“Enough!” Doug gestured with the shotgun. “No excuses. You tried to take what was mine and you almost killed me for it. Although I think that the worst part about all this is that you did it in such a cowardly manner that you felt you needed to blindside me and leave me for dead.” He regarded them with his blazing eyes. “Shows how goddamn stupid you are. If you’d had any brains you would have blown my head off with one of the guns, and that would have been it.” He leered at them. “Suppose I had died? Supposed I had died and come back? What would you have done?”
“I—” Tiffany tried to answer that they were in the process of doing that just now, but stopped. He was right. They’d been stupid, not to mention careless. Any excuse she came up with would only make her appear more dimwitted.
“Thought so,” Doug muttered. “You have no answer for that. Isn’t that right?”
The girls said nothing. They remained frozen, paralyzed with fear.
Doug tittered, grinning. The shotgun was still trained on them. “Believe me, but I know your kind well. Knew it even when I met you at Club Dead. Living for today, for the flesh, for desire. Nothing else mattered. Not peace of mind or spiritual peace. Not even for the beauty of life itself. Drifting from one party to the next blow of coke, to the next stud.”
Tiffany could see that he was running on pure adrenaline that was fueling his energies to keep him alive from his head injury. A flap of skin permitted a brief glimpse of the shattered bone of his skull. “Doug, please,” Tiffany said. Her hands were held up in a peace offering. Andrea stood beside her, a smile trying to worm its way on her face. “Doug, put the gun down,” Tiffany said, her voice calm. Smooth. “Put the gun down, and we’ll get help for you—”
The barrel of the shotgun raised to mid-chest level. “From where?” Doug’s eyes narrowed as he focused in on his target. Sweat stood out in shiny droplets amid his blood-crusted forehead. “I’m gonna die, Tiffany. I’m gonna die, and then I’m gonna rise and walk the earth in limbo. Only problem with that is there ain’t gonna be anybody around to satisfy my new craving.”
Tiffany started babbling again, joined by Andrea. “Shut up!” Doug blurted. His finger was tightening on the trigger. “Just fucking shut up! If you were going to kill me, you should have blown my brains out, but you didn’t and I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die and come back and I’m not gonna let you get away with it...” He was almost crying, his voice now coming in hitching rasps. He took a deep, collective breath. Focused them in with his gaze. Determined. “I’m not gonna let you get away with it.”
With a swift move, he gripped the barrel of the shotgun and brought the heavy stock down on Tiffany’s head. She collapsed to the floor, her eyes rolling up in the back of her head. He grimaced at Andrea as she stood in numbed shock.
The introduction of shotgun stock to Andrea’s skull produced similar results. Doug stood over them for a moment panting, his panic-stricken mind racing.
Five minutes later he was limping down the steps to the woods and up the mountain, dragging each girl behind him by the ankles.
BOTH WOMEN CAME to consciousness right around when Doug had them safely tied up to two large oak trees at the rear of his property.
It had taken every last ounce of strength he had. After he dragged both girls up, he’d trudged back to his place and rummaged in his workshed for some rope, or preferably something more heavy duty. He’d found some heavy-duty steel cable and rope, and after pausing for a quick rest (and to let a bad bout of nausea pass) he headed back to where he’d left the girls.
He’d tied them up carefully, taking care that they were trussed up securely.
He’d also made sure they were a good thirty feet apart.
Then he’d waited for them to wake up.
They came awake slowly. Andrea was the first to focus in on what was going on. She saw Doug and immediately started to cry.
Tiffany came awake thirty minutes later.
Doug stood up and approached both women, shotgun in hand. His breath wheezed in his chest. Already, he could feel his limbs growing weaker, could feel his equilibrium give out. He knew he had a serious head injury, and that it was only a matter of the next twenty-four hours if he lived or died. And if he died, he knew he would be back.
The thought of eating them sickened him.
Funny he would think that now, he chuckled to himself as he brought the barrel of the shotgun up and took aim. He sure loved eating them out before.
Tiffany’s left eye widened in horror as the barrel of the shotgun aimed at her midsection; her right eye was closed shut and swollen. “Nooo! Doug!”
Doug pulled the trigger and the shotgun exploded, propelling Tiffany back against her bounds. A large hole exploded between her breasts, blowing chunks of flesh, bone and skin. She fell back and hit the trunk of the tree limply and slid down, her eyes wide and vacant. The blast snapped Andrea from her shock, and she struggled in her bonds, eyes wide with fear. Her full lips were open in terror as she looked from Tiffany’s corpse and up to Doug.
Doug jacked the pump on the shotgun and took aim at Andrea, fixing her baby blues in his gaze. Her face screamed white fear. “No, Doug, oh please, God no—”
“Goodbye, Andrea,” Doug said, and pulled the trigger. Her right breast exploded in a shower of viscera. The impact flung her backward over Tiffany. Doug pumped another shell in the chamber and stepped forward.
Andrea was still alive. Her left side twitched spastically. Her eyes locked on Doug as he approached her, and she moved her limbs in a half-assed attempt at escape. Blood ran out of her mouth and was pouring out of her chest, staining Tiffany and the forest floor. A mewling sound rose in her throat. Doug stood over her and took aim, a slow grin beginning to spread on his features. A perverse sense of elation swept through him as he stood over her. She twitched in pain beneath him, still trying to get away. A massive hole of ruined flesh gaped where her once luscious right breast used to be.
Doug smiled and aimed at the center of her chest. Where the heart was. “Goodbye, Andrea.” He pulled the trigger.
He stood there in the thicket, listening to the echo of the shotgun blast reverberate through the forest.
Tiffany had ceased her struggle. Doug kicked her body with one booted foot. She was dead.
And so was Andrea.
He felt himself growing weaker, but he knew he had to wait. He had to wait to see if what he had hurriedly planned would work.
Andrea’s fingers twitched. A moment later Tiffany’s foot moved. Doug fought back a wave of nausea as he squinted at the two girls lying before him, trying hard to keep his breathing even.
Andrea was trying to sit up. Her dead eyes locked on him and she opened her mouth and hissed. Doug smiled. He knew that look on her face well. He had seen it on hundreds of them before. It was a look of undying hunger.
A moment later, Tiffany joined her. Both women strained against their bonds, their arms outstretched, jaws opening and closing, teeth gnashing into bottom lips in hunger. Doug laughed. He supposed it was like tying a starving man in front of a Filet Mignon, teasing him with it.
Doug took a dozen steps back, feeling himself growing wobbly. “Bye bye, girls.” He sat down heavily on his rump, the shotgun almost flying out of his grasp. He could feel himself growing faint. The shotgun seemed suddenly heavy, but he still managed to bring the barrel to his mouth. He stretched his lips over both barrels, his teeth scraping against the cold steel. He stretched his arm out and his finger found the trigger just as he felt another wave of blackness wash over him.
The sound of the shotgun blast was loud and echoed throughout the valley.
The wailing and gnashing of the hungry went on for much longer.
Out of the Cradle
OKAY IT'S CLICHÈ, but right now I don’t give a zip. This is how I’m starting this narrative:
I’m an alcoholic and drug addict.
There. I’ve admitted it. Mind you, I’ve been on my latest road to recovery for three years now.
Haven’t touched a drop of booze, chased the dragon, or done a line of coke since. And I don’t plan too, either.
Yeah, I’ve said that before too and blown that promise out of the water. This time it’s different, though.
I’ve got a reason to keep going this time. She’s only four days old and she weighed in at eight pounds seven ounces and was twenty-seven inches long at birth. Her name is Annabelle Lee Walker.
She’s asleep right now in her bassinet, in the room I share with my wife, Christy, Annabelle’s mother. Christy’s asleep, too.
Me, I can’t sleep. Blame that on all the caffeine I’ve had.
Since Annabelle’s birth four days ago I’ve come to believe in a lot of things I’ve always dismissed.
Of course if you had known me five years ago, or ten or even fifteen, you would have thought otherwise. Back then I knew on a subconscious level that ghosts existed.
I believe that now as well. But I believe in a lot more than that, too.
Now I know better.
I’ve known it since Annabelle was born.
And I stopped hearing the sounds.
And I stopped seeing the ghost of my first daughter sitting on my bed, sucking her thumb, waiting to be picked up in her father’s arms.
MY FIRST DAUGHTER. My God, where do I begin?
It was so long ago in years but I still feel so close to her that it feels like yesterday. This was well before I met Christy, before I got sober for the third time. My first daughter’s name was Lisa, she was beautiful, and I loved her more than life itself.
Her mother was my high school sweetheart, I guess you could say. She’d come from the wrong side of town but had a loving family. I still think about her; still wonder what would have happened if we’d remained together, or if the awful events that drove me to a path of self-destruction hadn’t occurred. I think we’d still be together, that Lisa would be in her freshman year of college as of this writing. Things would be different.
Much different.
Lisa’s mother’s name was Ashley Juneau, and she’d been blessed with glossy black hair that hung to her waist, big brown eyes that sparkled, and a smile that brightened her face and eyes up so much that it was like looking into a beautiful painting. Ashley had been of French, Indian, and Spanish stock, and the mixture created an exotic blend of tan skin and fiery passion between us. When I first laid eyes on her at seventeen, I knew she was the one for me. I was from an upper-class family on the so-called right side of the tracks, but I’d descended to the streets by choice. I felt more comfortable with blue-collar people than I did with my shitty holier-than-thou parents. Ashley and I hit it off immediately, and rather than bore you with the details, I think I can sum up our relationship in three words: teenage hormones, parental disapproval from my end, and early pregnancy.
Lisa was the perfect baby. Bearing her mother’s eyes and mouth and my facial features and hair, she was a dream. They say that the love of your life always comes second with the birth of a child, and the minute Lisa was born I knew that theory was true. Ashley loved Lisa with all the energy and emotion as I, and we spared no expense on that child. I worked two jobs so Ashley could stay home with her. I sacrificed; I sweated. I wanted Lisa to grow up in love and security, something I never experienced as a child (I may have had financial security, but my parents surely never loved me). Those two years were, in many ways, the best years of my life.
I used to lie awake at night and gaze down at Lisa’s sleeping form and just look at her. Marvel at her fair skin, her cupid lips encircling her thumb or her pacifier as she sucked it in her sleep; her chubby baby legs; her cowlicks; her feet, and especially her toes. Lisa’s fourth little toe on both feet were bent at an odd angle. Instead of tilting in alignment with the others, they went very slightly against the grain. The doctors had noticed that minutes after her birth, but there was physically nothing wrong. The bones weren’t broken and it was so subtle that you really had to look at them to notice the difference.
Back then I was sober. I had started abusing alcohol when I was nine, then graduated to drugs when I was thirteen. When I was seventeen I met Ashley and I quit cold turkey. I did it because I didn’t want to disappoint her, and I also did it because I didn’t want my parents to win. Another cliché: even though my parents came from upper class stock (my dad’s some bigwig CEO who pulls in over ten million bucks a year and my mom used to be a corporate lawyer, like I really give a fuck), their parenting skills were for shit. To break it down, the abuse I suffered was overwhelmingly psychological; they never raised a hand at me in anger, but it was painfully obvious to me that my birth was never intended. Sometimes I wished they’d beaten me instead of neglected me emotionally. Damage of the psyche and the mind is far more devastating than damage to the body.
They never knew Lisa. They wouldn’t acknowledge a child of ‘mixed-blood’, so they didn’t want to know. I resolved to never speak to them again by then anyway, so I was more than happy to finally be out of their lives. Ashley’s parents, however, were the parents I never had, and they took us into their home any chance they could. Wanting to be self-reliant, I insisted the three of us live on our own. We had a tiny one-bedroom apartment in Santa Ana near Main Street and we did fine there. For two years we were happy.
I’d come home late at night after a shift at the factory, than lie down in the twin mattress Ashley and I shared. Many times Lisa would be asleep with her mother, and I would lie down next to her and listen to her breathe, smelling her fresh baby scent. And I would fall asleep with the susurration of the moist sucking sounds of Lisa’s perfect mouth sucking her thumb or her pacifier.
When I wasn’t working we were a family. We did everything together. Ashley and I would spend hours with Lisa playing with her. We took her on walks to the park and around town. We always went to Ashley’s parents’, who doted on their grandchild with as much love as we. I really took to fatherhood; I never thought I’d make a good father. Before that, and in the years after Lisa’s death until just recently, I thought I’d never want children. Never really liked them much, to tell you the truth. I suppose you could blame that on my upbringing. With Lisa it was different. She was from me; from my flesh and blood; a little human being Ashley and I had created in love. I think if you’re a parent you’ll understand what I’m referring to. I loved Lisa more than anything, and even though the three of us had a tight bond, she was always her daddy’s girl. When I came home from work in the afternoons she would shriek ‘Da-eee!” and run toward me, arms outspread and I’d swoop her up in my arms and hug her. We had a strong bond. The strongest I’ve ever had with another human being. Stronger even than Ashley or Christy.
What shattered the dream was the monster that lived next door. The monster was a fifty-two year old man named George Rios, who worked as a salesman. I didn’t know much about him except that he was recently divorced with two grown children, and that he took the same bus as I every morning to work. On warm afternoons after work we would sometimes sit on the front deck of our complex and shoot the breeze over a beer. On the surface George was a normal enough looking guy. Ashley liked him and Lisa adored him. He always showered her with gifts; toys, candy, stuffed animals, dolls. One time he told me he was getting into practice for the day when his own children gave him grandchildren. And what did I know at the time? Even though I’d already lived through hell—had been a victim of abuse at the hands of my parents, had been arrested, been through drugs and alcohol, witnessed and taken part in petty crimes like B& E and credit card fraud and shoplifting and an assault or two—I thought I’d seen it all. I didn’t realize there were people out there that liked babies the way a normal heterosexual man likes adult women.
I got a frantic call one evening at my night job. It was Ashley. She was hysterical. She was calling from the hospital, saying that Lisa was bleeding internally. I rushed over and sat with Lisa as she lay in bed, hooked up to monitors and tubes. I brushed back her fine, silken baby hair from her sweet face and told h
er that her daddy was there, that he was going to protect her and make it all better. Ashley, who had been standing there crying when I came in later told me that, to her, Lisa’s condition seemed to improve drastically for a brief moment when I arrived. That bond at work I guess. Then ten minutes later as I sat beside my daughter whispering to her, my baby died.
A part of me died then, too. I felt it the moment Lisa passed. I felt a sudden cold chill; I was shivering, my teeth were chattering. I felt my baby die the minute it happened and I collapsed at her bedside and wept.
The five days that followed were a blur to me. I remember a doctor giving me a sedative. I remember Ashley’s parents taking us to their home. I remember sitting in my in-laws’ living room talking to a detective, answering questions about George Rios. I don’t remember making arrangements for Lisa’s funeral, but I remember the service itself. I remember sitting with Ashley in the front row as a choir from my in-laws’ church sang the theme song to Cinderella, which had been Lisa’s favorite movie. I remember the flowers that decorated the church and the tiny oak casket that sat on the altar. I barely remember the sermon, but I remember following the four pallbearers that bore my daughter’s casket down the isle of the church to the waiting hearse. I remember having to be supported by my father-in-law as my wife wept beside me.
The official cause of Lisa’s death was hemorrhaging due to internal injuries suffered during a sexual assault. Ashley had a nervous breakdown shortly after the service when George Rios was arrested and charged with my daughter’s murder. I learned later that on some occasions when I worked nights, George would come to the apartment and the two of them would sit and talk or watch TV. Sometimes Ashley would use this opportunity to run a quick errand—a trip to the grocery store or the post office or whatever—and leave Lisa with George. And why not? We thought we knew him. We’d seen his two grown children; met them; interacted with him. He was a normal guy to us. Freaks don’t have children of their own, they don’t wear suits and ties to work every morning. I know better now.
When the Darkness Falls Page 5