The Dark Ones (3 page)

Kill you
, he thought.

Watch you bleed. Watch your fucking life spill out on the ground
.

They hadn’t known he was there. No way they’d have been running their mouths like that otherwise. He had come up behind them during a break between periods. It was three of those fucking rednecks.
Locals
. Just thinking the word made his lips twist in disgust. He had lived in Ransom more than a year and a half at this point, but he would never think of himself as
local
. This town wasn’t his real home. That was Atlanta. Always would be. One day he’d go back there. Or maybe not. Maybe he’d head up to Manhattan instead. Or L.A. Or Chicago. Anywhere big and bustling and full of life and possibilities. Anywhere but here. Here felt like death.

The fucking locals would always be here.

Good
, he thought.

Let them rot in this nowhere place
.

They had been clustered around a set of open lockers in the hallway. Mark’s own locker was nearby on the same side of the corridor. The ten minutes allowed between classes was winding down and the hallways were emptying out fast. Yet these three idiots were in no apparent hurry to get to whatever remedial course was next on their schedules. Mark had felt the usual reflexive disgust as he neared them. All were clad in T-shirts advertising wizened classic rock bands and NASCAR drivers and dirty jeans with rips at the knees.

He was maybe twenty feet from them when he heard her name. He tensed immediately, his hand freezing on his locker’s combination knob. They still hadn’t noticed him. He knew this because he heard her name again. And he heard their barks of derisive laughter. If they’d seen him, they wouldn’t have been laughing.

They knew better.

“Yeah, she’s a slut,”
one boy said.

There was more of that stupid laughter and then one of them said,
“Sluts are cool, though. I’d fuck her.”

Mark’s hand came away from the combination knob.

More laughter.

He stood up straight and turned toward them. His blood was boiling.

One of the boys made a sound of disgust.
“You’d fuck one of them city bitches? Your dick’d fall off, boy. All them cunts got every STD in the book.”

Mark’s hands curled into fists.

Kill you
, he thought.

Fucking kill you
.

He started toward them. He cleared his throat. Their laughter cut off immediately. They turned to look at him, the mirth draining from their stupid faces lightning quick. It was him against three of them. But there was never any doubt how it would go down. One mumbled an apology of sorts and took off down the hallway at once, seeking the safety of a classroom. The other two paused just long enough to slam their lockers shut and then they were running like little bitches, too. Mark derived a small degree of satisfaction from the level of terror he’d elicited from the boys without even voicing a threat. Without uttering a single
word
.

And yet it wasn’t enough.

He’d stewed over it all day.

They couldn’t talk about her that way.

Even now, many hours later, he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Until a tapping came at his window.

T
HREE

Three soft taps, with a brief, deliberate pause between each.
Tap. Tap. Tap
. Very light, almost inaudible. There was a reason Mark silenced the TV every evening as midnight neared, and it had nothing to do with appeasing his parents. Their bedroom was at the opposite end of the big house, far enough away that noise was not a concern. The alarm system, however, was another matter, and was the reason for the tapper’s light touch.

Mark swung his legs over the side of the twin-size bed, got to his feet, and crossed the room in three quick strides. At the window, he slid two fingers between blind slats and peered through the narrow gap. It was her. She saw him peeking at her and smiled. He flexed his fingers, widening the gap between the slats, and held up the index finger of his other hand.

Give me a minute
, the gesture said.

She mouthed the word
okay
.

Mark stared at her a moment longer.
God, she’s so fucking beautiful
. Then he moved away from the window and snatched his keys from the nightstand next to his bed. These he shoved down the right hip pocket of his jeans. He grabbed his black leather jacket from the back of a chair and hurriedly slipped it on. He then dropped to the floor and reached under his bed to pull out a box containing his old collection of
Magic: The Gathering
cards. He’d given the game up years ago, but the loose pile of cards was an effective means of concealing things nosy parents shouldn’t see. Things like a quarter ounce of weed in a tightly rolled plastic bag and a half-pint bottle of Southern Comfort. He tucked the booze and bag of weed in an inner pocket of his jacket, closed the box, and shoved it back under the bed.

He opened the door to his room and stepped into a small rec room. There was a couch against one wall and a large flat-screen television mounted on the opposite wall. The shelves of a single bookcase were filled with board games, and there was a card table upon which these games, in theory, would be played. But it had been a long, long time since the last family game night. At least a year. Maybe longer. There’d been some subtle shift in family dynamics that was hard to define. His parents were no longer as close as they’d once been. Sometimes Mark thought it had to do with the stresses of Tom Bell’s corporate job at Stanton Manufacturing. The man worked seriously long hours. Too long. Mark couldn’t fathom that kind of time commitment to something that had to be boring as fuck.

Other times Mark was certain the change had something to do with him.

Times when he was sure they just didn’t like him anymore and were counting the days until he was out of their hair and out on his own.

It depressed him.

And he didn’t want to be depressed right now. There were things to be glad about. The girl waiting for him outside, for instance. He affected an air of jaded cynicism about most things, but this girl made him feel good. The world seemed like a brighter place when she was around. More vibrant. More exciting. And when she wasn’t around, all of that went away. Lately she’d been making an obvious effort to spend more time specifically with him, rather than anyone else in their small clique. It didn’t take a genius to figure out the interest was mutual. Still, nothing had happened yet and he had a feeling the time to make a real move was at hand.

He was out of the rec room now and standing at the door to the garage. The numbers on the alarm system’s keypad glowed a bright green in the darkness. The keypad was mounted on the wall next to the door. Here was the tricky part. The part that put a lump of fear in his throat every night.

Just get it over with
.

His parents were sound sleepers, but the law of averages said eventually one of them would have a restless, sleepless night around this time. There was an identical keypad mounted on a wall in their bedroom. They might notice the system had been disabled. And if that ever happened . . . well, he wasn’t sure what would happen. Maybe nothing. After all, he was half convinced they didn’t give a damn about him anymore. On the other hand, they might crack down, maybe officially forbid him from going out at night, which would effectively cut him off from his friends.

From
her
.

And that couldn’t happen.
Wouldn’t
happen. He was beyond their control now. Beyond anyone’s control. But that didn’t mean he was in any hurry to deal with the drama of a confrontation.

He jabbed numbers on the keypad. Four digits, each accompanied by a beep, followed by a louder beep signaling that the system had been disarmed. He unlocked the door and pulled it quickly open, hurried into the garage, and pulled the door shut again. He felt a little weird leaving the house unprotected by the alarm system, but, really, what was there to worry about? They didn’t live in the city anymore. A dead-of-night home invasion seemed unlikely in sleepy Wheaton Hills.

He had this little inner debate nearly every night.

It was pointless. He was going out and that was that.

He opened the door to the backyard and got the hell out of there.

F
OUR

“Alarm’s off. The boy’s heading out again.”

She didn’t answer right away. From his vantage point on the bed, Tom Bell could see his wife through the open bathroom door. Clad only in black thong panties and black platform heels, she leaned over the sink to apply a fresh coat of bright red lipstick. He stared at her fit but curvaceous body and felt his pulse quicken. She was wearing the platinum blond wig tonight. It was his favorite. She also had purple, electric blue, and silver wigs, among other shades. When she wore one of those, he liked to pretend he was screwing some hot punk chick.

Lydia strutted into the bedroom. She climbed atop the bed and stalked toward him, the heavy soles of her shoes making deep indentations in the mattress. She stopped when she stood over him at waist level, one shoe planted on either side of his waist.

He stared up at her, his eyes alight with a mixture of awe and desperate excitement. Her face was expressionless, but something in her posture nonetheless conveyed an aloof, almost bored contempt. But that was just part of the game. God, how he wanted to touch her. He groaned and jerked his wrists against the metal cuffs binding him to the bed’s wrought-iron headboard.

“Be still!”

He flinched. Her tone was harsh and loud. It was the voice of utter authority, implying an infinite capacity for cruelty. She had gotten very good at this part of the game, too. So good it scared him now and then when she really got into it. Like the time a month ago when she’d been choking him while he was in this very position, cuffed to the headboard and completely helpless. Just thinking about it made him shudder. She’d had both hands wrapped around his throat and was really bearing down, putting every ounce of her strength in it. He hadn’t been able to breathe at all for many long moments. He remembered seeing her nipples stiffen as he struggled for breath. He remembered that single trickle of sweat sliding between her breasts. That had been the thing that spooked him the most at the time, even more than the horribly intent look in her eyes. That tiny, slowly moving droplet of moisture scared the shit out of him. Because sweat meant work. She wasn’t playing, not then, and for a few horrifying moments he’d been sure she meant to kill him, a conviction that lasted all the way up to the second she abruptly let go of his throat. She’d scrambled off the bed then, retreating to the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. He remembered listening to her cry.

Tom hadn’t really needed an explanation.

It was all his fault.

It all went back to his brief dalliance a year ago with Suzie McGregor. Suzie lived in a big neo-Victorian on Spring Circle, the newest part of Wheaton Hills. They got sloppy and the affair was exposed after only a month. Lydia came damn close to leaving him then. Scary close. Somehow he’d talked her out of it. He cried. He begged. He promised her anything and everything. Somehow it swayed her. They went to marriage counseling. Tom hadn’t thought much of the counselor. But one of the woman’s suggestions had stuck. She told them they should think of some ways to inject some excitement back into their marriage. Perhaps some role-playing in the bedroom . . .

Lydia shifted her weight and lifted one foot off the bed. She placed the heavy sole squarely in the center of his chest and applied a bit of pressure.

She showed him a sneer. “You worried about what your son gets up to when he goes out at night?”

“Aren’t you?”

“No.”

Tom frowned. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t care what happens to him.”

“Christ, Lydia. He’s your own flesh and blood.”

“He’s a sullen, ungrateful brat.”

“Maybe, but it goes with the territory at that age. You know that.”

“I don’t care. He’s a troublemaking delinquent. Fuck him.”

Tom couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The last year had changed Lydia in a lot of ways, many of them not for the better. And part of that was understandable. She’d experienced a deep betrayal. But Mark was an innocent and shouldn’t bear the brunt of her rage. “Lydia—”

She shifted her weight again, pressing the heavy shoe harder against his chest. The point of the spike heel dimpled the flesh below his rib cage. “Shut your mouth.”

Tom winced. That heel was really digging in and hurting him. The pain was bad enough, but the things she was saying about their son bothered him more. He knew he didn’t spend enough time with the kid, or make enough of an effort to understand him, but he loved Mark.

Lydia did something strange then—she smiled.

He didn’t see her smile very often these days.

“I had a very pleasant dream last night.”

Tom groaned. The pressure on his chest had increased again. “Yeah?”

“Yes. I dreamed I came home from errands to find you fucking Suzie McGregor on the kitchen floor.”

“You know I wouldn’t—”

“Shut up. You know what I did when I found you with her in my dream? I got an ax from somewhere and I chopped you and that sleazy little whore into a million tiny pieces. There was blood everywhere. I was soaked in it. It was . . .
beautiful
.”

Her foot came away from his chest. She wiggled her hips and slid the thong panties down her legs. She dropped the tiny wisp of black cloth on his face and lowered herself to him, gasping loudly once as his engorged cock impaled her.

She leaned close to him. Her voice was a hot whisper in his ear:
“Do you like that?”

He managed a strangled,
“Yes.”

She ground away at him rhythmically for several moments before speaking again. “You know what I’m thinking about right now, Tom?”