His mouth was moving frantically now, praying for survival.
Well, it was more of
When he put the phone to his ear, his mouth gaped open. The phone had gone dead-thanks to his destructively mysterious night visitor, who must have tampered with the phone line.
But why was this happening to him? Or better put,
He trembled as a thousand and one questions flitted around his head, each of them unanswered, each of them bringing him chronic migraine.
Did he leave the front door open when he had made the repeated returns to his apartment earlier? Did he forget to lock the goddamned door? He couldn’t remember. Nor could he recall if he’d opened the main front door to gain entrance the last time he had come back inside, or if he’d just gone in straight
Donnie shivered again. And burst into tears. He would soon die tonight, and he didn’t even know it until now.
When he was done crying like an overgrown toddler, he wiped his eyes, set the phone back down on its cradle, and moved closer to the door. Putting his ear to the crack, he listened.
The absolute silence of the apartment frightened him.
Cold beads of sweat speedily formed on his forehead.
He stayed by the door and continued to listen, until the veil of serenity got torn apart by the squeal of tires against the pavement.
The Outcast watched Donnie scurry up and away into the living room, swinging the door shut behind him. He didn’t chase. Not yet. Doing so would make him lose the taste of the bite. He wanted the taste to last, because he enjoyed the taste better when it lasted longer. Of course, he wanted the game to be furious but not necessarily fast. Right now, he wouldn’t chase. He would only wait.
He pried the door separating the foyer from the living room open, peeped in briefly, realizing that Donnie had run upstairs-just as he had imagined Donnie would do.
Fantastic.
Swiftly, The Outcast walked out of the building into his SUV. He drove about forty yards into the moonless woods (he didn’t use the headlights, never used any lights at all while driving, didn’t even have one), killed the engine, and walked back to Donnie’s place, doing all of this as fast as he could.
Back in the living room, he hid and waited.
In the shadows.
For about five minutes after the car had sped away, Donnie didn’t move. He listened further.
The beads of sweat on his forehead had grown bigger, and the bulbous accumulation plopped onto the floor, watering down the tiny pool of blood at his feet. Blood from his broken nose. It was bleeding and throbbing like nobody’s business, but he had
Why didn’t he have a gun? The thought rushed to him all of a sudden, and he felt really stupid to have not considered it all this while. A smarter man, a visionary, would have planned ahead to forestall any danger on a night like this.
He looked around for something he could adopt as a weapon. The best thing at his disposal was a metal coat hanger. Not a stellar offer by a long chalk, but he grabbed it, anyway.
Switching off the light to make himself less of a target, he unlocked the door and opened it, wincing as the hinges squeaked.
A step across the threshold. A creak of the floorboard. More wincing, quick trembling.
He groped along the gloomy landing, looking this way and that, not seeing a lot and expecting to be jumped at any moment, but still hoping like crazy he would go through all of this shit in one piece.
No, he didn’t mind. Screw the blood. And screw the pride. He had to do something quickly, do something to live beyond tonight.
On the staircase now, stealing along the steps-the kind that have emptiness in-between them-and trying to avoid any tell-tale sound at all costs. He held the coat hanger straight ahead of him, shivering, and at that moment, he wondered if he would be able to use his weapon efficiently if the occasion ever arose.
Close to the downstairs landing now. Would he make it through tonight? Make it through to have another chance to smile and enjoy the good stuff life had up for grabs?
He could only hope.
The downstairs was not as murky as the upstairs. He instantly realized the doors-both the one connecting the foyer to the living room as well as the one between the foyer and the main entrance doorway-were open. Lights from the street lamps spilled in through the openings.
Perhaps his stalker was still inside the house? If so, where exactly was it located? Donnie couldn’t turn and run back upstairs. He might be running just into the arms of his assailant by so doing. Right now, his initial ailing courage to progress downstairs became dead altogether. He felt like crying again.
But he had to proceed-or else, the cops and the Coroner’s men would be here pretty soon, turning his body around inquiringly like they did Trevor Carter’s.
He shuddered.
And something leathery lashed out through one of the openings between the steps. It flogged his calves, helping him to make that urgent decision to proceed and stop being a coward.
He screamed when he was struck.
He screamed as he tripped.
He screamed while in flight.
His scream died away when he crashed face-first into the wooden flooring at the foot of the stairs.
From behind him, his attacker
Even before he looked back, Donnie already knew the intruder was barely a couple of feet away.
Donnie was gravely wounded, but he couldn’t afford to let the opportunity of an escape-hell, was there one yet?- elude him. He scrambled to his feet, and at the same time, the creature with the chimpanzee’s features swung its scythe in a wild horizontal arc towards Donnie’s neck.
Ducking and jerking his head away from the scythe’s lethal path-the only remarkable thing he had done so far tonight-Donnie ran out through the open doors.
And The Outcast followed.
The chase would be sweet.
He had known all along that this would be the best kill in a long time. He had planned it.
Having gone through the recent mundane experience with Trevor, The Outcast couldn’t afford to be put through such agony again. It was unbearable, and just reliving it each time made him shudder.
Chapter 10
Thursday, August 13
