Ella picked up from the furniture. Even with his mask on, Byford covered his nose.
When they turned the corner into the lounge, the true horror made itself known. This time, the coins were yet to be removed from the victim’s eye sockets, so Ella was able to see this monstrosity in the flesh.