The Dark Ones (6 page)

They joined Kevin on the long porch and approached the door.

E
IGHT

A little earlier
. . .

Her husband’s snoring brought Suzie McGregor out of her light doze. She glanced at the clock on the nightstand and saw it wasn’t yet midnight. Kurt turned over in his sleep. The shifting of his bulk caused the headboard to thump the wall. Suzie looked at him. Even in this darkness, his form a dark outline beneath the heavy blanket, she felt that familiar reflexive disgust. He’d been a real stud before they were married, powerfully built and fit, but over time all that muscle had turned to mush and he’d become immensely fat. As always, she couldn’t help comparing him to Tom Bell. They were the same age, but Tom worked out and kept himself in shape. It was a rotten shame that bitch wife of his had found out about them. Tom wasn’t just fitter and better-looking than Kurt, he was an infinitely better lay. Suzie clenched her fists in frustration. She needed a man again.

She glanced at her husband.

A
real
man.

She thought of Tom again and slipped a hand between her legs. She closed her eyes and moaned softly.

Yes, here we go . . . this is nice
. . .

She shifted her hips and moaned again.

What the hell—self-love is better than no love at all
. . .

A loud creak snapped her eyes open. She lifted her head and stared at the closed bedroom door. Several silent seconds passed. She lifted her torso, propping herself on her elbows. Her heart was racing. The sound could have been just the house settling, but it was possible there was an intruder. They didn’t have an alarm system. Stupid Kurt. He thought he was the only line of defense they needed against anyone foolish enough to invade his territory. Typical example of his self-deluding ways. He was a big old pig of a man, but he imagined he was some kind of badass. Suzie almost hoped there was an intruder. A naughty—but undeniably arousing—scenario came to life in her head . . .

The bedroom door crashes open. A muscular man dressed all in tight-fitting black and wearing a ski mask comes into the room. Tom gets up and tangles with the intruder, but the brute knocks Kurt out with one powerful blow and spots Suzie cringing beneath the blanket. He licks his lips and yanks the blanket away to stare at her shapely form, which is clad only in the very small silk nightgown. He climbs onto the bed and reaches for her, tears the flimsy garment from her sweat-sheened body, and—

The creak came again, louder than before, and this time her head snapped toward the large window overlooking their backyard. She looked at Kurt again to see if the sound had stirred him. He was facing her now and she could see his slack, doughy features in refracted moonlight. A thin stream of drool leaked from a corner of his mouth to stain the sheet. Jesus. He was so gross. It was so unfair. She was sexy. Men gave her long looks all the time. She deserved better than this giant bucket of goo masquerading as a man. The universe conspired against her in a lot of ways, but the most blatant of all was the way it’d stuck her with this asshole.

And now there was another sound from outside.

A loud thump as something hit the ground.

Suzie eased the blanket away from her body and slipped out of bed. The hardwood floor was cool beneath her bare feet as she padded over to the window and slipped a finger between the drapes, pulling the edge of one back far enough to get a glimpse of a dark-clad form scaling the high, slatted wooden fence. The figure was moving fast. Its speed and the darkness made identification impossible. It was gone in seconds. A tall oak tree with thick branches stood just outside the window. Her son’s bedroom was directly above their own. One of the tree’s thickest branches was close to the window up there.

Was Derek sneaking out of his room at night?

She didn’t know whether she should feel fury, concern, or some mixture of both. Something within that spectrum would be a normal parental reaction, especially considering it was also possible the form she’d glimpsed hadn’t been Derek. Perhaps there’d been an intruder, after all, someone who’d specifically come to harm Derek. Her son was a good-looking boy, despite his absurd “outsider” posing, a tempting target for a certain kind of sexual predator. She thought instantly of Clay Campbell. Campbell was about forty and lived alone in a house at the top of steep Laurel Hill Drive. He was a frequent subject of neighborhood gossip. Kids in the neighborhood were often seen hanging around his house. There was something not right about him. He didn’t seem to work, for one thing. Suzie was certain he was some kind of pervert.

She pictured it in her mind. Clay Campbell going up the big tree, then crawling out that short distance along that thick branch to Derek’s bedroom window. It wasn’t an easy thing to envision. Campbell was on the chubby side. But that wouldn’t matter if he was determined. She imagined him sliding the window open and slipping inside unheard by her sleeping son. Or . . . and this hadn’t occurred to her until now . . . what if Derek had been waiting for him? Suzie felt a flutter of disgust. Was her son a homosexual? The notion disturbed her more than the possibility of an assault. She didn’t like queers. That wasn’t the correct way to think anymore. It wasn’t a thing she could say out loud to most people. But it was how she really felt. She simply could not have a gay son.

Suzie moved from the window and crossed the room to Kurt’s walk-in closet. She took one of his belts from a hook and wound one end of it twice around her right hand. The buckle end dangled, brushing the floor. She slipped out of the bedroom, electing not to wake her oblivious husband. He wouldn’t have the balls to do what needed doing. If her son was queer, she was going to whip the perversity right out of him.

Upstairs, she tried the doorknob, but it was locked and wouldn’t turn. Of course. The boy wouldn’t risk being caught in the act of something perverted. Well, tough shit. She had some tricks of her own.

The room on the other side of the hall was used primarily for storage. It was crowded with boxes and miscellaneous junk. She entered the room and flicked on the light switch. She negotiated her way through the haphazardly stacked boxes and came to a small desk wedged into a corner. The top drawer contained an array of mostly useless items. She rooted through the assortment of crap and soon found the perfect thing at the bottom—a hairpin.

The lock on her son’s bedroom door was simple and not designed for heavy-duty security purposes. Suzie slid the hairpin through a hole in the center of the knob and probed for the latch. She found it, pushed, and heard the lock pop open.

Smiling, she pushed the door open and stepped into the room. The smile faded when she flipped on the light switch and saw that her son wasn’t in the room.

Derek was sneaking out, after all.

She felt a strange disappointment at not having caught him in some compromising situation. She’d been looking forward to whipping the boy with the belt. She had a lot of anger. A lot of frustration. She needed a way to vent some of that. Her son happened to be a handy target sometimes. It wasn’t a normal thing. A lot of people would think there was something wrong with her if they could hear her thoughts. Luckily, most people could not hear thoughts, and she tried to avoid the ones she suspected of possessing the ability.

She closed the door behind her and walked farther into the room.

“It’s okay, DeeDee.” Her smile returned. “You’ll be back. We’ll deal with you then.”

Because he still needed to be punished. The boy was still a minor and he would live by her rules as long as he lived under her roof. Sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night—on a school night, no less—merited some level of correction. Of discipline.

She sat on the edge of her son’s twin-size bed. She plucked at the hem of her silk nightgown and was surprised by the abrupt sound of her own laugh. She looked like a woman dressed for seduction rather than a concerned mother come to punish her wayward son. What would Derek have thought if he’d actually seen her like this? It might have done him some good. She was his mother, yes, but she was very attractive. She had a curvaceous, womanly figure. A boy his age should see a full-grown woman in bedroom attire at some point.

She smiled and began to feel naughty again.

Maybe the belt wouldn’t be necessary.

Maybe something other than discipline would occur when her son returned. After all, there was no real evidence her son was anything other than heterosexual. And she would hardly be the first mother to . . .

She frowned.

It was happening again.

Those thoughts she knew would horrify anyone who heard them. She experienced a moment of deep anxiety. But the moment passed and the anxiety eased. She was alone. No one was around to tune in to her thoughts. And the cosmic forces that were always fucking with her couldn’t hurt her so long as she just sat here quietly and waited.

So she sat right there on the edge of his bed and studied his things. The walls were adorned with rock band posters. Hatebreed. Killswitch Engage. Slayer. There were stacks of paperbacks on his desk.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
.
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
.
The Anarchist’s Cookbook
. And several other titles obviously inappropriate for a young child. There were bad influences everywhere she looked.

Something else to have a long talk with him about when he returned.

Suzie scooted backward on the bed, stretched out, and turned onto her side to stare at the dark window and the pale branches of the tree outside.

She let go of the belt and slid the tips of her fingers over a bare hip.

The bad, forbidden thoughts surfaced again, more vibrant and vivid than before.

She hoped Derek would be back soon.

N
INE

Kent Hickerson was having a restless night. This “lying wide awake and staring up at the ceiling for hours” business was not normal for him. It was annoying and frustrating. It was now almost midnight and he was as awake and alert as he normally was at school in the middle of the day.

He sighed. “This is fucked.”

Maybe he should just surrender and get up for a while. Maybe find something cool to watch on cable. Have a midnight snack. The notion had an unexpected appeal. Kent was a guy who appreciated a sense of order in all things. Nighttime was for sleeping. A good night’s rest was crucial for excelling during the day. He planned to be a successful man one day. A rich man. To make that happen it was necessary to adhere to a rigid self-discipline. The mind-set had paid off so far. His grades were stellar, yet he wasn’t some uncool egghead. He was popular with the girls because he was very conscious of the importance of proper grooming and wearing the right things. He always looked well put together, but with just enough safe pseudo-edginess to avoid the curse of coming off like a straitlaced bore. He was one of Ransom High’s most popular seniors, a status he was certain would set the tone for the rest of his life.

And yet . . .

He kept thinking of that midnight snack.

His stomach growled.

“Fuck it.”

Clearly the only viable way of dealing with this crazy impulse was to indulge it. He would get up and have a sandwich. Roast beef. Some crunchy chips. Tomorrow night he would slip back into his normal routine. Tonight had to be a one-time deviation from the norm. He reached for the lamp on his nightstand and switched it on, blinking his eyes against the sudden glare. He tossed the blanket aside and swung his legs over the side of the bed. His intent was to go directly to the kitchen, but a random impulse caused him to get up and go to his bedroom window.

He tugged at an edge of the curtain and peered outside.

He saw nothing remarkable at first. The neighborhood was quiet, undisturbed by sirens or the constant sound of car engines and horns, which had constituted the nighttime soundtrack of his city life as a child. Wheaton Hills went to sleep at night. It was very still and peaceful. But what was this? He glimpsed movement just outside the sphere of light cast by the closest street lamp, on the other side of the narrow residential street. He kept his eye on the street, hoping to see whatever he’d seen again. Several seconds passed. Nothing happened.

Then there they were.

Two people, a boy and a girl, stepped into the light. Their features were clearly defined beneath the glare of the street lamp for perhaps as long as two seconds before they continued down the street and again became two indistinct forms moving through the night. The boy was Mark Bell, who lived in the house directly across the street. Mark’s dad was a big deal, an executive at Stanton. The girl was Natasha Wagner. He was pretty sure she lived in Wheaton Hills, too, a few streets over in one of the newer sections. He saw her in the hallways of Ransom High now and then and was always struck by her beauty. But she was the wrong sort for him. Too edgy. And it wasn’t just a pose. Her body language was rife with suggestions of potential violence and danger. You couldn’t mess with a girl like that. Besides, she was always hanging out with the wrong type.

Like Mark Bell.

Tom Bell was an important man, no doubt about it.

But his son was a world-class troublemaker. There weren’t many people who actually frightened Kent Hickerson, but Mark Bell did. He was big and muscular from years of lifting weights. He had an athlete’s physique, but no apparent interest in sports, which just added to his already high weirdo quotient. Seeing him out there wandering the streets of Wheaton Hills at an hour when any decent person was in bed unsettled him.

The Dark Ones come out at night
. . .

Kent had seen the slogan. And he’d heard the rumors about those kids. But he’d never taken them seriously.

Until now.

Seeing them out there offended his belief in the necessity of adhering to a set of rules and regulations. They’d been heading away from Mark’s house, off to who knew where, and he doubted they’d be back anytime soon. Did they do this every night? It was what he’d heard. But when did they sleep? He saw them in school nearly every day. They weren’t ditchers. It was a mystery. And he didn’t like mysteries.