The Darkness to Come (38 page)

I won’t have to fight him this time. Joshua’s going to keep him away from me.

She wanted to believe that was true, but her nightmares were fresh in her thoughts. Nightmares were not necessarily prophetic—they were sometimes only manifestations of deeply-held fears—but it was impossible for her to push them out of her mind. This entire day had the quality of a terrifying dream.

The second-floor hallway was pitch-black. She’d spent some of the best times of her life in this house, but her fear was so sharp that she might have been wandering through a foreign place, where every shadow held a latent threat.

She panned the flashlight around, to ensure that she was alone. Joshua had asked her to hide. But no room—nowhere on the entire planet—was safe from Dexter.

She was so damn tired of running, of living in fear. She wanted to kill the man. She’d never wanted to harm another human being, but she would hurt him, eagerly and gratefully.

Don’t think like that, girl. You’ll lower yourself to his level, and then where will you be?

 Her meditation room was on the right. It was a chamber of peace that held nothing but comforting memories.

She would hide in there.

* * *

Joshua’s finger trembled on the revolver’s trigger. Dexter was outside—he’d heard him. But the asshole hadn’t tried to break-in yet. What was he doing?

Perhaps he had figured out Joshua’s broken light bulb ploy. Perhaps he was looking for another way inside the house.

But there was no other way inside. They had covered every entrance.

Joshua cut off the flashlight. He moved to a front window on the right of the doorway.

With one finger, he lifted one of the slats in the blinds, giving himself a narrow side-view of the porch.

A large tree branch had landed at the bottom of the steps, in the midst of the glass shards and leaves.

That was all they had heard. The branch crackling against the glass. Not Dexter.

But Rachel had been so confident that she’d sensed him nearby. Could she have been mistaken?

Joshua squinted outside again.

One branch fell. But we heard glass shatter twice, didn’t we?

It was hard to be sure. The noisy wind was conspiring against them.

He backed away from the window. Logic provided a comforting explanation. Intuition, however, offered another, much more disturbing possibility.

Resolve hardening his face, Joshua cocked the hammer of the .357 and flung open the front door.

Cold wind gusted inside and struck him like a many-armed beast. But there was no attack from Dexter.

Silvery moonlight illuminated the porch. Checking both ways, Joshua went down the steps. At the bottom, his shoe crunched on the blend of glass slivers and leaves.

He kicked aside the offending branch. Then he swung around, and looked up, knowing what he was going to see, and dreading it.

The dormer window, which led to the attic, was broken.

* * *

On the threshold of her meditation room, Rachel played the flashlight beam around. All clear.

She locked the door, leaned against it.

Her heart hammered. There was a chair beside the doorway, which she used sometimes during her meditations. She brought levered the top of the seat back underneath the door knob, a little extra reinforcement. Better.

Beyond the white cone of her flashlight, the room was tomb-dark. During their preparations, they had drawn the Venetian blinds on the big window that gave the panoramic ocean view.

She decided to open the blinds. It would make her feel better, to be able to observe the ceaselessly rumbling tides.

She pulled the lift cord, raising the blinds to the top of the windowpane. Pale moonlight fell inside. On the beach below, the waves, lashed by strong winds, crashed violently on the shore, as if some gigantic sea creature were thrashing to the surface to devour her.

Disturbed, she was about to close the blinds again, preferring the comfort of the flashlight to this sight, when she heard a sound behind her. Like creaking metal hinges.

In the far corner of the room, there was a rectangular ceiling panel that granted entry to the attic. As she watched, it opened slowly, a set of retractable wooden stairs lowering from the attic to the floor, like the widening jaws of an immense beast.

He’s already in the house, oh, Jesus . . .

A sharp stench assailed her nostrils, a blend of offensive odors. Damp earth . . . unchecked male sweat . . . old, spilled blood . . .

Terror bolted her feet in place. She wanted to run. But she couldn’t order her muscles to work.

There was a thud, and a creak: the weight of a body dropping onto the hardwood floor.

I smell him, I hear him, but I can’t see him. What the hell?

“I kept my promise, baby,” a familiar voice said, which had an effect on Rachel like an ice pick piercing her spine. “I found you.”

Run,
Rachel thought, wildly.
Run, run, run.

But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

Not any more.

She trained the flashlight in front of her.

Dexter materialized in the space, as if magically taking shape from the darkness itself. He looked the same, like the man who had haunted her nightmares for so long, but different. Crazier, if that were at all possible. Madness glinted in his eyes.

She had no idea how he did the invisibility trick. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she was going to put an end to this.

“Aren’t you going to run?” He nodded toward the doorway. “There’s the door. Make me chase you, baby, make it sweeter for me. You know I love it when you fight.”

“Then I’m happy to disappoint you, asshole.”

She dropped the flashlight, raised the gun, and pulled the trigger.

* * *

He got in through the attic
, Joshua thought.
Why didn’t I think of that?

Dexter had out-foxed him. The man had a singular, twisted brilliance.

Joshua rushed up the porch steps and through the front door. Like a fool, he had sent Rachel upstairs, thinking that he was going to protect her from harm. But he might as well have sent her away to die.

“Rachel!” He took the steps two and three at a time. “Rachel! Where are you?”

From a room upstairs, gunfire rang out.

* * *

His wife looked juicy, delectable. She had kept herself up well for him, her first and only husband. As Dexter looked at her, and thought about what he was going to do to her, how he was going to take her, he got a massive hard-on.

Then the bitch shot him. Point blank in the chest. It was like getting punched by a heavyweight champ. He rocked backward on his heels, fiery pain fanning across his torso.

But he didn’t fall. A man would have fallen, but he was greater than a man.

“Try again,” he said.

He charged her.

* * *

Joshua had told her that when he’d fought Dexter, Dexter had taken three rounds point blank from a .38 and had gotten up only a few minutes later and walked away. She should have known that shooting him would be a waste of energy and ammo.

But she tried it anyway. She fired, scoring a direct hit in his chest, and he only tilted backward on his heels, as if she’d merely punched him.

How was this possible? It wasn’t. The invisibility, the immunity to bullets . . . it just wasn’t possible. Perhaps she was asleep and experiencing her worst nightmare ever about him.

“Try again,” he said. He thundered forward.

Outside the room, Joshua was shouting her name. He couldn’t help her as she’d hoped he would. It was only the two of them, her and Dexter, as it had been in the beginning.

She aimed for his head and pulled the trigger. His head snapped sideways, and thick blood oozed down his face. But he kept coming, like an indestructible monster. Closing in fast.

Backing up against the wall, she went to squeeze off another shot, and he snarled and swiped at her, knocking the gun out of her hand. She screamed, spun to the doorway.

He seized her arm and threw her across the room as if she weighed no more than a doll. She smacked against the wall, rapping her head hard against the plaster, and slid to the floor.As if from a great distance, she heard Joshua pounding on the door, calling her name.

I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry for everything.

Grinning, Dexter descended on her like a spider that had trapped a fly in its web. He put his cold hands around her neck, and started choking.

* * *

The gunshots came from Rachel’s meditation room. Joshua tried frantically to open the door, but it was locked.

“Rachel! I’m coming!”

He took a few steps backward, and then lowered his shoulder and rammed against the door like a mad bull. He hit the door hard enough to rattle his teeth. Wood splintered, and the door buckled in the frame, but it remained intact.

Inside, Rachel screamed.

Joshua thought of using the .357 to blow the door open, but his father had warned him that the .357 was such a powerful caliber that a round could punch through walls and kill someone inadvertently. What if he shot at the door, blew away the lock—and hit Rachel, too?

He couldn’t risk it. He had to knock the door down. He was strong, a big man. He could do this. He had to. She needed him. His baby needed him. His future lay in that room, his only hope of lasting happiness, and this was his last chance, his only chance, to take hold of the future and blast away the darkness forever.

He slammed against the door again. And again. And again . . . .

* * *

He had his hands on her soft, warm flesh. Wrapped around her delicate, slender neck. Her big, pretty eyes bulging, lovely mouth lolling open, pink tongue wagging.

He hadn’t planned to kill her, not yet, not until he’d fucked her and she’d had his baby, but he couldn’t contain his rage, it was overpowering him, taking over. The bitch had robbed him of everything—because of her, he’d been sent to live like a caged animal for four years, and he’d lost it all, his law license, his home, his life, while she went and brazenly married someone else.

He had to choke the life out of the bitch, he had to kill her, kill her.

Till death do us part . . . .

And after he killed her, he would kill himself.

* * *

He was going to kill her. Through her dimming vision, she could see the murderous intent in his lunatic eyes, could feel his overwhelming desire to murder her in his trembling hands.

Across the room, Joshua was banging against the door, attempting to knock it down, but the chair wedged under the doorknob was holding him back.

Above her, Dexter grinned maniacally. Darkness pulled at her, a fathomless darkness that would never relinquish her once she surrendered to it.

“Gonna do you . . .” he said, his fetid breath washing over her. “Then do myself. Together forever . . .”

Her arm was twisted behind her. Her fingers brushed against the handle of the knife she’d had Joshua tape to the small of her back, her secret weapon.

“Till death do us part, bitch . . .”

Using the last of her remaining strength, she ripped the knife away from her back, brought it around, and plunged the blade into Dexter’s throat.

* * *

On Joshua’s seventh or eighth try, the door gave way. He stumbled inside, a chair spinning away—that was what had made it so hard to get in.

Dexter and Rachel were on the other side of the room, revealed in the pale moonshine and the backsplash of the flashlight that lay on the floor. Rachel was curled up, gagging violently. Dexter lay on his side, gasping, too, fingers plucking at a knife embedded deep in his throat.

She’d stabbed the bastard. He felt a flash of savage triumph.

Dexter saw Joshua, and hatred twisted his face. He ripped the blade out of his neck, an arc of blood spouting from the wound and splashing against the wall. As if indifferent to the pain and blood loss, Dexter got to his feet, gripping the knife.

“She’s mine,” Dexter said, in a guttural, blood-choked voice. He trudged forward, slowed but deadly as ever.

Joshua trained the .357 on him.

“She was never yours.”

Dexter lunged at him.

Joshua fired, the gun’s report like an explosion in the small room. A round blasted Dexter’s shoulder and spun him around.

He staggered, but didn’t fall.

Joshua fired again, blowing a fist-sized hole in Dexter’s blood-spattered chest. Dexter swayed backward like a man trying to stay aloft on a balance beam. Joshua loosed another round, and this one shaved across Dexter’s head, ripping away half his scalp and shattering the glass on the big window behind him. Another round in the head drove Dexter backward, reeling.

But not dead, dammit.

Lips drawn into a firm line, Joshua fired the last two cartridges. They tore through Dexter’s chest and sent him hurtling through the window, to the beach below.

* * *

He wasn’t supposed to die. He was superhuman, invincible. Bullets and knives couldn’t defeat him.

But when the bitch stabbed him, she must’ve severed his carotid artery, because he started spouting blood like a ruptured water hose. And when her illegitimate husband began shooting him with that damn elephant gun, it ripped deep plugs in his flesh that brought to surface a rare emotion for Dexter: fear.

Maybe he
was
going to die.

That thought stayed in his mind as he dropped through the window and fell to the hard-packed sand.

* * *

Standing at the shattered window, wind swirling around him, Joshua nervously peered below. Dexter lay sprawled in the sand, bits of glass sprinkling him like party glitter. He wasn’t moving.

He appeared to be dead. But it would be wise to make sure.

First, Joshua went to check on Rachel. She was sitting up against the wall. Breathing laboriously, she massaged her throat.