The atmosphere inside the house felt hot and stale, stuffy and humid. The air smelled musty, Mike thought, exactly like what you would expect of a home that had been closed up tight for years. But this home had been recently rented, and the occupants hadn’t even gone to the trouble of airing the place out.
And there was something else.
The scent of corruption, of death, of decomposing flesh, lingered in the air, barely perceptible but there nonetheless. Mike McMahon had been present at more than his share of murder scenes in his fifteen years as a patrolman back in Revere, and the smell of decomposing human tissue was something he would never forget. The scent in this crumbling house was less noticeable, more of a hint than anything else, but it was here.
His grip tightened on the Glock. He flexed his fingers subconsciously and moved slowly deeper into the house. The moaning noises he heard outside had faded away the moment he entered the house. Silence reigned, but to Mike it felt false, stealthy, like the determined efforts of a prowler to avoid detection.
Mike crossed the empty room—not a stick of furniture had been placed in it, no attempt at all to make the place even the slightest bit homey—and arrived at an open doorway leading to the home’s kitchen. This room, at least, showed signs of habitation. Dishes had been rinsed off and piled in the sink, awaiting a cycle through the dishwasher, if it even still worked. A refrigerator hummed quietly in the corner, its compressor clicking on while Mike examined the rest of the room.
There was no indication the couple who had rented this house were here, yet the pair of vehicles parked outside indicated otherwise. And that somehow artificial silence continued to scream a warning in Mike’s head. Something was very wrong here. The smart move would be to backtrack out of the house and call for backup—get Harley’s ass up here, and maybe Sharon’s, too, if she had finished up with the B and E at Parker’s.
That would be the smart move. But those faint cries he had heard earlier were eating at Mike. They sounded exactly like the sounds a human being would make if he—or she—were suffering and in extreme pain. What if Earl Manning had been kidnapped for some unknown reason and was being held here, injured? Or what if the couple renting this home had nothing to do with Earl Manning, but had been hurt in some sort of home-improvement accident and needed immediate medical attention?
Mike grimaced and continued on.
A partially closed door in the corner of the room opposite the refrigerator creaked and Mike jumped, startled. He stood unmoving, gazing at the door intently, flexing his fingers again on the grip of his service weapon.
The air inside the house was still and unmoving, the air outside heavy and damp, with no hint of a breeze. There was no reason in the world for that door to have creaked. Mike padded silently across the kitchen, moving faster now. His pulse pounded and adrenaline quickened his breathing. He raised his Glock and held it in his right hand, head-high, the business end now pointing at the ceiling. Using the doorframe for cover, he took a deep breath and eased the door open further with his left foot. It gave way reluctantly, issuing a loud screech that sounded almost exactly like a scream of pain.
Dammit. There goes the advantage of surprise. Mike turned the corner, taking the stairs slowly, descending into hell.
24
Things happened quickly. None of Earl’s actions had been planned out, at least not consciously, as any conscious thought would have alerted Acton to what was coming, so Earl was forced to react, to make things up as he went. But that was okay with Earl; things had worked out pretty well so far. He felt as alive right now as he had at any point since, well, since he had been killed.
A wet, squishy sound filled the basement as Acton’s dead body struck the concrete floor. Earl tensed for a scream, so certain one would come that he paused for just a second and cringed slightly.
Nothing happened.
He glanced from Acton’s prone body up into the eyes of the two people still alive in the basement. Raven, the green-eyed beauty who had lured him here with the promise of a night he would never forget—boy, she hadn’t been kidding about that one, had she?—stared disbelievingly at the sight of the older man on the floor. She had clapped a hand over her mouth in horror but a tiny mouse-like squeak escaped around her splayed fingers anyway. “Ahhhhhh…’ It was almost as if she wanted to scream but could not quite summon the breath necessary to make it happen.
The other guy, Parker, looked more composed, but only slightly. His bright blue eyes were open wider than Earl would have imagined possible, and he had slapped a hand over his mouth in a pose almost identical to Raven’s.
And he was moving, edging toward the stairs. He stopped the moment Earl glanced his way, freezing in mid-stride, but it was clear he had been trying to take advantage of the diversion provided by Max Acton’s untimely death to make a break for freedom. That sort of quick thinking was actually quite impressive, Earl thought. No wonder the guy’s net worth was greater than that of some small countries.
Earl smiled and the software guy’s expression changed from one of horror to one of . . . well . . . even greater horror. Earl decided he must look a lot more imposing in death than he ever had in life. This whole undead thing did have its advantages. “Going somewhere?” he rumbled.
That was when he heard the pounding on the front door. A second of absolute silence followed, and then the words, “Paskagankee Police” floated through the stillness of the house. “Is anyone home?”
The irony of the timing was inescapable, coming just as Earl had accomplished his goal. He was free of The Fucking Devil Max Acton, who had apparently selected him at random out of all the drunken bums in the world to lure away from the bottle and curse with a fate worse than anything he had ever imagined. Acton was dead, and Earl’s plan, which had never really been a plan to begin with—gain control of the box containing his heart and send Acton back to hell, where he clearly belonged—had been accomplished, and with shocking finality.
But this pseudo-plan had never really extended beyond the vague notion of grabbing the heart and stabbing Acton, and Earl now realized he didn’t have the slightest idea how to proceed. The police were at the door, he had two wide-eyed, terrified hostages, and despite the satisfaction of getting the drop on the man he hated more than anyone else in the world—next to that stunningly beautiful bitch, Raven, of course—Earl knew he was no better off than he had been ten minutes ago. He was still dead, still holding his heart cradled in the crook of his arm like a goddamn football, and the process of decomposition was still proceeding along as nature had always intended, thank you very much. He could feel his skin loosening and slackening on his body as it prepared to slide right off his bones, and there was not a fucking thing in the world he could do about it.
One thing he did know, though, was that after a lifetime of scrapes with law enforcement over issues mostly small but occasionally large, he was not about to simply cower down here in the basement of this house of horrors and wait for the pig upstairs to find him, take his heart away from him, and send him off to some research facility where geeks in white lab coats would poke and prod at him like he was some freaking specimen under a microscope.
Earl moved with a speed and economy of motion that must have surprised the two people in the basement still breathing. It certainly surprised him. He shambled three steps forward and grabbed the software nerd with his right hand, bunching the guy’s shirt up in his fist and lifting him onto his toes without even really trying. His strength had by now stopped surprising him.
The dude looked too shocked to scream, or even to say anything, but the chick, Raven, she had obviously heard the cop at the front door just as Earl had and she looked ready to launch into one massive yell for help. Earl’s left hand shot out just as she took a deep breath. He hooked her throat in the webbing between his thumb and forefinger, slamming her up against the wall as she began a scream which quickly died away to a wheezing, “Help me…”
The wooden box containing Earl’s heart
tumbled to the floor with a clatter. Earl expected it to smash into a million pieces, dumping his heart onto the concrete, but it bounced once, twirled on one corner like a coin spinning on a table, and fell still.
Raven clawed at his hand ineffectually as her face began to redden and then turn purple. He realized he was suffocating her and he didn’t care. She deserved to die a horrific death for what she had done to him, and he would have enjoyed drawing it out, too. See how she liked the idea of dying.
But there wasn’t time to give Raven what she deserved. Not yet. A cop was at the front door, and in Earl’s experience, cops didn’t just turn around and go away once you had drawn their attention. The pig was probably even now nosing around the house, and if that was the case, it was only a matter of time—and probably not very much of it—before his nosy porker ass ended up in this basement.
Earl looked from one captive to the other, trying to decide what to do next. The software dude had begun babbling quietly, begging for his release, saying something about Earl keeping the fucking Codebreaker software, as if maybe a dead guy might give a shit about a goddamn computer program. Raven, of course, was saying nothing, occupying herself with her futile attempt to fight her way free, or at the very least to get a little air.
And just like that his next move became crystal clear. Earl took one step backward and smashed the software guy’s head into the beautiful bitch’s head, bringing them together like an enthusiastic cymbal player. Earl had never played a musical instrument, but he thought if being a musician was anything like this, he had truly missed out on something special.
There was a hollow-sounding thud and the two bodies dropped to the floor in a rough approximation of the swan dive Max Acton had performed a couple of minutes before. Parker, the software guy, hit the concrete and lay perfectly still, arms and legs splayed, while Raven’s extremities twitched and jittered and she gasped for breath and then let out a surprisingly loud moan. Earl thought he might have to hit her again, but then her arms and legs stopped thrashing and she fell silent.
Earl bent down and picked up the wooden box, thankful it had stayed in one piece. He didn’t know what would happen if the rock and the heart sharing space inside the box were to get separated, but he had a pretty good idea he wouldn’t like the result. He hugged his prize to his chest like a new mother cuddling her baby and tried to figure out his next move.
25
Whatever had happened in this basement was bad, Mike could tell that much before even reaching the bottom of the stairs. Bodies were sprawled atop the bloodstained concrete floor, two men and one woman, none of them moving. One of the men he recognized immediately as Brett Parker, still dressed in the khakis and dress shirt he had been wearing this morning during Mike’s visit. How Parker had gotten here and what the hell had gone down at his house was open to question, but obviously the report of a break-in at Parker’s home had been woefully inadequate.
The other two people Mike did not recognize, but he knew immediately they must be the couple he was looking for. Older man, strikingly beautiful young woman. The woman lay next to Parker a few feet away from the body of the man, who had taken the worst of whatever had gone down here. His head, bent back at an unnatural angle, lay in a pool of blood that had clearly come from his neck, most of which was currently missing.
Mike raised his weapon and stopped on the stairs, taking in the scene, looking for whoever—or whatever—might have caused all this damage. The basement was mostly empty aside from the three prone adults littering the floor, with just a top-loading floor freezer taking up space in the far corner, along with some tools and a couple of small tables littered with junk.
The perpetrator of whatever had happened seemed to have disappeared. Mike had a lot of things to do in the next few minutes; he needed to prioritize. Number One was to check on the condition of the three victims, although it seemed patently obvious at least one of them was dead. He also had to get backup out here and secure the scene, as well as call for medical assistance for anyone left alive. And he had to contact Sharon to find out just what the hell had happened at Brett Parker’s home.
But first things first. Mike holstered his weapon and stepped off the stairs to assess the condition of the three victims. The assailant was gone, but Mike could not shake his feeling that something was wrong, that he was missing something of importance. The smell of death and corruption was much stronger down here, enough to make it hard to concentrate. He knelt at Parker’s body and felt for a pulse. Strong and steady. He looked for any obvious wounds and could find none. Parker would live.
Next he moved a couple of feet to his left and performed the same quick examination on the young woman. Same result: strong, steady pulse and no obvious sign of serious injury. He looked her over and realized that whatever Bo Pellerin’s faults were, and there seemed to be plenty, he was right about one thing—the girl was a knockout. Literally, Mike thought.
He stood and crossed half the length of the basement to the third body. Given the amount of blood on the floor and the severity of the man’s wounds, there was no doubt in Mike’s mind he was dead, but he refused to take anything for granted. He had to be sure. Careful to avoid stepping in the blood, he knelt next to the man as he had done with the other two victims. He placed his finger lightly on the side of the man’s neck—what was left of it—searching for a pulse. He found none. His sense of unease, his feeling that something was not right, intensified.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a river of blood had dribbled off across the floor, the trail roughly paralleling that of the freezer’s electrical cord, which ran from the back of the freezer in a meandering trail to where the plug lay on the floor just shy of a wall socket. . .
The freezer was unplugged.
Holy shit, the freezer is unplugged. Nobody moves into a new residence and goes to all the trouble of carrying a freezer into the basement and setting it up, only to leave it unplugged, with the cover closed.
And Mike knew.
He cursed and fumbled for his Glock as he felt rather than saw a lumbering presence moving up behind him. He pulled his weapon clear of the holster and threw himself to his left, twisting his body as he slid through the victim’s cooling blood, which was already beginning to coagulate, becoming sticky and viscous.
He ended up on his back and raised his weapon, pointing it at the spot he had just vacated.
And then he froze at what he saw.
It was Earl Manning, the missing man. Only it wasn’t Manning. Not exactly. It was a shambling mess wearing filthy, tattered, bloody clothing. It was a frightening-looking shell that more closely resembled a walking skeleton than a human being. The skeleton carried a small wooden box in one arm and in the middle of its chest was a ragged hole, a hole Mike thought might almost be big enough to see straight through and out the other side if the angle was right.
This couldn’t possibly be the Earl Manning Mike had had occasion to bust for drunk driving once or twice since his arrival in Paskagankee. That guy was no great physical specimen, but at the very least he resembled a living, breathing human being, more or less. This thing looked less than human, somehow inhuman.
But it had to be Manning, and Mike realized it didn’t really matter whether it was or not, because whatever it was, it was coming after him with murder in its cold dead eyes and a long, bloody steel screwdriver in its hand.
Mike sighted down the barrel and barked, “Stop right there.”
The thing smiled a ghastly smile and kept coming.
Mike said, “I mean it. FREEZE!”
The hideous face grinned wider and kept coming.
The Manning-thing was less than three feet away when Mike fired, blasting him to kingdom come. The disturbingly thin body flew backward, smashing to the floor and lying still.
Mike stood, shaking from the adrenaline coursing through his body and cursing himself for not seeing the obvious. A top-loading freezer in the basement, unplugged but with the lid closed. The thing,
whatever it was, must have been hiding in the freezer, holding the lid slightly open so it wouldn’t latch, waiting for Mike to turn his back.
And he hadn’t noticed. What the hell kind of cop was he?
He cursed again and walked slowly over to Earl Manning, or whatever the hell it really was, goddamned box still cradled in the crook of his arm, even after being shot. He reached down and felt for a pulse and found none. Manning was dead; no question about it, but the lack of blood from the bullet wound was mystifying. So was the general condition of the body, which was horrendous. And he was stone cold. It was as if he had been dead for quite some time, rather than just a few seconds.
Mike gazed at Manning’s chest. The whole thing was sunken, like it had fallen in on itself, like his ribs had been broken and no longer provided a support structure for the skin, which appeared paper-thin and somehow rubbery. There was a hole in his chest, too, just as Mike had suspected, a hole besides the one he had put there with his 9 mm slug. It was big and dirty and slimy, with unidentifiable gore surrounding it, but no blood, not even a trace.
Something was seriously wrong here, but the time for worrying about what had happened to Manning would be later. Right now, he had a dead body on his hands—two, he supposed, now that he had killed Manning—and a pair of injured civilians to worry about. He wiped the fingertips which had touched Manning’s skin on his pant leg and grimaced, wondering briefly about communicable diseases. Then he looked inside the open freezer. It had recently been cleaned, that was obvious, but it still smelled foul; no amount of scrubbing or hosing out would be able to remove the putrescent stench of decaying flesh. Of death.
A stealthy scraping sound came from behind him and Mike whirled, concerned that a second person had somehow been hiding in the basement, wondering how that could have been possible. He turned to see the scarecrow figure of Earl Manning launch himself across the floor, shoulder lowered like a battering ram.
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