by L. T. Vargus
He slowed when he got onto her street. Craned his neck to get a closer look, to scan the faces of these homes. It was damn near impossible to tell the difference. All stucco boxy things in beige, umber, and khaki.
The cars in the driveways were easier to tell apart than the damn houses, all those distinct colors and shapes. He couldn’t remember what make or model Claire drove — didn’t even have a rough guess at it — but he thought maybe he would know it when he saw it, like the sight might jar something loose in his memory, recognition dawning on him.
But then the gold numbers on house 6206 shimmered in the headlights, a glittering spot just next to the screen door. It seemed right. He could dig through the texts in his phone to verify the house number, but his gut was pretty sure.
So screw it. Just get on with it.
He parked. Got out. Moved to the side door off the driveway he knew they used and rang the doorbell. He could hear a muffled version of the electronic bell ding-donging a couple times.
He took a step back, watched the kitchen windows.
Movement flitted on the other side of the glass, shadows faintly visible through the gauzy curtains there.
It felt good to stretch his legs, and he’d relished the walk up the cement path that dead-ended at the doorstep. The step itself had been a goddamn delight to take. It was a little too tall, a little awkward, and the strain it put on his leg muscles made them ache with pleasure, so thrilled to elongate, to exert themselves. Even now, standing here before the screen door, his calves and quads sang songs of bliss and contentment.
So why did he feel like he was walking into a disaster?
Chapter 45
Emily feels his presence before she hears him creeping up behind her. Some disturbance in the atmosphere. A darkening.
The patter of footsteps fades into her consciousness, scuffing some as he draws near.
His shadow falls over her. Darkens her. Splits her just below the waist.
And the blackest shape rises out of that shade. Towers over her. Indistinct.
She wants to run. Wants to scream. Wants to pounce and latch on and claw out his eyes.
But she can’t. She’s frozen. Powerless. Lost.
He lifts her then, hands scooping under her arms, plucking her from the ground with little trouble.
She feels so small in his grip. A little thing. Helpless. Totally subject to his whims.
She watches the carpet pull back, the camera zooming out from the floor. The shadow swallows the carpet up as she drifts away. Cloaks it in a dark haze. Totally without shape or texture.
Her arms and legs dangle from the trunk of her body. Floppy sticks that sway and wobble. As limp as Lo Mein noodles.
Her head is too heavy on her neck, so it flops against her chest. Slack and useless.
He doesn’t draw her into a bear hug like she expects. Instead, he reaches his arms out. Extends her in front of him.
And she hovers in the emptiness of this dark room. The faintest tremor in his outstretched arms shaking through the meat of her.
He lowers her in slow motion, working with great care.
What lies beneath comes clear to her in stages.
A box.
A box made of wood.
A box made of dark wood the exact shade of those beams embedded in the walls of her cell.
It’s just bigger than a coffin — a touch taller and wider. More angular, too. This lacks the rounded contours of a commercial casket. The corners are all squared off.
The lid hangs wide, attached by hinges. The top opens like a mouth, and she can just make out that there’s something inside through the gauzy gray of the shadows. A rough texture coating the box’s bottom.
Sand.
The box is full of sand, a trench roughly her size gouged out of the middle. Uneven. Dipping into a point in the middle so the sides form a letter V.
Her eyes go wide and breath rushes into her. She pieces these concepts together.
He is going to put her into the box, shove her right down into the sand, and he is going to close the lid.
She squirms. Flails. Ignores the pain stabbing deep into her frontal lobe, the level of hurt blinding her, making her breath seize and sputter in her throat.
But it’s no use.
He nestles her into this vacancy, this shadowed place, this wedge carved into the dirt.
She feels the wooden walls close around her. A darkness. A black nothing that encases her. Holds her in its hollow.
And it’s cold. So cold inside the box. The sand pressing its chill into the flesh of her face, chest, arms, legs.
He presses her head down into the sand. Tremendous weight. Tremendous pressure.
And shackles close around wrists. Snap into place. One then the other. She hadn’t even realized he’d removed the cuffs from earlier, but he must have, when she was unconscious.
The weight lets up, and she squirms. Her movements are clumsy, but she rights herself. Bucks up onto her hands and knees.
But it’s already too late.
The lid crashes into her back, and her hands slide out from under her, the heels skidding through the dirt, and the weight of the lid presses, presses. Knocks her flat on her chest.
The blow to her torso sucks the breath out of her lungs. Paralyzes the middle of her.
And then the dark closes in the rest of the way, and it is everything. Everywhere. The only thing.
She panics. Twitches like an idiot animal. Pushes herself up too fast. Bangs the back of her head on the lid.
Anyway, it’s too late. It’s closed now. Bolted. There’s no way to open it from this side.
She hears the metallic scrape of a padlock threading the hasp. The snap of it locking her in.
She focuses. Works to slide her belly along the dirt. Hands and knees carefully attempting to turn her over.
With her shoulder dipped into the deepest part of the trench, there’s just enough room to roll onto her back. And then she sees it.
A slit in the lid. Maybe a foot long. About the width of a finger.
She gazes through it. Sees only the shadowy ceiling above from this angle. White paint on drywall. Nothing else.
What the hell is this for? A line slashed in the lid? And then it hits her.
It’s a breathing hole. So he can keep her here — keep her conscious — for as long as he wants. Trapped in a little box.
The lack of noise out there puts a new fright in her: Is she alone?
She presses her eye to the hole again. Swivels it around in its socket for no good reason.
Her view of the ceiling remains unchanged.
Jesus. Is he gone?
On cue, his voice rasps on the other side of the wood. She is repulsed and relieved at the same time.
“I told you. I told you how it would be, didn’t I? I didn’t expect this out of you. I don’t know. I guess I don’t know what to think.”
All is still for a beat. He sighs. There’s a scratching sound like he’s pawing at his chin.
“You’ll stay here until I’m ready for you. Half buried in the sand. Not the big sleep yet, though. Just a mini dirt nap, you know. A little taste of what’s to come.”
He breathes again. Stomps away.
And defeat washes over her. A loneliness like she’s never felt.
Chapter 46
Darger crept along the house in the darkness, careful not to kick any loose stones. Her heart picked up speed in the quiet, in the dark. Thudding away like a kick drum in her ribcage.
Stump’s house seemed normal enough in the moonlight. A handsome stucco home — certainly nothing like the ramshackle affair he’d been arrested in all those years ago — not boxy like most out here. Curved terracotta tile lined the peaked roof. Arched window tops gave it a Mediterranean look.
She shuddered walking along it, finding the home attractive. How long had he been hiding in this place, creeping out like a spider to claim new victims? How many years? How many girls?
She couldn
’t dwell on it. Kept moving. Sidling right up against the plaster.
A window interrupted the wall, and she ducked under it. Waited.
She checked her phone. Still no signal. No notifications that any of her texts to Loshak had gone through. No surprise there.
The white nub of the window sill jutted out over her head. Darger stared up at it, licking her lips.
She hadn’t peeked in any windows up close yet. She’d scanned them on her way up to the house, of course, but now that she was close enough to stick her nose to the glass, she found herself hesitant.
No. Beyond hesitant. Scared.
Some part of her was convinced that he would be there, that she’d press her face to a window and find Leonard Stump staring back at her.
It was silly, of course. A girlish, horror movie fear.
She needed to get a handle on the layout of the house, figure out where the girls were being kept, pin down and track Stump’s location, if she could. And she would look through the windows to accomplish these tasks. She had to.
OK. No more dallying.
She tucked her phone in her pocket and counted herself down.
5…
4…
3…
2…
1…
Her knees wobbled on the way up, her calves already tired from squatting.
The window slid into the frame of her vision little by little, white grille lines dividing it up into twelve tiny boxes.
And she peered through the glass.
The kitchen stared back at her. Empty. Fluorescent bulbs gleamed on stainless steel appliances. Kitchen implements hung on the wall: ladles, spatulas, whisks. No knives that she could see, and the pans looked flimsy. None of the skull-cracking cast iron variety. Too bad. The stun gun was her best option right now, but she couldn’t help but look for a backup weapon.
Like the outside of the house, the kitchen struck her as attractive. Unexpectedly modern.
She looked through the doorway into the next room where a dining table and chairs filled much of the space. That made sense. A kitchen and a dining room.
OK. Rooms one and two down. She had done it — had looked through a window without Stump popping up like some horror movie villain. She could do this. Would do this.
She held her breath. Waited.
The wind whistled over the hills.
She looked at the kitchen one more time. Did Stump cook for the girls before he killed them? Homemade omelets and spaghetti? She could imagine that, in a sick way. Playing house with his pets before he finished with them.
This thought focused Darger’s resolve. She didn’t have time to observe in such detail. She had two girls to save.
She scrunched back down into a squat and moved on, keeping right up against the side of the house. The next room she peeped into was a small bedroom equipped with a dresser, nightstand, and double bed draped with a southwestern style wool blanket. Something about it struck her as unused. A spare room, she figured.
No clues about Stump or the girls, so she kept moving to the last window on this side of the house.
Cold fear seemed to creep over her more and more now. That long ride in the back of the truck, the sneaking, the dark — all of it contributed to her jumpiness. It felt like she was playing Russian roulette. Sooner or later, she’d reach a chamber that wasn’t empty.
She swallowed, her throat clicking, and rose to survey the next room.
Darger’s brow furrowed in confusion as she gazed through the panes of the window. It was roughly the same size and shape as the small bedroom she’d seen moments before, but this room had no bed, no dresser, no nightstand. No furniture at all, unless she counted the strange box pushed up against one wall. It was oblong, roughly the size of a coffin, but maybe a little taller. Aside from the box, the only other distinguishing feature in the room was a mirror hanging on one wall. Storage, she supposed.
Beyond the empty room, she could make out a hallway with a steel door set into one wall. The door instantly drew her eye. It was definitely out of place — the thick kind of door you’d expect to find on a garage or industrial building, not inside a nice house like this. She figured she knew what that meant, and she dropped back down to a crouch.
A spindly, half-dead juniper bush stood between Darger and the far end of the house. She got even lower and skirted around its scraggly fingers.
This part of the house was older and more rustic than the rest, with rough log and chink walls. Probably this was the original cabin, and the rest of the home had been added on later. There was another window, but it was boarded up.
Yes. That fit with her developing theory. The steel door led to this back room with the boarded window. This was probably where he kept the girls. It almost had to be.
A small barn-style shed sat behind the house. The door was unlocked, and Darger poked her head inside. It held a jumble of the standard shed ephemera: a wheelbarrow, several tangled extension cords, an old rusty push mower, a kettle-style charcoal grill. Nothing she deemed useful or notable.
She skulked back to the house, passing another window secured with wooden planks. The uneasy sloshing in her gut only seemed to reiterate what she already suspected about this part of the house. She had to hurry.
The first window on the far side of the house was smaller and higher than the rest. Standing on her tiptoes, Darger caught a glimpse of a mirrored medicine cabinet and a shower stall. A bathroom.
The pictures from the Stump file flashed in her head — bathtubs stained with red spatters. He’d committed at least his first few murders in bathrooms. Icy prickles overtook the flesh along Darger’s arms. How many women had bled out here, just beyond that pane of glass?
A muted thud startled her. She threw herself to her knees and huddled in the shadow for a moment. The silence stretched out, long enough that she started to doubt herself. Had she really heard something, or was she imagining things?
Just as she reached for the bathroom window again, she heard a muffled shout from inside. This time, she had no uncertainty. It was real.
She moved, scrambled toward the sound.
More yelling and thumping erupted, louder this time. Clearly the sounds of a scuffle. Something clanged and then a noise like bags of kitty litter being dropped on the floor.
She scuttled to the next window. It was the living room that spanned the front of the house, half-lit from the light spilling in from the kitchen.
Movement in the darkened hallway beyond drew her eye, and she instinctively ducked away from the window, then slowly rose again to peer inside.
A dark figure took shape in the hall. Hunched over. Working at something.
Her heart fluttered in her chest at the sight of him again. Leonard Stump, in the flesh.
He sat on his haunches, bent over a crumpled form on the floor. Was it Nicole? And was she alive? Darger couldn’t tell.
Stump grabbed the girl by an arm and a leg and dragged her closer, lifting her limp body up and over his shoulder. He stood, and Darger got a better look at her.
The hair wasn’t right. It wasn’t Nicole. The other girl then. Emily Kessler.
That confirmed it. He had his two girls.
He plodded down the hall now, toward the back of the house. Darger aimed to follow his progress, wanted to know where he was keeping them for certain, though she was sure she already knew.
She quickened her pace, not wanting to lose him. Passing by the windows, she caught the movement of his shadow at times, stretched out and distorted on the wall of the long hallway that ran through the center of the house.
She lost sight of him as she sprinted around the windowless stretch at the back of the house, crunching over a dried out pine cone with her boot, but no longer caring.
At the window of the box room, she snuck a glance into the hall, chest heaving now with exertion. Nothing. No movement beyond the door.
Where the fuck was he?
Darkness spread into the open crack of the doorway. He
was coming this way. Darger stooped a little lower, still watching.
But he passed up the steel door. Kept coming straight at her. He pushed the door aside with his bulk, carried the girl inside the weird little empty room.
Darger’s breath caught in her throat. He was so close. If she had a gun, she could shoot him from here, a clean shot through the glass.
With no effort to be gentle, he dumped the girl on the ground. Was she dead? No, Darger didn’t think so. Despite his roughness, he was still taking too much care with her. If she were dead, his game would be over. He’d have to go find another girl to complete the ritual.
So what the hell was he doing with her?
The answer dawned on her as she watched him slither to the oblong box. He moved a latch aside, lifted the lid.
Darger reached out and pressed a hand to the side of the house, suddenly feeling dizzy.
Stump pulled the girl into his arms, picked her up, and dropped her into the box, like a child returning a doll to his toy bin. The movement seemed to rouse the girl. She squirmed in his grip, but it was too late. He was already shackling her inside.
The lid shut with a hard thud that caused Darger to flinch.
As he set to fastening the various latches and locks on the outside of the box, a new thought broke through the horror of knowing that he would keep this girl inside a box.
This was it.
She knew where he was.
While he was occupied here, she had her chance to get inside the house.
Go.
Chapter 47
The door swung open, and Claire stood in the threshold for a second before stepping aside so Loshak could enter. He noted that she spoke no greeting, so he piped up with one of his own.
“Good to see you, Claire. I’d say it’s a nice night, but it’d be a lie. I’m running on caffeine fumes at this point.”
She seemed to choke on her response, her lips sputtering some before she finally got it out.
“Come on in.”
She was quiet, which he was used to. He often compensated in their conversations, particularly early on, by talking a little more — hence the verbose greeting. But her hesitation in this case seemed off. Strange. It felt wrong in his gut.