In The Falling Light (14 page)

“Richie, give me a hand, will you?” Then he
burst into laughter. Richie snorted as well, and rose from his
seat, plopping down beside her and gripping her wrist painfully,
jerking the hand out and forcing her to straighten her arm. Dean
grabbed her fingers and quickly isolated the one with the big
diamond on it. The snips came in fast. Clip. The pain was blinding,
and Monica did indeed scream, a high yowling which sprayed droplets
of blood into her husband’s grinning face. She couldn’t help it,
she screamed again. He tossed something into the little cherry wood
box.

Dean turned his head. “Uh-oh, is that a door
I hear? Footie pajamas sliding over a marble floor?”

Monica tensed and froze, straining to
listen, forgetting her finger, her smashed nose, her broken teeth
and blackened eyes.

“I think,” Dean whispered, “that when you
run off on vacation to wood chipper-land, you’ll take our little
boy with you.”

Confidence in a man is admirable. Blunt
stupidity is not. Monica screamed again, but this time instead of a
wail of agony, it was something primal, and her instincts told her
body what to do. She lifted one knee high and drove her foot into
Dean’s chest with such force it knocked him backwards off the
coffee table in an ungraceful somersault. She snapped her head to
the side and sank her teeth into Richie’s nose, biting down until
it crunched. When his hands instinctively went up to push her away,
Monica reached inside his jacket with her right hand, closed on the
smooth grip of the black automatic he kept in a shoulder holster,
and yanked it free. She didn’t wave it, didn’t threaten, just
pushed the muzzle against his chest and blew his heart out with a
single pull of the trigger.

Dean was scrambling to his feet on the other
side of the coffee table, still on all fours, the billion dollar
smile gone and replaced by a look of surprised confusion. He saw
her swing the pistol towards him, and the confusion turned to a
wild rage.

“Bitch…!”

Monica was never able to remember how many
times she pulled the trigger. Enough to make Dean’s face and most
of his head disappear. The investigators said five, but who was
counting.

The media went crazy, and it was a global
sensation for weeks. The story dominated print and television news
outlets, true crime and celebrity entertainment programs, talk
shows and the internet. Armies of journalists and the curious
surrounded Monica’s building and hospital, and of course there was
the police with an endless stream of questions. She was labeled
both hero and fool.

Monica fired Saul Kessler from her hospital
bed, and by that time her husband’s lawyer was under investigation
himself and needed an attorney of his own. She hired a firm of
legal predators to deflect the book and movie deal offers, the
demands for talk show appearances, and to ensure the District
Attorney and the press saw her in the proper light - a victim who
defended herself and her child against a monster and his henchman.
The law firm also turned its considerable force to locking in
Monica’s claim to Dean’s financial empire. Dean had never bothered
with a pre-nuptial, since he had always known how the marriage
would end.

Monica got it all.

She hired a private security agency. They
surrounded her and Ethan with ex-mercenary and Special Forces
types, the kind of men with little patience for pushy journalists
or freak fans.

Home within a week, she was back in the
penthouse with Ethan, who thankfully hadn’t really been coming down
the hall to Monica’s screams. That was just Dean’s game. The
gunshots woke him, of course, and Monica learned something about
herself. She had gone to him, battered and bleeding, and quietly
put him back to bed, shushing him to sleep before calling the
police.

The best surgeons money could buy set her
nose and reattached her finger – though it would remain stiff and
out of sync with the others for the rest of her life – and they
assessed the damage to her face. Appointments with more surgeons
and dentists would follow.

Monica was cleared of any wrong-doing within
weeks, around the same time the families of Dean’s three murdered
ex-wives brought civil suits against his estate. Monica’s lawyers
were prepared for a battle, assuring her the families would get
little, if anything, but she surprised them by directing immediate
settlements, without negotiation. There was plenty of money. She
also insisted on meeting personally with each family to express her
own grief for their loss.

For weeks Monica kept Ethan next to her in
bed at night, feeling his small warmth against her, soothed by his
steady breathing and the knowledge that children are resilient. He
barely asked about his father. Now the penthouse was on the market,
and Ethan had finally moved back to his own room. Her security
people were on duty outside, and the media was under control.
Monica was finally safe.

At 2:00 am the pounding started on her
bedroom door.

It woke her up, a heavy, repetitive slamming
on wood, and Monica sat up in bed, her heart thumping. She could
hear the door rattle in the frame.

“
Monicaaaa!”

She covered her mouth to hold in the
scream.

“Monica! Open the door, bitch!” Dean’s
voice.

The knob rattled. She didn’t even remember
locking the bedroom door. It was something she never did, in case
Ethan got up in the night and wanted to come to her. More pounding,
and her dead husband calling to her from the other side.

“Monicaaaa! Come out, come out!” There was
no doubt. She knew that voice.

The cordless was in the living room. Her
cell phone was in her pocketbook on the front hall table. The
security men outside the penthouse in the elevator lobby would hear
it, wouldn’t they? The door shuddered, and she thought she heard a
crack.

There was no way, she tried telling herself.
It was a nightmare. It was a hallucination from painkillers. But
she knew she was awake, and had stopped taking the painkillers
weeks ago. Monica threw on a robe and slowly approached the door,
still covering her mouth. She smelled something foul as she neared
it, something wet and moldy.

“Sweetheart,” Dean said, his voice no longer
a yell, “I really need to see you. Come out and play with me.”

Monica wanted to scream, wanted to run, hide
in a closet, wish it all away. When he dragged his nails down the
wood and chuckled, she thought her sanity would snap. She started
backing up.

“Mommy?” A little voice, distant and
muffled. “Mommy?” A tiny sob. “Mommy, I’m have a nimare!”

Her breath caught and she froze in place. On
the other side of the door, Dean’s voice crooned, “Oh, it’s our
little man, Monica. Don’t worry, Daddy will go get him.”

In seconds Monica snapped off the lock and
jerked open the bedroom door. A wave of damp filth washed over her
and she gagged, holding onto the frame. The lights of Manhattan,
dazzling beyond the wall of windows off to the right of the living
room, revealed what was before her. Dean stood several feet away,
wearing the blood-soaked clothes he’d had on the night Monica
killed him. His face - which should have been missing after five
close-range hits from a 9mm – was back, though dark and starting to
decay. His eyes gleamed with a dirty, bronze light.

“Hi, baby,” he said, smiling that billion
dollar smile. Something white and wriggling moved in a rotted open
cavity in his throat. Monica saw that he wasn’t alone, either.
Silhouetted against the panoramic windows, three figures stood side
by side, little more than shades. A collective sound came from
them, a soft moan. It sounded like pain to her. She didn’t need to
recall their photos to recognize Darla, Piper and Antoinette.

Dean looked back at his former wives, then
at Monica. “Don’t you remember what I said? They’re mine. They
serve me in hell.” His grin widened. “And so will you.”

“Mommy?” Ethan’s voice was more urgent, his
bedroom just two doors off the living room. Monica sidestepped the
corpse to get to him, but Dean was quick, and darted in front of
her. Up close she thought she would vomit from the smell.

Her husband shook his head slowly. “I told
you Daddy would get him.”

The trio of wives moaned, swaying but moving
no closer.

Dean pulled the electrician’s cutters from
his hip pocket. “Just need to finish up, baby, then we’ll all be on
our way. Mommy first.” He took a step forward, as Ethan called out
for her again.

Monica felt her face flush, felt a heat rise
in her chest. “No!” She shoved Dean away with both hands, expecting
him not to move, or her hands to sink into his rotting chest, and
was surprised when the corpse staggered backwards. Not as surprised
as Dean, who let out a startled cry. Monica advanced, and shoved
him again. “No.” Another shove. “No.” Shove. “NO!” He fell back
against a decorative table, and the marble statuette of a rearing
horse wobbled and fell off, shattering on the marble floor. Dean
made a growling noise, but the bronze light in his eyes seemed to
flicker.

Monica looked at her husband, then at the
three dead women. “I don’t believe in ghosts,” she said, her voice
firm, and she clapped her hands together sharply. The shades which
were Darla, Piper and Antoinette let out a sigh, and faded.

“You bitch!” Dean shrieked. What have you
done?” He snarled and came at her, but Monica didn’t move, just
looked into his eyes as his form lunged through her, his arms
grappling but connecting with nothing. Monica faced him as he
turned and stared at his hands, then at her, blinking and not
understanding.

“I don’t believe in ghosts, Dean,” she said
softly, stepping towards him. “And I’m done with your games.” She
clapped her hands again, a crack in the open space of the
penthouse, and Dean faded, the light in his eyes winking out.

The last of him was a soft, receding,
“Nooooo….”

Monica strode through the space where he had
been and went to hold her little boy.

The drugs wear off and I come around

my wrists and ankles tightly bound

and in a closet, door and shelves
removed

the air filled with an awful sound

A scrape of mortar, the sight of bricks

rising and rising, I may be sick

Music plays, a country song fills the
basement and she hums along

using her trowel to seal me in to the tune
of a Nashville hick

She meant nothing, I cry, it was just a
fling, sweetheart, don’t do this thing

I forgive you, she says, and lays two more
rows

I considered taping your mouth and your nose
but that would be quick, and I want you to see how the rest of this
goes

Masonry, a skill I did not know she had,
close to the top now

building her wall, my beautiful wife

so calm and betrayed and utterly mad

I can’t handle tight spaces, I wail, and she
agrees that it’s sad

All but finished except for one last, a
rectangle up near the top,

but now comes the funnel, greased so they’ll
slide and won’t scamper out, ‘cause she knows that they’re fast and
opens the boxes, shaking them in

The moment for rational thought is long
past

Thailand and Texas, Brazil and Belize,
ordered from everywhere,

shipped to the house while I played, while
she knew, and came up with a plan and now down they come, spilling
into the dark

Please, please, oh God please

A hundred, she says as they fall, the big
ones, they’re my favorites of all

Quick and aggressive I learn as they race up
my legs, up my chest, running over my face and begin biting while I
begin screaming and watch as she sets

the last brick in its place

It was supposed to miss. Anything else was
unthinkable.

The government told the public and the press
for months that it would be a “close call,” but once they saw
impact was inevitable, the authorities scurried off to their holes
without warning. What would have been the point? There was nothing
anyone could do to stop it.

Benjamin stood with his cube farm colleagues
at the front of their top floor office, watching a wall-mounted
flat screen. Video shot from a Navy aircraft over the Atlantic
recorded the brilliant sparkle growing larger, filling the screen,
then a searing flash and a fiery streak before the screen went to
static.

Everyone felt the building shudder, and a
moment later the windows blew in. Men and women in business suits –
those who hadn’t been cut down by table-sized blades of flying
glass – started screaming and moved as a herd to the elevator
lobby. They knocked over cubicle walls, crushed their co-workers
underfoot, and crushed a few more against the elevator bank before
turning towards the fire exit.

Benjamin allowed himself to be carried
along, the only smiling face in a sea of pale terror.

In the stairwell, Benjamin broke away from
the herd as it poured downstairs, shrieking and tumbling and
crashing and breaking bones. From the forty-seventh floor it would
take them considerable time to reach the bottom and spill out into
the streets of Lower Manhattan, where the doomed from other
buildings throughout the financial district would join them,
packing streets already choked with abandoned cars.

Not Benjamin. He headed up.

Two flights and he was pushing out onto a
tar and gravel roof. He ran to the edge, kicking off his shoes,
stripping off his suit and hopping to clear his trousers. In
moments he was naked, standing at the edge, a twelve inch lip
separating him from the drop. Here at the tip of the city he had a
clear view all around, and most importantly to the south. Far below
was a chorus of honking and screaming, but it was quickly drowned
out by a growing whisper, a whisper building into a roar.