As darkness enveloped the crowded living room, many people kept running and screaming, but one young girl stayed statuesque and still. Frozen in the shock of seeing friends killed before her very eyes or just having absolutely no idea what to do. Or maybe it was that she had come to the conclusion that there was absolutely nothing she could do. Whatever the case, this one girl, no older then fifteen, just sat there curled into a little ball as others pushed past her in an attempt to find an exit. She looked up from her fetal position and stared blankly into the darkness around her. She let out a long breath, the first she had taken since the house had been plunged into blackness. The breath followed the darkness’ movements through the cold air before it eventually became one with it.
It’s funny what goes through your mind during intense situations. All of a sudden, she realized that she had missed the latest episode of Survivor last night. She remembered that the Toronto Maple Leafs and the New Jersey Devils were even now playing against one another. That she had an exam next week in World History, that she had forgotten to walk the dog before leaving her house and even that she had left her television on. All of these things and more wandered through the girl’s head as she stared into the total darkness surrounding her body.
Something flashed before her eyes.
She glanced about nervously, struggling to stop the sobbing that might give away her position. The moonlight shone in through the broken glass window, creating eerie silhouettes as her friends realized that there was nowhere to run and settled on hiding. There was a dead silence looming in the air.
-thunk -
The sound of a friend’s body dropping to the floor after a quick, silent death.
-thunk-
-thunk-
-thunk-
Over and over again. The girl turned her head to the floor, attempting to pretend that she was a piece of furniture. The hardwood near her reflected the moon’s light up into her face, as the wood was slowly enveloped by a different kind of darkness. A dark liquid rolled, and then streamed over the floor, eventually cascading lightly onto the girl’s sneaker. She continued staring down at it. As the moonlight reached it, the liquid took on a reddish tint.
Blood.
Suddenly, all the thoughts which had previously clouded the girls mind were erased, replaced by one word that continued to scream within the depths of her mind. Blood. Blood. Blood...
She looked up into the darkness again, and again she sensed movement within it. Abruptly, the moonlight caught hold of something else: a long, metal blade. Before she could react in defense or even scream, it was upon her.
She felt the blade slice clean across her throat.
She attempted to let out a cry but heard no sound despite all efforts. The killer’s strike had destroyed her vocal cords. She put a hand to her neck to try and halt the blood which now flowed freely. She knew this kind of blow rendered the victim dead within seconds, so she strained her neck so that she could look her destroyer in the eye. She fully expected him to finish her, deliver a killing blow across her head, but the blow never came. Instead the slayer just stood there, watching as the girl clung to life by a thin thread, her blood staining the floor and mixing with that already there.
After a second that seemed to be an hour, she lost strength and collapsed to the floor, her skull landing on the wood with a loud crack. The killer cracked a sinister smile.
John Walker crawled slowly along the edge of the wall, trying to stay out of the path of any light. He crept along, as silent as humanly possible, attempting to get to the shattered glass the murderer had entered through. He reluctantly stepped on a shattered piece, the quiet crinkling sound it made echoing through the dark room. He stopped and looked into the darkness to see if his position had been realized, then came to the fruition that if he had been he would have to move even faster and kept going.
-thunk-
A sound from the darkness that he recognized, yet wished that he hadn’t.
-thunk-
Again.
-thunk-
-thunk-
He kept going, his eyes beginning to get hazy from tears of knowing exactly what was happening in the darkness. He looked ahead and saw that the window was only a few feet away. Letting out a short, raspy gasp of excitement before becoming silent again, he listened to the sounds in the darkness.
There was some soft sobbing, followed by a slinking sound and a sharp crack.
He moved forward again, but realized that he would not be able to step over the glass without blocking light and attracting attention. He would have to crawl over it. Lifting his two hands over first, he began to pull himself along. The jagged, toothed glass stuck up from the doorframe, cutting into his abdomen as he made his way along. Blood ran freely as the sharp glass ripped and rendered the tender flesh of his chest and stomach. He bit back a yelp of pain as a piece of flesh got stuck on a small, razor-like piece of glass.
Rather than go back, he moved forward, pulling on the piece of hanging flesh. It stretched momentarily, before the glass itself broke off into the wound. With the stomach out of the way, John now stepped over the glass with one foot, lifting it high to make sure what happened to his mid-section did not happen to more sensitive areas. He lifted his other foot over in the same fashion and began a slow crawl over to the edge of the balcony where he would jump the two stories to freedom.
Suddenly, he felt a tug.
For a moment he thought that the killer had finally caught up with him. He stayed perfectly still, almost waiting for the inevitable to rain down upon him. But it didn’t. He turned his head slightly, enough to see that his jeans were hooked on the glass. He turned back for a second, giving a short sigh of relief. Believing he was out of trouble, he pulled his leg forward. Riiiiiiiip. The sound of fabric tearing cut through the air like a knife, and John knew that there was no chance the killer hadn’t heard it.
He stopped, listening to the darkness again.
There was a dead silence, and he thought for sure that he was finished. Then he heard the sickly reassuring sound of his redemption.
-thunk-
The sound of yet another friend’s body dropping to the floor. He sighed again. The fact that he was relieved, almost happy at the sound of death made him want to vomit. He sucked it back and pulled his leg forward again. His jeans pulled on the glass again, this time causing it to break. As if in slow motion, the glass flipped and spun as it cut through the air before landing on the ground and shattering with a clink that cut through the muteness. All at once it seemed as though the previous quiet had been nothing. It was as if even the silence had shut up.
It finally came to John that he had been discovered. He got up quickly, running to the edge of the balcony. He paused only for a moment, staring into the darkness behind him. Hearing the loud, heavy footsteps of his stalker behind him, John saw the glint of his blade as it swung from side to side in his back holster. He turned his eyes back to the ground below and, placing a hand over his stomach wound, jumped over to it.
His loss of blood and the couple of Budweisers that he’d had all gave him the sensation of flying, when in fact he was only falling. He didn’t even do that for very long. He felt an enormous pressure on his throat as his downward momentum came to a halt, and he had a brief sensation of weightlessness.
The killer had grabbed his collar.
Throwing him onto the balcony, the killer let loose with a hard kick to the ribs. John bent over in pain as he rolled through the glass and back into the house, almost exactly where he had begun. The murderer loomed over him, the moonlit night casting the shadow of him down upon his latest victim.
He took the drawstring from a window shade and held it up to the light. There was a warning on it that advised that children could choke on it. That sinisterly evil smile once again curved his lips, showing his sharp teeth. He wrapped the string around the chandelier, then around John’s neck. He picked John up with both hands and held him up for a moment, supporting his weight.
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Then, smiling, he let go.
There was a loud crack as the string went taut against John’s neck.
Another girl attempted to run for the exit and the killer threw his blade into her back, sending her toppling to the floor.
He twisted the blade before ripping it out with a sickening sucking noise. Bringing the blade to his thick lips, he licked some of the blood off, then wiped the rest away with his index finger.
Frightened and scared, Liz Tyler wandered from room to room trying to find one that had been left open. She could hear the sounds from the living room with crystal clarity. -thunk-, -thunk-, -thunk-, -thunk-, a weird cracking sound, followed by a loud rip and a lot of footsteps.
She tried one door after another in an attempt to escape the inevitable peril that was crashing down onto her like a wave onto the shore. Grendel’s bedroom door had been barred shut, as had been the downstairs bathroom. Her only option left was the spare room. She rushed to it quickly, reaching out her long, slender arm and turning the cold metal knob.
To her immense relief, it turned freely.
She swung the door open and almost closed it again with fright. Before her were Cathy and Mike, laid down on each other, both unconscious. She stepped back for a moment. Then, hearing a wet snap in the living room she stepped in, she closed the door and locked it behind her.
She glanced around the room, and finally just curled up in a corner and started to sob as water ran down her cheeks.
She was only there a moment when she came to a realization: Wasn’t Xander supposed to have been in the room as well?
The killer looked around at his handiwork and smiled, then walked from the living room into the hallway. He kicked down one door and looked inside.
Nothing.
The next, a bathroom. Nobody inside.
Then he found his way to the spare room.
Forcing the door open, he stepped inside...
Liz heard the latch on the door break. The door swung open and slammed against the wall. She buried her head into her arms and pretended that she was invisible. She was breathing hard, her chest near convulsing. When the killer came into view, she felt her heart skip a beat. He walked over to Mike and Cathy. He turned Cathy onto her back so that he could see her face. He held it in his hand for a moment before he heard it. Heard her. He turned and stared down at her, shaking in the corner. He reached down and picked her up by the scruff of her neck, then reached to his back to draw out his sword... then stopped when he heard a new sound.
The sound of police coming.
Some concerned neighbor must have called the police.
The killer looked down at his prey for a moment before he merely threw her against the wall as if she were a rag doll, snapping her neck. He opened the large bay window and stepped out, taking his leave.
CHAPTER SIX:
ZONE
Mike awoke on a stretcher. He opened his eyes then immediately closed them again, forcing them to adjust to the light. He opened them a second time, this time as he got up.
A paramedic rushed over to him. His name was Richard Dreyfus, and less than two hours ago he had asked his girlfriend of two years, Marjorie, to marry him. She’d said yes, and they’d both cried happily. Her three-year-old son had thought something was wrong at first, and had patted Richard soothingly on the back. It had been adorable. They’d all laughed, and he’d given the boy a hearty kiss on the cheek. The idea of being his father was overwhelming and good, and he hoped the feeling would never go away.
His pager had gone off just as Marjorie was calling her mother.
It seemed like a lifetime ago now.
“Easy, son,” Richard said, putting Mike’s arm around his shoulder. “You’ll be alright if you just sit down and rest. It’s over now.”
“W-wha?” Mike stumbled, having trouble getting the word out. His head felt like it was in a vice. He put his hand up to it, only to discover a rather thick layer of bandages surrounding it. Suddenly, his eyes went wide. “Cathy?”
“She’s fine. Would you like to see her?”
Mike nodded, and the Richard helped him to his feet and around the corner of the ambulance he had been sitting in the shadow of.
There were cars parked all over the front of Grendel’s front lawn, and the lawn next door. Police cars and ghost cars and ambulances, all of them flashing their lights in different patterns and casting a stuttering red hue over everything in their path. It was like the streets had been painted in blood, and as he looked beyond this street and onto the next, he saw that it continued out into the rest of Coral Beach. Maybe even the entire world.
There were bodies lined on the grass. They didn’t look like bodies, covered in zipped-up black bags that looked like the ones Mike’s father took his suits to the dry cleaners in. It didn’t help, though. He knew what they were, lined up seemingly forever and casting long, thin shadows with the light.
Police and paramedics and firefighters scrambled everywhere. They ran around and past each other, one somehow never hitting the other. Some people stood and just surveyed the chaos. People cried. There were more sirens far away, as well as a constant buzz of radios as reports were updated and then re-updated.
Cathy was sitting on the sidewalk with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, her head enveloped in her arms. She looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps.
“Mike.” She smiled, wiping tears from her eyes. “They wouldn’t let me see you until you woke, and--”
“Shhh,” he said, placing his arm around her. “It’s alright now.”
She broke down crying in his arms. “No. It isn’t. It never will be again.”
“What do you mean?” he demanded in a hushed voice. “What’s happened?”
“It’s Sara...”
Rumors spread like a wildfire in a small town like Coral Beach. By the time Monday morning came and the exact number of the dead had been counted, that wildfire had turned into a forest fire. Especially with Xander Drew among the missing. The worst part was all of the rumors came back to Mike and Cathy.
“Now I’m sorry I have to ask you two these questions,” Tim White said to Cathy and Mike from behind his desk. “I understand that you’ve been through a lot and if you want to do this later, that’ll be fine. But I want to catch this killer.”
Cathy looked at Mike.
“Now will be fine,” she answered for the both of them.
“Alright,” he opened his folder with a sigh. “I know this is a sensitive issue for you, but do you think... it could have been Drew?”
“Xander?!” Mike exclaimed. “No way! Never. Not in a million years. No.”
Tim raised his hands in surrender. “I know it’s hard, but there is substantial evidence now. The three of you were locked in that room, according to your own statements, right?”
“Yes,” Mike nodded.
“Now, this killer shows up, starts murdering everyone that Xander always hated and now your boy is gone. Not only that, but the first one he killed was a girl who had turned him down repeatedly.”
Cathy wiped her eyes at the mention of Sara.
“Then, the killer comes across you two. You were his friends, which is why he overlooked you. Which is why you were some of the only survivors. Then, he leaves. He realizes that he’s outsmarted himself and that people like me would put two and two together, and he runs. And now he’s out on the streets somewhere.”
Cathy was crying.
Mike looked at her, then turned back to Tim with hatred in his eyes. “Okay. That’s your opinion. Here’s what I think happened. This killer is just another freak serial killer in a long, sad line of freak serial killers. He kills for a reason, but one that we don’t fully understand yet. Anyway, before he tried to kill Tommy and Sud the other night, he heard them talking about Grendel’s big party and decided to crash it. That’s why he let them get away, when he probably could’ve killed both them and you. So, he shows up at the party and kills a lot of us. That girl, Liz you sai
d... right? Well, she runs into the room where Xander, Cathy and I are being kept. He follows, but thinks that the three of us are already dead, when we’re really just unconscious. He kills the girl and the sound wakes up Xander. So, the killer saw Xander wake and was about to kill him, when... he hears the police approaching. Rather than leave his plan undone, with no time to kill Xander in the grotesque and elaborate ways that he employs, the killer decides to take Xander with him if only for a little while. And yes, the killer is on the streets somewhere.”
Tim looked thoughtful, leaning back and stroking the edges of his mouth and chin.
“That’s what you think happened, huh?” he said calmly.
“That’s what I know happened!” Mike shouted in response.
“Mike,” Cathy said, speaking finally. She turned to Tim with a look of desperation in her eyes. “Xander didn’t do it. And if he ran... you can be sure it was for a good reason.”
“What reason would that be?” Tim pried, fingering his pen against the paper.
Cathy looked away, staring instead at the wall in an effort to fight back tears.
“He didn’t,” Mike said again, tapping a finger against the desk to elaborate.
Tim looked taken aback, then he restored himself. “Okay, son. You can go.”
Mike got up, taking Cathy by the hand. “Come on, love. It’s over now.”
They left Tim that day with much to think about, and much to reconsider.
He bent over his desk and looked at the massive pile of files in front of him, one for each person killed during the ordeal. Jamie Dawkins. Carl Dent. That elderly couple, the Jacobies. Liz Taylor. And at least thirty other teens from Coral Beach High, including Julian Grendel.
Of all of them, Xander was their only link... except for the Jacobies.
Habeas Corpus: Black Womb (Black Womb Collection Book 1) Page 12