Vengeance Page 8

  He swung the door wide open and sprung out of the vehicle, brandishing his weapon. He checked along the full side of the car, but there was nothing. Ready for anything, Carver walked slowly around the front of the car, looking for anything out of place, but there was nothing. He surveyed the area around the vehicle and then looked up into the Duke house yard. It was empty.

  He continued his short trek around the vehicle, continuing to look for anything that might catch his attention, but if he hadn’t heard the noise, he would have thought the street to be completely deserted. He walked behind the car, and knelt down. No one was simply crouched down either. The street from underneath the car was as clear as the street above.

  He stood and pressed the talk button on the radio that he had on his uniform. “Carver to dispatch,” he said.

  “Dispatch here,” a woman’s voice intoned over the receiver.

  “Probably nothing,” Carver said, “but had some noises around the vehicle at the Duke residence. Just checking them out. Nothing at this time.”

  “Let us know,” dispatch replied.

  Carver walked toward the house. It was entirely possible that the whole thing was a ploy to draw his attention away from the house. After all, while he was checking over his car, he wasn’t watching the house. He walked up to the house and walked back and forth along the front checking down both sides for anything, and still, there was nothing.

  Finally, he saddled his weapon, looking up and down the quiet street as he reapproached his car. There was not a distant headlight in sight, nor was there another vehicle even parked along the side of the street. He finally shook his head. Something had clearly made that noise, but there was nothing left to say whom. It was times like this that he hated guard duty. Things that go bump in the night always make you think there’s more out there than there really is. Something bumped the back, side, and then the front of the car. Could have been anything, he supposed, and he could also have imagined the sound to be much larger than it really was. Could have been a cat walking by, for all he knew.

  He sighed and clicked the radio button again. “Nothing here, dispatch,” Carver said. “False alarm. Bumps in the night.”

  “Understood,” dispatch replied. “Glad it was nothing.”

  “Me too,” Carver said. “Can’t wait till this is over. Catch up with you in another thirty, I guess. Carver out.”

  “Roger, Carver.”

  He walked back to the open door of his car, got in, and closed the door. He took a deep breath as he prepared to settle back in for a long night. He reached over to start his iPod back up, but when he didn’t feel it, he froze. He didn’t feel his iPod because he felt someone sitting in the passenger seat. He looked up to find the faceless figure staring back at him with her blank face!

  Officer Carver struggled for his weapon in the cramped space of the cruiser, but the figure already had her knife at the ready. She plunged it into him before he could loosen the strap.

  Inside the house, Sherry had changed into a frilly pink blouse and skirt and was preparing the dining room table. She was only serving some sandwiches, but Bob never ate on a plane, so she knew he would be hungry. It would be the first of a long line of loving gestures. As she worked, she sang a song:

  “My love will find me here now where I wait,

  And here I wait now for my love to come

  The one I long to hold, my soul’s true mate

  The one to whose caresses I succumb.”

  The doorbell rang, and Sherry danced through her living room to the front door. She took a couple of breaths and smoothed her clothes. Yes, it was just her husband, but this was a new beginning, and she wanted to start it right. She threw the door open wide and said in a sing-songish fashion, “Hello, darling.”

  However, there was no one at the door. Her moment broken, she looked outside for a moment. “Hello?” she said, sticking her head just outside of the frame, but never moving her feet past the threshold. Perplexed, she closed the door and started walking across the living room when the doorbell rang again.

  She rolled her eyes and walked back to the door. If this was Bob playing a prank, she’d likely kill him, new beginnings be damned. She opened the door with an annoyed, “Yes?”

  Again, no one was there. She sighed and slammed the door. Her mood was all but broken at this point, but if Bob was not behind this, she would do her best to find that mood again when he arrived. He did not deserve to see her like this. After all, she was a professor at a university where teens are just beginning to find their–

  The doorbell rang once again. She was being pranked by someone, and at this point, especially considering everything that was going on these last couple of days, she was going to have someone’s head. She swung the door open, with her teacher finger at the ready to scold the offender.

  “Listen, you little punk, if you don’t–” She stopped mid-sentence, her mouth unable to form words. The blood drained from her face and arms, and her heart all but stopped in her chest. She could feel fear rising and tears just starting to form at the corners of her eyes as her expression dropped and her hand shook. Immediately on the other side of the door was the faceless figure, standing only inches away from her, staring. The figure only cocked her head. Sherry came to her senses, took a couple of breaths, and screamed as she slammed the door and locked it. The figure made no attempt to stop her.

  She fell to the floor away from the door and crawled across the floor to the phone. She fumbled with the receiver and dialed Officer Carver’s number. She heard the ringtone through her phone, and seconds later, heard the cell phone itself ringing just on the other side of the door. Fearfully, she stood up and stepped tentatively toward the door, her breath a shallow hyperventilation as she walked, holding the cordless limply in her hand.

  She looked through the peephole and saw the figure still standing just outside the door, but she was displaying Officer Carver’s ringing cell phone for the peephole’s viewer to see. Sherry hung up the phone and the ringing stopped. Hysteria slowly set in as she shook her head and backed away from the door. She mumbled indistinctly as her mind started breaking down, unable to comprehend what to do next.

  Three knocks at the door, and Sherry jumped away from the door in fear with a scream. The tears flowed more freely now as the terror overcame her senses. The phone rang. Sherry shrieked again and stared at it dumbly. The caller ID showed Officer Carver’s number, but she knew it wasn’t him. It couldn’t be. In fact, he was probably dead. Slowly she answered the phone with a barely understandable, “Hello?”

  “Look what I have for you,” a low female whisper intoned before the line went dead. Sherry hung up the phone and slowly moved toward the peephole again. The sane part of her mind which would never have looked was gone. Her breathing was now accompanied by little whimpers as she leaned against the peephole.

  Outside, the figure remained where she had been, but this time, instead of holding Carver’s phone on display, she held Carver’s head. Sherry screamed, and dropping the phone, she threw her hands over face as she bawled. She dropped to her knees and curled into a ball as she continued crying. Suddenly, a glint of sanity peeped through.

  “The police,” she barely uttered through her fear. “The rest of them.” She crawled to the phone and turned it on to a dial tone. She stared dumbly at the numbers, “Uh … nine one one.”

  She dialed the emergency number and listened as the phone rang. There was still hope, perhaps. Someone was going to help her. The operator picked up the other end of the line and Sherry’s heart leaped for joy for only a second as she heard, “Nine one–”

  And then nothing. The line was dead. She stared at it incredulously. She thought for a second about where she had left her cell phone and recalled it was in her room. She was at home, and generally didn’t need it because of the landline she insisted on maintaining. Then, the lights went out.

  Sherry screamed again, breaking down in tears once again. Weakley, she managed to stand up.
Taking a few deep breaths, she started to make her way to her room, but behind her, the faceless figure ran across her backyard and crashed through the glass patio door into her kitchen.

  Her first instinct was to try her front door, but as she rattled the knob, she had forgotten already that she had locked it. Without the time to deal with the pair of locks, Sherry ducked past the faceless figure rushing toward her and ran down the hall to her room. She slammed her bedroom door shut and locked it behind her. She leaned against the door, trying to catch her breath.

  After a moment, she realized the figure had done nothing to the door. Hadn’t even tried the knob. She walked across her bedroom to her phone, sitting on her nightstand, charging. She dialed 911 as she unlocked her bedroom window.

  “Nine one one emergency,” the operator said. Sherry struggled with the window. It was stuck.

  “Please,” she pleaded, “I’m in my house with someone trying to kill me. I locked them outside my bedroom door, but I don’t know how long they’ll stay there.”

  As she struggled with the window again, she did not notice the bathroom door opening. The faceless figure walked silently across her bedroom.

  “Are you able to get out of the house?” the operator asked.

  “I’m … trying,” Sherry grunted. She stopped, suddenly aware of someone else in the room with her. “Oh, my God.” She spun around and looked directly into the mask of the killer. “Help m–“, she squeaked helplessly, but she dropped the phone to the floor as the figure grabbed her by the neck and smashed her head into the window, shattering it. The figure pulled Sherry back in and pinned her against the wall.

  Sherry’s arms flailed as the killer removed her knife from a holster on her belt. Sherry’s hand grabbed the figure’s mask and pulled it off. Her panic turned to confusion as she stared into the face of her killer. Before she could call out anything to the operator still on the phone, the killer jammed the knife up under Sherry’s chin, driving the blade through her inner skull into her brain. Sherry slumped, dead.

  The figure dropped Sherry’s body unceremoniously to the ground in a heap and reached down to retrieve her mask. Then she noticed the phone still in call on the floor. She picked it up and listened to the receiver for a moment. The operator on the other end, Laurie, knew that she was too late to help, but she had left the line open just in case they could hear anything in the background to help. She heard breathing near the microphone of the phone and decided to respond.

  “Hello?” Laurie had asked. “Are you there?”

  “I know who you are,” the figure intoned in her indecipherable whisper, and then hung up. Laurie was never the same. She had witnessed the sounds of a murder over the phone, and then the killer claimed to know her. She went home once from the time of that call until the investigation was concluded to pick up some things to enable her to stay at the station for awhile.

  She arrived with an escort of two officers willing to go after their long night shift and found that her fears were well-justified. Laurie was on no one’s list. She was young, single woman living out her life, and yet, because the killer somehow recognized her voice, she had made a house call on Laurie. Because of this, Laurie took nothing from her apartment and stayed with one of the other women who worked at the station for awhile. After some administrative leave and counseling, she took her old job back, but never went back to her old apartment.

  When Laurie arrived with her escort, the door was not fully closed, but the officers drew their weapons and went in first. Sitting on the table in the center of her living room was the head of Officer Carver.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Breaking Sanity

  A few blocks away from Sherry Duke on the night of her murder, Officer Spencer was the individual assigned to watch Athena Michaels. He sat on the side of the street in his cruiser fighting off the need for sleep with cups of coffee and an audiobook which was apparently interesting enough to keep him awake.

  Inside, Athena lay in bed but failed to sleep. Her eyes were closed and to a bystander, it might appear that she slept, but so soon after everything had happened, she still had trouble nodding off. Part of the problem was that her mind never stopped spinning over details of the past few days. At this moment, she was thinking about the conversation she had with Kathy about her need to be in her own house.

  “You’re sure you want to do that?” Kathy had asked her after Athena told her that she wanted to go home as soon as the police cleared.

  “I don’t have anywhere else to go,” Athena said. “It’s my home.”

  “I’d have trouble sleeping where a double homicide occurred,” Kathy admitted. “I don’t believe in ghosts or angry spirits or anything. It’s just the idea that the killer might come back. He got in once, you know.”

  “I know it sounds weird, but I’d have trouble sleeping anywhere else,” Athena said. “I’ve only ever stayed two places my entire life, and it took me a long time to get comfortable in our house. Hank was probably handing out keys like candy, though. I guess that how the killer got in. I’ll change the locks.”

  “Will that be enough though?” Kathy asked.

  “I don’t know,” Athena admitted, and she took a moment to consider her position before shaking her head. “I just feel like despite its past, the only place in the world I’ll feel safe is my own house.”

  “You can stay here,” Kathy offered. “My husband won’t be any trouble.”

  “Thanks,” Athena said, “but I’d rather be at home.”

  “Ok, but I offered.”

  “I know.”

  A creak sounded somewhere in the house bringing Athena out of her memory. She didn’t move or open her eyes, but simply kept listening. It could have been the house settling or just her imagination. All houses make noise now and then, and after what had happened, she accepted that she was on edge enough to jump at anything. Then she heard the bedroom door quietly swing open. The house and hinges were both new enough that it did not creak at all, but only because the house was quiet could she have even heard it.

  Her eyes shot open. She rolled over to look at the door, but the doorway was empty and she could almost see into the living room from her bed. There were doors in her parent’s house that would move of their own accord due to foundation shifting or the wind, but to her knowledge, this door had never moved by itself. Then again, she never really had cause to notice such a thing before. Had it ever happened? Would she have noticed before tonight?

  Almost reluctantly, she crawled out of bed and walked quietly and slowly to the doorway. She turned on the light in her bedroom and glanced across the empty room to make sure nothing was there. It was empty and everything was as she left it. She passed into the hall and turned that light on as well. She looked up and down the little corridor into the rooms that disappeared beyond the edges of the light, but the place remained quiet. She shook her head. Perhaps it was the wind or foundation or some other whatever she didn’t understand. She didn’t see anyone.

  She turned back to her room and then paused when she saw the bathroom out of the corner of her eye. She did her best not to think about what had happened in there when her needs arose, but here in the middle of the night investigating strange winds, she thought about it which caused her stomach to rise just a little. She took a deep breath to settle herself and stepped toward the bathroom. She turned the light on and looked it over. The shower curtain was gone, and the tub was clean. All of that was done by the police at the conclusion of their investigation. She had taken her last shower at Kathy’s to avoid using it. There were many things she could do, and regardless of her desire to sleep here, taking a shower was not one of them yet.

  She sighed, turned off the bathroom light, the hall light, and then her bedroom light as she closed her bedroom door behind her, making sure she latched it this time. She lay back down in bed and stared at the ceiling for a moment before she closed her eyes and sighed. She was certain if she could just relax, sleep would take her. Physically, she
knew she felt very tired, but her mind was racing too quickly to have any hope of sleeping. She took a deep, cleansing breath and let it out in an attempt to relax.

  “If a person sins and does what is forbidden in any of the Lord’s commands, even though she does not know it, she is guilty and will be held responsible.”

  She did not relax. Athena’s eyes shot open. That was not her imagination. The voice was a whisper, female, and familiar. She had heard it this morning after she had seen the news report about that boy and girl who were killed at the college when she had a visitor whose existence Detective Thompson doubted. Almost unwillingly, as if refusing to acknowledge a fact made it untrue, Athena sat up and looked toward the space beside the door where the voice had come from.

  There against the wall was a shadow. The shadow she had seen in the daylight yesterday. As she had done yesterday, the figure had snuck into her room and hid behind the door while it was open. And just like yesterday, Athena failed to check behind the door when she closed it, not like it would have helped in either case. Athena involuntarily hyperventilated and managed to breathe out, “Who are you?” The figure ignored the question and walked slowly toward her.

  “If a person sins and does what is forbidden in any of the Lord’s commands, even though she does not know it, she is guilty and will be held responsible,” the figure whispered again.

  “Why are you doing this?” Athena asked, her voice shaking.

  “If a person sins and does what is forbidden in any of the Lord’s commands, even though she does not know it, she is guilty and will be held responsible.”

  “What does that mean?” Athena asked again, more desperately. The figure stopped and leaned down to her. Athena was frozen in fear, shaking involuntarily, like a deer in a car’s headlights.