Husk (33 page)

A Timber Wolf.

BJ’s body went rigid, locked up by fear.

Lightning flashed overhead, and the animal’s gray fur glowed silver in the ensuing gloom. BJ gazed in amazement, spellbound by his proximity to it. He didn’t immediately realize that the beast had crept closer until it lowered its snout and licked his forehead.

The warm touch of its tongue broke the enchantment.

BJ shrieked and scrambled backward, retreating in reverse. The animal watched him go with only a curious twitch of its ears.

He exploded out the opposite side of the bush and spun around to discover lights now ablaze in the house behind him. Through a rear sliding glass door, he saw a man cross a living room carrying bags of luggage in each hand.

BJ glanced back at the wolf, but the animal had gone, vanished into the night.

He ran for the door.

* * *

Tim rode through the night beneath black cumuli made visible by bluish-white sheet lightning. He raced east on Chippewa Road, a less traveled stretch of macadam just north of Loretto—farther north than he would’ve cared to be at the moment.

Initially he’d headed south, toward the same bike trails on which he’d fled from the deer corpse, intent on following them back to the old barn. When he returned to County Road 19, however, he’d discovered that the train he’d dodged earlier had reversed back across the road—so its forward most engine rested just behind the post office, but not blocking the street—and a crowd had gathered. The locomotive’s engineer had no doubt called the police, and Tim knew it wouldn’t be long before an officer arrived to take his report of what had happened.

Not wanting to be noticed riding a bike near the scene, he decided to take a roundabout way back to where the trails crossed the railroad; the spot where he’d first encountered the dead deer. In order to do that, however, he first needed to get around the train’s freight cars, which now extended several hundred yards behind its engines, blocking his passage.

Which took him farther and farther away from Mallory.

He pedaled faster and prayed the detour wouldn’t keep him from reaching her in time.

CHAPTER 40

In addition to the glow from strategically placed lawn lamps, intricate door fixtures, and a variety of interior lights, the strobe of red, white and blue flashes from numerous squad cars now decorated the forward face of the Damerow home.

Backup had arrived, followed by the requested forensics team.

Frank sat in his Blazer and watched the workers toil about their duties, debating what to do. Melissa already had his statement and other relevant information. Technically he was free to go. Yet he stayed, waiting to see what might turn up. He knew it was a waste of time, knew he should be on the move, but the small city of chaotic activity felt like safe and familiar ground compared to the black country landscape around him.

Here, he wasn’t alone.

Frank shifted his gaze west and witnessed a trident of light stab at the earth several miles away. He’d been watching the oncoming storm’s lightshow gather in strength for several minutes now, knowing by its speedy progression that rough weather would soon be upon them. Thunder followed the lightning, low and resounding, but the storm itself remained far enough away to mirror the situation: time was running out.

He looked at the keys hanging in the ignition.
The entity is out there somewhere
.
You knew this day would come, so what are you going to do: spend another God-knows-how-many-years wondering when it’ll show up at your doorstep, or finish what you should’ve ended five years ago?

Frank exhaled a miserable sigh of frustration while considering his options. In all honesty, he didn’t know what he should do, or if he could do anything at all. From his research, he’d learned of countless manifestations possibly attributed to the presence of an entity. Unfortunately, none of those stories provided a definite method for its disposal.

He wasn’t even sure if it
could
be destroyed.

At his side, Frank’s console-mounted police scanner crackled with the conversation of an unrelated topic. He’d been listening to it when the squads first began arriving at the Damerow house, but now he turned its volume down. When he looked up again, he saw Melissa coming out of the garage, notebook in hand, heading for his truck.

He got out to meet her. “Found anything?”

Melissa crossed her arms. He knew from their talk earlier that she’d been up since sunrise, but her complexion and demeanor displayed no sign of fatigue, save for a gradually darkening bruise or two. He admired her resilience. Even with having slept in this morning, Frank’s feet dragged with the draining effects of the last few hours. There hadn’t been much physical work involved, but the psychological tax made up the difference.

She sighed. “If I tell you, will you promise to go home?”

Her words stung, but he detected no malice in them. He counted himself lucky she was speaking to him at all. “Fair enough. What do you have?”

“
Just the basics so far. The husband was cut by a large kitchen knife, and we think the wife was initially strangled. She had ligature marks on her throat, but it’s hard to determine exactly what happened with all the damage the body received. I sent the remains downtown to be thawed out for autopsy.”

“
Any children?”

“
Fortunately not. There was a dog, though. A black lab. It was found in the washing machine, covered with laundry detergent.”

Frank nodded his understanding. “It was trying to keep the place from smelling and drawing attention.”

“
Or maybe our perp is just racking up the shock points, like at the Pattersons’.”

“
Maybe, maybe not.”

“
Most likely not.”

“
Any signs of how the killer got in?”

“
None other than the window,” she answered, choosing to look at her notes rather than his face.

“
What about personal property, was there anything stolen?” he asked, knowing there wouldn’t be, hoping he could make her see beyond the disguise of an ordinary crime.

“
Can’t say for sure, not until we’ve talked with their insurance people to find out what might’ve been worth taking.”

Frank shook his head this time. “No. A crook doesn’t break into a high-buck place like this and not take anything. Whoever made the K markings just wanted victims.”

“
That still doesn’t prove they were killed by a
ghost
.”

“
No,” he agreed. “I guess it doesn’t.”

Flares of electricity ignited in the clouds to the west, bringing definition to the flat darkness overhead.

“
What about the murder weapon?” he asked. “You said the man died of a knife wound. Did they recover it?”

She nodded. “It was in the basement, buried in that laundry-pile near the machines. There was also a lot of blood on the clothes themselves.”

Great footsteps of thunder crossed the sky and Frank leaned closer. “There wasn’t any blood that we saw.”

“
No. The forensics guys found it in the middle of the pile, like someone had dumped the knife and bloody clothes there and then covered them up.”

“
Why cover up that mess and not the one in the living room?”

She shrugged. “He had to take the wash out of the machine to fit the dog in.”

“
Do you know for sure the clothes were in the machine to begin with?”

“
They were wet and had liquid soap on them. CSI thinks the killer used it to wipe away any fingerprints.”

“
How frightening that must have been,” he thought aloud.

She looked at him with a confused expression. “What, doing laundry?”

He shook his head. “Ask your lab people to examine that woman’s neck, where the bruising is, and to check her clothing. I’m sure they’ll find chemicals belonging to the soap she used in the wash. I wouldn’t be surprised if you found it on the man’s clothes as well—and on the living room carpet.”

Melissa began restating what he said, rebutting his idea, but his mind drifted toward the mental reconstruction of the facts she’d given him. He put shape to a possible scenario that explained what had happened to the couple in the freezer and the reality of it terrified him.

He imagined Mrs. Damerow prior to her death, carelessly going about starting a load of wash before dinner. He could picture the look of shock on her face when the washing machine’s lid suddenly flew open, the laundry she’d just loaded exploding out and attacking her. Frank guessed the creature crushed her windpipe for a silent death so the husband wouldn’t be alerted to the danger. Then it removed itself from the machine and sloshed its way up the stairs, into the kitchen. Mr. Damerow must have been sitting in the living room, probably watching TV, so he never heard the metal-on-metal sound of the butcher knife when the killer plucked it from its drawer. Seconds later, he collapsed in a pool of his own blood. The family pet had obviously come to its master’s aid too late, or maybe it had been outside at the time. Whatever the case, even if the dog had been present during the killings, there was obviously nothing it could have done to stop the slaughter. Afterwards, the killer must’ve carried the bodies downstairs, dumping them in their freezer for safekeeping and then stuffing their dog in the empty washer.

“
What was that?” Melissa asked.

Frank blinked to free himself of his self-induced daze. “Pardon me?”

“
What was that last transmission?” she asked. “On your scanner, turn it up.”

Frank slid back into the driver’s seat and adjusted the knob. He raised the scanner’s volume just in time to catch the dispatcher relaying the sketchy details of an accident call involving a juvenile bicycle rider and a freight train.

“
Shit,” Frank remarked. “That kid could be seriously injured, and we’re the only ones out here.”

“
They said Loretto,” Melissa added.

He nodded and started the engine. “We’re less than five minutes away. Let’s go.”

Melissa called to the house and asked one of the uniformed officers to get an additional car and follow them to the call.

She joined Frank in the Blazer.

CHAPTER 41

“
Soon,” the entity growled.

It paced the church parking lot, pretending to keep watch for police. Around it, the encircling trees bowed their branches in compliance with the growing wind, and their undulating shapes emulated its excited state of anticipation.

Not far away came the musical sound of shovel blades scraping against earth. It waited, listening to the harmonic excavation. Fuller and Dupree grunted and swore and gasped while they dug, heaving off load after load of soil, bringing Kane closer and closer to the surface.

The wind blew.

Thunder rumbled.

The teens cursed.

Shovels cut into the dirt.

“
Soon.”

But suddenly the shovel sounds stopped. Wind-tossed leaves fluttered, filling the void with their rustle. Then, out of the waist-deep weeds enclosing Kane’s grave, the two teens emerged into the car’s headlights, slouched and empty-handed.

“
Why’d you stop?” it demanded from the cemetery fence. 

“
Union break,” one of them said.

“
Yeah,” the other added. “You try digging that bastard up while getting eaten alive. There must be a million mosquitoes in these weeds.”

Its highjacked hands tightened on the iron fence, gripping the cold bars hard enough to split flesh and break bones. It clenched its vessel’s jaws, casting off pearl-white shards of fractured teeth that sparkled in the lamplight. No pain. Only rage.

Fuller climbed over the fence. “Man, that’s a lot of work.”

It stepped to the rear of the car, letting shadow fill the sweatshirt’s hood. It wanted to rip the defiant creatures’ heads off, impale them on the fence posts, but it forced the urge away, focusing on the task of regaining Kane.

“
The grave is only a week old,” it said, concentrating to keep Brad’s voice sounding human. “The ground can’t be that hard.”

“
Easy for you to say, you aren’t doing any of the work,” Fuller replied. “Let’s get the hell out of here and go get something to drink. We can come back later.”

“
But there’s a storm coming,” it growled. “We should finish up before it rains.”

Dupree cursed under his breath and batted away a mosquito. Smears of dark soil covered his skin and half a dozen red insect bites peppered his sweaty face. “Hey, man, you want to finish this up so bad, you go do it yourself. I’ve had a pretty shitty night so far, and I’m not going to spend the rest of it being ordered around by you.”

The two teenagers got into the car and slammed the doors, both ignoring its repeated demands to get back to work.

No other choice remained but to
force
them to obey.

It opened the trunk. Extracted the shotgun.

They would either retrieve Kane, or they would join him.

Returning to the driver’s side door, it tapped the steel barrel on the window.