Nightwalk 2 Page 4

  I also had a few non-lethal weapons on my belt, but my stun gun was electronic and therefore might be dead in Coventry Woods. I had a foot-long flashlight made out of anodized aluminum, but I didn’t see this as a situation calling for a club. And the last, the can of bear repellent, came with its own risks. I would be spraying upwards, and if any of that stuff came back down and got on me while trying to cling this high up... nope, bad choice.

  That left the pistol. It would be the most effective under these circumstances, although it still came with the “shootout in the skies above” phenomenon that I didn’t remember happening the last time I was here. On the other hand, I suppose if I miraculously managed to kill this thing with a hunting knife its body would still fall to the ground below. And since I didn’t remember it raining giant crab-gargoyles the last time either, I supposed that counted as a change, too.

  So I continued my creeping descent, but now with my right hand spending as little time supporting my weight as I could manage. I still considered retreat my first choice, but had now selected option two if this thing attacked.

  The clouds above me flickered again. It wasn’t true lightning this time, but it still gave me enough light to understand the situation. I barely contained a gasp at the sight my eyes beheld.

  The monster now occupied my former place on the ladder, about twenty feet above me. It appeared even uglier than I remembered from three minutes ago. And it had definitely put me on the menu. The thing clutched the ladder and struts, “head” down in a spiderlike fashion as it tracked me with predatory focus. But that was its mistake…

  It should have been looking up.

  Because it wasn’t the sight of this creature that had almost forced the gasp from me. It had been the larger horror I saw above it, spreading tendril-like tentacles as it silently descended on its distracted prey. The same type of monstrosity that had killed Ashlyn.

  I was already flying down the ladder at full speed when the lightning faded and the first “whipcrack” sounded. I heard a frantic buzz from the creature on the ladder, then several more whipcracks as the floating killer must have settled onto it and got on with the business of killing dinner. A couple more agonized buzzes came from above, then silence as the struggle ended.

  I barely followed any of it. I only cared about getting down to where the trees offered some protection. The skies up here were crowded and deadly.

  But right then I got the second lesson in my refresher course on survival in insane circumstances. Retreating too fast came with its own perils.

  I had succeeded in putting some good distance between me and the danger above when my foot suddenly met nothing but air where a ladder rung should have been.

  Shit!

  One hand and the other foot slipped due to my haste, and I rammed my face against a rung as I suddenly found myself hanging with my belly against the ladder by only one hand. I realized my mistake as soon as it happened.

  I had forgotten somebody had cut the bottom fifty feet of the ladder off this cell tower to keep the neighborhood kids from climbing it.

  Fighting down the urge to start cursing my stupidity, I focused on fixing things instead. First, I got my dangling left hand back up to grab a rung. Then with both hands available to pull with, I managed to get one of my feet back up to the bottom rung. By this time I was huffing and puffing, and it took two tries to get my other foot up.

  Writing mystery novels ain’t exactly the same thing as doing daily pushups, and I was too old for this kind of crap anyway. I may have been outfitted better this time around, but I had also aged another couple of years and gained a pound or two… or ten. Desperation and fear were poor substitutes for youth and conditioning.

  At least this time the angled strut hung lower. I had an easier time holding on to it as I stepped out onto the support beam and inched away from the ladder. My position was still too high on the tower for safety, and I wanted to get another twenty feet lower before stopping to figure out my next move. But now I would need to move with even more care. I had reached a low enough point that less than loud noises could be heard by the people below.

  And even as I thought of this, the sound of Darla’s voice rose from beneath me.

  “Woodlawn Gardens? Are you crazy? Woodlawn Gardens is a cemetery!”

  I looked down as I continued my slow descent, utterly entranced by the scene developing at the bottom of the tower. It was the same as I remembered, yet different due to my angle.

  Darla in her hip-hugger pajama bottoms and tiny crop-top football jersey paraded over to join the group huddled near one leg of the tower. She stopped directly beneath me, which meant I needed to be extra careful to make sure no blown grit or small debris lying on the beam got dislodged by my feet and fell down on her. On the brighter side, it also provided me with a somewhat distant but spectacular view down the front of her low-cut collar.

  Hey, I’m a guy. Okay?

  She may have been a pampered, manipulative, narcissistic, ever complaining and mostly useless pain in the ass… but that woman was stacked. There was a reason a lot of guys put up with her shit.

  But I hadn’t been one of those guys, and I had more important matters to focus on. Besides, the sight of her conjured another image that killed any satisfaction I might have obtained from the scenery below. The memory of her corpse, torn and slashed beyond recognition rose in my mind. Darla had been one of my least favorite people on the planet, but she hadn’t deserved the fate she suffered. Even if she may have brought it on herself.

  The thought of her impending death made me change my focus to her companion, standing slightly behind her and to her right.

  From this angle I couldn’t see Tommy’s face, but I knew exactly what it would look like. He would have the same lack of expression he always wore. He had been as unreadable as a sphinx the whole night. Even when faced with immediate danger, his entire demeanor had been unemotional and somewhat detached. I still think medications may have been involved.

  But right now I knew those empty eyes would be hiding an internal war he was destined to lose. And that loss would come with casualties.

  I tried to push those memories from my mind and focus on silence as I maneuvered my way down another level to the next beam. The drama unfolding below was history. And when it came to matters demanding my attention, it needed to be prioritized as such. The sooner I put distance between myself and this place, the better.

  Fortunately, my current memory of events also came with the knowledge there would soon be a window of opportunity for me to escape. So I chose to settle on the beam about thirty feet above the ground and wait.

  It wouldn’t be long now.

  I watched an obviously distraught Darla snarl and stalk away from the others with Tommy in tow. She had wanted to go to the park where light and other people waited nearby, but got outvoted. She hadn’t taken our decision well… to put it mildly. In all fairness to her, I suppose it did seem like an insane choice from her perspective. Now watching her try to regain her composure only drove home how truly frightened she had been.

  But this time I would be able to do nothing but watch as her fear led her into making a lethal mistake.

  The group below me came to their feet and started toward the small metal shed sharing the enclosure with the cell tower. They paused about halfway there and I heard Ed call back to the lone figure sitting by the little fire.

  “Mark?”

  “Yeah?” the figure wearing my old hat answered.

  “I need you to come with us for a second.”

  I listened to Ed enlist my aid in carrying the comatose Ethan Treadwell from the shed. It felt odd listening to myself answer, and I was grateful the hat I wore back then kept me from seeing glimpses of my own face. The former version of me rose to his feet and followed the others. He waited at the door after they went inside, his attention focused on the goings on in there.

  At the same time, I saw Darla do a fast sneak back from her side of the enclosure to the t
ower base. She snatched up Allen Treadwell’s shotgun and quietly hustled over to the gate of the enclosure.

  Bitch.

  Okay, yeah, she was scared and she was screwing up, but I still couldn’t deny the surge of anger I felt at seeing this stunt actually being played out. It had not only resulted in getting her killed, but Allen and Agnes Treadwell would have never gone to die at the playground if she hadn’t pulled this. Maybe that hadn’t been her plan, but it had still worked out that way. So I guess my feelings were a little complicated when it came to the subject of Darla.

  Choking down the anger, I looked back to see Tommy had taken a position along the side of the shed around the corner from where I stood in the doorway. He held a board he must have found lying nearby.

  I knew what would happen next, but it dismayed me to see how easy it had been.

  Having received Ethan Treadwell from his father, the version of me below turned and walked toward the tower. I had been so focused on looking at the boy that I walked right past Tommy without seeing him. He stepped out and ghosted along behind me as I carried the kid over to the fire. Then, just as I bent to lay the child down, I paused and looked toward the gate… where Darla had been watching the scene, open-mouthed, as it unfolded.

  “Darla?” I heard myself say. “What are you doing?”

  I started to straighten but that was when Tommy let me have it across the back of the head with his board. From above, I watched myself fall like a sack of potatoes across the legs of the boy.

  Tommy didn’t even bother to check if I was out. He simply turned and walked back to the shed, where he matter-of-factly closed the door and stuffed the board under the knob. He moved in a purposeful but unhurried fashion as he returned to the spot where Ethan Treadwell and I lay.

  Then he just stood there, staring down at us.

  He didn’t move, didn’t speak, or give any sign he noticed the pounding and yelling that had started in the shed behind him. He merely gazed down at the two of us as if we were the only interesting things he had come across tonight.

  “Tommy!” Darla hissed from the gate. “What the hell are you doing?”

  He didn’t answer, but I knew exactly what he was doing. The monster that had come awake inside him since the death of Ashlyn now demanded acknowledgment. It was challenging him to settle once and for all who he really was. And with one of his arrows now in Ashlyn’s heart, he had no choice but to accept its challenge and learn the truth.

  It happened almost exactly the way had I imagined it. He knelt by our bodies, while positioning himself so Darla couldn’t see what he was doing. Then he reached over and grabbed the plastic bag Casey had kept to hold some strips of cloth intended for bandages. He stretched the bag over the brain-dead boy’s face, then held it down with one hand while using the other to start going through my pockets.

  I stifled the urge to interfere, both by reminding myself that what transpired below had actually happened two years ago, and by remembering it didn’t matter to the little boy anyway. My job was to keep my distance and take the first opportunity to get on with my own mission.

  Therefore I remained quiet, and watched the strangest double death I could have ever imagined… Ethan Treadwell, despite the fact that everything truly making him a person had already died, and Tommy Murchison, although in reality he had been nothing more than a mirage clung to by a psychopath attempting to be a human being.

  “Toommmyyyyy…” Darla hissed

  The thing that had been Tommy lingered a moment longer, then stood and walked back over to the shed with Casey’s rag bag in his hand. Once there, he picked up the high school duffel bag containing his own stuff, and calmly added the rag bag to its contents while the sounds of knocking and shouting now emanated from the shed in earnest.

  Then he joined Darla at the gate and handed her a torch he pulled from his bag. He never said a word.

  She took it meekly, lit it, and the pair set off around the side of the fenced-in enclosure. They followed the fence until they reached the back trail leading through the trees to the jogging path beyond. They started down the trail, and within seconds all I could see of them was the flickering of their torch in the trees.

  An instant later I jumped into motion.

  My window of escape had arrived. The people in the shed would shout and bang on the door for a few minutes more. Then they would hunt for weak points in the sheet metal before finally hammering and bending out a corner to create a gap big enough for Casey to squeeze through and open the door for them. I intended to be long gone by then.

  Having made this part of the climb before, I quickly descended the last thirty feet to the ground and went straight to the gate. Unlike the assholes who preceded me, I made a point of closing and latching it after exiting. I knew nothing had wandered in last time, but it still irked me how neither of them had bothered with that little consideration in regards to the people they had just stabbed in the back.

  Then I padded around the edge of the enclosure, following the exact same route.

  While I had been waiting up on the tower for my chance to escape, I had formulated my next move. The asphalt jogging path at the other end of the trail went west along Deer Ridge, and north up the side of a creek toward Coventry Boulevard. It hadn’t been an easy choice to make.

  My goal lay to the north, but the safer route ran to the west. If I went west, then Tommy and Darla would be effectively running interference for me. I knew from last time they would encounter the goatman where the trail forked, but Tommy would kill him. From there I could follow the path to the playground in the park. That would also be temporarily safe since I also knew from last time that the monster lurking in the duck pond would not attack until triggered by Allen Treadwell walking along the pond’s shore. So the west route offered the most safety for the first leg of my mission.

  But it also offered the biggest danger of altering things concerning mine and Casey’s history, since I would be in proximity to Tommy and Darla… even if at a distance. If they spotted me following and slowed down or stopped for a while, it could lead to unforeseen consequences.

  So, I chose to go north.

  But first, I needed to test something. I pulled my flashlight from my belt, pressed the lens against the ground, and switched it on. Nothing. No ring of light appeared where the rim met the dirt.

  Interesting. I had originally thought all the electronics had been disabled by the distortion events when Chandra’s machine fired up. But my flashlight hadn’t been exposed to those. That meant they didn’t work due to ongoing conditions inside this area, which meant my stun gun would be useless as well.

  Oh well, I wasn’t terribly surprised, and I came more than prepared.

  Keeping an eye on the torch flickering in the woods ahead, I now slipped off my backpack and fished out the light I intended to start with anyway. It was a military-grade glow stick that I carefully shielded before cracking. Then I dropped it into a tactical glow stick holder I had bought at an army surplus. This was a rugged plastic tube featuring a “window side” I could twist open or closed. I could either clip it on my belt or carry it in my hand with the ability to conceal the light by the simple expediency of closing my hand over the window.

  I had intended to use it as my backup light for the evening, but it would serve until I got to a place safer for me to go with brighter options. At the moment, stealth mattered more.

  I twisted the tube so it would provide minimum illumination, then set out after the flickering torch ahead.

  Now, for once, I was the one doing the stalking, albeit with the objective not to overtake.

  But my slightly more aggressive role didn’t decrease my trepidation for one second. I remembered the lesson of my own stalker back on the cell tower. Coventry Woods was a food chain tonight, and despite the fact I had arrived better prepared this time, I stood nowhere near the top of that chain. I kept my light masked behind my hand and low to the ground as I silently entered the blackness of the trees. />
  My ears strained for any sound of danger nearby. Just because a smaller predator might have let two people with a torch walk past didn’t mean it wouldn’t feel up to tackling a solitary wanderer coming along behind. And I knew from prior experience there were some very deadly smaller predators out there.

  Just like last time, the night seemed to seethe around me. I didn’t know if it was due to the occasional alien chirp or whirr coming from the surrounding darkness, or an effect of the tortured dimensions being pushed together by Roger Chandra’s device. That sense of the night being alive only reinforced the awareness of my solitude while others were dying in groups out there.

  Ahead of me, the torch moved a little faster and had taken a sharp turn to the left. Tommy and Darla were now on the jogging path. This allowed me to move a little quicker myself.

  I covered the remainder of the trail quickly and crouched at the juncture where it met the asphalt. I had gained on the pair, and waited to let them get farther ahead. The jogging path was more open and offered longer lines of sight, so it behooved me to wait until they had gone completely around the corner before entering the path myself.

  My last view of those two walking away gave me a hollow feeling deep in my gut. Sometime over the next five to twenty minutes, the woman carrying the torch on the right would be viciously murdered and mutilated by her companion.

  She had put herself in that position, and endangered the rest of us in the process of doing so, but it still made me queasy watching her disappear around the corner while having no idea of what walked at her side. I saw no justice in what would happen to her.

  But tonight, the rules in play didn’t concern themselves with justice.