Recoil

by Evelyn Drake

  It wasn’t enough. Nothing was enough. Inside that building, shoved into a tiny closet, Victoria lay on the ground growing cold.

  “They probably haven’t even covered her yet.”

  Kyle’s hands gripped and released the steering wheel over and over as if he could bend it into a pretzel. His gut clenched with the need to hurt someone, the need to make a difference. Victoria had trusted him to protect her. That he hadn’t—that he had failed her—made staying in his own skin difficult. He wanted to crawl out. To become someone better.

  He felt wrong, and it had been years since anyone or anything had made him face that feeling.

  Giving the ignition a turn, he slid the shift stick into drive. The deranged and demented fan Therman Johnson had been released over an hour ago. The police had taken his contact information, had asked him a few questions, and then had allowed him to go on his way.

  It hadn’t mattered to them that Victoria had been terrified of the toadish little man with the feverishly obsessed stare. It hadn’t mattered to them that she had sometimes felt so unsafe that she had stayed at Kyle’s house. And she’d always been so sweet to Monica, the nearest person he had to a mother.

  There was no way Kyle could let this go. There was no way he could simply turn his back and pretend that life was the same. It wasn’t the same. Victoria’s dead eyes were staring up at the ceiling a couple hundred feet away from him. It didn’t matter that there were cinderblock walls between them and that his eyes couldn’t see her. His mind saw her. It saw her and nothing else.

  Giving the car some gas, Kyle inched forward and pulled down a small alleyway leading to a road beyond. Making his way through town, he drove almost on autopilot, following the map in his head laid out from over a year ago when he had made a point of following Therman home. He’d wanted to know where the guy lived. He’d wanted to know where to find him in the event that anything ever happened to Victoria. Well… that day had come.

  It took thirty-five minutes of driving through almost empty streets to reach his house, and when he did, Kyle wasn’t disappointed. Even though it was approaching three in the morning and all of the surrounding homes were dark with their owners in bed asleep, Therman was pacing in front of his large living room window. But he wasn’t just pacing. He was visibly ranting and intermittently pulling his hair and beating his head.

  His normally pasty complexion was red, and he was far too distressed even for a fan. Anyone who cared about Therman would have insisted he get professional help. He looked about ready to lose his shit.

  It was a look that Kyle was well familiar with, having had to live among people told they were crazy for seeing the world a little differently, for letting something awful get to them a little bit more than was socially acceptable, for over three years.

  It was awful, but Therman wasn’t distressed as any fan would be. This was obsession. This was grief like he’d lost the love of his life, even though Victoria had always been careful to keep him at arm’s length. The signs were clear. How the man held down a job, with all the hours he was in the club and all the money he spent on Victoria, was beyond Kyle.

  Parked across the road and one house down, Kyle shut off his engine and simply watched Therman as he paced, his mouth working as if screaming at himself. Kyle rolled his window down and strained to hear past the night’s sounds, and while he could manage to pick out the occasional sound of Therman’s voice, the words were completely lost. And the way Therman paced and turned his head made any attempts at reading his lips impossible.

  Then, in an explosion of movement, Therman picked something up and threw it at the large window that showcased the room. The effect was immediate as the window made a muted cracking sound not unlike the breaking of a branch. But instead of the thrown item piercing the window, the window held its shape, remaining completely intact. Its nature had now changed, though, from invisible at a distance to being covered with spidery lines that canvased its entire surface, making it difficult to see through.

  For a half minute more, Kyle saw the shadow of movement beyond the white spider veins of the window and then even that disappeared. Straining to hear, the low, unintelligible hum of Therman’s voice was gone.

  Getting out of his car and pocketing his keys, Kyle jogged across the street and over Therman’s lawn. He approached the window at an angle in order to avoid being seen from inside.

  Peeking through one of the less-cracked corners of the window, Kyle saw nothing but furniture beyond and he still could not hear the sound of Thurman’s voice.

  Making his way from window to window, Kyle circled Therman’s house, listening and looking in at every opportunity. Finally, when he reached the sliding glass doors, his view to the inside of the house opened up. There, in the hallway, stood an open door. Therman was nowhere to be seen.

  Kyle gave the door handle a nudge. The doors were firmly in place. A driving need pushed Kyle forward and he continued his path around the house, looking inside of windows as he went and trying each one, hoping to find one unlocked. But they were all secured.

  Reaching the front of the house again, Kyle surveyed the large window again with its spider web of cracks. The light from the window cast a glow on Therman’s front yard and on Kyle.

  Looking up and down the street, Kyle searched for the flicker of light in any of the surrounding houses. They all stood quiet, their occupants asleep.

  Keeping his eyes trained at the houses around him, Kyle’s elbow hammered back into the cracked, glass plate, and the cascade of tinkling glass fell all around him. Still, no light flickered at the surrounding houses.

  Turning around, Kyle found the window completely gone. The hole it left behind was warm and inviting—and not unlike the entrance to hell, Kyle was sure.

  He stepped through, and that was that. He was officially breaking and entering, yet Victoria’s dead eyes staring up in the back of his mind beckoned him on.

  Kyle pushed deeper into the house. He found the hallway that had been visible from the sliding glass doors from the back patio. The single door in the unadorned hallway still stood open, and Therman’s voice was still absent from the house.

  Approaching the door with care and moving as quietly as he could, Kyle looked through the opening into darkness and a stairwell that went down.

  A shiver travelled up Kyle’s spine, yet Victoria’s eyes gave him the courage to face the unknown ahead of him. She needed answers, he knew, and she was not about to let him rest as long as there was a chance her killer could be brought to justice.

  Stepping through the doorway, Kyle cringed, waiting for the top stair to creak, to announce his presence. But it remained silent.

  Even the house doesn’t like Therman, Kyle mused, feeling emboldened.

  Moving as silently as he could, he inched his way down into the darkness. He didn’t dare turn on the light for fear that it would alert Therman, and he often glanced over his shoulder at the open door and the glow of light it allowed through. His imagination played with his fears as his mind saw Therman step into view just long enough to slam the door shut to lock him into permanent darkness.

  To padlock the door.

  Kyle’s heart pounded in his chest.

  Get it together. You’re not some wuss. You can bench almost four hundred pounds. You can throw this dipshit over your head.

  Yet the fear he felt spiraled itself around his spine like a snake and then squeezed. Shifting, Kyle focused on controlling his breath. He kept it even and slow. He kept his heart rate low, and the serpent of fear eased its grip.

  He moved deeper into the darkness, turning a corner so that the glow of the door above no longer illuminated his surroundings. Something else did. It was easy to spot in the dark. The shadow of something tall with a straight lined edge was backlit by a soft glow of light. Moving closer, Kyle saw that a tall, heavy metal shelf had been pulled away from the wall. Looking behind it, he saw the rough-edge doorway of busted concrete that framed a long, low tunnel beyond.
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  “Motherfucker,” Kyle whispered, anger overriding fear.

  Pushing forward, Kyle moved into the tunnel and had to keep his shoulders and head tilted forward in order to fit the confined space. But the size and shape of the tunnel wasn’t of interest to him. The sound of Therman’s sobbing voice, the man still invisible at the end of the hall, pulled Kyle forward with a driving need. At his sides, his fists clenched and unclenched and his once-calm heart pounded against his ribs.

  Reaching the hall’s end, he moved into the space left open by the thick, solid steel door and stopped. Inside, Therman knelt on his knees with his forehead pressed to the top of a bed. On the wall above him and directly across from him was a framed photograph of Victoria. The space was small—about fifteen by twelve. It had a sink and a toilet. The legs of the bed were bolted to the floor, and each corner of the bed was equipped with chains and shackles.

  Inside, Therman cried. “Why? I could have taken care of you! It didn’t have to be this way! Why?”

  Kyle’s body leaned forward. He wanted to crush Therman, deliver justice himself. But Kyle’s feet didn’t move, and his body regained its balance instead of forcing him to step forward.

  Kyle wanted to kill the toadish man in front of him, and the refusal to allow his body to follow through with that want was a palpable pain that travelled up from Kyle’s palms into his elbows and shoulders until it hurt his head.

  I’ll kill him. Nothing—absolutely nothing—within Kyle planned otherwise.

  His hand reached out… his fingers curled around the edge of the door.

  He slammed it shut, throwing the steel lever welded onto the door into its lock to jam the door in place.

  Beyond the door, the muted cries of an anguished man turned into screams of fear and panic.

  Kyle smiled.

  5

  Tobias

  He was trapped. There was nothing above him, nothing around him, but he was trapped nonetheless, held in place by an invisible force.

  All he knew was that it was pure anger and hatred, and it was coming to kill him. It lived for revenge. Breathing became a focused labor. It became an effort.

  Tobias tried to reach out and put his hands up to his face or his chest. He tried to push at the being that had him trapped him. At whoever—whatever—was haunting him tonight.

  It was coming. Any time now. And he was never going to get away in time.

  Sweat broke out on his forehead as trapped, lifeless air strangled him with a hot blanket. Panic surged through him and he pushed and fought against the weight, but it didn’t budge. It lay on him, killing him slowly.

  Tobias’s lungs burned, his eyes bulging as the need for air consumed him.

  The pounding of his heart hammered in his head as the weight grew heavier, the threat grew closer. The pounding grew as his chest burned. It grew until there was nothing else but the pounding, the weight and the pain.

  Gasping air into his lungs, Tobias sat bolt upright in bed and then teetered as the room spun. His chest still burned, enough that he rubbed it hard with the butt of his hand. That only made it worse. Looking down, his eyes could see the angry red welts his fingernails had left as he’d clawed at his own chest with the need to breathe.

  Pounding sounded again, but the room stopped spinning. Taking a deeper, slower breath than the gasped, choking ones he’d been suffocating with, Tobias finally connected the sound with reality. Someone was at his front door. He’d only had a small window of opportunity to get some sleep as the forensic team gathered evidence at the crime scene, and that window was quickly closing.

  “Fuck!” Tobias pushed the base of his palms into his forehead above his eyes and pressed as hard as he could. He needed time to think. He needed time to figure things out.

  The pounding sounded again, louder this time.

  At this rate, he’d wake up all of the neighbors—one of the drawbacks to living in a condominium. Of the four-floor building, Tobias had the complete first floor. There was, however, a mirroring condo duplex right next to his, and they shared the same entryway as it led to an inner courtyard shared by each of the four-story condo duplexes.

  “I can’t do this anymore!”

  Tobias got out of bed, sensitive to the cool night air on his sweat-damp skin. Grabbing his Glock from his shoulder holster resting on the floor just under the edge of his bed, Tobias didn’t bother to dress and instead made his way to the front door in his loose, pin-striped boxers. He held the gun low against his thigh as he peeked through the door’s peephole.

  He saw the base of a thick throat atop broad shoulders too wide to be seen through the narrow window.

  Tobias’s heart skipped a beat.

  “Kyle.” The name sounded foreign on his lips.

  He’d lamented and prayed and cried over that name for years. He’d been to seances, had visited mediums, and had spent hours in front of a Ouija board. He’d gotten countless “messages” from Kyle and had been assured that he was well—that he was not restless because his murder had gone unsolved.

  Until less than five hours ago, Kyle had been a fourteen year old boy whom Tobias had loved. Kyle had been his best friend; he’d been his everything. And he had been frozen in time—forever fourteen.

  He had not been a man… with muscles, strength and the ability to command a room. Back when Tobias had known him, Kyle had been his world. Now, as a man—a man wholly alive and well—Kyle was out of his league… and he fucked girls.

  A large-knuckled fist began to pound on his door again just as Tobias reached to open it, halting the incessant demand for attention. With the gun safely in a drawer and out of sight again, Tobias opened the door and leaned against its edge before allowing his body a lazy yawn.

  “Yeah,” he said in answer to the big man standing in front of him.

  That everything about him put Tobias on edge was information that Kyle did not need to have. What Tobias hadn’t anticipated, though, was Kyle’s reaction to him.

  The big man’s eyes grew more lidded and heated as they took their time trailing down every inch of Tobias’s exposed flesh. It made Tobias feel naked, and he became aware of how his breath made his chest rise and fall. His cock throbbed with sudden want.

  “What happened to your chest?” The question hung in the air between them as Kyle’s low voice teased at all of Tobias’s senses.

  He wanted to give himself to Kyle. He wanted to be taken by and surrender to Kyle. All of him. Kyle had the kind of shoulders that could carry the past, tomorrow and today. He had the kind of shoulders that could carry the world—and Tobias was ready to let someone help him carry that burden.

  Kyle’s raised eyebrows as a silent question mark in the wake of the non-answer that followed brought Tobias back to his senses.

  He let you believe he was dead… for years. He didn’t know you thought he was dead. The voices within Tobias warred. He kept a straight face, not willing to give light to his struggle within.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “A lover do that to your chest?” Kyle asked, his eyes growing hotter.

  “Yes.” It wasn’t a lie. His own hand had been his most faithful lover.

  Kyle’s whole face darkened, losing its youthful, boyish charm.

  “What are you doing here?” Tobias asked again.

  “You shouldn’t have lovers like that. You shouldn’t let… men,” Kyle seemed to stumble on the word, “misuse you like that.”

  Tobias lifted a hand to his still sore jaw. He rubbed it and experimentally moved it from side to side before releasing it. “No, I shouldn’t.”

  Even in the soft light of the outside security bulb, Tobias could see Kyle’s face turn red. “I’m not your lover.”

  But you could have been, Tobias finished Kyle’s statement of rejection. The truth was much different than what Kyle was now so determined to hold on to.

  “Maybe you weren’t my lover, but I loved you. I loved you with everything about me. I loved you more than anythin
g. Literally. More than myself. More than life. You left me.” The words poured out of Tobias. They were words he had desperately wanted to say to Kyle over the years since Kyle’s “death.” Now that he was alive, fuck it all, Tobias wasn’t going to miss his chance.

  Kyle grabbed Tobias’s shirt front. “You left me. You left me to rot. You left me in hell.”

  Tobias’s fingers pulled at Kyle’s, but half-heartedly. He was breathless. How could he think that?

  Finally, Tobias grabbed his fist, wrenched it off him, and Tobias started to back out of the way of the door to slam it shut.

  But Kyle’s flat hand stopped the door so that it remained open.

  “I need your help.”

  Those had not been the words that Tobias had expected to hear next out of Kyle’s mouth.

  “What? You need me to throw myself off of a balcony to finish the job?” Tobias croaked. “Sorry. I live on the first floor. The fall wouldn’t kill me.” He didn’t know why he was joking.

  “I need your help with Victoria’s murderer. I know who did it. I need you to come with me.”

  “Fuck that!”

  “I’m sorry,” Kyle said, stepping forward into the apartment.

  “Why should I trust you?”

  Kyle’s face twisted in torment as some part of himself fought a battle worthy of legions. Anguish filled his eyes. “I loved you,” he finally said, his voice rasping. “I love you.”

  Tobias’s knees buckled but he caught himself. He staggered a step backward, and he saw as Kyle reached for him. But, this time, he wasn’t reaching with menace. He was reaching with concern.

  He loves me. Present tense. He LOVES me. Tobias’s heart raced.

  “I didn’t know you were alive. I swear. I swear it. I would have come for you. I would have done anything to save you,” Tobias rasped as a tear burned a trail down his cheek. “Mom told me you were dead. She looked awful. She looked like she had died. I… I believed her. I’m so sorry.”