Some friggin’ St. Nicholas Eve this was turning out to be!
First door. I pushed the handle down. Nothing.
One down, one to go.
The creature was still removing bones. Each one was carefully lifted out with the clawed hand, then gently placed in the sack. It was the polar opposite to the way it sliced and diced through Tessa.
The crazy Conclave woman didn’t look anything like the woman who’d wanted to burn me, who’d slapped me, and spat at me. She was becoming flat, just like all the other victims of this thing.
At least we now had our perp. How the fuck we were gonna deal with it was the million-euro question.
Crap.
I was almost at the door.
The way Mrs. Visser had died still didn’t make sense, though. Why was she the only one who hadn’t been torn up in the same way?
Time for thinking later. I didn’t want to end up like Tessa.
At the same time, though, I had the killer. I couldn’t just walk away from it and leave it to get away and slaughter someone else.
Okay, the plan. Get out of here, obviously. Run like fuck. Find a phone. There were no payphones in the city, so I’d have to find some doors to bang on or hopefully happen upon a stranger and rely on their kindness to let me use their precious device. Phones were still as addictive as they were four years ago with their games and streaming and all that jazz. I’d loved mine.
R.I.P.
This plan wasn’t great. What if it chased me? Or ran off?
Right. Facts. If I hung around like some total knob head, I was asking to get myself killed. Being dead wouldn’t help the case or my family, so the priority was to survive. Plus, it wouldn’t be fun for me to have my bones yanked out of me.
Ouch.
Escaping won! I had to rely on the fact that it had two other bodies to get through once it was done with Tessa. Unless it didn’t want them like it seemed to not want me.
Yet.
The last door opened a little, but I met resistance. I put more weight behind my push, and it gave farther, letting out a high-pitched squeal as the metal scratched the stone floor.
The monster’s head snapped around, eyes rolling in my direction.
I’d made a gap big enough for me to squeeze through. Inside, was flickering light from a dying strip bulb.
The creature’s feet tapped the concrete, and it lifted itself higher as if it were getting a better look at me.
Bollocks!
This was it, now or never. I slid into the gap, just fitting through. Without looking back, I slammed the door closed. I braced myself against it, waiting for the inevitable slamming of the creature’s body against the metal as it tried to get to me.
That didn’t happen.
As the light flickered, I saw that I was inside an office. Or what used to be one. There was a broken desk and chair, nothing much else. Moss was growing on the walls, and I could only guess that the nasty stench in the air was rat shit.
Still no banging for my bones behind me yet.
There was another door in the room with a broken windowpane. Cold air rushed through it, whipping about me. I went through it, no resistance this time, and stepped into a corridor with a fire exit at the end, the door slightly ajar.
A short walk to freedom.
Sinterklaas had deemed me worthy of a pressie right now. I was a good boy most of the time—maybe not in the bedroom, but that’s not the place to be wholesome—so, I guess I’d earned this reward to live.
Too easy?
Yeah. Lesson number one—trust sod all.
Still, I wasn’t gonna throw away the opportunity, so I hurried down the weakly lit corridor, the floor slippery under my boots. It was slick with water, probably from a leak somewhere. I yanked open the exit door at the end and stepped out into fresh air.
Yep. I was in the NDSM neighborhood. The lights of Amsterdam-Centrum, sitting across a body of water called IJ that separated the north and central areas of the city, twinkled teasingly—so close, yet so far on the other side of the dark river. A freezing wind bit at my face. Every lungful of cold stung my ribs.
Ferries didn’t cross the river to this part of the north like they used to, not since the area fell into disrepair and violence. Access to the housing estates for the residents still living here was by road or by ferries at safer points down the river. The last ferry crossing here had ended with a hijacking of the boat and five people dead.
I quickly headed away from the shipping building, aiming for a bridge up ahead to cross a branch of water running off the IJ so I could make myself to a crossing point back to Amsterdam-Centrum. The more distance I put between myself and the building, as well as that monster, the better. I could do this. I was focused.
“You!” The big guy leaped into my path.
I stopped. “Wow, thought you’d have been long gone by now.”
“You did this! You killed her!”
“Ah, wish I could take all the credit for that, but afraid to say, it wasn’t me.”
“It may as well have been you! Vile creature! Bringer of doom! Manifestation of sin!”
“Oh, piss off. I’m not in the mood for your shit.”
At least his sledgehammer was still with his dead brothers.
“I will kill you!” he roared.
“Shut up!” I spat. “You want to lead that thing straight to us? The best thing we can do is run and pick this up later.”
His forehead creased with thought, then his eyes narrowed. “I’d never run anywhere with a sinner such as you.”
“Then run the other way, do whatever you want. I don’t give two flying fucks. Just get the hell out of my way.”
He
