by Mark Lukens
Gripping the gun’s handle tightly, Stella had no choice but to go into the living room. Cole was in the bedroom and the only way to get to him was through the living room. It was still too dark in the house. If there was an intruder in the house, or if it really was the Ancient Enemy, then they knew she was in the kitchen right now. She needed to turn on a light—she couldn’t be in the dark.
On her way to the living room, Stella flipped on the overhead light in the kitchen and then the one on the ceiling fan in the living room. She rushed into the living room, gun aimed, her finger on the trigger.
And then she froze.
Cole sat in the recliner.
Stella’s breath came out in a rushing exhale, her body suddenly weak. The gun felt like a cinderblock in her hand and she dropped it down to her side.
Oh my God, what am I doing? I could have shot him.
“Cole,” she whispered.
He stared at her from the chair, hunched forward, his brow hiding his eyes in shadows, but she could tell he was staring at her. Maybe he was shocked because she had rushed into the living room with a gun aimed at him. But if he was angry, he wasn’t showing it. His face seemed blank, devoid of all emotion.
I could have shot him. What’s wrong with me?
Stella set the gun down on a bureau next to the wall, the thud of the gun against the piece of furniture loud in the silence. “Are you okay?”
Cole nodded. His eyes were half-closed now. Maybe he was still half-asleep. He had probably woken up and realized that she wasn’t in bed with him and he’d come out here to look for her.
“Are you cold?” she asked, taking a step towards him. It wasn’t cold at all in the house but he looked like he was shivering.
He nodded. But he looked more than cold, he looked sick. She hoped he wasn’t coming down with some kind of tropical flu. They’d been pretty lucky so far with their health. And if he was sick with something, there was a good chance she had brought it back with her from the jungle.
Maybe she was also sick. She felt like she was burning up with a fever, her skin hot and clammy. Maybe hallucinations were a symptom of this sickness. And paranoia.
“You want to go back to bed?” she asked him. “Get under a blanket?”
He shook his head no.
“I’ll get a blanket for you,” she told him.
He didn’t answer.
She knew she should have gone to him and comforted him, maybe she should have felt his forehead for a fever. But for some reason she didn’t want to be near him, and getting the blanket for him was an excuse to be away from that dead stare of his. She told herself that she was embarrassed because she had aimed a gun at him, but it was more than that. There seemed to be something wrong with him, something more than a fever.
A thought struck her when she was halfway down the hall to their bedroom—Cole hadn’t spoken a word to her. Cole wasn’t himself. She stopped in the middle of the hallway. It was dark, but the light from the living room was providing enough light for her to see that their bedroom door was almost all the way closed. Why would Cole leave their bedroom and close the door? He’d never done that before.
What if that wasn’t Cole out there in the living room anymore? What if the Ancient Enemy had gotten inside the house while she’d been looking out the kitchen window? What if the shadow moving outside had been a distraction so the Ancient Enemy could get to Cole, get inside of him? The Ancient Enemy had used distractions at the dig site and at the cabin; maybe it had used one here.
She’d left the gun out in the living room, but Cole had more guns in the bedroom. His handgun was in there. She slipped into the bedroom and closed the door, locking it. She would get another gun and go back to the living room. She would talk to Cole. She would make him answer her, make sure it was really him.
She was about to turn on the light so she could see. She didn’t want to be in the dark right now. But then she stopped. She heard something behind her, a heavy breathing sound coming from the bed.
It’s here . . . it’s already in here . . .
Stella slapped at the light switch, trying to find it, trying to turn it on. She realized now that she had made a terrible mistake. She never should have left Cole in the living room. She never should have put the gun down.
Something was grabbing her in the darkness, trying to pull her deeper into the room. She tried to fight back but it was too strong.
CHAPTER 13
Cole
Costa Rica
“Stella!”
She wasn’t answering him.
He turned on the bedroom light, flipping the switch on. He held her arm with his other hand, but she was still fighting him. Her eyes were wide with shock when she saw him in front of her.
“Stella, what’s wrong?”
“I . . . I . . .” She looked back at the bedroom door. It was closed.
“Were you asleep?” he asked. “Dreaming?”
She shook her head no, but it didn’t look like she was sure about her answer. It didn’t look like she was sure about anything.
This had happened to both of them before, especially the first year they were down here: night terrors, sleepwalking, paralyzing nightmares, stifled screams while waking up.
“I was awake,” Stella whispered, still staring at him like she was trying to understand why he was standing right in front of her.
He suspected she might still be trying to come fully awake.
“I just saw you in the living room,” she whispered.
Cole felt a shiver travel through his body. It wasn’t just what she’d said, but that expression of fear on her face.
He hurried over to his side of the bed and pulled on his pants. He stuffed his feet into his sneakers and grabbed his gun. He went to the door and then looked at Stella—she hadn’t moved an inch. “Is someone out there?”
She didn’t nod or shake her head no, she just stared at him.
Cole twisted the doorknob gently. It was locked. Stella had locked the door in her terror. He twisted the lock and then opened the door. He crept down the hall. The lights in the living room and kitchen were on. He stepped out of the hall into the living room, looking around. He didn’t see anyone.
Stella was right behind him.
“What did you see?” he asked her.
“I got up about twenty minutes ago,” she said.
“Did something wake you up? Did you have a nightmare?”
“I don’t think so. I . . . I just couldn’t sleep. When you finally fell asleep, I got up. I came out here to make some coffee. And then I thought I saw something moving outside the kitchen window.”
Cole stopped next to the bureau against the wall. He saw the gun on top of it.
“I got the gun from the kitchen drawer when I saw something outside the kitchen window,” Stella explained.
Cole just nodded and entered the kitchen. He could feel Stella right behind him. He checked the door that led out to a screened-in back porch. The door was still locked. He turned off the kitchen light and peered out the window over the sink. He looked back at Stella. “What did you see out there?”
“I don’t know. It was like a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye.”
“Like a bat?”
She shook her head no. “It was way bigger than a bat.”
“But you didn’t see what it was.”
She shook her head no again.
“What happened after that?”
“I heard a noise in the living room, like someone had bumped into a piece of furniture. That’s when I got the gun.”
He didn’t like the idea of her grabbing a gun while walking in her sleep.
“I went into the living room and I saw you sitting in the chair. You were in your T-shirt and underwear. Just like when you went to bed. You didn’t say anything. You just stared at me. You looked . . .”
“Looked like what?”
“At first I thought you were still half-asleep, but the more I thought about it, you
had a blank expression on your face. Emotionless. Like you were dead. Like Frank at the cabin. Like the others the Ancient Enemy sent back.”
Cole went to her and wrapped his arms around her, holding her. She was trembling. “That wasn’t me,” he whispered. “It was just a bad dream.”
“You were cold,” she continued into his shoulder. “Shivering. I went to our bedroom to get you a blanket.”
“It wasn’t me,” he assured her.
“But then I wondered if the Ancient Enemy was already inside of you, using you, controlling you.”
Cole pulled away and looked at Stella, staring into her eyes. “Babe, it’s me now. I’m here now. I wasn’t out here earlier. I woke up in our bedroom when you were slapping at the wall, trying to turn on the light.”
She just stared at him.
“I think you might have been walking in your sleep.”
She shook her head no, already dismissing that idea.
“I know it might have felt real. Remember how many times you walked in your sleep before? When we first got here? Remember that time you punched me in the face? You gave me a bloody nose.” He smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back. “I think you got scared in the jungle yesterday at the dig. And I think it has triggered the night terrors again.”
Stella nodded. She seemed to be on the verge of tears, struggling to hold them back. But she was also beginning to look relieved. He thought his words might be sinking in.
“I think you should take a few more days off from the dig. Maybe even a week or two.” The thought of men stalking the dig site, possibly planning to rob it, hadn’t left his mind entirely.
He expected resistance from Stella, but to his surprise she nodded in agreement. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of Maria,” she said. “I left her a voicemail, but I wanted to talk to her about it.”
Cole was glad she was going to take some time off. He had never liked the idea of her going into the jungle, but he had given in because he knew how much she loved the field work. Maybe she hadn’t really seen someone in the jungle, maybe it had just been her imagination triggered by all the talk in town about the eighteen people that had been slaughtered in a village a few days ago.
“Let’s get a cup of coffee and then we’ll go back to bed. Okay?”
She nodded.
“Or how about some tea? Maybe tea would be better.”
She shrugged like she didn’t care. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It was just . . . it seemed so real.”
“I know.” He hugged her again, holding her tight.
This was just a temporary setback, he told himself. They would get through this again. They would get better again.
Cole started some tea for Stella. Maybe they’d be able to get back to bed soon, but Cole wasn’t so sure he’d be able to go back to sleep. He’d been dreaming when Stella had stormed into the bedroom. He’d been dreaming about the ghost town in Arizona, only it wasn’t a ghost town in the dream—it was the town it had been back in the 1890s, a town called Hope’s End. Nothing scary had happened in the dream, but it had scared him anyway and he wasn’t sure why.
CHAPTER 14
Teresa
Denver, Colorado
Teresa snapped awake in bed. The bedroom was dark, but moonlight shined in through the upper windows, giving her enough light to see the massive bedroom she shared with her husband Gary. She looked at him lying on the other side of their king-sized bed. He was in his usual position, on his side, facing away from her. He was breathing heavily, but not snoring.
She looked back up at the high ceiling, studying the patterns the tree branches and leaves made there in the moonlight, faint patterns that could turn into faces and other things if she stared at them long enough. It was her own private Rorschach inkblot on her ceiling.
It seemed like something had awakened her, a sound somewhere else in the house maybe. She had checked all of the doors and windows and made sure the security system was on before going to bed. Her ex-husband’s paranoia had gotten to her today and she hated him for it. She didn’t want to admit it to him, but she had been scared when she’d found out Eliza and the kids were leaving town. And she had to admit that her ex-husband’s last name painted in blood on the wall of a crime scene had been pretty creepy.
Earlier, in the daylight, it had been easier to pass his ravings off as paranoia, but now, in the dark, in the middle of the night, it seemed like all of it could be real. She tried to think rationally as she lay in bed. What were the odds that a serial killer would come to their neighborhood and target this house? Astronomical odds, she guessed. Possible? Yes, but anything was remotely possible. Probable? Not likely. Of course Palmer’s name written on the wall changed things and changed the odds a little.
She had talked to Eliza earlier, but she hadn’t been able to talk her into staying in her home. Maybe that was a small victory for her ex. But Eliza looked at leaving as an impromptu vacation, a chance to get away with the kids for a while, to spontaneously go somewhere. An adventure.
“Don’t let your father win,” she’d told Eliza on the phone.
“Not everything’s a competition,” she’d answered back.
But he had already gotten to Eliza first, buried that fear deep inside of her before she could talk some sense into her. She wanted Eliza to dislike her father as much as she did, but sometimes it only seemed to make her love him more.
Love? That probably wasn’t even the correct emotion Eliza had for her father, it was probably more like pity. Palmer had been a strong man once, but the drinking and the FBI had torn him down little by little, making him weaker and weaker. And that last case he had worked, the Dig Site Murders, that case had broken him completely.
Even Gary tried to defend Palmer. He found it perfectly reasonable for Palmer to exhibit post-traumatic stress symptoms after the things he had experienced. He suggested that Palmer see someone, at least talk to a therapist.
Now Palmer was retired and still living in that tiny condo in the city. She didn’t know what he did all day now, and she wasn’t even sure why he was occupying so much of her thoughts lately. At least he hadn’t started drinking again; she could at least say one good thing about him.
Teresa rolled over, facing away from Gary. This was how they usually slept, facing in the opposite direction.
She had closed her eyes again, teetering on the edge of sleep, when a sudden wind rattled the trees outside. It sounded like a hurricane for a moment. She rolled over to see if the howling wind had woken Gary up. He was still sleeping.
After the wind died back down, she stared up at the ceiling again. The familiar patterns of the leaves and branches were back. She figured she would stare at them for a while until she fell asleep. But now, even though the wind was gone, the patterns seemed to be moving, swirling together, creating serpentine shapes with insect-like legs poking out and then pulling back into the swirling shadows. Little mouths opened at the end of some of the tendrils, jaws opening and closing, revealing sharp little teeth.
Teresa rolled over onto her side again. She wasn’t going to stare at the shadows on the ceiling tonight. Maybe she had fallen asleep for a second, dreaming those moving shadows for a moment. Again, she blamed Palmer for this; his scary tales had gotten to her, too.
A noise sounded from deep in the house. There was no mistaking the sound this time. It sounded almost like footsteps, like someone was walking around out there.
She sat up in bed, her heart beating faster, her skin warming up, her muscles tense. She had to fight the urge to wake Gary up.
The alarm system is on, she told herself. There can’t be anyone inside or the alarm would have gone off. She looked at the alarm clock on the table next to the bed just to make sure the electricity was still on (even though the security system had a backup battery). The green digital numbers of the alarm clock seemed to float in the darkness like little ghosts.
She was going to have to get up and check the house; she wouldn’t be able to go back to
sleep if she didn’t. She picked up the cordless phone and took it with her when she left the bedroom.
Their house was large. It was a mixture of modern styling and a rustic log cabin. There were a lot of large windows that looked out onto the acres of property all around them, with mountain views in the distance.
She didn’t bother turning on any of the lights as she made her way into the living room. She stared out the windows. There was no one out there. No vehicles in the large parking area or the driveway that led back down the hill into the trees.
Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was in the house.
The killer . . . the one who had done those things to the archaeologists down in that cave in New Mexico.
Palmer had told her a little about that case, but not too much. She’d gotten vague details from internet sites and the news, but Palmer knew more—he knew what had really happened to those people. She had never pressed him about the details; she had never wanted to know. All she knew was that it had been bad, bad enough to tear him up.
She checked the keypad on the wall—the alarm system was still armed. There couldn’t be anyone inside the house. She relaxed a little, but she still heard those footsteps in her mind; they had sounded so loud. It had just been her imagination. She still had the cordless phone gripped in her hand. She would’ve felt better with a gun, but Gary was against guns. They had the burglar alarm and the cordless phone, he’d told her—that was good enough for civilized people.
In the kitchen, she grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator. The light from the refrigerator was shockingly bright and it took her eyes a few seconds to readjust to the darkness when she closed the refrigerator door, agonizingly long seconds.
But she was already feeling better, and feeling tired again. She was sure she would be able to fall back asleep now.
She froze.
Footsteps sounded from the other side of the house—from their bedroom.