Cold Summer Nights (14 page)

“I don’t know,” Rusty whispered, like maybe it wouldn’t hear them.

Nick’s breaths came in short bursts.

Rusty turned from the ghastly scene on the couch to the closed bathroom door. Nick followed him over to it with hesitant baby steps, expecting something to blow through the door and do to them what it had just done to their friend. Rusty looked down to the door knob and decided to kick the door in instead. The wood frame cracked, sending splinters flying. He entered with his gun going first and Nick bringing up the rear. The bathroom was empty.

Rusty gripped the black nine millimeter tighter with both hands. “We
gotta
call the cops,” he panted. “Your house is obviously possessed.”

Nick was unable to respond. The way Rusty had said it was almost funny, if not for their dead friend sitting on the couch and the sound of footsteps beginning to climb the basement stairs. They froze and listened to the lazy thuds, each step sounding more menacing than the one before it. Nick considered locking them inside the bathroom and calling for help but Rusty was already on his way out.

“Hey!” Nick said
,
following him into the living room as the plodding footsteps grew louder, making it impossible to think clearly. But they needed a plan now more than ever because the clock was ticking. There weren’t that many basement steps left. Nick stared at Dallas’ body, knowing that the last thing they needed to do right now was to start panicking.

“Oh shit, we’re going to die!” Rusty screamed.

“Get over here with that gun,” Nick hissed, staring through the arched entryway into the kitchen.

The patient footfalls passed the halfway mark of the wooden staircase. Rusty stepped between Nick and the kitchen, pointing the gun with two shaky arms at the basement door. The living room lights cast a dim glow across the kitchen’s tiled floor, leaving too many shadows in its wake. “Go turn the kitchen light on,” he whispered over his shoulder.

“Fuck that,” Nick shot back.

The steady thumps neared the top.

Nick peeked over Rusty’s shoulder, wondering what the hell it could be, afraid to look but unable to turn away. A thick paste coated the inside of his mouth making it difficult to swallow.

Rusty shifted in his stance and tightened his sweaty grip on the gun, which suddenly felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. He wiped sweat from an eyebrow with his shoulder.

There was one last footstep at the top, louder than all the rest. Dead silence followed.

They stood waiting for the door to open, their hearts pounding and their heavy breathing the only sound. The anticipation was overwhelming, the silence unbearable.

“Go open the door,” Rusty whispered.

Nick’s face wrinkled. “Are you crazy?”

“Don’t be such a pussy.”

“You’re the one with the gun; you do it.”

“I don’t have health insurance right now, Nick,” Rusty hissed. “Remember?”

One loud fist-pound on the basement door caused both of them to flinch like scared cats. They scuttled backwards and Nick tripped over the pile of pillows and blankets lying on the floor. Amazingly, he regained his balance before falling onto Dallas’ unmoving body.

Silence swarmed the room, circling them like deadly
Dementors
.

“Let’s go out the front,” Rusty suggested in a low voice.

Nick glanced to the front door, wondering why he hadn’t already thought of that. He started sidestepping towards the entrance, keeping Rusty and his gun between him and whatever was on the other side of the basement door. They didn’t get far before the door made a clicking sound and began creaking open.

They stopped in their tracks, curiosity overpowering their motor skills even though they knew what it had done to so many cats before. Rusty adjusted his greasy grip on the nine and wiped more sweat from his brow with both shoulders.

The door’s rusty song ended when it reached wide open. They stared into the darkness behind it, unable to make anything out. A warm stench rolled out and licked their faces, followed by an oyster colored bare foot stepping onto the kitchen floor. The toenails were thick and yellow and looked wet.

Nick and Rusty took a step back as another bare foot joined the first one. Their eyes followed both appendages to a pair of cracked, colorless legs sticking out of a ragged black dress. The woman’s stringy hair made it hard to see the gray face hiding beneath. Nick took another step back, bumping into the room’s large bay window.

The woman’s hair was as limp as the arms hanging at her sides. She stood there with her head slightly down, studying them with vacant eyes. They stared back at the woman’s moldering figure, paralyzed by the impossibility of it all. Unable to grasp what no human had ever witnessed before. Nick thought about grabbing his cell phone to record the phenomenon but then she twitched.

Rusty and Nick screamed at the same time.

Her legs didn’t move and her feet never left the ground, but she began sliding towards them just the same. The black dress absorbed the living room light like a black hole, cloaking her in constant shadows no matter how close she got to the living room light. It was as if even the light feared her.

“That’s far enough!” Rusty shouted, pointing the gun at her.

The murky silhouette stopped. Traces of the living room light found its way to a colorless complexion that was decaying and covered in patches of black grime.

Nick gawked at the
pupiless
eyes staring back at him from behind oily hair that flowed past her skeletal shoulders. His eyes continued falling to her bony hands with yellow nails and peeling skin. His gaze sharpened.

Rusty’s legs wobbled, now knowing that ghost stories weren’t just stories after all. Even if he somehow managed to get out of this alive, nothing would be the same again. The menacing figure hovering in front of him had just opened a can of worms that would feed his paranoia no matter where he tried to go. If he managed to survive, this would change everything.

His eyes traveled up from her cracked legs to the ashen face watching his every move. The gun trembled in his hands. He felt the metal trigger against the inside of his index finger. “What are you?” he screamed, pointing the gun at her face.

She answered him with a cold glare and nothing more.

Nick stared at her thin hands. His heart hitched, but it couldn’t be. He looked back to the lifeless face hiding behind that dark hair. “Summer?” he sputtered.

Rusty shifted in his stance. “
Summer
?” he murmured over his shoulder.

Her cracked lips peeled back into a sinister grin, revealing two rows of broken teeth. With a grandiose swoop, she rose to the ceiling and hovered just below the ceiling. She stared down at them like an inflated King Cobra, paralyzing them with her black eyes.

“Holy shit!”
Rusty shrieked.

“Shoot her!” Nick yelled.

She glided back down and came at them without effort.

Rusty pulled the trigger and the gun kicked in his hands. He and Nick hunched their shoulders at the booming report.

She kept coming, so Rusty unloaded the clip into her, sending debris jumping in the kitchen as the bullets passed through her. The French doors blew out, raining down jewel like pieces of glass onto the tiled floor below. Rusty dove out of the way just before she snatched him. He tumbled over Dallas’s body on the couch and heard Dallas’ neck snap again. Nick stood frozen as Rusty rolled onto the floor and found himself looking into Dallas’ blank stare.

There was a loud crash on the other side of the sofa and Nick grunted. Rusty took a deep breath and gripped the gun. He got to his knees and peeked over the couch to see she had Nick pinned to the wall by his throat. A spider web of cracks coursed through the bay window behind him. Nick’s hands desperately struggled with the lone arm crushing his windpipe. Rusty took aim and fired. The gun clicked dryly. He squeezed the trigger again. Another empty click followed. Nick’s feet left the ground.

The gun slipped from Rusty’s fingers and clattered to the shiny wood floor. He watched Nick’s eyes bulge as she lifted him into the air with one decomposing hand, his arms and legs flailing uselessly. Rusty rose to his feet and bum rushed her from behind. Her free arm swung out and smacked him into the wall head first. He crumpled against it and slid to the dark wood flooring below.

Chapter Fourteen

Rusty peeled his sticky eyelids apart and tried to focus on the blurry light above. Absent-mindedly, he began yanking wires from his chest and the inside of his elbow. A tall machine on wheels next to him started beeping angrily. His eyes dropped to the blood tricking out the crook of his arm.

“What the…?” he wheezed, his throat too dry to talk. His hand involuntarily went to his head where a carousel of thundering booms rotated inside. He found the bandage on his crown and winced.

A
pretty blond
nurse suddenly burst through the door with Detective Rodriguez hot on her trail. She went right to work hooking the wires back up to Rusty without speaking.

Rusty’s eyes landed on the short detective. “What the hell?” he choked.

“Just relax, you’re fine,” Rodriguez told him. “Here, drink some water,” he said, handing Rusty a plastic cup with a bendable straw.

Rusty sucked the lukewarm beverage down, bringing the inside of his mouth and throat back to life. Upon finishing the entire cup, he released a long sigh.

“Don’t unhook these again,” the nurse scolded. “Doctor Jennings didn’t go through years of schooling so you could undo his work.”

Rusty stared at her silky smooth skin and dazzling blue eyes. She turned in a huff and Rusty watched her tight butt wiggle its way to the door.

“Thanks Tammy,” Rodriguez said as she zipped past without responding.

The door clicked shut behind her, triggering a wall to suddenly drop in Rusty’s mind, flooding him with painful memories. His eyes tried to focus in on the detective. “Where’s Nick?” he asked hoarsely.

Rodriguez poured another cup of water from the pitcher on the bed tray and handed it to him.

Rusty didn’t take it. “Is he okay?”

Rodriguez paused and then set the cup down, raising his weary eyes to Rusty. It seemed like hours before he spoke. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

The pounding in Rusty’s head intensified, his vision speckled with blinding white spots. “What do you mean?”

“Nick is gone, Russ. So is Dallas,” he replied gravely, his hands folded in front of him.

Rusty blinked at him, the shock of it all numbing the pain in his head. Or
maybe it was the wires Tammy had reconnected
. “No.”

The detective dropped his gaze to his shoes.

Rusty tried to sit up, grimacing with the move. “This isn’t possible.”

Rodriguez looked back up to him, with fearful eyes. “What happened in there tonight, Russ?” he whispered.

Rusty turned to the dark TV mounted on the wall, calling up the horrid memories. “Dallas said we’d be next,” he mumbled.

The detective’s eyes grew even thinner.

“Except, that wasn’t Dallas talking,” Rusty continued. “I unloaded an entire clip into her.”