Vision (28 page)

In that minute, he hoped Gabe would seize the opportunity and make a lunge for Galloway. It was farfetched, but it was all they had.

He heard her shuffled movement, then a wail and a deep growl. A tearing sound and a scream as she ripped the tape from her eyes and mouth.

“Bobby,” Gabe panted, “I got him in the eye.”

“Go! Run! Get out of here!” Bobby shouted. “I can take care of him from here. Mr. Cooper can help me. Mr. Cooper? Are you there?”

There was a moan and a sigh.

“Oh, God,” said Gabe.

“What is it?” Bobby’s heart was shattering through his ribcage, adrenaline keeping him afloat. Once it ebbed, he knew he was done for.

“We have to get out of here,” Gabe said flatly.

“I’m hurt, Gabe. I can barely stand. You go. Mr. Cooper will help me.”

There was the sound of someone rising to their feet.

“Oh, God,” said Mr. Cooper. “God, I’m so sorry. Go, Gabriella. Get out while you can. Run. I’m too weak to hold him back.”

His legs turning to water, Bobby edged toward Mr. Cooper’s voice. “It’s okay, Mr. Cooper. Gabe got him. You’re safe now.”

“Bobby!” Gabe shrieked. “Stay away from him! You don’t understand!”

“Exactly,” growled Carl Galloway’s gruff voice. “He can’t stop me. No one can stop me.”

Bobby felt the iron grip tighten around his throat, the air not getting through.

“Bobby, it’s him! He’s insane!” Gabe screamed. “Mr. Cooper
is
Carl Galloway!”

I
n the dimness of Bobby’s fading mind, memories from someone else’s life sifted through.

Kenny was a young prodigy, but his parents were poor. They’d pumped everything they had into lessons for him, until the accident that took them away. Orphaned at six, talented little Kenny Cooper was sent to live with his wealthy Aunt Regina and lovely cousin Olivia, whom he’d always idolized. Three years older, Olivia was delicate and a stunning pianist in her own right
.

But the fairytale life of privilege was soon marred by abuse. His aunt drove him to play with obsessive zeal and endless punishments. But Kenny knew. He was better than Olivia. Out of senseless, black envy, Aunt Regina was trying to ruin him, destroy him
.

Kenny Cooper seethed with hate until he could take no more—his young mind fractured in two, and the evil waited, lurking in the shadows for the right moment
.

He named him Carl.

Carl said the best way to hurt Aunt Regina was by destroying what she loved most. Olivia.

Olivia hated the water. Never learned to swim. But sweetly, now a reedy boy of twelve, Kenny coaxed Olivia onto a boat at Scratch Lake, promising he’d save her if she fell in the water. Then, with the sharp point of the fireplace pitchfork, Carl took over and speared her in the neck, laughing as the blood boiled from the wound. As she gurgled her last breath, he pushed her into the dark waters of Scratch Lake
.

It was ruled an accident. Distraught Aunt Regina withdrew into a world of madness, leaving Kenny to his own devices
.

While Kenny Cooper pushed away his terrible past, immersing himself in music and a neatly ordered life, Carl Galloway, the crazed killer, lived on, siphoning off his rage in acts of unspeakable depravity
.

“I’m so sorry, Bobby,” Mr. Cooper said, his hands like a vise around Bobby’s throat. “I tried to protect you, but you wouldn’t stop. You wouldn’t back down. I wanted to make something of you.” He started to cry.

Bobby took his chance and kicked out hard. He heard Mr. Cooper fall back and stumble.

“You shouldn’t have done that, Bobby. You don’t understand. My control is limited.”

“Run, Gabe! Get out of here!” Bobby shouted.

“I am not leaving you here with him,” she said firmly.

“What good is it if we both die?”

Bobby took a sharp kick to his stomach. He reeled backward, bright sparks of light superimposed over the darkness. “Go, please,” he moaned. He was too weak to fight any more.

Another punch, this time to his face. He spit out the blood that gathered in his mouth. Mr. Cooper was injured, too, but, fading as Bobby was, he didn’t know how long he could fend him off.

“He’ll bury us here with the others,” Bobby shouted, his throat raw. “They’ll think we died in the fire and he’ll keep on killing. Run!”

Something hard hit him over the head. Ears ringing, his legs crumpling, he thought he heard a thump as another body thudded to the floor.

Bobby groaned, every ounce of him screaming in protest. Was he dead? No—it couldn’t possibly hurt this much to be dead.

“Bobby, wake up. I hit him over the head. I wanted to kill him, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t do it. I bound him up with some old drapes. That should hold him.”

Bobby staggered to his feet, the dark world rocking like the deck of a listing ship.

“We’re getting out of here,” Gabe said, “and I’m not taking no for an answer.”

Somehow, as he wove in and out of consciousness, Gabe managed to help Bobby through the halls of the festering mansion, down the steps and out the front entrance. Weak gray light filtered through his lashes. It was daylight. He could still see light and shadow.

“Leave me here. Get help,” he murmured, crumpling to the floor of what his shifting visions told him was a massive wraparound porch. “I’ll just slow you down.”

“I’m not leaving you, even if I have to drag you by the hair.”

She hauled Bobby to his feet. Leaning heavily on Gabe, he managed to put one foot in front of the other, his world reduced to a blur of blood-curdling cries, blood, and the stuttering rhythm of his own heart pumping frantically in a battle to keep him alive.

So much death. So much horror.

And all this time, it had been Mr. Cooper.

They made slow progress through the woods, but it was getting harder and harder for Bobby to get his body to move. It seemed like the commands from his brain were not reaching his feet, while at the same time, the thread that connected him to Kenny/Carl pinged like electricity through a wire.

He’d gotten free.

He was coming.

“Gabe, leave me.
Please
,” he begged.

“No,” she said bluntly. “And that’s my final answer,

Bobby Robert. If I have to carry you, I’m not leaving you alone for that madman to finish off.”

His thoughts were clouded with the residue of so much death, his skull throbbing with a low buzz like a fluorescent bulb about to blink out. Wild colors flashed across dim gray. He moved his mouth to speak, but the words came out garbled and slurred. Walking had become an effort, like wading into a strong current. He was a puppet whose strings were too slack.

Then he heard it—a whirring, grinding noise in the distance, eating up the forest floor. Coming straight for them.

He tried to shout a warning, tried to get his mouth to move, but it was as if his jaws were sewn together with stiff elastic.

The ATV roared over their heads, crash-landing with a snarling fury a few feet away. He couldn’t find the words, but from some reservoir of stubborn will, Bobby summoned his last bit of energy to shove Gabe out of the vehicle’s path and roll out of the way himself.

But he kept rolling, his body limp and unable to check his fall. He slammed, flesh and bone against rock and dead trees, like a rag doll. In the distance, from somewhere above him, he could hear Gabe’s vague screams.

He hadn’t been able to save her. He hadn’t been able to save himself.

As his fall finally came to a halt, the sounds, the worries, all sensation dropped away like falling feathers.

B
obby floated somewhere, in warm liquid, suspended in darkness, feeling nothing. Seeing nothing.

Echoes of the all-terrain vehicle as it chewed the dirt beneath its wheels. His own screams.

Where am I?

Crying. So many years, he’d denied the monster within. Pretended it wasn’t there. Pretended the terror of his childhood was behind him. He was a good citizen. He cared about people, felt things. And the music. The music was what kept him anchored to his last shred of humanity. He clung to it like a shipwreck victim, hoping one day to be washed onto the shores of a safe haven. A place where
he
couldn’t reach him
.

But it all fell apart as the monster became stronger, gained more and more control. And once he realized what the beast inside him had done all these years, what could he do but clean up after him?

The boy. Oh, God, the boy
.

Bobby Pendell was like him. The
better
him
.

But the boy knew his secret. Somehow, as his eyes failed, his vision became clearer
.

Bobby Pendell was his nemesis. The cause of his downfall
.

He fought. Fought the impulse to destroy him. Fought the monster as he circled him, toyed with him
.

Kenny Cooper dropped to his knees on the living-room floor. The girl had stabbed him in the eye, the pain like a white-hot spike deep in his skull. Bashed him in the head. And it hurt. It hurt so much
.

Carl was stronger now, and he, Kenny Cooper, was fading away. Gone forever, leaving a monster to fill his shoes
.

There was only one thing left to do
.

One final act
.

There was leftover rope that Carl had used to tie up his victims in the garage. Kenny stumbled out there, one last time. His last stand against the monster he could no longer hold back
.

He’d make amends. He’d see to it that the boy who had so much promise could carry on in his name. If he could ever forgive him
.

Kenny Cooper grabbed a stool from his workbench. Swung the rope over the metal bracket of the garage door. Pulled on it to make sure it held
.

He popped a CD in the old player. Music. He needed it wherever he went, to keep the terror at bay
.

Now, he needed it to die
.

Kenny Cooper stood on the stool, tears streaming from his one remaining eye. He was good. To be good was all he’d ever wanted
.

He looped the rope over his head and stepped off
.