Malice (21 page)

Lysander closed the garage door and glanced at the clock above his father’s workbench. Four in the morning.

Jeeezus!

He turned on the light in the laundry room just off the garage, and the bright flash jogged something loose in his memory. Had he not seen the light on in his grandmother’s room when he turned onto his street? And had it not been snapped off as he approached?

He couldn’t be sure. When you were slogging home in the middle of the night, you couldn’t really be sure of anything.

He made his way into the darkened kitchen, groped along the wall for the light switch and when he couldn’t find it, he was struck by another thought. Years ago his family had spent a July weekend in a beach house in Nantucket. A telescope had sat neglected in a corner on the back deck, and he had spent hours peering out at what he could only guess was Neptune or Jupiter.

Searching the night sky, he had seen an infinite number of stars blinking back at him, billions of fiery balls of light. The universe was a pretty bright place. Lysander had thought about God then. With a sky so densely packed, surely God must be up there someplace. Then Lysander had pressed his eye to the lens and swiveled the long barrel of the telescope toward a dark patch of starless sky. The darkness he found there was so cold and frightening that he had shuddered. He had come to discover that day that if God really did exist, he was not the ubiquitous being priests would have you believe. It was clear to Lysander now that there were places from which God was absent. Dark places he didn’t dare go.

Lysander turned the kitchen light on, and a subtle smell greeted him. So faint that when he twisted his head the slightest bit it was gone. It reminded him of his father. Early mornings as a young child, scrambling onto his Winnie the Pooh riser, struggling to prop himself against the bathroom counter so he could watch his father shave.

Yes, that was it. Aftershave. That brief moment of nostalgia passed, and he let the thought slip from his tired mind, ignoring the fact that his testicles had inexplicably retracted up into his body.

This business of being the last one awake wasn’t so appealing to him anymore. What was stopping Reverend Small, or whatever that thing called itself, from hiding in his closet and waiting for him to fall asleep?

The answer to that was nothing. Nothing was stopping him, except perhaps the man’s sick delight in letting fear and panic build to such a screaming pitch that you were begging him to come in and end it. Or—

A heavy thud from upstairs. Directly above him. Sounded like something heavy falling over. Or someone falling out of bed.

He glanced up at the ceiling.

Grandma’s room.

Had they forgotten to feed her? he wondered dully. Or had she slipped out of bed?

For the first time he became aware that the cat had not greeted him at the door. Necra was always awake, waiting for him to come home, nearly tripping him as she weaved through his legs.

He stumbled through the darkness toward the spiraling staircase, a looming form before him. He started up it sluggishly, stair by stair, and he couldn’t help but glance over his shoulder, to be sure no one was behind him. He arrived at the top riser, his breath coming in quick shallow spurts. Grandma’s door was ajar. Her light was out.

A prickly sensation tickled his spine.

He flicked on the bathroom light and started for his grandmother’s room. He would just check in on her, he told himself. Make sure that she had been fed and that she wasn’t ... he looked down at his feet and saw that they weren’t moving.

Mush!

It was as though eight-hundred-pound sandbags had been strapped to his ankles. The strain was almost painful. He struggled to advance, one lumbering step at a time.

The scent of aftershave was becoming stronger. With a trembling hand Lysander pushed open his grandmother’s door. It gave a few inches, creaking lightly in protest, and then stopped.

The room seemed so dark that an image came immediately to mind: a black hole, churning like a disposal full of grinding teeth, eager to liquefy anything that strayed too close.

He held his breath and pushed the door open all the way. By the dim glow of the bathroom light, he could just make out a large oval lump underneath the covers. From here, it was difficult to be sure if he saw the steady rise and fall of her breathing, but he wasn’t going any farther to find out. An empty plate of food sat on her side table.

“No problems here officer,” he said scratchily.

His blood pressure cringing below the red line.

He gripped the doorknob, colder to the touch than usual, he noticed, and pulled it closed.

Only after he shut the door and started for his bedroom, his eyes stinging and begging to be closed in sleep, did he see the trail of blood. Thin and almost unnoticeable, it seemed to lead from his room, down the hallway and under his grandmother’s door, now closed tight behind him.
It’s after four in the morning and your eyes are playing tricks on you
. He stroked the scorched remains of his eyebrow, evidence that he had already been through enough tonight to justify the illusion. It was a remarkable one too when you thought about it, since no amount of seeing the blood made it waver or disappear. He bent down, dabbed his finger onto the wet carpet and rubbed his slippery fingers together until they grew thick and sticky. He brought them to his nose. The stench made his muscles bunch up like taut cords, all five senses jacked on full alert.

Blood!

He spun to face his grandmother’s room, a growing dread foaming into his mouth, like some bitter pill.

Her door was closed, just as he had left it.

His bedroom was open, though, accessible and safe, and a voice was screaming that he should barricade himself inside.

Put your bed against the door and don’t open up no matter what they say or how much they beg you.

He tried to slow his mind before it spun out of control. No, he would not do that. He would tell his parents. There was really nothing else to do. Then it occurred to him that the blood might belong to them. If he knocked, they might not answer. They too might have been lured into that room never to come out again. First his mother, exhausted and in a pissy mood, but responding on instinct to some noise she had heard. And later, after she had not returned for some time, his father.

He was standing before his parents’ door, about to start pounding, his hand poised at eye level, when he happened to look behind him. Through the gloom cast by the bathroom light he could make out an unusual form in his room. A form he hadn’t noticed before. He took a step closer, incredulous. There was an irregular lump under his covers. Someone was in his room, in his bed. He looked over at his grandmother’s bedroom door.

Her door was ajar.

His fists clenched tightly. Not possible, he thought. She hadn’t walked in years. He looked back at the bloodstain on the carpeted floor. It was smeared now, as though in the few seconds that his back was turned, something had been dragged across that carpet…No. That wasn’t it. He knew that wasn’t it, but he couldn’t bring himself to admit what his senses were telling him. That smear on the carpet, the one which led to that thing in his bed, hadn’t been made by something inanimate being pulled along the ground. No, not a something, but a someone, a someone who had dragged a pair of useless legs behind them, down the hall, and right past him.

***

Samantha came awake screaming. She had been trying to warn the man in her dream of some terrible danger. Her thoughts were still fuzzy, but she was awake enough to know she had been dreaming again, and this one was worse than the last. No clown this time. Only an old woman. An old decrepit woman and she was crazy, her fingers long with sharpened claws reaching out to snatch and tear. And Lysander had been there. She looked at the depression in the mattress beside her. He was gone. Just as well, she thought exhausted, he needed to get his sleep. She rolled over and smelled the pillow he had been sleeping on. It smelled of clean laundry. She smiled to herself in the dark. Already she had begun to forget about her bad dream and that horrible woman. She sighed and drifted off again, still uneasy.

***

Lysander stood by his bed. His trembling right arm was cocked over his head. In that hand was the only weapon that had been within arm’s reach: the conciliatory trophy he had brought home after his defeat with the Hayward Junior Comets. He was holding it by the tiny silver figurine.

Gold is for winners, son

The heavy base wobbled in his hand.

The mangled lump under his covers looked more like a pile of old, rotting clothes than it did a human being. The smell of things wet and moldy that was hovering around his bed in a fine mist did nothing to disprove that. He waited for the covers to rise and fall with the rhythmic pattern that accompanied sleep, but the form in his bed wasn’t moving at all. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his left hand and reached for the blanket. He would flip it back, and if it turned out to be anything other than a pile of dirty clothes he would swing this trophy with everything he had …
until there’s nothing left but a mashed, blood-jetting stump!

The ferocity of the thought made him recoil.

He was about to grab the covers when he heard something behind him. He turned quickly, half expecting to see Reverend Small scrambling out of the closet, his hand glittering with six inches of steel. But there was nothing there. A branch outside was scratching at his window.

He turned back to see the covers peeled away and a maniacal face staring up at him. Its eyes were bulging and wild, wrapped in bursting red veins. Its mouth opened in a half expectant smile. It had a pleased look, as though it were happy to see him. Blood was smeared around the open edges of its mouth. Bits of fur—cat fur?—clung to the blood around its face, some of it jammed between its blackened teeth.

It looked vaguely like his grandmother—her hair was the same, bluish and a mess of bed-flattened curls—but gone was the old dullness in her eyes, the serenity of her once peaceful existence. Something had snuck into her poor weakened mind and set up shop. Something had put a cold killing gleam in her eye and the smell of death on her lips.

He opened his mouth to scream. He could feel his abdomen tighten, the air rush from his lungs. That thing that looked oddly like his grandmother grabbed his hand with the trophy, squeezing it with dizzying force, crushing the bones in his wrist, until he couldn’t help but drop it.

It was saying something, but its lips weren’t in sync with the sound he was hearing. That thing was trying to pull him closer, its smile broadening with delight. He struggled to escape its iron grasp. It flailed out with its other hand, clawing at him. He drew his free hand back and punched it in the face full force. It shook off the blow and let out a perverse laugh. Blood was running from its nose now. He punched it again, and again and finally that thing that was once his grandmother let go, its nose split wide open and bent to one side. Lysander wrenched his arm away and ran toward his parents’ room. He shot a terrified glance behind him and saw that it was sitting bolt upright. He turned the handle and shouldered the door open, but it was stuck. He rattled the door handle and realized it was locked. He could hear it slipping out of bed, landing on the ground with a wet fleshy sound. Could hear it slithering toward him. He wanted so badly to turn around, but he couldn’t, because he knew that if he saw what was behind him, he would be immobilized by terror. He stepped back and sent his aching shoulder into his parents’ door again and nearly went sprawling as the door gave way. The scream locked behind his lips was finally let loose, jarring his parents from their sleep. His father propped himself up on his hands, his eyes wide and cloudy. His mother, still on her back, head cocked at a sharp angle, was glaring at him. The fear of God was in her eyes.

Lysander turned around, slammed the door shut and leaned against it with all his weight. He could hear it on the other side, wheezing, its long fingernails scuttling along the bottom of the door, clicking up toward the handle.

A second later his father was behind him.

“Jesus Christ, Lysander, what the hell is this all about?”

Lysander’s breath was skipping in his throat. He was hyperventilating.

“Calm down, son. What’s going on? Is there someone in the house?”

Lysander nodded vigorously, his face so milky white they might have mistaken him for an apparition.

His mother wrapped herself in her bathrobe. She was rubbing her enormous belly, her face stricken with weary terror. “Oh, Glenn. What’s happening? Is there someone in the house?…Glenn!”

Glenn disappeared into the walk-in closet. They could hear him swearing, the sound of things being scattered and tossed about. A second later he emerged with a silver .45.

“No, Glenn, don’t do something silly. Call the police.”

Lysander’s eyes grew wide when he saw the gun.

“I
will
call the cops, but if there’s someone in the house…We have to take care of our own.”