by Mark Lukens
It had been hours now and there had been no sign of this killer that everybody had been whispering about. But Officer Sam wasn’t going to let his guard down. He kept himself awake with the coffee, but also with his anger. He thought of John and Deena Bear, people he’d known well. And he thought of their poor son David. At least David and Awenita were with Captain Begay tonight at his house.
When they had organized their patrol earlier in the day, they had all agreed to drive by Captain Begay’s house every hour or so, even though he didn’t want them doing that. Officer Sam had also decided to swing past Awenita’s house on his way out of town. The house was dark and empty. He stopped there for a moment, his Dodge Durango rumbling in the driveway. He used the spotlight on the side of the driver’s door, shining the beam of light along the front of the home, but he saw nothing suspicious.
And now that he was farther away from town, he would run by John and Deena’s house. It was just an empty place now. No one would ever buy the house now. No one would even rent it. No one would buy the land even if the house was torn down. It was a haunted place now and it would always be a haunted place.
On his way out to John and Deena’s house, Officer Sam saw something in the distance down the road, a dark shape speeding towards him. He slowed down a little and flipped his headlights to brights. He saw now that the dark shape was a vehicle racing towards him, but the vehicle had all of its lights turned off.
Sam hit the switch for the police lights on top of his Dodge Durango. His first thought was that it could be the killer driving towards him, the killer they’d all been waiting for. But then he thought it was more likely a drunk driver who hadn’t realized that his headlights weren’t on.
The car wasn’t slowing down as it approached. It was driving fast, at least sixty miles an hour, and it was coming right for him.
Maybe the police lights weren’t working to alert the driver. Sam pressed the button for the siren, just a quick whoop whoop.
The car still hadn’t slowed down. It was almost up to Sam’s vehicle, staying in its own lane, driving as straight as an arrow. It was an older car, a gray Chevy Impala with a different colored front fender and a big dent in the rear quarter panel. The Chevy sped right past Sam’s Durango. His heart skipped a beat, his breath freezing in his lungs for a few seconds. There wasn’t anyone inside the vehicle. The Durango’s headlights had washed over the windshield of the Chevy Impala and there was no one in the driver’s seat.
That can’t be possible.
Maybe the flickering red and blue lights and his headlights had worked together to create some kind of distorting lights and shadows, some kind of optical illusion that made it seem like no one had been driving.
Officer Sam skidded to a stop and turned around. He gunned the gas and sped down the road. He was up to fifty miles an hour. Sixty. Then seventy. He was gaining on the car quickly, the red and blue lights from his police cruiser crisscrossing the road in front of him.
He was about to call this in, but he didn’t grab the mike because he saw the New Mexico plate on the back of the Impala; he already knew whose car this was. This was Billy Nez’s daughter’s car. But he doubted Doli was driving tonight, more likely it was her husband who was often drunk and always getting into trouble.
The driver was already slowing down, already knowing that he couldn’t outrun Officer Sam’s Durango. The Impala veered to the right as it slowed down more, the brake lights flashing a few times. It slowed to a crawl as it ran over the sand and then the brush and small shrubs before coming to a stop in a cloud of dust.
Officer Sam pulled up behind the car and kept his police lights on. He sat there for a moment, not sure what to do. He didn’t want to take this guy in because he didn’t want to leave his patrol, so he decided not to call it in. Maybe Doli’s husband wasn’t drunk; maybe he had just fallen asleep. If he was really drunk, Sam decided that he would just put him in the back of his Durango until his shift was over. There was always the danger of the guy puking or pissing himself, but it was a chance he would take to stay out here and help nab this killer.
If this killer was really coming.
He stared at the Impala in front of him. The Durango’s headlights were shining right into the rear window because his vehicle sat higher up off of the ground. The strange thing was that he still couldn’t see a driver behind the wheel. Maybe the driver was lying down across the seat, passed out. Or maybe he had jumped out earlier, running into the desert, taking his chances out there rather than being caught.
A strange sensation of fear tapped at Sam, but he pushed it away. He always had to be careful on traffic stops, but he was pretty sure this guy would be no real threat.
He got out and unsnapped the strap over his service pistol, getting ready to draw just in case. He pulled his flashlight out and turned it on even though his headlights and police lights were providing plenty of light. He shined his flashlight at the back of the Chevy Impala as he walked towards it, his boots crunching on the sand. It was quiet out here. The only sounds were both of the vehicles running. He was expecting the driver’s window to roll down or the driver’s door to open at any moment, spilling the driver out. But the door remained closed and the window stayed rolled up. All the windows were rolled up.
Sam got to the back door of the car and shined his flashlight in at the back seat. Everything—his heart, his breath, his muscles—seemed to stop for a second. There were four severed heads in the back seat: a man’s head, a woman’s head, and the heads of two children. Blood was smeared all over the seats. The children’s heads were face-down, but the man’s head was on its side and the woman’s face was turned up, her blank eyes staring at the ceiling of the car. Her mouth was wide open, her neck ending in a ragged stump that was crusted with dark blood. Her hair was splayed out underneath the head. It was Doli’s head. And her husband’s head was right beside hers. The two smaller heads must be her children.
Officer Sam drew his gun and stepped in front of the driver’s window, aiming his gun at the window, shining his flashlight beam inside. “Turn the car off! Keep your hands where I can see them!”
There was no one in the driver’s seat—it was empty.
“Aw, you saw the gifts I was bringing to the party,” a deep voice said from right behind Officer Sam.
Sam turned and aimed his pistol and flashlight at the man who stood only a few feet away from him. The man was tall and thin, the skin on his face and hands ghostly white. His head was shaved clean; even his eyebrows and eyelashes were gone.
“Don’t move!” Sam yelled at the man. This was the killer that Begay had warned everyone about earlier—had to be. Sam was going to nab this guy by himself, or shoot him if he had to.
The man raised his hands up slowly, surrendering. There were bloodstains on his dark clothing, and smaller splashes of blood on his hands. The man didn’t look scared. He smiled and his eyes were as cold as the desert air.
“Down on the ground!” Sam yelled. He needed to get this guy down and cuffed, and then he needed to call this in. He wished now that he would have already called this stop in.
“I guess one more gift couldn’t hurt,” the man said as dozens of tentacles shot out of his wrists and from his torso, knocking Sam’s gun and flashlight out of his hands, wrapping around his wrists in a flash.
Sam was slammed into the side of the Impala, his breath knocked from his lungs with a grunt. He slid down the car door, sitting down hard on the sand with his back against the Impala. He didn’t even know how he’d gotten down to the ground so quickly. There were more tentacles wrapped around his wrists and arms, holding him there. The tentacles were moving like snakes, alive but not alive, squeezing him tighter. He tried to kick his legs, but he couldn’t move.
Another tentacle shot out from a dark mass in front of him and wrapped around his neck. The killer was out there somewhere beyond those tentacles, somehow connected to the black, shimmering mass of tendrils. But that wasn’t a man, that was a demon,
the Ancient Enemy that some whispered about, the monster that Sam had never believed in.
The tentacle around Sam’s neck tightened, sinking into his flesh, cutting through his windpipe. He could feel the blood gushing down into his lungs, cutting off his breathing, drowning him. He kept his eyes open as long as he could, but everything was going black. His world was turning dark.
CHAPTER 28
David
Iron Springs, New Mexico
David woke up. He was curled up on the floor. He couldn’t remember falling asleep, but he must have dozed off at some point. He looked around at the living room. Angie and his Aunt Awenita were on the couch, one at each end, both asleep. Begay was probably supposed to be on watch, but he was asleep in his recliner, snoring softly, his shotgun on the floor beside him. Billy Nez was in the dining room, chanting softly, moving around in the other room like a shadow. All of the lights were off, but there was a little bit of light shining in through the windows from the front porch light.
David remembered dreaming so he had to have been asleep for a little while. In his dream he’d been in the town of Hope’s End again. But this time the dream was different, this hadn’t been a memory. This time he’d been alone in the town—Jed, Esmerelda, and the others were all gone; it was just him and the dead people in Hope’s End. And the killer. The killer was there in the town, a shadow materializing out of the darkness of the saloon.
But that was all David remembered before snapping awake.
The wind had died down outside of Begay’s house and everything was quiet. It felt like the calm before the storm. David sat up and stared into the dining room and kitchen, catching flashes of movement from Billy Nez, listening to his whispered chants. Begay had said Billy dabbled with the dark side of magic and that some believed he was a witch. Maybe the symbols Billy had painted on David’s hands, the ancient Anasazi writing, would help. But maybe Billy’s dark spells and songs would help, too. Anything might help.
David didn’t know anything about the dark arts, and as far as he knew Joe Blackhorn didn’t either. But Billy said earlier that Joe Blackhorn had left something for him at his place, something that could help with a spirit walk. David wondered if Joe Blackhorn had been keeping secrets from him. But that wasn’t really fair because he hadn’t studied long enough with Joe Blackhorn to find out any secrets the old man might have been keeping; he had turned his back on the medicine man and walked away from his studies. And now the guilt was back. He felt selfish because he had walked away from Joe Blackhorn, because he had wanted to feel normal. But now he knew that feeling normal was never going to be possible for him.
He looked down at the symbols painted on his hands and wrists. He wasn’t as prepared as he could be. He could die tonight because he wasn’t strong enough to defeat that monster out there in the dark, that spirit or demon or alien, or whatever it was. Not only could he die, but his aunt could die. And Captain Begay and his wife. Billy Nez could die. Cole and Stella could die. They could all die because he wasn’t ready, because he wasn’t strong enough to fight the Ancient Enemy, because he hadn’t studied and trained long enough, because he had turned his back on Joe Blackhorn.
The Ancient Enemy wasn’t going to stop after it killed all of them tonight. There would be a black wave of death to follow, every living thing wiped out in its path.
Begay seemed to stop breathing for a moment in his chair, for almost a full minute. David watched him, wondering if he should get up and try to wake the captain up. But then Begay snorted and inhaled a breath, coughing and waking up. He hunched forward in the darkness. “You hear that?”
David wasn’t sure if Begay was talking to him, or if maybe he was freeing himself from the last fragments of a dream.
“You hear that?” Begay asked again.
David listened for a moment, and then he heard a sound coming from outside. It was a rumbling sound, like a car or truck with a powerful engine running.
Begay grabbed his shotgun from the floor and stood up. He walked over to the living room window to peek out through the curtains.
Angie and Awenita woke up on the couch.
“What is it?” Angie asked as she popped up to her feet. “Who’s out there?”
Begay peered out the window. “It’s a squad car,” he said. “A Durango. One of the older ones. I told those guys not to park in front of my house. They need everyone they’ve got out on patrol.”
“What’s he doing out there?”
Begay shook his head just a little, still staring out through the slit in the curtains he had parted with the barrel of his shotgun. “I don’t see anyone. The lights are on, even the lights inside the cruiser, but no one’s there. I think it might be Sam Yazzie’s truck.”
“Why isn’t he in his truck?” Angie asked.
“I don’t know,” Begay muttered. He looked around at the front yard through the window. “Maybe he saw something and got out to check it out.”
David watched Begay at the window. He could tell that Begay felt helpless. He knew Begay wanted to go outside and check on Sam, but he was torn between staying in the house to protect them and going out there to help his former officer.
The wind picked up a little, David could hear it and he felt the goosebumps on his skin. It felt like the fine hairs on his skin were standing up, like a slight electric current was suddenly in the air. It was a sensation he’d felt before when the Ancient Enemy was close.
Begay let the curtain fall back in place and walked back to his chair, pacing the floor. Angie sat back down on the couch.
Something slammed against the front door from outside, a wet thump.
David had heard that sound before, the sound of wet thumps striking a door. He’d heard those same sounds in Tom Gordon’s cabin in Colorado.
Another thump against the door, loud and heavy, but also soft, like a rock covered in a cloth.
“What the hell?” Begay said, frozen for a moment with his shotgun in his hand.
Billy entered the living room from the kitchen, staring at the front door.
Three more thumps sounded against the door—five of them so far.
Begay marched to the front door.
“Wait,” David yelled at him.
Begay stopped and stared at David. “You know what that is?”
David didn’t answer because it wasn’t a simple thing to explain. He knew vaguely what the thumps were: body parts thrown against the front door, just like what had happened at Tom Gordon’s cabin in Colorado. But he didn’t know whose body parts they were. David looked at Billy Nez. The man looked frightened, like he’d just gotten a horrible premonition.
“It could be Sam knocking at the door,” Begay said, going for the door again.
“It isn’t Sam,” David told him.
Again, Begay stopped in his tracks. He looked at the door; the thumps against the door had stopped now. He looked at the window, the porch light shining in through the curtains.
Then the porch light went out. All of the lights went out and the house was plunged into darkness.
Angie screamed and put a hand up to her mouth.
Begay hurried over to the front window and peeked out through the curtains. He was tense, like a cat inspecting something on the floor, ready to jump back at any moment.
The Ancient Enemy was out there, David was sure of that. But it was more than that, the Ancient Enemy had brought a killer this time, a man who would know how to get inside the house, a man who would know how to terrorize his victims and keep them off-balance and second guessing.
Angie watched Begay as he stared out the front window. She still had one hand up to her mouth, breathing so heavily she was practically hyperventilating. “What is it?” she whispered at her husband. “What’s out there?”
Begay looked more confused than frightened as he stared out the window.
David had seen that expression on a man’s face before, at the cabin when Cole’s brother Trevor had stared out the cabin’s front window, star
ing at Frank standing in the snow, Frank who had been taken in the night and sent back to ask for things.
But David didn’t think the Ancient Enemy was going to ask for things now. No, the Ancient Enemy had the serial killer with him this time, a man who wouldn’t hesitate to kill just for the pleasure of it.
“I don’t see anything out there,” Begay finally answered his wife.
CHAPTER 29
Begay
Iron Springs, New Mexico
Begay moved farther to his left along the window so he could see more of the front porch, but everything was hidden in darkness. From this angle he could only see part of the front porch. It looked like there might be some stains on the concrete floor of the porch, maybe mud or footsteps, but he couldn’t be sure. The night sky was clear of clouds and full of stars, and the moonlight helped a little, but the only other light out there was from Officer Sam’s Durango. Begay was still tense as he looked out the window, ready to jump back if he needed to, his shotgun still gripped tightly in one hand.
“I still don’t see anything out there,” Begay said. “Sam’s Durango is still running, the interior lights still on.”
“You’re sure it’s Sam’s truck?” Angie asked.
“Yeah. The doors are all closed, the windows rolled up. But no one’s inside.”
“You think he’s out there chasing someone?” Awenita asked.
Begay didn’t answer.
“Maybe it was Sam at the front door,” Angie said. “Like you said.”
But Begay wasn’t so sure about that now. “No. He would have called out to us.”
Not if he can’t talk, a voice whispered in Begay’s mind.
Begay studied their large front yard. It was mostly hidden in darkness, but there was something halfway between the porch and Sam’s Durango. “I think I see something out there.”