Darkness of the Soul (40 page)

He felt the skin at his fingertips begin to split and peel back, leaving raw muscle and exposed nerves to scream with him. The further Sheila’s decomposition went, the more of his own flesh went to fuel it, until he more closely resembled an anatomy chart than a human being and she was little more than a shrieking skull sitting atop her own remains.

Trying to shut it off was impossible; Damien knew this and accepted it even as whatever the process was began to cannibalize his eyes and tongue. Still, the sound poured from him, the room around them reverting to shag carpet and freshly installed windows, the television replaced by a stereo, and the air-conditioning unit fading from view with an old paddle fan taking its place a moment later.

Fighting for every ounce of movement left in him, Damien managed to rise, ignoring the shrieks of pain and protest from every part of his body. He lifted his left boot, an action he had taken millions of times in his life that now seemed to require Herculean effort, and brought it down against the stolen skull from which Sheila still screamed.

Should
have
done
that
in
the
first
place,
he thought as he died. He almost welcomed it, seeing no real reason to fear. His part in the play was finally over. But as final darkness overtook him and he felt his last breath tear through what remained of his lungs, as his body tottered and then fell atop Sheila’s remains, he heard the laughter of the Beast and knew where he was headed.

Chapter
37
 

9:30 am, December 25, 1996

Drakanis’s eyes opened, and at first, he thought he must be dreaming. While he expected to see the blasted metal walls of the morgue’s freezer, given a best-case scenario, he appeared to be back in his own bedroom at home. After casting his gaze around for a moment, he realized that it wasn’t even the bedroom as he had last seen it, but rather the bedroom as it had been before everything went so wrong. The sheets were the ones Gina’s mother had given them before she had died, and the orchids were in the vase on the left side of the bed, as they always had been during their marriage.

The fact that the left side of the bed was rumpled and still radiating a small amount of body warmth registered with him next, alongside the fact that he could smell something cooking.

This
isn’t
right,
and
you
know
it;
you
haven’t
slept
in
this
room
since
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
well
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
since
before.
And
the
orchids
haven’t
been
in
place
either.
As
for
the
warmth
in
the
bed
and
the
smell
of
breakfast,
just
a
dream.
One
of
those
things
bit
you,
and
you’re
lying
on
the
floor,
in
shock,
and
daydreaming.

His mind seemed to think this was the proper explanation, but his body pulled itself out of the bed on its own, forcing him to look down. He saw no injuries, no scars—not even the ones on his left arm where he’d put his fist through a window three days after the murders. When he took a moment to flex his left hand and take a look at it, he noticed there was no missing pinky either, just his watch, proclaiming the date as December 25, 1996.

What
in
the
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
?
He was now certain that his mind was playing tricks on him; there was no way this could be real. Nobody dreamed three years of living in hell, maybe a night or two, hell, maybe a week, but not three years.

He reached down and pinched himself, trying to make the vision go away, trying to get back to the morgue, to where Woods needed him, to where everyone needed him. Nothing. He was still standing in his bedroom, smelling bacon and breakfast cereal wafting up from downstairs.

Maybe
you
should
check
that
out,
some deep part of his brain told him. Maybe. Or maybe not. Then his stomach rumbled, and he realized he hadn’t eaten anything since two days prior—three, if you believed the first part of the date on his watch—and that decided him. He began creeping down the stairs, honestly expecting his surroundings to evaporate at any moment.

Drakanis took the last step, coming into his living room, and glanced around. He bent down near the foot of the stairs and walked hunched over toward the couch, looking very carefully at the floor, even going so far as to sniff at it. No sign that any of it had happened, nothing except a grape-juice stain that hadn’t been there when he had gone to bed the night before. Finally beginning to accept the possibility that all of that had been just a dream, he straightened back up—feeling all the muscles in his back flex and listening to the cracks of his spine popping like it always did when he’d been sleeping badly—and smiled into the empty room.

“Good God. If that was a dream, I hope I never have that one again.”

“What was that, hon?” The voice floating into the living room from the kitchen was like music to his ears, even the rough New York Italian in it sounding peaceful rather than abrasive this morning. Drakanis closed his eyes and for a moment saw the horror from the nightmare: Gina and Joey in a bloody sprawl behind the couch, the officers warning him that he didn’t want to go in there. Had he punched Perez? He thought he had.
The
shit
people
cook
up
when
they’re
asleep,
he thought as he rounded the corner and came into the kitchen.

Everything carried with it an air of normalcy, of a status quo so deep it shrieked. There were the placemats, Joey’s stained with all manner of interesting substances—not all of them edible—and marked so deeply that a hundred cycles of the dishwasher still hadn’t cleaned it up; a cup of coffee for him, a glass of OJ for Gina, and a glass of milk for Joey; bowls set in the center, like they should be, ready to receive the sacrament of whatever flavor of Cream of Wheat had been at the top of the box this morning.

The television was on, the sound turned off, and the usual idiot morning hosts were babbling about their usual idiot topics, but Drakanis had never been so happy to see Regis. Mr. Philbin, however, was of secondary concern, as his gaze came up to the stove, riding up one shapely calf clad in denim to the curve of a hip and then to the old NYU T-shirt she wore around the house, the one that rode up and exposed just a small strip of her tanned back. Above that were the face, heart-shaped, dark-eyed, and smiling, and the miles of glorious black hair that were currently piled on top with some funky-looking butterfly clip trying to contain it.

He couldn’t help himself; he ran to her, wrapped his arms around her, and dragged her away from the stove before shock could even register in her eyes. His mouth was on her throat, her ear, her lips, kissing and biting, while he crushed her body against his. When he finally let her go, they were both left out of breath and there was a sparkle in her eyes that was equal parts curiosity and satisfaction.

“Whoa, tiger. Haven’t done something like that since Joey was born.” She winked at him. “Good dreams, baby?”

He pursed his lips. Still not relinquishing his hold on her waist, he allowed his hands to roam despite the playful slap she gave them. “The opposite.”

She glanced over her shoulder at him as she turned back to stirring the cereal. “Well, we’ll just have to chase those away then, won’t we? Just as soon as the little monster heads over to Grandma’s. Stay home today. Let Parker save the world for once.”

Her tone was playful but also carried a certain amount of reproach. He knew he’d been working too hard lately, and perhaps he hadn’t been around as much as he should have been. That stopped, today. Hell, he’d retire if that was what she wanted. Get a nice, normal job, like gardening or maybe teaching.

He was still kissing at her neck and hair when the giggle disrupted his train of thoughts. “Speak of the devil…” he muttered, as he let Gina go and turned just in time to have all the pleasant weight of a rambunctious six-year-old barrel into his open arms.

He lifted Joey up, planting him in the crook of his arm. Joey was small for his age, like Drakanis had been, and fit there easily. He settled into his chair.

“You’re up and at ’em early, kid. What’s the occasion? You think it’s a holiday or something?”

Joey’s laughter was high and bright, carefree like only a child’s could be. His voice carried a strange mix of Gina’s accent and his own but tuned to a higher pitch. Drakanis had always marveled at the strange amalgams that children were of their parents, and now he was seeing it with fresh eyes.

“It
is
a holiday, stupid!”

“Don’t call your father stupid,” came Gina’s automatic response.

“Sorry, Ma. But it
is
!”

Drakanis pretended to think it over for a long moment and then ruffled his son’s hair and laughed along with him.

“No, I don’t think so. I think someone’s just imagining things. What holiday is it supposed to be?”

The voice that came out of Joey’s mouth was like a splinter of ice shoved into his heart. He knew the voice, knew it from his nightmares, but it didn’t belong in his son’s mouth, not on this wintry Christmas Day that he was going to spend making love to his wife and opening presents at midnight with his son. It was the rasping voice of the monster who had killed them in the dream, of the beast that lived in a painting that was really a prison.

“It’s my birthday, of course. So glad you could come.”

*      *      *

The first sensation that came back was pain, though it was almost so universal that it was impossible to tell where it was coming from. After pain came hunger, sending her stomach into thrashing cramps and making her want to vomit. She turned her head to one side, coughed, and discovered perhaps the worst of her torments; thirst had sunk deep into her body, and coughing woke it up. It felt like barbed wire had been embedded in her throat and then coated with salt and vinegar for extra measure.

Brokov’s eyes cracked open half an inch, and the bright fluorescent light felt like needles being driven into her eyes. She swore she could
feel
her pupils contracting against it in the split second before she pinched them shut again. She wasn’t sure where the hell she was, but she knew what she felt like; this was the feeling you got after being up all night and drinking enough to put you in the hospital.

Given her fuzzy memory and the fluorescents, Brokov wondered for a moment if that might not be just where she was. She discarded the idea quickly, since the lighting hadn’t been right for that. She had spent a lot of time in recent weeks sitting under hospital fluorescents and had almost gotten used to the weird bluish cast and the tinge of green it added. This light didn’t have that quality. It looked more like—

Bathroom,
she thought, even as her mind pointed out the cold tile floor she was lying on. The rest of it fell into place easily enough. Okay, yes. A bathroom. The question now was what bathroom, and why?

“There’s no need to be playin’ possum, Miss Brokov. Saw your eyes open once already.” The voice came, sounding patient and bemused, from somewhere above her. Assuming her thought about this being a bathroom was correct, she supposed the owner was probably sitting on the toilet or maybe the edge of the tub. She tilted her head in that direction, squinching one eye open just a hair.

Manderly was sitting on the toilet, running one long-fingered hand through his crew cut and looking down at her with eyes that had gone the faded blue and yellowy white of the elderly. He nodded at her and then lifted his other hand into her field of vision, displaying the glass.

She wasn’t sure if she had ever seen a more welcome sight in all the world before that moment. The glass was nothing special, one of those freebies they put in hotel rooms for you to wash out your mouth or pour a small drink or something, but it looked like heaven at that particular moment. Filled with water, ice cubes clinking in it, and beads of condensation gathering on the edges, it made her whole body cramp with thirst-lust for it.

“Come on, then. Drink up, but drink slow. Don’t want you to choke on it.” Manderly bent, putting one hand behind her neck, and she could feel fever in that hand, baking off of him like a furnace. He lifted her head a little, tipped the glass to her lips, and allowed her a single sip. He pulled the glass away when she tried to guzzle it, giving her a stern look, and then tipped it back again.

He kept it up until the glass was empty, always taking it away just before she started to drink it all down at once, and slowly, the pains faded. Then he set the glass on a countertop to his left and looked down at her, shaking his head.

She tried her voice, managed a croak, and then tried again. “Where… where am I?” She vaguely remembered going somewhere with Parker, but other than that, it was a blank. How she’d ended up in a bathroom with the oldest cop on the planet was something she’d very much like to know.

“In a safe place. Got yourself mixed up in things you had no business mixing in, so you had to be put away for a while.” There was a certain amount of menace in his words. His delivery was like that of an actor in a bad Mafia movie or one of the characters in the novels she was always reading, warning someone that they shouldn’t have been digging in that particular grave. At the same time, his Northeastern accent smoothed it over, made it sound like a grandfather giving matter-of-fact advice to an overeager kid. He leaned back, his head against the brown and gold patterned tile on the walls.