Brian was just about to squeeze his trigger in the kitchen when he realized the shadow he saw in the gloom was a big vacuum cleaner.
After a heated deliberation among the faculty members of his mind, he had somehow found the courage to switch on the light in the living room, pointing his gun around at every slightest tick. Then, he had traced the blood on the floor all the way to the kitchen doorsill, beyond which superficial shadows nestled.
Although he hadn’t come in with a self-delusion that it was going to be a walk-over (in fact, he’d already concluded that his chances of surviving the battle were fifty-fifty at best), he didn’t realize it would be this challenging. Just how the hell would he know when it was right to shoot in the dark-and if he was shooting the right person? On the other side of the coin, how much risk would he expose himself to by lighting up the otherwise gloomy house?
Not daring to flip on the switch in the kitchen yet, he quickly worked his penlight, letting the thin beam from it divulge the secrets of all the murky crannies as much as it could. Then, he flipped the light on.
On the floor, as he had expected, there was a smear of blood. It covered a portion of the area at the foot of the sink, moved back towards the doorway, but then it discontinued.
He stepped back out of the kitchen, heard a sound behind him, and wheeled around.
It was Craig, already in the living room and training his own gun, too.
From upstairs, the floor creaked.
Brian gestured to Craig to find a safe vantage, stay put there, and watch while he went upstairs.
Cautiously, Brian proceeded.
There were two rooms upstairs, on the opposite sides of each other. The door of the first was left ajar, faint light oozing out through the opening. The second was closed. He tapped the first open, and quickly covered the view it afforded with his gun.
No one in there.
He stepped out, and just as he thought of how to handle the closed door of the next room, the floor creaked behind him.
With his heart jamming against his chest, he wheeled around swiftly, his gun trained, his trigger-finger almost twitching.
But no one was stalking him.
Yet, the creaking sound issued again. Less pronounced this time.
In the weak illumination produced by the light from the first room, Brian realized he was facing a closet. It nestled in the wall around the landing, and it was the location of the sound.
He stole closer.
Maybe the son-of-a-bitch was watching him from inside the closet through the cracks, readying his own gun, too.
Brian gritted his teeth as he reached out to yank the door open.
The scream was loud, and the force that pushed the door open was enormous. The wooden slab smashed Brian in the face before he even had a chance to calm Holly down.
“Oh, shit,” he grunted, grabbing his nose and simultaneously trying not to fumble the gun in a wrong way.
Holly pulled Robert along with her, intending to bolt past Brian.
Brian detached his hand from his nose, caught her arm, spun her around, and quickly covered her mouth to stifle her scream.
In his chamber, The Outcast came to at the sound of a woman’s short-lived scream. He blinked at the faint beam of light that seemed determined to make its presence known in spite of its inadequacy. It was coming from some other part of the house.
Something had changed. He didn’t go to bed with any lights on. Someone must have broken into his home. A burglar.
But what about the scream?
The scream made him remember. He wasn’t actually in his chamber. He was rather on the battlefield. And that was the woman screaming. He had to kill her. And her son. And everyone else that didn’t belong to him. Then, he would begin to reign.
He had groped around and grabbed the edge of a table to support himself up, and he was already making his ascent while the thoughts roamed around his head.
He gritted his teeth, determined to ignore his pains.
He listened. There were muffled voices coming from upstairs. Whispers from a man and a woman.
He moved, standing by the side of the door now, watching a shadow that danced around the wall in the hall, and then on the floor, wandering back and forth, back and forth.
The Outcast wrapped his shattered hand around one of his weapons, yanked it out of his robe. Ready to strike when the time was right.
The shadow moved closer.
The Outcast melded into the region immediately beyond the jamb, away from the rays of light, but still at a point where he could keep a good watch over the advancement of the shadow.
In no time at all, the shadow grew larger until it became solid, transforming into a figure in a cop’s uniform.
It bent down, examining something on the floor.
The Outcast knew he shouldn’t scream. But he also knew his cancerous rage-and the sweet realization that one more enemy was about to be felled-would make him unable not to scream.
So, he screamed as he leaped.
When Craig Nelson had taken a vow to protect the inhabitants of Ogre’s Pond with integrity and altruism, he hadn’t understood the entire ramifications of the deal he had made.
But now, with cold sweat seeping out of his scrotum and from beneath his armpits, and with none of those people available to offer something to cool him off in order to help him cope with his challenge, he thought he had made a very huge mistake. He should have considered taking a little longer time to weigh all the pros against the corresponding cons before finalizing his decision to join the Sheriff’s Department. Today was the harvest season-the appointed time to reap the fruit of his rashness.
He watched Brian tip-toe upstairs.
Then, he considered moving to a safe spot.
He moved to the kitchen, pointing his gun at every corner, as if Brian might have overlooked those spots, and thereby missed the killer when he had checked earlier. He was just turning around to walk back to the door when Holly’s scream shattered the quiet.
He jumped, but when he realized it was her, and that she had reacted to Brian’s presence rather than the intruder’s, he sighed.
Out in the hallway now, with his heart beating fast, Craig walked back and forth. Right on the spot, he felt like calling out to Brian to get the woman and the kid so they could just get the hell out of the house.
But then, he thought he saw the missing link on the floor. He moved closer and bent over to check. At that moment, gazing down at the tiny drop of blood, he smelled the danger nearby. Even before the crazy shriek that rushed out from the dark room located to his right, he had already started rising and turning-which was good, because the keen-bladed knife that would have been buried deep in the center of his back only sliced through his
