Husk (24 page)

Melissa stopped him by holding up a hand. “Geomagnetic what?”

Frank nodded in the general direction of the driveway. “My Blazer’s custom-rigged with various meteorological and electrical sensing equipment. The expense seemed a bit extreme, even to me, but the gear paid off. I registered an EMP discharge of more than 200 milligauss about a mile away from here. Two or three is normal, 400 is considered harmful. The central surge must have been incredibly strong, but well focused. Unfortunately, the sensors on my truck weren’t designed for wide-range scans. I was able to track the residual static charge back to its epicenter using a negative ion detector. The trail led me here.”

He aimed his flashlight beam on the freezer. “I tried the front door, but when no one answered, I went ahead and checked the property for whatever could’ve caused the readings I detected. Eventually, I saw this handprint through the open window and noticed how someone had screwed the freezer’s lid shut at each end. It was like a bad memory repeating itself. I knew I was overstepping my bounds, but I had to check it out in case someone needed help—I sure didn’t expect to find
you
inside.”

They both glanced to the closed freezer and stood in silent deliberation of what had been found.

“
I’d better call in a team and get forensics working on trying to find some prints,” she mumbled. “I’m going to catch this bastard if it’s the last thing I do.”

Frank shook his head. “You can forget about the forensic team for now. There’s not enough time.”

Melissa snapped her head up, not sure she’d heard him right. He looked to her thoughtfully and added, “They won’t find anything here that’ll help us catch our killer. They might even scare it away. The damned thing is saving these bodies, making sure they don’t decompose. It might come back here.”

“
Hang on a second,” she protested. “You want to
wait
to report what we’ve found here? Yesterday morning I had a double homicide investigation, but since then it’s snowballed into a massacre. I’d say time isn’t exactly something I should be wasting right now.”

Frank studied her. “That’s why we have to hurry and find Kane’s grave. You know what we’re up against now; you must’ve seen it. Following conventional methods will only slow us down.”

She gave him a quizzical gaze, once again reevaluating his character. “What are you talking about? Would you please say something that makes sense for once? I was attacked by some
guy
, maybe two, and they might have left clues.”

“
It was Kane’s guardian,” Frank said. “It was here, and we have to find it before someone else dies.”

Melissa felt her already strained patience ready to snap. “Don’t even start. You want me to believe that Kane’s accomplice is responsible for all that’s been happening lately, but in your book Kane’s partner is his own shadow. His
shadow
, for God’s sake!”

“
I know how crazy it sounds.”

“
Crazy?” she replied. “Frank, it’s impossible. You honestly expect me to believe that these people were murdered by a two-dimensional bogeyman?”

“
It’s an entity,” he clarified.

“
An entity?”

“
Yes, a bodiless being of energy, like a ghost or a spirit.”

“
So, now you’re saying Kane was possessed, is that it?”

“
No,” he replied. “From what I’ve learned this thing can’t inhabit a living body, but it can construct bodies out of various materials or occupy items like dolls, statues, or bodies of the dead. It hides inside them like—”

“‘
Like a seed of evil in a husk of flesh,’” Melissa quoted. “I read your book, Frank. It’s a nice line, but it doesn’t convince me.”

“
You don’t believe it? Then, explain that.”

He angled his flashlight beam toward the floor, into the shadows to the right of Melissa’s feet. The rigid form of a woman’s corpse lay crumpled in a heap, the same woman from the freezer. Melissa stared at it, unblinking, having not seen the cadaver in the basement’s gloom.

She opened the freezer’s lid and saw only the man.

Stunned speechless, she directed her gaze back to the deceased, now noticing deep cracks in the woman’s flesh—most at the joints of her limbs—revealing the frozen, reddish-purple meat beneath her blue skin. Melissa recalled the sound of what she believed had been breaking glass just before her attack.

She shivered again.

CHAPTER 31

Lori gazed up at the featureless figure, trapped between an instinctual urge to scream and the need to rationalize the sight into something less threatening.
It’s a trick
, she thought.
Just some light on the Plexiglas
.

But then the shape moved.

It stepped over the skylight and glared down at her with two blazing white eyes, the only characteristic she perceived in the dark void of its face.

A flare of lightning ignited the sky, pulsing, broken light in which the towering shape overhead vanished and reappeared, vanished and reappeared, its form visible in the darkness, but transparent in the light.

She ran.

It took her two seconds to reach BJ’s room, and she dashed through the door, going straight to his bed.

Still empty.

“
B-BJ?” she stammered, pawing through the bed sheets.

From somewhere overhead came a long, inhuman howl.

“
BJ,” she screamed.

“
Lori?”

She turned and found him huddled near the end of his double-wide dresser, crouched between the furniture and the wall behind a pile of stuffed animals.

“
Voodooman came back,” the boy cried.

She took hold of his hand and pulled him to her, having no time to explain that ghosts and goblins don’t exist, but the prowler outside did.
It had to be a prowler.

“
We’re going to go to your daddy’s office and use the phone,” she said. “I’ll call the police and everything will be—”

“
No,” he shrieked, jerking out of her grasp.

“
BJ, what—”

“
I don’t want to go with you,” he bawled, shrinking away.

“
BJ, it’s okay—”

“
Stay away from me. Lori, make him stay away.”

Suddenly, she realized he wasn’t speaking to her at all. His tear-glazed eyes had locked on something over her left shoulder, something behind her, but when she whirled around to face it, she didn’t see anything.

“
I won’t go,” he cried. “I want to stay with Mallory and my dad.”

Fear pulled at the corners of his mouth and squeezed tears from his eyes. He turned his head, seeming to track someone’s movement across the far side of the room.

“
BJ, are you all right?” she implored, unable to hide the tremble in her voice. His gaze had fallen on the bed now, and he scrambled away from it, edging along the dresser with his back to the drawers.

She looked to him, to the bed, to him again.
What’s happening?

BJ’s sobbing halted and a new degree of terror entered his expression. He shook his head in violent denial, begging to the nothingness over his empty bed, wailing, “No, no, no. Don’t kill Lori! She’s my friend, please don’t hurt her!”

She spun to face the bed again. “BJ, you’re scaring me.”

Suddenly, the bedspread shot off the mattress, its edges spread wide. The soft material engulfed her head and body. It tightened around her throat and pressed against her mouth, hugging her in a smothering embrace. She tried to scream but only managed a muffled groan. She stumbled backward from the impact, pushed by a bulk that couldn’t have solely belonged to the bedcover.

Propelled backward, her spine rammed into the edge of BJ’s dresser, and the back of her head shattered the dresser’s mirror.

She crumpled over. Fell to the floor.

Clawing at the fabric, she fought to free herself. She clutched handfuls of the material, pulled until her fingernails threaten to tear away from the flesh. Then she heard the blessed sound of ripped stitching, and the grip loosened. Soft stuffing spilled out the hole like dry innards.

The spread went slack, and she yanked it off her.

She gasped. Coughed. Gasped again

BJ ran to her side and grabbed an arm, begging her to stand.

The room appeared far darker than she remembered it. After a second, she realized that the backyard lights had gone out. But not just the backyard lights. BJ’s digital alarm clock had gone dark, and the lights from downstairs no longer cast a weak sheen across the wall near the stairs.
All
the power was out.

A new commotion boomed inside the closet, and she reeled around at the sound of metal instruments falling to the floor behind the walls. She didn’t have more than half a second to ponder the source of the noise when she heard the attic door crash open inside the closet.

“
He’s coming,” BJ said, tugging at her tortured hands.

Heavy footsteps clumped across the carpeted floor within the walk-in closet.

“
We gotta run away,” he pleaded.

The kid was right.

In a split-second action that surprised both BJ and herself, Lori leapt up from where she’d fallen and lunged at the door even as the brass knob began to turn. She plunged in an uncoordinated dive toward the closet, striking out at a child-safety latch near the top of the door—
Snap!
—sealing it shut.

She dropped to her stomach.

The door shuddered but remained closed.

“
Come on!” she exclaimed, getting up. “Run!”

She clutched BJ’s hand in hers, leading him out of the room with the closet door thundering it its frame. She heard the wood crack behind them.

They ran. Down the hall, through the darkness, racing faster with each footfall.

They got to the steps overlooking the foyer, where the light of the street lamps outlined the front door with a buttery glow. They descended the stairs and ran for the exit.

Lori seized the front door’s knob with both hands but couldn’t get it to turn.

“
Shit,” she groaned through gritted teeth.

Something scurried down the back of her neck, and she clapped a hand to it, finding her hair slick with blood.

Upstairs, the brittle splintering of wood erupted from BJ’s room, and the forceful stomp of boot heels resounded through the floor.

Lori looked up.

The shape appeared at the second floor railing, revealed by the light coming through the segmented windows by the door. Her breath caught at the sight. The intruder had donned the snowmobile outfit she’d seen earlier in the attic. Its puffy outer material matched the blackness in which it stood, but where there should’ve been a head, Lori saw nothing more than a dark hole rimmed by the suit’s collar.

The headless horror paused to hover over them, making sure they both caught a glimpse of the long carving knife it gripped in one hand. Apparently there had been a set of holiday cutlery in the storage space, and now the monster was showing them what it had found. It turned the instrument from one side to the other, so the wan light caught its silvery blade.

Lori shivered. The knife looked large enough to cleave whole turkeys in two with one swipe.

Got to call the cops, get help
.
The alarm panel!

But when she turned to it, the bulbs of its indicator lights appeared blacker than the empty eye sockets of a skull.

The living nightmare on the second floor didn’t bother with the stairs; it vaulted the railing and dropped into the foyer with the loud slap of rubber soles hitting tile. Lori screamed. She dodged to the left of the landing with BJ in hand, retreating into the forward living room where she turned right and ran for the back of the house.

The thing shot after them. The nylon snowmobile suit made
swish, swish
noises at their backs, sounding like the panting wheeze of a hungry beast.

They crossed the threshold that separated the living room from the family room, guided only by what weak light from outside made it in through the windows. Ahead lay the TV and fireplace seating area, where she and BJ had spent most of the night. More importantly, however, farther to the right waited the dinette area and sliding glass door, their passage to freedom.

In an attempt to stall their pursuer, Lori turned and flung shut the double French doors that divided the two rooms, hoping against hope it would give them enough time to make it outside.

The unearthly assailant crashed into the twin doors the second they locked together, blasting through them like a battering ram. She twisted away. Glass and wood flew in all directions, pummeling her back. The knife’s blade flashed within the storm of debris, and she fled between the couch and TV, where the sharp corners of a hundred scattered Lego blocks bit into her stocking-covered feet. She collapsed to the carpet, dodging the blade by mere inches. It sliced through one of the couch cushions instead of her flesh.

She stumbled as the aching soles of her feet gave less support with each step, and a second later she smashed her left foot into the brick mantel of the fireplace, pitching her forward. In the darkness, she collided with the hearth’s stand-up rack of tools on her way to the floor.