Revenant (16 page)

Acton indicated the industrial floor freezer at the other end of the basement with a flourish of which Bob Barker would have been proud, and Earl began staggering toward it. He knew instinctively this was the chance he had been waiting for, probably his one and only opportunity to salvage what was left of his miserable existence. He crossed the concrete floor in a few seconds, reaching the freezer and opening the cover like a mortician giving the hard sell on a top-of-the-line casket to a prospective client.

Max turned his attention back to the horrified software designer, whose facial expression indicated his growing understanding of the situation. The second he did, still acting without conscious thought, Earl grabbed the box containing the mystical Navajo stone and his still-beating heart off the table next to the freezer. He tucked it away in the crook of his forearm, cradling it against his chest like a sleeping baby, and strode rapidly back toward the tiny group clustered in the basement of the crumbling home.

No one had noticed a thing; not yet. Raven and Parker were watching Acton, both riveted, and Acton himself seemed so wrapped up in his little presentation that for the moment at least he appeared to have forgotten all about Earl.

So far, so good.

As he passed the open chest containing the tools the rotten bastard had used to slice open his frozen body and remove his heart, Earl reached in and plucked out the first item he could find which might suit his needs. It was a forged steel Phillips-head screwdriver with an impact-resistant plastic handle and twelve-inch long tempered-steel shaft.

The handle of the screwdriver            rattled against the metal toolbox, Earl’s grip betrayed by his steadily deteriorating physical condition, and suddenly all hell broke loose. The eyes of all three observers turned to Earl, Max Acton swinging around and adopting a defensive position. It was clear he knew something was going wrong, even if he was not entirely sure what that might be.

But by now it didn’t matter. The physical strength Earl had gained as a result of the mysterious change he had undergone, combined with the advantage of surprise, was more than adequate for his purposes. There was now no need for Earl to try to shield his thoughts from his “god.”
He
now possessed the box containing his heart, and thus—he hoped—
he
was now the one who controlled his destiny.

Earl lurched forward and slashed at his captor, wielding the screwdriver like a butcher knife, catching Max in the side of the neck. The screwdriver’s long shaft entered just under his left ear and plunged straight through the man’s throat, reappearing under his right ear in a gush of blood that looked as though it was being blown out a garden hose.

Acton issued a strangled cry, the sound moist and bubbly, like he was trying to talk underwater, and then Earl yanked the handle of the screwdriver savagely, twisting as he pulled. The blood came out in a wave, splashing onto the floor. Ripped veins and blood vessels, along with unidentifiable gristle and gore, hung from the man’s throat and Earl thought,
so this is what the expression “cutting a man’s throat from ear to ear” means,
and Acton’s desperate gaze locked onto Earl, his bulging eyes angry and accusing, and Earl watched as the life drained out of them with a swiftness that was astonishing, and then Max fell straight down, his dead body dropping with a thud into his own blood on the concrete floor.

23

Mike rolled to a stop on the gravel driveway outside the rental home on Depot Road. A beat-up old minivan pocked with rust sat at the end of the driveway next to a candy-apple red Porsche 911. The effect was incongruous, like looking at your eighty year old grandfather sharing a chaise lounge with Mila Kunis at the family picnic.

The big house loomed over the two parked cars, shadowy and silent, imposing. From the outside it appeared barely livable. Long strips of peeling paint hung from the window frames. Entire sections of wood siding had rotted away, leaving great sheets of exposed plywood. It was as if some invisible blight was attacking the home in sections, and the entire structure appeared slightly askew, like the foundation might be crumbling literally out from under the rest of the house.

The summer air hung heavy and still as he exited the cruiser. Mike’s unease was palpable. It was plainly evident this was not the sort of place any couple would consider renting, not unless their names were Herman and Lily Munster. The only potential advantage offered by this home was its extreme isolation. If privacy was uppermost in the mind of a renter, then this dilapidated testament to shoddy maintenance would be ideal.

Dust kicked up around Mike’s shoes as he crunched across the driveway. Even the gravel seemed tired and listless. Mike’s sense of foreboding intensified as he became aware of total silence in the air. There was quite literally no noise. No crickets chirping; no birds tweeting. There wasn’t even the rustle of a breeze in the majestic eighty foot tall pines surrounding the home. The complete stillness was unnerving. It felt to Mike as though nature could sense evil in the air just as he could.

He kept walking and reached down, feeling the radiators of the two vehicles as he passed by on his way to the front door. The Porsche’s was cold, the minivan’s warm, its engine block ticking as it cooled. He wondered what was happening at Brett Parker’s retreat, the brand-new home that was the polar opposite in terms of quality from this one. Sharon should be calling in soon with a report of exactly what had been taken in the robbery.

One thing at a time.
Mike pushed thoughts of Sharon from his mind as he punched the doorbell button mounted next to the front entrance and was unsurprised to discover nothing happened. The bell had either been disconnected or was broken, like seemingly everything else about this place. He lifted his fist and pounded hard on the door. “Paskagankee Police. Is anyone home?”

Silence greeted the knock and Mike looked over again at the two cars in the driveway, one of which had been recently driven. Two cars, one still-warm engine. Two people supposedly renting this piece of crap house.

Nobody answering the knock.

Someone was here.

He reached up to pound on the door again, harder this time, and as he did he thought he heard a vague sound that set him on edge, raising the tiny hairs on his arm and causing him to freeze with his fist in the air. The windows were cracked slightly open and through the one to his right, covered by a ratty screen which had long ago stopped providing any protection from insects, came a weak, strangled cry for help.

Maybe.

He stood unmoving, waiting, not one hundred percent certain he had actually heard anything.

There it was. Again.

A sound that was more like a moan than the articulation of any actual words floated through the window once more, so weak and nearly inaudible Mike was surprised he had even heard it. But this time he was sure. He wasn’t hearing things. The sound was human, and whoever was making it was in trouble.

Mike reached down to his hip and unsnapped the leather strap securing his Glock, lifting it clear of the holster, holding it in his right hand with the barrel pointed at the floor of the small wooden landing. The weapon felt solid and reassuring. He grasped the doorknob with his left hand, hoping it would be unlocked. It was.

Mike turned the knob and pushed, taking cover behind the frame as the door opened noiselessly inward. He waited half a heartbeat, then peeked cautiously around the frame into an empty room. Another half-second wait and then he stepped clear of the door. Crossed the threshold.

The atmosphere inside the house felt hot and stale, stuffy and humid. The air smelled musty, Mike thought, exactly like what you would expect of a home that had been closed up tight for years. But this home had been recently rented, and the occupants hadn’t even gone to the trouble of airing the place out.

And there was something else.

The scent of corruption, of death, of decomposing flesh, lingered in the air, barely perceptible but there nonetheless. Mike McMahon had been present at more than his share of murder scenes in his fifteen years as a patrolman back in Revere, and the smell of decomposing human tissue was something he would never forget. The scent in this crumbling house was less noticeable, more of a hint than anything else, but it was here.

His grip tightened on the Glock. He flexed his fingers subconsciously and moved slowly deeper into the house. The moaning noises he heard outside had faded away the moment he entered the house. Silence reigned, but to Mike it felt false, stealthy, like the determined efforts of a prowler to avoid detection.

Mike crossed the empty room—not a stick of furniture had been placed in it, no attempt at all to make the place even the slightest bit homey—and arrived at an open doorway leading to the home’s kitchen. This room, at least, showed signs of habitation. Dishes had been rinsed off and piled in the sink, awaiting a cycle through the dishwasher, if it even still worked. A refrigerator hummed quietly in the corner, its compressor clicking on while Mike examined the rest of the room.

There was no indication the couple who had rented this house were here, yet the pair of vehicles parked outside indicated otherwise. And that somehow artificial silence continued to scream a warning in Mike’s head. Something was very wrong here. The smart move would be to backtrack out of the house and call for backup—get Harley’s ass up here, and maybe Sharon’s, too, if she had finished up with the B and E at Parker’s.

That would be the smart move. But those faint cries he had heard earlier were eating at Mike. They sounded exactly like the sounds a human being would make if he—or she—were suffering and in extreme pain. What if Earl Manning had been kidnapped for some unknown reason and was being held here, injured? Or what if the couple renting this home had nothing to do with Earl Manning, but had been hurt in some sort of home-improvement accident and needed immediate medical attention?

Mike grimaced and continued on.

A partially closed door in the corner of the room opposite the refrigerator creaked and Mike jumped, startled. He stood unmoving, gazing at the door intently, flexing his fingers again on the grip of his service weapon.

The air inside the house was still and unmoving, the air outside heavy and damp, with no hint of a breeze. There was no reason in the world for that door to have creaked. Mike padded silently across the kitchen, moving faster now. His pulse pounded and adrenaline quickened his breathing. He raised his Glock and held it in his right hand, head-high, the business end now pointing at the ceiling. Using the doorframe for cover, he took a deep breath and eased the door open further with his left foot. It gave way reluctantly, issuing a loud screech that sounded almost exactly like a scream of pain.

Dammit. There goes the advantage of surprise.
Mike turned the corner, taking the stairs slowly, descending into hell.

24

Things happened quickly. None of Earl’s actions had been planned out, at least not consciously, as any conscious thought would have alerted Acton to what was coming, so Earl was forced to react, to make things up as he went. But that was okay with Earl; things had worked out pretty well so far. He felt as alive right now as he had at any point since, well, since he had been killed.

A wet, squishy sound filled the basement as Acton’s dead body struck the concrete floor. Earl tensed for a scream, so certain one would come that he paused for just a second and cringed slightly.

Nothing happened.

He glanced from Acton’s prone body up into the eyes of the two people still alive in the basement. Raven, the green-eyed beauty who had lured him here with the promise of a night he would never forget—
boy, she hadn’t been kidding about that one, had she?
—stared disbelievingly at the sight of the older man on the floor. She had clapped a hand over her mouth in horror but a tiny mouse-like squeak escaped around her splayed fingers anyway. “Ahhhhhh…’ It was almost as if she wanted to scream but could not quite summon the breath necessary to make it happen.

The other guy, Parker, looked more composed, but only slightly. His bright blue eyes were open wider than Earl would have imagined possible, and he had slapped a hand over his mouth in a pose almost identical to Raven’s.

And he was moving, edging toward the stairs. He stopped the moment Earl glanced his way, freezing in mid-stride, but it was clear he had been trying to take advantage of the diversion provided by Max Acton’s untimely death to make a break for freedom. That sort of quick thinking was actually quite impressive, Earl thought. No wonder the guy’s net worth was greater than that of some small countries.

Earl smiled and the software guy’s expression changed from one of horror to one of . . . well . . . even greater horror. Earl decided he must look a lot more imposing in death than he ever had in life. This whole undead thing did have its advantages. “Going somewhere?” he rumbled.

That was when he heard the pounding on the front door. A second of absolute silence followed, and then the words, “Paskagankee Police” floated through the stillness of the house. “Is anyone home?”

The irony of the timing was inescapable, coming just as Earl had accomplished his goal. He was free of The Fucking Devil Max Acton, who had apparently selected him at random out of all the drunken bums in the world to lure away from the bottle and curse with a fate worse than anything he had ever imagined. Acton was dead, and Earl’s plan, which had never really been a plan to begin with—gain control of the box containing his heart and send Acton back to hell, where he clearly belonged—had been accomplished, and with shocking finality.

But this pseudo-plan had never really extended beyond the vague notion of grabbing the heart and stabbing Acton, and Earl now realized he didn’t have the slightest idea how to proceed. The police were at the door, he had two wide-eyed, terrified hostages, and despite the satisfaction of getting the drop on the man he hated more than anyone else in the world—next to that stunningly beautiful bitch, Raven, of course—Earl knew he was no better off than he had been ten minutes ago. He was still dead, still holding his heart cradled in the crook of his arm like a goddamn football, and the process of decomposition was still proceeding along as nature had always intended, thank you very much. He could feel his skin loosening and slackening on his body as it prepared to slide right off his bones, and there was not a fucking thing in the world he could do about it.