Husk

by Hults, Matt

  The deepening cold embraced her, triggering a shiver, and she bit down on her lower lip to keep from screaming.

  She couldn’t afford to waste the air.

  CHAPTER 29

  Lori sat on the Wiesses’ living room couch, a protective pillow held across her chest while she used the television remote to flip through the cable channels. Upstairs, she hadn’t heard a word from BJ since putting him to bed, which she took to mean he’d sleep peacefully through the night.

  Their talk about creatures lurking in the darkness had gotten to her more so than she’d known, however. With the kid in bed, sitting there alone, the house seemed eerily large and unsafe. There were so many rooms, so many windows for a prowler to sneak in through. She kept thinking about the noise she’d heard earlier, behind the attic door, and she imagined that whatever made it had slipped out of sight before she turned on the light, slinking within the walls to emerge somewhere else in the house.

  “Some hero,” she thought aloud, thinking of the bravery she’d tried to display earlier.

  Thud!

  She stopped channel-surfing and looked to the ceiling.

  Thud!

  Lori sprang to her feet. The muffled noise came again, the sound of a door slamming shut.

  Clicking off the television, she hurried to the foyer and looked up from the foot of the stairs to the second floor landing. She should’ve been able to see the glow of BJ’s lamp from where she stood, but the hallway appeared dark.

  The only light where Lori stood came from the outside lamp over the front steps. Its whitish gleam shone in through the sectioned windows lining each side of the main door and cast bar-like shadows over the floor and steps. In this strange setting, the entry seemed murky and uninviting, specifically designed to repel guests rather than to welcome them. She flipped on the entry light to dispel the mood.

  “BJ? Are you all right up there?”

  When no answer came, she mounted the steps two at a time, now fearing that what she’d heard could’ve been the sound of the boy falling out of bed, possibly injuring himself and breaking the lamp in the process.

  “BJ?”

  From the landing she could see through the crack in BJ’s door, and even in the dark she could tell he wasn’t in bed. The noise thumped again, closer this time. She spun to face the other half of the hallway.

  Stepping into the lesser gloom below one of the hallway’s two skylights, she said, “For someone who was so afraid of going to bed earlier, you sure don’t seem too scared of playing hide-and-seek in the dark.”

  He didn’t answer.

  Of course not, she thought. That would ruin the fun.

  She sighed and began moving from room to room, flipping on lights along the way. She reached BJ’s sister’s room at the opposite end of the hall with no sign of the boy.

  “Come on, BJ,” she said, adding force to her tone. “Enough is enough.”

  Every light on the second floor went out with a snap.

  Lori backed up and groped for the nearest light switch, sweeping the wall with her hand faster and faster with each unsuccessful pass. Then she had it.

  Click, click, click. The switch didn’t work.

  “Shit.”

  “Lori,” the boy called from his room.

  She stumbled into the hall and took three steps toward the boy’s door, ready for an explanation, when that heavy thump came yet again, this time much louder. She stopped in her tracks.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the window in Mr. Wiesses’ study slammed shut. Before she had a chance to question what closed it, the air darkened around her. She snapped her head up, looking to the skylight overhead.

  And saw the silhouette of man peering down at her.

  CHAPTER 30

  Melissa shook her head in the darkness of the box freezer, casting off another bout of weariness that strove to drag her into sleep.

  Her teeth clattered together.

  She shivered uncontrollably.

  Numbness had changed to pain in the bare portions of her skin that contacted the frozen corpse beneath her and no matter how often she shifted position she couldn’t escape it.

  Death seemed inevitable now, and the realization came to her with a greater measure of acceptance than panic. She wondered how long it would be before anyone discovered her body, what speculations the papers would report on her disappearance.

  Her head dipped down when she began to nod off again, and it took a few seconds to comprehend that she’d laid one cheek upon the dead person’s parted mouth.

  She jerked away, hitting her head on the freezer’s cover.

  Was her life meant to end this way? It didn’t seem right, not after a lifetime of striving to protect others. And with that thought in mind, she began praying for the first time since childhood, begging for God’s assistance with her hopeless situation.

  At any other time she would’ve argued the question of why God should spare her when so many others died daily, from soldiers in battle, to the innocent bystanders killed in high school shootings, to the victims of accidents and natural disasters. In her line of work the contemplation of death followed her like a shadow, but she’d always avoided discussing it with fellow officers, much the same way she’d avoided the consideration of whatever came next, if anything. Now, however, with her end in sight, she let go of her disbelief and pleaded for her life and soul.

  Her head was floating down toward the corpse’s mouth again when a ticking sound guided her back from sleep. She perked up and listened, hearing what could’ve been somebody testing the freezer’s door handle.

  “Help,” she shouted. “If someone’s there, help me!”

  After a short pause, there came the muffled reply of, “Hang on. I’ll get you out.”

  Melissa exhaled a breath of shock, accompanied by an inner shiver of wonderment.

  Metal grated on metal, chased by a piercing snap and the whoosh of rushing air when the lid finally burst open. Melissa breathed in one lungful after another, unable to recognize the man who helped her up until she’d had a few seconds to catch her breath and focus.

  “Frank!”

  With the overhead bulbs destroyed, darkness filled the basement. The only illumination came from Frank’s flashlight, which he tucked under one arm as he helped her out of the freezer. Even behind the shadows streaked across his face it was clear he shared her surprise.

  “Detective Humble,” he said. “What are you doing here? Are you all right? I saw the blood.”

  “It’s not mine,” Melissa cut in. She steadied herself, letting the chill ebb from her flesh. “What are you doing here, Frank? How did you find me?”

  Frank grimaced at the curtness of her inquiry, then traced her line of sight to the pistol clutched in his right hand.

  “Here, this must be yours,” he said, offering up the weapon. “I found it on the freezer top.”

  She took the gun, hefting it in her hand, but didn’t put it away.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Frank asked.

  “Do I look okay to you?” she fired back.

  She’d smacked her head against the frozen corpse when she’d been hurled into the freezer, and her jaw still ached from the punch that had nearly knocked her unconscious. Ironically, her time spent in the cold seemed to have kept the swelling down, and when she ran her free hand across her cheek and mouth, the lumps didn’t feel too bad.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said in a less defensive tone. “Just tell me what you’re doing here.”

  The look of worry vanished from Frank’s face, replaced by an expression of dismay. “I didn’t put you in that box, if that’s what you mean. I’ve been driving around the area, looking for Kane’s gravesite.”

  He told her about the discovery he’d made upon locating Judge Anderson’s home, how the surrounding area had once been the Kane family’s orchards, and why he believed Kane’s body must be nearby. She didn’t understand his obsession with locating the dead man’s remains, but she
had to agree, if the Andersons’ neighborhood had been the killer’s old home, then the vicinity of the copycat murders might not be a coincidence.

  “I was about out of places to look,” he continued. “But then, when I was coming back from the Saint Thomas Church near Corcoran City Hall, the geomagnetic field meter on my truck picked up a huge electromagnetic discharge in this area. I would’ve been here sooner, but it took me a while to pinpoint the—”

  Melissa stopped him by holding up a hand. “Geomagnetic what?”

  Frank nodded in the general direction of the driveway. “My Blazer’s custom-rigged with various meteorological and electrical sensing equipment. The expense seemed a bit extreme, even to me, but the gear paid off. I registered an EMP discharge of more than 200 milligauss about a mile away from here. Two or three is normal, 400 is considered harmful. The central surge must have been incredibly strong, but well focused. Unfortunately, the sensors on my truck weren’t designed for wide-range scans. I was able to track the residual static charge back to its epicenter using a negative ion detector. The trail led me here.”

  He aimed his flashlight beam on the freezer. “I tried the front door, but when no one answered, I went ahead and checked the property for whatever could’ve caused the readings I detected. Eventually, I saw this handprint through the open window and noticed how someone had screwed the freezer’s lid shut at each end. It was like a bad memory repeating itself. I knew I was overstepping my bounds, but I had to check it out in case someone needed help—I sure didn’t expect to find you inside.”

  They both glanced to the closed freezer and stood in silent deliberation of what had been found.

  “I’d better call in a team and get forensics working on trying to find some prints,” she mumbled. “I’m going to catch this bastard if it’s the last thing I do.”

  Frank shook his head. “You can forget about the forensic team for now. There’s not enough time.”

  Melissa snapped her head up, not sure she’d heard him right. He looked to her thoughtfully and added, “They won’t find anything here that’ll help us catch our killer. They might even scare it away. The damned thing is saving these bodies, making sure they don’t decompose. It might come back here.”

  “Hang on a second,” she protested. “You want to wait to report what we’ve found here? Yesterday morning I had a double homicide investigation, but since then it’s snowballed into a massacre. I’d say time isn’t exactly something I should be wasting right now.”

  Frank studied her. “That’s why we have to hurry and find Kane’s grave. You know what we’re up against now; you must’ve seen it. Following conventional methods will only slow us down.”

  She gave him a quizzical gaze, once again reevaluating his character. “What are you talking about? Would you please say something that makes sense for once? I was attacked by some guy, maybe two, and they might have left clues.”

  “It was Kane’s guardian,” Frank said. “It was here, and we have to find it before someone else dies.”

  Melissa felt her already strained patience ready to snap. “Don’t even start. You want me to believe that Kane’s accomplice is responsible for all that’s been happening lately, but in your book Kane’s partner is his own shadow. His shadow, for God’s sake!”

  “I know how crazy it sounds.”

  “Crazy?” she replied. “Frank, it’s impossible. You honestly expect me to believe that these people were murdered by a two-dimensional bogeyman?”

  “It’s an entity,” he clarified.

  “An entity?”

  “Yes, a bodiless being of energy, like a ghost or a spirit.”

  “So, now you’re saying Kane was possessed, is that it?”

  “No,” he replied. “From what I’ve learned this thing can’t inhabit a living body, but it can construct bodies out of various materials or occupy items like dolls, statues, or bodies of the dead. It hides inside them like—”

  “‘Like a seed of evil in a husk of flesh,’” Melissa quoted. “I read your book, Frank. It’s a nice line, but it doesn’t convince me.”

  “You don’t believe it? Then, explain that.”

  He angled his flashlight beam toward the floor, into the shadows to the right of Melissa’s feet. The rigid form of a woman’s corpse lay crumpled in a heap, the same woman from the freezer. Melissa stared at it, unblinking, having not seen the cadaver in the basement’s gloom.

  She opened the freezer’s lid and saw only the man.

  Stunned speechless, she directed her gaze back to the deceased, now noticing deep cracks in the woman’s flesh—most at the joints of her limbs—revealing the frozen, reddish-purple meat beneath her blue skin. Melissa recalled the sound of what she believed had been breaking glass just before her attack.

  She shivered again.

  CHAPTER 31

  Lori gazed up at the featureless figure, trapped between an instinctual urge to scream and the need to rationalize the sight into something less threatening. It’s a trick, she thought. Just some light on the Plexiglas.

  But then the shape moved.

  It stepped over the skylight and glared down at her with two blazing white eyes, the only characteristic she perceived in the dark void of its face.

  A flare of lightning ignited the sky, pulsing, broken light in which the towering shape overhead vanished and reappeared, vanished and reappeared, its form visible in the darkness, but transparent in the light.

  She ran.

  It took her two seconds to reach BJ’s room, and she dashed through the door, going straight to his bed.

  Still empty.

  “B-BJ?” she stammered, pawing through the bed sheets.

  From somewhere overhead came a long, inhuman howl.

  “BJ,” she screamed.

  “Lori?”

  She turned and found him huddled near the end of his double-wide dresser, crouched between the furniture and the wall behind a pile of stuffed animals.

  “Voodooman came back,” the boy cried.

  She took hold of his hand and pulled him to her, having no time to explain that ghosts and goblins don’t exist, but the prowler outside did. It had to be a prowler.

  “We’re going to go to your daddy’s office and use the phone,” she said. “I’ll call the police and everything will be—”

  “No,” he shrieked, jerking out of her grasp.

  “BJ, what—”

  “I don’t want to go with you,” he bawled, shrinking away.

  “BJ, it’s okay—”

  “Stay away from me. Lori, make him stay away.”

  Suddenly, she realized he wasn’t speaking to her at all. His tear-glazed eyes had locked on something over her left shoulder, something behind her, but when she whirled around to face it, she didn’t see anything.

  “I won’t go,” he cried. “I want to stay with Mallory and my dad.”

  Fear pulled at the corners of his mouth and squeezed tears from his eyes. He turned his head, seeming to track someone’s movement across the far side of the room.

  “BJ, are you all right?” she implored, unable to hide the tremble in her voice. His gaze had fallen on the bed now, and he scrambled away from it, edging along the dresser with his back to the drawers.

  She looked to him, to the bed, to him again. What’s happening?

  BJ’s sobbing halted and a new degree of terror entered his expression. He shook his head in violent denial, begging to the nothingness over his empty bed, wailing, “No, no, no. Don’t kill Lori! She’s my friend, please don’t hurt her!”

  She spun to face the bed again. “BJ, you’re scaring me.”

  Suddenly, the bedspread shot off the mattress, its edges spread wide. The soft material engulfed her head and body. It tightened around her throat and pressed against her mouth, hugging her in a smothering embrace. She tried to scream but only managed a muffled groan. She stumbled backward from the impact, pushed by a bulk that couldn’t have solely belonged to the bedcover.

  Propelled
backward, her spine rammed into the edge of BJ’s dresser, and the back of her head shattered the dresser’s mirror.

  She crumpled over. Fell to the floor.

  Clawing at the fabric, she fought to free herself. She clutched handfuls of the material, pulled until her fingernails threaten to tear away from the flesh. Then she heard the blessed sound of ripped stitching, and the grip loosened. Soft stuffing spilled out the hole like dry innards.

  The spread went slack, and she yanked it off her.

  She gasped. Coughed. Gasped again

  BJ ran to her side and grabbed an arm, begging her to stand.

  The room appeared far darker than she remembered it. After a second, she realized that the backyard lights had gone out. But not just the backyard lights. BJ’s digital alarm clock had gone dark, and the lights from downstairs no longer cast a weak sheen across the wall near the stairs. All the power was out.

  A new commotion boomed inside the closet, and she reeled around at the sound of metal instruments falling to the floor behind the walls. She didn’t have more than half a second to ponder the source of the noise when she heard the attic door crash open inside the closet.

  “He’s coming,” BJ said, tugging at her tortured hands.

  Heavy footsteps clumped across the carpeted floor within the walk-in closet.

  “We gotta run away,” he pleaded.

  The kid was right.

  In a split-second action that surprised both BJ and herself, Lori leapt up from where she’d fallen and lunged at the door even as the brass knob began to turn. She plunged in an uncoordinated dive toward the closet, striking out at a child-safety latch near the top of the door— Snap!—sealing it shut.