Why did Junior look so strange?
Ricky pushed his brother’s spotty T-shirt up over the blubbery, hairy chest and belly.
He shook his head in the utmost dismay.
There was no intricate way to put it. Junior’s once-proud and very prominent beer gut . . . was gone.
Had he been dieting?
He remained there awhile, sorting his thoughts. He supposed he should call an ambulance, but that might not be the smartest thing to do right now. The local ambulances were at the Point, no doubt recovering the burned bodies of David Something-or-other and his little fox of a daughter. It would seem an odd coincidence. And an ambulance call might bring some police questioning with it.
In time, Ricky straggled up.
He went to the kitchen, grabbed another beer, then wandered open-eyed around the house. He didn’t turn the lights on; he needed it calm and dark, to help him think on what to do.
He wandered around some more in the dark, then found himself in the living room. He didn’t know where he was going, what he was even doing. This was redneck mourning: shuffling around in your dark house with a beer in your hand and a thousand-yard stare. . . .
With his next step, something crinkled under his foot.
A glance down showed him a sheet of paper.
Movement snagged the corner of his eye. He spun around, and—
His second beer of the night shattered, full, on the floor.
A thin figure stood staring at him from the hall that led to the bedrooms. It was so dark Ricky couldn’t see. Just a figure there, something barely more substantial than a shadow . . .
A burglar? It must be. But, boy, did he pick the wrong house to burgle! There was nothing to steal in
Unless . . .
“Who the fuck’re you, scumbag?” Ricky challenged.
The figure looked grainy standing there in the dark. It said nothing.
“I’m gonna . . .” But Ricky stalled through a thought. It finally occurred to his not-so-spectacular brain that maybe this figure was the guy who killed Junior somehow.
The figure said this, in a low, grating voice like some slow, black liquid oozing up his throat:
“Your brother is in hell. . . .”
And the figure, in a split second, withdrew into the hall.
“I am gonna kill you so motherfuckin’ dead, you motherfucker!” Ricky bellowed out in his loudest sociopathic rage. His bulk tore down the hall, boots thudding. In the dim darkness he spotted an edge of the figure disappearing into Junior’s bedroom. A second later Ricky was there, eyes sweeping back and forth in the dark.
There was no one else in the room.
But the window stood open, framing moonlit darkness.
Then that utterly bizarre voice seemed to gush around his head in a mad circle:
“Your useless brother is now a fat whore for the devil’s minions, as you too will be, very soon. . . .”
Ricky stared in the dark. This time the voice had seemed to have no source. It came from everywhere, or nowhere.
He thrust his head out the window and saw the figure standing between some trees at the very end of the yard.
A cloud moved off; then a bar of moonlight fell ever so briefly across the figure’s face, and Ricky’s teeth ground, because he knew who it was. . . .
And then the figure’s voice returned one last time, not from the figure itself but again a mushlike gurgle churning around Ricky’s head as it bade its final promise before the figure disappeared.
The voice said this: “Curse thee.”
Running after him would be pointless. Ricky pulled back into the room, confused, sick, and enraged. But something tempered that rage—even sociopaths felt fear.
He took deep breaths in the dark bedroom. Now instead of the evil voice it was the sound of cicadas that flowed into the room, and it was then that Ricky realized he was still holding the piece of paper he’d found in the living room.
He turned on the light and looked at it.
A single word was scrawled on a sheet of white paper, in something like brown chalk:
“I want you out of there right now! More murders? That place is dangerous.”
Patricia sat comfortably on the bed. Sunlight streamed into the room, warming her face. It was Byron she was talking to on her cell, and the previous, very loud exclamation had been his response when she’d told him about the burning last night, and the gruesome deaths of David Eald and his daughter. “Honey, you’re overreacting again. It’s just some people way out on the Point who got involved with drugs—”
“And those two people who got murdered the other night—what was their name? The Hilds? The Halds? Whatever! They were involved in drugs, too! Which is why I want your butt in your car right
Patricia rolled her eyes. “There’s plenty of drug-related crime in D.C., but we don’t move because of it.”
“That’s four murders in a week,” Byron countered. “No, five. Don’t forget about Dwayne, the whole reason you went back to that nutty place.”
“The Ealds weren’t murdered. Their place burned down, probably an accident. It’s actually kind of common in makeshift meth labs. Making the stuff involves several flammable solvents.”
“That’s supposed to put me at ease? It’s okay because it’s
“No, but I’m just saying—”
“And it could just as easily be that someone else torched the place, couldn’t it? Another turf murder. Didn’t you say the Hilds were murdered by a rival drug gang for operating on their turf?”
“Well, it’s possible. That’s what the police think. But . . .” She paused over the phone.
“Promise.”
She laughed. “I promise!”
“So what are you going to do today? Chew tobacco? Sit on the porch in a rocking chair?”
“Agan’s Point isn’t quite
“You shouldn’t be driving into town; you should be driving
She just shook her head and continued. “And then I’ll probably just hang around the house and help Judy with some things.” She began to tell him about the big clan cookout tomorrow—if the Squatters still had it now—but as she talked, her focus dissolved. Was that a splattering she heard? Yes, and a hiss. She noticed then that her bedroom door was open a crack, and as she peered down the hall, she saw that the bathroom door, too, stood open a few inches.
