Chapter 31
ABI
The day moves too slowly. I manage to get some paperwork done, but I don’t even bother performing the autopsy I have on the docket. I tell myself I’ll do it tomorrow, that when Nameless comes by tonight, I’ll ask him to stay even after the sun comes up. I think he will.
I hope he will.
The promise of nightfall is both terrifying and reassuring. Reassuring because Nameless has only ever come to the funeral parlor at night, and he’s the only person I want to see right now. The only person I trust to protect me.
But it’s terrifying, too. Because I don’t know who else will be looking at me in the dark.
Fortunately, my fax machine stays quiet. No more photographs. No more messages. No one calls my work phone. Penelope and Chloe text me a few times, checking in on me. I tell them I’m fine. Lies.
Sunset is around eight o’clock this time of year. When it arrives, I sit on top of the dais in the viewing room so I can watch the yard slowly draping itself in shadow. Eventually, the streetlights come on, all at once, like someone flicked a switch. Hatch Street is empty.
“Are you out there?” I whisper, sliding off the dais so I can press my hands against the window and peer outside. It doesn’t help. I don’t see much of anything.
My chest twists around. It’s true that I don’t necessarily see him every night, but after last night—
He has to come. Doesn’t he?
My breath fogs the glass. The wind moves through the yard, but all it does is push the shadows around. And I think about the last two times I saw him, including last night. He didn’t just announce himself. I went out on the front porch, and then he made himself known.
Of course, tonight is not last night, and the idea of going outside makes me feel dizzy and sick.
Uncle Vic’s gun, I think.
I peel away from the window and go upstairs, my breath tight and shallow. The gun case is still resting on the bed where I left it, and my hands shake as I flip the latch. The gun looks like a toy. Mostly because I’ve never seen a real gun before.
I take it out, and it’s heavier than I expect. There’s a box of bullets, but I leave those. I don’t know how to load the thing. I just want to hold it, like armor.
Then I carry it back downstairs, cradling it awkwardly against my chest. My footsteps creak on the stairs, on the floorboards in the entranceway, and I turn the lights on as I go from room to room, flooding the house with light. As if light can protect me.
I check the video feed from my doorbell camera before I unlock the door. Nothing. Just darkness. Then I turn the deadbolt and nudge the door open and step out onto the porch.
The wind is up, damp and salty, and I can taste the sea in the back of my throat.
“Hello?” I step cautiously out onto the porch. The wind answers, blowing low and mournful across the cemetery. “Are you there?”
I don’t get an answer, and my body tightens with anxiety. I clutch the gun a little closer to my chest.
“I need to talk to you,” I call out, louder this time. The last time I called out to Nameless in the dark, he showed up. And then he destroyed me.
But no one steps out of the shadows tonight. The wind lifts and makes the trees rattle around, and I swallow back that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
He’s not here.
I’m sure of it. If he were here, he would make himself known. I would hear his footsteps, soft and rustling through the grass. But all I hear is the wind.
“Please?” I add, but it comes out as little more than a whisper.
Something bangs around in the back of the house, as loud as a gunshot. I jump and whirl around, holding my own gun out awkwardly. “Nameless?” I say, then immediately feel stupid. I doubt he remembers me calling him that the night in the viewing room.
Silence.
I can’t stand being out here. The night feels like it’s closing in on me, thick and constricting. I duck back inside and slam the door shut and lock it. Then I breathe, still holding the gun, staring at my pale reflection in the door’s new window.
God, how stupid am I to think a murderer actually wants to protect me? How stupid am I to think I can trust him at all? Just because he was with me when Olivia and Heather died doesn’t mean he isn’t involved. Every dark, beautiful word he said to me could have been a lie.
Maybe he killed the first attacker to throw me off the trail.
Maybe that’s why he won’t show me his face, because if I see it, I’ll recognize him. One of Blake’s friends, maybe. A man I used to know as a boy.
My face is hot. My eyes burn with unfallen tears. I squeeze the gun close to my chest and try to decide what to do, now that the one person I thought would be here for me didn’t show up.
Penelope was right. I should get out of town. Go stay with Chloe. Maybe this nightmare won’t follow me that far north, and I can come to terms with what I let happen. I can shove my darkness back down inside me where it belongs.
Another bang echoes in the back of the house.
I whip around, gun up, staring into the darkened hallway leading toward the back of the funeral parlor. Back toward the examination room.
Nameless? It’s a weak, fluttering sense of hope, but the examination room was the first place I ever saw him. The first place he kissed me, pushing his mask up so his lips would brush chastely over mine.
“Is that you?” I call out, taking slow, cautious steps forward. I readjust the gun, cradling it awkwardly in my arms. “I wish you wouldn’t play this game right now. I, um, I need to tell you some—”
The floor creaks. Not where I am, in the bright-lit foyer. But from deep in the darkness up ahead.
“Please don’t do this,” I call out. “Just say something. Let me know it’s you.”
Another creak, long and low. Someone is in the hallway leading to the examination room. I just pray that it’s Nameless.
“Please,” I whimper, and one of my hot tears falls in a straight line over my cheek.
I’m at the edge of the hallway, and I can feel someone in the darkness, watching me. I reach over and flip the switch.
The light reveals a figure dressed all in black. But any relief I feel is momentary, because this figure isn’t tall enough. He’s too thin.
And he’s wearing a stocking over his face, not a twisted rubber mask.
“Not who you were expecting?” he asks in a cruel, taunting voice, and I have the quick, fleeting thought that it’s a voice I’ve heard before. But then it disappears when I press the gun’s trigger on instinct, and all I hear is a useless click.
“Stupid bitch,” the man says. “Women never know how to use guns.”
Then he launches himself at me, barreling down the hallway at a full run.
For a second, I’m a prey animal trapped in headlights.
But then, just as he’s about to grab me, I swing the gun like a baseball bat and slam into the side of his head.
It makes a terrible thumping sound, like tapping a watermelon.
The man stumbles sideways and howls, his hand going up to his temple.
Spots of red drop across the floor.
“You whore!” he shrieks, looking at his bloody fingers. “You think you can hurt me?”
I whirl around and run. The gun gets in my way, and I throw it into the viewing room as I pass, then pump my arms and legs toward the door. The killer is behind me, his steps heavy and loud.
“You can’t escape me,” he calls out. “I got the other two cunts. What makes you think you’re so special?”
I slam into the front door and undo the lock and throw it open, letting in a sweep of damp, howling sea wind. Then I spill out onto the porch and race across the yard. “Help!” I scream. “Nameless! Please!”
I don’t know why I called out to him. I know he’s not here. Not when I need him most.
“Shut the fuck up!” An elbow hooks around my neck and drags me backward. Panic surges through me, and I kick out and try to scratch at his arm. But he heaves me around and throws me into the damp grass, then slams his heavy booted foot hard on my chest.
All the air slams out of me. I gasp and choke and try to wriggle my way free. But his weight is too much. I’m pinned down like a butterfly.
“Finally,” he says, looking down at me. It’s too dark for me to see anything but shadows. All I can make out is the silhouette of my attacker. My would-be murderer. “I’ve been waiting ten fucking years for this.”
I scream again and try to grab his ankle. He responds by bearing more of his weight down on me, angling his boot so it goes into the soft part of my belly and not my ribs.
“Don’t want you puncturing a lung,” he says. “I got plans for you that require you to be alive for a little while longer.”
I squirm and sob, writhing around in the grass. I keep imagining Nameless coming out of the shadows. Snapping this man’s neck. Saving me like he did last time.
But nothing happens. He’s not here.
“Time to go,” my attacker says.
He grabs my hair and yanks me sideways, dragging me across the grass. Burning pain tears through my scalp. I try to fight, but it just seems to make the pain worse.
“Enough of that,” he snarls, yanking me up to my knees. Tears stream over my cheeks, blurring the familiar expanse of my yard. We’re in front of the big oak tree that grows next to my living room window, and I lift my gaze to the branches stretching thick and sturdy toward the glass.
“Say nighty-night,” the killer says, and then he slams my head against the trunk.
For a moment, there’s nothing but pain.
Then there’s nothing.