Malevolent (34 page)

Another sound, another tense moment. Hope dwindled even further when she recognized the sound of the French doors being closed. Her last feeble hope of escape. She had to assume he’d latch them. Even though she could unlock the doors without a key, it would take her way too many valuable seconds.

“Enough of this horseshit.”

She very clearly heard that statement from the living room.

He was coming.

The floor shuddered under him as he rushed her by way of the short hallway off of the living room. That left the dining room open and unguarded, but she was too slow. Her limbs seemed to barely drag her forward, like nightmares she’d had where the monster is pulling up close and she barely had the strength to move, her legs impossibly heavy.

Before Patty could take a step, he was in the kitchen with her.

He barely had time to mutter a snarl and throw up a protective forearm before she sailed the cast iron skillet at his head. It made a flat thud of a sound as it found tissue and bone. She backed up, grabbed a long-bladed carving knife from the butcher’s block and sliced the air with it. He went to one knee, hugged his head, and slowly rose.

While he was blinking new blood out of his eye, Patty rushed him, thrust the knife, nearly dropped it in squeamish horror as she felt it slide into the flesh and gristle of his left shoulder. He groaned, a much smaller sound than she expected.

He slapped her hand away as she removed the blade for another plunge, and she heard it clatter out of sight.

He stood precariously still, like a child attempting his first steps. His mouth formed slowly into a message she could read as it formed on his color-drained lips.

“You. Bitch.”

He was coming again.

When she and Tim had moved into the apartment she’d let him and his buddies lug in the heavy things while she contented herself with small boxes and loose clothing. She would never have thought she’d have the strength to even lift the microwave from the counter, but now she found herself hurling it at the charging mailman.

He instinctively held out both hands as though to accept the flying load, and howled as he caught it. His knees buckled, blood pumped with new energy from his knifed shoulder. The heavy appliance slipped from his grasp and found one of his feet as it crashed to the floor. He followed the microwave’s trajectory, landing in a crumpled heap.

Patty paused on her way out the dining room doorway only long enough to drop the phone from its cradle and punch in the numbers nine, one, one. Maybe he’d notice and hang up right after her, but maybe he wouldn’t.

The plan, worked out in an instant, was this—unlatch a French door and make for the balcony. She’d probably crippled him enough to give her at least that much head start. From the balcony she’d scream like hell while keeping her eyes glued to the door behind her. If he came out, she’d risk broken bones by dropping into the shrubs.

She patted the paring knife she’d also stashed, making sure it was still in her waistband. If it came to arm-to-arm combat, God forbid, she’d do whatever she had to do.

As a plan hatched on the run it wasn’t bad, except that she hadn’t taken into consideration the screaming wraith awaiting her in the living room.

“Die, you bitch, like I died.”

It was a well-fed ghost in a burgundy dress that clung uncomfortably tight. The woman’s breasts were full, her hips somewhere between seductively ample and overly abundant. The woman shimmered before Patty like a desert hallucination or bad television reception, every muscle in her crimson face contorted with rage.

All that fury, all that mind-boggling aggression, and yet the dead woman’s screams could barely be heard. Like telephone lines that had been crossed, the message seemed meant for another listener.

But Patty knew different. The hatred was aimed full-blast at her, and the knowledge froze her on the spot. Even the Melinda Dillon phantom hadn’t been so full of venom. This woman, this thing, this ghost in burgundy, it hated Patty merely for being alive.

“Get her, you bastard,” the woman screamed again, but as distant as before.

She couldn’t hurt her—this ghost-woman could only rage on. Ignore her. Go around her. Or even charge right through her insubstantial presence and be on her way. That’s what Patty told herself, but still, it held her with its enmity until the moment passed for taking action.

The wind got knocked from her as she was slammed from behind and brought to the ground. Patty gasped for air like a fish tossed to land.

The ghost’s distant screams of rage turned to gleeful chortles that Patty could only hear in her mind now. Fingers that were all too dreadfully human found her throat and pressed, pressed. She heard the mailman wheeze painfully, felt his blood drip onto her upturned face while her own fingers danced along the tight intersection of their two bellies in search of the paring knife.

She found it, and found it to be impossibly tangled in her waistband. For one precious second she clutched its handle, but her fingers were growing too weak to yank it free.

Purple lights blossomed and exploded in her vision, but she could still see in the shadows of her dying light the burgundy ghost. She—it—crouched next to the mailman, the leering figure wavering and breaking up and reforming as Patty’s vision clouded.

Her hand fell away from the hopelessly tangled knife. It wasn’t so bad, really, what was happening to her. It was as calm as drowning, once you’ve given up the luxury of hope. She barely gave thought to the sound of splintering wood.

Chapter Fifty-Seven

The teenage boy looked tall for his age. He also looked tense, but that might be explained by the gasping, sweaty-faced stranger at his doorstep.

Tim forced himself to take deep breaths to restore the lungs he’d taxed in his jog from the Marberrys’ and to fake a disarming smile before asking the question again. “Is your father home?”

“Uh,” said the boy.

Uh?
What was that? Tim was feeling just impatient and pissed-off enough to force his way past the kid and drag the dull-wit’s father out by his ear, but fortunately the urge passed.

“Jason? Let the gentleman in, please, and then come join us.”

Tim recognized Vincent Applegate’s refined voice from inside the tidy brick-and-mortar Tudor with its green expanse of lawn. A far cry from the Marberry women’s tumbledown bungalow and weed-infested lot in a ruder part of Cleveland’s Old Brooklyn neighborhood. Tim couldn’t help wondering how often Reverend Applegate had passed the collection plate Germaine Marberry’s way in order to maintain his comfortable lifestyle.

He didn’t even
want
to stop thinking such sour thoughts before confronting the minister. The conversation was guaranteed to be an interesting one.

Tim got the distinct impression that the boy blocking his path into the home would disregard his father’s orders. Jason’s mouth popped open for words that never came. His eyes kept jumping from Tim to the interior of his home behind him. Now what was that all about? But finally he stepped aside enough for Tim to brush past.

“Now if both of you will come join us in the dining room,” Vincent said, still out of sight.

Tim didn’t feel like joining anyone. He wasn’t even sure why he was here, except that he had to find
answers
.

The house had an entry hall big enough to be called a room if it were in the Marberry house. Granite flooring, a desk with a gilt-framed oval mirror, a pair of wide, arching doorways and a staircase with enough wood to keep a fireplace crackling for a week.

The minister’s refined tone had come from beyond the arch to the right. From here, Tim could spy a hutch and part of a massive wooden table like the Vikings might have used.

He felt expected. Even the boy, Jason, hadn’t seemed surprised to see him. Scared shitless, but not surprised.

“Right this way,” the unseen Vincent invited. “You too, Jason. Your mom and sister are waiting.”

It was still an hour or more till nightfall, but shadows had grown thick in the house. Tim’s conscious mind now recalled what his subconscious had registered earlier—the drapes had been pulled.

His eyes sought Jason beside him. The boy’s expression was grim, sullen. Of course. He’s a teenager, Tim thought. So why’d the kid make him so nervous? Probably still freaked out from the goddamn cats.

He heard people breathing in there, in the room beyond the arch. Well of course they were breathing—but why weren’t they making any other sounds?

He put thoughts away that went nowhere and put one foot in front of the other. His footsteps sounded intrusive on the expensive stone.

There were three people in the room. A woman and teenage girl sat in straight-back chairs covered in velvet. A man stood. Vincent Applegate. He held a gun.

“We’ve waited hours for this get-together,” Vincent said. “My family was getting impatient, but I knew you’d show eventually. Very clever, by the way, the trick in the supermarket. Jason, don’t forget to join us.”

Odd as it sounded, Tim had never seen a gun before. In movies and museums, sure, but not up close and personal. His mind was rambling, reeling. He felt like he might get sick all over the expensive Oriental rug under him—and what mood might that put the gunman in?

“Jason, you’re not straying, are you? Come back in and sit down, son. Your mother and sister are getting concerned.”

Tim wondered if his earlobe was bleeding again—or was that just sweat trickling down his neck?

The boy shuffled into the room and sat on the edge of a chair beside his mother.

Vincent beamed at the grouping, the proud father. “You know Jason and Lisa,” he said. “And I’m absolutely certain you’ve met my dear wife, Sandy. Say hello to everyone.”

“Vincent, don’t—”

He cut his wife off with a loud
shush
and a wave of his gun-toting hand. Small and square, that gun, almost lost in the minister’s long fingers. “Please, honey, let me chat with your friend.”

Then, turning to Tim, he said, “All this time and I still don’t know your name.”

Tim cleared his throat. He felt awkward, embarrassed, unsure what to do with his hands as he stood at the head of that massive table as though preparing to launch into an after-dinner speech. “Tim Brentwood.” His audience all seemed to be expecting more, so he added, “We met at the church during the service for Travis Kendall.”

Vincent laughed, a sudden sound that made Tim twitch. “Met in the church, did we? Wouldn’t that be a clever way to see your lover?” He turned to his wife. “Just tell him to meet you in church. Who’d suspect a thing?”

Lover?

If he’d missed the punch line, it didn’t look like he was the only one. Sandy Applegate wrapped an arm around each seated child and pulled them at bent angles toward her.

“Vincent, I think you’re confused.” She spoke slowly and concisely, like a bomb squad technician working a live device. “Remember how you said that the man you thought you saw me with had blond hair? Remember saying he was young? In his twenties? Tan? You said he was muscular and intensely good-looking. You remember that?”

Tim wasn’t sure he liked where this was going.

Sandy turned stiffly in her chair and acknowledged Tim with a nod. “Take a look at him, hon. Is he anything like the man you described?”

Man, he was taking hits today. Tim swallowed hard and tried to think of something to say, but Vincent reacted first—with a sharp bark of a laugh.

“You people are something,” he said, grinning appreciatively. “If I came in while the three of you were rolling in bed naked with the guy, you’d all look me straight in the eye and want to know what I was talking about.” He roared with laughter, the gun in his hand trembling.

Now Tim knew what chink had been discovered in the minister’s psychic armor. He chanced a glance at the doorway just two quick steps behind him. If his feet didn’t feel so weighed down with cement, he’d make a break for it. Probably make it. It was that small element of doubt that held him back, along with his fears of what might become of the Applegate family.

The gun stopped its erratic waving. Its barrel found Tim’s chest. The Reverend Applegate had lost his amusement. “I used to abhor the death penalty. I suppose I still do in a multitude of circumstances, but adultery with a man’s wife is not one of them.”

“Vincent.” She barely whispered her husband’s name.

“Daddy.” It was the girl, her voice a quaver of pain.

“Do you know what you put me through?” Vincent asked, ignoring his family. His grip tightened on the small, square gun. He raised it, now level with Tim’s flinching face.

Jesus, he couldn’t take this, waiting for the last sound he’d ever hear, for the one and only sin he’d never committed.

The next sound wasn’t gunfire, but the muffled rumble of Sandy’s chair over the expensive rug as she stood suddenly. “You’re not going to do it, Vincent,” she said.

“Mom,” her son warned, the first words out of the kid’s mouth since
uh
.

“Stay out of this,” Vincent told both family members.

Sandy didn’t stay out. She inserted herself between the gun and Tim. The boy warned her off again and Lisa began to sob quietly.