Black Creek Crossing

Blood.

It was everywhere, on his hands and on his shirt, and on his pants and on the walls and the rug and everywhere else he looked. But mostly it was on the bed.

The sheets were crimson with it, and the hair of the still form that lay beneath the sheet was matted with it, and it was smeared on the headboard and the pillows and the blanket that lay at the foot of the bed.

Marty rose from the chair in front of the fireplace and walked slowly toward the bed. It was almost as if he was floating, for he felt nothing under his feet.

Nor could he hear anything. The silence around him was complete — not a creaking floorboard, or a whisper of wind from beyond the house, nor any of the other sounds of the night.

No insects or frogs chirruping in the darkness.

No low murmuring of birds roosting in the trees.

And no breathing from the form on the bed.

It lay facedown, the flesh of the back lacerated by the knife he’d wielded, slashed in every direction, the skin and flesh laid back so he could clearly see the unmoving ribs that had failed to protect the lungs or the heart.

He reached down and turned it over. It seemed utterly weightless, moving as if it were somehow floating above the bed rather than lying deep in the blood-soaked sheets. And as it rolled over, the sticky matted hair fell away from the face, and Marty gazed at the visage of death that was smiling up at him, the lips drawn back in a rictus around stained teeth, the deep-sunk eyes gazing sightlessly up at him, but seeming to peer directly into his soul.

As he gazed down into the face of his wife, the silence was finally pierced by a whispering voice, so faint at first that Marty barely heard it at all. But as the seconds slipped by — seconds that seemed to stretch out into eternities — the faint whispers coalesced into words.

“The other one…”

“Not done…”

“The other…”

“You want to… you know you want to… .”

As the voice kept whispering, the still form on the bed slowly began to sit up. The bloody sheets fell away, revealing the carnage beneath. His wife’s throat was slashed open, the already shrinking skin pulling back to expose the torn flesh and ligaments. Her breasts had been slashed away too, and her chest laid open to reveal her heart.

But it wasn’t any kind of heart that Marty Sullivan had ever seen — not even in the worst horror movie he’d ever gone to.

This was a black mass of muscle, crawling with worms and maggots.

And it was beating — throbbing in a slow rhythm that spewed a stream of maggots from its puncture wounds with every beat.

Transfixed, Marty Sullivan stood still as the right arm of the living corpse began to rise.

The hand reached out, as if to seize him.

He shrank away, but it didn’t matter.

The forefinger, its nail torn away and hanging only by a thread of cuticle, pointed directly at him, and he felt his flesh begin to crawl as if he himself had just felt the touch of death.

The mouth opened and a croaking voice erupted from the mangled throat.

“You have to,” the voice said. “You want to!”

The finger came closer, and as he felt its touch, a convulsion seized Marty.

An instant later he was wide awake.

His heart was pounding, and the echo of the voice was still in his head: You have to… you want to… .

He lay still, and the images of the dream began to fade. He could hear Myra breathing next to him — the long, slow, even rhythms of sleep.

She wasn’t dead. He hadn’t killed her. It was only a dream.

“You want to, Marty,” the voice whispered again. “You need to. Go on, Marty… do it. Do it now.”

Listening to the voice in his head, knowing what it was telling him to do, Marty Sullivan rose silently from the bed and slipped out of the room, leaving his wife’s sleep undisturbed.

A moment later he stood at the door to Angel’s room, his hand on the knob.

“Go on, Marty,” the voice whispered. “You know what you want… go on… she wants it too … she’s a whore, Marty. She’s only a whore …

“She’s your whore… ”

Listening to the voice, Marty turned the knob of Angel’s bedroom door and let himself in.

The moon had set when Angel awoke, and the shadows on the wall had vanished into nearly total blackness. Even the sounds of the night had fallen silent.

But what had awakened her?

She lay still, listening.

Nothing.

But then she heard a sound — the creak of a loose floorboard.

Now she could feel something — a presence in the room, close by her bed.

Then she heard a single word, uttered in a whisper so low she almost thought she was imagining it: “Whore.”

Another floorboard squeaked, and she felt the presence in the room draw closer.

The voice whispered again, repeating the loathesome word once more.

Angel felt her heart pound, and she began repeating the words her mother had spoken only a few hours ago: “He loves you, and he’d never do anything to hurt you… he loves you and he’d never do—”

“Whore!”

The word struck her with a force that was almost physical, and at the exact moment the word was uttered, she felt a hand touching her.

Touching her chest at exactly the spot where her breasts were beginning to grow.

Terrified, too frightened even to scream, she lay perfectly still, praying that if she didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t cry — not so much as a whimper — it would stop.

He would go away, and the sounds of the night would begin again, and moonlight would stream in the window, and she would be safe.

Instead, the hand on her chest pressed harder, then moved away. For an instant Angel felt a glimmer of hope. But then the hand was back, this time gently pulling the covers away so that all that covered her budding breasts was the thin cotton of her pajama tops.

Fingers reached out of the darkness and began unfastening the buttons of her pajama tops.

Angel clenched her jaw against the scream rising in her throat, and her body stiffened as she tried to prepare herself for the terrible thing that was about to happen.

She felt the heat of the hand poised just above her left breast.

Then, just as she felt the rough skin of a heavily callused hand brush against her nipple, Angel heard a hissing sound.

The hand on her breast was jerked away.

For a few interminably long seconds there was an eerie stillness in the room.

Angel lay perfectly still, too frightened even to breathe now.

More seconds passed — more eternities — but still she didn’t take a breath. And in the stillness and the darkness, she felt the unseen hand moving toward her once again, like a viper slithering silently through deep grass, moving invisibly toward its prey.

Her skin crawled as she felt the hand grow nearer.

Then, out of the darkness, the hissing sound came again, followed by a crash and a brief grunt of pain. A moment later she heard the sound of her bedroom door opening and closing.