In the Dark of the Night

He followed, outwardly calm but barely able to contain the excitement spreading through him.

His grip tightened on the object concealed beneath his cloak.

The scalpel.

The scalpel whose need to work seemed almost as great as his own.

• • •

TIPPY LAY CURLED on the chair cushion, her eyes wide in the moonlit darkness, her ears flicking to catch the sound of any movement the darkness might hide even from her sharp eye.

Suddenly her body tensed.

There it was! One tiny sound nearly lost in the cacophony of crickets and frogs at the water’s edge.

Nearly lost, but not quite.

She knew that sound. She’d been waiting for it.

A mouse.

Silently, the cat stood, stretched, and jumped lightly from the chair to the patio, then stopped to listen again.

Her ears twitched, and caught the sound once more: by the woodpile at the edge of the trees.

Slowly, quietly, one soft step at a time, Tippy crept through the grass, ears forward, eyes trained on her destination.

She heard the mouse gnawing on something hard.

As she drew closer, she slowed nearly to a standstill, fixing the exact location.

A blade of grass moved.

She froze, sniffed.

Something else was in the night.

Something that caught not only Tippy’s attention, but the mouse’s as well.

A moment later the breeze wafted the scent of the mouse into her nostrils, and Tippy crouched, her tail twitching in readiness, her hind feet moving to find a grip on the damp grass.

The mouse, unaware of the danger nearby, went back to its meal.

Tippy slunk a step closer. Paused.

Another step.

She could smell more than just the mouse now: she could smell its nest as well. It wasn’t far away — just under a nearby board.

The mouse stopped, sitting up to look out over the grass, its eyes glinting like two tiny beacons in the moonlight.

Tippy tensed, trembling as she readied herself to pounce.

And in the instant she began her spring, a pair of hands grabbed her from behind.

Tippy splayed her claws, ready to do battle with the unseen attacker, but before she could react, she was flipped over onto her back. She kicked out with her powerful hind legs but caught nothing with her claws.

Her mouth gaped open to utter a yowl of fury, but even as the sound began to form in her throat a searing pain sliced through her belly.

She heard, rather than felt, her skin rip as two hands pulled her apart.

Then she knew no more.

A few moments later the crickets and frogs resumed their nighttime chorus.

The mouse nosed its way out of its nest, smelled a new scent, but deemed it to be of no danger.

Safe, it darted through the grass to resume its meal.

THE ROOM THE woman had led him to was so cold he could see his breath plume out in a steaming cloud, and the only light came from a gas street lamp outside the window.

The skewed rectangle of light lay directly on the woman’s bed.

The bed where she lay, her painted lips curled back in a grimace that could have been mistaken for a smile.

But there was no smile in her eyes.

Her eyes were fixed and empty and beginning to glaze as she stared into eternity.

From her neck to her groin, though, she was exquisite, her skin laid open to expose all the secrets concealed within her body. Her entrails steamed in the cold, and scarlet trickles of blood still spilled over the edges of the slash.

He tortured himself by watching and waiting, holding off, tantalizing himself with the pleasure that was soon to come.

But not yet. Not yet. Not quite yet.

He fixed every detail in his mind so that later he would be able to revisit this girl and savor the gifts she had to offer. He would visit her many times in his memory, and in his dreams.

Only when he had committed every detail of her exposed body to his memory, but before the freezing chill in the air turned the best part cold, did he finally drop the scalpel on the bloody bedspread and plunge his bare hands into her warm viscera.

ERIC JERKED AWAKE with a sob.

He sat straight up in bed, utterly lost in the dark, his mind still full of the nightmare that had gripped him a moment ago.

His heart pounded so hard he saw red orbs glowing in the darkness around him.

Red, like the blood that filled the corpse into which he’d plunged his hands.

He gagged, rolled off the bed, and dashed to the bathroom, groping for the switch by the door, finding it.

Bright white light seared his eyes but freed him from the terror of the dream. He squinted, blinked, then saw his own image in the mirror.

He was still dressed in the clothes he’d worn yesterday.

His mind began to clear.

It had just been a nightmare.

His relief drained his strength away and he leaned against the sink for a moment, staring at himself in the mirror. His face was ashen.

Dark smudges lay beneath each eye, and sweat stood out on his forehead and upper lip.

His heart still hammered, and the details of the dream began to replay in his mind.

He needed to look at his hands, but he didn’t want to, terrified of what he might see.

He could still feel the slimy softness of the girl’s insides, could still hear the wet sounds his fingers had made as he’d plunged them into her torn body.

His stomach heaved and he barely made it to the toilet before his mouth filled with vomit.

When the nausea passed, he took a deep breath, steeled himself, and then finally looked down.

Looked at his hands.

Nothing.

No blood.

Eric raised his hands to eye level and looked first at his palms and then at the backs.

He examined his fingernails.

Clean. No trace of blood at all.

Yet he could so clearly remember the feeling of plunging them inside her—“Stop!” he whispered out loud. “It was only a dream.”

He splashed cold water on his face, filled the water glass and drank it down, then closed the lid on the toilet and sat for a moment.

The cold hard tile on the floor felt solid beneath his feet, and finally his pulse began to slow.

He waited, putting off the moment when he would have to go back into the bedroom where the nightmare might be waiting to torture him once more.