The Uninvited (Book 2): The Stranger

by mike Evans

  “Well, I forgot my purse at work. I need to go get it tomorrow and I need to swing by the grocery store and give Harry a twenty for the wine and pizza. Him and the manager floated me and said it was okay to come back and pay for it. They know that I’m there enough that I am good for it. Besides, there’s no other place to get groceries between work and there. I’d have to drive a half hour out of my way to get us anything else on the way home. You wouldn’t want that now, would you? Not with all the weirdos out and about everywhere.”

  “No, no, not at all.”

  She raised an eyebrow when he didn’t move. Poncho was still losing his furry mind and bouncing off the window. The swing was growing louder as he flipped the switch to the outside light. He turned around after a quick look through the window. “There’s nothing there. The dog is just being an idiot; they do that because they are dogs.”

  He flicked the light off, laughing, and then back on. Holly screamed bloody murder making him jump a foot. He looked back and there was nothing there. He clenched his chest and felt light headed and the laughter that erupted from her was one that would make him feel resentment for a while. When she saw his reactions she held up both hands to express her fear and how bad she felt. “I’m going to kill you, woman. I mean it. You don’t like being scared but it is okay to try and kill me with a heart attack?”

  “You know I didn’t mean for it to be that bad, honey, I’m sorry. I won’t do that again, I swear. You need to put some lubricant on that swing set or get rid of it.” Holly walked up to him feeling horrible giving him a hug. She flicked the light on one more time for her peace of mind and saw something on the swing rocking back and forth, “Oh fuck, who is that?”

  “Yeah, you aren’t cute right now, Holly.”

  She spun him around pointing to a man facing away from them on the swing. Rob opened the door and Poncho bolted before they could catch him. The dog ran straight for the man who bent down holding on to the swing grabbing the pup as it leapt for him. The Stranger ignored the dog and turned his head to hear better. The Stranger thought that this had been the best night he had experienced since Rosa and her neighbors six months before. Holly screamed, “You better get the fuck outta here, or my husband’s going to kick your ass!”

  Rob looked at her in shock, “Are you seriously threatening a man with a knife who is in our backyard illegally, and looks big as fuck?”

  She wanted to say something but couldn’t think of anything intelligent to spit out. “Well what do you want to do?”

  He didn’t have a chance to reply because he got up off of the swing and that was when he turned around and they saw the mask that had been on every news station off and on over the last few months. Holly slammed the sliding glass door shut and looked at the counter trying to find a phone. She realized hers was at the diner. “Rob, baby, where’s your cell at?”

  “I don’t know, upstairs maybe, but we need to get out of here.”

  She looked over his shoulder but didn’t see the man anymore. She ran to the kitchen window looking for him. She couldn’t hear Poncho barking anymore or see anything. “What about Poncho? We need to get the dog, Rob!”

  “We need to not be another one of this twisted fuck’s victims.”

  They heard a squeaking noise coming from the kitchen door. Rob flicked the light back on and jumped back a foot when they saw the man standing at the glass drawing a bloody smiley face on the door. Rob looked down to check the lock. The relief that washed over him was temporary as a tapping noise began on the other side. Rob looked up slowly not wanting to know what was going to be next and despising this day. The Stranger was holding a piece of metal rebar. By the time Rob figured out what it was the glass shattered below him and he felt something stab into this abdomen. Rob looked down but Holly was already screaming as she saw then heard the pit pat of blood dripping onto the linoleum below her. He tried to say something but the shock was overwhelming. He looked down to see blood and urine intermixing as it wound its way down his leg. Holly screamed, “It’s gonna hurt!”

  “What’s going to—”

  She gripped him by both shoulders ripping him backwards and freeing the rebar that had been plunged into his abdomen. Rob screamed and The Stranger felt a euphoria he had never felt before rush over and through him. He couldn’t have been more satisfied than if it were angels singing. Holly watched the man for only a millisecond and vowed she wasn’t going to be a victim tonight if she had anything that she could do.

  Rob was screaming still and she pulled him behind her. He kept dropping down to a knee and she slapped him without thinking about it. “Honey, baby, you need to move. I know it hurts, I'm sorry, but that thing isn’t going to stop coming for us until he gets what he wants. We don’t want what he wants to give us. I’ve been watching shit all night at work and there’s little that will stop him in his pursuit but a fucking bullet.”

  Rob nodded and he put an arm around her shoulder and the two hobbled up the steps together. She grunted as she tried to keep him from falling backwards. They got towards the top of the steps and that was when the remaining glass in the door cracked falling to the ground. The Stranger started to walk into the kitchen taking his time making sure there were no surprises waiting for him. He’d had very few people taunt him while he was in the process of killing.

  Holly got towards the top step before she felt the weight on her shoulder growing heavier and heavier until it disappeared all at once. She turned as he was falling backwards; the look of fear in his eyes was worse than she’d ever witnessed before. He looked like he was trying to fly as he went over backwards. He grabbed at the railing but it snapped off under his weight. Holly screamed but it wasn’t because of her husband falling so much as seeing the devil waiting at the end of the stairs. The Stranger was standing at the end of the steps waving to her and then rubbing his hands together as if a delicious meal were being delivered just for him. Rob hit the stairs hard doing a barrel roll and then the snap of his leg bone echoed up the stairway. He hit hard at the bottom of the steps and he started screaming even louder, pleading, and tears began to stream down his face. The Stranger shook his head and put his finger to his lips indicating there was nothing he could do or say that was going to change the outcome of this night.

  The Stranger grabbed him by both ears lifting him up uncaring about his leg and slamming his head back down until Rob was on the verge of passing out. Holly yelled to him, “Stop, stop now, you bastard. Stop!”

  Matt looked up the faintly lit hallway and shook his head no. “I can’t stop, I wouldn’t even if I could. I love it too much.” He dipped a finger in Rob’s blood drawing a smiley on their wall before looking back up to Holly, “I don’t think you would understand. But I promise what I'm doing to him is going to seem like a present compared to what you are going to go through. It is rare I get to know how scared people are of me before I show up. I'm going to spend some time on you.”

  Holly was torn, the man she loved was being tortured and her escape to the outside was only a few more steps away. Rob on the verge of dying, screamed, “Save yourself!”

  Holly put her hands up to her heart thinking that it was going to break very soon. “I can’t leave you, Rob.”

  The Stranger pulled a knife and started pressing it into his heart slowly. Rob screamed in protest trying to hit the man but there was nothing left in his reserves. The Stranger said, “You should look at your wife. I don’t want me keeping you out of heaven.”

  Rob looked at him questioningly before he brought down an open palm on the knife smashing it through till the knife stuck in the floor below. He looked up at Holly who was mesmerized by the act and then twisted the knife guaranteeing there’d be nothing else that could be done to save her husband. He pulled the knife out slowly dipping two fingers in it and running them down the length of his face and across creating the blood cross.

  He rose up off of the floor taking the steps one at a time and listening intently for a window to break or a sign
that she was going downstairs through the top somehow. He walked up and looked around; a loft bedroom and nothing else. There was a window open and he walked over to it looking out into the night to see if he was being duped. Two hands came from nowhere pushing him as hard as they could. Unfortunately for Holly, those hands weren’t big enough and her muscles did little to budge an almost three hundred pound man.

  The Stranger spun around as she tried to bail on the situation. She pushed off her foot as hard as she could to put the distance she needed from his massive reach. When she tried to run he clenched a handful of her once beautiful hair and clenched hard. She ran so fast that the pressure from him pulling almost ripped it straight from her scalp. Her hair’s roots stuck though and brought her off balance and almost off her feet. Matt never hesitated. He grasped her by the neck, lifting her as he walked and tossed her back first out of the second story window. The look of shock on Holly’s face was pure amazement. Matt said, “I’ll see you soon.”

  She screamed, “Fuck you!”

  Holly plummeted to the ground twenty feet below, hitting hard on the dry California grass. Poncho ran over and licked her face trying desperately to wake her up. She pushed the dog off trying to remember what it was that she was doing and why she was staring up at the stars. The Stranger came from nowhere leaning over her.

  Chapter 17

  Gray was calling in backup as he sped toward Holly’s home. He didn’t know where he was going and the dispatcher wasn’t doing much better giving him directions. He screamed into the radio, “Unless you want some very undesirable job in the future, son, you’d better get your head out of your ass. I'm the only one who’s going to make it to this person’s house in time. If I don’t get there that son of a bitch is going to do God knows what. What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Agent Gray, we have districts that we drive in. We are responsible for a very large city. If someone goes outside of it then we don’t necessarily know where they are going. It isn’t our job. We don’t have jurisdiction of the entire USA.”

  Gray snapped off, “Are you being a smart ass, kid? I’ll put up with just about fucking none of it.”

  “Just keep heading east, sir, you’ll be there eventually. Stay on the back roads and you’ll be fine. It is so late you’ll have no issues this time of night. If you get a chance to see any other cops on the way make sure that you let them know that you are on a case and to drop what they are doing immediately and follow you.”

  “No shit, well when you figure out where the fuck I need to go besides east why don’t you radio back to me and let me know. At some point I’m going to go too far and these people don’t have the time we need to waste to get there.”

  “Yes sir, I’ll do just that, I can assure you.”

  Gray drove the sport utility until there was nothing left in the engine to give. A minute later and fifteen miles further into a less than respectable neighborhood and dispatch finally came back over the radio, yelling, “We found it, we found it! You need to slow down and turn, they aren’t that far from you.”

  Gray listened to the directions and when he was within a block of the house he slowed down more, listening with the window down to anything that might be alerting him to something going wrong. He pulled up to the house slowly, still hearing nothing and for that matter saw nothing strange. Gray got out quietly walking to the rear of the house careful not to disturb anything, or for that matter alert anyone that he was there. When Jack made it around back he saw the broken glass from the window and then saw the blood on the kitchen floor.

  Jack hit his radio, “I want an ambulance. There’s blood and the back door looks like it was breached. I repeat…I want an emergency medical vehicle here, ASAP.”

  Jack ducked in-between the broken glass trying to do his best to be quiet. He walked through the kitchen with his gun up and ready, sweeping each room in less than a minute. He was cursing under his breath because the police still were not there yet. He listened until there was a deaf rage going on in his mind trying to tell himself that it wasn’t too late. He thought if he was gone that he’d make it back to his sister in New York and that everything would be fine. He would catch the bad guy, he would move on with his life, and he would keep thousands from suffering.

  When Jack got to the top of the stairs he saw Holly pulling and kicking at restraints on a chair, her eyes wild. Jack pulled his knife running up to her and ripping a piece of duct tape from her mouth. “Are you okay, did he hurt you?”

  “He’s behind you!”

  Jack spun pulling his pistol and knife at the same time, but The Stranger came from nowhere like a ghost grasping his gun hand and pulling it to the side and smashing it into the wall. The gun dropped and Matt kicked it away. While Jack was still looking at that Matt was already sliding the knife into Gray’s side and through his lung.

  Jack smiled, spitting blood bubbles which covered The Strangers mask. He watched Jack’s eyes becoming glassy. Jack sat there wobbling but not letting any pressure off of his grip on Matt. Jack saw his life begin to flash before his eyes. When his wife flashed before them a second wind, a final fight before his life was extinguished surged through him. Jack said, “I’m not going alone.”

  He head butted Matt breaking his nose and splitting it open. Blood poured from the bottom of the mask. Matt tried to grab his nose but Jack pulled him to the window and the two of them went out of it. Holly fought until the restraint finally came off and when she looked down to the grass she saw Jack laying there, alone. Police sirens began blaring down the street and within a few minutes they had the house surrounded. Holly watched Jack on the ground and even though she wasn’t a doctor she knew that he wasn’t going to be getting up again.

  She thought about Rob on the floor downstairs and dropped to her knees burying her face in her hands. She started punching the floor until her hand hit Poncho’s bed. When she heard the police yelling she hobbled downstairs, stepping over Rob and wiping at her eyes. She saw police officers in the front and ran to the door. She reached for the knob to turn and as she did felt a hand around her stomach. The Stranger clung to her neck smashing her face into the door frame until he heard the snap of her nose. She was screaming now and the police were trying to fight their way in but the deadbolt was in place and their kicks were doing nothing to open it.

  Matt slit her throat from ear to ear and opened the front door. The police caught her as she fell forward and Matt pulled his pistol shooting each of the officers in the head. He walked down the sidewalk to his car, climbed in and punched a number into his cell phone. “Yeah, dad...it’s Matt. I need a place to heal for a while. What’s that? Yeah, I fell off the wagon a little.”

  He started to drive away when he saw a van parked in the distance. He could see the exhaust and from the pool of water from the air conditioner running knew that it’d been there for a while. He disappeared into the neighbor's yard cutting up to another yard and back over. Matt walked slowly until he was within inches of the door. The voices came from the inside and were stern. A woman yelled, “I’m Leslie-fucking-Bryant and I’m not going anywhere. I don't’ care how many cops are going to show up. He just shot three of them in the head. You must not understand journalism. You don’t leave the scene once you have a story, you stick your daggers into it and you don’t let go for nothing!”

  When the driver and camera man started to reply the rear door opened and The Stranger waved his fingers at them. He clenched the news woman and said, “Leslie, you haven’t been saying very nice things about me.” He held her hair in his hand while running a knife through the first man’s throat, and then repeated the action on the second.

  She clawed at his hands to let go but he did not falter at all. “You’d best be nice to me, Leslie, or I might make this hurt.”

  “The cops are going to be here soon. You aren’t going to get away with this.”

  “I always get away with this. It is why I’ve been doing it for so long. You should have been more polite a
nd not made me out to be a monster.”

  “You are a monster!”

  He dragged her down to the back of the truck shutting one of the doors and locking it and held her head down next to it. He said, “You need to be kind of pretty to make it in this business, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, sure, so what? What are you going to do, you twisted fuck?”

  Matt said, “Too bad.”

  He started slamming the door repeatedly, his body erupting in goose bumps as he heard her bones crunching. After the first two screams she fell silent. He knelt down next to her and said, “You know, I thought after the officers that I was going to have to take a break, this was a deliciously pleasant surprise, Mrs. Bryant. I’d say that I’d love to do this again sometime but I’m pretty sure you aren’t going to make it.” The Stranger put his hunting knife by her ear sticking just the tip of it in and slammed the door one last time. Leslie jolted where she lay and blood began to pour from her ears. The long knife blade stuck through her head with just the tip on the other side.

  Matt pulled the knife from her head sitting her up in the van in one of the seats. He hit the LIVE newsfeed button sitting next to her and put an arm around her. He stared at the video camera while holding her head up. “Yes she’s dead, and no I’m not done. When I am healed again I’m going to come back stronger, deadlier, and wanting even more blood. See you soon, folks.”

  He let her body fall to the ground, jumped out of the van and walked away down the street.

  To be continued?

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