“Not soon enough,” Cathy said quietly in a dead voice, sitting up in Sandra Davis’ lap as the last memories of light faded from her retinas.
There was another metallic click as John pulled back the hammer of his revolver, bringing it to eye level as he wheeled away from the window and closer to the girls. His unseen face had become taut and expressionless, his lips becoming invisible thin lines across the bottom of his face. In his mind, he was instantly twenty years younger, could walk and see perfectly, and could still fire off three rounds in less than a second.
-click-
It came again, with no reason this time. He glanced from the girls to the kitchen, searching for some explanation for the sound and finding none. Swallowing hard, he pushed his chair another inch forward, his palms sweaty and shaking.
Something slammed against the front door and he spun the chair on a dime, aiming the pistol at it. Whatever it was had been so hard and violent that it continued to shake the walls of the house almost ten seconds later.
Cathy nudged away Sandra’s attempt to pull her closer again, swallowing back a mouthful of moisture before she could speak. “Mike?” she said finally, her voice small and wet.
John raised a bushy eyebrow towards the door, tapping his tongue against the back of his teeth for a moment contemplatively. “Mike?” he called out, his voice loud and authoritative in a way Cathy had never heard before.
There was another thud, louder than the first. Light was seen as the door moved in for a split second then settled back into its frame.
“Mike, if that’s you say something or knock normal, son,” John yelled again, closing one eye to aim as he raised the gun again.
There was a long, tense moment when nobody breathed. Cathy refused to blink as she awaited some response from Mike.
There was another thud. This one so hard it cracked the wood around the deadbolt.
John fired the gun twice, creating two forty-five-millimeter holes in the door instantly. The light from the street shone in in two long lines as burnt gunpowder wafted its way out of the barrel, floating into the atmosphere and dissipating slowly. For a moment their ears rang loudly, then there was no sound. His hand throbbed with a dull ache. He’d forgotten how much the gun kicked, as well as how his heart raced with every shot fired. When he was sure this was over he’d have to take one of his pills to slow it back down before his angina acted up. Even now he felt that pain in his chest, like the world’s worst case of indigestion just a few inches too high to actually be that.
He turned his head back towards the girls again, smiling at them even though he knew they couldn’t see him through the darkness.
-click-
John’s eyes went wide as all the hairs on Cathy’s body stood on end. She could almost see his opaque yellow claws tapping against the door.
He turned back around and pulled back the hammer again, willing the joints in his trigger finger to bend again.
-clink-
-clink- -clink-
Sandra stared into the darkness, pulling on Cathy’s shoulder again. This time the girl relented, laying her head against her throbbing heart, and for a moment Sandra forgot who was comforting whom.
Cathy didn’t sob or moan now, made no sound at all. She willed her eyes to take in more of the light, trying to see what she already knew was there. Her head twitched from one side to the other every few moments, her mind continuously tricking her into thinking she saw the aquamarine eyes of the Black Womb in her peripheral vision.
John lowered his revolver slightly, turning his chair so that he faced the girls while keeping his eyes trained on the hallway that led down to the basement entrance. That was where the killer had come in through, he was sure of it. He lowered his gun slightly, the hand that held it shaking. It stopped after a moment as he turned away from the hall toward Sandra and Cathy. His heart-shaped face drew down in a frown that seemed to melt his features, his eyes small and dark underneath his bushy eyebrows.
“What is it, John?” Sandra whispered, leaning in slightly to make sure she was heard.
He opened his mouth to respond, blood dripping from it in a long trail into his lap as his gun dropped to the floor and slid underneath the couch. The blood looked as black as the Womb’s in the moonlight as more spewed out, his mouth still moving without a sound as he tried to tell them something. “Run,” he managed to force out, as a shadowy figure stood up from behind his chair.
Cathy’s eyes went wide in paralyzed fear as she looked at it, backlit and powerful behind John’s body.
It shoved something forward from behind the chairs brown leatherback and John’s chest exploded outward, spraying Cathy and Sandra with hundreds of tiny droplets of blood spatter.
Sandra screamed as they both scrambled to their feet, running past the killer and into the hallway, bumping her shin into the end table as they went.
The killer made no movement to intercept them, the blackened head turning only slightly to watch as they went.
John finally fell to the floor in a heap, the thud of his form shaking the house. Blood still oozed slowly from his mouth as he forced his head up, feeling his energy ebb slowly out of the hole the killer had made in his lower back. Somewhere deep inside him, the spiteful cop who enjoyed Gallows Humor chuckled at the monster that had cut into
