Anything Can Be Dangerous (18 page)

“
Don’t come any closer!”
Kane shouted to the officers without taking his eyes from Frank.
“I’ve got your man Attkins. I’ll blow his head off!”

Frank’s grip tightened on his weapon.
“How do you know my name?”

Kane’s laugher sounded like snakes
slithering through dry grass. “I’ve been told all about you. Who
you are. Where you live. I’ve stood over you while you’ve slept.
You didn’t know that, did you? The veins in your neck have beat
against my blade more than once, but each time I let you live. Do
you know why? Because you pose no threat to me, Detective. No more
than those dead men on the stairs.”

“
There are fifty officers
surrounding this place,” Frank growled. “You’ve got nowhere to go.
Now drop the fucking weapon!”

Kane laughed again. “I’m counting on
those fifty officers, Detective. Don’t you get it? You’re here
because I want you here. This is where it starts!”

Frank’s trigger finger tensed when
amber light suddenly flared to life on the other side of the room.
For a split second his mind screamed
BOMB!
He flinched hard, but then recovered.
Kane’s silhouette stood amid the blaze in stark relief. He could’ve
cut Frank in half.

“
You see?” Kane said within
the light. “It’s begun.”

Frank squinted, trying to keep Kane in
his sights.

Over the madman’s shoulder the
blinding amber light seeped through the frame of a closed door set
into the far wall, casting blazing slivers across the room that
illuminated the basement. Then, as suddenly as it appeared, the
light vanished. Kane’s spittle-slick grin snapped back into
focus.

“
The bible got it
wrong,” the killer said in an oily whisper. “The meek won’t inherit
the Earth, Frank. They’ll
take it
BACK
.”

And with that, the smiling devil
pulled the trigger of his weapon.

Each round punched into Frank’s chest
with the ruthless power of a sledgehammer, their lethal progress
stopped short of entering his flesh by his vest’s protective
plating. Pain sunk its teeth into his nerves. Somehow he held the
MP-5 steady, gripping it in both hands. He fired back even as he
fell, his shots opening a dozen dark holes in the killer’s gaunt
torso. Red geysers sprayed from exit wounds in the madman’s back.
Unbelievably, Kane continued to grin, firing his gun empty as
Frank’s 9mm rounds sliced through him.

The remaining officers poured down the
steps and flooded into the basement, filling the room with the
explosive roar of additional gunfire. Muzzle flashes lit up the
room, creating a crowd of black shadows that danced on the walls
like a cheering crowd of demonic spectators.

Frank collapsed to the floor, jaw
clenched in a rigor of pain.

The final shot rang in his ears,
followed by the shouts of the officers entering the
room.

“
Cease fire!”

“
Officers down!”

“
Get the medics in
here!”

Frank caught a momentary glimpse of
Kale Kane’s blood-splattered face staring back at him from the
ground, eyes open. Then fellow officers crowded into the area,
blocking the view.

Two of the men helped Frank to his
feet. “I’m okay,” he said. “I’ll live.”

He pushed away and edged through the
crowd until he stood over Kane’s corpse. The killer lay in an ocean
of blood, one cheek peeled aside by a bullet to reveal those shiny
white teeth, as if he was still smiling.

Frank sagged, catching his
breath.

Across the room wood shrieked against
a strike plate. When Frank looked, he saw one of the tactical
officers trying to yank open a door built into the opposite wall.
It pulled free on the third try, and the officers that closed in to
clear the room beyond immediately choked and recoiled.

“
Holy shit,” one of them
cried.

Another doubled over and
puked.

Frank hurried forward. He pushed
through the crowd, wincing in pain, but came to a halt when he
beheld the unimaginable sight that waited in the dirt-walled room
ahead. He stared in dreamlike detachment, his mind straining to
make sense of the madness displayed before him.

“
My God,” he
whispered.

And just when he thought his
overstressed nerves had been pushed to their limit, one of the
medics who’d bent over Kane’s body ended the shock-induced
stillness with a scream.

“
He’s still
alive!”

CHAPTER 1

Five Years Later …

Jerry Anderson’s eyes snapped opened
to see the last flicker of pale blue lightning depart from his
bedroom walls, pursued into the night by darkness.

He bolted upright and surveyed the
shadowy bedroom with widened eyes, searching his surroundings for
the source of what had roused him. By the weakness of the
lightning’s pursuing thunderclap, he knew it hadn’t been the
storm.

Something moved in the darkness, and
Jerry wheeled around to face it.

Outside, the wind gusted against the
house and through the nearby treetops, its morose tone overlaid by
the sound of rainwater dripping from the gutter. Inside, black
shadows swayed on the walls and floor, but he saw nothing to
justify his fear.

Nothing yet.

“
Get up,” he hissed,
shaking his wife.

Margaret Anderson jerked from sleep.
“What—” she gasped, but Jerry clapped a hand over her mouth before
she could finish.

“
I heard something,” he
whispered. “In the house.”

Her startled expression cleared,
replaced by a look of stark terror. Even in the wan light of the
bedside clock the color drained from her face. “No,” she groaned.
“It’s been three days. Kern said three days and we’d be
safe.”

“
Kern’s a fool,” Jerry
said. “We were idiots for listening to him.”

Her eyes flicked from his to the door,
then back. Lightning flashed outside, and a peal of thunder
trembled through the air. They listened to the silence that
followed, straining to hear into the deeper reaches of the
house.

“
You’re certain it wasn’t
just another nightmare?” she asked. “We’ve been through this
before. You know how real they can be.”

Jerry shook his head. “We should’ve
left when we had the chance.”

Turning away, he extracted a .44
revolver from the nightstand, keeping his gaze trained on the
bedroom door. When he looked back to his wife, she’d already
retrieved the Remington pump-action shotgun from under her side of
the bed, just like they’d practiced.

“
Stay here,” he
said.

He eased out of bed and walked toward
the hallway, holding the gun ready. He forced himself to keep his
finger on the trigger guard rather than the trigger itself, afraid
his shaking hands might fire the gun prematurely.

Clearing the doorway, he crept down
the hall to where the stairs overlooked the foyer. Below, the
reassuring red light of the front door’s new security panel glowed
in the darkness:
Property
Secured.

He exhaled his fear in one great
breath. If anyone lurked down there, the motion sensors would’ve
detected them the moment they entered the room.

I’m a prisoner inside my
home
.
And now even home no
longer feels safe.

But maybe it was over; maybe Kern was
right?

Lightning flashed outside. It lit the
huge window in the adjoining living room and displaced the
darkness, illuminating a collage of muddy footprints splattered
across the carpet.

Jerry’s heart convulsed.

His jaw trembled; his legs
weakened.

“
No,” he whispered,
clutching the railing for balance.

Darkness devoured the sight, but not
before he saw the tracks proceeded up the stairs.

Then it came again, the noise he’d
heard earlier.

Not wind. Not rain.

Someone moving through the
darkness.

His skin went cold, and he whirled
around, tracing the footprints back to the bedroom door, where they
faded to nothing more than outlines on the carpet.

Margaret screamed.

“
Not her,” Jerry
cried.

Bounding faster, he came through the
door to find the source of his dread looming at the bedside,
silhouetted against the far window. Margaret thrashed on the
mattress, battling to free herself from a cocoon of bed sheets
wrapped tight around her head and held fast by the attacker’s hand
behind her back. Her muffled cries came to him like the screams of
a drowning swimmer.

The intruder stood silent, unmoving.
Resisting Margaret’s violent struggle elicited no signs of strain
whatsoever.

“
Get away from her,”
Jerry yelled. He thrust the gun forward. “You’re not welcome
here.
Leave us alone!
Go the
hell away and don’t ever come back.”

Despite the strength of his words, a
cold sweat beaded on his forehead.

“
Need you,” the trespasser
replied.

“
No,” Jerry cried.
“Find someone else to torment. I’m not going to help you. I
can’t
do what you
want.”

Another flash of light played across
the sky, and Jerry gasped at what it revealed: his old flannel
shirt; Margaret’s faded blue jeans with the patches on the knees.
The intruder had taken the clothes off the scarecrow from their
garden and now filled the mud-covered garments to the point of
nearly bursting the seams. Jerry trembled at the nightmarish sight,
mumbling “please” over and over again in a child-like whimper. His
eyes searched the dirty burlap sack that made up the thing’s head
for the slightest sign of mercy, but no details had ever been added
to the simulated head to create a face. The only response to his
pleas came in the form of a blank, expressionless stare.

Thunder boomed, shaking the house
around them.

The scarecrow extended its free hand,
holding forward an old, wooden-handled shovel.

“
No,” Jerry mewed. “I
won’t.”

The scarecrow’s face wrinkled,
creasing into a look of rage. “You have no choice!”

On the bed, Margaret’s wild movements
had dwindled to weak clawing actions.

“
You’re
not supposed to be able to come here anymore,
” Jerry
shrieked.

With tears slipping from his eyes, he
sighted the weapon on the center of the wadded bed sheets and blew
two bloody holes through his wife’s shrouded head.

Then, acting before the maniac
scarecrow could stop him, he rammed the hot barrel under his chin
and fired again.

End of Preview...

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here:

MATT
HULTS - HUSK

* * *

Preview of:

GARY BRANDNER’S - THE HOWLING

1

The September heat lay heavy on Los
Angeles. In the condominium community called Hermosa Terrace all
the windows were tightly closed. The only sounds were the hum of
exhaust fans and the muted growl of a power mower.

In the living room of Unit Two, Karyn
Beatty stood on tiptoe to kiss her husband, Roy. Lady, their
miniature collie, wagged her approval from the sofa. It started as
a casual husband-and-wife first-anniversary kiss, but it quickly
became something more. Karyn drew back her head and looked into
Roy’s clear brown eyes.

“
Are you trying to start
something?” she said a little breathlessly.

“
Darn right,” Roy replied,
taking her in his arms.

Roy pulled her close, his big, gentle
hands warm through the thin material of her summer dress. He kissed
her neck where the blond hair curled forward below her
ear.

“
Won’t Chris be here soon?”
she said, her lips close to his ear.

“
We won’t answer the
door.”

“
You couldn’t do that to
your best friend. Especially after we asked him to come by for an
anniversary drink.”

“
I suppose you’re right,”
Roy admitted. “Anyway, he won’t stay long. He has a
date.”

“
Anybody we
know?”

“
A new one, I
think.”

“
Doesn’t Chris ever get
serious about anybody?”

“
Who knows? I think he’s
secretly in love with you.”

“
You don’t mean
it?”

“
Why not? All my friends
have good taste.”

* * *

Max Quist shut off the power mower and
took out a soiled handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his face. He
watched as a young couple in sparkling tennis whites climbed out of
a sports car and ran laughing across the lawn. They didn’t pay any
attention to Max. Nobody living in Hermosa Terrace paid any
attention to Max. He was like another piece of shrubbery to
them.