Stray Fears - Gregory Ashe Page 0,79
now she’s cleaning house,” I said. “Making sure no one can point back to her.”
“Oh shit,” Elien said, scrambling off the bed. “She’s there right now. She’s going to kill Richard.”
ELIEN (5)
When we got to the house, the front door was open. Muriel’s Subaru was nosed up to the garage.
Dag caught my arm as I was unbuckling myself. “Will you please stay here?”
“No.”
“Will you at least let me go first since I have the gun?”
After a moment, I nodded.
We got out of the Escort. The St. Augustine grass was as neatly trimmed as ever; the magnolia trees and the black oaks and the sugar maples stood still. When I took a deep breath to steady my nerves, I could smell pine sap and freshly cut grass; Richard must have had the lawn-care guys out again. In the house, nothing moved. The windows held our reflection, and behind the reflection, I could make out the dark shapes of furniture.
Then the door slammed shut.
I jumped, and Dag shot around the car to put himself in front of me. One of his hands was on my chest; the other held a pistol. He wasn’t breathing fast or trembling or anything. After a moment, he said, “Fuck.”
I didn’t sound quite as controlled when I muttered, “Holy fucking hell.”
“Please stay here.”
“I can’t.”
“I know,” he said, “but a guy can hope, right?”
He took slow, careful steps toward the house. I came after him, leaving a yard between us; I knew he might have to move fast, and I didn’t want to tangle him up. He’d given me a fixed-blade hunting knife before we left his house, and the fucker was about as long as my hand. If anything got close to me, I was going to stab the fuck out of it. My muscles were spasming, and my movements were jerky as I planned and lived halfway inside that future moment. I briefly considered that I was out of my goddamn mind.
When Dag got to the front door, he did a silent three count on one hand and then kicked it open, charging into the front room. I came after him, slamming the door behind me, and I checked the corners the way he had told me on the drive up. Dag was still moving, passing the stairs and cutting across the living room and into the kitchen. He was still silent, but someone was screaming, and it took me a moment to realize that the sound was inside my head. I went after him, and it was like I was inside a stranger’s house: I cracked my shin against the coffee table, checked up against the couch, caught a cord with my sneaker and pulled a lamp down behind me.
I was coming around living room, just getting a glimpse into the open-plan kitchen, when Dag flew through the air. He crashed into the windows, and glass shattered, but he didn’t go through them. The frames just buckled and splintered, and he fell to the ground. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing.
When I looked up, the hashok was there. This was the first really good look I’d had at it: a human form stripped of anything that might have identified it, nose and ears barely more than nubs, its skin ashen and its eyes black all the way across. Its frame and head were elongated, giving it a stretched-out look, but it had an easy, relaxed stance that reminded me of a basketball player—lots of muscle, and ready to move.
“Shit,” I whispered. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Holding out the knife, I grabbed my phone and called 911. I kept my eyes on the hashok, but it was still in the kitchen, still watching me. The dispatcher came on, and I shouted the address and officer down. I didn’t know if that was the right phrasing, but I figured it’d light a fire under their collective asses. Then I tossed the phone on the couch.
The hashok sprinted, and I made an involuntary stab at the air, but it wasn’t moving toward me. It shot toward the back of the house, smashed through the door, and blurred across the grass. Then it was gone.
I wasn’t ready to be tricked again. The damn thing had tried this last time. It liked to try to pick its victims off one at a time. It liked to try to sneak up behind you.
Crouching by Dag, I checked him as quickly as I could. He was breathing, although something sounded wrong, a kind