Husk (27 page)

Melissa sighed. “This is bullshit, Frank. Do you even hear what’s coming out of your mouth? The whole idea of it is just … just …
incomprehensible.
”

“
What part don’t you understand?”

Melissa laughed. She knew she should drop the subject, let it go, but Frank’s level of conviction infuriated her, and now she wanted to prove him wrong. “All right, answer me this: if your entity-thing has been around for so long, since the time of Christ—”

“
Before Christ.”

“
Whatever. If it’s as powerful as you say, being able to cast magic spells and make bodies out of anything it wants, then why now? Why didn’t this thing come after you five years ago, when you busted Kane? You’re the one who tracked him down and put an end to his crimes, you’re the one who ruined his plans. In all this time, why hasn’t this thing killed you? Seems sort of convenient that it would just up and vanish the second Kane got captured. The way you describe it, you’d think it would’ve come looking for revenge.”

Frank’s one eye broke from her gaze and his posture sagged. With a heavy, miserable breath he seemed to age an additional twenty years before her eyes.

“
Now, there’s a question I’ve asked myself more than once over the years,” he said, “and every time I do, I wonder if it would have really made a difference.”

“
What does that mean?” she asked in a softer tone.

Frank looked at the ground and cleared his throat, perhaps buying more time before needing to answer. “I’m fifty-seven years old and I need to sleep with the lights on. Sometimes I wet myself in my sleep from the nightmares I have of Kane’s basement, of seeing my friends slaughtered. And when I’m alone, it takes me almost an hour to work up the courage just to take the garbage out. You can imagine how hard it was for me to come all the way out here tonight. I don’t have any family left, my friends stopped visiting when I was reluctant to leave my home, and I haven’t been with a woman since this whole mess started. Believe me, Detective, sometimes it seems like I’m
already
dead.”

Frank’s revelation of how his experiences had affected him left Melissa speechless. She found herself unable to meet the humility in his eyes. Instead, she turned and stared at the glowing windows of the ranch house.

“
Up until now, I believed the entity to be a transient being,” Frank resumed, “going from one person to the next, abandoning its devotee whenever it desired. That’s what had me scared half-crazy for so long, thinking it could show up at any time, which is why I invested in all this elaborate sensory equipment after I retired. You may not have noticed it, but I have an EMF reader in every corner of my apartment. I needed the peace of mind. But now, with all this taking place
after
Kane’s death, I’m starting to think that the entity didn’t come after me simply because it couldn’t. If Kane and this monster were performing some sort of union spell, something to blend them together, and if we hurt Kane badly enough before it was finished, the entity could’ve been trapped inside his half-dead body. That might explain all the thrashing around I told you about, all the incoherent ranting; it was the entity realizing it had bonded with a dying body, too weakened from casting the original spell to free itself. It was stuck.”

The wind hustled a gathering of dried leaves across the driveway, producing a sound like scuffling feet. Melissa and Frank spun to face the noise, but relaxed when they realized what it had been.

Frank faced her. “We can defeat it, Melissa. I’m prepared this time, everything from holy water to plastic explosives with remote detonators.”

“
Explosives,” Melissa echoed.

Frank smirked. “When you deal with bad guys all your life you learn where they shop.”

She looked away again. Despite what a dedicated detective he’d been in the past, Melissa had the disheartening feeling that Frank’s original bout with Kane had left mental wounds that might never heal.

In the distance she saw lights approaching, heard the wavering sound of far-off sirens. Behind them, several fingers of lightning reach over the horizon and gripped the cloudy sky. No thunder rumbled in the air.

Not yet.

CHAPTER 34

BJ dashed through the back lawn of another yard, not sure who the yard belonged to or how far he’d come from his own house. His only certainty came from the driving urgency to get away, even if it meant fleeing into the unknown.

High overhead, thick clouds closed out the heavens, blocking the starlight and limiting visibility to only a few feet. Obstacles exploded out of the night in his path, then faded away in his wake as fast as they’d appeared. He didn’t stop.

The cool grass cushioned the bare soles of his feet, but the roughed patches of dirt still retained a noticeable degree of warmth leftover from the day. Skyward, the wind bent the treetops, each pulsating gust stronger than the last. All around him the looming branches whispered a warning to remain quiet.

Shhh, Shhh, Shhhhhhh.

When he wasn’t looking for what obstacle would jump out at him next—bush, flowerbed, birdbath—he searched for a lit house where he might be able to find help. So far, all the buildings ahead appeared to be abandoned. Set against the white painted walls, their blackened window glass looked cold and uninviting.

He’d entered another yard—the grass reached slightly higher here, tickling his ankles—when the heart-stopping sound of a snapping twig caused him to skid to a stop and take cover behind a low shrub.

Holding back his burning breath, trying not to let out the wail of fear that squirmed inside his throat like a living animal, BJ hunkered down and forced himself to remain motionless.

At first, all went silent—all except for the wind and the trees. Soon, a stealthily hidden swarm of crickets began to sing, followed by the distant barking of a dog somewhere on the other side of the neighborhood; its heavy woofs seemed muffled by the umbrella of sooty clouds above.

Then the twig-snapping noise again.

The crickets’ song stopped.

Goosebumps marched across his arms.

He lay down on his stomach and eased himself backward, sliding farther under the shrubs. Across the yard stood a row of box-shaped bushes that divided this yard from the one behind it, and it sounded like the source of the noise lay concealed somewhere behind one of those tall plants.

Lying in the grass, with the earthy scents of plant and dirt filling his nostrils, BJ closed his eyes and thought about his dad and Mallory, praying Lori had been telling him the truth about how to ward off monsters.

* * *

The Killer navigated the wide sea of the night like an eel cruising through black oil, gliding from point to point, unimpeded by the darkness. Traveling through shadows, it crossed great distances in an instant and passed through solid obstacles like they didn’t exist.

At first, it proceeded with the deliberate grace of a superior hunter, searching for BJ’s trail. It drifted sedately among the yards, stalking the most likely hiding spots, confident the boy hadn’t gotten far. But while the search widened and the boy remained undetected, the entity spanned out from the Wiess property and searched neighboring homes. It flew faster, its rage and frustration building, until it became a frenzied beast running on predatory instinct. It dashed from one area to the next, depending entirely on its ability to sense life energy to seek out the boy.

And still nothing.

Somehow, BJ had escaped.

But how could such an inept quarry have eluded it … unless a greater power protected him.

Its anger boiled at the thought.

If it didn’t find BJ, it wouldn’t be able to coerce Paul Wiess into helping it retrieve Kane. It couldn’t afford another failure; there had been too many already.

No! Tonight, one way or another, it would prevail. The separation from Kane had left it weakened, the long wait having drained its power, but it had grown stronger with each victim and now it was ready for the reunion, ready for revenge.

Then, at last, a glimmer of psychic energy.

It shot toward the back end of the neighborhood, beyond the last line of homes bordering the forest. But when the boy came into view, it discovered that the life energy it detected didn’t belong to BJ but to one of Mallory’s friends.

Tim.

The entity watched, invisible to his human eyes.

He crossed the street and entered the woods, striding deeper into darkness.

And he was alone.

CHAPTER 35

Tim pushed his way through the bulwark of staggered trees and bushes planted along the far side of Terrace Street, those set up in an organized attempt to blend the landscaped embankment into the surrounding wild forest.

Once under windblown treetops, it only took him a few seconds to locate the earth-packed lanes of the bike trails. Even in the darkness he maneuvered his way along the paths with ease, having traveled them enough to be familiar with every twist, turn, and fork. Choosing a route that would take him to the railroad tracks—which he could follow all the way back to Loretto in half the time of traveling normal roads—he started home.

In the woods, he wouldn’t run into Mallory and her friends again, either.

Before he’d made his discreet exit from her house, he’d overheard her suggestion of a trip to the old barn. Walking along the street, they might have spotted him on their way out to the fields, and he didn’t feel like explaining why he’d left the house without telling anyone.

Wind gusted hard into the surrounding trees, and their branches moaned in protest. Off in the forest smaller plants mimicked the noise, sounding like the muffled whispers of unknown creatures.

Tim trod forward without pause, his eyes focused on the dirt.

A three-foot long branch had fallen across the path, and he kicked it out the way, imagining it was Derrick.

Two paces later he scooped up a rock and hurled it after the branch.

“
Asshole,” he yelled.

He stormed onward, unzipping the jacket he’d taken from his mother’s car and put on to armor himself against mosquitoes. The night’s breeze was keeping them at bay and the added clothing only made him sweaty.

Someone laughed.

It sounded sharp and squeaky against the tranquilizing shift of nature, and Tim snapped up his head to see a huge black figure emerged into view barely fifty feet away. It glided toward him on the path with frightening fluidity, moving like a sentient glob of darkness out of a Lovecraftian nightmare.

Tim stopped dead in his tracks, rooted in place by fear. His nerves charged with energy, prepping his muscles to run, but then the advancing hulk broke apart, separating into the silhouettes of three teenagers riding bikes along the trail.

Fear melted into humiliation, and Tim’s shoulders sagged as the tension drained from his body. He wiped his brow, now picking up the first hints of jocular conversation and laughter. He started forward once more, composing himself so he wouldn’t look too geeked-out when they passed him.

But his fear returned when he recognized the loudest voice in the group.

Brad Hill!

“
Oh, shit.”

Tim scrambled off the trail and took cover within the foliage, wincing with each sound made beneath his shoes.

He didn’t know if Brad still wanted revenge for the dodge ball incident, but if he did, Tim could only imagine what the larger boy would do to him out here in the woods.

The three drew closer. Thirty feet away now. Twenty-five.

Tim wondered how brave Mallory would think he was if she could see him now, cowering like a rabbit in the presence of a wolf.

He positioned himself behind a tree trunk less than four feet off the trail, not daring to chance looking for a better spot deeper in the woods. If he stepped on a brittle stick, he might call their attention.

Smarter to ease around as they pass
.
Just keep the tree between us, hide in the shadows.

From where he crouched, he saw the occasional red glow of a cigarette flare brighter when one of them inhaled, and he could vaguely make out their black shirts and dark jeans.

Tim held his breath, hoping they’d pass without—

Suddenly, the plants thrashed with movement at his back, rustled by something deeper in the trees. Before he could look, an object shot over his head like a bullet, sending shredded leaves fluttering to the ground behind it.

Tim held his breath to keep from gasping when he realized what had happened.

To confirm his fear, the silhouette on the far right of Brad’s group jerked backward, crying out in pain.

“
Oh God, no,” Tim whispered.

The boy fell off his bike and crashed to the ground, howling through clapped hands locked over his mouth. Tim heard one of the others say something about a rock.

Tim looked over his shoulder and tried to find the attacker, but saw nothing past his own hiding spot. Just black plant stalks on a blacker background.

A light clicked on and swept over the bushes. It caught the back of Tim’s head in its beam, causing his shadow to flee over the plants ahead of him.