There weren’t. The three bulbs in the ceiling fixture stared down, blank and dead. The same with the fixture in the ceiling of the dining area in front of the double windows that looked over the valley.
McCall breathed a tremulous sigh of relief. The pull-shade over the right-hand pane was up. It should have been down. McCall nodded. That explained the sharp snap and the sudden light-the remnants of daylight streaming through the window as the shade popped loose at the instant he touched the light switch. Coincidence, yes. Certainly nothing more.
He swiveled on his good leg and peered into the darkness of the garage. With his body between the jaundiced light and the garage, all he could see was his bulky, dark outline where it had bled across the concrete. He moved to one side.
Even in the dimness he could see clearly the jagged line of a break in the concrete slab of the garage. It looked like it was at least three inches across, but he realized almost immediately that he was seeing a shadow, not the break itself. The concrete was probably offset only a fraction of an inch, but that was enough to send him reeling when he stumbled over it. The crack started along the outer wall, perhaps a dozen feet in from the double- width wooden doors, and twisted like a shadowy rattlesnake across the floor until it disappeared beneath the inside wall that connected with the entryway. Directly in front of him, the edge of the crack glistened wetly.
Blood. His blood. Caught on a crack in the glass-smooth garage floor.
McCall’s mind snapped back to the headlines on the day’s papers, to the calls from investigators and engineers and attorneys. To the threats. And to…
“ Ace.”
His head jerked up and he whirled around, almost pitching himself headfirst across the kitchen floor. It was a whisper that might have been only the passing wind. Or it might have been something more.
No. It can’t be.
He’s dead!
4
“Who’s there?” Ace McCall yelled, his voice midway between a scream and a shriek of anger. “You better get the hell out of here. I’m armed!”
He clenched his fist-not as effective as a gun, he knew from a lifetime of experience, not even as good as a nice, heavy white-ash bat or a long sturdy length of two-by-four, but it was all he had and he knew well enough how to use it.
“Who’s there?” He strained to hear any movement.
Nothing.
He crossed the kitchen slowly, uncomfortably aware of the layered shadows of cabinets and alcoves designed to hide nothing more threatening than crockery and silverware but that now had become abysses of darkness and fear. He crossed the dining room as well, angling his body so that the dim light through the open shade fell just to the right. He wasn’t about to give whoever was there a good glimpse of where he was. He glanced out the window. The lights of Tamarind Valley glittered coldly, like bits of silver ore shattered from a larger piece. Further out, strings of white and red from the freeway cut through the valley like twin, thin coping saw blades.
Craaack!
This time, he knew he had heard it. Deeper in the bowels of the house. A window, perhaps, or a door panel shattering beneath a hammer blow. Something hard and violent. McCall shivered even though beads of sweat stood out on his forehead.
He moved into the living room, skirting the double sliding door that opened onto a small covered patio. In most of the houses in Charter Oaks, the patios were already hedged by pyracantha and hibiscus or half-cloaked with newly planted wisteria or grape vines. But the one behind 1066 Oleander Place was stark, awash with white moonlight that turned shadows into prison bars.
McCall breathed deeper as soon as he was on the other side of the doors, safely in the darkness along the living room wall. He followed the smooth plastered surface with one hand as he crept toward the front of the house. At the entryway, he stopped again. He wanted to yell, could feel a screaming “Get the hell out of my house!” billowing over his tongue and pressing against his teeth, but he forced himself to keep still. To his right was the skull-blank wall separating the entry from the garage. To his left and about a foot in front of him was the black mouth of the hall that led past two bedrooms and a bathroom before it made a right angle and continued into deeper darkness, where it opened onto three more bedrooms and the second bath.
Seven rooms.
In the darkness.
For a second, McCall almost took three strides straight forward, where he could wrench the front door open and burst out of the house and run to his car and get far enough down the hill to stop at some nice safe Mr. and Mrs. Suburbia’s place and call the cops.
Almost.
“ McCall.”
The voice was still less than a whisper. But, he realized, it was far more than just imagination. It chilled Ace McCall to the bone. He recognized it immediately. He knew whose voice it was, and he knew, dammit he knew that the throat that made those sounds was crushed and dead and buried where no one no one would ever find it.
“ McCall.”
Now the whisper was less than a breath.
He turned into the dark hallway. Even during the middle of the day, this part of the house was always gloomy. Windows in the bedrooms were offset from the doors just enough that only filtered light penetrated to the hallway even at noon. After nightfall, the blackness was absolute. He literally couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.
For a moment he heard himself thinking, This can’t be. This isn’t happening. It’s a trick or something.
The best thing to do would be to get the hell back down the hall, rip off the chain lock from the front door and explode out into the night and climb into the waiting Lincoln and drive away from 1066 Oleander forever. Never look back. Never come back. Never think about it again.
“ McCaallll.”
With that single, guttural sound, the last moment of clear thinking for Ace McCall passed unnoticed into oblivion.
“No!” he shrieked in fear compounded with a fury that drove rationality from him like brittle-dry, skeletal October leaves whirling dervish-like before a madding hurricane.
No one does this to Ace McCall no one tries this kind of game and gets away without broken bones.
He plunged deeper into the darkness of the hall, crashing into the closed door at the corner. His shoulder screamed with the pain of his two hundred and fifty pounds. The door creaked, threatened to give way but finally held and rebounded enough that he fell backwards and slammed into the opposite wall. He shook his head. Kaleidoscopic red stars and yellow lightning bolts and blue whirlwinds appeared, disappeared, re-appeared. Then disappeared again. But not entirely.
He shook his head again to clear his vision, rubbed his hand across his face, and stared down the right-hand branching of the hallway.
The bathroom door was a black abyss, so was the bedroom door opposite and the last door on the left. But the door on the right, at the far end of the hall-the door to the back corner bedroom…that door was open and through it spilled a feeble light tinged pale, gangrenous green, like things once living but now dead and slowly, silently rotting into a putrid luminescence.
McCall swallowed and, more automaton than thinking man, he moved forward.
Get out of here Ace get the hell out of here now! part of his mind screeched over and over, but his feet weren’t listening. His fisted hand relaxed and dropped to his side, limp and useless.
“No no no no no,” he repeated endlessly, his voice hoarse. It can’t be.
He reached the edge of the doorway and stopped just out of sight of what waited beyond.
“McCall.”
