Smash. A great black gloved hand broke through the window of the house, grabbing Dent. He felt the broken glass rip at his flesh as he was pulled into the home.
He looked around and saw the corpses of an elderly couple sprawled onto the floor. Dent could tell that they had been dead a long time by the way the flesh was beginning to rot away, their icy cold gazes begging him for aid he could not give. Then Dent realized... If they’ve been dead that long, this guy must’ve planned all this.
Dent’s eyes went wide as the killer stabbed once. Twice. Three times, then threw his now limp body to the floor. The killer put the weapon away, replacing it with a small scalpel. He bent over, stepping into the pool of fresh blood, letting the small, sharp knife cut through Dent’s tender stomach flesh, making a long line all the way down...
CHAPTER FOUR:
SPIDER WEB
Sara Johnson was home alone that night. Her parents were over at Jamie Dawkins’ house, helping his parents through this ‘hard time’.
Why do people do that? she wondered silently. They go over to comfort people they’ve barely spoken to before after a tragedy happens, to ‘make things better’, but they usually end up just making things worse. They remind these families of their loss, when these people should be getting into a routine to distract themselves from it. Some people think it best to face things like this. Sheyeah. Right.
Sitting at her desk with her laptop in front of her, she ran a hand through her blonde hair, messing it into a tangled knot on one side. Taking a bite out of her Kit-Kat bar, she signed out of her e-mail account after deleting all the old messages from Jamie. The chocolate goodness gave her a slight lift that she had been in desperate need of and she couldn’t help but smile as she took another nibble, brushing wafer crumbs off the breast of her shirt.
-BEEP- -BEEP- -BEEP- Sara’s instant messenger called out to her from her computer. She jiggled the mouse a bit to turn off sleep mode, then brought it down to the little yellow man in the corner of her screen.
“Spider?” she asked out loud, reading the name that popped up as the message’s author. “Who the hell is Spider?”
She double clicked on the name to receive the instant message, and began to read it aloud. Her eyes went wide with fright and she backed away from the computer. She raced over to her door and locked it, then froze in mid-step and listened. From downstairs came the slow creek of footsteps.
“No way. It’s just some moron screwing with me,” she whispered to herself, then looked back at the screen.
I’m outside house.
She looked around the room carefully, her eyes darting every which way, searching for any sign of movement or life.
-BEEP-!
She jumped with fright, quickly putting her hand on her chest. With tears forming in her eyes, she went around to the computer and pressed enter.
Go to the window, came the new message, as cryptic and disturbing as the one before.
As salt water found its way down Sara’s cheek, she made her way over to the window. The blinds were closed. She grabbed the swinging rope that would open them, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. Biting her lip, she mustered up the strength to pull down on it, causing the venetian blinds to rise.
Stepping over to the window and looking down at the ground below, she saw nothing. Leaning out, she turned her head to look out to the side of the driveway. Still, there was nothing.
She let out a long sigh, realizing she’d been holding her breath the entire time she was at the window.
“Sara!” the voice came suddenly as a head with scruffy dark brown hair popped out from the side of the window.
“Ah!” Sara let out a short yelp and held her chest as she realized who it was. “Xander! What are you doing here?”
“Good day to you too,” he said cheerily, climbing in through the window as he wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“You jerk!” she yelled, slapping him playfully on the arm. “What are you doing here?”
“My parents went over to Jamie’s too. I thought we could hang out a bit.” He looked her over once, chuckling. “Have a small heart attack, why don’t you?”
“Shut up! You would too if you got messages like that!”
“Messages?” Xander raised his eyebrows. “What messages?”
“Shut up!” Sara said. “You’re always trying to scare me!”
“Usually yeah, but not this time, no.”
They both stepped over to the computer and looked at the messages. “Are you telling me that isn’t you?”
“Come on, you know my tag is Captain America. Besides, how could I have messaged this and gotten to your house in that amount of time? This is probably just some freak trying to scare you. It’s just a cool coincidence that I came at the same time.”
She nodded, acknowledging the impossibility of him sending those messages. She glanced down at the plastic bag in his hand, then looked up at him with a grin, her eyes both expectant and more than a little flirtatious. She did know him so well. “Movies?”
“Yup. One chick-flick, one for me, and a comedy for both.”
“Should last us all night. What do you plan on doing in that amount of time?”
He smiled, blushing despite all his attempts not to. “I got Sweet November for you, Apocalypse Now for me, and Big Daddy for the required comedy.”
“Let’s pop ‘em in,” she laughed, as the two headed downstairs.
Nurse Riley was on duty early Thursday morning. It was only six o’clock and still quite
