She got the feeling now that something out there was watching her and watching her family. Out there watching, and waiting.
But waiting for what, she didn’t know.
***
In the darkness, he listened to the distant sound of a dog howling plaintively and he wondered why the sound bothered him so. He knew that there must be a reason that the dog was howling. What was it? Was it howling because it knew that its own death was coming? Did death stalk someone that it loved?
Or was it warning him?
Somewhere deep inside his brain, the brain now twisted up into knots with meth and crack, he knew that he was being paranoid. He had moments of lucidity; moments in which he knew that there were great holes inside his brain that the drugs had made there. He’d know, then that he’d gone too far, and he knew that he should stop and seek help of some kind.
Then the rational moment would go away, and his thoughts would twist and turn bizarrely inside his head liked dueling, hissing snakes.
He knew that they were trying to kill him, and that death would come in the middle of the night to get him.
He lay still beneath the snowy sheets, strips of moonlight leaking through the curtains and painting strange shapes with shifting, glowing colors on the floor. He hadn’t been asleep; he hadn’t slept for three days.
He didn’t want to go to sleep because he was afraid. They had put a monster in his belly and it ate him from the inside out. It gnawed with bloody teeth and scratched with bloody talons at his intestines, growling and grunting inside him. If he went to sleep, it would finish him.
The dog stopped howling and he wondered idly if they killed it, too. If they’d eaten its face off and played in its blood, the way they wanted to killed him.
They wanted his blood.
He began to whimper in his bed, thrashing and turning, and he thought about going outside, the way that they wanted, the way that they whispered for him to…He could hear them. Come outside, Corey, come and play…
No! He thought. No. that’s what they want. I won’t go outside with the dark and the trees and the moon. Tomorrow I’ll leave, I’ll go far away, far from all this, and they won’t be able to find me.
But he knew that he was only fooling himself. He couldn’t leave. He had a house and a job and they would hunt him down anyway, wherever he went. He needed the drugs they gave him. They knew everything he was doing and thinking anyway; they were watching his every move. He’d heard little clicks on his phone and there had been someone peering in his window last night. Whoever it was had run away when he’d screamed and shot his pistol.
And now they’d put the monster in him, and the monster wanted blood. If Corey didn’t feed it soon, it would take his blood. He’d thought that it would be satisfied with the girl he’d given it the other night, but it hadn’t been enough for the monster. It wanted more.
Corey crawled out of bed and went to the window. He strained hard to see through the darkness but all he saw were mutating, transforming shadows. It seemed still and quiet out there, but he knew that it was only an illusion.
They were watching him.
He started to turn on the television but he knew that they watched him through the screen so he left it off. He’d found that out one day when the cable had gone out; through the static he’d seen Dan’s face peering at him. Since then, he’d left the TV off.
Maybe I’ll eat, he thought. He didn’t think that he’d done that for a while; he kept forgetting. Corey went and rummaged through the refrigerator. There wasn’t much there; eating hadn’t been a priority with him lately, but he managed to find some cheese slices and bologna that didn’t look too bad. He smeared mayonnaise on two slices of bread and slapped the sandwich together, stuffing almost half of it in his mouth all at once. He slurped down the soft drink he’d found in one big gulp.
He stood staring at the back of the refrigerator while he ate. The light flickered and Corey knew suddenly what he was supposed to do. He dropped the last bite of his sandwich where he stood and left the refrigerator door open when he walked away.
He moved through the house without turning the lights on; it was strange how alien familiar objects can look in the dark. The furniture seemed to leap forward when he turned his head. He could see it out of the corners of his eyes but when he turned his head sharply, it all went back to where it was before. Once he became convinced that the mirror on the wall was twisting itself into a hideous shape, just waiting for him to come close enough to grab. He stared at it until it changed itself back into a mirror again. He didn’t have time for this; the light in the refrigerator had told him what he had to see.
He turned on the television. At first it was nothing but static, but then he began to see the picture and Corey giggled with excitement. He saw the hand holding the knife and he knew that it was his hand. He saw the man standing there, saw him stagger from the inhuman force of the blow. The knife tore through flesh and cartilage with a ripping sound and then hacked through to the brain. The corpse sagged to the floor, blood flowing down, flowing everywhere, and Corey giggled even more when he saw that the corpse still shuddered and twitched in the throes of death.
He knew what he had to do.
Dan had shown him. It had been Dan on the TV, just like before, but this time he hadn’t been spying; he had shown Corey what to do to keep the monster from killing him, from eating his guts. He had to kill. He had to kill the man on the television.
“Okay, Dan,” he said aloud, and the sound of his voice reverberated through the quiet house. “I’ll do it. Thanks for showing me that.”
It was going to be easy, too. Because Corey knew that the man was an insomniac and he often went to his office at night to work. His car would be parked right out front so it would be easy to tell if he was there. The office was isolated and Corey could get in and out without notice.
The man trusted him, so it would be easy for him to get close. He stopped by the office to visit all the time when the man was working. To check on him, because that was Corey’s job.
Because Corey was a cop.
Corey got high before he left; Dan had told him that the monster needed drugs, too. He was still giggling when he pecked on the window and the man looked up from his work and smiled at him.
Corey rubbed his hands together as the man unlocked the door. This was going to be fun. He hoped that the monster liked it as much as he did.
***
She had a stalker.
Phoebe knew about stalkers, everyone did, but they belonged in someone else’s life. She wasn’t a singer, or famous, or even fantastically beautiful. She wasn’t any of those things. She was just an ordinary woman with an ordinary job and an ordinary life.
She looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. She was in her early twenties, dressed neatly in a business suit, with a slender figure and big blue eyes. She wore her brunette hair up, exposing neat earlobes with discreet, gold button earrings. Heads didn’t turn when she walked down the street.
She was ordinary.
Phoebe was beginning to wonder if it was someone she knew well; maybe someone she dated, or someone she worked with. It was getting harder and harder to think; she couldn’t sleep at night and when she did drop off, her sleep was filled with nightmares. She woke every morning with an impending sense of doom.
Maybe today would be the day he struck. When she finally made it through each day, her nerves stretched tight enough to bounce quarters off, she thought: Maybe it will be tomorrow.
This can’t go on, she thought to herself. I can’t take anymore.
She glanced at the slim, elegant watch on her wrist, the one she’d found in a high-end consignment shop. It was time to leave for work. She looked around at her condo; she’d owned it for a year. She was proud of her house. She’d bought it with her own money and until recently it was her haven of peace, the place where she felt safe.
Now it felt like a prison, because someone had been in here while she was gone.
Not just once, but several times, and they’d moved her things around. She could report it to the police, but what could she say?
Officer, someone came into my house while I was at work and moved my jewelry box three inches to the right. No, they didn’t take anything, just moved it. They rifled through my underwear drawer, and I know this because I always fold my socks, and they were all crumpled up. Oh, and one of my least expensive perfumes is gone. Yes, that’s all, just the $10 perfume I bought at a drugstore chain. I feel like someone is watching me all the time, at work, while I’m driving home, when I’m lying by the pool…Yes, I’ll be sure and call you when I have some evidence that someone is watching me. Thank you, Officer, for letting me make a fool of myself and convincing you that I’m a nut-job.
When it was time to go outside and get into her car, Phoebe stuck her head out the front door and looked both ways before going all the way outside. The she ran to the car, pushing the button on her clicker to unlock the doors right as she reached it. After sliding inside quickly, she locked the door with hands that trembled and headed downtown to the bank where she had worked for five years. She felt her eyes tear up, and she couldn’t tell if it was from the harsh rays of the Florida sun or from fear. The back of her neck prickled and a sharp pain throbbed above one eye.
She turned the car into the parking lot of the bank, ignoring the voice in her head that was clamoring for her to just keep driving, to just go on down the road until she was far, far away. At least she was safe here; it was only nine in the morning and the bank was buzzing with people.
When Phoebe got to her desk and threw her purse down, her supervisor approached. He smiled at her, and Phoebe felt suddenly cold.
Maybe it was him.
Maybe his distinguished looks and fatherly manner hid a monstrosity. Maybe underneath his silver hair was the brain of a psychopath and he was only waiting for the day when he could show her his secret self.
Maybe he’d kill her today.
A broad smile suddenly crossed her face, and Brian beamed back. He was a nice man, and Phoebe felt better all at once. She decided then and there that the next time she felt that someone had been in her house, she would call the police, even if they derided her fears. If she was imagining things like this of poor Brian, it was time to get someone else to help her. She chuckled to herself as Brian walked away. Brian, a stalker.
Yeah, she was definitely going to call them tonight and talk to someone about this stuff. As soon as she got home. At least she would feel that she had done something, even if the police laughed at her for it.
But Phoebe had left it too late.
When she didn’t show at work the next two days, her co-workers got uneasy. Brian called the police, because he didn’t believe a conscientious person like Phoebe would take off without saying a word to anyone. Phoebe had never missed a day’s work without calling, he told the detective on the phone. She had vacation days saved up; if she had wanted a day off, all she had to do was call, so something was wrong. They couldn’t get her on the phone, not her cell or her house phone. He’d tried himself, at least ten times last night alone. He had a key that Phoebe had given him when she first moved in; would they come by the bank, pick it up, and then go check on her?
When the two officers opened the door to her condo, they found something resembling a charnel house. One of the officers had been a cop in Miami for twenty years before transferring to Ft. Myers; he boasted that he’d seen everything and that nothing made him sick anymore. He joined his rookie partner in the bushes after ten seconds of seeing what someone had done to Phoebe Walker.
She didn’t even look human anymore.
And that stuff congealed in the bottom of her good crystal goblets looked an awful lot like blood.
Chapter Three
“Will you please hurry?”
Angelique rolled her eyes as she pleaded because she knew that Andy wasn’t listening. He wasn’t going to speed up, and that bothered her. And what was up with his hygiene lately? She wrinkled her nose. She wasn’t shallow or anything but Andy looked so awful lately that she was embarrassed to be seen with him. He was pallid and his hair was dirty and that was the same shirt he’d been wearing yesterday, she was sure of it.
“Hang on,” Andy said, and it seemed to her that he dug through his bag even more slowly, just to annoy her.
Part of her wanted to leave him standing there, but she waited. They’d been friends for a long time and they’d been dating for almost a year. But she sure didn’t like the way he’d been behaving lately. He didn’t seem to care about anything at all and she was just about sick of it. She’d spoken to him about it and he got a great big attitude, so she’d backed off and given him a little breathing room.
Kira dying had been hard on him and she should remember that, she told herself. Angelique frowned. But now that she thought about it, all this weirdness had started before Kira died. Ever since he’d met that guy Dan, Andy had been acting strangely and she was tired of it. She didn’t like that Dan guy – he just seemed like a big jerk who didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life.
Angelique, however, knew perfectly well what she was going to do with hers. And until just recently, Andy had known what he was going to do with his. It didn’t matter what she dressed like on the weekends; she did that for fun and to freak people out. She liked to prove to people that you couldn’t tell what someone was like just by looking at them. When you looked at her in her freaky clothing with her nose ring and her heavy, theatrical makeup, did you think honor student?
No, of course not. But that’s what she was. She’d never had a grade lower than an A.
Her mother told her that she was wasting her time, that she should give up her theater friends and stop all her studying. She said that Angelique should just find a good man and marry him, but Angelique didn’t listen to her. She loved her mother, but she was from a different generation. She was still living in that submissive mindset, where the man made all the rules and the woman took all the orders. Sometimes she sounded like she was still living in the nineteen fifties. And where had that gotten her, exactly?
The last thing Angelique wanted to do was wind up like her mother, getting married as soon as some man asked her, having a couple kids and then wondering what happened when her drunken husband took off for who-knew-where with her only car and all her money. She wasn’t going to scrub toilets for a living and raise two kids all alone, not her. That was not going to happen. She was going to graduate from FGCU with honors and take her full scholarship right on to medical school.
So she partied on the weekends – she studied hard every weeknight, making sure that she got the grades that she needed. She was going to have a great life, and nobody was going to give it to her. She would earn it herself.
Angelique stared at Andy now and wondered why she was bothering with him. She looked at her watch and huffed with displeasure. He was just so infuriating lately. Whatever was wrong with him, he’d had long enough and plenty of chances to pull himself out of it. He knew how she felt.
“Maybe you don’t care if you’re late, but I do,” she snapped.
Angelique surged off down the hall and Andy shambled after her, catching up just as she opened the door. The professor shot them both a dirty look but didn’t say anything. Angelique considered herself lucky, and she made up her mind right then as she headed for a desk as far away from Andy as she could get. He had been acting this way for weeks, and she was tired of waiting for him to get better. Talking hadn’t helped. Being sweet to him hadn’t helped. Anger hadn’t helped.
It was time she took her own path.
Andy Mossiman could consider himself dumped.
***
Dan Jackson stared all around, resting for a moment with his oar across his lap.
It was a different world out here, man. One hour away from the city, but it was a million miles from civilization. The humidity seemed ten times worse here in the swamps than it did in
Fort Myers. Marsh grasses grew in profusion and flamingos and herons stood in the shallow water, their beaks searching the bottom for food. There were more flamingos here in this one spot than he’d seen in his entire life, and he was born in Florida.
He started paddling again; he could look at the birds later, when he was done with his little chore. Dan cursed as he bogged down momentarily in the silt of the swamp, then he pushed off with his oar and gave a sigh of relief when the boat began to move, propelling him further into the Everglades.
What seemed like millions of mosquitoes buzzed all around him, eating him up despite all the repellant he’d smeared on himself. Hell, he had even picked up a leech getting into the canoe, and it had left an angry red welt on his leg. Dan shuddered at the thought of the repulsive creature he’d plucked off his leg and tossed overboard. Then he laughed. Here he was, looking down on the leech for being a bloodsucker but it was just doing the same things he liked to do.
“Isn’t that right, Andy?” he called back to the body wrapped in canvas in the back of the canoe. He chuckled at his own wit. “You found out firsthand about bloodsuckers, didn’t you?”
Dan cackled again and realized that he didn’t sound quite sane. He had taken so much stuff today that it was hard to know what was real and what wasn’t. His head was spinning. But hey, sanity was just a word, wasn’t it?
Dan hadn’t really wanted to come out here, but he was Dian Carman’s number one man, wasn’t he? He had to take care of problems as they came up, and disposing of bodies had become a problem. If many more showed up with all the blood gone out of them, the whole city would panic. It had been his idea to bring them out here to the swamp, but he never thought that he was going to be the one who had to do it. Should have just kept his mouth shut.
Dan slapped a mosquito. Little bugger was full of his blood, look at it, smeared all over his arm. He put out his tongue and licked it all up. Probably full of Andy’s blood, too, come to think of it, since he’d sucked down his share at the party last night.