keeping pressure on the button. But Fran hadn’t heard the jingle of keys hitting the floor. The batteries? If they’d died, why wasn’t Al answering? Had he suddenly gone deaf?
Perhaps he’d fallen. Or had a heart attack. Or a stroke. That made more sense than Al playing games. Fran probably needed to get to him, to help him. He might be dying.
Fran tried to let go of the shelf, but her hands wouldn’t open. The bones in her legs turned into rubber, and she had a hard time keeping her balance.
Then the flashlight came back on.
A sound escaped Fran’s mouth that was halfway between a laugh and a sob. She squinted at the light, roughly ten feet away from her, and it brought her more pure joy than she’d felt as a child on Christmas morning.
“Al, what—”
The light went off again. Fran waited for an explanation, an apology.
None came.
“Al?” she squeaked.
He didn’t answer. And once again the darkness pressed down on Fran, suffocating her, making her feel trapped and alone and without any hope. Her breath came faster, shallower, and she felt the blood leaching out of her head, the edges of unconsciousness closing in.
And then the flashlight was on.
Then off.
Then on.
Off.
On.
What the hell was Al doing? The light hovered at chest level, so he hadn’t fallen. But he wasn’t making any attempt to come closer, wasn’t speaking, wasn’t doing anything but pointing the beam at her face.
Then the light began to move.
Off of her face. To the freezer. To the sink. To the dish rack. Slow, like a spotlight following an actor.
Then to the oven. Over to the fryer, lingering there.
And finally down to the floor, where Al lay on his stomach, one hand clutching the spurting slash in his neck, the other clawing at the tiles, trying to crawl through the growing puddle of his own blood.
The light went out again.
It was never a good time to have a panic attack. But in an actual situation that called for panic, or required immediate action, it was deadly. Fran had gone from hyperventilating to being unable to draw a breath. Her head pounded, and her lungs screamed, and her entire body became jelly except for her death grip on the shelving.
Fran knew about fear. She knew its power to incapacitate. She knew it affected a person physically, mentally, and emotionally and that it became so overwhelming it pushed away all thoughts other than survival. But in some cases fear didn’t precipitate fight or flight. Instead it induced the deer-in-the-headlights response. True fear could be an out-of-body experience, watching what was happening to you, yet unable to do anything about it.
Fran could picture herself in the darkness. She saw the terrified expression on her face, eyes wide, mouth hanging open. She saw her knees quiver and her shoulders shake. She saw the tears welling up, tears she couldn’t blink away because she was too afraid to even blink.
Then she heard a footstep on the tile floor.
Then another.
Whoever did that to Al was coming for her.
Fran gasped, managing to get some air into her lungs.
The light went on, focusing on Al. A black boot stepped on his neck, pinning his face to the floor, making the blood squirt from the wound in his throat. Then a hand in a black glove reached down to him—a hand holding a knife.
Fran couldn’t close her eyes, couldn’t turn away, as the knife went to work on Al.
When Al finally stopped moving, the light went off again.
The silence that followed was the loudest thing Fran had ever heard. Louder than the three hours she spent upside down in the car, her husband Charles dead in the driver’s seat beside her, hanging by his seat belt, his blood dripping onto her face—
Something hit Fran in the chest, bringing her back to the present, making her flinch. It clung to her shirt. Warm and wet, like a towel. What was it? What had he thrown at her?
She shook her shoulders, but it didn’t move. Fran needed to let go of the shelf, needed to release her hands so she could knock off whatever—
The flashlight came on, pointing at her. Fran looked at her chest and saw something red and rubbery and shredded hanging there. Something wearing Al’s walrus mustache.
And then the light went off.
Fran screamed. She screamed and screamed and then her paralysis broke and her hands opened up and she batted Al’s face off herself, arms flailing out as if she were being attacked by a swarm of bees.
After five seconds of pure, explosive panic, Fran froze, the cry dying in her throat, her hands stretched out into the darkness surrounding her.
Another footstep.
Then a low chuckle.
Strangely, Fran no longer thought of herself or the horror of what was happening. Instead, she thought of Duncan. Her son was a miniature version of Charles, except he had Fran’s pale blue eyes—so pale they looked like ice. He had just turned ten, an age when it really wasn’t cool to hang out with Mom anymore. But Duncan still tolerated her attempts at playing catch and her lame efforts at video games. He even allowed her to pick the movies they saw together, occasionally sitting through something more serious than a Jim Carrey comedy.
She thought of the walks they took when he was younger, and the family vacations they’d gone on when Duncan’s father was still alive, and the day he was born, after sixteen grueling hours of labor, and how holding him for the first time made her cry with unrestrained joy. She thought of his teenage years, just around the corner, which he’d have to face without any parents if she died.
Fran couldn’t let that happen.
Reaching behind her, Fran felt along the shelves, her hands clasping around a five-pound can of tomato paste. She raised it over her head and waited.
The flashlight came on again, less than five feet away from her.
Fran threw the can as hard as she could. She didn’t wait to find out if she’d hit the killer or see what damage she’d done. She was already running away from him, climbing on the desk, seeking the window to the alley.
Her fingers met cool glass, covered in a film of grease and dirt and cobwebs. She found the latch, tried to turn it.
Painted over. Wouldn’t budge.
Frantic, she reached around on the desktop, found the phone, and cracked it hard against the window.
Glass shattered, letting in cool night air and the pungent smell of garbage. The window was small, and shards still jutted from the pane, but Fran forced her upper body into the hole. Her hair snagged, but she pushed forward, scooting her chest through the opening as glass cut at her palms and elbows. Then her hands touched the brick on the outside of the building, and she was dragging her hips out, thinking that she’d actually made it, thinking she’d actually gotten away, and her fear transformed into a crazy, almost hysterical sense of relief.
That’s when the killer grabbed her ankle.
• • •
Sheriff Ace Streng fired twice at the figure coming up the stairs, the muzzle flashes illuminating something black and enormous. The bullets didn’t slow it down, so Streng ran left, to the door on the other side of the hall.
A spare bedroom, unlit, with a musty odor that indicated it hadn’t been used in a while. Streng found the window, hurried to it, and fumbled for the lock.
He chanced a look behind him, saw the figure filling the doorway. A sharp, unpleasant smell filled the room,
