Husk (32 page)

Like a gas fireplace, the flames went out with the ease of shutting off the fuel. Its half-melted head bubbled and smoked.

Brad ran.

He didn’t know if it was fear or adrenaline that gave him the strength to move, but it propelled him down the hall, through his parent’s bedroom and into their bathroom. He slammed the door and turned toward the window. It was a bone-breaking drop to the concrete patio below, but after the hell he’d already been through the two-story leap seemed minor.

He clutched the window frame with his good hand and—

A groan arose behind the walls.

Brad spun to face the door, but it remained closed.

He snatched his father’s straight razor from the sink top and flicked the blade open. Chest heaving, he stood silent and listened for sounds of the carpet-creature.

Why hadn’t it followed him?

The groan came again, deep and metallic. Pipes rattled. It came from all around him, inside the walls.

“
Fuck this!”

Brad faced the window again. He lifted it an inch before it slammed shut.

“
No!”

He tried again, but it wouldn’t budge.

Clenching his teeth, he made a fist and drew back to punch through the glass. Before he could, the toilet beside him exploded. It blew off his mounting bracket in a fountain of rushing water, knocking him back. The shock spurred him away without heed to what was near him, and his legs caught the edge of the tub, causing him to fall into it. His head smacked the opposite wall.

Dazed, he could only watch in wonder as the wall tiles shattered above him. Copper pipes crashed though the sheetrock, spraying the ceiling and creating a torrent of rain. The sink, the shower, and the tub drain erupted like high-pressure geysers, flooding the room with hundreds of gallons of water.

But it wasn’t the water that drew Brad’s mouth into a mute scream.

It was the thing within it, the invisible force that for a moment surged up before him in the shape of a towering liquid horror with blazing white eyes.

It crashed down on him with the force of a breaking tidal wave, violently gushing into his mouth and nose. He felt his lungs and stomach expand, convulsed in unparallel agony as the organs burst inside his chest.

This time, he begged the darkness to take him.

* * *

The entity stared down at Brad’s corpse.

Lying motionless on the water-soaked bathroom floor, coupled with the stone-gray hue of his skin, the boy looked like a statue toppled off its base.

It had almost gone too far in killing him, but the damage dealt to his internal organs was not noticeable on the outside. Disregarding his weak complexion, the teen’s body could still pass for human. Heavy clothing and deep shadows would easily disguise both his pallor and the wound on his wrist.

It slid into Brad’s husk and rose to a stand, flexing the boy’s limbs while it adjusted to the annoying pull of gravity.

The dead body offered none of the means by which its previous owner perceived the world. The lifeless eyes within Brad’s skull were nothing more than decorations on the mask of its costume, his skin a concealing blanket. But cadavers made valuable tools, providing golem bodies of flesh and bone it could use to interact with the physical world when its ethereal state proved impractical. It retained its own incredible perception, along with its potent mental capabilities, but there was no
life
to be sampled, just the cursed, never-ending numbness.

It strode to Brad’s closet, pawing through the few items on the hangers. It selected a change of clothing, including a black hooded sweatshirt to conceal the vessel’s peculiarities. Slipping it on, it hurried downstairs, heading to the basement.

In the elaborately furnished lower rooms, among a trove of framed sports memorabilia, it found an oak gun cabinet housing a formidable array of weapons. It crossed the floor toward the case, psychically manipulating the electrons in the metal of the lock. The door clicked and swung open.

It scanned the various hunting rifles and shotguns, eventually removing a Remington semi-automatic 12-gauge, along with a box of ammunition. The shotgun would be an effective instrument of intimidation, allowing the entity to gain the compliance of others without having to deplete its own valuable stock of energy. Every action—every telekinetically thrown object or electrically manipulated device; each constructed body and telepathic communication—burned more of the precious power it had gathered, power it needed in order to retrieve Kane.

Brad had already forced it to use more energy than it preferred.

Snarling with anger, it loaded the weapon to capacity—chambering one round and adding another for a total of six shots—then stuffed a handful of additional shells into the sweatshirt’s right pocket and clambered upstairs.

Now all it needed was transportation.

Back on the main floor, it strode through the kitchen and into the garage, where a highly polished black Lexus occupied the far side of the two-car space. Using the same means by which it opened the gun cabinet, the entity popped the trunk and stashed the shotgun behind a leather bag of golf clubs.

It glanced around the room, practicing the act of looking human. It twitched its facial muscles with precisely timed bursts of energy, doing its best to bring a look of life back into the boy’s dead flesh. Once satisfied, it walked to where a collection of lawn tools hung on storage hooks along the back wall and chose two long-handled garden shovels, adding them to the trunk.

The entity slid behind the wheel and once again used its control over electricity to activate the garage door opener and start the car’s engine, all at the speed of thought.

With the door up, it backed the car into the night.

It cleared the garage when the flicker of human life drew its attention, causing it to stop. Taillights stained the driveway red.

Looking to the left, it spotted the exact two humans it planned to go search for—Brad’s friends from the woods—both stepping off the street and walking across the lawn toward the house.

They eyeballed the Lexus with hard-faced features, each trying to look tough despite their earlier ordeal.

The entity created a wide grin on Brad’s face and rolled the window down.

“
Where’d you two pussies run off to?” it asked in their friend’s voice. The sound came out gravely and uneven, and the entity adjusted the tissue of Brad’s throat. “We were just starting to have fun.”

The two stopped in their tracks, pausing to peer through the shadows of the sweatshirt’s hood.

“
Us? Where the hell did you go, man?” It was the kid it had hit with the rock. “And what are you doing in your old man’s car?”

“
I’m borrowing it,” it answered. “Want to go for a ride?”

“
Yeah,” the second kid replied. “Take me over to that limp-dick Flemwad’s so I can kick his scrawny ass. That little bastard went psycho and nearly choked me to death.”

“
Get in.”

The two piled in without hesitation. It didn’t know their names because it hadn’t bothered to read Brad’s mind while he died, and the dead organ inside his head was of no use to it now. It would scan their thoughts and learn their names on the road.

“
All right,” the riled teenager growled. “Let’s go find Fleming and mess him up.”

The other nodded his agreement. “Yeah, and if we can’t find him, let’s burn his fucking house down.”

So much rage. Just like Kane had been at their age.

“
That’s too kind,” it told them. “I have a better idea.”

“
Like what?”

It grinned with genuine pleasure. “We’re going to dig up a dead body.”

The two stared in silence. They shared matching expressions of curiosity, but neither rejected the idea. They were rowdy, self-centered, and easily amused; just the sort of miscreants it should have sought out in the first place.

It dropped the car into gear and pulled out of the driveway. “There’s a cemetery in the forest not far from here. We’ll dig up the juiciest stiff we can find, track Tim down, and lock him in the trunk with it. How’s that sound?”

The boys laughed excitedly.

“
Dude. Now that’s a plan.”

On the drive to the cemetery, the entity learned the boy’s names: Tom Fuller and Jay Dupree. Both remained sullen because of their previous run-in with Tim, but they were equally enlivened with the prospect of exhuming a corpse. It liked that about them.

They drove to the forest road, slowing to pass between the overgrown bushes that hid it from the highway. Gravel crunched below the Lexus’ tires like the sound of ground-up bones being dumped into an open grave. The entity maneuvered the car along the dirt driveway, steering around thick tree branches that overhung the path.

Around them, it sensed various animals emerge from burrows, dens, and nests, racing into the night to flee from its presence.

“
I hope you know where you’re going” Dupree said, speaking around his split lip. “I don’t want to get stuck out here.”

They emerged from the forest drive, and the car’s headlights illuminated the churchyard’s dirt parking lot.

“
We’re here.”

It pulled to a stop before the iron fence that extended off the church’s left side, using the sedan’s headlights to illuminate the property. It put the car in park without shutting off the engine.

“
Damn,” Dupree commented. “I never knew this place was out here.”

“
Me either,” Fuller admitted.

Ahead, tombstones sprouted from the overgrown weeds like relics of another age. Gnats, moths, mosquitoes, and flying beetles flittered between the graves, their black bodies transformed to ash-white in the headlights.

The entity stepped out of the car, prompting the others to follow.

Nothing had changed since its previous visits, yet it hesitated in the presence of the church. The place still appeared dead and forgotten, a nameless corpse left for the elements to gradually dispose of. But an invisible ocean of energy churned beneath the site’s physical façade, guarding the church and graveyard, keeping the entity out.

If only it had been stronger when Kane’s body died. Maybe then it could have recovered him in the asylum’s morgue without assistance.

Turning away from the church, the entity walked to the vehicle’s trunk and mentally opened the lock. It retrieved the two shovels, then lowered the lid again without latching it closed.

Fuller peered at one of the closest headstones. “Damn, 1862. These fuckers are old.”

“
I’ll say,” Dupree added. “Which one should we open, Brad?”

“
The newest addition,” it replied. “Kale Kane.”

They craned their necks to find the grave.

Dupree looked confused. “Who the hell is Kale Kane?”

“
Dumb-ass,” Fuller said. “He’s the psycho who just keeled over. Watch the news once in a while.”

It thrust the shovels into their arms. “You two go dig him up, that’s your job.”

Dupree smirked. “Us? What the hell are you going to do, sit back and supervise?”

“
He must think he works for the city,” Fuller said.

“
Cops check back here every now and then,” it lied. “I’ll keep watch on the road. When you reach the casket, haul it up and bring it over to the car. I’ll take care of the rest.”

“
What rest?” Fuller asked.

“
You’ll see,” it replied, smiling with Brad’s cracked, bloodless lips.

CHAPTER 39

BJ huddled in the bushes, eyeing the large shrubs of the next yard and listening for the crackling sound of movement.

Something at night is the same thing without light.

Something at night is the same thing without light.

His father’s reassuring bedtime poem echoed in BJ’s mind while he huddled against the ground. Often used while waiting for sleep, the nine-word verse reminded him that the room beyond his bed’s footboard—that area lost in oozy realms of shadow—was no different in darkness than before the lights snapped off.

Something at night is the same thing without light.

It seemed to make sense. He only hoped the same held true for the outdoors. He’d watched countless animal shows that stated nighttime became a whole new world when dealing with nature, a world comprised of nocturnal beasts who awoke at sunset to hunt and scavenge.

Something at night …

The snapping noise came again, closer this time. Not from the other yard like before, but right next to him.

He turned.

Two circular yellow eyes flashed into view deeper in the bushes.

BJ flinched at their appearance and his heart skipped a beat. The eyes hovered inches off the ground, level with his flattened body, staring straight at him.

The creature emerged from the bush’s lower branches, gliding into sight with the smoothness of a spirit rising from a grave. It stood up from where it had been lying in the shadows and rose to a height that would’ve come level with BJ’s shoulders had he been on his feet.