My eyes adjusted to a keyhole’s worth of moonlight streaming through the window. It wasn’t nearly enough. I pressed my body along the wall, determined to traverse the room along its perimeter, inching against its walls and counters and
BONG.
I flinched, swearing. My hand flailed in the darkness, searching for the thing against which my hip had struck. Metal, smooth, pebbled with grime, grease-slick. My fingers found the wrought-iron cooking grates, and I nodded. Stove.
The walls tittered.
I stepped around the appliance, hand now sliding across its surface, now feeling the steel give way to pocked countertop. My fingertips parted a sea of crumbs, then pressed into something half-eaten, mushy. For a heartbeat, I was more revolted by this room than I was afraid of it.
The meager moonlight began to wane, victim of another cloud. I held my breath, desperate and sick again. No. Not now. Please, Lord. Not now.
My hand brushed against a small cardboard box, and I picked it up, praying for a box of matches. I shook it. The ex-smoker in me heard the ubiquitous rattle of cigarettes inside. I pitched it.
The kitchen was darker now. From the living room, the music began to stutter, fade in and out.
My hand groped again, and my panic rose again, blazing red-hot, blowing hypothermic in this icy room. Come, damn it. Come on.
“Come on,” I whispered.
The music roared louder, surging with static.
My sweating palm grasped the hilt of something plastic and I fumbled with it in the dark, hungry to understand it, see it by touch alone. Plastic handle, metal nozzle. A grill lighter—the thing with which Daniel Drake lit his gas stove, his cigarettes.
I sighed, index finger sliding past the trigger guard. I pressed its switch. The room flared to life.
Daniel Drake stood before me, his eyes bloodshot and murderous.
A whiskey bottle hung from one hand. In his other, a hatchet.
“You again,” he muttered, swaying.
I was stupefied, scared stiff.
“Never here. He was never here. And when he finally came home, Mom and Jenny died.”
His breath was putrid from the booze. My mouth tried to find words, but my brain was stuck, vapor locked. I suddenly needed to pee.
The living room thunderstorm raged on, even louder now.
“Obsessed, he was insane, obsessed,” Daniel said. He shrugged his broad shoulders. “He ruined everything. He ruined our brand-new life out here. My life. Her life. And. And then…”
He dropped the whiskey bottle. It shattered on the floor.
“…he…”
Daniel snarled, hefting the hatchet in both hands now.
“…left.”
The radio trumpeted a final crescendo, then fell silent.
“It’s you,” I said, backing away, the lighter’s flame still flickering between us. “You tracked them, all of them, all of his friends. You killed them.
“You’re the Dark Man.”
25
Daniel clomped forward, closing the gap. The countertop dug into my ass, immovable. I glanced about in the shadowdance, frantically doing an inventory of the cramped kitchen. Stove beside me. Refrigerator across the room. Between them: counters, sink. In the kitchen’s center, a weathered thrift-store table and two rickety, mismatched chairs.
An open jar of peanut butter on the counter. Empty booze bottles in the sink. Skillet on the table, writhing with roaches. Unwashed plates there. Crumpled cans of Coors.
GOD BLESS THIS MESS.
I resisted a suicidal urge to laugh.
“No. No, fucker,” Daniel Drake said. His massive form swayed in place. He grinned knowingly. “No-fucking-comprendo. Dad’s the killer, was always the killer. He brought something back with him from the See-See-See-Pee. A curse. An Inkstain. He could see the future, see the blood a-comin’, and he ran. God, all the blood…”
His hollow, hopeless face twisted into a sneer.
“…and oh, the blood that’d come and gone, Jesus, the things he did. I know. I saw. Extra-shittin’-extra, read all a-fuckin’-bout it. Them people he killed in Russia. All the letters that came here after he left, all them government letters, letters from fucking lawyers—oh, he knew, he knew I’d see ’em, knew they were comin’, I know he knew. I read ’em all. I burned ’em all.”
He glanced down, at the stained throw rug beneath his feet. His mouth curved into a toothy, meat cleaver smile.
“Well. Almost all of ’em.”
“Daniel, put the hatchet down,” I said, still holding the grill lighter between us. “I’m here because your dad sent me. He wants me to find something here, in this house, something that can help him. Maybe it’s you, the things you’ve read. You’ve gotta come back with me, come back to The Brink. Your father needs you. Your… your family needs you.”
The walls seemed to rattle as the man laughed. The hatchet’s thick blade shimmered in his hands. He leaned in. The fire’s reflection burned bright in his eyes, turning them coal-red.
“ME” he cried. “Sounds like he needs you more than he ever needed me. You, the stranger, the meddler, the gravedigger, diggin’ it all out, bringin’ it all back, filled with worms and bugs…”
Tktktk.
“…and you wanna fix ’im, cure ’im, so he can see. And then what, gravedigger? I’ll tell you what. More. More killin’, more dyin’. No. That can’t happen. He’s earned this. He deserves this. He’s the walking dead. And you… . You.”
He puckered his lips and blew. The lighter’s flame vanished.
“You’re just dead.”
I heaved my body to the right, away from the stove, as the darkness spiraled upon us. An instant later, the room filled with the splinter-blast of axe blade meeting Formica. The lighter slipped from my hand, clattering into the ink.
“No, Daniel!” I screamed, but the man’s raspy breath devolved into another grunt, and I scuttled further, nearing the sink and window above it.
The hatchet was a thunderclap, shredding the dish cabinet where my head had been. The blade gave a shrill, throaty squeak as Daniel yanked it from the wood. I stumbled on, hands smacking against the booze bottles in the sink. I stole a half second to look down, using the moonlight from the window as a spotlight. I grabbed a bottle, held it like a club.
The man chuckled in the darkness. A hand fired from the black, clapping hard against my chest. I snatched at something—anything—to keep from falling. Miraculously, my fingers gripped the sink’s faucet. I used it for leverage, staying upright, gasping in dread as the metal began to bend. Bottles clinked cheerfully as my forearm clashed against them.
“Gotcha,” Daniel hissed.
The hatchet roared downward again, destroying the bottles in the sink, missing my hand by an inch. I felt the bee sting of glass slicing my skin. Daniel wrenched the axe wildly upward. Its blade blew through the kitchen window, scattering thick shards across the countertop. They tinkled like knives nested together in a drawer.
I found my footing, madly swinging the bottle in my hand. It detonated against the axe handle, spraying razor-edged jewels that sparkled in the dim light from the window. Daniel roared. He dropped the weapon, hands pressed against his face.
I lunged toward the floor, intent on grabbing the axe. A steeltoed work boot bashed into my stomach, blowing the air from my lungs in a surprised scream. I slid, nearly fell… but Daniel’s hands snatched my shirt, yanking me skyward.