Something stirred in the room down the hall. A rustle. A thump. Now a door cracked open, the music grew louder, and heavy footsteps pounded down the hallway.
“Shh. Don’t move,” Natalie whispered to Bunny.
She stood up and braced herself, aiming her gun at the door.
The footsteps stopped just outside the door.
Natalie tapped the base of her magazine with the heel of her hand to make sure it was fully seated before raising the gun to eye level. She placed her finger on the trigger and focused on the front sight.
The doorknob turned slowly.
“Go away!” Bunny shouted.
The doorknob stopped turning.
Natalie felt a numbness like sand trickling through her body as she steadied her aim and aligned the intended target in her front and rear sights.
“Go away, or she’ll shoot you in the head!” Bunny cried.
Natalie cringed and took a step forward, reaching for the door before Samuel could get away, but right at that instant, the door shot open as if a bulldozer had knocked it down, and Samuel burst into the room swinging a baseball bat. He knocked the weapon out of her hands, and her right wrist snapped as the gun misfired. He slammed the bat into her left shoulder, and the pain registered on her optic nerves. Cascades of white flashes. She cried out as she flew backward, gun skidding across the room and sliding under the night table. She landed hard on the floor, all the wind knocked out of her lungs.
Samuel was naked from the waist up. He wore jeans, no shoes, and a mask made out of a knotted pair of women’s pantyhose—the old-fashioned, polyester kind. You could see his eyes through a slit in the mask. His toes gripped the warped floorboards and a sheen of perspiration clung to his torso.
Natalie cringed at the sight of his birthmark—a butterfly in midflight.
“You? What are you doing here?” Samuel asked, his strange gaze flitting across her face.
He seemed very far away, hovering somewhere on the edge of the universe. A hawk, circling high in the sky, looking down at her … waiting to snatch her life away.
Natalie’s eyes burned. Her left shoulder throbbed. Her right hand felt broken. A gasp sprang from her solar plexus as she withstood the gravitational pull of fear.
“Don’t hurt me!” The air became electrified with Bunny’s screams as she strained against her chains, trying to break free.
Samuel turned toward his captive and raised the bat threateningly. “I asked you politely to stop screaming. Didn’t I?”
Bunny cowered with animal fright.
Natalie scrambled for her gun, clawing across the floor and scooping it up, ignoring the pain in her right hand. She used her left hand to sight down the barrel, aiming her weapon center-mass. It took every ounce of strength she had left not to blow him away. “Drop the bat, Samuel,” she said, steadying her nerves. “Raise your hands where I can see them. Slowly.”
He turned in silhouette, his head backlit by the corner lamp.
“Raise your hands in the air,” she commanded. “Nice and easy.”
He studied her through the eerie eyeholes of the pantyhose mask.
“Drop the bat,” she demanded. “I don’t want to shoot you.” What a good liar. “Drop the bat and raise your hands—slowly.”
He clutched the bat in both hands and shook his head. “You followed me here?”
“Put it down,” she repeated. “Now.”
His head swayed ever so slightly on his muscular neck. Breathing calmly, he told her, “You followed me here from the lake, and I’d like to know why.”
She stuck to the script. “Put your hands in the air—now!”
“How did you find out about this place? About me?”
She swallowed hard and said, “Your birthmark.”
He glanced at his arm.
“You attacked me a long time ago in the woods. You had your T-shirt wrapped around your head so I couldn’t see your face. But I noticed the birthmark.”
“Oh. Okay. I understand now,” he said in a measured way.
She could detect her own rapid pulse in the slight pendulum of her aim.
“I remember our date when you were in college. But I don’t remember attacking you in the woods. When was this? There’ve been so many,” he confessed. “It’s hard to keep track.”
She felt the muscles of her hands twitching from the strain. She recalled what her father had told her about firing her weapon in the line of duty. It’s not bragging rights. It’s deeply troubling. Avoid it if at all possible. She blinked the sweat out of her eyes.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” Samuel said. “This is not going to end well.”
“Drop the bat,” she insisted.
His eyes were raked with sadness—or a perfect imitation of human emotion. “I was the one who pulled your sister out of the lake tonight. Did you know that? She was stuck in the weeds. I had to tug her legs out of the eelgrass, but then she popped up, and I had her. I looked into her eyes,” he said. “Have you ever done that, Natalie? Looked into their eyes?”
Her trembling lips betrayed her revulsion and fright.
“But you deal with dead bodies all the time in your line of work, don’t you? What are you afraid of?”
“Get your hands in the air!” she shouted hoarsely.
“We all think we’re going to live forever. Secretly, we all believe it.” His outline was beginning to waver. “But then, once you realize you’re going to die … once you accept your own mortality, that’s the instant you become your true self.”
Natalie’s head filled with a crackling sound. Bright spots danced before her eyes. She was beginning to lose focus, his image snapping and shivering before her.
“Should I tell you what happens? When I look in their eyes?”
She felt like a bug you could flick away with your fingers.
“Their expression begins to change,” Samuel said in a low, mesmerizing voice. “From dreaming to awake. From awake to terror. From terror to surrender. And as they take their last breath … they become who they truly are. The moment of transformation … is unimaginable.”
Her sweaty finger twitched on the trigger. Her left hand was weaker than her right hand. Her aim was unsteady. She was afraid of him. It was obvious to both of them.
“Your sister was alive when I pulled her out of the lake,” Samuel said in a trancelike cadence. “Her name was Grace, right? That’s an elegant name. She barely had a pulse when I pulled her out of the reeds, but she was still breathing … I cradled her in my arms and helped her move on. I’ve helped a lot of people move on. She said she wanted to die. Some people believe that, right before you die, the last thing you see remains on your retina. And so, I’m sure, the last thing your sister ever saw was me.”
Shoot him now.
“I helped her move on. I can help you move on, too, Natalie.”
Shoot him now.
“The last thing you’ll ever see,” he said, taking a step forward, “will be me.”
She jerked the trigger. Once. Twice.
Two startling flashes. Two explosive cracks.
Samuel took both rounds in the chest. His eyes bulged with disbelief, like a boy on a roller-coaster ride. The bat dropped out of his hands and clattered to the floor.
It took time for gravity to tug a one-hundred-and-ninety-pound human being to the ground. Samuel dropped to one knee, and then to the other. There was a terrible thud as he landed on his face, blood pooling from his chest and soaking into the threadbare rug.
Bunny screamed and tried to get away, the heavy chain clanking.
Natalie rolled the body over and felt for a pulse.
Samuel was staring at her, guzzling for air. The bullets had pierced his vital organs. Soon, his body would no longer be able to regulate the flow of blood to his brain. It would pool inside his sick and evil mind, starved for oxygen.
She rested her fingers on his throat.
A weak pulse.
He blinked the blood out of his eyelashes and said, “Look at me.”
She drew back, repulsed beyond belief, her body shaking with resistance.
Samuel sucked in a breath. “Look into my eyes, Natalie.”
A shudder ran through her. She shook her head and fought off a current of fear.
But he was relentless. “Look into my eyes. Go on. I dare you.”
The temptation created a dull ache in her heart. She peered into his eyes, feeling something instant and powerful. His irises twisted like flies caught in a spiderweb. What she saw was nothing. A chilly force. A swirling emptiness. Whatever stared back at her wasn’t human. It spun slowly on the edge of the known universe like a lone, barren planet.
Tears sprang to her eyes. She drew back.
Words formed bloody bubbles on his lips. “What did you see?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
He stared at her like a possessed man. The raccoon. The stick. The boy with the butterfly birthmark. The memory was as organic as a jellyfish, alive and breathing liquidly, filling all the crevices of her consciousness with its poisonous tentacles.
He took his last breath without making a sound, shoulders jerking spasmodically, as if he had the hiccups. Then his body sagged and went perfectly still.
She touched his throat. No pulse.
Finally, it was over.
Dead. He was dead.
His blood pooled onto the floor and soaked into the rug.
Time slowed to a stop. Reality crumbled away.
Fury gripped her. She tried to shake him awake. “I saw nothing!” She dropped his head on the floor and could barely breathe, she was so full of outrage. She wanted to kill him all over again. She wanted to smash him to bits.
A horrible stillness descended.
The last thing he ever saw was her image carved on his retina.
She tried to find a path back to sanity.
The air grew dense and cold inside the room.
Sirens. A snap back to reality. Luke must’ve tracked her phone.
She stood up, grabbed a blanket off the bed, and wrapped it around Bunny’s quivering shoulders.
Bunny reeled away. “He was gonna feed me to the crows!”
Through the window, Natalie saw red and blue lights strobing across the surrounding woods. Two officers got out of their cruiser and approached the house, signaling silently to each other. Luke had found her. She tried rearranging her thoughts in order, but it was useless.
Natalie felt like someone else. Crossing the line could do that to a person. She’d helped countless victims of car accidents, fires, rapes, and robberies. She’d seen how shock could rob people of their senses. Psychological trauma could cripple you.
She turned to face the dead body on the floor. Samuel’s eyes were open, glazed and untroubled. Everything was broken inside her. She took a deep breath and began to cry.