“ Only when she’s playing, but it’s just little nibbles and it doesn’t hurt.”
The ferret arched its back and screamed, making a sound like a baby that had been scalded with boiling water. Arty jumped away from the animal, squirming and turning along with Carolina, following the ferret’s frightened gaze and he saw two glowing red eyes staring into the room. Staring at them. Then they faded to black and were gone.
Chapter Four
John Coffee glanced over at the wrapped packages on the passenger seat. Gifts. Carolina was one of the few good things to come out of his life. He smiled as he thought of her eyes, sparkling green as dew lit grass on a fresh morning, her crooked smile showing perfect teeth. Most people wouldn’t believe what he had to tell her, but she would, because they never lied to each other.
It tore at his heart, the thought of telling her, because it would probably steal away her childhood. But she had to be warned, even if it meant the steep price of her innocence. But first he wanted to just sit and talk, gab about baseball, school and whatever else she might be interested in.
He parked across the street and shut off the engine. He had the windows down and he felt a chill as the evening breeze blew through, bringing the scent of the sea and something else.
He sucked in his breath and held it, listening to the silent breeze. An electric charge danced through the air. He tasted a faint rotten egg smell, and he knew he wouldn’t be knocking on his daughter’s door with gifts and a smile and gabbing about the Atlanta Braves this evening.
The wind shifted, taking the faint sulfur smell away, but he’d tasted the familiar scent and knew that she was near. He opened the door, cringing at the sound it made. He knew what he’d tasted on the wind. He opened the glove compartment, took out a small jar and dropped it in a coat pocket. Satisfied that it was secure, he reached back in and took out the holstered forty-five automatic. Not very accurate at distance, but hit a person anywhere at close range and you picked him up and slammed him back about six feet.
He took the gun out of the holster and shifted it to his left hand. There was a reason children feared shadows on the wall and primitive people feared the night. A gun would be useless against whatever tore at their hearts, and he doubted it would be much good against what he was about to face, but he felt naked without it.
The charged air sent the hair on his arms tingling in warning, and he crossed himself.
She was close.
He stepped out of the car, looking up and down the block as he closed the door, checking to see if anyone was watching. The small residential street was lit by a street light at either end, the two in the middle of the block were dark.
Was it coincidence?
She was clever.
It started to rain.
The house was covered in darkness and it reminded him of another dark house on another dark night. It was overcast then too. And, he remembered, it had rained the night he broke into her house at the end of the road. There were stories and legends, whispers and pointing fingers. The locals knew enough to leave the old woman alone. Not him. She was old and he thought she would be easy. Old, she was, and now his daughter might wind up paying, because easy, she wasn’t.
He moved across the lawn with the practiced ease of a burglar, glancing again at the light at the northern end of the street, then at the southern.
Nobody at either end.
The living weren’t out tonight.
He turned his head away from the far off street light and moved his eyes back into blackness, so they would get used to the dark. He wanted to flee and he would have, the locket wasn’t worth it, but Carolina was. He headed toward the side of the house.
There was a space between each house, in most cases covered by bushes or small trees. The houses were about ten feet apart. That space made a perfect den for an animal, or one of the many homeless that were starting to dot the landscape, or an excellent way for a thief to enter a house unobserved.
One of Carolina’s bedroom windows faced the front of the house, but was hidden from the street by a small pine tree. He liked that, as there was no way a passerby could see into his daughter’s bedroom.
Carolina’s other bedroom window faced into the dark space between the two houses. He knew this as surely as any professional housebreaker knows what he’ll find when he enters an empty house through a window. He’d cased the place earlier. He’d been inside when his ex-wife and daughter had been away. In and out without being detected. He was good at his trade.
He closed half the distance between himself and the bushes guarding the space between the houses. He saw something out of the corner of his eye. He turned toward the light at the southern end of the block. A child had just come jogging around the corner on the other side of the street.
He sprinted toward an aging Chevy pickup. He was over the side and lying flat on the wooden bed, before the boy was able to cross over to his side of the street. He’d been in the truck for less then a ten count when the boy came struggling by, breathing hard. A boy in a hurry.
He peeked over the side as soon as the boy was by and watched as he climbed the steps and knocked on the door of his daughter’s house. The boy rushed through as soon as the door opened, and even from his position he was able to hear the sound of the deadbolt clicking in place after him.
He wondered why all the lights were out if someone was home, and why let the chubby kid in and not turn them on? Jane would never do that, he thought. Then he figured it out, Jane wasn’t home. Carolina was home alone. She had the lights out because she was frightened and she wanted it to look like nobody was home.
Was it the old woman? Had she seen it?
For a few seconds he hated Jane for leaving her alone. Then he turned the hate toward himself for bringing this down on his daughter, and for not being available when she needed him.
But he was here now.
He swung a leg over the truck’s bed and hopped out. The light in the living room went on.
Why?
He was standing by the truck, trying to work it out, when the light in her room went on. The chubby kid isn’t afraid, he thought, or he wants it to look like someone’s home, an adult maybe. Time to find out.
He closed his eyes for a second and imagined a small sandy island, some palm trees and a fantasy blond in a string bikini. If he was going to die, that’s what he wanted on his mind as he checked out.
He reached into his coat pocket and took out the jar. He kept the gun glued to his left hand as he used the heel of his right palm against the lid to open it. Then holding the jar between thumb and forefinger, he rotated it, filling his right hand with hot pepper. He said a silent prayer to the Blessed Virgin, asking for strength, as he dropped the open jar back into his pocket.
Prayer finished, he took a deep breath, crouched low and moved quickly to the bushes, because if she was here, this is where the old horror would be, in the dark, between the houses. Three feet away, he bent even lower and moved in.
She was on him before he exhaled, battering him like a charging bull, sending him flying backwards, while she raked his face with long fingernails. The force of her attack sent them rolling onto the front lawn. Halfway to the street, with her decaying hands on his throat, he stuck the gun into her stomach and started pulling the trigger.
The sound of the forty-five filled the night as he emptied three rounds into her belly, but the witch held on to his neck with her left hand, while grabbing and flinging the gun aside with her right. After the gun was gone into the night, her right hand joined the left in taking his breath away. Then she relaxed her grip for an instant and he inhaled, expecting to get a great lungful of crisp, clean air, but instead he inhaled the stench of her, a rotting stink that smelled of something long dead.
She wanted him to sense her, to know what she was, before she killed him. She knew where the locket was now. She no longer needed to follow him. She wanted him dead, but not before he suffered. He felt the cold surging
