“Fuck that,” Nick shot back.
The steady thumps neared the top.
Nick peeked over Rusty’s shoulder, wondering what the hell it could be, afraid to look but unable to turn away. A thick paste coated the inside of his mouth making it difficult to swallow.
Rusty shifted in his stance and tightened his sweaty grip on the gun, which suddenly felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. He wiped sweat from an eyebrow with his shoulder.
There was one last footstep at the top, louder than all the rest. Dead silence followed.
They stood waiting for the door to open, their hearts pounding and their heavy breathing the only sound. The anticipation was overwhelming, the silence unbearable.
“Go open the door,” Rusty whispered.
Nick’s face wrinkled. “Are you crazy?”
“Don’t be such a pussy.”
“You’re the one with the gun; you do it.”
“I don’t have health insurance right now, Nick,” Rusty hissed. “Remember?”
One loud fist-pound on the basement door caused both of them to flinch like scared cats. They scuttled backwards and Nick tripped over the pile of pillows and blankets lying on the floor. Amazingly, he regained his balance before falling onto Dallas’ unmoving body.
Silence swarmed the room, circling them like deadly Dementors.
“Let’s go out the front,” Rusty suggested in a low voice.
Nick glanced to the front door, wondering why he hadn’t already thought of that. He started sidestepping towards the entrance, keeping Rusty and his gun between him and whatever was on the other side of the basement door. They didn’t get far before the door made a clicking sound and began creaking open.
They stopped in their tracks, curiosity overpowering their motor skills even though they knew what it had done to so many cats before. Rusty adjusted his greasy grip on the nine and wiped more sweat from his brow with both shoulders.
The door’s rusty song ended when it reached wide open. They stared into the darkness behind it, unable to make anything out. A warm stench rolled out and licked their faces, followed by an oyster colored bare foot stepping onto the kitchen floor. The toenails were thick and yellow and looked wet.
Nick and Rusty took a step back as another bare foot joined the first one. Their eyes followed both appendages to a pair of cracked, colorless legs sticking out of a ragged black dress. The woman’s stringy hair made it hard to see the gray face hiding beneath. Nick took another step back, bumping into the room’s large bay window.
The woman’s hair was as limp as the arms hanging at her sides. She stood there with her head slightly down, studying them with vacant eyes. They stared back at the woman’s moldering figure, paralyzed by the impossibility of it all. Unable to grasp what no human had ever witnessed before. Nick thought about grabbing his cell phone to record the phenomenon but then she twitched.
Rusty and Nick screamed at the same time.
Her legs didn’t move and her feet never left the ground, but she began sliding towards them just the same. The black dress absorbed the living room light like a black hole, cloaking her in constant shadows no matter how close she got to the living room light. It was as if even the light feared her.
“That’s far enough!” Rusty shouted, pointing the gun at her.
The murky silhouette stopped. Traces of the living room light found its way to a colorless complexion that was decaying and covered in patches of black grime.
Nick gawked at the pupiless eyes staring back at him from behind oily hair that flowed past her skeletal shoulders. His eyes continued falling to her bony hands with yellow nails and peeling skin. His gaze sharpened.
Rusty’s legs wobbled, now knowing that ghost stories weren’t just stories after all. Even if he somehow managed to get out of this alive, nothing would be the same again. The menacing figure hovering in front of him had just opened a can of worms that would feed his paranoia no matter where he tried to go. If he managed to survive, this would change everything.
His eyes traveled up from her cracked legs to the ashen face watching his every move. The gun trembled in his hands. He felt the metal trigger against the inside of his index finger. “What are you?” he screamed, pointing the gun at her face.
She answered him with a cold glare and nothing more.
Nick stared at her thin hands. His heart hitched, but it couldn’t be. He looked back to the lifeless face hiding behind that dark hair. “Summer?” he sputtered.
Rusty shifted in his stance. “Summer?” he murmured over his shoulder.
Her cracked lips peeled back into a sinister grin, revealing two rows of broken teeth. With a grandiose swoop, she rose to the ceiling and hovered just below the ceiling. She stared down at them like an inflated King Cobra, paralyzing them with her black eyes.
“Holy shit!” Rusty shrieked.
“Shoot her!” Nick yelled.
She glided back down and came at them without effort.
Rusty pulled the trigger and the gun kicked in his hands. He and Nick hunched their shoulders at the booming report.
She kept coming, so Rusty unloaded the clip into her, sending debris jumping in the kitchen as the bullets passed through her. The French doors blew out, raining down jewel like pieces of glass onto the tiled floor below. Rusty dove out of the way just before she snatched him. He tumbled over Dallas’s body on the couch and heard Dallas’ neck snap again. Nick stood frozen as Rusty rolled onto the floor and found himself looking into Dallas’ blank stare.
There was a loud crash on the other side of the sofa and Nick grunted. Rusty took a deep breath and gripped the gun. He got to his knees and peeked over the couch to see she had Nick pinned to the wall by his throat. A spider web of cracks coursed through the bay window behind him. Nick’s hands desperately struggled with the lone arm crushing his windpipe. Rusty took aim and fired. The gun clicked dryly. He squeezed the trigger again. Another empty click followed. Nick’s feet left the ground.
The gun slipped from Rusty’s fingers and clattered to the shiny wood floor. He watched Nick’s eyes bulge as she lifted him into the air with one decomposing hand, his arms and legs flailing uselessly. Rusty rose to his feet and bum rushed her from behind. Her free arm swung out and smacked him into the wall head first. He crumpled against it and slid to the dark wood flooring below.
Chapter Fourteen
Rusty peeled his sticky eyelids apart and tried to focus on the blurry light above. Absent-mindedly, he began yanking wires from his chest and the inside of his elbow. A tall machine on wheels next to him started beeping angrily. His eyes dropped to the blood tricking out the crook of his arm.
“What the…?” he wheezed, his throat too dry to talk. His hand involuntarily went to his head where a carousel of thundering booms rotated inside. He found the bandage on his crown and winced.
A pretty blond nurse suddenly burst through the door with Detective Rodriguez hot on her trail. She went right to work hooking the wires back up to Rusty without speaking.
Rusty’s eyes landed on the short detective. “What the hell?” he choked.
“Just relax, you’re fine,” Rodriguez told him. “Here, drink some water,” he said, handing Rusty a plastic cup with a bendable straw.
Rusty sucked the lukewarm beverage down, bringing the inside of his mouth and throat back to life. Upon finishing the entire cup, he released a long sigh.
“Don’t unhook these again,” the nurse scolded. “Doctor Jennings didn’t go through years of schooling so you could undo his work.”
Rusty stared at her silky smooth skin and dazzling blue eyes. She turned in a huff and Rusty watched her tight butt wiggle its way to the door.
“Thanks Tammy,” Rodriguez said as she zipped past without responding.
The door clicked shut behind her, triggering a wall to suddenly drop in Rusty’s mind, flooding him with painful memories. His eyes tried to focus in on the detective. “Where’s Nick?” he asked hoarsely.
Rod
riguez poured another cup of water from the pitcher on the bed tray and handed it to him.
Rusty didn’t take it. “Is he okay?”
Rodriguez paused and then set the cup down, raising his weary eyes to Rusty. It seemed like hours before he spoke. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.
The pounding in Rusty’s head intensified, his vision speckled with blinding white spots. “What do you mean?”
“Nick is gone, Russ. So is Dallas,” he replied gravely, his hands folded in front of him.
Rusty blinked at him, the shock of it all numbing the pain in his head. Or maybe it was the wires Tammy had reconnected. “No.”
The detective dropped his gaze to his shoes.
Rusty tried to sit up, grimacing with the move. “This isn’t possible.”
Rodriguez looked back up to him, with fearful eyes. “What happened in there tonight, Russ?” he whispered.
Rusty turned to the dark TV mounted on the wall, calling up the horrid memories. “Dallas said we’d be next,” he mumbled.
The detective’s eyes grew even thinner.
“Except, that wasn’t Dallas talking,” Rusty continued. “I unloaded an entire clip into her.”
The detective studied him without moving. “Into who?”
Rusty’s head snapped to the detective. “Summer,” he said faintly.
Rodriguez weighed the response in his head. “Summer Parker?”
Rusty snatched the cup of water and slammed it back without using the straw. Water trickled out the corners of his mouth, soaking the shoulders of his flimsy hospital gown. The shadowy female with the dead skin shot through his unfolding mind. His eyes nervously darted around the room. “Nick said it was her.”
Rodriguez followed Rusty’s wandering gaze around the room, as if something might be standing right behind him, but there was only an empty recliner. He turned back to Rusty and took a step closer.
Rusty rubbed his face with both hands.
“Who was it, Russ? Who did this?”
Rusty shook his head. “It was too dark,” he said, swallowing. “She had this clay-like skin, and thick, yellow toe nails.” He turned to the detective with frightened eyes. “You didn’t catch her?”
Muffled pages took over the PA system outside the door.
Rodriguez stared at him. “We caught you.”
“Me?”
“Listen to me, Russ, and listen good,” he said calmly. “There are at least three news crews outside every door in this place, all wanting to know why you did it.”
Rusty gulped. “Me? They think I did it?”
“Shhh, they think you were despondent over your job loss at The Des Moines Register, and, subsequently, you flipped out and strangled your two best friends after a few beers. Channel 13 claims you owed Nick money.”
Rusty gasped. “What?”
Rodriguez put his index finger over his lips. “Take it easy. I don’t know where they got that from,” he said, pulling out his tablet and poking the screen. “Maybe a Stacey Halverson.”
Rusty groaned. “I’m writing a book and don’t care about that lame job.”
“Try telling that to them,” he snorted. “Your Facebook photo has already been plastered on every channel in town.”
Rusty turned his head to the side, trying to quell the pain the morphine was now missing. “I knew I should’ve never joined Facebook. All people do is brag about where they went for dinner.”
“Hey,” Rodriguez said, resting a brown skinned hand on Rusty’s bruised arm. “I know you didn’t kill your friends,” he whispered. “The Chief on the other hand is a different story. He wants to give those news crews a killer, because he sure as shit can’t have one running loose on his streets.”
Rusty turned to him with a frown. “How do you know I didn’t do it?”
Rodriguez glanced to the closed door while pulling a small baggie from his coat pocket. He unrolled it and Rusty stared at the broken fingernail inside.
“Found it inside Hubbard’s Prius. Didn’t think much of it at the time,” Rodriguez said, pulling another bag from a different pocket and glancing to the door again.
Rusty squinted at the similar looking fingernail in the other bag and turned to Rodriguez with starry eyes.
“Found this in Nick’s living room,” the detective told him.
Rusty stared at it, his mind trying to piece together his next question. But there were too many to pieces to choose from and Detective Rodriguez beat him to the punch.
“How do I find this Summer?”
Rusty snorted. “I don’t think you know what you’re messing with here,” he said gravely.
Rodriguez stuffed the bags back into his coat and zipped the pockets shut. “I know that Hubbard’s gas pedal didn’t stick, and I know he didn’t drive it into a wall at seventy-five miles an hour on purpose just because he didn’t get a raise this year. None of us got a raise this year!”
Rusty watched the detective straighten his leather coat and compose himself.
“I also know that Ron Hubbard was a good cop,” he said, with a softer voice. “And an even better friend, and when he says he’s getting warnings from complete strangers just before they die, I’m smart enough to listen. He may have had a penchant for donuts but not for booze or drugs. Something scared the living shit out of him,” he whispered. “And to top it all off, I also know that your buddy’s girlfriend was abducted five years ago and never found.”
They studied each other for a moment, both considering which track to take next. Rodriguez finally broke his gaze and sighed. “Mi abuela told childhood stories about the dead using people on the edge of death as temporary portals back into this world.” He paused. “I always thought they were more than just stories and so did my grandma. And I think Hubbard is proof.”
Rusty inhaled deep pulls of sterile air. “If I hadn’t seen what I saw tonight, I’d say you and your grandma were bat-shit crazy.”
Rodriguez didn’t laugh.
Rusty squinted at him. “Your grandma told you childhood stories like that?”
Rodriguez shrugged. “We couldn’t afford Dr. Seuss, ese,” he smiled. “So tell me exactly what happened. Start from the very beginning,” he said, holding up his tablet.
Rusty took a deep breath and let it out. “In second grade my dog, Jasper, got loose and was run over by a UPS truck…”
Rodriguez raised a hand into the air and stopped him. “Not that far back.”
A puzzled expression took over Rodriguez’s face. “So how did Nick know it was Summer?”
Rusty wiped his eyes, where tears were making an appearance as the shock wore off. Weakly, he shook his head.
“This her?” Rodriguez asked, holding up a picture Rusty hadn’t seen before.
His gazed sharpened at the photo of Summer smiling brightly with two other pretty girls she stood arm in arm with. The three wore colorful summer dresses while holding red margaritas. Rusty nodded with a sniffle.
Rodriguez exhaled tiredly. “Only thing we know for sure is she went missing after going for a jog through a wooded park five years ago. They never found a body. I contacted her mom in Rockford and she debunked the whole mafia story. Said Summer hadn’t been dating anyone, let alone someone in Chicago. Either way, she’s on her way here tonight and wants to speak with you, although I doubt she’ll have any luck in that.”
Rusty’s forehead folded. “Me?”
“She just wants some closure and I don’t blame her. If my daughter had been missing for five years, I’d be a wreck too.”
“Well, don’t tell me she thinks I had something to do with it.”
“What would you think if you were her?”
Rusty dropped his head back into the pillow and scanned the hospital room with unfocused eyes while gingerly rubbing the inside of his arm.
“Rusty,” he said, finding his eyes. “Something got the jump on Hubbard, and it wasn’t any damn mobsters because they would’ve been dead with him. There was nothing left of that car.�
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Rusty took a beleaguered breath. “Whatever that thing was, I’m telling you it wasn’t human!”
Rodriguez put a finger to his lips and Rusty leaned back down.
“I think you’re exactly right when you use the word thing," the detective said. “I can feel it.”
Rusty gazed at him with incredulous eyes as relief washed over his entire body. Suddenly his head felt clearer. “You should have seen the way it moved,” he whispered gravely, rubbing both his arms. “Nothing human moves like that.”
“What do you mean?” Rodriguez asked with a hint of fear in his voice.
“It was like…it was floating on a conveyer-belt. It moved but it didn’t move, not its legs anyway.”
Rodriguez looked down and punched something into his tablet.
“So what do we do now?” Rusty asked, sitting back up. “How do we stop it? What about your grandma or abuela or whatever? Can she do some voodoo shit on it or something?”
Rodriguez snorted. “My abuela has been dead for over ten years now, amigo.”
“Damn.”
“But don’t worry, I just might have a couple of her tricks up my own sleeve,” he said with a slight grin.
Rusty’s eyes widened. “Seriously?”
“Let’s just say, we’re going to make this bitch pay for what she did to our friends, but first we have to get you out of here. If I’m going to have any chance of calling her back, I’m going to need your help.”
Rusty’s eyebrows sank. “Call her back? Fuck that, dude! I’m not going anywhere near that thing. I’m lucky to be alive as it is.”
Rodriguez shrugged. “I’m sure she can reach you in jail, which is where you’ll be tomorrow after they discharge you from here. I’m not sure your cell-mate will be much help defending you, but it’s your choice.”
Rusty looked around the room and swallowed. “How do we get out of here?”
Rodriguez smiled and glanced to the closed door. “There’s a laundry cart right outside. We’ll wait for Tammy to disappear on her rounds and then I’ll wheel you down to the exit in the basement. It’s for staff and emergency vehicles only. My car is already by the door.”
Cold Summer Nights Page 13