Night Terrors
Author: Mark Lukens
Date: 2014-07-01 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Literature & Fiction; Horror; Occult; Mystery; Thriller & Suspense; Thrillers & Suspense; Suspense; Paranormal; Psychics
Description: NIGHT TERRORS Genre: supernatural thriller How do you hide from a psychic serial killer? Tara Simmons has always had psychic abilities as long as she can remember. And she's suffered from night terrors where a shadowy man pursues her. The Shadow Man found her once before when she was sixteen years old and slaughtered her parents. And now, nine years later, he's found her again. The Shadow Man is killing people as he works his way closer to Tara. She can see the murders through his eyes, the clues left behind, and he wants it that way. He takes things from each victim: blood, skin, and other it
Publisher: Createspace

Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
EPILOGUE
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

NIGHT TERRORS

A novel by

MARK LUKENS

Night Terrors – Copyright © 2011 by Mark Lukens

All Rights Reserved

No part of this work may be reproduced without written permission by the author.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead (or in any other form), is entirely coincidental.

As always, this book is dedicated to my wife, my son, and my family.

Please check out these other books by the Author:

ANCIENT ENEMY http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FD4SP8M

THE SUMMONING http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HNEOHKU

DESCENDANTS OF MAGIC http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FWYYYYC

A DARK COLLECTION: 12 SCARY STORIES http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JENAGLC

GHOST TOWN: A NOVELLA – http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LEZRF7G

DEVIL’S ISLAND – Coming Soon

THE SUPERHUMAN GENE – Coming Soon

CHAPTER ONE

1.

The Shadow Man waited in the darkness across the street, hidden in the brush and palmettos as he watched the house – it was a two-story home, constructed from block with a stucco finish which was painted a very light beige and trimmed in white. The house was two thousand one hundred and fifty square feet and was bought for two hundred and forty-five thousand dollars in 2005. There was a master bedroom downstairs and two other bedrooms upstairs. He had the layout of the home committed to memory – he had done all of the necessary research.

The front porch light was on and it cast a cozy, yellowish glow across the front porch and a small area of the front yard. A white BMW 328i sat in the driveway. The landscaping around the house was lush and tropical, and it would provide plenty of cover.

At the Shadow Man’s feet was a canvas duffel bag.

2.

Inside the house, seventeen year old Jen watched her mother and father as they got ready to go out for the night. Her father shrugged into his suit coat and studied himself in the mirror that hung on the wall near the front door; he turned this way and that way, smoothing out the coat with his hands.

Jen smiled at her father. “You look fine, Dad.”

He returned her smile and then looked at his wife who rummaged through her purse like she was making a last-minute inventory check.

Jen’s father walked over to his daughter. “We’ll be back before midnight. You sure you’re going to be okay here by yourself?”

Jen’s mother, satisfied that everything was in order inside her purse, placed a reassuring hand on her daughter’s shoulder and answered for her. “She’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, Dad,” Jen added. “I’ll be okay. I’ve got a lot to do. I’ve got that report to finish for school.” Jen gently pushed her parents towards the front door. “Go on. Have a good time. Don’t worry about me.”

Jen’s father kissed her on the forehead. “Okay. Keep all the doors locked. Don’t open the door for anyone. And no boys over.”

Jen nodded – she’d heard this a thousand times.

Jen’s parents opened the door and walked out into the warm and humid night air.

“Bye!” Jen called out and waved to them as they walked to their BMW.

As Jen watched her parents get into their car, something tugged at her mind for just a moment; a quick and fleeting feeling, like something sharp and dangerous. And for just a moment she was sure that somebody was watching her from the darkness. She looked across the street at the brush and the forest of scraggly pine trees, but she couldn’t see anyone.

But he’s there, her mind whispered.

And then as quickly as the feeling had come, it was gone. She pushed the momentary fear away; she was just having jitters about being home alone for the night – that was all.

She waved one more time at her mother and father as they drove away, and then she hurried back inside the house. She shut the door and locked it.

3.

The Shadow Man watched Jen’s parents leave the house and get into their car. The car started. The headlights came on. The car eased out of the driveway and drove out onto the lonely neighborhood street, and then it sped away into the darkness.

There were only a few houses on this road – all of them on the other side of the street. Each house sat on a two acre lot and Jen’s house in particular was isolated from the other homes, separated from them by densely wooded lots on each side.

The Shadow Man smiled in the darkness. He made himself wait a few minutes longer; making sure that the parents weren’t going to double back because they’d forgotten something. He could stand to wait a few more moments; he’d been waiting a long time for this.

He knew that the girl inside the house had sensed his presence in the darkness. Their minds had “connected” for a brief moment. But it didn’t matter because he was going to be one step ahead of her at every moment.

The metal objects inside his duffel bag clinked together as he lifted it up and slung it over his shoulder. He hurried out of the trees and brush and then darted across the road like some kind of night animal.

Night animal, he liked the thought of that. Night predator – even better.

He raced across the dark lawn, careful to keep out of the splash of light from the front porch. He made it to the corner of the house and slipped in behind a group of Philodendrons. He crept around the corner to the back of the house.

4.

Jen made sure the front door was locked one more time and then she walked over to the coffee table and picked up the remote control for the television; she left the TV on, but she turned the volume all the way down. She bounced over to the stereo system and turned it on. She found a pop station and cranked up the music.

She grabbed her laptop out of her book bag and plopped down on the couch. She flipped the laptop open, powered it up, and found the file for her school report. She had just started reading what she had written so far when she nearly jumped out of her skin.

Someone was banging on the sliding glass door!

Jen turned so quickly she almost knocked the laptop off of her lap. Her eyes were on the vertical blinds that covered the sliding glass door that led out to the pool deck in the backyard.

She stood up, her heart thudding in her chest, her mouth going dry, her mind beginning to buzz with panic.

Something evil is out there, she thought.

Jen walked to the vertical blinds and stood in front of them. She was about to pull them aside, but she stopped. She flipped the light switch up and the yellowish light from outside shined around the edges of the blinds. She glanced back at her cell phone on the coffee table – maybe she should have it with her.

She turned back to the blinds, took a deep breath, and ripped them aside.

Right on the other side of the glass, only inches away from her, was a person dressed in dark clothing.

Jen breathed out a sigh of relief as she unlocked the sliding glass door and pushed it open.

“God, Kevin,” she said, “You scared the shit out of me.”

Kevin, eighteen years old with an athletic body and a lopsided smile, entered the home. He grinned at her. “Who’d you think I was, the Boogeyman?”

He tried to kiss Jen, but she pushed him away and closed the sliding glass door.

“What the hell?” she said. “You didn’t have to pound on the door like that.”

Kevin smiled and then gave her a mock frown. “If you don’t want me here, I can leave.”

She smiled and kissed him. “No, I want you to stay.” And then she pushed him away again. “But you scared the hell out of me.”

Kevin smiled and headed for the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and rummaged around. “Your dad got any beers hidden in here?”

Jen didn’t answer; she went back to the couch and her laptop.

“Here we go!” Kevin shouted as he found four bottles of beer behind a gallon of milk. He grabbed one of the beers, opened it and drank a third of it down. He sauntered back into the living room with the beer in his hand.

Jen stared at him. “What am I supposed to tell my dad when he sees that his beers are gone?”

“He’ll be drinking enough tonight. He’ll probably think he drank them. You could tell him that he blacked out.”

Kevin plopped down on the couch right beside Jen as she pretended to read her report on the laptop. She scooted away from him.

He scooted closer to her and took another sip of his beer. He smiled as he watched her. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

Jen ignored him.

“Come on, Jen.”

Jen couldn’t help smiling. She turned and looked at Kevin – she’d already forgiven him.

Kevin scooted closer to Jen as she set her laptop on the coffee table by her phone. They kissed; Kevin forced his tongue into her mouth right away.

Jen pulled away. “Your breath smells like beer.”

“You know you like it,” Kevin said, still smiling at her, but there was a hungry look in his eyes. He stood up and set his beer down next to her laptop on the coffee table. Then he walked towards the door at the other end of the living room and looked back at her. “Come on, let’s go to the bedroom.”

“That’s my parents’ bedroom.”

“I know,” Kevin said and smirked, and then he entered the dark bedroom, leaving the door open for her, inviting her in.

Jen hesitated. She really wanted to make out with Kevin – she always wanted to do that – but right now that feeling of dread still tugged at her. And for the second time that night she pushed the tingling feeling of fear away. She felt a little safer now that Kevin was here with her. She got up and rushed to the bedroom.

She entered the bedroom and closed the door. The room was totally dark; the only light came from the crack underneath the door.

“Where are you?” Jen whispered as she walked towards the bed, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness.

No answer from Kevin.

“Come on, Kevin. Don’t play around.”

“Down here on the bed,” Kevin whispered.

Jen lay down on the bed and Kevin slid closer to her. It was quieter in the bedroom, but Jen could still hear the music thumping from the living room.

Kevin reached for her in the darkness, his hands groping at her body. He kissed her; a longer, more passionate kiss this time. And she started to forget about her fear for a moment; she wanted to let herself surrender to Kevin. He moved his hand down her arm to the bottom of her shirt, his fingers wiggled underneath her shirt, slowly working their way up …

Jen pulled away.

Kevin breathed out an annoyed sigh.

“I … I don’t know if I’m ready yet.”

“Come on, we’ve been going out for six months now.”

“I know. I just want it to be the right time.”

“It never seems like the right time for you.”

Jen sat up and hugged her arms like she was cold. She glanced around the dark bedroom. She couldn’t shake the nervous feeling. No, nervous wasn’t the right word. She was afraid. That presence she’d felt earlier, that evil and that darkness, it was back now and much stronger than before. A buzzing panic was building up inside of her. Something very bad was outside her house; she knew that it didn’t make any sense, she knew that it wasn’t reasonable – but she knew it was true.

She looked back at Kevin. “Maybe we should go out somewhere.”

“Go somewhere? Why? We’ve got the house to ourselves.”

“I don’t know. I just want to go somewhere.”

Jen jumped from a soft thumping sound from out in the living room. She looked at Kevin with wide eyes. “Did you hear that?”

Kevin stood up, even more annoyed now. He listened for a moment, and then shook his head. “I don’t hear anything.”

He exhaled a deep breath and then stomped out of the bedroom and left the door wide open.

Jen hopped off the bed and hurried after him.

In the living room, Kevin grabbed his beer from the coffee table and chugged the rest of it down.

“I said I was sorry for scaring you,” Kevin said after finishing the beer. “God, if I knew it was going to make you act like this …”

“It’s not that -”

They both jumped from a loud clanging noise in the kitchen. Jen let out a short scream as she grabbed on to Kevin’s arm, and both of them stared into the kitchen.

“What was that?” Jen whispered.

Kevin tore his arm away from Jen’s hands and took off for the kitchen.

“Kevin, wait.”

“I’m going to see what it was,” Kevin said over his shoulder, still clearly annoyed at these interruptions to his sexual conquest.

Jen followed Kevin into the kitchen. They stared at a few pots and pans that had fallen out of one of the bottom cabinets.

“It’s just some pots and pans,” Kevin said.

Jen walked past Kevin and shoved the pots and pans back inside the cabinet. She didn’t see how they could’ve just fallen out like that. They were usually stacked neatly – her mom kept the kitchen very organized.

She stood up and looked around the kitchen as she rubbed her arms again. She looked right at Kevin. “Let’s just go somewhere.”

Kevin didn’t answer her as he grabbed another beer out of the refrigerator and headed back to the living room.

Jen followed him. “Something doesn’t feel right. I don’t know how to explain it.” She’d never told Kevin about the “feelings” she got sometimes; she didn’t need to give him something else to make fun of her about. She’d never really told anyone about these feelings except her lifelong friend Kelly.

Kevin was on his way back to the couch when he stopped in his tracks. He stared at the vertical blinds – they swayed back and forth slightly, like a breeze outside was moving them.

“You shut the sliding glass door, right?” Kevin asked Jen.

Jen nodded as she stared at the blinds. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure I did.”

Both of them jumped as a blast of static erupted from the stereo. Jen glanced at the stereo, but then she focused on Kevin. “Listen to me, something’s wrong here. I’m not kidding.”

Jen hurried over to the stereo and turned down the music which was distorted by static. She looked back at Kevin who stood in front of the vertical blinds. He pushed the blinds aside.

“Kevin, what are you doing?” she hissed.

The sliding glass door was open slightly. He slid the door open all the way and looked out at the pool deck and fenced-in backyard. The back porch light only illuminated so much and a lot of the backyard was still hidden in shadows.

Kevin was about to step outside when Jen grabbed his shoulder. He turned and stared into her wide eyes.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

Kevin snorted out a laugh. “I’m gonna check it out.”

“No, don’t. Just stay in here. Someone’s out there. I can feel it.”

Kevin smirked at her. “What do you mean, you can feel it?”

Jen sighed; she really didn’t feel like going into a long explanation right now.

Kevin smiled again at her and pushed a lock of hair out of her face. He seemed like he was relishing her fear, loving to play the hero for her. “I’ll be fine. I just want to have a look around. Besides, I’ve got a weapon with me.” Kevin lifted the beer bottle – indicating his weapon.

Jen exhaled a shudder of a breath.

“Don’t worry,” Kevin told Jen. “Just shut the door and lock it. I’ll knock three times so you’ll know it’s me and not a psycho killer.”

“That’s not funny.”

Kevin kissed Jen and went outside.

Jen shut the sliding glass door and locked it. She walked back to the stereo. Static still hissed from the speakers. She tuned in another station. More static. The static meant something, she was sure of it.

She walked back to the sliding glass door and looked out at the back porch and the pool. The shrubs and fence beyond the pool were just black shapes in the darkness. She couldn’t see Kevin anywhere.

She unlocked the door and opened it. She listened for any sounds from Kevin. The night was silent; she didn’t even hear the usual buzzing of insects so common at night in Florida.

“Kevin,” she whispered.

No answer.

“Kevin? Where are you? Come back inside.”

Still no answer.

Something crashed through the bushes at the back fence, something large. She couldn’t see who it was, but she was sure it wasn’t Kevin. She hurried back inside, slid the door shut, and locked it. She slid the vertical blinds shut. She stood there for a moment, watching the vertical blinds sway, the plastic blinds tapping at each other as their pendulum dance slowed down to stillness.

She rubbed at her arms. It was warm outside, but she felt so cold.

Her phone!

Jen rushed to the coffee table and picked up her phone and dialed Kelly’s number.

She paced around the living room as she listened to the phone ringing in her ear. A pit of fear knotted her stomach and her muscles felt weak and shaky. Her eyes kept darting back to the wall of vertical blinds in front of the sliding glass door; they seemed like a thin barrier against what was out there.

Come on, Kelly, she thought, pick up the phone.

Finally, Kelly answered. “Hey, Jen. Kevin not there yet?”

“He’s here,” Jen answered, talking a little too quickly. “He’s outside looking around. He banged on the sliding glass door earlier and scared the hell out of me and then he was inside and I know I closed the sliding glass door but it was open again -”

“Hold on, Jen. Slow down.”

Jen took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I’m just freaking out. I think someone’s outside my house. I told Kevin not to go out there, but he went anyway.”

As she talked on the phone, Jen felt a little braver; she walked to the vertical blinds and pushed them aside just a bit so she could peek outside. No one out there. No Kevin, either. She let the blinds fall back in place.

“Maybe Kevin’s just trying to scare you again.”

“Yeah, maybe.” But Jen didn’t think so.

Jen looked at the stereo system; even with the sound turned down low she could still hear the static. “Will you do me a favor, Kelly?”

“What?”

“Will you check your radio? See if the stations are coming in okay.”

“Why?”

“Please, Kelly.”

“Okay.”

Jen walked from the vertical blinds to the TV as she waited for Kelly to check her radio. The picture on the TV was distorted, wavy lines interrupted the program. Jen picked up the remote control and flipped through several channels, all of the channels had wavy lines on them like something powerful was interfering with the signal.

Jen jumped a little when she heard Kelly’s voice on the phone. “All the radio stations are coming in fine here. What’s going on there?”

Jen just stared at the TV.

“Jen? Are you still there?”

Jen could feel the dark and evil presence now; it was like a blanket smothering her. It was so much stronger now. It was the interfering force on the TV and radio, she was sure of it. There was a killer outside. She didn’t know how she knew this, but it was as real as anything she’d ever known in her life. The killer was out there in the darkness and he was coming for her.

And this killer was familiar to her. She knew him. She’d seen him before – in her dreams.

“Jen!!”

“Yeah,” Jen whispered into the phone. “I’m still here.”

“You’re kind of freaking me out here.”

“He’s here now.”

“Who?”

No answer from Jen.

“Jen, you’re really starting to scare me.”

Jen backed away from the TV and its wavy lines. She turned back to the vertical blinds. A blast of static erupted from the cell phone and blared in her eardrum.

“He’s here,” Jen said into the phone, but she wasn’t sure if Kelly could hear her words anymore. “The Shadow Man I’ve seen in my dreams.”

“ … Jen … what … Jen … can’t …” Static cut off Kelly’s words.

A panic gripped Jen now, she wanted to run, but she didn’t know where she could she run to. The Shadow Man would know where she was going; he would know what she was going to do. He would be one step ahead of her.

Another blast of static squealed in Jen’s ear from her cell phone. It startled her so badly she dropped her phone. She picked up her phone from the carpet, but there was no signal now. The phone was useless; it wasn’t going to work properly, not with him around.

Jen jumped and screamed when she heard a pounding on the sliding glass door.

Kevin! He was back!

Jen ran across the living room to the vertical blinds. She was about to rip them open when a thought occurred to her – it hadn’t been three knocks. What if it wasn’t Kevin on the other side of the glass? What if it was the Shadow Man from her nightmares?

She hesitated, listening, waiting for more knocks on the glass. “Kevin?” she called out. “Is that you?”

No answer.

There was a pounding on the glass; it almost sounded like the glass was reverberating, threatening to shatter.

“Kevin! If that’s you, then answer me!!”

Still no answer from Kevin. If it was Kevin, he would’ve said something by now.

Then she heard three loud knocks on the sliding glass door hidden behind the blinds. Three deliberate knocks.

“Kevin … please …”

Jen took a deep breath and tore the vertical blinds to the side. And then she screamed.

Oh God. It was too late for Kevin.

Kevin sank down on the other side of the glass door leaving behind a smear of blood.

Jen backed away from the sliding glass door, shaking her head no, tears streaming down her face. Her mind buzzed with white-hot panic, and her animal instincts took over – she needed to run.

She raced across the living room towards the front door and then froze when she heard a pounding at the door.

Jen stifled a scream. She tried to dial 911 on her cell phone, but the phone still wasn’t working.

The phone in the kitchen!

She bolted for the kitchen and ran past the counter to the wall where the phone normally hung, but she stopped dead and stared at the spot on the wall where the phone used to be; now there were just some shredded wires hanging out of the wall – the phone was gone.

Jen turned to the counter and reached for the block of kitchen knives. She needed something to defend herself with. But all of the knives were gone.

She hurried back around the counter to the kitchen door that led outside, about to reach for the spare keys on a wooden key holder that was shaped like a key. But all of the keys were gone: the keys to the house, the keys to her mom’s car in the garage. All of them gone.

She backed up a step away from the wall, shaking her head no, praying that this was another one of her nightmares. This couldn’t be real. She just wanted to wake up.

A scraping noise at the kitchen door grabbed her attention. She saw the shadowy figure of a man right on the other side of the door, just visible through the sheer curtain.

The lock on the door handle slowly twisted from locked to unlocked. Then the door handle slowly turned.

Jen bolted from the kitchen in a blind panic; she ran through the living room for the stairs. She rushed up the stairs, stumbling on the last few carpeted steps as she reached the second floor hall. She fell down in the hallway, but she didn’t waste any time, she was back on her feet and running to her bedroom as whimpers of fear escaped her throat.

She rushed inside her bedroom and slammed the door shut. She had a lock on her door; she had asked her parents for a lock a few years ago and they had installed one. She twisted the lock and backed away from the door. The lock seemed so flimsy right now. Even the door itself didn’t seem like much protection.

Her phone!

She turned and ran to the table beside her bed. Her phone was gone; the only thing left was the telephone wire on the table. No, he couldn’t have been up here already. And then her mind slipped back to the muffled noises she had heard when she and Kevin were in her parents’ bedroom.

The sound of heavy footsteps in the hall drew her attention back to her bedroom door. A shadow crossed the strip of light underneath the door.

Jen breathed hard as she tried to think of what to do. She couldn’t protect herself up here; she had nothing to fight back with.

The window? It was only a fifteen or sixteen foot drop to the ground – she could make it.

A clicking noise at the door. She looked back and saw the lock in the door handle twisting, the door handle turning. The door opened slowly. And the man from her nightmares entered. In her dreams she had never seen his face; it had always been hidden in shadows. He had wanted it that way. But she could see him now, she could see his eyes, and there was no mercy in those dark eyes.

Jen backed up to the wall, slid down, and cried hopeless tears. She shook her head back and forth.

“No … please,” she sobbed. “What do you want?”

The killer approached.

“What is that thing?” she asked when she saw the metal contraption in his gloved hands.

And that’s when Jen started screaming.

CHAPTER TWO

1.

Tara woke up panicking as she clawed at the air and screamed out a name: “Jen!”

She sat up and looked around at the bathroom.

Then she began to relax – she knew where she was now; she was in her guest bathroom, in the bathtub. She had been sleepwalking again. She’d been having a nightmare about a girl being murdered.

But this wasn’t a nightmare. It had really happened. Some girl she didn’t even know, a girl named Jen, had been murdered by a killer. She could remember Jen’s face, but she couldn’t remember anything about the killer – because it was like she had been watching everything through his eyes.

He wants it that way, a voice in her mind whispered.

Tara closed her eyes for a moment, trying to catch her breath. She was dressed in her usual bedtime clothes – pajama bottoms and an oversized T-shirt. She never wore anything too revealing to bed anymore ever since she was a teenager and she’d woken up three blocks from her house in her underwear after a sleepwalking incident.

She crawled out of the bathtub. There was light coming from some other place in her apartment, but the bathroom was dark, and she couldn’t be in the darkness. She turned on the bathroom light and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, her dark hair was disheveled and her blue eyes were haunted by the images she had just seen in her dreams. Her eyes darted for a moment to the thick, four inch long scar on the side of her neck. She turned away from the mirror and hurried out of the bathroom into her living room.

She went to the spare bedroom which was around the corner from the guest bathroom she had just woken up in – the light was coming from this room which she used as her office. Along one wall was her desk with the computer on top and two battered filing cabinets next to it. Two bookcases crammed with books took up another wall, and in the corner between the desk and bookcases was her art easel.

Scattered on the floor were three sheets of drawing paper.

She picked one of them up, then another, and then the last one. They were quick sketches of Jen. She had drawn them in her sleep. She did this every once in a while when she had a terrible nightmare or vision, but it had been a while since she’d had a night terror this bad – years.

She studied the sketches, the lines were quick and heavy, not too much detail, but Tara could see the terror in Jen’s eyes, her hands held up in defense. But Jen had not been able to defend herself against this monster.

Tara wanted to shove the papers away in a drawer, maybe even tear them up and throw them away. She didn’t want these reminders that she’d seen the murder of a seventeen year old girl that she could do nothing about, nothing to help her. But something stopped her. At the edges of each drawing were a few numbers and a word: a number three on one drawing, a number five on the next, and one word on the last one – Run.

What did this word and these numbers mean? She tried to remember if they had anything to do with the dream – but she couldn’t remember. But they had to mean something.

Run. Maybe something was telling her to run. Hadn’t that been what she’d been doing during her night terror – running away? Running to her bathroom and hiding in the tub? Jen had been running away from the killer, maybe that’s what the word had to do with it. But Tara felt that the word was targeted towards her, that it was meant for her.

And the numbers: a three and a five. What did they have to do with anything?

After a dejected sigh, Tara set the sketches on her desk and left the room. She turned off the light and closed the door. She hurried to the front door and checked to make sure the deadbolt was engaged. She checked the windows. Everything was locked – she was safe.

But she didn’t feel safe. She still couldn’t push away the feeling of dread that had washed over her. A girl had been murdered tonight and there was nothing she could do about it. A sudden sadness and helplessness nearly overwhelmed her.

And the worst thing was that she felt like she knew this killer, like she’d seen him before.

I’ve felt him in my dreams before; I’ve seen horrible things through his eyes before.

Tara grabbed a bottle of water out of the refrigerator and drank half of it down – she was so thirsty. She stood in front of the open door of the refrigerator with the bottle of water in her hand. A tingly feeling of fear danced across her skin on spidery legs; it was the feeling that someone was in the apartment with her, watching her from some shadowy corner, about to whisper her name from the darkness.

She spun around when the weight of the feeling became too much.

No one there.

Of course there wasn’t.

She was alone in her apartment.

She closed the refrigerator door and left the light on over the stove. She went to her bedroom with its trusty nightlight still shining from the outlet near the nightstand. She sat down on the edge of her bed and took a deep breath. She reached underneath her bed and pulled out a length of rope that was tied to one of the legs. She tied the other end around her left ankle. She hadn’t had to tie her leg to the bed in a long time, at least two years. But she couldn’t risk another sleepwalking episode.

She lay down and stared up at the ceiling. This girl she’d seen in her dream, Jen, was dead by now, she was sure of that. She felt like crying. What good were her visions of a murder if it was already too late to help? There wasn’t anything she could do to help this girl now. She could call the police, but she had no idea where this girl lived, or if she even lived here in Tampa. And she had learned her lesson about contacting the police and trying to help them. They all thought she was a fake. Or they thought she was crazy.

Tara looked at the alarm clock on the table next to her – eleven thirty. She looked back up at the ceiling.

“Jen,” she whispered and closed her eyes. But she knew it would be a long time before she would be able to fall back asleep.

2.

By eleven thirty p.m. there were cop cars and an ambulance parked in front of Jen’s house, some of the vehicles were parked on the lawn. A plain detective’s car pulled up and parked. Detective Ronald Perry, a tough and weathered fifty-two year old man, stepped out of the car. He had short-cropped silver hair and his facial features, which used to look like they’d been chiseled from granite, had now started to become jowly. His belly had gotten a little bigger over the last ten years, but his ice-blue eyes never missed a thing. His movements were slow and methodical, yet it seemed like he could move like lightning if he needed to. His dark suit was a little rumpled, his tie loosened.

Perry walked up to the front door of the house where Detective Jackson, a gigantic man, waited. Jackson chewed on a wad of bubble gum, his jaw muscles bunching up underneath his dark skin as he chewed. Jackson used to be a linebacker for the Miami Hurricanes in his younger days, but he never made it to the NFL. While in college, he got a liberal arts degree. And even though he was proud of his degree, he had always dreamed of being a cop. He joined the academy, and then started off as a traffic cop. He worked his way up to a homicide detective in record time.

Jackson watched Perry approach. Jackson already had a pair of blue nitrile gloves on and he handed a pair to Perry.

“She’s upstairs,” Jackson told Perry. “In her bedroom. We found the other one in the backyard by the pool.” Jackson hesitated just a second and then added: “You’re not going to believe this one.”

Perry looked at Jackson with heavy-lidded eyes that could stare right through a person, eyes that had seen every kind of depravity of human behavior over the years.

“Have the parents been contacted yet?” Perry asked as he stuffed his large hands into the gloves.

“Just reached them,” Jackson answered. “They’re on their way here.”

Perry turned to a police officer who stood near the front door. “You let us know when the parents get here,” he told the officer. “Don’t let them go upstairs.”

“Yes sir,” the police officer said.

Perry and Jackson entered the house. Perry followed Jackson up the stairs and down a hall to a bedroom, a girl’s bedroom – Jennifer McGrath’s bedroom. And there was Jennifer; her body was slumped down between the bed and an overturned end table, the lamp and alarm clock pulled down to the floor. Her back was against the wall and her legs splayed out in front of her like she’d been sitting upright against the wall and then slid over to one side. Her clothes were still on her body and they didn’t look disturbed. Her hair was a little messy and her eyes were wide open in her pale face. Her face and body weren’t marred at all, no injuries on her except for the hole in her throat which was about the size of a dime with a ring of dried blood around it.

Perry squatted down beside Jen’s body and studied it for a moment. “Not much blood from the wound,” he muttered.

“The M.E. said most of her blood is gone.”

Perry looked up at Jackson.

“He thinks some kind of pump was used on her,” Jackson continued. “The killer collected the blood and took it with him.”

Perry looked back at Jen’s very pale body. “No signs of any other injuries?”

“No obvious injuries so far.”

“What about the other one?” Perry asked. He stood up and stared at Jackson with his milky blue eyes. “The one in the backyard. Was the blood pumped out?”

“No,” Jackson answered, chewing on his gum. “This is where it starts getting a little weird.”

3.

In the backyard, on the pool deck, Perry and Jackson stood over Kevin’s body which was sprawled face-down in front of the sliding glass door in a pool of blood. There were splashes of blood all over the patio stones. There were smears of blood on the sliding glass doors. Kevin’s hands were coated in blood.

“ID in his wallet says Kevin Getz,” Jackson said. “I’m guessing he was Jennifer McGrath’s boyfriend. He’s got a deep slash across his throat. Cut through his arteries, windpipe, vocal chords. Everything. Looks like he was beating on the sliding glass door.” Jackson nodded at the smears of blood all over the glass. “Maybe he was trying to get inside.”

Perry shook his head in disbelief. “So this nutcase drains the blood out of the girl and keeps it, but he slashes this guy’s throat and lets him bleed out all over the place.”

“There’s some other stuff around the side of the house.”

Perry followed Jackson past the pool. They walked through an open wooden gate and then they continued along a path between the house and some shrubs. Beyond the shrubs was a stand of woods between this house and the next one a quarter mile away.

They stopped where a set of construction lights had already been set up by police officers. The lights shined down on the ground where a collection of small kitchen utensils and butter knives, house and car keys, phones, and other items from the house were piled up by the door that led into the kitchen. The kitchen door was ajar, just like it had been found by the police officers.

“What the hell?” Perry said and looked at Jackson.

“It’s like the killer was in the house earlier and set things up. He dismantled the phones and removed any house and car keys.”

“And the knives,” Perry nodded down at a group of butter knives, forks, and even a potato peeler. “Like he was removing anything that could be used as a weapon.”

“Some of the knives are missing,” Jackson said. “All of the big kitchen knives from a wood block are gone. They’re not out here with the other kitchen stuff and we haven’t found them anywhere inside the house.”

“He might have used one of them on the boy.”

“Yeah,” Jackson agreed. “But why would he take all of the big knives with him and leave all of this other stuff behind?”

Perry shrugged. “You get any prints off this stuff?”

Jackson shook his head. “They’re still working on it, but nothing so far. He probably wore gloves.”

“Who called this in?”

“Anonymous tip from a throwaway cell phone.”

Perry glanced at the woods for a second, and for that moment he felt like he could feel the killer watching them from the darkness. He thought about sending some cops into the woods.

A police officer rushed around the front corner of the house and ran up to Perry and Jackson. “The girl’s parents just pulled up.”

Perry and Jackson rushed out to the front yard. Perry saw Mr. and Mrs. McGrath bolt from their car, running towards their house. Police officers blocked their way, trying to hold them back. Mr. and Mrs. McGrath had left their car running, the headlights on, the car doors wide open.

“Get the hell out of my way!” the father yelled. “Where’s my daughter? I want to see Jen!”

“Oh God, please tell me she’s okay,” the mother begged. “Please tell me she’s still alive.”

Perry joined the two officers in holding Mr. McGrath back and Jackson approached the mother. Jackson was a very large man, and usually an imposing one, but he could also show deep emotions with just a look. Mrs. McGrath stared into his dark eyes and more tears spilled from hers, her chin quivered as she tried to speak, but there were no words. She could only shake her head no. Jackson laid a hand on her shoulder and whispered into her ear. She collapsed against Jackson and sank to her knees as she retched out silent sobs.

Jen’s father rushed over to his wife and his body folded in on itself as he collapsed beside his wife, both of them held each other and cried.

4.

Across the street, deep in the palmetto brush and pine trees, the Shadow Man watched the collection of police cars and emergency vehicles. He smiled at their confusion, at the way they scurried around like ants on pointless little missions. They could keep on scurrying but they would never find him. They would never catch him. He was too slick for them. He would always be one step ahead of them.

One step ahead of everybody.

He lifted up his duffel bag and threw it over his shoulder. It was a little heavier now that it had a container of the girl’s blood inside. He turned and walked away, deeper into the brush and darkness.

It was time to collect the next item for the ritual.

CHAPTER THREE

1.

Tara managed to get a few more hours of sleep, but it was a restless sleep filled with twisted dreams. She didn’t have any more nightmares of Jen’s murder, but she could feel an evil weight trying to smother her in the dreams.

It was him – the Shadow Man. He’s found me again. He’s come to kill me.

She finally gave up on sleep and got up at five-thirty in the morning. She untied the rope from around her ankle and went to her bathroom to take a quick shower.

Inside the bathroom, she locked the door and undressed. She had a clear shower curtain over the bathtub – she hated being behind the solid shower curtain, jumping at every noise, peeking out every few seconds, so she bought a clear one. She kept a baseball bat beside her toilet, leaning against the vanity, and there was a knife in one of the drawers.

She took a quick shower and then got dressed in her workout clothes: a pair of sweat pants, an oversized Tampa Bay Rays baseball shirt, and a pair of sneakers. She grabbed her gym bag with a change of clothes inside and tossed a few bottles of water in there.

2.

The gym Tara went to was more of a traditional boxing/martial arts gym, but there was an area for free weights and exercise machines. She worked out with the weights and exercise machines sometimes, but mainly she worked out on the punching bags. She warmed up a little and did a few stretches. Then she strapped on her gloves and the pads for the tops of her feet. She had taken three years of karate and reached blackbelt very quickly. And then she quit. But she still incorporated the kicks and punches she’d learned into her workout routine. Like the knives and baseball bats stashed throughout her apartment, self-defense lessons and the constant workouts made her feel like she would be ready if the Shadow Man ever found her again, if he finally came to finish the job and kill her.

She hit the punching bag and it helped a little in a therapeutic kind of way, but no matter how hard she worked out she couldn’t keep her mind from drifting back to her nightmare about Jen.

Tara had always had psychic feelings as far back as she could remember. She grew up in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. It was a nice neighborhood with Victorian homes lining the streets. Her father, Ben, had been in the insurance industry and he’d done pretty well with investments in his spare time. Tara’s mother, Cynthia (but her dad called her Cindy), volunteered at the animal shelter and took part-time work from time to time to keep herself busy.

Tara had lived with her parents until she was sixteen years old, until her parents were murdered.

Tara had been an only child. Her parents always told her she was a gift from God; they had tried to have children for years and finally Tara had come along. She was always treated special by them, as only children sometimes are, but they never spoiled her.

She’d had nightmares ever since she could remember. She would wake up screaming and her mother and father would rush into her bedroom. They would try to calm her down, but eventually they would have to leave the light on for her so she could sleep. Or sometimes her mother would curl up in bed with her and hold her until she fell back asleep.

The nightmares were usually the same. There would be someone lurking in the darkness, and that shadowy person wanted to kill her; she was sure of that. And then she would run and she could hear the person chasing her, breathing hard, his footfalls pounding the ground. He would catch up to her, getting closer and closer. Sometimes she saw the person. She could tell he was male and muscular, but that was about all. He was always hidden in shadows; she could never remember any facial features, almost like he was a silhouette. And eventually she began to refer to him in her mind as the Shadow Man. Sometimes the Shadow Man had a knife in his hand, sometimes he had an ax. He never said anything to her; he never screamed at her or threatened her. He just chased her and chased her. And she knew that if he caught her he was going to kill her. He was going to hold her down and carve her up very slowly.

She would wake up hyperventilating and sweaty. She was afraid that if he killed her in her dream, she would die in her sleep.

When Tara was twelve years old she began to sleepwalk. That’s when her parents decided that maybe she needed some professional help. They took her to see a therapist, Dr. Kuehner, who diagnosed her with night terrors. The doctor was a nice woman, but she couldn’t help Tara. They tried talking about things, they tried hypnosis, even sleeping aids, but nothing took the nightmares away.

“Why do you think this Shadow Man is after you?” Dr. Kuehner asked Tara many times. Tara had told Dr. Kuehner everything she knew about the man that chased her in her dreams, the man who was trying to catch her and kill her, but she had no idea why he was after her; she just knew that he was real, and that he was out there somewhere looking for her. Dr. Kuehner explained that this person in her dreams was just a figment of her imagination, something her mind had made up to mask other feelings. But Tara told her she wasn’t trying to mask anything – other than the nightmares there was nothing wrong in her life.

When Tara turned thirteen her nightmares didn’t get any better, they got worse. And at the same time her “feelings” about people grew stronger. She’d always had these feelings where she just “knew” stuff about people. It wasn’t like she could read minds, more like she just knew things. Tara tried to explain these feelings to Dr. Kuehner. Tara told the doctor that she’d looked things up on the internet and that she’d seen psychics in movies and on TV. Her parents never allowed her to watch scary movies because of her night terrors, but when she spent the night at her friend Debbie’s house they would watch them, and from these movies and TV shows she realized what she was – she was telepathic, or a psychic, or she had second sight; whatever you wanted to call it. Dr. Kuehner tried to explain to Tara that she was just projecting feelings that she had created subconsciously onto her conscious mind about people she knew – or something like that. Tara didn’t understand the scientific lingo, she just knew that her psychic abilities were real, whether anyone wanted to believe her or not.

Eventually she learned not to tell anyone about it.

Life went on as normal as it could be for Tara over the next few years. But when she was almost sixteen years old everything changed. She woke up at night, three blocks away from her house in Mr. and Mrs. Taylor’s shrubs beside their garage. She was dressed only in the underwear that she’d worn to bed and she was screaming. It just happened that Suzy, the Taylor’s daughter, was one of the biggest loudmouths in the school and in record time everyone knew about her little “incident”. She could not only hear them snickering and making fun of her behind her back, she could feel them.

School became unbearable. Rumors began to spread about the scar she had on the side of her neck, rumors that she was crazy and had tried to kill herself. The scar, a thick jagged gash across the left side of her neck about four inches long, was something she’d always been embarrassed about. She tried to hide it with her long hair, but other people invariably saw it and asked about it. Her parents had told her that she’d slipped and fallen when she was a year old and had cut her neck open. They had rushed her to the hospital and had it stitched up, but because she was so young the scar had gotten bigger and jagged over the years as she grew. She never talked about her accident too much with her parents because they always seemed to feel so guilty about it.

As she walked down the school halls with students laughing behind her back about her latest sleepwalking episode, she felt like she could slink down to the floor and die right there.

She wished she could get away from this school and these asshole kids. She wished she could move far away.

And within a few months she got her wish.

The nightmares got worse and worse. Even while she was awake, she felt the constant dread that the Shadow Man was coming for her, like this killer was homing in on her psychic signal, like he was picking it up right out of the air and following it like a bloodhound trailing a scent. He was getting closer and closer. He was a psychic like she was; she knew that – they were the same in that respect.

One night she had a night terror and she ran from her house. She didn’t remember it, but she ran and ran. She woke up in a stranger’s yard with a whole family huddling around her. There was a cop there with a flashlight in her face, questioning her. She remembered that she was hysterical, screaming at the cop that the Shadow Man was coming to murder her and that she needed help.

And then a vision hit her – it almost seemed like it had been forced into her mind purposely. She knew her parents had been murdered. She’d seen flashes of the gruesome scene in her mind even though she didn’t want to. And the worst part was that there was nothing she could do to help them now, she couldn’t tell the cops to hurry because it didn’t matter now – her parents were already gone. She felt a crushing pressure on her chest, like she couldn’t breathe anymore, and she shut down.

A few minutes later the cops checked Tara’s house as she waited in the front seat of the squad car, numb with grief. They found her parents slaughtered. Whoever had killed them had entered the house and killed them quickly, hacked them up within minutes. The killer had searched through every room in the house; his bloody footprints had revealed that. He searched the rooms, but he hadn’t taken anything. It was like he was looking for something.

Or someone.

They never caught her parents’ killer. The police considered it a home invasion gone bad. But Tara knew better, she knew that the Shadow Man had picked their house specifically, and worse, she knew that he had been looking for her. It was a guilt that always stayed with her. Her rational mind told her that if she’d been at home, the Shadow Man would’ve killed her parents anyway. But it didn’t matter; she still couldn’t help feeling guilty about running away in the middle of the night.

Tara’s Aunt Katie, her mother’s sister, took Tara in. Tara moved to Philadelphia with her aunt. But they didn’t stay in Philadelphia very long; they moved around a lot. Even if they lived in the same town for a little while, they would move from house to house, never staying anywhere longer than six months.

Tara finished high school early, doing some of her studies online, and then she applied to an art school in Tampa, Florida. She was accepted. She had always been a good artist, but her teachers in school always commented on how “dark” some of her works were – they would rather she stick to ponies and rainbows.

Her parents had a life insurance policy in place, but it was held in a trust (along with the little bit of money that the sale of their “murder house” had made) until she was eighteen years old. Tara wasn’t a millionaire, but she was set for a while. But even though she had the money, she still wanted to get a college degree and do what she’d always wanted with her life – to be an artist.

When she moved to Tampa, she got a nice apartment. The night terrors had subsided some, but they never completely went away. She would have the occasional nightmare about the Shadow Man, but more often than that she would dream of a murder somewhere, she would see the person while they were dying – just like she’d seen Jen last night, like she was looking through the killer’s eyes. She had tried to help the police a few times, but she couldn’t give enough details about the killer, and she couldn’t see the future, she couldn’t see these things before they were going to happen.

At least not yet.

Tara was never able to live with anyone for very long. She had tried. But eventually a roommate would wake Tara up in the bathtub, or in a hall closet, or even out in the driveway, and she would have to explain to them about her night terrors.

And boyfriends found it a big turnoff when they woke up in the middle of the night to find Tara on top of them, punching them, clawing at them. And it didn’t help that her training in the martial arts allowed her to punch and kick with lethal force.

She had been with one guy, Rick, for almost a year. She had told him about her night terrors and he promised that he could learn to live with her condition. He told her that he would be there to protect her from the shadowy man that she feared in her nightmares. But when she broke his nose in the middle of the night, it was too much for him, the last straw. He was sorry, he told her, but he couldn’t go on like this. What if she grabbed a kitchen knife while in the middle of one of her night terrors? Tara agreed and she watched him pack his bags and leave. She cried for a few days after he was gone, but she could not blame him for leaving.

Tara was destined to be alone – she realized that.

She kept weapons around her house in case the Shadow Man finally found her again: knives in the kitchen, baseball bats in the closets, but never guns – she couldn’t trust herself with a gun. And she never had pets; she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she hurt a pet in her sleep.

Tara finished up her workout with a flurry of punches and kicks on the bag. She grabbed her towel and headed to the locker room.

3.

After Tara showered and changed her clothes, she walked outside to her dull brown Jeep Cherokee. She wore a pair of faded jeans, an oversized shirt, and white sneakers. She had to admit that she felt better after working out. Exercise always helped to clear her mind.

But she still felt that constant feeling of dread hanging over her, pressing down on her. It hadn’t been this strong for years, not since she was sixteen years old, but it was back now.

She couldn’t help but think that the person who killed Jen last night was the same one who had killed her parents, the same killer who had searched through her parents’ house for her, leaving bloody footprints behind in every room. She couldn’t help thinking that this killer had come to Florida to find her, that he had come back to finish the job he had started years ago.

As Tara got into her Jeep and started it, she didn’t notice that across the parking lot, near the edge of it, a man sat in his car watching her.

4.

Tara got back home and went to work in the guest room that she used as her office and art studio. She worked as a freelance artist. She got some work through her website and other websites that she advertised herself on, and over the last year she had built up a group of consistent customers. She did book covers, media designs, illustrations for books, whatever customers wanted.

She did much of her work on the computer, but her latest assignment sat on the easel in front of her, illustrations for a children’s book – these had to be hand-drawn and then scanned into her computer.

After a few hours of working and touching up, she sat back and stared at the drawings. But she couldn’t focus completely on her work today; her mind kept returning to her dream last night, to the murdered girl, to the sketches on her desk.

Tara took a break from her assignment and laid out all three of the sketches on her desk. They were quick sketches, but they captured the terror in Jen’s eyes during the last moments of her life. She hated seeing the horror that she’d drawn, but she needed to see the word and the two numbers that she’d scrawled down on the edges of the papers. A three. A five. And the word: Run.

In all the years that she’d suffered through night terrors, she had rarely drawn sketches in her sleep, and she had never written down random numbers and words.

But I don’t think these are random numbers and a random word. They mean something.

Tara nearly jumped out of her skin when her cell phone rang on the desk beside her. She checked the phone and saw that it was her Aunt Katie calling from Boston.

“Hey, Aunt Katie,” Tara said as soon as she’d caught her breath. She got up from the desk and left her office. She paced across the living room as she talked.

“How’s everything going down there?” her aunt asked.

“Fine. Everything’s great.”

“You staying busy with your art?”

Aunt Katie always called it Tara’s art, like this was some kind of hobby for her and not a profession.

“Yes,” she answered with a smile. “I’m as busy as ever.”

Tara walked to the front door and checked the door locks – something she did about twenty times a day. Then she walked over to the window that looked out onto the small front porch and the parking lot beyond. She pried the blinds apart and peeked out. She saw something to the right that caught her attention.

“I heard about the murders down there in Tampa,” Aunt Katie said, getting right to the point. “Those two teenagers.”

“Wow,” Tara said, “I guess a murder in Tampa is big news in Boston.”

Aunt Katie didn’t respond.

And Tara didn’t need her to. She knew that her aunt scoured the papers and internet, watching for stories of violence, watching out for Tara in case the Shadow Man ever decided to come after her again. It had been the reason they moved around so much when Tara lived with her. Aunt Katie had become certain that the killer would come after Tara one day to finish the job, and she didn’t want to make it easy for him by staying in one place too long. It might seem crazy to some people, but Tara loved her for it.

“I just want you to be careful,” Aunt Katie finally said.

“Always am,” Tara said with a smile, hoping her aunt could hear the smile in her voice.

Tara still had the blinds on the window pried apart and she watched Mel, the building maintenance man, talking to another man. They stood near a dark blue pickup truck that must be the other man’s vehicle. It looked like Mel had just given the man the tour of the empty apartment next to hers. The apartment had been vacant for over a month. A young couple used to live there but Tara hadn’t really gotten to know them too well – she hadn’t gotten to know any of her neighbors too well over the years. The couple partied a lot, and then they argued. And then they left. Mel told Tara that the couple had left the place a mess. He had ended up having to repaint the whole apartment and lay down some new carpet.

Tara stared at the blond-haired man who was talking to Mel. The man was tall and lean, and he was dressed casually in jeans, sneakers, and a long-sleeved shirt, but he had the shirtsleeves pushed up to his elbows revealing muscular forearms.

She could tell that the man was being polite by listening to Mel, who Tara knew could go on and on forever. Mel had come into her apartment a few months ago to fix the garbage disposal and after a few hours Tara knew everything about Mel’s life and all of his opinions on all worldly matters. He was a sweet old man, but you couldn’t get him to shut up.

And then Tara’s heart skipped a beat – Mel and the blond man started walking towards her apartment.

“Hey, Aunt Katie,” Tara said into the phone after she let the blinds pop back in place. “I gotta go, there’s someone at the door.”

“You make sure you look out the peephole before you answer it,” Aunt Katie said.

“I will,” Tara said and smiled. “Thanks for calling me.” And thanks for always worrying about me, she thought.

“I love you, and be careful.”

“I love you, too,” Tara told her and hung up her cell phone just as Mel pounded on the front door.

Tara unlocked the deadbolt and turned the twist lock on the door handle and opened the door. She stared at Mel who had a big grin on his face. He was short, bald, and overweight. But he didn’t seem to feel self-conscious about his appearance in front of anyone – he didn’t seem to feel self-conscious about anything. Sometimes Tara wished she could be like that, someone who didn’t care about what other people thought, someone who didn’t worry about anything.

“I wanted you to meet your new next door neighbor,” Mel said in his heavy New York accent. Since the garbage disposal date they’d had, Mel had become Tara’s new friend whether she wanted him to be or not. And Tara didn’t mind at all – she only had one other friend in the world.

“Thanks, Mel.”

Tara smiled at the other man. “Hi. I’m Tara. Pleased to meet you.”

“Steve,” the man said and offered a hand.

They shook hands and Tara felt a split second of electricity surging across the palm of her hand and into her body; it was a jolt, like static electricity, but not an unpleasant feeling at all.

Her new neighbor Steve was even better-looking up close. He was toned and muscular, but not bulky; he had the body of a swimmer or a long-distance runner. And his skin had a golden tan to it. His eyes were dark, a contrast to his nearly bleach-blond hair, and his smile was easy. He exuded confidence and grace.

“Tara’s been here a few years,” Mel said. “My best tenant.”

“Thanks, Mel.” Tara could feel herself blushing.

“Tara’s an artist,” Mel blurted out.

Steve raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Oh really. I’d love to see your stuff sometime.”

“I … uh … I’m just a commercial artist,” Tara finally stammered out. “Nothing really special.”

“No,” Mel shook his head. “Don’t sell yourself short, kid.” He turned to Steve. “I saw some of her stuff on the kitchen table when I was here to fix the garbage disposal, and it was really great.” He smiled at her. “You remember that garbage disposal? What a pain to get it off of there.”

Tara nodded. She remembered.

“I don’t want to hold you up,” Steve said quickly before Mel got going on another rant, almost like he could tell that Tara was slightly uncomfortable in front of a stranger. “I’m sure you have things to do. I’ve still got a few more truckloads to bring over here.”

“It was nice meeting you,” Tara told him.

They walked away and Tara watched them for a moment, and then she closed the door and relocked all of the locks.

5.

Hours later, after attempting to get some more artwork done, Tara cooked dinner for herself: baked fish with a side of pasta and steamed broccoli. She prepared a plate and sat down at the small table in her kitchen – a setting for one. She poured herself a glass of white wine to go with the meal.

The food was good. She had learned to become a good cook through the years because she hated going out to a restaurant by herself and she rarely ate fast food. She downloaded cookbooks on her Kindle and tried out different recipes.

She ate a few bites and listened to the silence of her apartment. With her noisy neighbors gone now, the place was so quiet. The older man in the apartment on the other side of hers had only moved in a few months ago and he kept to himself. Just like Tara. She saw her future in that old man – living alone, keeping to herself, cooped up inside a small apartment.

Tara tried to push the thought away and wondered if she should turn on the radio just to have some background noise.

Her thoughts turned to Steve. She had peeked out the windows over the last few hours, but he hadn’t returned to start moving in. She took the garbage out to the dumpster, thinking she might see him pulling in, but she didn’t.

What was she thinking anyway? Why was she even letting the thought of a relationship, no matter how platonic, enter her mind? It would never happen. It would never work out. It never did.

She took another bite. The fish melted in her mouth. She just wished that she had someone to share her dinner with, but she needed to be realistic. She had to be tough. She had gotten used to being alone. Like everything else in her life, she had forced herself to accept it. And on some level she was proud of herself, proud of her strength and her discipline to keep herself away from others, to protect others from the damage she could do to them in the middle of the night, sneaky damage, a shadow creeping up on an unsuspecting person in their weakest and most vulnerable state – sleeping. And she in her most destructive state – sleeping.

Tara finished her meal. She rinsed her plate off in the sink and stored the rest of the dinner in a rectangular Tupperware dish for tomorrow’s lunch. She did the dishes, cleaned off the counter, and had one more glass of wine.

She didn’t usually drink too much alcohol, but a few glasses of wine or a few beers could take the edge off a little. And tonight she needed to relax, she’d hardly been sleeping, and when she did manage to fall asleep, she would wake up an hour later from a nightmare.

It was dark outside now, and Tara kept the light on over the stove. She got her pillow and blanket from her bedroom and she settled down on the couch in front of the TV. She usually slept in her bed with the TV on, but sometimes she felt better in the living room on the couch. But if she had another sleepwalking episode tonight, then she knew she would have to sleep in her bed with the rope tied around her ankle so she didn’t wander outside.

Her ringing cell phone made her nearly jump off the couch.

She saw that it was her friend Lorie calling. Lorie had just met a new guy, and she was sure that he was the “one” for her. She wanted Tara to meet him, but he was always so busy.

Lorie had some free time tomorrow and she wanted to take Tara out to do some shopping.

Tara tried to get out of it, but Lorie was too persistent. And besides, it might be good to get out of the house for a little while. Get away from the dark feelings that pressed down on her constantly.

She hung up the phone and smiled as she watched TV. And soon she drifted off to sleep.

CHAPTER FOUR

1.

The next morning Lorie drove her little red Mazda Miada down the busy Tampa Bay street, weaving in and out of traffic. She took the last drag from her cigarette and flicked the butt out the window. She made a left turn just as the light turned red and stomped on the gas pedal. She drove for a quarter of a mile until she came to The Garden Apartments – the neighborhood that Tara lived in. She turned into the entrance, her tires squealing in protest as she took the turn a little too quickly. She passed the lush landscaping and headed to the parking area in front of the two buildings which each housed four spacious apartments. It was a nice area, close to downtown Tampa, and there was a large pond in the back with no neighbors nearby.

Lorie parked next to Tara’s older brown Jeep Cherokee. She wondered why Tara kept this old hunk of junk; it looked like some redneck’s truck to her. Lorie tried her best to help Tara with her sense of style. They had met in art school and became quick friends even though they were complete opposites. Tara was shy and Lorie was loud and gregarious. But there was something about Tara that Lorie loved even though she couldn’t explain it to herself. Tara was quiet and could sometimes seem vulnerable, but there was this strength inside of her. Even before Lorie learned about the death of Tara’s parents, she could tell that she’d been through a lot in her life already. One night, after a few too many drinks (Tara didn’t overindulge much, but this time Lorie had coaxed her into it), she had opened up to Lorie about her night terrors and about her psychic abilities. Lorie had always felt so bad for Tara, but Tara didn’t want sympathy, she didn’t want any pity, she just wanted a friend. And Lorie was her friend, but she couldn’t resist trying to “fix” Tara up a little and get her hooked up with somebody so she wouldn’t have to be alone.

The blaring music from Lorie’s car stereo was silenced when she shut off her Miada. As she got out, she noticed a man moving into the end apartment right next to Tara’s. The man was tall with blond hair; he was athletic-looking without being overly muscular. A total babe, Lorie thought and smiled.

“Hey,” Lorie said to the man as she slammed her car door shut. “Welcome to the neighborhood.”

The man was about to take one of the many cardboard boxes out of the back of his dark blue pickup truck, but he stopped and smiled at her. “Hey, thanks.”

What a smile, Lorie thought.

Lorie smiled back at him, and gave him one more glance as she made her way to Tara’s front door on her spike-heeled shoes that clacked on the walkway.

2.

Tara jumped when her doorbell rang. She exhaled a breath, glad that she hadn’t let out a scream. She looked around at the living room. She was still on the couch; the blanket kicked off of her body in the middle of the night and crumpled up on the floor. The TV was still on, but the sound was turned down almost all the way. The nearly empty bottle of wine and a plastic cup (how fancy) were on the coffee table near a drawing tablet, a notebook, and a few magazines.

She sat up as the doorbell rang again. She panicked for a split second as the remnants of the dream held on to her like a psychotic lover’s hug. But she couldn’t remember exactly what she had been dreaming about.

And maybe she should be happy about that.

She looked at the wine bottle. She couldn’t remember having more glasses of wine in her favorite yellow plastic cup, but apparently she had.

A slight headache spoke to her from the back of her head and she touched her fingertips to her temples for a moment, and then fixed her sleep-wild hair as best she could with her hands.

The doorbell rang again.

It was Lorie – she was the only one who could make the doorbell change its sound and seem more insistent every time she jabbed the button. Tara got up and walked to the window and peeked out. Even though she was certain it was Lorie, she still never answered the door without checking first. She hurried to the front door as the doorbell chimed again. She unlatched the deadbolt lock, twisted the lock on the door handle, and opened the door for Lorie.

Lorie entered Tara’s apartment like she entered any other place – like she was a Hollywood starlet fresh off the red carpet. She gave Tara a disapproving look. “You’re not ready to go?” she asked.

“Almost,” Tara said sarcastically as she closed and locked her front door, re-locking the deadbolt.

Lorie was used to Tara’s obsessive door-locking routine. She walked away from the door and smiled at Tara. “I saw your cute neighbor moving in next door.”

“Who? Steve?”

Lorie couldn’t hide her disappointment. “Oh, you’ve already connected? And you didn’t tell me?”

“I wouldn’t call it a connection. He just started renting the place and Mel dragged him over to introduce him to me.”

“See, I’m not the only one who’s trying to hook you up.”

Tara shuffled into her kitchen and turned on the coffee maker. A cup of strong coffee would chase the wine fog and slight headache away. “You want coffee?”

“No, thanks.” She thought for a moment. “Maybe Steve asked Mel to introduce him to you. You ever think of that?”

Tara didn’t respond – she really didn’t think that was the case.

“He could’ve been flirting with you. You should pursue it.”

“Won’t get far. Never does.”

Lorie glanced at the couch – Tara’s bed last night – and frowned at her. “You feeling okay? You don’t look so hot.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I haven’t been sleeping too well these days,” Tara said from the kitchen as she brushed her hair back with her fingers. “I woke up in the bathtub the other night.”

“You had another one of your … your …?”

Tara nodded. “Yeah.”

Lorie was suddenly fascinated. “Did you have a dream? I mean, did you see anything?”

“I saw a girl,” Tara told her. “A teenager. She was murdered.”

“Oh my God. I saw that on the news this morning. They’re not releasing her name or much information -”

“Her name was Jen.”

“Did you see …”

“I saw the murder, but I couldn’t make out the killer.”

“You want me to call my uncle?”

Tara shook her head no. “It won’t do any good.”

“If you don’t want to go shopping today, I mean, I totally understand …”

“No, I still want to go. I just need to jump in the shower.”

3.

After a few hours of shopping, Lorie had three shopping bags of clothes and shoes. Tara didn’t buy anything. Lorie tried to get Tara to buy a pair of high heels, but Tara didn’t want them – she was fine with her sneakers. Easier to run away in, she told Lorie with a laugh.

Lorie didn’t think it was funny.

They ate lunch at Peretti’s Italian restaurant. Afterwards, Tara drank ice water and Lorie sipped her second glass of wine. Tara considered having a glass of wine, but then she thought about the bottle she’d drank last night and opted for water instead.

“I can’t wait for you to meet Mike,” Lorie told Tara. “He’s tall and you should see his body. He just moved here from California where he sold his business for a lot of money.”

Tara nodded.

“He’s very rich,” Lorie sang out and smiled at Tara.

“Wow,” Tara said and smiled. She sipped her ice water as Lorie finished off her glass of wine. Lorie had the ability to suck down drinks and still seem sober.

“I showed him some properties around here,” Lorie went on, explaining how she and Mike met. Even though Lorie had studied interior design at the art school they had attended together, she had pursued a career as a real estate agent after graduation. A better chance at making money, she said. And she’d done well in only a few years, becoming one of the premiere agents in the firm where she worked. She’d built up a network of rich clientele who recommended her to all of their friends.

“Mike looked at some houses between nine hundred thousand and one point three mil,” Lorie went on, still explaining how she’d met Mike. “I took him to a few houses at Apollo Beach and even one on Davis Island, but it wasn’t what he was looking for. He was looking for something more secluded, more rustic, out in the country.”

Tara nodded in all the right places.

“So I told him about a property in Pasco County. Not really my area and a little bit of a drive from here, but he seemed interested. We had a long time to talk and get to know each other. The place I showed him is on ten acres, much of it wooded. But in the middle of the property is this marvelous two story log cabin. There’s a detached garage, a storage shed, an in-ground pool.”

Tara listened to Lorie, but her eyes wandered over to the tables near them. She watched some of the other couples in the restaurant. She saw one couple sitting close to each other. They were both in their late thirties, married, and they seemed to be in love. They were dressed casually. A day off from work? Tara wondered. Maybe they were taking a vacation together. Maybe they had flown down to Florida for the week. Tara began to make up a story about their life in her mind. And she wondered what it would be like to have someone in her life like that, someone who knew everything about her, someone who wanted to be with her, someone who loved her no matter what strange afflictions she might have.

Lorie snapped Tara out of her mini-daydream. “And he bought it! I mean the house was in a little bit of rough shape, and it needed some cleaning – the previous owners had left a lot of furniture and their stuff behind, and it had been empty for almost a year. But he made an all-cash offer right then and there. I submitted it and the bank okayed it.”

Lorie stopped talking for a moment, and her smile faltered a bit. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Look at me, just going on and on about Mike.”

“No,” Tara said, feeling a little embarrassed at being caught daydreaming. “I want to hear about it. I’m glad to see you happy.” And she was happy for Lorie. Lorie had been on the never-ending dating treadmill for a while now, and no man ever seemed to meet her criteria. She could tell that Mike was a man Lorie could really fall for. But she didn’t want Lorie to get hurt; she wanted Lorie to take things slow. But she knew she couldn’t tell her that – Lorie never took anything slow.

“But I want you to be happy, too,” Lorie said and pouted.

“I am happy,” Tara insisted, but her voice didn’t sound happy to her own ears – she was doing a lousy job of faking it. “I really am,” she added and smiled.

4.

They left the restaurant and walked down the sidewalk in front of newer shops and stores that had been designed to look like quaint, old buildings. Lorie’s car was a few blocks away (she refused to ride in Tara’s Jeep).

“You should go talk to him,” Lorie said. Her shopping bags swung back and forth a little in her hand as she walked.

“Who?”

“You know who. Steve – your hunky new neighbor.”

Tara shook her head no, smiling, not even answering Lorie.

“What’s wrong? Is someone moving in with him? A girlfriend? A boyfriend?”

“No,” Tara answered, still smiling, “I haven’t seen anybody else with him.”

Lorie laughed and pointed at Tara. “So, you’ve been spying on him.”

Tara looked at Lorie, shocked by her words. “Uh, no, I’m not spying on my neighbors.”

They walked along a little farther, Lorie’s high heels tapping on the sidewalk, Tara’s sneakers as silent as a cat.

“You should bake something sweet for him,” Lorie said.

“You just won’t let this go, will you?”

“I just want you to be with someone. I just want you to have what Mike and I have.”

Tara didn’t point out to Lorie that she and Mike had only been together for a week and a half now.

“Take him some cupcakes or something,” Lorie went on. She was like a bulldog about things, she wouldn’t let anything go. Ever. “It could be like a housewarming present, or a welcome-to-the-neighborhood present. Who knows where it could lead?”

“You know where it leads to.”

Lorie sighed. “There has to be a man out there somewhere who could learn to cope with your … your condition.”

Tara was about to say something but her words were cut off as a homeless man jumped out from an alleyway right in front of them. The man grabbed Tara’s upper arms in an iron grip; he was face-to-face with her and he stared at her with wild eyes.

“He’s coming for you,” the homeless man said in a low, gravelly voice.

The man’s face was only inches away from Tara’s face. She could smell his sour breath, and something underneath that sour breath smelled like rotten meat. His face was mostly grayish-black beard with those dark and wild eyes staring out from the dirty skin above his beard. He was dressed in layers of clothing even though it was nearly eighty degrees outside. But what caught Tara’s eye the most was the large, homemade cross that hung from his neck on a string of leather. The cross was two pieces of rough-hewn wood, maybe hand-carved from some pieces of scrap wood, tied together with a dirty string to form a crucifix.

“Get out of here, you psycho!” Lorie screamed.

The homeless man didn’t even seem to notice that Lorie was there – right now Tara was his whole world. His fingers were still clamped on Tara’s arms and his wild eyes were still locked on to hers.

“He’s coming for you,” the man said again. “He can see you. He can feel you.”

Tara didn’t fight back; she only stared at the man with wide eyes. Something about his words brought back the feelings from last night and this morning, the feeling that hadn’t completely gone away, the sense of dread and fear that pressed down on her, trying to crush the breath and life out of her.

Lorie dropped her shopping bags on the sidewalk and rummaged through her six hundred dollar purse for her cell phone. “I’m calling the police!” she shouted at the homeless man.

But the man still didn’t look at Lorie; he focused on Tara like a laser beam. And then his eyes widened in shock as he stared at her, like he’d just realized something.

“You already know, don’t you?” the man whispered. “You already know he’s coming for you. You’ve already seen him.”

He let Tara’s arms go, and his wild eyes cleared slightly like he’d just woken up from some kind of dream (or night terror). He looked around like he didn’t even know how he’d gotten onto this sidewalk and this street by these shops.

Lorie pulled her hand out of her purse and clutched a small can of pepper spray. “Back off!” she yelled. “I’ve got pepper spray!”

The man backed away, but he still didn’t look at Lorie; he never took his eyes off of Tara. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with,” he whispered to her. “You’ve never seen evil like this before. He’s not a man. He’s not human. He’s the devil.”

The man turned and took off down the sidewalk, one shoe flapped on the concrete as he ran. He half-shuffled/half-ran down the block and then slipped into the next alley between the buildings.

Lorie stood on the sidewalk, her shopping bags down by her Prada high heels, her can of pepper spray clenched in her manicured hand, and a look of astonishment on her face. “You better run, you bum!” she called after the man.

Lorie looked at Tara. “You okay? You want me to call the police?”

Tara shook her head no, still staring down the sidewalk even though the man was gone now. “No. It’s okay.”

“You want this pepper spray?” Lorie asked Tara. “I’ve got more at home. A real estate agent always carries pepper spray with her.”

Tara looked at Lorie and smiled at her, hopefully reassuring her. “It’s okay.”

“Why didn’t you kick his ass?” Lorie asked. “You do all of that martial arts stuff …”

Tara just shrugged and shook her head – she didn’t know. It had happened so fast. And he hadn’t been trying to mug her or hurt her – he’d been delivering a message to her; that was all. He’d been trying to warn her.

A shiver ran its way up and down Tara’s skin on little spider legs.

Lorie sighed again as she picked up her shopping bags.

“God, that was strange,” Lorie said.

“Story of my life,” Tara replied.

CHAPTER FIVE

1.

As the afternoon sun slipped down towards the horizon, the Shadow Man walked through the woods until he came to the abandoned house at the edge of the trees. There had been a trail through these woods once, but the Florida vegetation had nearly overtaken it in a short amount of time. Spikey palmetto plants and vine-like vegetation had grown over the trail and it was nearly unrecognizable now. But the Shadow Man knew where the trail to the house was.

And he knew he wouldn’t need this place much longer.

Nestled among the choking brush and pine trees was the abandoned house. The house had been full of neglected junk left behind by previous owners; it looked like the house had been vacant for years. He had spent a whole day cleaning the place up, hauling junk outside and throwing it among the brush, getting the house ready for the ritual.

Soon it would be time.

Everything had to be perfect for this to work; every piece had to be in its place.

He climbed the chain link fence and hopped down into the knee-high weeds and grasses. He trudged through the vegetation that seemed like it tried to grab at his pants legs. He approached the back of the house and then walked down the side of the house and entered through the front door.

He stood just inside the living room and looked at the rest of the left-behind junk and garbage that he had stacked against one wall on the far side of the living room. Now there was a clear path through the living room to the hall that led back to the three bedrooms.

He walked through the living room and down the hall to the bedroom at the end of the hall, the master bedroom – that’s where the ritual would take place.

He stepped inside the master bedroom. He had already set up a long wooden table with ropes tied to each leg. He had collected candles in the corners of the room, some of them on stands, some of them on plates. There were red candles, white candles, and of course black candles.

Just inside the door to the bedroom, he had installed a strong metal ring in the ceiling; it was bolted to the trusses above the ceiling. There were ropes tied to the metal ring. He pulled on the ropes, testing the strength of the metal ring. This was for the witness to the ritual.

He took another look around the room, and then left. He walked back down the hall to the next empty bedroom. The only thing in this room was a wood chair at the far end, it sat facing the door.

Everything was ready.

It was almost time.

He had waited so long for this. And soon it was finally going to happen.

He entered the nearly empty bedroom, crossed the wood floor and sat down in the plain wooden chair. He rested there for a moment, waiting for night to fall, waiting for the moon to rise. But the moon wouldn’t be quite full tonight, not yet, not for a few more nights. A full moon was another critical element to the ritual. You had to be very careful, it was a dangerous ritual – the most dangerous of all rituals – and everything had to be followed to the letter, every detail perfect, no instructions misinterpreted.

When night came, he would go find the man he’d seen in his dreams lately, a man who had the same gift he had – the same gift Jen had possessed before she died. The man would be able to sense him when he got near, he would be able to tell something was wrong, but by then it would be too late. The Shadow Man would already be a step ahead of him. He had already scouted the man’s property, and he knew the perfect time to strike.

The Shadow Man needed something from this man tonight. He had to take something from him, another ingredient in the recipe for the ceremony.

He closed his eyes.

He smiled.

Everything was working out perfectly.

And why shouldn’t it? This was destiny. Higher powers at work. Gods and angels and demons conspiring with each other, making everything come together.

2.

Tara sat in front of her easel with the large drawing pad on it. She was trying to work, she had a lot that she needed to get done, but she was distracted. And the distraction was coming from her kitchen.

She tried to get back to work. She was still working on the series of illustrations for the children’s book. She sketched a little more and then tore up the piece of paper. Nothing was coming out right. No matter what she drew, it just didn’t seem right.

She sighed and got up.

She went to the kitchen and stared at the distraction on the kitchen counter: a plate of cupcakes.

After Lorie dropped her off earlier, Tara went to the store and bought the ingredients for cupcakes. They were chocolate cupcakes and she bought creamy white frosting to spread on top. She even bought a package of brightly-colored sprinkles. She got home and followed the directions on the package. Even though these weren’t homemade cupcakes, she was sure they would be tasty.

And now she stared at the plate of cupcakes.

She grabbed her car keys off the counter and stuffed them down into her pants pocket – they had her house key on them – and then she grabbed the plate of cupcakes and marched to her front door.

She unlocked her door and stepped out onto the front porch that led out to the walkway in front of the parking area. She glanced up at the early evening sky where baby pinks and blues were turning purple on the horizon as night slowly crept over the world. She didn’t close the door all the way; she just stood there for a moment. Steve’s blue pickup truck was parked in front of his apartment so she knew he was home.

She was going to walk next door to Steve’s apartment. She was going to knock on his front door with confidence. She was going to smile and welcome him to the neighborhood with a plate of (nearly) homemade cupcakes.

But she didn’t make a move towards Steve’s apartment. Instead, she turned around and ducked back inside. She closed her door and locked it. She took the plate of cupcakes back to the counter and set it down.

“This is stupid,” she grumbled.

She picked up one of the cupcakes and took a big bite.

3.

As Tara went back inside with the plate of cupcakes, she didn’t notice the sedan parked at the far end of the parking area. It was a dark sedan, a common car, only a few years old, and it blended in with other cars easily.

The man in the car watched Tara stand there for a moment with the plate of cupcakes in her hand. And then he watched her go back inside.

He watched the front door of her apartment for a long time.

After starting his car, he put it in drive and left the parking area. He’d be coming back soon to visit her.

4.

Tara managed to get some more work done that evening. She had only eaten one of the cupcakes and she left the others on a plate next to the stove. Maybe she would change her mind tomorrow about giving them to Steve.

But she didn’t think so. Why even bother? What if she brought the cupcakes to him and they hit it off? What if he asked her out? What if they went out on a few dates? What if they really started to like each other? Maybe it would start off okay. A few more dates maybe. But eventually she would have to tell him about her night terrors. She could just picture herself explaining to Steve that sometimes she walked in her sleep, and there might come a night when she might accidentally beat the shit out of him in the middle of her sleep. I hope you’re okay with that.

Yeah, right.

After she finished two more drawings she called it a night. She changed into her flannel, non-sexy pajamas and settled down on her couch in front of the TV. The TV was one of the things she’d spent some money on – and a comfortable couch. Many nights she fell asleep in front of the TV, it seemed to calm her nerves as she watched some kind of reality show about rescuing bars or buying storage units or fixing up houses, and then she would drift off to sleep in the safety of the flickering TV light.

And soon she was asleep.

5.

It was time.

The Shadow Man watched the trailer from the darkness of night. There had been a German Shepard on guard, but he had already taken care of that problem. The rundown doublewide trailer sat under a canopy of giant oak tree branches. Next to the trailer was a huge garage used for fixing up cars. A floodlight spilled light down onto the garage, but left the trailer mostly in darkness. Between the trailer and the garage were a few hulks of rusted-out cars along with other vehicle parts and stacks of tires. Five other cars and trucks were parked in the weedy lawn, some of them possibly repaired or waiting for repairs, one of the trucks was undoubtedly the man’s own vehicle. Even with all of the vehicles, the Shadow Man knew that the man was alone in the trailer. Two deep ruts etched into the grass served as the driveway; the ruts ran from the gate where the killer stood to the doublewide trailer and the garage in the distance.

The killer moved through the darkness like a living shadow, creeping closer and closer to the trailer, and then he slipped around the corner to the back door.

6.

Greg had a sudden jolt of alarm as he sat in front of his TV. He wasn’t sure where the feeling had come from, but he was suddenly on-edge and nervous. He could tell something wasn’t right. He felt like someone was watching him and it gave him a crawling sensation on his skin. A rush of blood flooded his muscles. His heart started pounding in his chest so hard he could feel the rush of blood thumping in his ears.

He sat up a little straighter and looked around his cluttered and messy trailer. He realized he hadn’t heard Bo, his German Shepard, bark for quite a while. He got up from his recliner and felt a little light-headed as he went to the front door and opened it.

Greg stood at the front door of his trailer, the door wide open. He whistled for Bo, but his dog didn’t come running and he didn’t hear anything out in the dark. Damn dog, he thought. Bo wasn’t the greatest watchdog in the world, but he looked mean, and if people saw him they usually thought twice about entering his yard.

Greg walked down the three wooden steps from the trailer to the weedy ground. He took a few steps out towards his truck and looked around. It was dark out here, with the only light coming from the floodlight over the garage door. His porch light had apparently burned out. He wondered if he had any light bulbs in the house.

“Come on, Bo!” he shouted, but he still didn’t see the dog anywhere. “Dinner time!” he yelled, hoping that would coax him out of the darkness, but it didn’t. Bo was probably out at the other end of the five acre property, probably chewing on the fence and trying to get out. He’d gotten out a few times before, but the neighbors always brought him back. All the neighbors around here knew that Bo was just a big ol’ pussycat.

Still, something didn’t feel right to him. Greg had learned to trust his gut instincts over the years – they had kept him out of trouble from time to time. One time a few years back he had sudden urge to pull over on the side of the road, which he did, and then he watched an eighteen wheeler run a red light at the next intersection a few seconds later. He remembered that his hands had been shaking and he’d been sweating. True fear. He’d sat on the side of the road for a few moments until he was calm enough to drive again.

And now that true fear was back. His hands trembled and he could feel a cold sweat on his back, dripping down his spine.

He thought he should go check the large double gates on his chain link fence to make sure they were locked. He even took a few steps out into the darkness towards the gates, but then he stopped as the fear tingled along the nerve endings just under his skin. The gates were closed and the chain was locked, he was sure of that. It was a nightly ritual for him.

Instead of checking the gates, he walked back to his doublewide and climbed the steps and went back inside. He closed the door and locked it. He didn’t usually worry about locking his front door because he always kept the gates locked and Bo was always roaming around, but for some reason he wanted the door locked tonight.

The TV was blaring a cop show as Greg walked from the front door to the kitchen. He felt a little better now that he was back inside his house with the door locked. He tried to shrug off the feeling of fear as he walked into the kitchen. He didn’t feel like cooking so he poured himself a bowl of cereal, except he used a salad bowl instead of a cereal bowl. Not good for his waistline, he was sure, but he’d given up on dieting years ago. He was always going to have a pot belly. He’d even quit drinking beer a few years ago, but his belly refused to cooperate.

He added milk and a spoon to the cereal and took it from the kitchen back to the living room. He planned on plopping down in his recliner in front of the TV and watch some Law and Order re-runs and munch on his cereal. Maybe fall asleep in his chair.

And he would keep his cordless phone close by tonight. But then he thought that maybe getting his shotgun out of the hall closet would be a better idea.

Greg stopped in his tracks about halfway to his lumpy recliner.

Static blared from the TV.

And static blared in his mind. It was the strongest feeling he’d ever had in his life – much stronger than when he’d pulled over onto the side of the road and watched the eighteen-wheeler run the intersection. A shockwave of fear ran through his mind. There was no denying it now, there was no shrugging it off as imagination, he was certain now that he was in grave danger.

He didn’t know exactly what kind of danger, but he knew it was imminent.

The cereal bowl slipped from his hands which seemed to have lost their strength for a moment. The plastic bowl crashed down to his laminate wood floor and then bounced up and finally settled upside down a few feet away from him after the milk and cereal had sprayed out across the floor.

Like the spray your blood will make, a voice whispered in his mind. But the scariest thing was that it didn’t seem to be his own voice. It was like someone else had just whispered into his ear (and he even looked around to see if anyone else was right behind him), but the voice had been in his mind.

Greg knew he didn’t have much time – there was only one thing he could do to save himself. He ran through the living room for the hallway. He was still wearing his work boots (still wearing his work clothes for that matter, grease stains and all), and his boots thundered across the floor.

He reached the hall closet and tore the door open.

Someone’s in the house! his mind screamed at him.

He searched through coats and boots and other odds and ends stuffed into the hall closet, but he couldn’t find the shotgun.

“Where the fuck is it?”

It had to be in here. This is the only place he ever kept it.

But it wasn’t in the closet.

“Looking for this?” Greg heard a man whisper from behind him.

Greg turned around and he didn’t even have a split second to react before he saw the butt of his shotgun arcing down at his face, he didn’t even have time to put his hands up in defense.

There was an instant flash of pain and then the world went black. Greg was out.

7.

Tara slept on the couch as the TV’s flickering light washed over her. The rest of the apartment was in darkness.

From the darkness came a whisper.

“Please help me.”

Tara’s face twitched, her eyes closed tighter.

“Tara,” the voice whispered. It was a man’s voice and it seemed closer to her now. “Tara, help me.”

Tara opened her eyes and she was face-to-face with Greg. Blood matted his hair and stained one whole side of his face. His eyes bulged with unknowable fear.

“Please, Tara. You have to help me. The Shadow Man’s here.”

Suddenly, the man was dragged away from Tara, pulled by his feet into the far shadows of the living room. His mouth was open in a silent scream. He tried to claw at the floor, but he couldn’t stop the invisible force that was dragging him back into the darkness. Three of his fingernails popped off as he left claw marks in the wood floor.

Tara jumped up on her couch, her legs tucked up underneath her body, her eyes wide open. “No!” she shouted at the darkness.

She fumbled with the lamp next to the couch and tried to wrap her fingers around the switch, nearly knocking it over before she finally twisted the knob.

The light. The blessed light.

She looked around at her living room in the soft glow of the lamp, but there was no blood-soaked man huddled in the corner.

Greg, her mind whispered. His name was Greg.

Tara let out a long breath and closed her eyes for a moment. But then she opened them – afraid that the horrible image of the man might come back if she kept her eyes shut too long.

She looked back down at the floor where he had been dragged away. But there were no claw marks on the floorboards, no broken-off fingernails, no trail of blood from his body.

Tara got up on shaky legs and hurried into the kitchen. She turned on the light over the stove and then opened the refrigerator to grab a bottle of water. She was so thirsty – she drank half of the water down. Her hands were still shaking from the nightmare, but she was beginning to calm down a little.

Something on the coffee table in front of the couch caught her attention. She hadn’t noticed it when she’d been on the couch even though it was right in front of her.

She set the bottle of water on the counter and walked back into the living room on legs that still felt a little unsteady. She stared down at the coffee table. There was a sheet of paper on the table and two pencils. One of the pencils was snapped in half.

She looked down at her right hand and saw a cut on the inside of one of her fingers. It was just a small cut, it had barely bled, it didn’t hurt and she hadn’t even noticed it until now.

Tara looked back at the paper and two pencils bathed in the flickering light from the TV and soft glow from the lamp beside the couch. She couldn’t remember bringing the paper and pencils out of her office.

She’d been sleepwalking again.

And she’d been drawing in her sleep again.

She sat down on the couch and stared at the paper which was face-down. Her night terrors were getting worse. The Shadow Man was back and he was out there killing people, and she could feel him in her dreams. And the Shadow Man knew that she could see him. The Shadow Man wanted her to see through his eyes, he wanted to show her the things he was doing.

And she knew that the Shadow Man would be coming for her soon. She could feel it.

Tara picked up the paper and turned it over.

On the paper was a quick sketch of a gun; it was a revolver with its cylinder open and six bullets spilled out of it. The drawing was quick and rough, like the sketches she had made of Jen. She could see where she’d pressed down so hard on a part of the drawing that she must’ve broken the pencil there. She saw a dark spot on the paper that could be a drop of her own blood.

A gun and bullets. What did that mean? Was that what was used to kill Greg?

No, Greg wasn’t killed by a gun. His death had been much worse than that.

Tara stared at the drawing and she believed that this was a clue to the next murder. The Shadow Man was giving her clues now, daring her to piece them together, daring her to find him before he found her.

But she didn’t want to find the Shadow Man. She just wanted to stay away from him.

At the edges of the paper she noticed two numbers: a two and a nine. At the top of the page was one word: Pine. And scrawled at the bottom of the drawing was another word: Trinity.

What did these words and numbers mean? Were they associated with the gun and bullets somehow? What would Pine or Trinity have to do with a gun? Or the numbers, two and nine.

She laid the paper down on the coffee table, face-down again, and a shudder rippled through her muscles.

She had always been afraid of giving in to her visions, giving in to her telepathic power completely. She’d always been afraid of where it would lead to. But if she was going to stay alive, and if she had any chance of keeping anybody else alive, then she needed to try and open herself up to her ability. She needed to see what this killer was doing. Normally, after a sleepwalking episode, she would sleep in her bed with the rope tied around her ankle, but she felt like she needed to let herself sleepwalk now; she needed to let herself draw sketches in her sleep if that’s what it took. She needed to see where all of this was going to lead to.

She needed to see through the Shadow Man’s eyes. She needed to see the horrible things he wanted to show her.

Because her life depended on it – she was sure of that now.

CHAPTER SIX

1.

It was nearly noon when Detective Perry and Detective Jackson drove onto Greg’s property through the open gate in the chain link fence. Two sheriff’s cars and a paramedic’s vehicle were already parked on the lawn in front of a doublewide trailer that looked like it was barely held together by rust and spit. Near the trailer was a large, free-standing metal garage that reminded Perry of a Quonset hut from his days in the Marines. The cars, trailer, and garage were all nestled underneath massive oak trees with heavy branches that didn’t look like they’d be able to make it through the next round of summer storms.

Perry had gotten the call about an hour earlier. He was still working on the Jennifer McGrath case and this one had some similar characteristics to that murder. The call about this murder had come into the station as another anonymous tip from another throwaway cell phone.

The killer wanted them to see this.

Detective Jackson had ridden with Perry and then wished he hadn’t – Perry drove way too fast. Even if they were just going to lunch, Perry had to speed. For someone who moved and spoke so slow and methodically, his driving was a direct contrast. But the drive here had been worse than ever, and Jackson had gripped the armrest so hard he’d nearly left a permanent impression in it.

They both got out of the car after Perry parked beside a sheriff’s car and then they walked towards the trailer which had its front door wide open. As they got closer they saw a sheriff fill the doorway, waiting patiently for them to approach.

“I’m Sheriff Tully,” the older man said and extended a hand after Perry and Jackson climbed the three steps into Greg’s trailer.

Perry gave the sheriff’s hand a brief squeeze and nodded at him. “Detective Perry.”

Jackson already had his nitrile gloves on, but he shook the sheriff’s hand anyway and smiled at him, giving him a warmer greeting than Perry. “I’m Detective Jackson.”

The Sheriff nodded and gave them a tight smile. “Well, we got an anonymous tip about a murder here. We found the owner’s dog at the far edge of the property, near the fence. Dead.”

Perry ignored the sheriff and he walked across the living room towards an overturned plastic bowl and a mess on the floor.

The sheriff ambled over to Perry. “Over there’s some spilled cereal and milk.”

Perry nodded at the sheriff. He could see what it was.

The sheriff moved with methodical slowness around Greg’s lumpy recliner and walked to the hall where the closet door was still wide open. Jackson thought Perry was slow and methodical with his movements and speech, but this sheriff was even worse; at least Perry’s actions seemed functional and not a waste of motion.

There were shoes and some clothing pulled out of the hall closet, but there were also some blood splatters on the wall and a big puddle of blood on the floor.

“This is just how we found it,” the sheriff told them. “It appears that the owner of the property dragged some things out of the closet like he was looking for something. Then it looks like he was hit with this shotgun.”

Detective Perry was growing a little impatient with the sheriff’s play-by-play of the murder scene. “Where’s the body?”

Jackson looked down at the shotgun with the blood-stained stock.

The sheriff noticed Jackson looking at the weapon. “That’s the homeowner’s shotgun,” the sheriff said, ignoring Perry’s question. “We checked the serial numbers and it’s registered to him. But whoever killed him used the gun to knock him out, not to kill him.” He shook his head. “Bizarre.”

Jackson nodded as Perry sighed impatiently.

The sheriff pointed down at the linoleum floor in the hallway where a wide streak of dried dark blood led right to the back door which was ajar. “Looks like he was dragged outside through that door. Must’ve been a strong fella to drag this big man’s body out of here.”

Perry stared at the sheriff with his pale blue, heavy-lidded eyes and asked again: “Where’s the body?”

“Out in the garage,” the sheriff said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Hawkins threw up when he saw it.”

2.

Sheriff Tully remained inside the trailer while Perry and Jackson followed the drag marks through the grass to the side door of the garage; the main garage door out front was still pulled down and locked with a padlock. Before entering, they stopped and looked down at the concrete pad outside the doorway; it was stained with blood. They let the side door close behind them after they were inside and the putrid, coppery smell hit them right away. No one else was in the garage right now and that’s how Perry wanted it.

No one else except Greg.

A police photographer from the sheriff’s department had taken some photos earlier and he was waiting outside by his car. But Perry would call their own photographers and forensics experts from the Tampa Police Department to take more photos and gather evidence.

Right now he wanted to study the scene with Jackson and no one else.

Greg hung from the rafters in the middle of the empty garage. There were no vehicles in the garage. Perry didn’t know if the killer had emptied the garage, or it just happened to be that way. At the far end of the garage was a row of counters and cabinets overflowing with tools and car parts. Along the sides of the walls were jacks, spare tires and rims, and other leftover parts and tools.

The ropes that Greg was strung up by were tied several times around his wrists and then looped around the exposed rafters above and then tied off to the sides of the metal walls, tied tightly around exposed metal studs. His bare feet hung only a few inches from the concrete floor. His body swayed back and forth gently and the ropes creaked in the silence. He had a severe wound to the left side of his face; his forehead was caved in a little from the butt of the shotgun. Dark blood was matted in the wound and in his hair. The whole left side of his face was stained with blood that had dripped down the left side of his body. He was gagged with a rag stuffed into his mouth with several lengths of rope tied around his head to hold the rag in place.

Greg was naked. And the skin from his entire torso, from right under his arm pits down to his waistline, had been removed. It hadn’t been a precision job, Perry could tell that just by looking at the sawed marks in the victim’s red muscle and fat. But it didn’t look like it had been a rush job, either. Greg hadn’t been tortured; this had just been a job to the killer, like someone skinning an animal after a hunt. Only, judging from the gag in his mouth, Perry guessed that this animal may have still been alive at the time.

Blood-stained tools were scattered on the concrete floor around the massive pool of blood that Greg hung over. There was a box cutter, a pair of large scissors, a pair of rusty shears, and various pairs of pliers. In the bloody puddle under Greg’s feet were globs of fat and pieces of muscle that had been cut off during the removal of his skin.

The skin from Greg’s torso wasn’t anywhere in the garage.

“He’s taking things,” Jackson said as he stared at the body. He chewed on his wad of bubblegum and his jaw muscles clenched and relaxed as he chewed. “Blood from the first victim. Skin from this one.”

Perry nodded and sighed. He stared down at the assortment of tools in the pool of blood.

“Where are the knives he used?”

Jackson didn’t answer. He stared at the pliers, scissors, and the box cutter.

“There’s a box cutter,” Perry said, “but he didn’t use that to flay the skin off of the body.”

Jackson looked at the saw marks on the man’s muscle and fat, evidence of the knives that had been used.

“Why would he take the knives he used to skin this guy, but leave the other tools and shotgun behind?” Perry wondered aloud.

Jackson didn’t have an answer for him.

3.

Tara’s heart jumped when she heard the knock at her front door. She was at her easel, finishing up the last of the illustrations for the children’s book. She had the radio on – she liked to listen to music when she worked, something soft and easy that eventually faded into background noise.

The knock sounded again.

Who was at her door?

Tara felt the instant prickling on her skin, the instant tension in her muscles, the instant buzzing of panic in her mind.

She got up and hurried out of her office and then raced across the living room. She pried the blinds apart and peeked out the window near the front door and she just caught a glimpse of Steve walking back to his apartment.

Tara rushed to the front door and fumbled with the deadbolt, and then the lock on the door handle. She finally got the door open and ran outside onto the concrete walkway. Steve was almost back to his apartment door.

Steve heard her come outside and he turned back to her and smiled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you.”

“It’s not a bother,” Tara said, even though she wasn’t quite sure what she was saying was no bother to her. That hadn’t come out right and she wished she could start over.

Steve walked back towards her at a leisurely pace, a smile still on his face. Tara noted again that he was a very good-looking man. He wore a pair of old faded jeans that hung perfectly on him and a Polo shirt that revealed more of his toned body than she had seen before.

Stop it! Stop staring at him like that.

“I was just wondering if you had a cup of sugar I could borrow,” Steve said.

Tara didn’t say anything. She couldn’t seem to find her voice for a moment.

“I was going to make some tea …” Steve continued but then he let his words trail off.

“I’m sorry,” Tara finally said. “I don’t … I don’t have any sugar. I used it all.”

Steve smiled even wider. “Thanks, anyway.”

“I’m sorry,” Tara said again and she smiled. She felt like she was smiling dumb. Stop smiling, she told herself. But she couldn’t seem to stop.

“It’s okay,” Steve said. “No big deal. I need to go to the store anyway. I just wanted to make some tea first …” He stopped talking and turned a little red underneath his tan skin.

Was he embarrassed? Tara wondered. Could he be just as nervous in front of me as I am in front of him?

Steve turned to walk away, but he glanced back at her.

“I really didn’t mean to bother you,” Steve said again. And he was still grinning at her, a lop-sided smile that somehow seemed to be cute and sexy at the same time.

“It’s no bother at all,” Tara said as she paused at her front door. “Any time.”

Steve went back inside.

Tara went back inside. She could still feel that big, dumb smile plastered on her face. Any time? What the hell was that supposed to mean?

She sighed as she leaned back against her front door and glanced over at the plate of cupcakes in her kitchen.

I’m such a chicken.

4.

A few hours later, Tara was jogging with Lorie down a trail through Grover Park. They had finished their run and Lorie was panting – she looked like she might fall over and pass out. Tara was hardly even breathing hard.

“I don’t see how this can be good for you,” Lorie said when she finally caught her breath.

They stretched out their leg muscles by a park bench. Lorie wore a pair of shiny, skin-tight yoga pants and a low-cut shirt and the best running shoes money could buy. Tara wore her solid black stretch pants, her white sneakers, and an old T-shirt that she had knotted at the side of her waist. Her dark hair was tied back in a ponytail.

Tara had agreed to help Lorie work out. Lorie was in good shape already, a naturally slender and curvy woman, but she said she wanted to tone up some, she felt like she needed to compete with Mike’s body, whatever that was supposed to mean. Tara told her they’d start with some aerobic and endurance stuff and then work up to some light weight-training.

Lorie and Mike had really hit it off after she sold him the place up in Pasco County. They’d been seeing each other every night and Tara got a phone call from Lorie after every date. Tara was happy for Lorie, but she could also tell that their friendship was going to slowly dissolve away the closer Mike and Lorie got to each other. Lorie was her only friend, so it saddened her, yet she still couldn’t help being happy for her.

Tara had always been alone; she knew how to be alone. She was an expert at it. But Lorie wasn’t that kind of person so Tara was happy she had found someone to be with.

After Tara finished stretching, she looked around at the park. The day was nice. It was hot, but the further they got into October, the less humidity there was in the air which made it feel less muggy. There were a few other people in the park: two women pushing baby strollers, an old man feeding the birds at another bench, a few other people jogging and walking past her and Lorie. In one of the fields there was some kind of Tai Chi class going on.

“I almost took your advice,” Tara said.

Lorie looked at Tara, still panting a little. “Advice about what?”

“I baked Steve some cupcakes.”

Lorie’s eyes bulged with surprise. “You did? And?”

“And I chickened out. I didn’t give them to him.”

“Tara …” Lorie sighed.

“And today he came over and asked if he could borrow a cup of sugar.”

Lorie’s face brightened a little. “And?”

“And I didn’t have any. So … he went home.”

Lorie sat down on the bench and sighed, she had a confused look on her face for a moment. “He actually came over and asked to borrow a cup of sugar?”

“Yeah.”

“Flashbulbs should’ve been going off in your head. That’s the oldest line in the book. You missed a great opportunity.” Lorie had finally gotten her breath back. “What a line. You could’ve said: I didn’t have any sugar because I used it all on these. And then you present the cupcakes to him.”

“It doesn’t matter now. It’s too late. The cupcakes are old, starting to get stale. And I already ate half of them.”

Lorie got back to her feet and they started walking back down the trail to where their vehicles were parked.

You’re hopeless,” Lorie said. “How’s your work going? You should be getting plenty of that done.”

“It’s going okay,” Tara answered. She wanted to tell Lorie that her nightmares were getting worse. That she was sleepwalking again, something she hadn’t done in a few years. She had hoped (but should’ve known better) that maybe she had somehow begun to move past her night terrors.

But now they’d come back with a force that she hadn’t felt since she’d been a teenager.

Since her parents were murdered.

But Tara wasn’t going to unload all of that negative stuff onto Lorie. She was going to be happy for Lorie and help her in any way she could. She would have to deal with her night terrors and panic attacks as she always did – alone.

They walked in silence for a moment as they got to the parking lot.

“Why don’t you stop at a store on the way home and pick up a bag of sugar?” Lorie suggested. “Bring a cup over to him. Or hell, show some imagination and bring him the whole bag.”

“You have a one-track mind.”

Lorie laid her towel down over the driver’s seat of her car even though she had a seat cover on it. She looked at Tara for a moment, almost like she was studying her. “You okay?”

Tara smiled as she stood by her hulking Jeep. “Yeah, of course.”

“I want you to tell me if anything’s bothering you. If you’re having any more of your nightmares.”

The word nightmares sounded innocuous out here in the bright sunshine, it sounded almost childish; her friend worrying about her bad dreams.

“You know I would,” Tara lied. “Go and have fun with Mike. You deserve this.”

Lorie beamed and nodded. “I won’t give up until I find someone for you.”

“Maybe Mike has a brother.”

“I don’t think so. I’ll see if he has a cousin.”

Lorie got into her Mazda and fired it up. She pulled out of the parking lot so quickly that she almost screeched her tires.

Tara got in her Jeep and after a quick and silent prayer that it would start, she fired up the engine. It roared loudly even though it really didn’t have any power – it was all bark and no bite.

She pulled out of the parking area and onto the street. She didn’t notice the dark sedan following her.

CHAPTER SEVEN

1.

Tara stopped at a convenience store on the way home and bought a bag of sugar. She usually didn’t like to stop at a store in her workout clothes, but she tied her hoodie sweatshirt around her waist and that made her feel a little better. She didn’t have any reason to be ashamed of her body, she’d worked hard to sculpt a lean and healthy figure, but she didn’t like feeling like she was showing it off to people.

She could’ve stopped at a grocery store for the sugar – it would’ve been a lot cheaper – but she tried to avoid the supermarket as much as she could. In fact, she tried to avoid most places that were crowded with people; the less contact with strangers, the better. She had realized a long time ago that she could pick up stray thoughts from people whether she wanted to or not. The signal seemed to be stronger from some people than others. And it wasn’t always like a sentence in her mind that someone was thinking (but sometimes she could hear the actual thoughts from a person, word-for-word, but that was rare), usually it was more like a quick picture in her mind or even just a feeling. Most times the thoughts or feelings were mundane: worries about bills or if they had enough money to pay for the groceries, or worries about work, or their children. But every once in a while she would get a powerful feeling that would nearly knock her down – a sudden feeling of fear or anger or happiness.

Yes, it was just a good idea for her to avoid crowded places. She could tune out the feelings and pictures in her mind most of the time, but sometimes around a lot of people it could be a bit overwhelming. She had learned to schedule her grocery shopping at non-peak hours like either early in the morning or late at night.

She drove home with the bag of sugar on her passenger seat. When she got home, she set the bag of sugar on the counter. She stared at it for a moment like it was a piece of art to be appreciated, and then she walked away to take a shower.

During her shower she would force herself to decide if she was going to take a cup of sugar over to Steve.

Before she got to the bathroom, someone knocked at the front door. She stopped and stared at the door.

It’s Steve.

She looked down at her workout clothes: her tight-fitting, rather revealing workout clothes.

The knock sounded at the door again – more urgent this time.

She hesitated and glanced at the kitchen and the bag of sugar sitting on the counter.

Should I come to the door with the bag of sugar in my hands?

She got a quick mental picture of herself standing at the door holding the bag of sugar in her hands like a showgirl on a game show. No, that was going to look stupid, she thought. And giving Steve the whole bag of sugar might send him the wrong message – like here’s a whole bag of sugar so you will stop bugging me.

Another series of knocks pounded on the door.

Tara hurried to the front door, unlocked it and opened it.

It wasn’t Steve knocking at her door.

“Uh … can I help you?” Tara asked.

The man in her doorway was tall and wore a dark suit and sunglasses. He had what looked like a black wallet in his hand and he flipped it open in a practiced motion and showed Tara an FBI I.D and badge.

“Hello, Tara Simmons. I’m Agent David Woods with the FBI.”

Tara couldn’t answer him for a moment as she watched him tuck the FBI identification back inside his suit coat pocket.

“Could I take up a moment of your time, Ms. Simmons?”

Tara nodded, but she hadn’t moved away from the door to let him inside her apartment. “Yeah, I guess.” She glanced beyond the FBI agent and saw a dark sedan parked right next to her Jeep Cherokee. An unmarked cop car if she’d ever seen one.

“What’s this about?” she asked.

“It’s very important,” Agent Woods said. “I won’t take up too much of your time.”

Tara’s eyes darted back to the agent and a sudden warning flashed through her mind. For some reason this didn’t feel right to her.

“May I come inside?”

Tara chose to ignore the warning in her mind and stepped back; she gestured at him to come inside.

He entered her apartment and she shut the door behind him. And for once in her life, she didn’t lock the door. It was like she wanted the door to be unlocked for an easy escape if she needed one.

Where had that thought come from?

Agent Woods walked a few steps into the living room and took off his sunglasses in a quick, efficient movement and stuffed them down into his suit coat pocket. He had dark eyes, but they were alert and they seemed to take everything in within a split second. He glanced at the drawing paper face-down on her coffee table. His eyes lingered for a moment on the two pencils, one of them snapped in half, like there was something bothering him about it.

Thank God the drawing of the gun and bullets was turned over, Tara thought.

Tara tried to will the agent to focus back on her.

“Can I get you anything?” she asked as she walked to her kitchen. “Something to drink? I have some stale cupcakes if you want them?”

Agent Woods gave Tara a tight smile. “No thanks.”

Tara needed something to drink – she was suddenly so thirsty. She grabbed a bottle of water out of the refrigerator and drank some of it down. She walked back into the living room. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m thirsty. Just got back from a workout.” She gestured down at her clothing like she needed proof to back up her story.

He nodded.

Why was she so nervous around this man? She studied him for a moment. He was actually a very striking man in a dark sort of way. He was lean, like he’d been chiseled from stone. He stood very still and he exuded a sense of power and even a little danger. She was sure he’d learned this pose of his over the years as an FBI agent. Maybe they had training courses on it or something in the FBI.

What is wrong with me? Why am I suddenly sizing up every man I see?

She felt a rush of blood to her face as they stood in front of each other in a moment of awkward silence.

“So, what’s this about?” Tara asked again.

“It’s about the three murders that occurred over the last two nights.”

“Yeah, I heard about them on the news.”

“We believe it’s the work of a serial killer. We’ve been tracking this killer across the United States for the last two years.”

Agent Woods paused.

“And what does that have to do with me?” Tara asked.

“I need your help.”

“What?”

“I came to ask you for your help.”

“My help with what? I didn’t know those people who were murdered. I wasn’t anywhere around those places when the murders happened.”

“I know, Ms. Simmons. But I still think you’ve seen something.”

Her heart jumped. What did he mean by that? “I just told you I wasn’t anywhere near those places,” she said, and she could hear the sharp tone of anger in her voice. “How could I have seen anything?”

Agent Woods continued quickly, like he could tell he was making her angry, like he knew he only had a few seconds to convince her of something before she kicked him out. He took a step towards her and his expression softened. “I think you’ve seen something in your dreams. In the visions you have.”

Tara’s breath caught in her throat and she pointed at her front door. “I think it’s time for you to leave, Agent Woods.”

Agent Woods took another step closer to Tara. The hard lines of his face eased even more, his dark eyes which were so watchful and predatory before were now oozing with compassion. “I know about your abilities, Ms. Simmons. I know about your dreams. I believe you can see things. Sense things.”

“How would you know about that?” Tara whispered as her mind whirled for a moment. The only way he could know about her ability would be from police reports back when Tara had tried a few times in vain to help the police department. They had treated her help like a joke, and even worse, a waste of their time. And she couldn’t blame them. She couldn’t really help – she was always too late with her visions and she never had enough detail about the killers. It was a cosmic joke to have psychic powers where you only saw things after they happened, so she stopped trying to help.

“I know you’ve tried to help the police with your abilities,” he said as if reading her mind. “I know they treated you like a joke. But believe me, the FBI won’t do that. We take these kinds of things very seriously.”

Tara walked to her front door and opened it for Agent Woods. “I can’t help you. I’m sorry.”

Agent Woods met her at the front door. He was about to leave, but he turned and looked at Tara. “There will be more murders. You know that, don’t you?”

Tara didn’t answer.

Agent Woods stepped through the doorway and turned back to Tara. He produced a business card in between two fingers like a magician performing a trick.

“Can I leave my card with you?”

“Will it make you go away any faster?”

He didn’t answer.

She took his card and shut the door on him. She twisted the lock on the door handle. And then she locked the deadbolt.

2.

Tara ran to the window near the front door, the one that looked out onto the parking area. She peeked out through the blinds and watched the FBI agent walk back to his dark sedan. He had his sunglasses on again. He walked between her Jeep and his car and was about to open his door, but he stopped and looked around at the parking area.

And then the agent grabbed his cell phone off of his belt like someone had just called him. He lifted the phone up to his ear and talked into it, brief sentences, sometimes only a word or two in between pauses while he listened on the phone. To Tara, it seemed like he was affirming something.

Then Agent Woods turned and looked right at her window. Even though he had the sunglasses covering his eyes, she could tell that his eyes were focused on her like he knew she’d been watching him the whole time.

She let the blinds snap back in place as she let go of them with her fingers.

She felt a little embarrassed at being caught peeking at him. How did he know she was watching him? He’s a cop, she told herself – it was human nature for someone to peek out the window at him – it was probably another thing he’d learned in a training course at the FBI.

She heard his car start up and pull out of the parking area. She wanted to look out the window again to check and make sure he was gone, but she resisted the urge.

Tara jumped when her telephone rang.

It was her home phone, not her cell phone, and it had a sharp ring that demanded an answer. She hurried to the phone and picked it up on the third ring.

“Hello?”

“Tara,” Ben said into the phone.

Ben was one of the people she worked for. In fact, he got her the most work. The assignment that she was finishing now, the children’s book illustrations, was for him.

“Hey, Ben. How’s it going?”

“I was just calling to see how those illos are coming along?” Ben always called the illustrations “illos” for short. “It’s getting a little close to the deadline,” he said. “Not that I’m worried about you, Tara. You’ve never been late on an assignment yet.”

“And that streak will continue,” Tara said.

Ben laughed.

“They’re just about done. I got a little behind schedule.” She thought of a quick white lie. “I’ve been a little under the weather the last few days. The flu, maybe. But I’m back on track now.”

“Sorry to hear that. You should take some Vitamin C.”

“I will. I already am. One step ahead of you, Ben. Thanks.”

“Okay. You just call me if you need anything. I’m just right down the road, you know that.”

Ben’s office was in downtown Tampa, maybe just down the road, but maybe an hour away during rush hour.

“I will, Ben. Thanks. I’ll send the first set of illos to you tonight.”

“I’ll be looking for them.” There was a slight pause and then a slight static on the phone.

Ben had said something, but Tara couldn’t make the words out through the static. “Ben? Did you say something? I lost you there for a second.”

The static faded away a little, but Tara could still hear it. She could hear Ben more clearly now. “I said, take care of yourself.”

“I will. Thanks. Bye.”

She guessed that Ben had said good-bye, but the static was blaring on the phone again. She hung up the phone and backed away from it.

Doesn’t anything work right anymore?

Tara wanted to go and take a shower, but she walked back to her front window instead. She peeked out through the blinds, opening them wider this time; she wanted to make sure the FBI agent was really gone.

He was gone – nobody out there at all. She looked towards the right, towards Steve’s apartment. And she saw him leaving his apartment. He walked to his pickup truck and got in. He started his truck, and then drove away. Unlike the FBI agent, he hadn’t even looked her way at all; he didn’t seem to know that she was in her window watching him like a stalker.

She let the blinds pop back in place, feeling a little dejected that Steve didn’t look her way. And then she had to mentally slap herself and get herself back under control, she had to remind herself that nothing was ever going to happen with Steve. Once he found out about her night terrors and sleepwalking, he would run away from her like she was a leper.

She needed to put him out of her mind.

After checking the front door again, and then all of the windows, she went to her master bathroom and took a shower. She brought her cell phone and laid it on the bathroom counter and locked the bathroom door like she always did.

CHAPTER EIGHT

1.

The next day Tara sent off the illustrations (the illos) to Ben’s e-mail. She still had to work on the last of them, just to touch them up a little, but she still had a few more days for that. Just getting most of them would ease Ben’s mind a little. She tried working on the touchups, but she just couldn’t fully concentrate on them right now.

She had too much on her mind.

She ate the rest of the leftover veggie lasagna that she’d baked last night. She drank a cup of green tea and honey with her meal, and then polished off a glass of red wine afterwards.

She ate alone at the small table in her kitchen. Sometimes she wished she had a pet. Even a cat. Even if it ignored her all day. But she couldn’t take a chance on having a pet.

After rinsing off her dishes, she sat down in front of the TV. The drawing of the revolver and bullets was still on the coffee table in front of her underneath the two pencils: one whole pencil, and the other one broken in two pieces.

She picked up the drawing and studied it again. This was a clue, she was sure of it, a clue sent to her straight from the Shadow Man – a clue that said: try to find me before I find you.

She set the paper down on the coffee table and then saw Agent Wood’s business card next to it. She stared at the card for a moment, and then she sat back deeper into the couch.

It was only late afternoon, but her eyes began to close. If she could just shut her eyes for a few minutes, she knew she would feel better. She hadn’t gotten enough sleep lately, and sometimes it was better to nap during the day – she didn’t really have a set schedule anymore, she just took her sleep whenever she could get it.

She was almost asleep when her cell phone rang. Her eyes popped open. The cell phone was on the kitchen counter. She jumped to her feet and ran to the counter as the phone rang and buzzed at the same time. Somehow her phone was stuck on both ring and vibrate at the same time and she didn’t know how to change it. It was her aunt calling.

“Hey, Aunt Katie.”

“Tara, how are you?”

“I’m a … I’m pretty good. Sorry. I was sitting on the couch and I think I was almost falling asleep.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” The instant concern in her aunt’s voice brought Tara back to her childhood in a split second. She felt a sudden ache of nostalgia.

“No,” Tara said. “It’s okay. I wasn’t all the way asleep. I don’t even want to sleep.”

“You feeling okay?”

For just a moment Tara felt like spilling her guts to her aunt. Lorie was her only friend, but her Aunt Katie was the only family she had left, and Aunt Katie was alone just like Tara was; she and her latest husband had split up a year ago after only two years of marriage. But Tara didn’t say anything; she didn’t want her aunt worrying about her.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Tara finally answered. “Just a little bit of the flu lately.” She used the same lie she’d told Ben.

“Are you not sleeping well?”

Her aunt knew how to cut right to the chase. Buried in her question was a concern about her night terrors. Her aunt had dealt with Tara’s condition when they had lived together. She was only one of a handful of people who knew about Tara’s night terrors.

“A few nightmares here and there,” Tara finally answered. “But nothing major.”

There was a silence on the phone for a moment. She could tell that her aunt didn’t believe her, and for a moment she wished her aunt was here with her. Her aunt was the only person in the world who really knew her.

“I heard about the latest murder down there in Tampa,” Aunt Katie finally said. It was the real reason for the phone call, Tara knew. “All the way up here in Boston, it’s big news. They’re calling him a serial killer. Killed three people in two nights.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of big news down here,” Tara said, and then regretted it, fearing it sounded sarcastic.

“I’m just worried about you,” her aunt said.

“I’m fine,” Tara answered. “Got my doors locked. Baseball bats in every room.”

“Very funny,” Aunt Katie said and laughed.

No, Tara wanted to say; it’s the truth – I have baseball bats stashed around my apartment. But she didn’t. She could tell that her aunt wanted to say more, she could sense that something was on her mind. But her Aunt Katie wasn’t divulging anything.

They made some more small-talk. Yes, everything was going well with Tara’s work. No, Tara hadn’t found a boyfriend yet. Not even close. She sure wasn’t going to tell her about Lorie’s plan to hook her up with the next door neighbor using a bag of sugar as the bait.

Tara got off the phone with her aunt and went back to the couch and stretched out on it. She plucked Agent Woods’ business card off of the coffee table and stared at it for a moment. Agent Woods seemed like a hard and competent man, but she had seen something vulnerable in his dark eyes for a moment when he asked for her help.

She set the card down on her stomach and closed her eyes.

She just needed to close her eyes for a few minutes. She was so tired.

Moments later she was asleep. At first she didn’t dream anything.

But then the dreams came.

2.

Aunt Katie hung up the phone and she walked to the kitchen table where she’d left a photo album wide open. She flipped back towards the front of the book, to photos of Tara when she was a baby. She turned a page, crinkling the plastic a little that covered the pages. She lingered on a photo of Tara’s mom and dad when they were younger, when Tara was little. She touched the photo of Tara’s mother with her finger. Katie’s sister. God, she missed her so much.

Katie had been keeping a secret from Tara for years now. She never wanted to tell her, she was afraid it would destroy her, but now Tara needed to know the truth.

She closed the photo album with a snap and sat at the small kitchen table in her tiny Boston apartment for a long moment. She stared at her cluttered kitchen counters as her mind lingered on the murders down in Tampa.

It was happening again.

Katie had always believed that she had a touch of psychic ability – but nothing as powerful as Tara’s abilities, not even close. She believed that everyone had a sixth sense whether they knew it or not, whether they chose to believe it or not. She believed that people had “gut feelings” in their lives, a voice whispering at the back of their mind to not go to work that day, or not to go down a certain road, or to buy a lottery ticket. A lot of times people ignored these feelings and then later they knew that they should’ve listened to that voice in their head.

Maybe it was a part of a collective unconscious that all humans shared. Katie had heard that theory from somewhere before.

Who knew?

Right now she had a voice whispering to her, a gut feeling tugging at her, and she didn’t think she should ignore it.

She got up and paced around her cramped apartment. She could hear the traffic of Boston outside: blaring horns, skidding tires, someone yelling at someone else. She had followed her latest husband up here and it hadn’t worked out. Maybe it was time to pack a bag and get out of this city for a little while.

It was time to take a trip to Florida.

It was time to see Tara and tell her the truth. And what she had to tell her, she couldn’t say over the phone, she needed to face her.

Katie walked to her hall closet and pulled down two suitcases from the top shelf.

CHAPTER NINE

1.

Miss Helen waited by her front window for the killer to come.

Her home-based business, Miss Helen’s Psychic Readings, was located on State Road 301, between Tampa and the Hillsborough State Park. Her house was set back from the road and situated on almost two acres of land; it had been left to her by her mother after she passed away six years ago. Her neighbor to one side was Mrs. Jean Smith, an old lady in the early stages of dementia. Her neighbor on the other side was a middle-aged couple who constantly drank and argued.

Miss Helen’s Psychic Readings was open from eight in the morning to seven o’clock at night. She preferred appointments, but if she wasn’t busy she would take walk-ins. She really couldn’t turn down any business.

She had a sign out by the road that advertised her business. It had been constructed, hand-painted, and installed by her brother ten years ago. He died two years ago. She knew she should get a new sign, a bigger one, a fancier one, but she couldn’t bear to replace the sign. It was something made by her brother’s hands that she could look at every day.

Her front yard was large and she’d had the driveway widened a few years back to handle extra cars parking in front of her home. Not that there was some kind of mad rush of customers, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Her vehicle, an older mini-van, was parked underneath the aluminum roof of the carport.

Miss Helen peeked out the window again. It was late in the afternoon and she was closed for the day. She’d had her last customer at three o’clock. She had to admit that she’d been a little distracted with her last customer, and she probably should have rescheduled, it would’ve only been fair to the poor woman who came in. Miss Helen knew she hadn’t given her the best service, and she almost felt like refunding the woman.

Almost.

After her last customer left, Miss Helen made sure the front door was locked and then she went to her bedroom to get the revolver from the drawer in her nightstand next to her bed. She had loaded the gun a few days ago with six brand new bullets from the box. She’d been keeping the gun by her bed every night for the last two weeks, but today she wanted the weapon with her at all times.

Miss Helen was in her mid-sixties, and she was a heavy-set woman. She wore large, baggy clothing which helped her conceal the revolver in her pants pocket more easily. She knew how to use the gun, it had been her brother’s and he’d shown her how to fire it at a remote pond in the woods a few years back. They shot at beer bottles until Miss Helen could hit at least half of them.

She had seen the killer in her dreams the last few nights, but not in any detail, only a shadowy figure. But she could feel him. She sensed that he had killed many times before, working his way across the country. At first he killed for pleasure, and then he killed to hone his skills. Recently he’d begun taking things from his victims, things he needed for some kind of ritual or ceremony which hadn’t been too clear to her in the dreams.

The shadowy killer was seeking someone in particular here in Tampa. Miss Helen didn’t know who the person was, but she was pretty sure it was a young woman.

She thought about calling the police, but she knew they would do nothing to help her. They didn’t believe in her mumbo-jumbo and they weren’t going to stake a cop outside her house because she had a few bad dreams.

No, this was something she was going to have to take care of herself.

The killer would be coming for her and she was going to be ready.

That’s why she had cleared her schedule for the next few days. She told her clients that she was going on a self-deserved mini-vacation. But in reality, she was going to be hiding inside her house in fear, waiting for the killer to come, waiting to shoot him before he got to her.

Miss Helen checked the doors and windows again. She made sure the OPEN sign in the window was turned to CLOSED. The front of her home, which would normally be a formal living room, had been converted into her meeting room. The clients came in and sat down at the table in the middle of the room which was covered with a large purple cloth. The archway that led into the dining room and kitchen was covered with another purple drape and strings of beads – Hippie beads, her brother used to call them.

God, she missed her brother right now. He would’ve stayed here with her and protected her. He would’ve known what to do. She kept his ashes in an urn on the window sill in her kitchen over the sink where she could see it every day.

The rest of the décor in the front room was what she liked to call New Wave/Spiritualist. She had a Buddha statue in one corner among a few plants in pots. She had a carving on one wall of a Hindu god (and honestly, she wasn’t sure which one it was). She had the Christian and Jewish religions covered with many icons and statuettes around the room. She didn’t want to offend anyone who came through her door. She wanted to express a Oneness with the universe and all religions when it came to her services.

And she believed in that Oneness. She believed in a Supreme Power, but not an angry god who sent people to hell if they didn’t believe a certain religious scripture word for word.

She knew there was a Supreme Power, a Great Spirit, a God. She could feel it. She knew there was goodness in the world; she could feel that, too. But she also knew there was a terrible evil in the world. It couldn’t be denied, one couldn’t pretend that it didn’t exist – it could be very dangerous to pretend that it wasn’t real. One couldn’t only believe in the good and ignore the evil.

And Evil was coming. Tonight, maybe. Or tomorrow. Or the next day. But definitely soon.

She shuddered as a sense of anticipation buzzed through her; it made her stomach feel light and it felt like every nerve-ending on her skin was sizzling.

The only noise in the house was some small water fountains she had running, creating a soothing sound of trickling water. She often had light and flowery spiritual music playing in the background, something that might help customers imagine being one-with-nature, but she didn’t play the music now – she didn’t want any distractions. Her hearing wasn’t the greatest anymore and she wanted to make sure she heard any sound that came from outside no matter how subtle it might be.

And she didn’t have to wait too long.

2.

It was early evening as the Shadow Man stood in a stand of trees watching Miss Helen’s house. To the west the sun was setting the horizon on fire with gory splashes of yellows, oranges, and reds. To the east the sky had become a deep blue that was quickly turning to black. A full and bloated moon was about to rise above the trees into the night sky. Insects chirped in the woods, a final symphony before they bedded down for the night and let the mosquitos take over.

The Shadow Man watched the house for another few minutes. He had seen the woman in the window staring out at the darkening world, but she wasn’t at the window anymore.

She’s inside waiting for me, he thought. She’s sitting at her table with the purple cloth draped over it, staring at the front door and waiting.

He knew she could sense him coming for her, but there was nothing she could do about it. He was always going to be one step ahead of her.

He stepped out of the trees, dressed in dark clothing. A few objects rattled together in his pockets as he walked towards the front door. He wanted to show these objects to Miss Helen – he had a big surprise for her.

3.

Miss Helen sat in her chair at the table which faced the front door. There was a window in the door and a sheer curtain covered that window, but she could see through it easily with the porch light burning. The porch light would help her see the killer when he came to her door.

On the table in front of her, laid out on the royal purple table cloth, was a set of Tarot cards. They were facedown. Beside the Tarot cards was her cell phone, turned on and ready for use.

Miss Helen glanced down at the hand of cards that she’d dealt. She reached for the one closest to her. She was about to turn it over, but she hesitated, her fingers trembling. She had taken the gun out of her pocket and laid it on her lap. The gun was heavy, but it felt reassuring.

She took a breath and turned the card over that would tell her future.

It was the Death Card.

She stared at it for a long moment until a sound at the front door tore her attention away. She looked up and saw that the porch light was flickering, and then it went out.

Even though the light was out, she could see the shadowy figure right behind the window of her front door.

Miss Helen watched the door handle as it jiggled slightly, like the man was trying the handle to see if it was locked.

She should shoot him right now. He would be an easy target right there behind the glass of the front door. She should grab the gun off of her lap, lift it up, aim, and squeeze the trigger. And then pull the trigger again and again, just how her brother had taught her.

But she didn’t do it. She couldn’t kill him while he was still outside. What would she tell the police? She needed to wait until he was inside to shoot him.

Even though she had rehearsed this in her mind a thousand times over the last few days, now that the moment was here she discovered that she was suddenly frozen with fear. She never thought the fear would be this paralyzing.

And it wasn’t a fear of death. She had made her peace with death for a while now, like many older people do. You fear it when you’re younger because you still have so much to live for, but as you get older it just becomes something inevitable. It’s not like she wanted to die, or like she was ready to die, she just knew that when the time came she wouldn’t fight it kicking and screaming like some did. No, what she feared wasn’t death; what she feared was the evil behind her front door, a supernatural evil, something beyond human. And the evil held her in its hypnotic gaze as she watched the lock on the door handle slowly twist.

She watched the door handle turn.

The door opened.

The man entered her parlor. She had another chance to shoot him as he closed the front door. But what if she missed? What if ducked back out the door and she ruined her one shot at surprising him? No, it would be better to wait until he was closer, she told herself.

He stared at her. He might have seemed like a normal man to other people, but she could see the evil in his eyes, she could sense the evil oozing out of his pores, she could feel it smothering her.

He was dressed in dark clothing and he wore some kind of black latex gloves on his hands that went well up underneath the cuffs of his shirt sleeves. He wore heavy boots, maybe motorcycle boots, but he didn’t make a sound as he walked to her table and sat down opposite her – like he was floating half an inch above the floor, walking on a thin cushion of air.

He stared at her for a long moment with dark eyes that looked like polished black stones, and there was no mercy in those eyes.

She had a choice to make in a split second – shoot this man right now or call for help. Without even thinking about it, she grabbed her cell phone from the table and dialed 911. She held the phone to her ear, but she could hear nothing but static.

“It’s not going to work,” the man whispered to her.

Miss Helen dropped the phone back into her lap near her revolver. She was glad that it hadn’t clinked against the gun.

“I knew you were coming – seen it for days now,” Miss Helen said, and she was surprised and a little proud that her voice was steady and even. Maybe her hands wouldn’t shake so much when she finally picked up the gun and aimed it at him. Maybe she would be able to hold it still as she pulled the trigger again and again and buried bullet after bullet into this abomination that pretended to be a human.

“I knew you were coming,” she said again. “That’s why I prepared myself.”

She lifted up the gun and found that her trembling had subsided. It was the anticipation that had caused her tremors – now that she had done it, now that she had lifted up her gun and aimed it at him, she found herself calmer – like the Alpha waves in her brain had just kicked in. Everything was in motion now, there was no turning back.

And now it was time to finish this.

Her visitor sat in silence in front of her, his hands in his lap. He showed no emotion. He didn’t flinch back from the weapon pointed at him. He didn’t seem surprised, either. He just stared at her with those inhumanly dark eyes.

And then he lifted his latex-sheathed fists up from his lap.

For a moment she thought he had a weapon, that he’d brought his own gun to this shootout. But there was no gun in his hands, only his clenched fists which he moved in slow circles over the purple table cloth like a magician preparing to do a trick.

He had something in his hands, hidden inside his fists. He had something he wanted to show her.

She didn’t want to see anything this monster wanted to show her. She needed to end this while she still had the courage. Her finger tightened around the trigger, ready to pull it.

But she hesitated as he opened both fists in one quick release.

Six bullets fell from his fists, three from each hand. They clattered down onto her purple table cloth. One of the bullets rolled all the way across the table and stopped right on top of the overturned Death Card in front of her.

No, it couldn’t be. Those couldn’t be her bullets, the bullets from this gun in her hand.

Miss Helen pulled the trigger.

Click.

She pulled the trigger again and again.

Click. Click.

There were no bullets in her gun.

They were on the table.

“The cards don’t lie, Miss Helen,” her shadowy visitor told her. “You can’t change your destiny.”

Miss Helen glanced down at the Death Card with the bullet on top of it. She lowered her hand and the heavy gun fell out of it and landed on the table with a thud. She looked up at her visitor.

“How?” she whispered.

He didn’t answer, but she saw a vision of the killer slipping into her home earlier, perhaps when she’d been with her last customer. She saw him as a shadow slipping through her window – a Shadow Man. He went straight to her nightstand for the gun, like he already knew where it was. He took the bullets out, but left the gun behind, like this was a big game to him.

“How did you know I didn’t put more bullets in it?”

The man didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. He just knew.

Miss Helen knew her death was coming very soon. She knew before too long that she would be with her brother again, and her mother. She just prayed that her death would be quick and that she wouldn’t feel too much pain.

“Why us?” she asked. “Why do you come after us?”

Again, the killer didn’t answer her question, but she already knew why.

Because we’re so easy to read, so easy to take things from.

The visitor reached across the table for the gun. Miss Helen didn’t flinch, she just watched him pick up the gun from the table. He opened the cylinder and picked up a bullet with his rubber-sheathed fingers and loaded it slowly, methodically.

Miss Helen watched him load the gun with all six of the bullets. She could try and run, but she knew she couldn’t outrun this man, she couldn’t outfight him. She had never stood a chance.

“There’s someone you want,” Miss Helen said. It wasn’t a question; it was more of a statement to herself. At this point, so close to death, her psychic powers were stronger than she’d ever felt before. Or maybe it was because someone so strong sat across the table from her and it magnified her own powers. She wasn’t sure, and it didn’t matter now. She could see what this murderer was after; what he was planning to do.

And she saw why he was after this young woman, why she was so important to him, and the terror and fear chilled her to her soul.

How could God let a creature like the one in front of her ever be born?

After he loaded the gun, the man pointed it at her.

“I need something from you,” he said.

4.

It was dark now. The sun had slipped below the horizon in the west and there was only a dark blue line to show that there had ever been daylight. The rest of the sky was black, the clear night sky glittering with the light of ancient stars and the bloated Harvest moon.

Miss Helen’s house was a dark shape in the night.

A moment later there was a flash of light from inside her house, and the sound of thunder from a gunshot rumbled.

CHAPTER TEN

1.

It was dark inside Tara’s apartment as she slept on the couch. She hadn’t turned on the light over the stove before she fell asleep, but at least she’d left the TV on. The TV with its reliable flickering lightshow, an ever-watching sentinel that kept the monsters pushed back into the shadows.

Tara barely moved a muscle as she slept. Her body needed the rest, the chance to rebuild and heal. And for a moment there was peace from the dreams.

But then the dreams came.

Tara fidgeted in her sleep. She turned over on the couch and her arm fell down beside her towards the floor, her hand clenched in a tight fist inches above the wood floorboards. Her fingers relaxed and her hand opened up.

Six bullets from a revolver slipped out of her hand and dropped down to the floor making a loud clattering sound as they hit the wood.

Tara jumped awake, sitting bolt-upright on the couch. Her eyes were wide with fear. She lunged for the lamp next to the couch and her fingers found the switch in the flickering light from the TV. She twisted the little knob and heard the distinctive click from the lamp.

The room was bathed in soft light.

She looked down at the floor.

There were no bullets on the floor. It had only been a dream.

She sat back down and buried her face in her hands. She felt like crying. She felt like sobbing. There was a sense of loss in her. Someone else had died. Someone else had lost their life as this killer worked his way through his victims to get to her.

All for her. All because of her.

She glanced at the coffee table, making sure that there wasn’t a new piece of paper there with a new set of hurried sketches and scratches, and new numbers and puzzling words written at the edges.

It was just the same sketch as before – the revolver and the six bullets.

And now she knew what it had meant – it had been a clue. But what kind of clue was that? How could she have prevented someone’s murder with that kind of clue? It wasn’t fair.

She looked back down at the floor where she’d heard the bullets from her dream land. There were no bullets on the floor, but there was something there – Agent David Woods’ business card; it had fallen off of her stomach and fluttered down to the floor during her nap.

She picked it up and stared at it. Should she call him? Could he even help her?

2.

Tara hurried into her kitchen. She turned on the light over the stove and opened her refrigerator. She took a sip of her bottled water, but it wasn’t quenching her thirst. She wanted something more. She wanted some wine. She searched her refrigerator and cabinets, but she didn’t have any kind of alcohol in her apartment.

She would go get some. Yeah, that’s what she’d do.

She left the light on over the stove and she left the lamp in the living room on, but she turned off the TV. She slipped her socked feet into her sneakers, grabbed her purse and car keys, and marched to the front door.

She needed to get out of her apartment for a while. Maybe a drive in her hulking Jeep would do the trick.

She turned her porch light on and slipped out into the night and then closed and locked her front door. She hesitated for just a moment before walking out to her Jeep, looking at Steve’s apartment. She wanted to go over there and knock on his door. She wanted to talk to someone, be around someone else right now.

But he wasn’t home. His pickup truck was gone.

He probably didn’t want to see her now anyway.

She hurried out to her Jeep Cherokee and climbed inside. She jammed the key into the ignition, twisted it, and the Jeep roared to life. It was obnoxiously loud; she wasn’t a mechanic, but she was pretty sure that there was something wrong with the muffler.

She backed out of her parking spot and turned her headlights on, then shifted into drive and headed towards the entranceway to her apartment complex.

Tara didn’t see the man hidden in the bushes watching her leave.

The man stepped out of the brush after he was sure Tara was gone. He had long hair and his face seemed to be all scraggly beard and wild eyes. He wore many layers of clothing and reeked like a garbage dumpster. He touched the giant homemade cross that hung from his neck with his grimy hands.

3.

Tara went to Publix, a supermarket not too far from her apartment complex.

She pushed her cart down the nearly empty aisles and discovered that besides her craving for alcohol, she was hungry. The food in the deli looked good. She usually stuck to a sensible diet, but tonight she felt like splurging, perhaps gorging on decadent food and spirits, maybe some exotic cheeses and crackers to go with the wine.

Like a death row inmate’s last meal.

Where had that thought come from? She drop-kicked it out of her mind, knocking it back to whatever morbid place it had crawled out of.

“Help you with something?” the deli worker asked.

“Do you have smoked cheddar cheese?”

“Of course, ma’am.”

The deli worker went to work on her orders of extravagant cheeses and salamis. She would get some crackers and horseradish sauce, some green olives. She’d have her own little hors-doeuvre party.

How pathetic.

That’s how it is when you’re alone.

She pushed her shopping cart to the other side of the store and bought two bottles of wine. They were a little expensive, so maybe they would be good. At least they would drown away the voices in her head, the visions in her mind, and maybe even the nightmares that waited for her when she slept.

4.

Tara pulled into her apartment complex and shut off the rumbling engine. Steve’s pickup truck was still gone. She had hoped he would be home when she got back. She’d decided that she would bring one of the bottles of wine and her overpriced selection of cheeses and crackers over to share with him.

But maybe it was good he wasn’t home. She probably would’ve just chickened out again.

Tara got out of her Jeep and grabbed her bags of groceries from the back seat and headed for her front door.

She didn’t even realize something was wrong until she got to her front door.

Her front porch light wasn’t on.

She always left the front porch light on when she left.

Maybe it had burned out.

She set the grocery bags down by her feet and found her house key on the key ring. And then she jerked around like a frightened cat as a breeze rustled through the trees and brush at the other end of the parking area; the stand of woods looked like a black silhouette against the dark sky, the tops of the trees dancing back and forth in the wind. She had a sudden feeling that someone was watching her from the trees.

She turned back to her door and opened it, ready to bolt inside to safety, but then she froze in mid-step. She was greeted by a wall of pitch black darkness.

I know I left the lights on.

She hesitated at the threshold to her apartment for a moment but then the feeling of someone watching her from the trees forced her into action. She reached inside the doorway and groped along the wall, still not wanting to step all the way inside. She finally found the light switch that turned on a seldom used ceiling light just inside the doorway.

But the light didn’t come on.

She tried the switch again and again.

Still nothing.

She hesitated for a moment, not sure what to do. Maybe the power was out. She glanced around at the other apartments and saw that some of them had lights burning inside. Comforting, safe lights.

Maybe just her power was out.

Maybe Steve’s power was out, too. His lights were off, even his front porch light. But he was gone – he probably didn’t leave his lights on when he went out; he probably wasn’t scared of the dark like she was.

She had just left her lights off, that’s all. She had been in a big hurry to race to the store for some wine and she had just forgotten to leave a few lights on when she left. And now all she needed to do was go inside and turn them on. It was that simple.

She couldn’t stand out here all night. She needed to do something.

Tara went back to her Jeep to grab a flashlight, keeping an eye on the woods as she approached her vehicle. She always kept a flashlight in her Jeep, usually two of them. She kept flashlights inside her apartment, too – one underneath the kitchen sink, one in the bathroom, and one in the nightstand next to her bed. She was never far away from flashlights or extra batteries. She couldn’t be in the darkness. She couldn’t wake up in the middle of the night during a power outage and not have a light.

She checked to make sure that the flashlight worked and she walked back to her front door. She thought about asking her other neighbor for help, the older man who kept to himself, but then she decided not to. That would really make her feel pathetic and weak.

She needed to do this on her own. Maybe one of the breakers had blown. The breaker box was in the laundry room beyond the kitchen, set in the wall a few feet away from the back door that led out to her small backyard. She just needed to make it that far.

Tara entered her home. She left the bags of groceries on the front porch area and the wind rustled the plastic bags which sounded eerily similar to someone creeping through the brush. She thought about downing a portion of the wine to get her courage up, but she scolded herself for the thought.

Just get this over with.

She took a few steps into her apartment. Maybe just the front porch light and the ceiling light inside the doorway had gone out. Maybe they were on the same breaker.

As she took another step deeper into the darkness of her apartment, she was even more certain that she had left the lamp on next to the couch and the light on over the stove. She always did.

The power had to be out.

She told herself that she should head right to the laundry room and check the breakers. But the laundry room was farther away, hidden away in the deep and seemingly impenetrable darkness beyond the kitchen. She shined her flashlight beam into the kitchen and created eerie, darting shadows that danced across her laundry room door. She trained her flashlight beam back on the lamp next to the couch – it was a lot closer.

Step by step, she forced her legs to move closer to the couch, a mere eight steps or so, that was all. She could see the couch in the glow of her flashlight beam. She imagined some pale creature with sharp teeth jumping up from beside the couch and hissing at her. She pushed the thought from her mind and shined her light beam on the lamp next to the couch.

She twisted the little knob of the lamp with one hand as she held the flashlight with the other. The little knob clicked and clicked as she twisted, but the light never came on.

“Shit,” she muttered. She knew she would have to check the breaker box in the laundry room now. And if it wasn’t the breaker box, then the power must be out.

If the power was out, she wasn’t sure she could stay here. She could imagine herself on the couch with an army of half-burnt candles in front of her and three or four flashlights within easy reach, maybe two empty bottles of wine and warm cheeses and crackers. Maybe she could do it. Maybe she could try.

First check the breakers, and then take it from there.

Tara backed up a step away from the lamp and turned around; she pointed her flashlight at the kitchen at the other end of the living room. She was about to begin her journey into the kitchen when something stopped her. She saw the green digital numbers of the clock on her stove. She panned the flashlight beam to the TV and saw that the light on the cable box was still on. The power couldn’t be out.

But why weren’t any of her lights working?

She started to walk towards the kitchen and she bumped her leg against the corner of the coffee table. She hadn’t remembered the coffee table being so close to the couch before. But things changed in the darkness, things weren’t where you remembered them being, like they moved around slightly by themselves when you weren’t looking. When her leg brushed by the table, she heard a slight clinking sound, like fragile glass bumping against each other.

Just then her flashlight started to flicker and go out.

She smacked it in her hand and a moan escaped her throat. “No, not now, please …”

And a split second later, the front door slammed shut.

5.

Tara nearly cried out with terror.

The flashlight came back on for a moment and she shined it around the living room, trying to point the light beam everywhere at once with her trembling hand, trying to see if a killer was materializing out of the shadows and running towards her. But there was no one inside the apartment with her.

She pointed the flashlight beam down at the coffee table where she’d heard the clinking noise and she saw the biggest salad bowl she owned sitting in the middle of the table right on top of the drawing of the revolver and bullets which was still face-up. Inside the bowl were dozens of light bulbs of various sizes – every light bulb from her home.

The flashlight went out again, plunging her into darkness.

She slapped at it again, unaware of the cries of terror mewling from her own throat.

No light. No light. No light.

The light bulbs!

She thrust her hand down into the bowl of light bulbs a little too quickly, almost shattering some of them and slicing her hand open. Her fingers curled around one that had to be the right size. She rushed over to the lamp next to the couch and reached over the lamp shade to stick the light bulb down into the socket.

Almost there.

She swore she heard something in the apartment with her now, someone moving through the darkness, someone breathing heavily, someone getting closer and closer to her, ready to grab her.

She almost dropped the light bulb. Her fingers were already slick with nervous perspiration. But she got another hold on it at the last second and tried to screw the light bulb in with her trembling fingers.

If I don’t get it in this time, I’m running!

But she got it in the socket. And she twisted and twisted the light bulb. It seemed to be taking forever.

And the shuffling sound in the darkness sounded like it was closer. The breathing sounded like it was closer. She swore she could feel hot breath blowing on the back of her long hair, disturbing it slightly.

And then she was rewarded with a blinding light in her face on the next twist. She tore her hand out of the lamp, nearly knocking it over, and she turned and looked around at her apartment with wild eyes.

Nobody was in the apartment with her. No Shadow Man waiting to bury an ax into her face.

She was breathing so hard, she was afraid she was going to hyperventilate. Maybe she would pass out right here on her couch with her groceries outside her front door.

Tara moved away from the couch and stared at the bowl of light bulbs. Someone had done that. Someone had taken every bulb out of her lamps and lights and set them in a bowl for her to find, right on top of her drawing.

He’d been in here – the Shadow Man had been in her apartment.

She needed to get out of here.

She bolted for the front door, leaving the lamp on next to the couch and she left the light bulbs in the bowl on the coffee table. She also left the flashlight on the seat of the couch (it didn’t seem to work anyway). She tore the front door open and ran outside. She slammed her door shut and managed to stick the house key into the lock with her trembling hands and twist it.

She knew where she needed to go now.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

1.

Tara grabbed her two bags of groceries from the concrete walkway outside her front door and ran for her Jeep. She glanced over at Steve’s apartment as she ran, hoping he’d gotten home in the short time she’d been fumbling around with the lamp in her apartment.

But he wasn’t home.

She opened the back door of her Jeep and practically threw the two bags of wine, cheeses, and crackers into the back seat. The wine bottles clinked together hard, but they didn’t break. She slammed the back door shut and hopped into the driver’s seat. She slammed her door shut and slapped at the door lock buttons, locking all of the doors.

Now that she was safely inside her Jeep, she looked around at the apartment building and then twisted around to look out through the rear window of her Jeep at the stand of woods and brush at the other end of the parking area. She stared at the dark trees and bushes for a long moment, waiting for some kind of movement in the darkness.

But she didn’t see anyone in the darkness.

She didn’t see him anywhere.

Tara turned back around, trying to get her breathing back down to a normal rate. Her trembling began to subside a little and she wiped at a thin film of perspiration on her forehead.

The Shadow Man had been here at her apartment complex not too long ago, but she couldn’t feel him now.

Because he won’t let you feel him.

She hesitated for another moment before starting her Jeep. She felt like crying. She wanted to be with somebody so bad right now. There was a killer out there in the darkness somewhere, a killer who’d been searching for her for a long time. And now he’d found her.

And he wanted her to know that he’d found her. The light bulbs were his message.

She needed help. Maybe from the police.

Or from the FBI agent.

She dug the business card out of her purse and laid it down on the passenger seat and looked at it for a moment.

No, not yet. She’d call Lorie first.

Tara backed out of her parking space and turned the headlights on. She pulled out of her apartment complex onto the street.

2.

As Tara drove, she dialed Lorie’s number. She needed to talk to someone who knew her, someone who knew she wasn’t crazy, someone who could help her calm down.

Lorie picked up on the fourth ring. Tara had just been preparing to leave some kind of witty message so Lorie wouldn’t worry about her.

“Hey, Tara. What’s up?”

“Lorie,” Tara said as she stopped at a red light. She knew she shouldn’t be using her phone and driving, but she felt like this was an emergency. And if a cop pulled her over, maybe that would be a good thing. Maybe he could follow her back to her apartment and look over the evidence of an intruder that was sitting on her coffee table.

But then she could picture the cop’s eyes as he stared at her. A bowl of light bulbs proved nothing except maybe a crazy woman with delusional fantasies had taken the time to remove all of her own light bulbs to prove that not only was the Boogeyman after her, but he was playing practical jokes on her.

“What’s wrong?” Lorie asked after Tara hesitated too long.

“I’ve got some wine and snacks,” Tara said and her joviality sounded false to her own ears. “I’m on my way over. We’re going to hang out and don’t try to stop me.”

“Oh Tara,” Lorie said and Tara felt her heart sink at the sound of her voice. “I’m sorry. I forgot to tell you. Mike invited me up to his place for a few days.”

She forgot to tell her. This was the beginning of the end, Tara thought. The beginning of the distance that would grow between them as she and Mike grew closer together.

“Tara?”

Tara turned left onto a side street, not sure where she was going now, but definitely not heading to Lorie’s house anymore. “It’s okay,” she said a little too quickly. “That’s great. Wow. You guys are … you’re moving fast.”

“You okay, Tara?”

“I’m … I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound okay.”

“No, seriously, I’m fine. I just wanted to get out for a little bit. That’s all. Cooped up in my place too long, I guess.”

“Why don’t you ask Steve to go somewhere with you?”

Tara nodded as she drove. “He’s not home, and anyway, I think I may have brushed him off one time too many by now.”

Lorie screamed in Tara’s ear.

Tara’s heart jumped and she was about to ask if Lorie was okay, but then Lorie’s scream turned into a fit of giggling. Tara heard a man’s voice in the background saying something to her in a low and deep voice, something possibly seductive.

“Sorry,” Lorie said. “Mike was out for a while and he just got back. He snuck up behind me and scared the hell out of me.”

Tara rolled her eyes as she drove. And for a split second she despised Lorie and wished she was Lorie at the same time.

“Sorry, Tara. I gotta go.”

“Yeah, sure. You kids have fun.”

Another hesitation on the phone.

And then: “You sure you’re all right, Tara? You don’t sound all right.”

“I’m fine. Never been better.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Lorie told her. “I promise. And we’ll hang out soon.”

“Okay. Bye.”

Tara hung up the phone and drove, still not really sure where she was driving to, just sure that she didn’t want to be at her apartment right now after what had just happened.

She needed to get help. Maybe she should drive to the police station and report this.

Report what? What was she supposed to tell them?

Hey officer, you know that killer who’s been butchering people the last few days; well I think he may have been in my apartment a little while ago. How do I know? Because he collected all of my light bulbs from my apartment and put them in a big bowl on my coffee table where I would find them, right on top of a drawing that I’d done in my sleep, a clue to the next murder victim.

No, it didn’t sound so great when she thought about it.

But she still needed some kind of help.

She stopped at a red light and plucked the business card up from her passenger seat.

It was time to call Agent Woods.

3.

Detective Perry arrived at Miss Helen’s only ten minutes after the first officers were on the scene. He’d been driving and he wasn’t too far from the crime scene when he’d gotten the call. He turned his unmarked sedan around and stomped his foot down on the pedal. Jackson, in the passenger seat, held on for dear life as they sped down Highway 301.

There were two police cruisers parked in Miss Helen’s front yard. One of the cops stood by his car as Perry and Jackson walked up to him.

“One dead inside,” the cop told them. “Shot in the head.”

“Robbery?” Perry asked.

“Doesn’t seem like anything was taken.” The cop hesitated for a moment like he wasn’t sure if he should elaborate. “Suicide, maybe?” He shrugged his shoulders.

Perry and Jackson entered the house. They glanced at the other two cops who were inside and they didn’t need to tell them to get out – they hurried outside on their own, leaving Perry and Jackson alone in the front room of the house with Miss Helen slumped over on her purple table cloth.

Perry studied the woman and the table. There was a set of Tarot cards laid out and a revolver at the other end of the table out of her reach. She was face-down on the table, her arms hanging down limply at her sides. The back of her head was a gory mess, her hair matted with blood and brain. The wall behind her was a spray of blood with a few chips of the woman’s skull embedded in the drywall.

“She didn’t kill herself,” Perry muttered as he stared down at the gun at the other end of the table.

If she had shot herself, Perry thought, the gun would most likely still be clenched in her hand on the table with her finger on the trigger, the finger possibly snapped when the gun and her lifeless hand flopped back down to the table. Or the gun would be on the floor near her, dropped from her hand as soon as the bullet rocked her head and body back into her chair.

But the gun wasn’t in her hand or on the floor or on the table beside her. It was at the other end of the table, right near the edge, almost balancing there on the edge.

“Forensics will test her fingers for gun residue,” Jackson said.

“They won’t find anything,” Perry muttered. “Someone killed her. Someone came to her house, entered through that front door, sat down and shot her in the head while she sat there.”

Perry moved quickly through the house and Jackson followed him.

“Nothing looks like it was taken,” Jackson said. “Nothing even looks disturbed.”

Perry walked from the woman’s bedroom back down the hall to the kitchen. His eyes roamed over the counter, and then he opened one drawer after another.

Jackson watched as Perry looked at him.

“All the kitchen knives are gone,” Perry said. “It’s the same guy.”

Perry closed the drawer and looked around the kitchen, and then he walked back through the wall of beads to the front parlor and stood near the table, looking around.

“The knives are gone, but he must’ve taken something else,” Perry said.

Jackson glanced around at the parlor they were in, trying to see everything in a new light. Nothing seemed disturbed in the house. He looked at Miss Helen’s body a little more closely. Maybe the killer had taken something off of her body, from somewhere underneath her clothes. But he didn’t think so. Her body didn’t look disturbed. Forensics would study the body, and then it would be studied even further at the morgue. If something was taken from her, they would find out what it was.

Perry stood in the middle of the front room, still looking around. “I think he came here to take something from her house. Something specific that he wanted or needed.”

“What?” Jackson asked.

Perry shook his head, and his eyes still had that faraway look in them as he studied the floor, the walls, and the archway to the kitchen. “I don’t know what it was, but I know he took something else.”

4.

Tara listened to the ringing on her cell phone as a horn honked behind her. She looked up at the traffic light – it was green.

She gunned the gas and the Jeep’s engine roared as it took forever to build up speed. She drove as she listened to the ringing, thinking that she would get Agent Woods’ voice mail soon.

But then he answered.

“Agent Woods here.”

“Hello?” Tara said. “Agent Woods?”

He just said that.

“It’s me,” she continued quickly. “Tara Simmons. You came by to -”

“I remember you, Miss Simmons.”

“Do you still want to talk with me about some things?”

“Yes, Miss Simmons. Very much so.”

“Are you busy?”

“No.”

“Meet me at a place called Sal’s Bar and Grill. I’ll tell you how to get there.”

5.

Tara sat at a corner table in the upscale bar and restaurant. It was a slow night; there were only a few people at the bar and three couples at the tables. None of the customers sat near her table – she had asked specifically for a table out of the way; she even promised a big tip for the inconvenience.

She was on her second glass of wine when she saw Agent Woods walking past the empty tables towards her.

He sat down opposite from her.

“Thanks for meeting with me,” Tara told him.

“Thank you for calling me.”

A waitress approached their table and she gave Agent Woods a lingering eye and a seductive smile. “Can I get you something to drink?”

Tara watched the waitress, and she suddenly felt a little ignored. David Woods was a handsome man, there was no doubt about that, but there was more than that to him, there was a kind of power and confidence that oozed from his pores. She had to admit that she felt much safer just being near him right now.

“I’ll have some water,” Agent Woods told her and gave her a small, seductive smile of his own. “Bottled water, please, if you have it.”

The waitress was about to turn away to fetch Agent Woods’ order, and Tara had to hold her wine glass up to get the woman’s attention. “Excuse me, ma’am. Keep these coming please.”

The waitress gave Tara a curt nod and then turned on her heels and sashayed away.

Agent Woods watched the show the waitress put on for a moment, but then he turned his gaze back to Tara – he was all business again. “What happened?”

“What do you mean, what happened?” Tara asked, taken by surprise for a moment. How did he know that something had happened?

“I don’t think you’d be calling me if something hadn’t happened,” he explained. “You were pretty adamant before about not wanting me in your home.”

Tara felt a sudden blush of embarrassment on her face. She finished off her glass of wine. “Yeah, sorry about that.”

Agent Woods gave her a tight smile as he waited for her explanation.

“My apartment,” Tara finally said. “Someone was in there.”

Agent Woods sat up a little straighter and he folded his large hands together in front of him on the tabletop. He stared at her with his dark eyes. “Someone? What, like a burglar?”

“No. I don’t think anything was taken. I don’t know, really. I didn’t stick around long enough to check.”

The waitress returned with a cold bottle of water for Agent Woods and another glass of red wine for Tara. She stared at Agent Woods a little too long, smiled a little too wide.

But it didn’t look like Agent Woods had any interest in the woman anymore – he was focused on Tara now.

“Anything else I can get you?” the waitress asked.

“No, thanks,” Agent Woods said without looking at her.

“He was in my apartment,” Tara said after the waitress left them alone. “I mean, somebody was in my house, but I know it was him.”

“Him?”

Tara sighed. “You know who I’m talking about.”

“I just want to be very clear here, that’s all.”

“The killer. The one who’s been killing people lately here in Tampa.”

Agent Woods nodded like he was satisfied. He cracked open the plastic cap on his water bottle and took a long sip, his dark eyes still on her the whole time.

“Did you see him?” he asked.

“No, I didn’t see him. But I could feel his presence in there.”

Agent Woods just stared at her.

“I know it sounds crazy, but I can feel him sometimes, but only when he wants me to. It’s like he left a trace of himself behind in my apartment, like a scent, but also like a feeling in my mind. It feels like a dark and suffocating presence. It’s hard to explain.” She shook her head. “I know this probably sounds crazy.”

But it didn’t seem like Agent Woods doubted her in any way.

Tara sighed. “He left something for me in my apartment.”

That got Agent Woods’ attention. “What?”

She finished off her glass of wine and stared at him. “It would be better if I showed you.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

1.

Tara leaned against the counter in her kitchen as she watched Agent Woods screw in the light bulb over her stove. He had replaced all of the other light bulbs for her already. She drank another glass of wine, this one from one of the two bottles that she bought at Publix earlier. She was feeling a little tipsy from all of the wine, but she was also feeling a lot better now.

She watched Agent Woods work. He’d taken off his dark suit coat, loosened his tie, and rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt like a man getting ready to do some physical work. She watched the muscles of his forearms flex as he screwed in the light bulbs. She had a chance to really study him, and for once (maybe it was the wine) she didn’t scold herself about it.

He had offered to replace the light bulbs – she hadn’t asked him to do it.

“Shouldn’t these be left where they are as evidence?” she had asked him.

But Agent Woods didn’t feel like these light bulbs were much evidence. He had saved one of them in a baggie so he could send it to a lab later and check for fingerprints. Before replacing her light bulbs, he had checked all of the doors and windows for signs of forced entry, but he didn’t find any evidence.

Tara looked at the single light bulb in the plastic sandwich baggie on her countertop – it was a light bulb from the closet in her office, one she didn’t need to use much. And she always had extra stocks of light bulbs along with the batteries and flashlights. She set her glass of wine down on the granite countertop and picked up the baggie. She stared at the light bulb inside.

“I don’t think you’ll find any prints on this light bulb.”

Agent Woods was finished screwing in the light bulb over the stove. He even wiped his hands together like he was brushing off invisible dust after a job well done. He watched her.

“I think he wears gloves,” Tara explained. “Dark, slick gloves, like latex. Black ones.”

“It won’t hurt to try,” Agent Woods said. “And I have to check for prints, it’s kind of like part of my job.”

Tara almost laughed out loud, but she stopped herself.

Agent Woods stared at her with his unwavering dark eyes. “There’s been another murder,” he said.

“I know. I saw it in a dream. Some of it, anyway.” She felt a little strange talking so openly about her psychic abilities to someone she barely knew.

“She was a fortune teller,” Agent Woods continued. “She called herself Miss Helen. I was on my way to check out the crime scene when you called.”

“Oh,” Tara said. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry. Do you need to go?”

Agent Woods gave her a tight smile and shook his head no. “I’ll read over the detectives’ reports. Then I’ll go and check out the scene by myself tomorrow. I like to be at a crime scene by myself. Helps me concentrate better.”

Tara just nodded. She didn’t know what to say.

“Besides,” Agent Woods continued. “I think I might find out more information here from you.” He stared at her for another moment. “What did you see in your dream?”

Tara took another sip of wine as she let her mind wander back to the dream she’d had earlier. She nearly closed her eyes as she tried to remember the fuzzy details.

“Miss Helen knew the killer was coming. She was ready for him. At least she thought she was. But he was one step ahead of her. I just remember gloved hands, slick black gloves, and they were closed in a fist. And then the hands opened and six bullets dropped down onto a purple, velvety table cloth.”

Tara opened her eyes and stared at Agent Woods. “That’s all I really remember. I see things through his eyes, so I never really see him. I saw Miss Helen’s face. I saw her eyes. She was so frightened, but there was also this … this resignation, like she knew that she was going to die and there was nothing she could do about it. When I woke up, there was this …” Tara took a deep breath and thought for a moment, “…this kind of depression and sadness weighing me down.”

Agent Woods nodded. He leaned against the counter on the opposite side of the kitchen.

Tara took another sip of wine, feeling braver by the moment. She stared at Agent Woods, locking eyes with him. “Can I ask you something?”

He nodded. “Of course.”

“What do you know about this killer so far?”

Agent Woods sighed. He hesitated like he wasn’t sure how much detail he should share with her.

“I mean, if you’re not allowed to talk about that kind of stuff, I understand,” Tara added quickly.

He shook his head and looked away like he was wrestling with something in his mind. Then he looked back at her. “It’s not that.”

“Come on into the living room,” Tara said. She felt more at ease with the agent now, which was unusual for her; she was usually nervous around strangers, especially men, especially attractive men.

Agent Woods followed Tara to her couch and recliner.

“You sure you don’t want a glass of wine?” she asked him.

“No, thanks,” he said as he sat down on the recliner, on the edge of it, like he was tense.

Tara sipped her wine, waiting to see if Agent Woods was going to tell her anything.

“I’ve been tracking this killer for the last two years now,” he finally said. “Tracking him across several states. On the surface the murders seem random, unconnected. The victims are often killed in different ways. Sometimes they’re killed quickly. Other times they’re tortured. Some have been stabbed, some shot, some beaten.”

Tara nodded and sipped her wine.

“But I’ve noticed two things about each murder.”

“What?” Tara asked.

“Recently, at each murder scene, the killer started taking things from his victims. He took one person’s eye. From a few others he removed their ears. Teeth from another one. A finger from another. But it’s not always body parts; sometimes he takes a possession of theirs, something they own. Items that don’t seem to make much sense.”

“He took blood from Jen,”

“Yes,” Agent Woods agreed. “And skin from the next man.”

Like he’s collecting things, she thought.

“What’s the other thing you’ve noticed about the murders?” Tara asked. She was hunched forward now at the edge of her couch, almost mimicking Agent Woods’ pose, and she clenched the stem of the wine glass tightly in her fingers without being aware of it. She watched the agent, waiting for him to continue.

“This might sound a little crazy,” he said.

“Try me,” Tara said and snorted out a sarcastic laugh – she’d experienced crazy lately; she was an expert at that.

Agent Woods took a deep breath and then spit it out. “Many of the victims, as far as I can tell anyway, may have possessed some degree of sensitivity to psychic phenomenon.”

Tara stared at Agent Woods.

He got up and paced around the room. He seemed more energetic now as he continued, more passionate.

“I’m not even sure if some of the victims realized they had any psychic powers at all. But the killer knew. I think that’s how he locks on to them. I think that’s how he always stays one step ahead of them.”

Agent Woods stopped pacing and he stared at Tara. “And now I think he’s locked on to you.”

Tara averted the agent’s dark eyes. Yeah, she already knew the killer had locked on to her.

“Or maybe you’ve locked on to him somehow,” he said, a little more excited now. “Maybe he can feel your … your psychic power … or your ability, or whatever you would call it, and he doesn’t like it.”

It may work both ways, Tara thought, but she knew that the killer had locked on to her, not the other way around. She still couldn’t help believing that this killer was the same man, the same monster, who had slaughtered her parents. The Shadow Man. These night terrors she’d experienced lately, these oppressive feelings of dread, they were the same exact feelings she’d felt right before her parents were killed. He had gotten away after killing her parents, and then he had possibly been searching for her all these years as she moved around, trying to pick up her signal again – and now he’d found her.

And now it was time she told Agent Woods about it. “When I was sixteen years old, my parents were murdered.”

Agent Woods nodded, but he didn’t seem surprised.

“You knew that already,” Tara said after seeing his expression. Of course he would know that already. It was public record, and apparently he’d already done enough of a background check on her to know that she had tried to help the Tampa Police Department with her psychic abilities, so he probably knew everything available about her history.

But the agent’s eyes were softer now, and she could see the compassion in them for her.

“I think this guy is the same person who killed my parents,” Tara went on quickly. “I don’t have any proof; it’s just something I feel.”

Agent Woods nodded like he had the same feeling.

Then a thought occurred to Tara. “If there’s a connection between psychics and this killer, then why don’t you just have a psychic try to lock on to this killer?” As soon as she said the words, she realized why the agent was here in her apartment, why he had come to her for help.

“We’ve tried,” he said as he paced back across the wood floor, his shoes somehow barely making a sound. “But he’s always blocked them out. The ones who tried said it was like nothing they’d ever felt before, a sense of evil and darkness like they’d never imagined. None of them offered to try again.”

Agent Woods sat back down on the recliner and watched Tara.

“And that’s why you came to me for help,” she said and took another sip of her wine.

“I came across reports of you helping the Tampa police. You tried to work with a Detective Perry and a Detective Jackson.”

Yeah, Tara thought, and they thought I was a nut.

Agent Woods leaned forward and stared at Tara, his eyes seemed to pierce her. “We need to stop this guy before he kills again. Before he gets to you.”

He was right. At some point she had to try and fight back. She couldn’t keep running. She drank down the rest of her wine in a few swallows and set the glass down on her coffee table (a little harder than she had intended) and she stared at Agent Woods.

“I’m ready to try,” she told him.

2.

Tara got comfortable on the couch, nestled into it, her head resting on a pillow against the arm. Her legs were stretched out, her muscles relaxed, her eyes closed, her breathing deep and even.

Agent Woods sat in the recliner and watched Tara. He had taken out a small tape recorder and he had his small notebook open on the coffee table next to the recorder with a pen on top of the paper.

“Okay, Tara,” he said in a soft voice. “You’re perfectly safe here. I just want you to remember that. Always keep that in the back of your mind. No matter what happens, the killer can’t get to you right now. I won’t let that happen.”

Tara nodded, and inside she felt a warm feeling of security. She believed the agent’s words, she felt safe and protected. She finally felt like she could reach her mind out into the darkness and search safely. She had always been afraid of reaching out, letting her powers go. She’d always been afraid of what she would see and feel. But the terrible images came to her in her dreams whether she wanted them to or not, so she might as well try to reach out.

“Just let your mind open up,” Agent Woods continued in a soft, soothing voice. “Just say anything, any impression that comes to you, even if it doesn’t seem to make any sense.”

Tara nodded, and she imagined a blob of energy, almost like a giant bubble of water floating in the darkness, glowing with different colors, constantly changing. The ball of energy drifted out from her body, breaking away from her, stretching out into the darkness, breaking free from her, seeking the darkness, searching for the killer, searching for his signal. She watched as the blob of energy faded away into the darkness, travelling farther and farther away, becoming smaller and smaller until it was gone.

And then she saw herself standing alone in the freezing darkness. It was a suffocating darkness, closing in around her, squeezing the breath out of her. She knew she had found his realm – The Shadow Man.

“I think I feel him,” Tara whispered. “He’s trying to block me. He’s strong and he’s blocking me out, but I can still feel him.”

Agent Woods leaned forward. “That’s good,” he said in a low voice. “Go ahead and reach out. Don’t be afraid. I’m right here and I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Tara nodded.

“He’s so close,” she said. “Very close to me. He can see me. Feel me. He feels like he has total control over me.”

In her mind, Tara walked forward into the darkness, venturing deeper and deeper into the freezing blackness. And then she saw a slash of bright light ahead of her. The light was knifing through the darkness, almost like the light was cutting a slit through it.

“Can you see him?” Agent Woods asked, and his voice sounded so far away now. “Can you describe him at all?”

“He’s slick,” Tara answered. “He thinks he’s so slick. Slippery. Pitch black. Like a living shadow.”

Agent Woods jotted down the words in his notebook as quickly as Tara said them.

“You’re doing great, Tara. Don’t be afraid. Remember, you’re in a safe place right now.”

The white light was brighter in the darkness, and the tear in the blackness was getting bigger. And now Tara could see movement inside that light. She could see the killer’s hands; they were sheathed in a shiny black material. And they were reaching out from the light towards her. She wanted to run. She could feel the panic building up inside of her as she let her mind probe further into that white light, further into the diseased mind of the killer.

“He’s on a journey,” Tara said as she twitched on the couch. “On a … a path. He’s looking for things. Collecting things. For some kind of … of ritual or something. Everything has to be a certain way. Everything has to be perfect. But there’s something important that he still needs – the key to it all.”

Agent Woods was perched on the edge of his seat, watching Tara. “That’s it. Let it out. Let it flow out.”

“He’s powerful,” Tara moaned.

In her mind she was still in the cold darkness, in front of the blinding white light that was being ripped open in the wall of black in front of her. And the white light had a buzzing noise to it, like static. And now the latex-sheathed hands were closer to her.

She tried to run, but the gloved hands grabbed on to her, the fingers sinking into the flesh of her bare arms. His grip was so strong … she couldn’t get away.

“He’s getting stronger!” Tara yelled from the couch as she thrashed back and forth. “One by one, he takes their power and their energy. He’s becoming stronger with every one that he takes. He’s evolving! Becoming … becoming a …”

Tara sat straight up on the couch, screaming out the next words. “…becoming a god!!”

3.

Tara sat on the edge of the couch, her eyes wide open, breathing hard. She was about to jump to her feet and run, but then she realized where she was – in her own living room. She saw Agent Woods in the recliner. He looked worried.

“You’re okay,” he said, and she could see the concern in his dark eyes. “You’re perfectly safe.”

Tara nodded. She was safe. But for a moment she hadn’t felt safe at all. She had felt exposed and naked in front of the killer.

“What did you see?” he asked her.

“He’s so strong.” Tara shook her head and hugged her arms like she was cold. And she was cold. It felt like she’d really been trapped in that cold darkness for a few moments. She swore she could still feel his slick hands on her skin, gripping her.

“He’s much more powerful than I ever imagined,” Tara added softly and then she was quiet for a moment.

Agent Woods didn’t say anything. He gave her a chance to calm down.

“He thinks he’s smarter than everyone else,” Tara finally said. “Superior to everyone else. He thinks he can do whatever he wants right under everyone’s noses.”

Agent Woods stood up and gave her a half-smile. “You did great. That’s enough for tonight. We can try again later.”

He clicked off his tape recorder and dropped it down inside his pants pocket. He got up and went to the kitchen for the rest of the wine. He brought back the bottle and another wine glass. He poured Tara half a glass and himself half a glass.

Tara drank down her glass of wine quickly and then nestled back into the couch. She closed her eyes, letting the exhaustion and the buzz from the wine overtake her. It was a welcome feeling, and she let it come.

“Go ahead and lie down,” Agent Woods told her as he picked up his glass of wine and sat back down in the recliner. He sipped the wine.

Tara got more comfortable, but she opened her eyes and watched him.

“Agent Woods?”

“Please … call me David.”

“David. Is there a Mrs. Woods?” Normally Tara wouldn’t ask such a bold question, but the wine had crashed through her inhibitions.

“No,” he answered. “Married to the job as they say.”

Tara couldn’t help smiling a little.

“What about you?” he asked Tara. “How come you don’t have a boyfriend or a husband here protecting you?”

“My boyfriend left a year ago,” Tara answered and she could hear a slight slur in her words – either from the alcohol or exhaustion, or maybe both.

“I find it difficult to imagine anyone leaving you.”

Tara felt a slight tingle in her insides. Was he flirting with her? She couldn’t be sure. “I broke his nose,” she said.

An awkward silence.

Great, Tara. Just when things are getting somewhere, you know just what to say to ruin it.

“Maybe I was wrong,” he said with a slight chuckle like he meant it as a joke.

At least she hoped he meant it as a joke.

“It was my sleepwalking,” Tara said in a groggy voice. “I’ve been sleepwalking my whole life. He got tired of finding me in the bathtub in the middle of the night. Or under the bed. Or outside.”

Tara couldn’t believe she was telling Agent Woods about her night terrors. It was normally a taboo subject with her, definitely not something she discussed with a stranger.

“It became embarrassing for him,” Tara continued. “He drew the line when I began attacking him in my sleep. I broke his nose one night. He left the next day.”

“What a loser,” Agent Woods said.

Tara smiled and nearly laughed.

“What about you?” she said. “You seem kind of young to be an FBI agent.”

“I completed high school a year early. And then I did two years in a junior college. But from the time I was a boy, I knew what I wanted to be – an FBI agent. I never had a doubt. I applied after college and I was the dedicated person they were looking for. They look for singularly focused candidates – and that was me.”

“What about a partner?” Tara asked. She felt like she was close to drifting off to sleep now. She didn’t even have the TV on and the apartment was dark now except for the light over the stove. “Don’t FBI agents usually work in teams?”

Agent Woods chuckled. “You’ve been watching too much TV and movies.” But then he became serious. “I’ve had partners before, still work with them sometimes. But we often work alone now. It’s a new reality with the economy and cutbacks.”

Tara nodded. She was almost out now, but she woke with a slight start and opened her eyes.

Agent Woods was still sitting in the recliner.

“Could you stay for a while?” she asked and then felt a little silly asking him. There were probably a million things he needed to do. “I mean, if you want to.”

He nodded and told her that he would stay for a while.

Tara fell into a deep sleep.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

1.

Tara awoke with a start. She sat up quickly and her head swam with pain. She closed her eyes and touched her forehead gingerly. She winced as a wave of nausea washed over her.

She opened her eyes and looked down at her body. She was on her couch. She was fully dressed. And there was a blanket over her legs – a blanket from the top of her bedroom closet.

Tara got to her feet in a panic, suddenly remembering that she’d fallen asleep with Agent Woods in her apartment; he had been sitting in the recliner, watching her.

But he wasn’t in the chair now.

She stumbled to the front window and thought off-handedly that at some point she must’ve kicked off her sneakers because she only had her socks on.

Or had Agent Woods taken her sneakers off for her?

David. He had asked her to call him David.

She pried the plastic blinds apart and peeked out the window as the sunlight stabbed at her eyeballs. After a few seconds of adjustment she could see that Agent Woods’ plain sedan was gone. Her hulking brown Jeep sat by itself in the parking lot, two empty spaces on each side of the vehicle like the other cars didn’t want to be near it.

She let the blinds pop back into place. She looked back at the couch and the blanket she had tossed down to the floor – the blanket from her closet.

Oh God! He was in my bedroom. Was he snooping around?

He was an FBI agent. It was in his nature to snoop around.

She went into her bedroom and looked at her bed, which was still neatly made – she hardly slept in it these days. The nightlight was still plugged in near the bed, but she wanted to make sure that the rope tied to the bed leg wasn’t visible – the rope she used to tie around her ankle to keep herself from sleepwalking. She could see part of the rope tied to the leg, but the rest was tucked under the bed.

But she didn’t think an FBI agent would miss that little detail.

A blush of embarrassment washed over her. What did he think about a piece of rope tied to her bed leg? What did he think she was in to?

Well, she couldn’t do anything about it now.

Right now, she was very thirsty. And hungry. And she needed a shower.

She went back to the living room and was about to walk past her coffee table, but she stopped and stared down at it. The drawing of the revolver and six bullets wasn’t there anymore – she had tucked that away into an office drawer last night as Agent Woods began reinstalling her light bulbs. The wine bottle and two wine glasses weren’t there anymore, either.

She glanced at the kitchen and saw them by the sink – he had taken them back to the kitchen for her and rinsed them out.

But the coffee table wasn’t empty - there was something on the table. A piece of copy paper folded in half with a familiar object on top of it – an object that made her think of Lorie, a small canister of pepper spray.

She picked up the paper and opened it. It was a note from Agent Woods.

It read: Good morning, Tara. Hope you slept well. Had some things to do, but I will get back in touch with you soon. Please stay inside and lock your doors. Left some pepper spray with you. Call me if anything happens. David.

She set the paper back down on the coffee table and wondered for a moment where he’d gotten it from. Her office was the only place she kept this kind of paper for the printer.

So, he’d been in her office, too. Had he checked out her entire apartment while she slept?

2.

During her shower, Tara thought back to last night, wondering why she had spilled her guts to this man (David) about her night terrors and her last boyfriend.

And now Agent Woods was gone.

He’d run away from her in the middle of the night as fast as he could; that’s what had happened.

Tara put on a pair of faded jeans, a blue shirt, and her sneakers. She felt less vulnerable having her sneakers on, like she was prepared – prepared to fight, or prepared to run.

She washed two aspirins down with a bottle of water and then made a grilled cheese sandwich and a small side salad of romaine lettuce, tomatoes, black olives, onions, and cucumbers topped with oil and vinegar. She was starving and she ate all of it.

She wanted to go to the gym and work out on the punching bags, but her headache wasn’t going to allow her to do that today. Besides, Agent Woods had told her to stay inside.

After she cleaned up the dishes in the kitchen and straightened up the living room, she called Lorie.

Lorie answered after three rings. Lorie talked about how things were going with her and Mike up at his house in the woods. Everything sounded like it was going perfect for her.

“So, how are you doing?” Lorie finally asked.

Tara told Lorie about finding the bowl of light bulbs in her house.

“Somebody was in here,” she told Lorie. “There wasn’t any sign of forced entry, Agent Woods checked for that, but somebody was in my apartment.”

“Oh my God! You shouldn’t even be there right now.”

“Agent Woods gave me some pepper spray and told me to call him if anything happens.”

“I don’t like this,” Lorie said. “I’m going to call my uncle.”

“No,” Tara snapped. She remembered what that was like and she wasn’t going through that again. “Agent Woods is working on this. He can do this.”

3.

Lorie paced back and forth across Mike’s kitchen with her cell phone up to her ear.

Mike sat at the kitchen table with his IPad tablet in front of him; but he kept sneaking peaks at Lorie, watching her pace back and forth and yell into the phone.

She caught Mike’s look and smiled at him to let him know everything was okay, but then she opened the sliding glass door that led out to a wood deck that wrapped around the second story of the house. She slipped outside and closed the door. She walked over to the railing and spoke in a softer voice as she stared out at the seemingly endless woods.

“Why don’t you get out of there, Tara? Come up here for a while. You can stay with us for the week. Mike won’t mind.”

“Yeah, right.”

“He’ll be okay with it after I explain everything to him.”

“I really don’t want everyone knowing my business.”

“Mike won’t mind, I swear.” Lorie glanced at the sliding glass door to see if Mike was watching her through the glass.

He wasn’t.

“Yeah, right,” Tara said. “I’m sure Mike wants your crazy friend coming up there and hanging around.”

“Yes. He wants what I want. Just come up here and let this FBI guy of yours handle this. It’s his job.”

Tara didn’t answer.

“At least think about it,” Lorie begged.

“I will.” A pause from Tara. “Listen, Lorie. I want you to do something for me. I want you to stay up there for a little while. Could you do that?”

“Yeah. We’re going to be up here for at least the next three or four days. I took some vacation days.”

“Okay. Good.”

“I love you, Tara. You know that. I’m just worried about you.”

“I love you, too. I’ll be okay. I promise.”

4.

A few hours later, Tara sat on the couch in front of the TV. There was some kind of reality show on, but she wasn’t really watching it. Her mind was wandering. She had the small canister of pepper spray in her hand, twirling it around by the little chain attached to it.

She had called Agent Woods’ phone several times, but he didn’t answer. She left one message, letting him know that everything was okay and that she was all right. But the message sounded lame and she didn’t leave any more messages after that.

She couldn’t sit inside her apartment anymore.

She got up and paced back and forth across her living room. She needed to get out of her house. She needed to do something.

“Hell with it,” Tara mumbled and walked straight for the front door.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

1.

Tara stood in front of Steve’s front door and fought the urge to run back to her apartment. She rang the doorbell and then knocked on the door. Steve’s dark blue pickup truck was parked in front of his apartment so she assumed he was home.

She felt a little nervous. She wanted to apologize to Steve for the stand-offish way she had been treating him lately, but maybe the real reason she was here was because she didn’t want to be alone.

Her breath caught in her throat as Steve opened the door.

He looked very surprised to see her standing there.

“Tara. What are you … I mean, hi.”

“I hope I’m not bothering you.”

“What? No. Not at all. I wasn’t even doing anything.”

Tara smiled; she felt a little better now that they were talking, a little more at ease. “I think I’ve been kind of rude to you lately …”

“No, not at all.”

“… I’d like to try and make it up to you.”

“How about over a cup of coffee?”

Tara couldn’t say anything for a moment – she was too shocked.

“We could go somewhere if you want to,” Steve added quickly. “I’m still kind of new in town, but maybe you know a place we could go.”

Tara’s heart hammered in her chest. She had only come over here to apologize; she hadn’t expected to be asked out on a date. Wait. Was that what this was, a date?

No, not a date. She couldn’t put that kind of pressure on this situation. This was just two people, two friends, getting a cup of coffee together.

Why not? she thought. Why not get out for a little while? Get out of the house. What could it hurt?

Tara couldn’t help smiling. “There’s a little coffee house down the street. About three blocks from here.”

“Great. You want me to drive? Or do you want to?”

She saw his eyes dart to the embarrassment that was her brown Jeep Cherokee.

“I was thinking that we could walk,” she said. “If you don’t mind.”

2.

Tara sat at one of the small tables at the café. The tables were in an outdoor courtyard that looked out onto the sidewalk and side street. Most of the other tables were occupied by couples or business people grabbing a quick lunch.

Steve brought two cups of coffee to the table and sat down.

“They have the best coffee here,” she told him.

Steve sipped his coffee and nodded, beaming at her. “Yeah. That’s really good.”

Tara felt much more relaxed around Steve now. The walk here had been pleasant. The conversation seemed to flow, and nothing felt forced. He’d asked more about the neighborhood and Tara told him what little she knew about it since she mostly kept to herself. And he really seemed to be listening to her. It was an easy conversation, effortless for her.

“So, tell me a little about yourself,” Tara said, feeling a little bolder now. What was coming over her lately? She was becoming a vixen, a flirt.

“Not much to tell,” Steve said as he shrugged. Yet he smiled. “I lead a very boring life.”

“Yeah, right. What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a writer at heart,” he told her. “But I haven’t made it yet to surviving on it. So I’m in sales.”

“Sales?”

“Oh, please. You make it sound much more glamorous than it really is.”

Tara laughed. She was about to ask him what kind of sales he was in, but he asked her a question first.

“What about you? The building manager …” Steve paused like he was trying to recall his name.

“Mel,” Tara told him. Good old Mel, Tara’s only other friend, the one who had brought Steve over to introduce him to her.

“Yeah, Mel. He said you’re an artist.”

“Yeah, I do all kinds of work. Book covers. Illustrations for books and magazines. Designs. Logos. That kind of stuff. I just finished a series of illustrations for a children’s book.”

Steve looked impressed. “Children’s books. Wow. See, that’s interesting. Me? Just sales.”

Tara smiled and took a sip of her coffee.

“How long have you been a professional artist?” Steve asked.

“Only a few years. Since I got out of art school. The illustrations I just finished are for a guy named Ben who works for a big publishing company. Before we graduated, the art school helped us get our artwork out there to potential employers. Ben saw my work and he asked for my contact info and portfolio. And I’ve been working for him on and off ever since.”

“That’s great. Hey, do you think Ben needs any writers?”

Steve laughed and shook his head in shame. “I’m just kidding. That was tacky. That was -”

“No,” Tara interrupted. “I could call Ben. He seems to know just about everybody in the publishing world.”

“I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“No, it wouldn’t be any trouble.”

3.

After a second cup of coffee, Tara and Steve walked back to their apartment complex. It was a slow walk, a stroll really. The weather was nice; warm, but not too hot, and there was a nice breeze whispering through the trees.

“Lorie’s been my best friend for years,” Tara said as they walked. “She’s always trying to hook me up with some guy.”

“I thought you already had a boyfriend.”

Tara was shocked. She stopped walking for a moment and looked at Steve. “No. What? Why would you think that?”

“I saw a guy in a suit and tie. A car in front of your apartment. He was there all night.” Steve shook his head no, suddenly embarrassed. “I’m sorry. That sounded really bad. Creepy. I’m not a stalker, I swear. I just noticed the car and the guy. That’s all.”

Tara thought of Agent Woods and smiled. “It’s okay. He’s not … it’s not like that. It’s a long story.”

Steve gave her a big grin. He seemed relieved now that he knew she didn’t have a boyfriend. “God, I just met you and look at me, I’m grilling you.”

“It’s okay, really.”

They continued walking slowly, the entrance to their apartment complex in view down the street.

“This has been fun,” Tara said after a moment. “It felt good to get out of the house. Get my mind off things.” And she really meant it.

“Well, I’m glad I could help.”

But then Tara felt a tingling in her mind, a sudden feeling like someone was watching her. She turned and saw a man in the trees in the side yard of a house beyond the sidewalk. He was a big man, and he was dressed in layers of dark clothing. With his black hair and beard, he almost seemed to be camouflaged among the brush.

She saw the large homemade cross hanging from his neck.

It was the same homeless man who had jumped out of the alley and grabbed her when she and Lorie had gone to lunch a few days ago. He was the same man who had given her the warning.

He’s coming for you, the homeless man had told her. You have no idea what you’re dealing with. He’s not a man. He’s not human. He’s the devil.

The homeless man stared right at her with his dark eyes set deep in his hairy face. He made a slow throat-slashing gesture, dragging a filthy finger across his neck underneath his beard.

Tara turned back around and her body stiffened as her mind buzzed with fear.

“You okay?” Steve asked, suddenly concerned.

“I … uh …” But Tara couldn’t answer for a moment as she struggled for breath. She could feel a panic attack trying to come on.

No … not right now. Not in front of Steve.

Tara forced herself to look back at the side yard of the house.

But the homeless man was gone.

She shuddered as she fought to control her breath, forcing herself to take slow and even breaths, letting them out slowly. She continued walking for a few more steps and then gave Steve a fake smile and nodded. “I’m okay.”

4.

Tara and Steve stood by his front door.

“That was fun,” Steve said. “I hope we can do it again.”

Tara nodded, but she was distant now, her mind still on the homeless man she’d just seen. Why was he hiding in the brush so close to her home? Was he following her? Watching her? Was he the one who had been in her apartment? Was he the one who had taken all of her light bulbs out and put them in a bowl on her coffee table?

She couldn’t sense anything right now – it was like her psychic senses were blocked.

He’s blocking them!

“Sure,” Tara finally answered Steve. “Real soon.”

“Tomorrow?” Steve asked with hope.

“Yeah, maybe. We’ll see.”

She thought about the homeless man in the brush beside the house again. She saw him in her mind, those small dark eyes, the bushy black beard and long hair. The homemade crucifix dangling from his neck overtop of his layers of clothing. And she saw him dragging his finger across his throat slowly. Was it another warning for her? Or towards her?

Tara glanced back at the line of brush and trees that hid their apartment complex from the street. Was the homeless man in the brush right now? Watching them? Waiting.

She looked back at Steve. She felt like she needed to tell him about the man she’d seen in the trees by the house, and tell him that someone had broken into her apartment. She felt like she needed to warn him somehow, but she wanted to do it without sounding like a crazy person.

“You should keep your doors and windows locked,” she finally said. “I don’t know if you heard about the murders recently.”

“Oh yeah,” Steve said, turning serious and solemn suddenly. “I saw that on the news.” And then he added, “I always keep my doors locked. And you should, too.”

I had my doors locked, she wanted to say, but the killer got into my apartment anyway. But she didn’t say anything.

Tara jumped and had to stifle a scream as her cell phone rang and vibrated at the same time in her pants pocket. She gave Steve an embarrassed smile and dug her phone out. It was her Aunt Katie calling.

“Sorry, Steve. I have to take this.”

“No. Of course. Hey, come over any time.”

She smiled at him. “Okay. I’ll take you up on that.”

Tara walked down the concrete walkway that meandered through the landscaping between Steve’s door and her front door. She answered her phone on the fourth ring.

“Hey, Aunt Katie.”

“Hey, Tara!” her Aunt Katie squealed. “Surprise! I need you to come pick me up at the airport.”

Tara froze just as she was about to unlock her front door. “What?”

“I flew down here to see you.”

“You … what … why?”

“I can take a taxi if you can’t pick me up.” Aunt Katie’s voice dropped a little, her excitement suddenly withering.

“No. No, I’ll come get you.” Tara said as she entered her apartment. She closed and locked the front door. She waited for a moment, half listening to her aunt, and at the same time listening for any sounds in her apartment.

And she thought of how the killer had snuck into her apartment and left all of the light bulbs on her coffee table. It had been a threat, it had been an illustration of how he could get inside her apartment any time he wanted to, how he could do anything he wanted to at any time.

She wasn’t safe here.

What if the homeless man wasn’t the killer? What if he had been trying to warn her with his throat-slashing gesture? What if the killer had come back to her apartment and he was in here right now waiting for her?

Tara stayed on the phone as she did a quick search of her apartment. She had the phone in one hand and the small container of pepper spray from Agent Woods in the other.

“Tara,” her aunt said. “You still there?”

Tara heard the concern in her aunt’s voice.

“I’m sorry,” she told her. “I was doing something. I just got home.”

“Really, if this is going to be too much trouble, I don’t mind calling a cab,” Aunt Katie said.

“No,” Tara practically snapped as her mind raced. She couldn’t let her aunt stay here after the killer had been inside her home. She didn’t even want to stay here right now. She walked over to her front window and peeked out through the blinds – a habit that she performed at least twenty times a day. Her eyes scanned the brush for the homeless man as she tried to figure out how to explain this whole situation to her aunt.

“I need to get you a hotel room,” Tara finally told her. “We can’t stay at my apartment right now. It’s not safe here.”

Tara was about to begin her explanation of why they couldn’t stay in her apartment, but her aunt’s next words stopped her in her tracks.

“I know,” Aunt Katie said.

Tara froze for a moment, gripping the phone in her hand. “What do you mean, you know?”

“Tara, I have something I need to tell you. Something I should’ve told you a long time ago.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

1.

Tara tried Agent Woods’ phone number again after she got off the phone with her aunt. Still no answer. She left another message this time and told him that her aunt had made a surprise trip down to Florida and that she was going to stay with her in a hotel room near the airport. She told him that she would let him know the name of the hotel and the room number as soon as she got there. She hesitated for a moment, wondering if she should add anything else, but then she hung up.

She packed an overnight bag into one of her gym duffel bags. She threw the small canister of pepper spray in there that Woods had given her. She also dropped in a paperback novel that she was struggling to get through along with a drawing tablet and a few pens and pencils tucked away in a plastic case.

Her apartment was already cleaned up and she made sure everything was turned off. And then she grabbed her car keys and left.

She walked towards her Jeep with the gym bag in her hand and glanced over at Steve’s apartment – and there he was, locking his door and walking to his pickup truck. He stopped and smiled at her.

Tara wondered what Steve was thinking, seeing her leave with an overnight bag just after their “date”.

She smiled at him, and hefted her bag a little. “That was my Aunt Katie on the phone. She just flew down from Boston for a visit.”

Steve smiled and nodded. “That’s great.”

He really did have a wonderful smile.

“I’m going to stay with her in a hotel room near the airport,” she added, feeling like she somehow owed him more of an explanation.

He waited by his truck and nodded. “I really meant what I said earlier,” he told her. “I’d really like to see you again. Maybe over another cup of coffee.”

Tara felt a tingling buzzing through her insides and she couldn’t stop smiling. “Yeah. Of course. I’d like to do that, too.”

Steve gave her one last quick nod and then jumped into his truck. Tara walked to the back door of her Jeep, opened it, and threw her gym bag into the back seat.

She got in her Jeep and started it, glancing over at Steve, watching his truck drive out of the parking area. She pulled out of her parking space and looked down at the gas gauge and saw that she would need to stop and fill up this thirsty beast before she got to the airport.

As she shifted into drive, her mind shifted back to her aunt’s cryptic words on the phone – her aunt had something to tell her.

A secret.

Something she said that she should’ve told her a long time ago.

2.

Tara spotted her aunt right away at the airport. She wore bright orange pants that hugged her still-shapely legs and a tight-fitting flowered shirt. Her hair was dyed a bright red and she had a little too much make-up on. She wore gigantic sunglasses that looked like they’d come right out of a tourist shop. Aunt Katie still looked good for her age; she still looked much younger than her years. Tara hoped she had some of her aunt’s anti-aging genes in her own DNA.

She pulled over in the temporary parking behind a taxi. She helped her aunt stow two small suitcases in the backseat of her Jeep and then they hopped back in and drove off.

“I’m going to find us a hotel room around here,” Tara told her aunt as she merged her Jeep over to the exit lane out of the airport.

Her aunt didn’t seem to mind getting the room, she didn’t seem offended about not being invited back to Tara’s apartment – it was like she seemed relieved. And she remembered her aunt’s words that she’d heard on the phone, words that had chilled her to the bone.

I know, her aunt had said. And it had something to do with the secret she was keeping; she was sure of it.

Tara glanced at Aunt Katie, she couldn’t wait any longer. “What’s this thing you want to talk to me about?”

Aunt Katie smiled at her and took her sunglasses off. There was nervousness in her eyes that Tara could not only see, but she could sense. “As soon as we get settled into the room, I’ll tell you everything. I promise.”

Tara nodded and darted her eyes back to the road. “Okay. And when you’re done, I have some things to tell you, too.”

They found a hotel room not too far away from the airport after stopping by a convenience store to pick up some wine and snacks. It was a nice hotel with seven stories. They got a room on the third floor.

“What is it you have to tell me?” Tara asked once they were tucked safely away inside their spacious room.

“It’s about how you really got that scar on your neck.”

Tara brushed her jagged scar lightly with her fingers without really thinking about it. Her scar: she’d always been so embarrassed and sensitive about it. Her parents always told her she’d fallen down and cut her neck on the edge of a table.

“How did it happen?” Tara asked.

“Some wine first,” Aunt Katie said and gave her a big smile.

But Tara could see that it was a fake smile – something was really bothering her.

Tara didn’t push. She could be patient.

Aunt Katie put her bags away and Tara shoved her gym bag on the top shelf in the closet. Her aunt found some plastic cups in the kitchen cabinets – they would have to do.

Tara didn’t really want more wine right now – she’d had enough last night – but she didn’t want to be rude. And if this news was as bad as it seemed to show on Aunt Katie’s face, then maybe she needed a glass of wine.

Aunt Katie sipped her wine and opened the sliding glass door that looked out onto a small balcony. From the third floor, the buildings of downtown Tampa and a partial view of the bay could be seen. She slid the door closed and locked it. She poured another glass of wine and sat down on the edge of the bed.

“I don’t want you to be upset with me for not telling you this sooner.”

Tara stared at her aunt – she looked miserable.

“What is it?” Tara asked. She sat in one of the plush chairs that was wrapped in a gaudy, flowery fabric. She took a sip of her wine from the red plastic cup and waited.

“That scar on your neck, you didn’t get it from a fall. You got it from your half-brother.”

3.

Half-brother?

I have a half-brother?

Aunt Katie continued quickly.

“Your father and mother never told you about Jeremy, your half-brother. They had their reasons. Your father had a child, a boy, with a woman before he met your mother. The woman, her name was Hannah, was a little crazy and your father always swore that she’d gotten pregnant on purpose to try and keep him with her. But the more he got to know her, the crazier she became.”

Aunt Katie sighed and took a big sip of wine. “I’m not trying to make excuses for your father – but that’s the fact. He had a child with another woman. He said he hadn’t planned to stay with Hannah, and he definitely hadn’t planned on having a child with her, but he wasn’t going to turn his back on his son.”

Tara didn’t say anything. She had a million questions racing through her mind, but she just sat there in the chair. Her aunt had always had a flare for the dramatics, not only with her fashion, but with everything in her life. And she knew that her aunt would drag this information out as dramatically as she could.

“Jeremy lived with his mother, but he visited your father every so often. When Jeremy was a baby and up until he was about two years old, everything seemed okay. I’d only met him a few times. I didn’t really visit much … I was always roaming. You know me.”

Her aunt gave Tara a small smile.

Tara nodded. She knew her aunt. She knew how much she used to like to party and live life to the fullest. But she had changed that part of her life in an instant when she had to take Tara in.

“But when Jeremy was older,” Aunt Katie continued, “four and five years old, your dad began to notice some odd things about him. He seemed to have a mean streak in him a mile wide. He was always trying to hurt animals. He was always talking about killing things and people and then giggling about it. And that can be a normal stage that boys go through, but Jeremy never seemed to grow out of it. Your father let Jeremy come over less and less to his house.”

Tara nodded, still clutching the plastic cup of wine in her hand.

“After you were born, your parents were nervous about having Jeremy around, but your father still wanted to make an effort, he still wanted to try and be a part of his life. When you were a year and a half old, Jeremey was over staying the night. I think he was about eight years old at that time. He was over for some kind of holiday. It might have been Thanksgiving or Christmas, I’m not sure. I know it was snowing. Anyway, I was visiting and we all woke up in the middle of the night from your horrible screams. Jeremy had gotten up in the middle of the night and grabbed a kitchen knife and tried to slash your throat.”

Tara stared at her aunt in silence.

Aunt Katie drank down the rest of her wine and then continued quickly. “Your dad ran into your room and pulled Jeremy off of you. He told me later that Jeremy was stronger than he had expected, incredibly strong; like he was possessed. Of course, your mom and dad weren’t really religious people, but he told me later that he saw something in Jeremy’s eyes, a bottomless blackness, an evil that seemed to burn inside of him. Your dad said he’d felt this sudden oppressive force trying to smother him, and it took all of his willpower to keep from killing his own son that evening.”

Tara exhaled. She felt like she’d been holding her breath the whole time.

“Your dad watched Jeremy while your mother and I rushed you to the hospital. Your dad wanted to go, but he was too afraid to leave either one of us alone with Jeremy. He called Hannah and told her to come get her son. He told her he didn’t want to see Jeremy again and he didn’t want him around his family. He told me later that those few hours in the house with Jeremy were some of the scariest moments of his life. Not only was he afraid of Jeremy, he was afraid of what he might do to Jeremy. He said it seemed like there were voices in his mind trying to push him to do something. He said it seemed like the voices were coming from Jeremy.”

Aunt Katie got up and went to the kitchenette and poured another cup of wine.

“Do you need some more wine?”

Tara looked down at her plastic cup. She had barely sipped it; she’d just been holding the cup the whole time her aunt had been talking. She shook her head no.

Aunt Katie went back to the edge of the bed and sat down. Her face had fallen now. She wasn’t smiling anymore, and for the first time to Tara, she looked older, she actually looked her age, like she’d been burdened with a weight all these years. She looked like she was about to cry.

“Your father asked Jeremy why he had tried to hurt you, his own sister. He stared at your father, he had the darkest eyes then, like two black coals. He said that he needed to kill you. He couldn’t let you live. It didn’t make any sense to your father, and after a while he stopped trying to talk to him and just waited for Hanna to pick him up and for the police to get there.

“The police came and talked with your father and with Hannah. They even talked with Jeremy. It would’ve looked bad for your father, but Jeremy admitted to trying to kill you with the knife. He wouldn’t say why he wanted to do it, just that he needed to. They let Jeremy go with his mother and she promised to get some help for him. Later on, your mother and I both made statements to the police.”

Aunt Katie paused for a moment. She looked over at the sliding glass door for a few seconds. The drapes were drawn back and bright sunlight invaded the room.

“Your father was dead to Hannah after that. Hannah blamed him for everything; she was always sticking up for her sweet little Jeremy. She wouldn’t let your father see him or talk to him anymore, but your father didn’t want to see Jeremy anyway, not unless Hannah got him some kind of psychiatric help, which Hannah swore she would never submit her baby to.

“She moved Jeremy out of Ohio. They moved to somewhere in the middle of Indiana. I’m not really sure where exactly. But five years later Jeremy killed his own mother.”

Tara gasped – she hadn’t been ready for that.

“He stabbed her to death with a kitchen knife. He practically decapitated her. From there the state took over. Last I heard, he was going to be placed in a mental institution until he was an adult.”

“So what happened to him?”

“I’m not sure,” Aunt Katie said and shrugged her shoulders. She shook her head. “Hannah had Jeremy’s last name legally changed from Simmons to her own last name – Miller. I’ve tried to inquire about him at hospitals in Indiana, but nobody at the hospitals will talk to me because I’m not family. I don’t know if they released him when he was an adult. I don’t know if he was moved to another hospital in another state. I don’t even know for sure if he was ever released.”

Tara looked away as a chill ran through her body.

“I’m sorry, Tara. Your father made me promise never to tell you about your half-brother. He did it for your protection. After that night he was so scared that Jeremy would hurt you, maybe even kill you. And he never wanted you around him until he was sure it was safe. He had planned on telling you about Jeremy when you turned eighteen, but …”

Aunt Katie let her words trail off and she looked away as she wiped at a tear in her eye.

But they were murdered before I turned eighteen, Tara wanted to finish for her aunt, but she didn’t.

Tara still didn’t say anything at all for a moment. She felt numb. She needed time to process this information.

Then a thought occurred to her. She looked at her aunt. “What if they did let him out of whatever psychiatric hospital he was in when he was eighteen or twenty-one?”

Her aunt didn’t reply. She just stared at Tara like she already knew what Tara had thought of; it was something she’d considered a long time ago, a possibility she’d had to live with all of these years.

“What if he came back for me that night?” Tara said and she could barely get the rest of the words out. She could feel emotions choking her up. “What if he killed my mom and dad to get to me?”

Tara imagined Jeremy knocking on the front door. She imagined her father answering it and seeing his son there. Maybe her father had been shocked or even repulsed by the sight of Jeremy, but maybe he would’ve opened the door for him. That’s why there was no forced entry. No warning.

Aunt Katie was crying now. She got up and hugged Tara fiercely. “I’m sorry. So sorry.”

Tara got up and tore herself away from her aunt’s embrace. She shook her head. “Somebody should’ve warned my parents,” she said. “If Jeremy was released from the mental hospital, then somebody should’ve let my parents know.”

Katie nodded as more tears spilled from her eyes. “Yes, baby. But they don’t do that. And your dad wasn’t even considered family anymore.”

But I had been warned, Tara thought. She had felt the fear in her nightmares. She had felt the panic in her night terrors as she ran out of the house that night, away from the evil that was coming to kill her parents.

Tara burst out crying, a gut-wrenching sob as the guilt racked her mind. Why had she run away that night? How come she couldn’t have warned her parents? Why did this half-brother she never even knew she had want to kill her so badly?

Tara fell to her knees and hugged herself as she sobbed. Aunt Katie sank to her knees beside Tara and held her. She wasn’t going to let Tara push her away this time.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Aunt Katie whispered to her. “And don’t you dare blame yourself. You were just a child. That’s all. And you had a night terror; you were still asleep when you ran away. Even if you had woken up and stayed, you couldn’t have done anything about it.”

Tara shook her head back and forth, her mouth open, a breath caught in her throat. For a moment it felt like she couldn’t breathe. The loss of her parents ached her heart all over again like she was suddenly reliving that terrible night.

Oh God, I miss them so much! Why did he take them from me?

4.

A little while later Tara washed her face in the bathroom. She came out and drank another glass of wine, chugging this one down in a few gulps.

Aunt Katie had apologized again about keeping the secret all of these years, but she had made a promise to Tara’s parents. And she told Tara that she wasn’t certain that Jeremy killed her parents; for all she knew, he could still be in a mental institution somewhere in Indiana. Or he could’ve died. Who knew?

But Tara knew. It was like she’d discovered a missing piece of the puzzle that she’d been looking for all these years, and now she saw the whole picture clearly and everything fit together perfectly. Her half-brother, Jeremy, had gotten out of the mental institution and he’d gone right to Ohio looking for her. And she knew that he had the same metal powers that she had, something passed down in her family that had skipped a generation, skipping over her father. But she and her half-brother shared some kind of psychic link and he had used that link to home in on her signal. He had come looking for her, and he killed her parents when he didn’t find her.

After her parents’ death, Tara moved in with her aunt and they moved from place to place, like they were on the run. Tara had never really questioned the constant moving, but it all made sense now. Her aunt believed that Jeremy had been the killer all along. She believed that he would find Tara again, that’s why she kept them on the run. She had sacrificed her life and loves for Tara, to keep her safe, to protect her.

Tara couldn’t be angry at her aunt for too long.

What do I do now?

Tara paced back and forth in front of the two hotel beds and dialed Agent Woods’ number again.

And this time he finally answered his phone.

She assured him that she was okay, and she told him about her aunt’s sudden visit and that she was staying with her in a hotel room by the airport. She gave him the name of the hotel and the room number and waited while he jotted it down.

Just the fact that Tara wasn’t staying in her apartment seemed to make Agent Woods feel better – she swore she could hear it in his voice.

But Tara didn’t tell him about the secret her aunt had just told her. She would wait until she saw him tomorrow. She wasn’t sure if he could get any information out of the mental institutions in Indiana without a warrant. She didn’t have a description of Jeremy and Aunt Katie didn’t have any photos of him when he was little – Aunt Katie hadn’t been a picture-taking kind of aunt when Tara was a child.

After Tara got off the phone, she and Aunt Katie ate dinner in the hotel restaurant. It was a little pricey, but the food was better than they expected. They each drank another glass of wine and then they went back up to their room.

They talked into the night and Aunt Katie finally fell asleep on one of the double beds.

Tara stretched out on the other bed, lying on her stomach and staring at something on the TV but not really watching it. The drapes were pulled tight and the room was dark except for the flickering light of the TV. The TV’s light didn’t bother Aunt Katie at all, her aunt knew about Tara’s fear of the dark.

Tara had taken out her drawing pad, figuring she might doodle for a bit, but she got frustrated after a little while and gave up. She sort of wished she’d brought along the sketches she’d done in her sleep. Maybe she could see some kind of pattern in them or something. The random words and numbers had to mean something.

After ten more minutes she fell asleep on her stomach with her head laid down on her arms.

5.

Two hours later Tara sat at the foot of the bed with the drawing tablet in her lap, a pencil clenched in one hand, her eyes wide open and staring at the TV – but she was still asleep.

In Tara’s dream she saw herself on the bed with the TV in front of her, but everything else was shrouded in darkness. She couldn’t see the other bed with her aunt on it. She couldn’t see the drapes over the sliding glass door or the door that led out to the hallway.

She watched herself sitting there with the drawing pad on her lap and she was scribbling fiercely with the pencil, sketching something without looking down at the paper, drawing something over and over again.

From the darkness behind her, from beyond the head of the bed where the wall should have been, someone approached – a man draped in dark robes, his hands and arms sheathed in shiny black latex like a second skin. His head was covered with a mask made from a patchwork of human skin, pieces layered over each other and sewn together. Several sets of ears hung off the sides of his head and rows of human teeth were glued around where the mouth would be, making the mouth look like some kind of monstrous meat grinder. Clumps of hair were attached to the top of the head in various places and a set of what looked like bull horns were attached to each side of the mask.

Hanging around his neck was a necklace adorned with more body parts: fingers, toes, ears, bones, a dried-out tongue.

The Shadow Man pushed his way through the darkness, wading through the bed like it wasn’t there anymore, like it was dematerializing as he walked through it.

And Tara never stopped drawing on the tablet as the killer crept up behind her.

6.

Aunt Katie woke up to the sound of a pencil scribbling on paper.

She sat up and saw Tara sitting at the foot of her bed, her feet flat on the floor, her drawing tablet in her lap, a pencil clutched in her right hand. Tara was staring at the TV with wide eyes that were still asleep.

Tara scribbled on her paper, tracing a drawing over and over again.

Aunt Katie just watched her for a moment. She had seen Tara’s night terrors many times before. Usually she woke her up, but Tara wasn’t screaming right now and she wasn’t running away.

Katie got up and crept over to Tara. When she saw what Tara was drawing, she felt that it was important to let her continue with her night terror – she was getting a message that she needed, Katie was sure of it.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

1.

Aunt Katie stayed up the rest of the night after Tara’s night terror had ended. She watched until Tara simply stopped drawing, dropped the tablet and pencil to the floor, closed her eyes and crawled into bed and lay down on her side. Soon, she was sleeping deeply.

Katie picked up the drawing tablet and pencil from the floor and she took them over to the small writing table. She turned on the tiny lamp and studied the drawing more closely. It was a quick sketch and some of the lines were drawn so heavy that they almost went through the paper. Even though it was a rough sketch, Katie could tell exactly what it was.

She left the light on over the writing table – it wasn’t very bright. She got up and covered Tara up with a blanket. It was only a few hours until dawn, but Katie was certain that she wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep now.

At six in the morning Katie went down to the restaurant in the lobby. It was already open and serving breakfast. Katie wasn’t sure if Tara would be hungry, but she ordered two French toast breakfasts with sides of bacon. She also ordered a thermos of coffee and two cartons of milk and two bottles of orange juice.

She brought the food and drinks back up to the hotel room.

Tara still hadn’t woken up yet.

And Katie wasn’t going to wake her up. She remembered how much the night terrors drained Tara when she was younger, and she knew that the thing she needed the most right now was sleep, a deep sleep with no dreams.

Tara woke up around eight-thirty.

Aunt Katie warmed up her breakfast for her in the microwave. Tara picked at her food, barely eating, but she drank the juice, milk, and a cup of coffee.

After Tara took a shower and changed her clothes, Aunt Katie showed her the drawing she’d created in the middle of the night. She had considered keeping it from her, keeping her away from whatever Jeremy was pointing her towards, but she had decided that after today there would never be any more secrets between them again. Tara was the only family she had left, and she didn’t want to drive her away.

Tara stared at the drawing. It was a quick sketch of an old house that looked like it might be in the middle of the brush or woods. And in one corner of the paper was a number – an eight. She had traced over the number again and again, nearly etching it into the paper. And there was one word at the bottom of the page, and again she had rewritten it so many times that it was practically carved into the paper. The word was Woods.

Woods. What did that mean? The woods? Was the house located in the woods? Did it have something to do with Agent Woods?

She didn’t know.

“You drew that in your sleep,” Aunt Katie told her. “I watched you do it.”

“Yeah,” Tara said. “I’ve been doing that a lot lately.”

“I stayed awake to make sure you didn’t get up and leave.”

Tara nodded. This was a familiar and nostalgic feeling for her – Aunt Katie watching over her through the night. She missed that feeling of security more than she had realized.

“Thanks,” Tara told her.

“Tara, listen to me.” Aunt Katie sat down right in front of Tara at the small table. She grabbed one of Tara’s hands in both of hers and locked eyes with her. “This is serious business. There’s a killer in this city, and I think he’s looking for you. And I think it’s Jeremy.”

Tara didn’t say anything.

“You can’t fight him,” Aunt Katie continued. “Why don’t you come back with me to Boston? I already bought a ticket for you.”

For a moment the idea of getting on a plane and escaping appealed to her. But she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t let one more person die because Jeremy was looking for her. She couldn’t let one more person become a sacrifice.

Tara sighed and squeezed her aunt’s hand. “I love you. I wish I could come back with you, but I can’t.”

Aunt Katie was about to argue but she could see it was no use.

Tara got up and grabbed her drawing tablet and cell phone. She dialed Agent Woods’ number and listened to the ringing on the other end. He finally answered after five rings. “I’ve got something to show you,” she said. “Meet me at my apartment in an hour and a half.”

She hung up the phone and looked at her aunt who was already shaking her head no, already begging Tara with her eyes not to go back out there in that world with a monster looking for her. Stay here in this hotel room with me where it’s safe, her eyes said.

But Tara had to go.

“Please, Aunt Katie,” Tara said as she went to the door, “just stay here in the hotel room. Don’t go anywhere. And don’t open the door for anyone. I’ll call you later.”

They hugged and Tara left.

2.

Tara pulled into her parking space and shut off her rumbling Jeep. She glanced over at Steve’s apartment and saw that his blue pickup was parked a few spaces down from hers.

She got out of her Jeep with her drawing tablet tucked under her arm and hurried to the front door where Agent Woods was already waiting for her. Again, she could imagine Steve watching out his window and wondering about her relationship with Agent Woods. She was going to have to come clean with Steve, tell him the truth about what was going on, tell him the truth about her night terrors, and tell him the truth about a half-brother she never knew she had, a half-brother who was searching for her to finish the job he had started with her parents. If Steve couldn’t accept all of that, then he just wasn’t the right guy for her, and it would be better to know that now than later.

“I found this under your door mat,” Agent Woods said.

He handed Tara a white envelope with some writing on it. “I didn’t open it,” he added quickly.

Tara smiled and looked down at the envelope. True to his word, the envelope was still sealed. Printed on the front in careful, neat letters were the words: From Steve. To Tara.

“Someone’s got a crush on you?” Agent Woods asked. He sounded like an adult teasing a child.

“Come on inside,” she told him, ignoring his comment. “I’ve got something I want you to see. And something I need to tell you.”

3.

Over cups of coffee, Tara gave Agent Woods a brief history of her life, filling in the previously missing details about her half-brother. She told him more about her night terrors, how she not only walked in her sleep and caused boyfriends to run away in the middle of the night, but also about how she had developed a new habit of drawing in her sleep.

She collected the drawings from her office and laid them out on the coffee table for Woods to study. And she tore out her most recent drawing from the tablet and laid it down next to the others.

Agent Woods stared at the drawings for a few minutes. Then he looked at her. “Why didn’t you show me these before?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I drew these while the murders were happening so they really couldn’t have helped.”

Agent Woods studied the drawings again.

“You drew all of these while the murders were happening?” he asked.

“I drew these while Jen was being murdered,” Tara said and pointed at the sketches of Jen. “And this one with the gun and bullets I drew while Greg was being murdered.”

“Like you saw a clue to the next murder.”

“Yeah,” Tara said, “but I didn’t know what it meant at the time,” she added defensively.

“So what’s this one?” he asked, pointing at her most recent drawing of the house among the overgrown brush.

“I don’t know. I drew that one last night in my sleep. Maybe it’s the place where the next murder will take place.”

“But I’m assuming you don’t know where this place is.”

“No. I’ve never seen it before.”

“But maybe you’re seeing it through the killer’s eyes.”

Jeremy’s eyes, Tara thought. “Or he’s sending these images to me on purpose,” she told Agent Woods. “Playing with me for some reason. I mean if he can get in and out of my apartment any time he wants to, then why didn’t he just come in here and kill me?”

Agent Woods shook his head; he didn’t have an answer to her question. He turned his attention back to the drawings. “What about these words and these numbers around the edges? What do they mean?”

“I don’t know. They could be random thoughts that I’m picking up.” But Tara didn’t believe that.

And neither did Agent Woods. “They have to mean something.” He took out his little notepad and wrote down the numbers in a list: three, five, two, nine and eight. And then he wrote down the words scribbled on the drawings right underneath the numbers: Run, Pine, Trinity, and Woods.

He showed her his notebook. “None of this means anything to you?”

“No, I’ve been looking at them for days.”

“What about Woods? Is that supposed to be me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe if we scramble the words up. I mean Woods and Pine seem to go together. They both have something to do with trees. And then there’s the word, Trinity. Could mean three of something. Or it could mean the Holy Trinity. It could have something to do with the number three. And then there’s the word Run …” he let his words trail off – he didn’t really seem to have any idea of what they could mean.

“What about my half-brother?” Tara asked him, changing the subject. “Can you see if he’s still in a mental institution in Indiana? Or find out when he got out?”

“You really think this killer is your half-brother?”

Tara stared at him and nodded. She was sure.

“I can try to get some kind of warrant from the field office in Indianapolis, get some people working on it up there. It might take a little while.”

Tara walked away from the coffee table. She saw the envelope from Steve on the counter. She didn’t really want to open it in front of Agent Woods, but there was something bothering her about it.

“You should get your door locks changed,” Agent Woods suggested as he pulled out his cell phone.

“I don’t think it will matter,” Tara answered as she stared at the white envelope. She’d felt something strange when she had held the envelope in her hand earlier, a flash of something dark. And now a pit of dread was beginning to form in her stomach like she’d just overlooked some kind of major clue, something that she’d missed that was going to come back to haunt her very soon.

“Do you mind if I take pictures of these drawings?” Agent Woods asked as he aimed his cell phone at the first of the drawings laid out on the coffee table. It seemed like he was going to take the pictures whether she gave him permission or not.

“Go ahead,” Tara said and her voice sounded far away to her own ears.

Something happened to Steve, her mind whispered as she walked over and picked up the envelope.

Now that the envelope was back in her hands, it felt funny. It felt a little damp, like it had been outside in the humidity for a little while. She could feel something inside the envelope, but it didn’t feel like a folded piece of paper a letter would be written on. And it didn’t feel like a greeting card.

It felt like a photograph.

She wondered why Steve would send her something in an envelope. He didn’t seem like that kind of person; he didn’t seem like the kind of man who would hide behind a letter. Maybe it was just a note telling her that he’d had a great time on their “date” the other day.

She tore the envelope open as Agent Woods snapped the last photo of her drawings.

Tara stopped breathing for a moment as she stared down at the Polaroid photo she’d pulled out of the envelope – it was the only thing inside the envelope, nothing else except the photo.

“Agent Woods … you need to see this,” she finally breathed out.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

1.

Agent Woods stuffed his cell phone back inside his suit coat pocket and rushed over to Tara who stood very still by the kitchen counter, the shredded white envelope on the floor at her feet, a photograph clutched in her hands.

She shoved the photograph at Woods.

He looked at it. It was a photo of a man seated in a simple wooden chair in a bare room. His arms were behind him and the chair like they were tied behind his back and there was a strip of gray duct tape sealing his mouth shut.

Agent Woods looked at Tara.

“It’s Steve,” she said.

“You know him?”

“Yes,” she gestured towards the kitchen wall. “He’s my next door neighbor.”

She walked away into the living room. “Oh God, Jeremy’s got him and it’s all my fault.”

Agent Woods hurried over to Tara. “Okay, calm down for a minute. Let’s think about this. Why would Jeremy kidnap this guy Steve? Why do you think this is your fault?”

“Steve and I walked down to the café for a coffee yesterday.”

He stared at her. “I told you to stay inside.”

“Yeah, and I called you all day. I didn’t want to be alone, okay?” After she said the words they sounded childish and pathetic to her own ears and she regretted saying them right away.

“I was … busy with …” Again, Agent Woods let his words trail off.

“You told me to call you if anything was wrong.”

Agent Woods inhaled a breath and let it out slowly. He nodded. “I’m sorry I didn’t answer your call,” he said. “I listened to your messages. Everything seemed to be okay so I didn’t call back. I was at Miss Helen’s house, looking over the evidence.”

Tara shook her head, suddenly feeling guilty again. “No, it’s not your fault. You told me to stay inside and I just wanted to talk to someone, be with someone …”

Agent Woods surprised Tara by laying a gentle hand on her shoulder. He stared at her with his dark eyes. “This isn’t your fault. Okay?”

Tara nodded.

Agent Woods removed his hand from Tara’s shoulder and hurried towards the front door. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Where?” she asked, but she grabbed her keys and followed him to the front door.

“Next door. If he was taken, there has to be some kind of clues left behind.”

2.

They stood in front of Steve’s front door as Agent Woods pounded on it with the edge of his fist. “Steve! Open up. I’m Agent David Woods with the FBI!”

Tara glanced at Steve’s pickup truck. Since it was still parked here, it would mean that Steve had to have been taken sometime last night or this morning. The Polaroid photo looked like it had been taken in the daytime, which made Tara believe he’d been taken this morning.

Tara thought of the photo of Steve tied to the chair and she cringed inside, thinking of what he must be going through right now.

If he’s still alive. If he still has all of his body parts in the right places.

She tried to ignore the voice in her mind as she turned back around and watched Agent Woods beat on the front door. She wondered why she hadn’t seen a vision of Steve’s abduction in her dreams last night. Why had she drawn the house in the woods instead of Steve tied to the chair?

Because Jeremy is playing with me again, giving me another impossible clue to decipher.

“He’s not in there,” Agent Woods said, snapping Tara’s attention back to him.

Agent Woods jiggled the door handle. It was locked.

He looked at her. “Let’s go check around back.”

3.

The back of Tara’s four-unit apartment building looked out onto the large pond that was surrounded by brush, tall grasses, and trees.

Agent Woods hurried around the corner and inspected two of the windows at the back of Steve’s apartment, pulling at the screens on both of them, but they didn’t budge. He walked over to the only door back – a set of sliding glass doors with a concrete pad in front of it meant for patio furniture.

They peeked in through the glass doors, cupping their hands around the sides of their faces so they could see through the glass. The vertical blinds were drawn halfway open and Tara saw an empty dining room area with what looked like the living room beyond it in the gloom. To the right of the dining area was an archway that led to the kitchen.

Agent Woods startled Tara by pounding on the glass door. She pulled her face away from the reverberating glass.

He slipped his fingers into the grooved door handle set in the metal frame and pulled. The door slid open easily. He looked at Tara.

“You’re allowed to do that?” she asked.

“I won’t tell if you won’t.”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He pulled his .45 out from his shoulder holster and entered the house like a tentative cat.

Tara hesitated for a moment, she looked around. No one could see them back here – it was all marsh and trees and palmetto plants, and each apartment had a small section of wooden privacy fencing that ran down about halfway towards the pond.

She followed Agent Woods inside Steve’s apartment.

He stood in the middle of the tile floor where a dining room table was supposed to go. There was a fancy chandelier light hanging down low from the ceiling on a gold chain. But there was no dining room table and chairs to go underneath the light. Cardboard boxes were stacked up against the wall in the living room.

Tara hurried over to the boxes and read the words scrawled on them in black Magic Marker: kitchen, bedroom, living room, books, misc.

He hadn’t even finished unpacking all of his stuff yet.

Agent Woods was right behind her as she studied the boxes. He darted past her and checked out the bedrooms. She followed him as he darted down the short hallway.

She was right behind him as he inspected both bedrooms and the bathrooms. There was no furniture in either bedroom; one of the bedrooms was completely empty, and the other bedroom had a sleeping bag laid out on the floor next to a cheap alarm clock. Eight well-worn paperback books were stacked up near the temporary bed and a few clothes were hung in the closet. Tara was tempted to go check out the clothes and the books, but she restrained herself.

“Don’t touch anything,” Agent Woods said like he was reading her mind.

Agent Woods had been very quick with his search and then he left the bedroom.

Tara felt strange being alone in Steve’s home. The apartment looked so empty, so lonely. She tried to open her mind, let herself reach out, but it was like she was running up against a block wall – like Jeremy already knew she was here and he was blocking her, blindfolding her, smothering her senses. It felt claustrophobic if she concentrated on it too long, and she could already feel her breathing quickening as she struggled to draw in breaths in this stale, empty room. And then she found herself focusing on her breathing and trying to prevent a panic attack.

“In here!” she heard Agent Woods call out to her from another room.

She rushed out of the bedroom, through the living room, and found Woods in the kitchen. There was a small cardboard box on the counter, it was opened, and the words Kitchen Stuff were written on the side in black marker. There was a frying pan on the stove and a few dishes on the counter next to a carton of eggs and a green pepper and onion waiting to be chopped. On the tile floor was a broken bowl and a splash of raw eggs that had been scrambled.

Tara stopped in her tracks, focused on the frying pan. She walked towards it slowly, like she was drawn to it.

There’s something in the frying pan.

She moved closer until she was right next to the frying pan. She looked down and saw a severed human finger lying inside in a puddle of burnt oil. She stifled a scream and stepped back away from the stove.

Agent Woods rushed over to her with his gun still in his hand. “What is it?”

Tara shook her head no. “I thought I saw something in the frying pan.”

“What?”

Tara looked back at the frying pan but it was empty now.

“Nothing,” she said and shook her head no. “It’s not there now.”

“Maybe you saw something that was there before,” Agent Woods said. “Or maybe it’s something that’s going to be there. Anything could help.”

“It looked like a finger,” Tara finally told him. “A human finger that had been cut off.”

Tara turned away and looked down at the eggs splashed across the floor among the broken bits of the ceramic bowl. The eggs were congealed and dried now. Her eyes roamed across the floor and then she saw something underneath the toe kick of one of the cabinets, right next to the refrigerator – it was something she’d seen before and she had to stare at it for a few seconds to make sure it was really there.

“Agent Woods.”

He turned and looked down at the floor where she was looking.

“You see it, right?” she asked him.

He hurried over to the cabinets, crouched down in front of them and picked up the homemade wooden crucifix from the floor.

“I’ve seen that cross before,” Tara told him. “I’ve seen the man who wears that.”

“Where?”

“I think he’s a homeless person. A few days ago, my friend Lorie and I were walking down a street in Tampa and this guy jumped out of an alleyway and grabbed me. He had these wild eyes and he warned me about the killer. He told me that the killer was coming for me and that he was like nothing I could imagine. He told me that the killer was the devil.”

Agent Woods held the cross in one hand by the broken string that used to be its necklace, watching her.

“And yesterday, when Steve and I were walking back from the café, I saw him in the trees beside a house.”

“Tara, why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Is there anything else you’re not telling me?” he asked with a sharpness to his voice.

“No. I’ve told you everything.”

Agent Woods sighed like he was letting his sudden anger go. “This guy you saw yesterday, this homeless man, what was he doing beside the house?”

“He was just … just watching us. And he stared at me and made a throat slashing gesture.” Tara drew her finger slowly across her own throat.

“Maybe this street person took Steve.”

Tara shook her head. She didn’t know. She was sure Jeremy was the killer. Could the homeless man really be Jeremy? Could Jeremy have dressed up like a homeless man?

“We should go look for this guy,” Agent Woods said. “It’s our only lead so far.”

Tara didn’t answer.

“Where would a street person hang out here in Tampa?” he asked.

Tara told him about a place where they could start looking.

They went back out through the sliding glass door and slid it shut. Then they hurried around the building to the parking lot. Tara checked to make sure her apartment and Jeep were locked. She shoved her keys into her pants pockets and she felt the small canister of pepper spray that Agent Woods had given her in her other front pocket – she kept it on her at all times now.

She watched as Agent Woods talked on the phone next to his car. He seemed to be barking orders into the phone, but she couldn’t hear him. She didn’t want to go over there while he was talking on the phone, so she waited by her Jeep until he was finished.

4.

Tara rode in Agent Woods’ car and she directed him to the seedier side of town. She moved her feet among the trash on the passenger floorboard.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “I haven’t had time to clean out the car. I just throw all my trash down there.”

“It looks like you live in your car.”

He didn’t respond as he turned his car down a side road and parked. The tall buildings of downtown Tampa could be seen a few blocks away. They got out and walked over to a heavy-set woman layered in clothing, she pushed a shopping cart full of odds and ends most likely procured from garbage dumpsters.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” Agent Woods said as he walked up to her, flashing his ID at her and then tucking it away in one quick movement. “We’re trying to find someone.”

The woman just stared at Agent Woods and Tara like she didn’t know what the hell they were talking about.

Agent Woods pulled out the wooden cross from his suit coat pocket and showed it to her. “He was wearing this around his neck.”

The woman shook her head no. “I don’t know. You should talk to Edgar.” She pointed towards an alleyway half a block down the narrow street.

Tara walked beside Agent Woods down the street to the mouth of the alleyway. They walked around a green dumpster overflowing with garbage and entered the alleyway.

Thirty feet down the alley they saw an older man seated on a piece of cardboard, his back against the brick wall. He looked up at them without a word. His face was a roadmap of wrinkles and his beard and hair were streaked with gray. He wore a faded Miami Dolphins baseball cap.

“Are you Edgar?” Agent Woods asked.

Edgar didn’t respond. He just stared up at them.

“We need your help finding someone,” Woods told him.

Edgar still didn’t say a word.

Agent Woods showed him the wooden cross. “We believe the man we’re looking for may be homeless. He wears this around his neck.”

Edgar couldn’t hide the split second of surprise on his face at seeing the homemade wooden cross, but then his poker face was back.

Agent Woods looked up and down the alley, making sure there was no one else around, and then he whipped out a twenty dollar bill from his pants pocket and held it between two fingers at Edgar.

Edgar struggled up to his feet, a smile on his face now. He took the twenty out of Woods’ fingers like a bird plucking an insect out of the ground, and then he stuffed the money down somewhere in the layers of his clothing.

“I don’t know him,” Edgar finally said. He had a surprisingly deep voice for such a thin man. “Don’t know his name. Some call him The Reverend. He’s sort of new around here. Crazy as a sprayed roach, if you ask me. He’s always preaching about the end of the world and shit like that. The Rapture. Armageddon.”

“When did you see him last?”

“Yesterday, I think. He seemed really scared. Said he’d seen the devil. Said he’d made a deal with him and now it was time to pay up.”

“Did he describe this devil?” Agent Woods asked.

Edgar looked at Woods like he was crazy. “Describe the devil? No, he didn’t.”

Agent Woods seemed to be growing a little impatient. “Do you know where we could find this Reverend?”

“I don’t know. Sorry. I don’t know much about him.”

Tara took a twenty dollar bill out of her purse and handed it to Edgar. “Thanks. You’ve been a lot of help.”

Agent Woods gave her an odd look and they walked away.

They walked back to Agent Woods’ car.

“What now?” Tara asked.

“I don’t know. But it seems like this Reverend guy may have known the killer – if that’s the devil this guy is talking about.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

1.

Lorie and Mike snuggled together on the porch swing that was built into the wraparound deck of the cabin. The wraparound porch was the thing that had really sold Mike on this home, Lorie thought. That and the gigantic, free-standing garage near the house. Big enough to park an RV inside, Lorie had told him.

Mike said he didn’t have an RV.

Lorie told him that he could get one now.

They had been kissing and fondling each other on the porch swing for a few minutes now, but then Lorie pulled away from Mike. They’d just made love an hour ago, but they still couldn’t keep their hands off each other for very long.

Mike came in for another kiss, but she still pulled away.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

She shook her head and looked out at the woods all around them. It really was beautiful up here. Only an hour’s drive north of Tampa and you were up here in the woods.

“I don’t know,” Lorie finally answered him. “I’m worried about Tara. I wish she would just come up here with us.”

“If she doesn’t want to come here, you can’t force her.”

Lorie had already discussed the idea with Mike of Tara coming up here to stay for a few days. She had explained what had happened with Tara, about someone breaking into her apartment and how frightened Tara was, and Mike didn’t even hesitate, didn’t even bat an eyelash. He offered Tara a room up here for as long as she wanted. Even when he and Lorie went back to Tampa she could have a room here, he’d told her.

Lorie loved Mike even more at that moment.

Love? Now there was a scary word. But she couldn’t help feeling this way around Mike. She felt like a giggly teenager again. She was scared of getting hurt, but then again, if she was going to go all in, then this was the guy she was going to risk it on.

“What’s wrong?” Mike asked her again.

She looked at him and gave him a smile.

“Something seems strange about the FBI guy who’s been helping Tara,” Lorie said.

She looked at Mike. “Don’t FBI agents usually work in teams?”

Mike shrugged. “I guess. Probably a good idea so they have each other’s back.”

“I know someone I can ask, someone who would know for sure.”

Lorie got up and headed for the sliding glass door that led back into the kitchen.

“Where are you going?” Mike asked, sitting up on the edge of the porch swing, pretending to be hurt and offended that she was leaving him alone.

“Something I should’ve done a while ago,” she told him. But she stopped at the sliding glass door and gave him a seductive smile and a wink. “But I won’t be very long.”

Mike snuggled back down into the porch swing.

Lorie closed the sliding glass door and marched to the kitchen counter. She dug her cell phone out of her purse and dialed her uncle’s number. The reception wasn’t the best out here in the woods and there was a little bit of static on the line as the phone rang.

2.

Detective Perry sat at his cluttered desk which faced Jackson’s neat and tidy desk. His phone rang. He snatched it up on the second ring.

“Detective Perry speaking.”

“Hey, Uncle Ronald,” Lorie said on the phone.

Detective Perry couldn’t help smiling as he leaned back in his chair which squealed in protest. “How’s my favorite niece?”

“I’m your only niece.”

“And my favorite. What’s up?”

“Has Tara called you by any chance?”

Just the mention of Tara’s name set Perry on edge a little. Lorie’s little psychic friend had come into the station a few times in the last few years claiming to have knowledge of murders through visions or dreams or whatever she was doing to channel the spirits.

“No, Lorie, I haven’t heard from Tara. Why?”

“She’s been having dreams again; dreams about these recent murders.”

Detective Perry ran a hand through his short gray hair. “Lorie, honey, you know what I think about that psychic stuff …”

“I know. But I called to ask you a big favor.”

Oh no, here it comes, Perry thought. She’s going to want me to bring her friend in here to reveal her visions. He liked Tara as a person, and you’d never know she was a psychic. She was a beautiful girl and looked normal. She didn’t come in with candles and a crystal ball or anything like that. She didn’t dress up like a gypsy. But still, he couldn’t spare the time with dreams and visions that weren’t going to get him or his guys any closer to catching real criminals.

“I was wondering if you could look up some information on an FBI agent who’s been helping Tara.”

This got Perry’s attention and he sat up straight in his chair. “FBI? What are you talking about? I haven’t heard anything about the FBI being involved with these murders yet.”

Jackson, who had been absorbed in paperwork on his desk, looked up with sudden interest at the mention of the FBI.

Perry locked eyes with Jackson for a split second, and then he glanced around the room, making sure none of the other detectives were within earshot.

“Some FBI agent has been hanging around Tara,” Lorie told Perry. “He came by and said that he knew about her psychic abilities and that he would take them seriously. She blew him off at first, but then after her apartment was broken into, she called him for help.”

“Her apartment got broken into?” Perry said, and his voice was much lower now. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“Because it wasn’t a normal break-in. Nothing was taken and there was no forced entry. It was like somebody just wanted to send her a message, wanted her to know that he could get to her anytime he wanted to.”

“Lorie, honey, this is serious business. Where is Tara right now?”

“I don’t know. I’m going to call her right after I get off the phone with you, but first I wanted you to look up this agent if you could. I don’t know, I just have a weird feeling about him. About this whole situation.”

“Okay. Do you know this guy’s name?” Perry rummaged through his papers, looking for something to write on.

Jackson was up in a flash with paper and pen. Perry took the pen and paper, ready to jot down the FBI agent’s name.

“Agent David Woods,” Lorie told him. “That’s what she told me. She said he had an FBI I.D. and everything.”

“Okay. I’ll check it out.”

“Will you let me know as soon as you find something?”

“Yes, Lorie. I promise.”

Perry hung up the phone and he looked at Jackson who still towered beside his desk.

“The FBI is involved?” Jackson whispered.

Again, Perry glanced around the room, and then he stood up and looked at Jackson. “I don’t think so. How could they be on this case without us knowing about it?”

Jackson picked up the piece of paper from Perry’s desk before it got swallowed up in the sea of other papers. “I’m going to look this up right now.”

3.

Agent Woods parked his car at a fast food joint. He’d gone through the drive-through a little earlier and bought a combo meal. Tara didn’t want anything.

He parked his car at the far end of the parking area and wolfed down a sandwich while Tara called her aunt.

There was some bad reception on the phone, like a buzzing static, as she listened to the ringing. Aunt Katie answered the phone.

“Tara, is everything okay?”

“Yeah. How about you?”

“Fine. I’ve been staying in the hotel room, but I think I’m getting a little bit of cabin fever.”

“I know. I’m just worried about you. I wish you’d go back to Boston. When this is all over, I’ll come up to see you, or you can come back down here.”

4.

Aunt Katie sat in one of the overstuffed chairs in the motel room, her feet propped up on the end of the bed, her cell phone up to her ear. The drapes were wide open, letting in the dull afternoon light of a cloudy day.

“I’m going to stay at least one more day,” Aunt Katie told Tara. “But I wish you would reconsider going back to Boston with me. I don’t like the idea of Jeremy out there looking for you.” She paused for a moment. “Or the idea of you looking for him.”

“Everything will be okay. Just promise me you’ll stay in the hotel room. Order room service. Just don’t go outside.”

“I’ll be fine. I love you.”

“Love you, too,” Tara told her.

Aunt Katie hung up her phone and set it on the small writing table beside her. She leaned her head back and let out a long sigh. She’d finished off the wine this afternoon and she sure could use some more right now. Maybe she would go down to the hotel bar in a few hours for a bite to eat and a few drinks. Tara didn’t have to know.

Just then there was a noise outside her hotel room door. It sounded like a slight scratching at the bottom of the door.

Katie sat up straight and stared at the door. It automatically locked when it was shut, but she didn’t have the security lock engaged on the inside. If someone had a key card, they could swipe it and open the door.

She imagined Jeremy killing one of the hotel staff and taking the card up to the third floor and standing in front of her door with the blood-splattered key card. She didn’t know what Jeremy looked like now. She remembered him as a small child. He’d had dark hair, and dark brown eyes. But she imagined him now as a tall man with wiry muscles and a lean body. She imagined his dark hair was long, hanging down in front of his face. She imagined grimy skin covered with tattoos. She imagined baggy clothes and heavy biker boots. She imagined an assortment of cutting instruments hidden away on his body underneath his clothing, maybe even wrapped up in a cloth and tucked down into the waistband of his pants.

There was a loud pounding at the door.

Katie jumped to her feet, her heart in her throat. She grabbed her cell phone from the table, ready to dial 911. But even if she did, the police would never get up here in time.

“Housekeeping,” a female voice said from behind the door.

Katie felt like she could breathe again. She jumped up and ran to the door and peeked through the little peephole. She saw the distorted view of a maid standing beside a cart full of cleaning supplies, extra clean towels, and bagged-up garbage.

She opened the door and let the maid in, and then she thought that she was definitely going to go down to the bar in a few hours and get those drinks. Yes, she’d made up her mind – she needed something to take the edge off of this constant tension.

5.

Agent Woods finished his fast food meal and took it to the garbage can (rather than throw it down on the passenger floorboard) while Tara talked to her aunt as she paced back and forth beside his car. Agent Woods used this opportunity to collect the trash on the passenger floorboard and throw it away so he could give Tara more legroom.

When Tara hung up the phone with her aunt, Woods was already sitting in the driver’s seat with the photo of Steve in his hands. He studied the picture: Steve in the chair, the tape over his mouth, the fear in his wide eyes.

Tara looked out the window at the long afternoon shadows. It was getting a little cooler with a nice breeze blowing through the palm trees that surrounded the fast food restaurant.

“Look at this?” Agent Woods said.

Tara turned to look at him. He was picking at the corner of the photograph like the backing on it was coming loose. He picked at it with his short fingernails. Tara almost offered to help pull the backing off – but her fingernails were just as short as Woods’ nails.

He’d peeled it away enough to pull the backing off, which looked to have been carefully glued to the back of the photograph. He pulled at it slowly, careful not to rip it. After he pulled it free from the photo, he just stared at the other side of the white backing for a moment in the dwindling light.

“What is it?” Tara asked him.

“Looks like a map.”

Woods handed the backing to Tara. The backing was a little flimsy and sticky from whatever kind of glue had been used to seal it to the back of the photo, but the crude drawing done in black pen was easily seen – it showed Highway 60, which led out of Tampa towards Polk County. And near the county border, a line was drawn from Highway 60, running north, and the name of the road was written down in tiny, neat handwriting. And off of this road was a smaller road with a small star drawn at the end of it.

She looked at Woods.

“The killer drew us a map,” he said and started the car.

Tara had saved photos of her drawings on her phone, and she pulled up the sketch of the house she’d drawn last night in her sleep. This was the house Steve was in, she was sure of it. But why would Jeremy draw a map for her? To get her there? How could he have been so sure she would find it?

As Woods sped down the road, heading towards Highway 60, Tara began to have her first feelings of doubt about Agent Woods.

“Are you going to call for some kind of backup?” Tara asked as they turned west onto Highway 60, heading for the more remote area of Hillsborough County.

“Not yet,” Woods answered. “Not until I’m sure I have him. If he’s there, then I’ll have every cop in the county there.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

1.

Woods drove down a narrow road crowded on both sides with brush and trees. The road had ruts and holes, and his car felt like it was going to shake apart. A cloud of dust followed the car, the dust glowing red from the tail lights. The sun dropped slowly towards the horizon and the shadows grew longer.

Tara looked down at the photo of Steve tied to the chair. She could feel that they were very close to him now.

Woods slowed his car down to a crawl after passing a stand of woods that stretched on for half a mile. They saw a house among a sea of weeds and brush, set back from the road beyond a sagging chain link fence. The house looked just like the one in Tara’s drawing.

The whole acreage of property around the house was fenced in and the gates in front were closed and chained shut. Beyond the gates there was no discernable driveway, and there were no vehicles parked among the overgrown shrubs and grass that they could see.

Woods continued down the road another half mile. He drove past three empty lots until he came to a piece of land with a rusted doublewide trailer sitting in the middle of it. There were two old pickup trucks parked in the front. He turned around in that driveway and then idled back down the road with his headlights off. He pulled into the empty lot next to the house and his car crunched slowly over the brush and weeds until he parked next to the chain link fence that surrounded the house. The brush and shrubs were so high against the chain link fence that it concealed their car from the house.

Agent Woods shut his car off.

They sat there for a long moment. They listened to the sounds of dusk; the insects buzzing, a dog barking in the distance, someone using a chain saw a mile away, but they didn’t hear any noises coming from the house beyond the fence. They didn’t see any movement in the brush around them.

Woods took the keys out of the ignition and then he popped off the plastic cover from the dome light in the ceiling and yanked out the little light bulb. He got out and pocketed the car keys, trying to be as quiet as possible. He leaned back into the car and stared at Tara.

“Stay here for a minute. I’m going to see if I can find an opening in the fence.”

Tara nodded.

Agent Woods closed the door almost all the way and then he was off and running through the knee-high weeds and grasses. A moment later he was just a shadow moving among the gloom, and then she didn’t see him anymore.

Tara made herself wait in the passenger seat a moment longer, watching out the windshield, before she turned around and looked in the back seat. There was a small suitcase on the rear floorboard behind the driver’s seat and a full garbage bag behind her seat. She glanced back to make sure Woods wasn’t coming back and then she crawled halfway into the back to inspect the garbage bag. It wasn’t tied and she pulled it open a little bit. The garbage bag was full of clothes that looked like they needed to be washed.

And then she saw something among the dirty clothing, a small plastic baggie with an item inside that she recognized. She reached her hand into the pile of dirty clothes and plucked the little baggie out carefully with two fingers of her hand like she was touching something disgusting.

Inside the baggie was a smashed light bulb – it was the same light bulb from her house. The same light bulb that Agent Woods said he was going to try and get a fingerprint from. But he hadn’t turned it in for analysis – he’d left it here in this garbage bag of dirty clothes. He had lied to her.

Tara jumped when her cell phone rang and vibrated. She nearly screamed.

She plopped back down into the passenger seat and checked her phone.

It was Lorie calling.

“Hello,” Tara breathed into the phone as she scanned the brush in the evening gloom, looking for Woods.

“Tara,” Lorie nearly squealed into her ear. “Listen to me very carefully. Where are you right now?”

A gigantic hand of fear began to tighten around Tara’s heart, squeezing her lungs. Her skin felt tingly and her mouth went dry in an instant. Something was wrong. She was used to Lorie’s melodramatics, but this was way beyond that. Lorie was scared.

“I’m with Agent Woods,” Tara told her. “In his car. The killer took Steve out of his apartment and -”

“None of that’s important. Is Agent Woods with you right now? Is he in the car with you?”

Tara looked out at the early evening murk, searching for Woods, but there was no sign of him.

“No, not right now,” she told Lorie. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“You need to get out of that car right now. Wherever you are, you need to run. You need to get away from Woods as fast as you can.”

“What?” Tara asked. She could feel the breath leaving her lungs in a rush. But she’d already known something was very wrong a few seconds before Lorie called. The crushed light bulb in the back of Woods’ car had been the evidence that she’d needed.

“Agent Woods is not who he says he is,” Lorie said.

2.

Tara felt like she’d been slapped. A shock ran through her body and she was instantly tense, her skin tingling even more now. She gripped her cell phone tighter.

“I called my uncle,” Lorie continued quickly. “I asked him to check Agent David Woods out. He looked him up and there is no Agent David Woods. At least not anymore. He’s been dead for two years now.”

“Dead?” Tara said and her voice sounded so far away to her own ears.

“He was murdered in Pennsylvania.”

A small burst of static interrupted Lorie’s voice.

“Where are … right now?” Lorie asked as the static blurred some of her words.

Tara was about to answer but a loud knocking on the passenger window startled her and she nearly screamed. She clicked the hang-up button on her cell phone without thinking about it.

Woods opened the passenger door and stared down at her with his dark eyes.

“Who were you talking to?” he asked as he stood in between the open car door and the night, like he was blocking her from getting out of the car.

“It … it was just … Lorie. Nothing important really.”

“I found a way inside the fence.”

Woods backed up to let Tara get out of the car and he stood in the knee-high grass waiting for her.

Tara wondered for a moment if she should tell him she wanted to wait in the car. She wondered why he wasn’t demanding that she stay in the car. Wouldn’t a real FBI agent tell her to stay here where it was safe? But he was patiently waiting for her to get out and follow him.

And she couldn’t demand to stay in the car now. It would look too suspicious to him.

“Maybe we should wait for some backup,” Tara said to him in a low voice. “Maybe you should call this in now.”

For a moment Woods stared at her like he might suspect something.

“No,” Woods finally whispered. “We don’t have the time. I don’t want to wait and take a chance on Steve getting hurt. And I need to know they are in that house before I call it in.”

Tara thought of Steve.

Steve had been the bait all along. Tara could see it all now. Jeremy had found out about the dead agent – the real David Woods, maybe even murdered him two years ago, and then he took his identity. What better way to get close to her, to worm his way into her life. He must’ve recruited the Reverend, forced him to spy on her, and found out she’d been to the café with Steve. And then he killed the poor Reverend once he didn’t need him anymore. He had taken Steve and lured her out here to this house in the middle of nowhere.

How come she hadn’t seen it coming?

Because he was too powerful. Even now, this close to him, she could feel his dark power practically crushing her. And now that they were alone in this isolated place, he would have time to do anything he wanted.

Was Steve already dead now because his purpose had been served? If he was still alive she couldn’t abandon him now. She had to find out if he was still alive and then she had to find a way to hurt Woods.

She thought about the gun tucked away in Woods’ holster inside his suit coat. If she could just get to that …

She forced the idea out of her mind – she had to be careful with her thoughts around him.

Tara got out of the car and stood on legs that were a little unsteady at first, but they were getting stronger by the second. She was very scared, but there was another feeling building inside of her, a feeling so alien to her that she almost didn’t recognize it at first.

Anger.

Jeremy was standing right in front of her, a half-brother who had tried to kill her when she was a baby, the same person who had murdered her parents, butchered them and took them away from her. He had set all of this up to get her out here. And she’d gone along with all of it. And now she suddenly wanted revenge, and she didn’t want another person to die because of her.

She couldn’t let Jeremy kill her. What would he do next? Who would he go after next? What was he going to do after his ritual was complete? She had to try and stop his killing spree now.

Tara grabbed her cell phone and her purse, about to take it with her, but Woods stopped her.

“Leave your phone here. I don’t want a call coming in while we’re near the house.”

Tara thought about arguing, but she didn’t. Right now the only thing she had going for her was the element of surprise. He didn’t know yet that she knew.

Or did he? her mind whispered.

She had to believe that he didn’t know yet. She needed to use any power she had to keep him pushed away and keep the shiny black fingers of his mind from probing her and discovering that she knew the truth.

Tara set her cell phone down in the center console and then she stood back up and looked at Woods.

There was one other small advantage she still might have. She had something else in her pocket that she could use – the pepper spray that Woods had given her.

3.

Tara followed Woods through the field of weeds. They walked carefully, but the dry snapping of the dry grass sounded so loud in the darkness. Woods showed her the tear in the chain link fence which was about fifty feet down from his sedan. It looked like Woods may have pulled the piece of fence out more, creating a bigger hole for them to squeeze through.

He waited for her, gesturing at her to crawl through.

Tara bent down and squeezed her body through the tear in the fence. She felt the sharp metal burrs of the edge of the chain link tugging at the back of her shirt. For one moment she started to panic, feeling like she was stuck there in the slit in the fence – helpless in front of Woods. But then the fabric of her shirt tore free and she was inside the fence, crawling among the thick and prickly grass and weeds. At least the soil and the brush were dry.

She got to her feet quickly and turned to watch Woods crawl through the hole. He was much bigger than she was, but he seemed to have an easier time pushing his way through the tear in the fence. She thought about kicking him in the chin while he crawled through, kicking at him like a kicker punting a football. With the strength she’d built up from her years of self-defense training, she was fairly certain she could knock him out, perhaps even kill him if her kick landed precisely.

But it was too late. Woods was through the hole and on his feet in a flash. He was much quicker and more agile than she had suspected. He must be hiding a very strong and athletic body underneath his dark suit.

“We’ll walk to the house,” he whispered at her. “When we get there, I want you to wait outside. But before I go inside, I want you to try and reach out to Steve, maybe you can tell exactly where he is.” Woods stood very close to her in the encroaching darkness. “And reach out to the killer.”

Tara nodded and looked across the sea of brownish-green grass and weeds at the dark house in the distance.

She walked towards the house, pushing her legs through the brush that seemed to grab at her legs like millions of tiny little demon hands trying to drag her down into the earth. The dry, scraping sound seemed so loud. Woods walked right behind her, but he seemed to barely make a sound as he walked.

They were at the side of the house, their backs against the rough stucco; the paint was faded and stained with mildew. They stood by a large section of wall that was between two dark windows – the only windows on this side of the home. Neither one of them peeked in through the windows.

It was decision time for Tara. She had to do something soon. If Woods got her inside the house it might be too late.

She glanced at the rear and the front of the house and she noticed what looked like piles of junk near the back of the house, and another pile near the corner by the front of the house. But this side wall of the house they were leaning against was virtually free of junk – except for one thing only a few feet away from her, within easy reach, one thing that she could use: a shovel.

But looking at the shovel gave her the creeps. Why was that shovel here? Was it going to be used later to bury Steve? And to bury her somewhere among this dry brush?

She had to do something right now.

Tara dropped her hand down by her pants, rubbing her hands on her jeans like she was rubbing off the dirt and stickers from the weeds and grasses they had just waded through. She slipped her right hand down into her pocket and plucked out the small canister of pepper spray, palming it, hiding it in her hand.

“What’s wrong?” Woods hissed at her. He had his gun out, clenched in his hand. “What is it?” he asked again.

“I can feel Steve,” Tara whispered as she clutched her pepper spray, keeping it out of Woods’ sight. “I know where he is in the house.”

Woods nodded. “Okay. Where is he?”

“You should know, you son of a bitch!” Tara yelled and aimed the can of pepper spray at him. She pressed the button and for a split second she wondered if Woods had given her an empty can of pepper spray, knowing that she might try and use it on him.

But the spray came out in a steady stream and hit him right in the eyes.

Woods howled and dropped his gun. He brought his fists up to his eyes, trying to knuckle out the burning liquid from his eyes.

Tara didn’t hesitate – she grabbed the shovel that was leaning against the side of the house and she swung it at Woods like a baseball bat.

He never saw it coming. The flat part of the shovel hit him right in the side of the head – if she had turned the blade to its sharp edge, it probably would’ve killed him immediately. The blow knocked Woods to the ground; he fell like a dead weight and made a loud crashing sound, and then his arms and legs splayed out limply. He was motionless.

Tara spotted the gun on the ground. She picked it up and aimed it down at Woods with trembling hands.

But Woods wasn’t moving. He didn’t even seem to be breathing. And now she could see blood pouring out of the side of his head and along the hairline of his forehead. The blood looked almost black in the night.

Oh God, did I kill him?

She kept the gun pointed down at him, her hand shaking, her index finger on the trigger. She was ready to pull the trigger; she wanted to pull the trigger. He had killed her parents. He had tried to kill her. And he killed so many others.

But she couldn’t do it.

She ran down the side of the house to the front. She climbed up onto the front porch and hurried up to the door. She tried the door handle – it was unlocked. She pushed her way in through the door, not worrying about making too much noise now.

She hoped to God that Steve was still alive.

“Steve!” she called out.

She hesitated in the doorway for a moment, listening for any sounds as her eyes adjusted to the darkness inside the house. Something felt wrong here. She could feel the first tentacles of the dark evil reaching out for her and caressing her skin.

Something’s not right about all of this.

But she had to find Steve. It was her fault he was here.

If he’s still alive.

Tara ventured deeper into the front room of the house, which looked like it used to be the living room. There were piles of junk against the far wall of the house where it looked like there might be a fireplace hidden beneath the trash. The floor was made of wood, but it looked splintered and warped in some places. She would have to watch her step.

She saw the remnants of a dining room and kitchen off of the living room. The appliances were all gone, just dark stains on the linoleum floor marking where they used to be. Cabinet doors barely hung by their loose hinges. She made her way through the darkness to an archway that opened up to a wide hallway with closed doors on each side and a closed door at the far end.

“Steve,” she hissed in the darkness, gripping the gun tightly, her finger still on the trigger. She knew that holding the gun should make her feel safe, but it didn’t. The feeling of fear and dread was getting stronger; it was like a tingling feeling on her skin and a buzzing in the back of her mind. She kept glancing behind her, expecting Woods to rush at her through the darkness.

She heard a moan from the first room down the hall on her left. A moan like someone was crying out into tape.

Tara hurried down the hall and entered the first room on the left. And she immediately recognized the room from the photograph – it was exactly the same. Steve sat in the wooden chair at the other end of the room, his hands behind him and the back of the chair, the strips of gray tape plastered across his mouth, his eyes wild with fear and panic. She even saw the camera on a tripod a few steps away from the door, the same camera used to take the photo of him.

“Steve,” she whispered and she couldn’t help smiling. “You’re alive.”

Steve struggled in the chair, kicking his feet, nearly toppling the chair over. He screamed something unintelligible into the tape, his lips trying to move underneath the strips of tape, trying to form words. His eyes were wild as he gestured with his head, like he was trying to point with it at the doorway behind her!

Tara felt the unmistakable tidal wave of fear rise up behind her and she spun around to face the doorway which was just a black rectangle now. She aimed her gun at the darkness, her hands trembling. She waited for Woods to enter the doorway and try to finish the job he’d started. But she had a surprise for him.

This time she wouldn’t hesitate. This time she would pull the trigger and kill him. She would end all of this.

Behind Tara, Steve stood up without a sound – his hands had never been tied. He gently peeled the strips of tape away from his mouth as he crept towards her with a smile.

CHAPTER TWENTY

1.

Tara aimed Woods’ gun at the doorway, waiting for him to pop out of the darkness of the hallway at her, running at her, screaming like a madman. Maybe he would even have the blood-stained shovel with him. But she still had her finger on the trigger; she would be ready for him.

But something seemed wrong here.

She could feel someone right behind her in the room, a sudden dark and suffocating presence. She noticed a little too late that the sound of Steve’s struggling and moaning into the duct tape had ceased. The room was quiet. The whole house was quiet. She could feel breath on the back of her neck.

“Hello, little sister,” Steve whispered from right behind her.

Tara whirled around with the gun in her hands, but Steve was ready for her. He chopped a knife-edged fist down onto her wrists and for a moment her hands went weak and numb and the gun slipped from her fingers.

Before she could react, Steve grabbed her by the throat and threw her against the wall, knocking the camera and tripod down in the process. She hit the wall so hard the breath was forced from her lungs. The back of her head had slammed against the wall and she saw motes of bright dots floating in front of her half-closed eyes.

“I knew you’d find me, Tara,” he whispered into her face, his breath foul and sour, his eyes wide with insanity. “I knew you were finally ready.”

Tara struggled in his iron grip, but she couldn’t get away. He threw her across the room into the wooden chair that he’d been “tied” to. She tried to catch herself, but she had been flung too fast and she felt the sharp wooden edges of the chair crack into her ribs and one of her shins. The pain was instantaneous, and she couldn’t help crying out.

She collapsed down onto the wood floor with the chair clattering around somewhere near her. She could only lay there for a moment and stare up at the ceiling, trying to slow all of this down; everything was happening too fast.

Tara had sparred with people before during her self-defense and karate classes, even men twice her size. But nothing had prepared her for the insane strength this man possessed, the quickness and agility of his movements, the precise delivery of his punches.

It was like he knew what she was going to do before she even did it.

And now she could feel that blanket of darkness all around her, pressing in on her, just like it had in her night terrors all these years, it was the fear that had driven her out of her bed in the middle of the night to run for safety, anywhere away from this dark presence.

But she couldn’t run now. All the years of trying to be ready for the inevitable meeting with this darkness hadn’t prepared her for him.

She heard his boots stomp across the floorboards, coming right for her. She felt his hands grab her, his fingers clutching at her hair, holding her tight. She tried to jerk her head away, but his hand gripped her hair too tightly, intertwined in it.

“Thanks for taking care of Woods for me,” Steve whispered at her, and his voice sounded pleasant, almost conversational. “He’s been a pain in my ass for quite some time. Did you like the shovel I left for you?”

Tara tried to drive a knee into Steve (he wasn’t Steve – he was Jeremy), but he turned to the side as her blow glanced off of his hip, already prepared for her attack.

“You still don’t understand how powerful I am, do you?” he told her through clenched teeth. He jerked her head with the handful of hair he still held, and she felt a sharp pain knife through the side of her neck.

“But I need more power,” he told her as he jerked her head again. She was afraid he was going to break her neck – it was all she could do to hold her neck muscles rigid to fight his violent twists. “I’ve been devouring souls, taking their power, getting stronger. All for you.”

A thought pierced Tara’s mind – the pepper spray! Did she still have it? Hadn’t she stuffed it back down into her pocket after she’d sprayed Woods with it?

She patted her front pants pocket frantically with her fingers and felt the bulge of the small can in there. She slipped her hand down into her pocket and pulled out the tiny canister, her thumb already on the little lever, ready to spray it into this monster’s eyes.

But as she raised it towards him, he slapped it out of her hand easily and it flew across the empty room and landed on the floor.

“Don’t be afraid,” he told her. “You’re not going to die. You’re going to live forever inside of me.”

He wrapped an arm around her throat, nearly cutting off her breathing and his other hand was still tangled in her hair. He dragged her out of the room easily even though she thrashed and kicked.

2.

Woods lay in the dirt and grass near the house. Blood leaked out of the wound in his forehead, soaking into the ground.

He didn’t move as the sounds of struggle from inside the house invaded the night air. The sun was almost below the horizon now, blazing out with pinks and blues. And on the other horizon a full moon was already in the night sky, shining down on the horrors about to happen with a bright, blank face.

3.

Jeremy dragged Tara down the hall to what used to be the large master bedroom. The bedroom was empty except for one wooden table in the middle of the room. Groups of different colored candles were collected in the corners in glass jars waiting to be lit. Strange symbols were painted on the walls around the room and a pentagram was painted in the middle of the table in dark red paint.

Or was it blood?

As Tara was dragged inside the room she saw a dark shape right next to the doorway and it took her mind a moment to understand what she was seeing. It looked like a man, but it took her foggy mind a few seconds to understand that the man was hung upside down, his feet tied together and attached to the metal ring in the ceiling.

She recognized the layers of the man’s clothing that hung down around him; she recognized the scraggly hair and beard. It was the Reverend, only he no longer had his wooden cross – that was tucked away in Woods’ car. The Reverend’s throat had been slashed and there was a pool of dark blood at the bottom of his head soaking into the floorboards.

“Our witness to the ritual,” Jeremy said with glee as he slammed Tara down onto the table like she was a straw doll.

She landed on the table top with a thump, and again her breath was driven from her body for a moment. She tried to inhale, but it didn’t seem like her lungs wanted to work. She heard her own breath wheezing as her lungs burned.

Before she even realized what Jeremy was doing, he had her right wrist tied to the table with a rope. She tried to fight back as he tied her other wrist, but he crushed a hammer fist down onto her forehead and she nearly blacked out.

Maybe it would be better to black out.

Tara pulled against the ropes, but they were tied to the legs of the table, her arms stretched out painfully. She lifted her head up a little, and through her blurry vision she saw Jeremy move down to the end of the table and start to tie her right ankle down to the table.

He watched her, smiling.

How had she not known it was him the whole time? How had he blocked her? Was he that powerful?

He grabbed her ankle and pulled her leg down so hard she thought he might have popped her hip out of its socket. He tied the rope around her ankle, the rope biting into her skin.

“I need to get the rest of the ingredients for the ritual out of my truck,” he told her. “Powerful ingredients for the ritual. Virgin blood mixed with the ashes of the beloved dead. My ceremonial mask. Oh wait until you see it, Tara. It’s taken me years to perfect.”

But then he stopped and smiled like a thought had just occurred to him.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “You’ve already seen my mask, haven’t you? In your dream.”

He tied her other ankle to the table, her body stretched out spread-eagle, her tendons and muscles burning with pain.

“You’ve only seen what I’ve wanted you to see.”

He stood beside the table and stared down at her in the semi-darkness, nearly a shadow himself hovering next to her.

“The moon is full and now we can begin the ritual. We’ll have all night.” He looked at the wall on the other side of the doorway like he was considering something. “Maybe we could use another witness.”

4.

Woods got to his feet. His legs were so shaky and his mind was swimming on the edge of consciousness. His eyes burned and it was painful to even open them all the way.

What happened?

But then the memories came back to him in a flash as painful as his stinging eyes.

Tara had sprayed him with pepper spray – maybe the same pepper spray he had given her. And then she’d hit him with something. He saw the shovel on the ground in his blurry vision. She’d hit him with a shovel.

He brought a tentative hand up to his forehead and felt the warm blood. Even though it hurt, he touched the wound on the side of his forehead that ran into his hair. The skin was split and bleeding. It probably needed stitches, but it wasn’t life-threatening. He moved his hand down and felt the blood soaked on the side of his neck and the shoulder of his suit jacket.

Why had she attacked him? He tried to remember what she’d said. “You should know, you son of a bitch.” And then she’d sprayed him with the pepper spray and he went blind. And then he heard a whoosh of air, felt an explosion of pain, and then he was out.

For some reason she thought he was the killer. She’d found something out. Maybe her friend had said something to her on the phone. She had seemed different after that phone call.

Jeremy. He had set this up. But how? Had Jeremy somehow made Tara believe that he had something to do with all of this? Was that why she had attacked him?

Woods didn’t have time to worry about any of that. Right now he needed to get to Tara and Steve before it was too late – the killer had to be in the house with them at this moment.

But Steve was probably long dead. He’d only been the bait to get them here. Jeremy must have been the Reverend all along, pretending to be a homeless person so he could get close to Tara. Woods could see it all now.

He took a step towards the house and nearly dropped back down to his knees. He was so weak and shaky. Was it from blood loss? Or maybe a slight brain injury.

But he had to fight it.

His gun? He patted his suit coat, but it wasn’t in the shoulder holster. He had been holding it, he remembered. He must’ve dropped it. He glanced around at the ground with his watering eyes, but he didn’t see it anywhere.

Tara must’ve grabbed it.

He heard the sounds of struggle from inside the house. A crashing blow like someone had been body-slammed down onto a floor or a table.

Maybe Tara was still alive. Maybe he had a chance.

He rubbed his eyes again and nearly groaned with pain. He knew the stinging from the pepper spray would subside a little in a few minutes, but it would take hours for his eyes to completely recover. But he didn’t have hours. He might not even have minutes.

Woods wiped his eyes one more time as he turned the corner of the house to the front porch. He crept up the few wooden steps and made his way to the front door that looked like a yawning black mouth inviting him inside the belly of a giant monster.

He entered and stood just inside the wrecked living room for a moment, letting his watering eyes adjust as best as they could to the darker interior. But at least the light of the full moon shined in through the windows which had no curtains or drapes blocking them, and that helped him see a little better.

A thump crashed from somewhere in the house. And then Woods thought he heard someone talking. It was a man’s voice. The killer. Jeremy.

Woods hurried through the living room, passing the stacks of old junk and trash against the wall. He thought of looking for a weapon, but he wasn’t sure if he had time.

He came to the first doorway to a nearly empty room. But it was a room he recognized – he saw the overturned camera and tripod, and he saw the wood chair that Steve had been tied to in the photo – it was tipped over on its side near a corner.

Steve wasn’t in the room. He was probably already dead.

Something on the floor caught his attention, a dark object near the baseboard on the wall. He had almost missed it.

It was his gun.

He bent down and scooped it up while another wave of dizziness threatened to topple him. Tara had taken his gun, and now it was here on the floor. She must have been attacked, the gun knocked away from her. There was a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach now. Was he too late?

He stood up and wiped at his eyes again. The pain was subsiding just a little, but his eyes wouldn’t stop watering and it was hard to see through his blurry vision.

“Agent Woods?”

Woods heard the sound of Steve’s voice.

“Steve?” he said. “You’re okay?”

“Yeah, Tara got in here and untied me, but that crazy bastard’s got her now.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

1.

Thank God Steve was okay, Woods thought. He held his gun in one hand, and wiped at his eyes with the other one, trying to see Steve in the darkness.

“Where are they?” Woods asked.

“They’re in the last room at the end of the hall.” Steve’s voice choked up a little. “He came out of nowhere and grabbed Tara. I didn’t know what to do. I should of …”

It sounded like Steve was going to cry.

“It’s okay,” Woods said. “I’ll get him.”

“Are you going to call for backup?” Steve asked with hope in his voice.

“They’re on their way,” Woods lied. “I want you to go back outside and wait for me there.”

2.

Tara writhed on the wood table in the master bedroom. She pulled as hard as she could on the ropes but they were tied too tight and the rope was too strong; the more she struggled, the more the ropes bit into the flesh of her wrists and ankles. She glanced over at the dark figure hanging upside down against the wall beside the doorway – the man was just a black mass in the darkness now, and thankfully she couldn’t make out much detail anymore.

She looked around the room at some of the strange symbols painted on the walls. Were they demonic symbols or were they symbols her crazy half-brother had made up himself? Who knew?

He said he needed to get the rest of the ingredients for the ritual out of his truck. She hadn’t seen his truck – it must be parked behind the house or out in the brush somewhere. His pickup truck had been parked in front of his apartment when they were there earlier, but he must’ve circled back and got it while they were on the wild goose chase looking for the Reverend who was most likely already dead by then.

The ingredients for his ritual: virgin blood mixed with the ashes of a beloved dead person. She didn’t know where he’d gotten the ashes from, but she was sure the blood had been emptied from Jen’s body. And the other things he’d taken: Greg’s skin, and other things from past murders, the body parts sewn into his ceremonial mask.

But first Jeremy was going to get Woods’ body and string him up on the other side of the door and use him as another “witness.”

Oh God, she’d been wrong about Woods. She’d hit him with the shovel so hard he was probably dead, or at least still unconscious and helpless. Jeremy would go back to the first bedroom and get the gun and then he would go outside and put a bullet in Woods’ brain as he lay there unconscious. Or he might not even use the gun, not wanting to alert any neighbors with the sound; he might just beat Woods’ head to a bloody pulp with the shovel, finish the job she had started. Or use the shovel’s blade to chop Woods’ head off.

She squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to think about that, but she couldn’t help it. She had caused all of this. She had played right into Jeremy’s trap the whole time.

But Lorie had told her that Agent David Woods was dead. He’d been murdered.

Lorie wouldn’t lie or make something up. It didn’t make sense.

So who was Woods?

It didn’t matter now. Once Jeremy finished Woods off, he would be back in here to begin this insane ritual of his. What was he going to do to her? There was nothing off-limits for him. She’d seen the terrible things in her dreams that he’d done: the drained blood, the skin peeled away from flesh, the body parts mutilated and hacked off.

Her breathing was getting quicker and quicker, a panic attack coming on. She wished she could hyperventilate and pass out. She didn’t want to die; she didn’t want to suffer hours or even days of torture in this abandoned house.

She heard a sound from down the hallway. It sounded like two men talking in hushed tones, like they didn’t want to be overheard. One of the men was Jeremy, she was sure of that. The other one had to be Woods. They didn’t sound like they were arguing or fighting.

Woods was awake and inside the house!

But why wasn’t Woods attacking Jeremy? Why wasn’t he killing Jeremy and trying to get to her? Was he a part of this somehow? The thought turned her stomach even more.

No, her mind screamed as the obvious answer came to her from the fog of her drowsy mind.

Woods doesn’t know that Steve is the killer!

She lifted her head up and screamed as loudly as she could, but her panic attack had driven the breath from her body and all that came out was a wheeze.

Come on, she told herself. Fight it! This is your last chance, your last hope.

She swallowed a lungful of air, and then she screamed as loudly as she ever had in her life.

“Woods!! Steve is the killer!! STEVE IS JEREMY!!”

3.

As soon as Tara screamed from the other bedroom, Jeremy attacked.

Woods thought he may have heard the swing of the punch whistling through the air a split second before he was hit. And then he felt the blast of pain on the side of his face, the same side of his face that Tara had hit him with the shovel. He was rocked back, but he didn’t fall to the floor, and he didn’t drop his gun.

Why was Steve attacking him?

Woods heard Tara screaming from somewhere deeper in the house.

“Steve is the killer! Steve is Jeremey!!”

He tried to make sense of these thoughts through his pain-filled mind. But Steve had been tied to a chair. He’d seen it in the photograph. Steve had been taken from his apartment. He’d seen the dishes on the counter, the scrambled eggs on the floor.

But he didn’t have time to figure this out. Right now Steve was trying to kill him. He had to believe Tara’s words.

Tara kept on screaming, repeating the same words, and at least that meant she was still alive.

That meant he still had a chance to save her and to kill Jeremy.

Woods backed up and he felt a kick that just grazed the gun in his hand, almost knocking it loose, and then the kick pounded his ribs. He didn’t really see it; he couldn’t see anything except blurry dark shapes through his watering eyes.

He staggered back from the kick and his back bumped into a wall. He raised his gun and squeezed the trigger, shooting twice, hoping he was hitting the son of a bitch. The gunshots sounded so loud in the small room.

He opened his eyes as wide as he could and he saw a dark and blurry shape bolting away.

Steve was running.

Had he shot him?

Woods didn’t hesitate, he ran after him, out across the hall and into the next room. He shot three more times into the dark room. His whole field of vision was dark right now, but he could make out a blurry rectangle at the other end of the room – the window that Steve was crawling out of.

One more shot – a deafening noise.

Woods ran through the darkness towards the moonlit window and nearly fell face-first to the floor after tripping over some piece of furniture in the middle of the floor. He got to the open window and couldn’t see anything in the darkness.

A moment later he heard a vehicle start up. It sounded powerful, and then it was driving past the house – but it was on the other side of the house.

Woods couldn’t make it to the other room in time to get off a shot.

He ran back out to the living room, to the front door which was still wide open. He stood in the doorway; his arms raised, the gun in his hand, his watering eyes trying to fix on the blurry shape speeding towards the chain link gate in the distance. All he could really see in his watery vision were two bright, blurry red blobs that were the tail lights of the truck.

He almost squeezed the trigger – but the truck was too far away. He heard the truck crash through the gates and then fishtail out onto the dirt road. And then it was gone.

Woods lowered his gun and let out a long breath. The side of his head was throbbing now and even though the stinging in his eyes had subsided a little, it still hurt like hell.

A wave of dizziness washed over him for a moment, and he had to lean against the door frame to keep from falling over.

Just keep it together, he told himself. Need to find Tara.

4.

Tara struggled against the ropes. She lifted her head up and stared at the doorway that led out to the hall, trying not to look at the dead man hanging upside down beside it. She could imagine the Reverend sitting up suddenly, his eyes popping open and staring at her.

She hadn’t heard anything in the house for the last few minutes. She’d heard the fighting, the gunshots, and then a vehicle speeding away.

And now it was dead silent in the house.

Finally, she heard footsteps coming down the hall, approaching the room. The footfalls were heavy, and they almost sounded like they were dragging a bit.

It was Woods. It had to be. He had to have been the one shooting. Right? Or maybe Steve got a hold of the gun and he had done the shooting. Maybe Woods had run for his vehicle. Maybe he had gone for help.

“Woods?”

No answer. But the footsteps were getting closer to the doorway.

And then Woods stood in the doorway for a moment like he was waiting for a wave of light-headedness and nausea to pass before he could take another step.

Then another terrible thought occurred to Tara. What if Woods passed out? What if he walked a few more steps and then passed out on the floor? What if he was hemorrhaging in his brain right now? What if he died a few steps away from this table before he could free her?

And then what if Jeremy came back?

What if Jeremy could see all of this through her eyes?

If Woods passed out or died, Jeremy would see it. He would come back.

A new explosion of panic erupted inside of Tara, but she forced herself to remain calm.

“Woods, are you okay?”

Woods didn’t answer. After a few attempts, he managed to slide his gun into the shoulder holster inside his suit coat and then he stumbled over to the table like he was drunk.

“You have to untie me before he comes back,” Tara said.

“You hit me,” he grumbled as he stood beside the table.

“I’m sorry. I thought you were the killer. I thought you were Jeremy.”

Woods’ eyes were shut, and they looked a little swollen. He felt along the table and his hands touched her wrist and the rope around it.

“Can you see?” she asked and felt a twinge of guilt about the pepper spray she’d blinded him with.

“Not really,” he answered as he fumbled with the rope around her wrist.

Great! The one person I need to rescue me is nearly blind and close to passing out.

“You have to hurry, Woods. Please.”

Woods nodded and he fiddled with the knot on the rope some more. She thought of asking him if he had something to cut the ropes with, but then the thought of him using a knife with his blurry eyesight might not be a good idea.

And then she felt the rope loosen around her wrist.

She pulled her hand away as the rope fell. It felt so good to be able to move her arm again.

“My legs,” she told him as she stretched her arm and torso as much as she could to reach her other wrist, but her bound legs were preventing her from stretching far enough.

Woods moved more quickly now. He untied her right ankle and she felt like her body was a spring that had been loosened. She was almost free now. She could reach her other wrist more easily and she plucked at the knot with her fingers which were a little numb from the ropes, her fingertips buzzing with pain as the blood circulated back into them.

But she fought through the pain and numbness – panic taking over. She managed to untie the knot and work her other hand out of the tiny noose.

She sat up just as Woods untied her other ankle.

She hopped off the table and down to the floor a little too quickly. She had to stand still for a moment, leaning against the table and biting back a scream as the pins and needles stabbed at her feet and ankles from lack of circulation.

“You okay?” Woods asked from the darkness.

Tara nodded. “Yeah.”

“Who’s that?” Woods nodded at the Reverend.

“He’s the Reverend, the one we were looking for earlier. The one who wore the wooden cross.”

“I need to get out of here,” Woods said, and he was already heading for the door, rushing past the upside-down Reverend. “I need to get back outside.”

5.

Tara followed Woods out of the house, and then she followed him through the half acre of brush towards the chain link fence. She stopped him after they had crawled through the hole in the fence.

“I want to tell you why I hit you,” Tara said, halting him with a hand on his arm before he started walking to his car.

He turned and looked at her, swaying just a bit on his feet.

“Lorie called me. That’s who I was on the phone with when you came back to the car. She said you weren’t Agent Woods. She had her uncle, he’s a detective, look up the name. She told me that Agent David Woods was dead. He was murdered a year ago in Pennsylvania.”

Woods knuckled at his eyes again.

“Agent David Woods was my brother,” he told her. “Jeremy killed him. There was never any proof that Jeremy did it, but I knew. And I’ve been tracking him ever since.”

Woods stared at Tara and wiped at his eyes again, trying to focus his eyes on her. “I’m sorry I lied to you. I had to. I needed your help. You never would’ve helped me if I hadn’t lied to you.”

“You knew about Jeremy?” Tara asked.

Woods sighed like he had some bad news for her. “After my brother was killed, I began to work the case myself. Once Jeremy had an alibi, it was like the FBI didn’t care anymore. But I couldn’t give up. It was all I could think about. I tried to find Jeremy. I used every favor I had with my brother’s co-workers to get as much information about him as I could.”

Tara just listened. She remembered asking Woods to look up information about Jeremy earlier in the day. But he had lied to her. He’d kept the knowledge of Jeremy to himself.

Woods just stared at her with blood staining the side of his face and his eyes watering like he was crying.

“You believed Jeremy was the killer,” Tara said. “And you tracked him. But you were always a step behind. But you must’ve found out he tried to kill me when I was a baby. And you figured he would find me again, try again to finish the job.”

Woods only nodded.

“So you came down her and waited, and used me like bait.” Tara could feel her anger rising again.

“No, not bait,” Woods answered quickly. “I still had a friend of my brother’s in the FBI, the only person who would still help me. He dug into your past and he found reports with the Tampa Police Department, reports about you trying to help them with your psychic powers. I went back over the other murder cases again and again, digging into their pasts and I saw the connections. Jeremy was going after psychically sensitive people because he could read them like a roadmap, he could tell everything they were going to do, he could always be one step ahead of them the whole time. And then he could take the things he wanted from his victims for …” Woods gestured at the shack, “…whatever it is he’s doing here.”

Tara didn’t say anything for a moment.

“I just need to find him,” Woods said. “He murdered my brother and I just wanted to find him. No one would help me.”

“Jeremy believes that every person he kills makes him stronger,” Tara said. “He thinks he absorbs their power or life-force, or whatever.”

“I never doubted your psychic abilities,” Woods said and took a step closer to Tara. “I believed in you. And I thought you might be able to tell when your half-brother was near. I wanted to be there before he got to you, to protect you.”

“But your main goal was to wait until he found me. Let me lead him like I was some kind of beacon. And then what?”

Woods didn’t answer.

“Obviously you weren’t going to arrest him. You’re not even a cop. You were going to kill him, weren’t you?”

Woods nodded. “He’ll never be caught. The police can’t even get close to him. And even if they did catch him, then he’d probably strike an insanity deal.” Woods was silent for a moment, breathing heavy. “Yes, it’s true. I want revenge. I want to kill him for what he did to my brother.”

And my parents, Tara thought. She’d felt Woods’ same rage only hours earlier.

“You’ve seen him now, Tara. You can lock on to him now. You’re the only chance of ever catching him.”

Tara didn’t answer.

Woods walked to his car and put his hands down on the hood, leaning over it for a moment, like he needed something to support his body, like he might throw up at any moment. “I understand if you hate me,” he said without looking at her. “I understand if you don’t want to help me. If you want to turn me in to the police.”

Tara glanced around at the darkness all around them. She listened to the silent night, expecting to hear sirens in the distance soon. The police would be here – someone nearby had to have heard the gunshots. But then again, maybe gunshots were a normal sound out here in the boonies.

She walked over to Woods and held her hand out to him. “Give me your car keys.”

Woods looked at her with his watery, red-rimmed eyes. “Why?”

“Because you can’t drive in your condition.”

He dug his keys out of his pocket and handed them to her.

“You’re right,” she told him. “The police will never be able to get Jeremy.”

“Thank you, Tara.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

1.

Tara drove to a cheap motel off of Highway 60, still well outside of the city limits of Tampa. They had stopped at a Dollar General store on the way and Woods waited in the car while Tara bought a T-shirt, sweat pants, and hoodie sweatshirt for him. She also bought a bottle of the strongest painkillers they had, alcohol, bandages and tape, a twelve pack of beer and case of bottled water.

She checked into the motel room while Woods waited in the car. She was pretty sure a motel clerk might remember a bleeding man checking into the motel room so she wanted him out of sight right now.

They got a room on the first floor at the back side of the two story motel. She backed Woods’ car into a parking space a few doors down from their room; the motel was only about half full so there were plenty of available parking spaces. It was only about eight thirty and Tara wanted to call her aunt and make sure she was okay. She also wanted to call Lorie.

But she wanted to take care of Woods first.

Woods wanted to go after Jeremy right then, but he was in no shape to be doing anything at this moment. First he needed to get cleaned up and rest. And then they needed to make some kind of plan.

As soon as they got inside the motel room, Tara brought the bags of clothes and medical supplies inside and locked the door. She was worried Woods might be seriously injured and she suggested that he should see a doctor. Woods refused, but he at least let her shine a light into his eyes to see if he had a concussion. He seemed okay to her.

He told her he was going to take a shower.

In the shower, he let the hot water rinse the blood and dirt away. He winced as the scalding hot water pelted the wound at the side of his head, but he toughed it out. After his fifteen minute shower, he toweled off and dressed only in the pair of sweat pants that Tara had bought him at the dollar store. He remembered her going in and then it seemed like a second later she was back with a small shopping cart of supplies. She had told him not to go to sleep – she was afraid he might have a concussion – and he had tried his best not to, but he thought he might have dozed off for a little while.

While Woods was in the bathroom, Tara sat on the bed and called her Aunt Katie and told her to stay in her hotel room. Katie promised that she would stay. Tara tried once again to convince her aunt to take a taxi to the airport and go back to Boston for a little while, but her aunt, as stubborn as ever, refused to leave while this was going on.

She was about to call Lorie next, but Woods came out of the bathroom wearing nothing but the pair of jogging pants.

Tara’s breath caught in her throat for a moment, and she was sure that Woods, even in his weakened state, had noticed her look.

She looked away quickly, embarrassed that she had stared so long at his body. He was as hard and lean as she had imagined. The jogging pants hung easily on his narrow hips. His dark hair was still spikey from the shower and it looked like he had combed it back as best he could with his fingers.

“Come and sit here on the bed,” she said as she jumped to her feet, suddenly filled with nervous energy. She clicked on the lamp next to the bed. She kept the drapes shut and she had every lock on the motel door secured.

Woods sat down on the edge of the bed. He had taken a fistful of painkillers and washed them down with a bottle of beer before the shower. He opened a second bottle of beer and he looked like he was feeling a little better, the cocktail of the Aleve and alcohol easing his pain a little.

Tara got the bottle of alcohol and some cotton balls from the dresser that the TV sat on. She stood in front of him, her hands shaking a little as she drenched the cotton balls with the alcohol.

“This is probably going to sting a little,” she said.

“Hold on, then,” Woods said and downed the rest of his beer in a few swallows.

Tara smiled. “Are you ready now?”

“I’m anesthetized,” he said, and his words were a little slurred.

She daubed at the wound on the side of his head and he flinched a little. She had to admit that the wound did not look nearly as bad since he’d had a shower. A lot of the wound was hidden in his dark hair. His eyes were still a little red, but at least he could see now.

“I never thanked you for saving my life,” Tara said.

Woods looked up at her, staring into her eyes.

“Thanks,” she said and her voice sounded a little husky to her own ears. She hadn’t meant it to come out like that. She cleared her throat quickly.

But for a moment, she stared into his dark eyes and imagined that he wanted her as much as she wanted him right now. For a moment she almost sank down beside him into bed and grabbed on to his body, holding him. And for a moment she almost smothered him with a kiss.

But she turned away and walked back to the dresser at the foot of the bed and threw the cotton balls away in a little waste basket. She screwed the cap back on the bottle of alcohol.

Woods watched her with sleepy eyes.

“I got some bandages,” she said over her shoulder. “But it looks like most of the wound is in your hair.”

She heard heavy breathing. She turned around and saw that Woods had stretched out on the bed and he was breathing deeply, his eyes closed. She stared at his body for a long moment, wondering what it would be like to lie down next to him and hold on to him. She fantasized for a split second about some kind of future relationship between them.

But then the thought of her night terrors crashed her back to reality and she dismissed the idea quickly as sudden tears stung her eyes. She had to be strong. This attraction to Woods was just because of the thrill of danger and the near-death experience that they had been through tonight. That was all. After this was all over, Woods would go back to whatever life he had before in whatever town he lived in.

And Tara would go back to her own life.

She grabbed her cell phone and unlocked the locks on the door carefully. She glanced at Woods, but the sound hadn’t disturbed him at all. She made sure she had her room keycard, and then she went outside to call Lorie.

2.

Tara didn’t like being outside at night by herself. She could imagine Jeremy out there in the darkness somewhere watching her. But she didn’t want to talk on the phone in the motel room while Woods was sleeping – he needed his rest.

She walked from their motel room door down to Woods’ car and leaned against it as she dialed Lorie’s cell phone number.

The night was kind of cool, but not cold. It was dark, but this area of the parking lot was well-lit. She kept glancing around as she held the phone up to her ear, but she didn’t see anyone else moving around out here. The parking lot was only about half-full, and most of the windows of the motel rooms were dark.

Lorie answered the phone before her voice-mail kicked in.

Tara told Lorie about Woods, and what had happened with Steve, who she now knew was really her half-brother Jeremy. But Tara didn’t go into detail about who Steve really was, the important thing now was that she knew Steve was the killer. Tara asked Lorie to tell her uncle the truth about Woods and to get her uncle to back off of Woods and concentrate on finding Steve. She gave Lorie the address of the abandoned house that they had been at earlier. Maybe there was some kind of evidence there that could help her uncle.

Lorie said she would call her uncle right away.

They hung up with each other and Tara dialed her aunt’s cell phone, but it went to her voicemail. Why wasn’t Aunt Katie answering her phone? Maybe she was in the shower. Or maybe she went to grab a bite to eat or a drink. She was sure her aunt was okay, but she couldn’t get the feeling of dread out of her mind now after all that had happened tonight. She left a message for her aunt to call her back as soon as she got back in.

She stood beside Woods’ car for a moment longer, staring out at the sea of pavement in the parking lot that stretched away into the darkness. She wondered where Jeremy had gone to. She wondered what he was going to do next. She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to reach out with her mind, but all she got was a black wall.

She was too tired now, and she felt like she needed rest as much as Woods did.

3.

Lorie got off the phone with Tara and she looked at Mike.

Mike had just entered the room; he couldn’t help overhearing the alarm in her voice.

“What is it?” Mike asked. “Is your friend okay?”

“Yeah, for now. She was almost killed tonight, her and Woods.” Lorie let out a deep breath. “And she knows who the killer is now. It’s her next door neighbor, Steve.”

“Her neighbor?”

“Yeah. He must’ve been watching her for a while and waited until a unit was available in her complex. He was right beside her the whole time. Just watching her. Waiting.” She shook her head. “Oh God, I talked to that guy.”

Mike came over and wrapped and arm around Lorie’s shoulders and pulled her close to him. “You’re okay. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“I tried to fix Tara up with that guy,” Lorie said with horror.

“You didn’t know,” Mike told her.

Lorie pulled away from Mike suddenly. He stepped back.

Mike was beginning to get used to Lorie’s overdramatic flare for everything – it was one of the things he loved about her, her passion, her emotions worn on her sleeve for all to see, her grandiose expressions.

“I need to call my uncle. I’ve got to straighten out a mess I started.”

4.

As Lorie called her uncle, Tara went back into the motel room and entered as quietly as she could. She locked all of the locks on the door and set her keycard by the TV. She turned out the lamp next to Woods and covered him up with a blanket from the bottom of the bed.

She set the alarm on her phone for five o’clock in the morning. As soon as Woods got some rest, she wanted to go and check on her aunt. She left the light on in the bathroom and she lay down on the bed beside Woods. She could go lay in the other bed, but she wanted to lay down beside him for a little bit. He was asleep; he would never know that she had snuggled up beside him for a while.

She felt safe for the first time in a long time. Woods was a strong man and he wouldn’t hesitate to protect her. And he wanted the same thing she wanted, to rid society of this monster who stalked the night.

Tara had never been sure if she could kill anyone. She had always wanted to kill the man who had murdered her parents, but if that time came, she wasn’t sure she could do it. And she had proven that to herself earlier tonight when she had aimed the gun down at Woods – she hadn’t been able to pull the trigger. She shuddered at the thought … if she had pulled that trigger …

She didn’t want to think about what could have happened.

But after tonight, after looking into Jeremy’s eyes, after feeling the evil and darkness coming from him, she wanted to believe that she could kill him if she had to.

She just wanted to close her eyes for a few minutes and then she would move over to the other bed.

Tara closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

5.

Aunt Katie left her cell phone in her hotel room when she went down to the restaurant/bar that was in the lobby. She had only planned to be down there for half an hour at the most.

She ordered a fried fish and fries basket. She drank a cold bottle of Budweiser before her dinner and then one more when the food arrived. The beer tasted good with the greasy fried food.

After she was done with her meal, she went to the bar and sat on one of the stools. The beers had wetted her appetite for another drink – something a little stronger. She had always had a weakness for alcohol, she knew that. She had tried to quit over the years, but she had compromised and decided to cut way back. There were many nights when she didn’t drink anything. But then there were some nights when she liked to reward herself with a few drinks.

And tonight she was worried about Tara, more worried than she’d been in a long time. But the last phone call she’d gotten from Tara had set her mind at ease.

Tara had been face-to-face with Jeremy and she had gotten away from him. And now she was getting the police involved. That was the best thing; let the police handle this while Tara was safe in a motel room with Woods.

Katie wished that they would’ve been able to come to this motel and stay with her, but Tara said Woods needed some rest and medical attention.

The bartender, a young man who introduced himself as Ray, glided up to her and asked what the lady would be drinking this evening.

“Vodka and tonic,” she told him with a seductive smile.

He smiled back, but it was false, she could tell. He was nearly half her age.

The bar was almost empty. A couple had shared some kind of appetizer over some martini-looking drinks. And then they were off, probably up to their room for some headboard-banging sex, Katie thought.

She ordered another drink.

As she finished her second drink a man sat down next to her at the bar. He smiled at her. He ordered a drink for himself and a third one for Katie.

They talked for a few moments as Katie downed her third drink and the man nursed his.

“I need to go out for a quick smoke,” Katie said.

“I’ll go with you,” the man said.

The man was a lot younger than she was. He was a tall, good-looking man with a strong and lean body. He had blond hair and the darkest eyes.

When they stepped outside, Katie lit her cigarette and introduced herself. “My name’s Kate. Everyone calls me Katie.”

“My name’s Steve,” the man said and gently shook the hand she offered.

Katie dropped her cigarette and stared into the man’s dark eyes. There had been something nagging at her about the man as soon as he sat down, something remotely familiar, but the alcohol had clouded her senses. But now she recognized those dark eyes – she’d seen them a long time ago.

Steve wasn’t smiling anymore.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

1.

After Lorie called Detective Perry, he got up out of his chair. He had been settled down for the night in his recliner, about to watch a college football game. He’d had a few beers already, but not too many.

And it didn’t matter – after Lorie’s phone call he’d sobered up completely.

The first thing he did was call the station to get a search warrant for Steve’s apartment. He knew that the warrant would take at least until the morning, so the next phone call he made was to Jackson.

Jackson was home with his family, but this was business and he was ready to go to the abandoned house with Perry on the condition that he drove. He wasn’t in the mood for a mad dash down Highway 60 in Perry’s car.

Perry got dressed and shrugged into his shoulder holster. He slipped his .45 into it and made sure he had a few extra clips with him. He grabbed his heavy Maglite flashlight and tested it. He attached his cell phone to his belt and slipped his jacket on. Then he made sure his cat had plenty of food and water. His neighbor knew that if he didn’t come back home for more than a day, then she could come into his house with the spare key he’d given her to make sure his cat was okay.

The cat, an ornery Siamese, rubbed against his leg almost like she could tell he was going somewhere dangerous and might not return – she wasn’t usually this affectionate.

“I’ll be okay, Sam,” he told her. He’d named her Samantha, but he always called her Sam. She didn’t like table food – she only ate Meow Mix cat food. She fought off any dogs that came around and she didn’t like to be petted for very long, maybe a few minutes, and then she’d nip at him to let him know that she’d had enough.

She was ornery – just like Perry.

Jackson arrived fifteen minutes later and they drove to the address Lorie had given to him.

2.

Perry and Jackson pulled up to the gate of the abandoned house; the gates were wide open, like a car or truck had plowed right through them. The house was set back on two acres of brush and trees. There were some other residences within a mile or so, but for the most part this house was isolated. The nearest neighbors were run-down homes or trailers, the large yards littered with cars and car parts, kids’ toys, and neglected pets. Perry would’ve thought someone might have reported the sound of a vehicle crashing through a fence and the gunshots earlier.

But maybe not out here.

Jackson pulled his car in through the gates and they drove through the weeds and grass up to the house, driving beside the ruts left behind by the vehicle that had sped out of here earlier.

They parked in front of the house and the headlights shined right on the front porch. The front door was ajar. They sat in the car for a moment, letting the engine run, looking for any movement from inside the house.

On the way to the house Perry told Jackson that he hadn’t called this one in – they would be here on their own with no search warrant and no backup. He gave Jackson a brief report of what his niece had told him about Tara’s next door neighbor being the killer and what he’d tried to do to Tara. If everything Tara said was true, then he would call it in; but he wasn’t going to waste manpower, or worse, be embarrassed, if Tara was bullshitting about all of this.

Jackson was cool with all of that.

Perry knew he would be.

They got out of the car at the same time, both with flashlights in their hands. Jackson had turned the car off, but he left the headlights on.

They walked up to the front door and Jackson pulled his gun out and aimed it at the front door along with his flashlight. Perry kept his gun holstered as he banged on the front door with the butt of his flashlight and the door creaked open a little more from his pounding.

“Police!” he said in a loud voice and waited for a response or any kind of sound from inside the house.

Nothing.

Perry had to be careful here. Lorie told him that the place was abandoned, but if Tara wasn’t telling the truth, then Perry and Jackson could get in a lot of trouble entering someone’s home without a warrant. Of course, if something like that were to happen, then there were always ways around it. But Perry liked things simple and he wanted to be careful.

As he beat on the front door again, it opened up all the way.

Perry took a few steps inside the house, shining his flashlight along the stacks of junk piled up against the far wall – the house looked vacant.

“Hello?” Perry called out. Jackson was right behind him, covering him. “We’ve received a report of gunshots and we want to know if anyone’s hurt. The front door was wide open and we’re coming in.”

There were still no sounds in the dark house. The light from the headlights of their car provided enough light in the living room, but Perry knew that the farther they ventured into the house, the darker it would become.

Perry was feeling reasonably sure that no one was here, and he began to believe Lorie’s story more and more by the minute. He marched through the living room into a dining room that had more garbage and trash littered across the floor. He went down a wide hallway, Jackson two steps behind him.

They came to the first room on the left and Perry entered with Jackson right behind him. Even though the living room, dining room, and kitchen were cluttered with unwanted junk and garbage, this room was clean, nearly empty except for a knocked-over camera and tripod and an overturned wooden chair.

Perry glanced at Jackson. This room gave him the creeps, someone had set up a camera to take a picture of someone in a wooden chair at the other end of the room – Perry could only think of one scenario for that kind of photograph.

He inspected the overturned chair more closely, but he didn’t touch anything. He pulled out a pair of latex gloves and pulled them onto his hands, snapping them in place.

Near the overturned chair he saw something on the wood floor; a few pieces of duct tape that looked like they had been pasted over someone’s mouth. He shined his flashlight beam down at the tape, and he could even see the slight impression of someone’s mouth in the middle of the tape.

“Duct tape over here,” Perry said.

Jackson nodded, but he kept glancing back at the bedroom door, his flashlight beam trained on the far side of the hallway.

Perry shined his light on the overturned chair, and then he panned his light slowly around the room again.

“No rope,” Perry said. “We’ve got duct tape like someone was tied to the chair, but no rope. I don’t see any tape or marks on the chair.”

Perry took his phone out and snapped a photo of the duct tape and the chair. And then a small object in the corner of the room caught his eye. He stepped over to the corner and stared down at the small canister of pepper spray.

“Pepper spray,” Perry muttered as he took a photograph of this item with his phone. Then he looked at Jackson. “Let’s check out the rest of the rooms.”

They checked out the next bedroom directly across the hall from the room they’d just been in. Perry walked across the room towards the shattered window. Bits of broken glass winked back at him when he shined his light on the floor. He panned the light up the wall beside the broken window.

“Bullet hole,” Perry said to Jackson who waited near the door, his gun still clenched in his gigantic hand.

They did a quick check of the hall bathroom – nothing much there.

It was beginning to sound like Tara’s story was true. And if that was the case, then the worst was still waiting for them at the end of the hall in the master bedroom.

Perry could smell the dead body before they even opened the door. He entered and saw the hanging man beside the door. He backed away so he could let Jackson inside. They stood beside each other and stared at the dead man.

The hanging man was dressed in layers of filthy clothing; he looked like he might’ve been a street person. The man had been hung by his ankles from an iron ring that was attached to a rafter in the ceiling – pieces of drywall were ripped away to expose the rafter. The man’s legs were tied together and his arms hung free, lying limply on the floor in the now-sticky dark blood pooled up underneath his head and slit throat. His mouth was wide open, and his eyes had a milky glaze over them.

Perry shined his flashlight around the room. Like the first bedroom, this one was nearly empty; except for the dead man, the only other things in the room was a wood table in the center of the room, and groups of unlit candles in the corners.

It was like the killer had purposely cleaned out these bedrooms, perhaps moving the junk and garbage either outside or to some of the other rooms. He wanted to set the first room up to take a picture of someone in a chair, and he wanted this room for his bizarre ritual.

Perry shined his light over the table slowly. Ropes were tied to each leg of the table. A pentagram was painted on the tabletop in dark red paint. Or maybe it was blood. The homeless man’s blood? Perry wondered. Jen’s blood? There were a number of squiggly-looking symbols inside the pentagram. And some of those same symbols, and others, had been painted on the walls around the bedroom in the same dark reddish-brown color.

The killer had planned on sacrificing Tara here for some reason.

Everything Lorie had told him was true, and Perry felt a pang of guilt as he stood in the room. He felt a little bad for doubting his niece’s word, but even more for doubting Tara so much. He’d always liked Tara; she’d always seemed nice and polite. But he had always doubted Tara’s psychic abilities – Perry just didn’t believe in that sort of thing, he couldn’t help it.

But it was all true. A killer had somehow lured Tara and Woods out to this abandoned house for a ritualistic killing (and Perry was sure the room with the chair and camera had something to do with that lure), and he had nearly succeeded in killing Tara – but Woods had saved his niece’s best friend.

“Let’s call it in,” Perry said to Jackson.

Soon this house would be crawling with cops, photographers, forensics, and coroners. This case would probably get filed away as the hangout of some kind of fringe satanic cult that had sacrificed a street person that no one would even care about. It would fall to the bottom of the list unless they caught this guy and proved that the same man had killed all of these people.

Perry knew this was the same killer who had murdered the two teenagers nearly a week ago. This was the same killer who had peeled a man’s skin off of his torso after hanging him in his own garage. Perry also believed this was the same killer who had shot Miss Helen in the forehead. He had taken blood from the first girl, skin from the second victim, and something from the third that Perry hadn’t figured out yet. He must’ve planned on using those items for this ritual, but the items weren’t here in the house.

The ritual hadn’t worked out like the killer had planned.

But this killer wasn’t going to give up – Perry was sure of that. This guy wanted Tara for some reason; he’d gone to an awful lot of trouble to get her out here and to set this whole thing up. He would do it again soon.

Perry dialed Lorie’s number. It rang a few times and then he was sent to a voicemail box that was already full.

Great.

He hung up the phone as Jackson called this in to the department. Jackson hung up his phone.

“They’re on their way.”

Perry nodded. “After we’re done here, I want that warrant for Steve’s apartment. I want to be there first thing in the morning.”

Jackson nodded. “I got Judge Whalen working on it. He’ll get it for us. Should be ready in a few hours.”

Perry nodded. He was going to take a look around the outside of the house while he still had a chance to be alone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

1.

The next morning Tara woke up in the back of Woods’ unmarked sedan, choking back a scream. She’d been having a nightmare. No, not a nightmare, a night terror. She had walked in her sleep again. And this time Woods must have seen it. Oh God, her second night with him and she had already walked in her sleep.

She looked down at the backseat and the floorboards. The garbage bag of clothes was still behind the passenger seat and her body rested against it like it was a pillow. His tattered suitcase was down on the floorboard behind the driver’s seat.

Tara heard a thumping at the window behind her, someone pounding on the glass with a fist.

Woods must’ve woken up and noticed she was gone. He had come outside to look for her and found her in his car, curled up and hiding away from her nightmares.

It was time to turn around and face him.

Tara turned around and saw Jeremy on the other side of the window, he stared at her with his coal-black eyes and insane smile, the same smile he’d had when he was tying her down to the wooden table adorned with satanic symbols. He beat on the window again and she saw that his fists were covered in blood, and every time he beat on the window he left a smear of blood behind.

2.

Woods jumped awake in the motel room. Tara wasn’t there. He called out for her and ran to the bathroom – she wasn’t in there.

She must be outside.

He hurried back to the door and looked for his car keys, but they were gone. He didn’t even waste time putting on a shirt or his shoes. He ran out the door and left it wide open. He ran out to his car and he saw Tara curled up in the backseat. Her body was twitching like she was in the throes of a nightmare at this very moment. He felt so bad for her; these night terrors had ruined her life.

He tried the back door. It was locked. He tried the passenger door. It was locked. All of the doors were locked.

Tara had his keys; he saw them clenched in her right fist. And there was something else clenched in her other fist, it looked like it might be a balled-up piece of paper.

“Tara! Wake up!”

He beat on the door window with the side of his fist.

“Come on, Tara, wake up! You’re having a bad dream!”

Out of the corner of his eye Woods saw that one of the doors to a downstairs motel room had creaked open, someone was curious about all the noise out here so early in the morning.

3.

Tara jumped awake in the backseat of Woods’ sedan and she whirled around and stared at the window where she’d seen Jeremy beating on the window. But Jeremy wasn’t there. And there were no smears of blood on the glass from where he’d been pounding on the window – it had been a dream.

The pounding was coming from the other window.

She looked at the other window in front of her and saw Woods. He was shirtless and pounding on the glass. His eyes were wide with concern.

“Let me in, Tara!” he screamed at her.

Tara nodded, but she hadn’t made any kind of a move yet. She felt very tired, like she’d been running in her sleep all night.

“The doors are locked,” Woods said through the glass. “Unlock the door.”

Tara became suddenly aware of pain in her hands and fingers. She looked down at her hands and saw that they were both clenched into tight fists. She was holding something in each of her hands.

She opened her right hand slowly and saw the keys to Woods’ car. There were deep impressions in the flesh of her palms and fingers from the keys, and there were even a few drops of blood; the keys had opened up the small wound from the pencil she had snapped in half while drawing in her sleep a few days ago.

She unclenched her other fist and saw a balled-up piece of paper, and she immediately guessed what it might be – another drawing. But she knew that what was on this paper was for Woods and she couldn’t let herself see it.

4.

“Tara, please open the door,” Woods said again.

He had stopped beating on the door now that she was awake.

He could see that she was terrified. When she’d talked to him about her night terrors, he thought he might know what to expect. But he hadn’t expected to see this kind of fear and vulnerability on her face right now. She looked so small and helpless, she looked so frightened.

And he wanted to help her.

An overweight man stood in the open doorway to his motel room, staring at Woods suspiciously.

Woods looked at the man. “Mind your own business.”

The man looked like he’d been slapped. He ducked back into his motel room and slammed the door shut.

Woods suspected that the man might be on the phone with the manager of the motel in the next few minutes. Or maybe even the cops.

He couldn’t have the cops here. He would face his punishment for impersonating an FBI agent when this was all over; he would do whatever jail time he was given with satisfaction and a smile on his face once he killed Jeremy and everyone else was out of danger.

But right now he needed Tara to open the car door.

5.

Tara looked at Woods again, at the fear and compassion in his eyes. He wasn’t looking at her like she was some kind of freak, he was worried about her. She sat up and lunged for the door and unlocked it.

Woods helped Tara out of the backseat of his car.

She stumbled out, her legs were weak. She felt like a newborn fawn struggling to walk. Woods held her with his strong hands.

“It’s okay,” he whispered. “Everything’s okay. I won’t let anything happen to you. I swear.”

Tara held on to Woods and she felt tears stinging her eyes. It felt so good to be in this man’s arms. She had always been a strong woman, she had always trained and strengthened her body to be a weapon, she had always been proud of being alone and standing strong, but right now it felt good to have someone else in this world looking out for her, protecting her, caring about her, someone on her side.

But there was work to be done. She’d seen things in her dreams, fragments really, but the pieces of the dream-puzzle were beginning to come together in her mind and there were people in danger.

“You must’ve been sleepwalking,” Woods said.

Tara pulled out of his arms and she felt herself blushing. Her night terrors was her most embarrassing secret, and now Woods was discussing it out here in the morning light like she had just tripped or something, like it was no big deal.

She handed Woods the balled-up piece of paper. “This is for you.”

“What is it?” he asked. “Another drawing?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I just know that you can’t show me what’s on that paper.”

Woods opened the ball of paper and looked at it. It wasn’t a drawing. It was a list and what looked like a set of instructions. It didn’t really make much sense to him, and he would have to study it more carefully later. Right now he balled the paper back up, not wanting Tara to even get a glance at it.

“Let’s get back inside,” Tara told him. “I need to call my aunt.”

Woods put an arm around her shoulder and led her back to the motel room door that was still wide open. She felt the warmth from his skin on her cold flesh, and a shiver ran through her body. She could feel the lean, hard muscles of his arms, holding her and protecting her like a girder of steel.

Once they were back inside the motel room, Woods closed the door and secured the locks. Tara went straight to her cell phone. No messages from her aunt. She never called back. Not even a text from her.

She dialed Aunt Katie’s number, but only got her voice mail.

“My aunt’s not answering,” Tara told Woods as he put a T-shirt on.

“You think she’s okay?” he asked her.

“I don’t think so,” she said and her stomach fluttered with fear.

A sudden memory jumped into her mind so forcefully that it almost felt like it had been shoved into her consciousness. She remembered leaving for the airport after her “date” with Jeremy – Oh God, the thought of her admiring his looks sickened her now.

But now she remembered when she was leaving that she told Steve (Jeremy) that she was going to pick up her aunt at the airport and stay with her in a hotel room.

Oh God … she’d told Jeremy where her aunt was going to be.

Tara looked at Woods with horror.

“We need to go. I think my aunt might be in trouble.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

1.

Detective Perry and Detective Jackson swung by the police station for the search warrant. Judge Whalen had okayed it early in the morning. Perry and Whalen had known each other for decades, and Whalen trusted Perry completely.

Jackson drove Perry to the Garden Apartments where Tara and Steve lived. They pulled into the parking lot. Tara’s Jeep was parked in front of her apartment, but Steve’s pickup truck was not parked in front of his place. A squad car followed them into the parking lot and parked a few spaces away.

One squad car was already parked in front of Steve’s apartment, a cop waiting for them. He met up with Perry and Jackson as they got out of their car. There was also a faded red Cadillac, Mel’s car, parked next to Tara’s Jeep Cherokee. Mel waited by his car, and he already had a set of master keys in his hand, jiggling them nervously as he glanced around. A few residents in the other apartments stood in their open doorways watching, even the older man on the other side of Tara’s apartment who kept to himself.

Mel had already talked to the other tenants and explained what was going on. They stared at him with wide eyes and they had questions. But Mel didn’t have any answers right now. All he knew was that the man who had just rented the end unit, the man who called himself Steve, was wanted by the police for questioning and they had a warrant with them to search not only his apartment, but Tara’s as well.

Was Tara in trouble, too? The other tenants asked. Mel didn’t know. But deep down inside, he didn’t think so. He couldn’t imagine Tara being in trouble or doing anything wrong.

As Perry and Jackson walked from their car towards the apartment building, a police officer met them.

“No answer from either apartment,” the police officer told them. “Doesn’t sound like anyone’s home.”

Perry nodded at the police officer and brushed past him. Jackson instructed the other two police officers to stand back, but have their weapons drawn and ready; they were possibly dealing with a very dangerous man inside this apartment. Jackson drew his weapon, and much like he’d done at the abandoned house, he stayed two steps behind Perry, covering him.

Perry crushed the doorbell button with his thumb, and then he pounded on the apartment door.

“Steve! Are you home?!”

No answer.

“We’ve got a warrant! I’ve got the building manager here with me! We’re going to unlock the door and enter the premises unless you open up!”

Nothing but silence.

Perry nodded at Jackson who turned and nodded at a police officer next to Mel. The police officer gestured at Mel to open the door.

Mel walked down the walkway to the end unit with the ring of keys in his hand. Each key was marked for each apartment. There were only eight apartments in the two buildings that sat side by side, so the ring of keys wasn’t that big. There was another set of keys for the utility shed which was housed in a block building set far off from the other end of the small apartment complex.

Perry drew his gun and looked at Mel. “Give me the keys.”

Mel hesitated.

“If this guy shoots at us, I don’t want you here in front of the door,” Perry told him.

That sounded okay with Mel. He picked out the key for Steve’s apartment – Unit Number One – and gave it to Perry with a trembling hand. Then he hurried back out of the way.

Perry took the key and unlocked the lock on the door handle. He twisted the door handle, expecting the deadbolt to be engaged, but it wasn’t. He took a breath, clenched his gun in his right hand and opened the door with his left. He flung the door open and then moved out of the doorway, to the side.

“Steve! I’m Detective Perry with the Tampa Bay Police Department. If you’re in there, then show yourself! I don’t want anyone to get hurt here!”

There was no answer from the gloomy apartment. No sound at all from inside.

Perry’s heavy-lidded eyes met Jackson’s eyes. Perry nodded and he entered first, his gun aimed in front of him, his arm steady, his eyes scanning the room quickly. Jackson and two other police officers filed in after Perry.

Jackson nodded to the bedrooms off of a small hallway and the police officers hurried to check them out.

Perry and Jackson moved through the living room and into a dining area. The vertical blinds in front of the sliding glass doors were pulled back and they allowed the early morning light to brighten the dark apartment.

Perry entered the kitchen and stared down at the mess on the floor, the old food on the counter, the frying pans on the stove top. This didn’t look right to him. It was supposed to look like someone had been abducted here, but when he studied the scene more closely he didn’t see the signs of struggle that he would normally see: no blood, no damaged furniture or walls, no torn curtains or blinds.

It looked staged to him.

Perry moved quickly through the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator. Hardly any food. A leftover fast food meal and a jug of drinking water.

He opened the cabinets, one by one. Nothing in the cabinets except a few boxes of food and a can of soup. Most of the food was on the counter or on the floor.

The two police officers entered the dining area which didn’t have a dining room table. There wasn’t a stick of furniture in the whole place.

“All clear back there,” one of the officers said. “There’s nothing back there but a sleeping bag on the floor, an alarm clock, and a pile of books.”

Perry was only half-listening. Something was bothering him about this place. Mel, the manager of this apartment complex, had told them that Steve had moved in about a week ago. But there wasn’t any furniture and only a few kitchen utensils and dishes had been unpacked. The man slept on a sleeping bag.

Like all of this was temporary.

He stared at the stacks of boxes lined up against the living room wall. There was something about those boxes.

Perry approached the boxes, reading the words scrawled on the boxes as he walked towards them: kitchen stuff; bedroom; bathroom; books.

He grabbed one of the boxes labeled books. It was one of the smaller boxes, but he expected it to be heavy with books. But it was light as a feather.

It was empty.

And so was the next box. And the next box. They were all empty. All props to show that he was moving in. He wanted to be right next to Tara so he could keep an eye on her. So he could watch her every move.

Perry felt a tingling in his belly, like he was too many steps behind and something terrible was about to happen that he wouldn’t be able to stop.

“Let’s get next door to Tara’s place,” Perry said and rushed out of the apartment.

Mel opened the door to Tara’s place and backed out of the way. Perry and Jackson entered. They instructed the other two police officers to wait outside.

Perry spotted the drawings laid out on the coffee table. He stared down at them as Jackson checked out the rest of the apartment.

Tara wasn’t there. Jackson came back out from Tara’s bedroom and found Perry in the same spot, staring down at the drawings on the coffee table.

“What do you got?” Jackson asked Perry as he approached him.

“Holy shit,” Perry whispered. He looked at Jackson. “She saw everything. She drew it all. Details no one else could’ve seen. All of the murders. Even Miss Helen.”

Jackson pulled a blue nitrite glove out of his jacket pocket and slid his big hand into it. He picked up the first drawing and studied it. “What’s with all of these words and numbers?”

Perry shook his head no; he didn’t answer, but he was beginning to get an idea of what they might be.

2.

Woods dressed in a white button-down shirt and black slacks that he’d gotten from his suitcase in the car. Then they rushed out to the car and sped towards the airport.

Tara prayed that her aunt was okay. She dialed her number again and again, but all she got was her voicemail.

Tara and Woods got to the hotel and rushed up to the third floor. They entered her Aunt Katie’s room – Katie had given Tara an extra keycard so she could let herself back in when she returned. They searched through the room and bathroom quickly.

Aunt Katie wasn’t there.

She hadn’t checked out. Her suitcase and clothes were still in the room. Her cell phone was still on the little writing table.

Tara checked her aunt’s phone and listened to the last messages, all from Tara. She felt a knot in her stomach twisting tighter and tighter. Jeremy had found Aunt Katie. He had taken her. There was no proof that Jeremey had abducted her, but Tara knew it was true.

“He got her,” Tara said as she looked at Woods, and she couldn’t help the tears that slipped from her eyes. “He took her and it’s all my fault. I told him where she was going to be.”

“What do you mean?” Woods asked her.

Tara explained quickly about telling Steve (Jeremy) when she was leaving that she was going to stay in a hotel room with her aunt near the airport.

“You didn’t know,” Woods told her. He grabbed her upper arms like he was steadying her and he stared into her blue eyes with his dark eyes. “He won’t kill her. He’s using her for bait. He wants you, not her.”

Woods turned away, heading for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“I want to question the manager and desk clerk.”

3.

Woods used his fake FBI I.D. badge to bully the hotel employees into telling them as much as they knew. The bartender and bar back were getting the hotel bar ready which would open at eleven. They hadn’t been working last night, but they called a man named Ray and woke him up with their phone call. Ray confirmed seeing Katie at the bar. She’d eaten a dinner by herself and drank two beers. And then she sat at the bar and really started drinking. He said she was talking to a guy. The guy was younger than she was, and he was a good-looking guy with bleach-blond hair. They seemed to be hitting it off and then they got up and went out for a smoke.

Tara stood by herself, away from Woods as he talked to the bartenders. She stared at the bar and she could almost see her aunt sitting there on one of the stools, sipping her margaritas or martinis or whatever she was drinking. She could almost feel her aunt. Katie had been lonely, cooped up in her hotel room too long. She’d come down here to be around other people. It was probably just supposed to be a quick dinner and a few bottles of beer, but then she started drinking.

And then she would’ve wanted a cigarette.

Woods walked over to Tara after he was done questioning the bartender.

“They said she was here last night,” he told her. “They said she was knocking a few drinks back, getting a little buzzed.”

Woods hesitated for a moment, and then continued. “The bartender said she was talking to a guy at the bar. He was young and had blond hair.”

Tara’s heart sank. “Did she pay her tab?”

“No, the bartender said she never returned. He said they’ll just put the bill on the credit card she used for the room.”

Tara stared at the front doors of the hotel – fancy glass doors framed in fake gold. The doors opened out to the parking area.

“She went out for a smoke,” Tara said, still staring at the doors like she could see it happening before her eyes, a ghostly reanimation.

Woods nodded. “Yeah,” he answered. “That’s what the bartender thought; they went out for a cigarette. No smoking in the bar.”

“She smokes sometimes,” Tara said slowly, still staring at the front doors of the hotel. “She’s tried to quit hundreds of times, and she does stop for a while. But every once in a while, especially when she’s nervous or upset, she caves in.”

“And that’s when he got her,” Woods finished.

“When she got outside with him, she finally recognized him. But it was too late.”

Woods just stood beside Tara for a moment like he didn’t know what to say. He could only nod.

“And then he took her,” Tara whispered. “But where?”

Woods shook his head no. He wished he had an answer for her.

Tara looked at Woods like something had suddenly clicked in her mind, like pieces of a puzzle had just locked into place revealing a picture. “The drawings I did in my sleep …”

“Yeah?”

“I think I might know what those numbers and words mean now.”

Just then Tara’s cell phone rang. She looked at the screen to see who it was, hoping to see her aunt’s name calling from her room. But it wasn’t her aunt – it was Lorie.

Tara answered the phone, breathing out her friend’s name in relief: “Lorie …”

And then Tara’s face fell in horror.

“What’s wrong?” Woods asked.

“It’s Jeremy,” Tara whispered. “He’s got Lorie’s phone.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

1.

Lorie snapped awake in Mike’s bedroom. He wasn’t in bed beside her. She glanced at the alarm clock. It was almost ten o’clock. Mike had let her sleep in too long.

She looked around the bedroom. Mike had slipped out of bed without waking her. He didn’t want to disturb her. She smiled. Mike was the most considerate man she’d ever met. And he had the body of a Greek god. And he was filthy rich.

A dream man. Her dream man.

She sat up as a strange feeling tingled over her skin. She heard a low thump from somewhere downstairs.

“Mike?” Lorie called out as she sat very still in bed.

No answer from Mike. She looked across the large bedroom to the bathroom door; it was slightly ajar with the light turned off. Maybe he was in the bathroom, but she didn’t think so, the noise had come from downstairs – she was sure of it.

She got out of bed and stood there for a moment. She wore only a flimsy satin night gown that hugged the curves of her body. And for the first time in a long time she felt a little exposed and she had a sudden urge to cover up.

It’s a little chilly this morning, she said to herself, justifying this compulsion to get dressed.

Lorie grabbed her jeans and sweater from the back of the chair near the bed and she slipped into them. She even shoved her bare feet into her sneakers. And she did feel a little better now, not as vulnerable, not as afraid.

Afraid?

What was wrong with her? She wasn’t afraid of anything. She was starting to act like Tara with her foreboding feelings of doom. Maybe Tara was rubbing off on her a little. But perhaps that made sense after everything that had happened in the last week.

But it was more than that. Something felt strange in this house.

Lorie hugged her arms as a shiver wormed its way through her body.

She marched across the room and checked the master bathroom which was so large it was almost the size of the bedroom. Mike wasn’t in there.

She left the bathroom and walked across the bedroom. She stood at the top of the stairs that led down to the second floor. She hesitated for a moment.

“Mike?” she called down the stairs.

He didn’t answer her.

“Mike, if you’re down there, then answer me. This isn’t funny.”

Still no answer. But she thought she heard another noise. So faint, she wondered if it was just her imagination. She exhaled a breath and went down the stairs, her sneakers thumping down the carpeted steps.

She entered the kitchen and looked at the sliding glass doors that led out to the wraparound porch. The door was shut, but the vertical blinds were all the way open, letting the early morning sunlight into the room.

She went to the sliding glass door and slid it open.

“Mike? You out here?”

No answer.

She went into the kitchen and then stopped cold. There were breakfast preparations laid out on the countertop and a frying pan on the stovetop. Something had been fried in the pan; there was an odor in the air of fried meat that turned her stomach.

On the counter next to the stove was a carton of eggs, a bag of shredded cheese, a package of bacon that hadn’t been opened yet, an onion, a green pepper, and a carton of fresh mushrooms. Right next to a plastic cutting board was a large kitchen knife coated in blood.

Lorie’s heart jumped and she rushed to the counter. She saw splashes of blood on the vegetables.

It looked like there might have been an accident.

Maybe Mike had cut his finger while chopping vegetables.

She looked at the frying pan and stifled a scream. There was a human finger in the pan; it had been fried in oil.

A noise came from somewhere else in the house – but she couldn’t pinpoint exactly where it was coming from. It sounded like someone was moaning, maybe trying to cry out, but the sound was muffled, any words indiscernible, like someone had a hand over someone’s mouth, or a piece of tape or a gag.

Lorie turned and ran in a blind panic towards the kitchen door that led outside to the wraparound porch.

She heard a noise right behind her and turned to see …

…a man standing a few feet away from her. He was dressed in motorcycle boots, old jeans, and a flannel shirt stained with blood. His shirt was wide open, revealing a muscular torso. Covering his entire head was some kind of mask made of patches of skin – human skin. The mask was adorned with body parts taken from victims over the last few months: ears, fingers, teeth. A leather string hung around his neck with even more body parts dangling from it.

The masked man grabbed the blood-stained kitchen knife from the cutting board.

Lorie screamed again.

2.

After an hour and a half of searching both apartments, Detective Jackson drove Perry back to the station house. Perry had his cell phone up to his ear, listening to the ringing, and then to his niece’s voicemail message. He had called her four times already and she wasn’t calling him back.

“Lorie,” he said into the phone after it beeped. “This is your uncle Ronald. I need to get a hold of you. Where are you? Where’s Tara? You need to call me as soon as you get this.”

Perry hung the phone up and tossed it into the center console.

“Shit. She’s in trouble, I know it. She said she was going up to her boyfriend’s house for the weekend.”

“You got his number?” Jackson asked.

“No. I don’t know anything about him except that his name’s Mike and that Lorie sold him a house somewhere up in Pasco County. I don’t even know his address.”

Perry picked up Tara’s drawings again and leafed through them. He stared at the sketches of Jen, the first victim they’d found. He could see the fear in her eyes. And each drawing seemed to be from the killer’s point-of-view, almost like Tara had been looking through his eyes.

Steve’s eyes. Steve was the killer, that’s what Tara had said.

Perry played it over and over in his mind. Steve comes to Tampa and murders several people, collecting things: blood, skin, and whatever he took from Miss Helen’s – all for a ritual in which Tara is obviously the integral part. But why move in next door to her? Why not kill her right away? Why wait?

And Tara saw the killer coming, she saw him kill the first four people in her dreams, she even drew what she’d seen. But she never came to him for help.

Perry felt a twinge of guilt.

Of course she wouldn’t have come to him after the way he had treated her the last time she tried to help.

He hadn’t believed in her ability, and he’d dismissed it before he even gave her a chance to talk. But now he was beginning to believe that Tara’s psychic ability was real.

Perry studied the words and numbers at the edges of each drawing and he was beginning to see their connection now.

One of the words on the drawings jumped out at Perry: Trinity.

Pasco County.

Wasn’t there a town or a place in Pasco County called Trinity? A rural place, he thought; a place where wealthy people lived.

And Lorie had mentioned how wealthy Mike was quite a few times.

Jackson glanced at Perry who held one of the drawings in his hand. Perry’s body was motionless as he stared out the windshield like he was in a trance, staring at something only he could see in his mind.

“Perry?”

“Trinity,” Perry whispered and he looked at Jackson. Perry was back now. He’d made some kind of connection in his mind, Jackson could tell.

“What about it?”

“I think I know what it means. I think Trinity is a place and these numbers and words add up to an address. We need to put them into the computer, see what kind of address we come up with.”

“I’ll get Dale on it when we get to the station,” Jackson said. “He’s the best with computers.”

Jackson stomped his foot down on the gas pedal and the unmarked cop car roared with power. He hoped he was scaring Perry a little like Perry had scared him with his driving.

But he wasn’t.

Perry wasn’t even paying attention. He had his small notebook out and he was already beginning to write down combinations of addresses.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

1.

It took Woods and Tara over an hour to drive from Tampa up to Pasco County, and now they drove down a narrow back road shaded by a canopy of ancient oaks – only minutes away from Mike’s house.

They had made a few stops on the way so Woods could complete the instructions on the paper that Tara had scribbled down in her sleep.

They stopped at a Wal-Mart and Woods went into the store with the crumpled-up paper in his hand.

While Woods was inside, Tara looked at her drawings stored on her cell phone. How come she hadn’t seen it before? The words and numbers added up to an address and all she had to do was dig through her purse and find one of Lorie’s real estate business cards – the one that she’d written Mike’s address down on.

38259 Pine Woods Run. Trinity, Florida.

How had she missed that?

And why had she written Mike’s address down a little at a time during her night terrors? She’d written some of the words and numbers down before Lorie had even given her the business card with Mike’s address on it.

She had glimpsed the future. She used to only be able to see flashes of murders as they were happening, but now, in the last few days, her power had gotten stronger or changed somehow. First she saw the gun that was going to kill Miss Helen before Jeremy killed her. And then she’d written down pieces of Mike’s address because she couldn’t see the whole picture in her dreams yet.

But there it was – Mike’s address. Jeremy was there right now. He had taken her Aunt Katie and he was there with Lorie and Mike. He was at Mike’s house with all of the people she loved in the world.

And Woods was going to be there, too.

Mike’s house. The final showdown. Jeremy hadn’t been able to sacrifice her at the abandoned house where he’d set it up, so he was going to complete the ritual at Mike’s house.

Tara wanted so badly to call the police, but she couldn’t; Jeremy had told her to come alone – no police or Lorie, Mike, and her Aunt Katie were dead. And even if she could call Detective Perry, he wouldn’t believe her. He never believed her. And she had no proof that anything was wrong at Mike’s house. Jeremy had promised that they were still alive, he even let her speak to Aunt Katie for a few seconds, and he promised that he wouldn’t butcher them if she did exactly what he wanted. He didn’t want them, he didn’t need them. He only needed her.

Her life for their lives.

2.

Woods found most of the stuff on the list Tara had drawn in her sleep inside Wal-Mart. There was one other crucial item they needed on the list, but they would have to stop somewhere else for that. He waited in the checkout line with the odd assortment of items.

He couldn’t really believe he was doing this, that he was trusting Tara’s psychic abilities this much. But he knew they were real. He had believed in her from the very beginning.

He paid for the items with cash and left the store. He walked back to his car and put them in the trunk.

His handcuffs were stuffed down inside his pants pocket and Tara had asked him to hide the key to the handcuffs on his body somewhere and not tell her where it was. It was a strange request, but he went along with it. He knew the request must have something to do with this plan of hers, this plan that included these items he’d bought at the store, a plan he couldn’t see fully yet.

He got in the car and started it. He backed out of the parking spot. They still had two more stops to make before they went up to Trinity, before they faced the monster.

Woods hoped to hell that these crazy things Tara had written down were going to work. He would go along with her plan as long as he needed to, but when the time came, he was going to kill Jeremy for murdering his brother. And for murdering Tara’s parents. And for all of the other people who’d had their family members ripped away from them by this killer.

3.

Their next stop was a Catholic Church.

Woods got out of the car without a word and he took out one of the items from the Wal-Mart bag in the trunk – a plastic squeeze bottle, the kind of bottle a bicyclist would use to squeeze water into his mouth as he rode; Woods had found it in the sports section of Wal-Mart. He got back in the car and sat down in the driver’s seat and closed the door. He handed Tara the plastic squeeze bottle.

“What’s this for?” she asked.

“The instructions on your paper say that you’re supposed to fill this up with holy water.”

Tara didn’t question it. She took the squeeze bottle and got out of the car. She walked up the walkway of the big church and pulled one of the massive doors open and slipped inside.

Holy water, Woods thought as he watched her walk inside the church. Did Tara really think holy water was going to do anything to Jeremy?

But it didn’t matter. Woods would play along. Because when he got to Mike’s house, he was going to take over with his plan of killing Jeremy.

They only had one more quick stop to make, a stop where Woods was supposed to complete the last instruction on the list – something Tara couldn’t know about, something for him alone.

4.

And now Woods drove down the small narrow road only minutes away from Mike’s house according to his GPS. They passed open fields with woods in the distance; they drove over rolling hills and descended down into valleys. The houses were far apart from each other out here in the country, some of them situated on acres and acres of property. They drove underneath the canopy of ancient oaks as the woods around them thickened.

Moments later they saw a wooden sign up ahead on the right hand side of the road.

Engraved on the wood sign was Mike’s address.

Woods stopped the car and let it idle for a moment. There were no vehicles on the road behind them, and none coming towards them from the other direction.

He stared at the entrance to Mike’s property – the wood sign marked the beginning of the dirt trail that led down into the pine trees and palmetto plants and brush that looked too thick to even walk through.

Woods and Tara locked eyes for a moment.

“You can drive to the house,” Tara told him. “He already knows we’re here.”

5.

As Woods maneuvered his car down the bumpy dirt road that meandered through the thick trees and brush, Tara took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

She let herself reach out to Jeremy, and she could almost feel the link between them, the sibling link that they’d shared all of their lives without her even realizing it. He had always been a dark presence to her, an evil and unstoppable force, a faceless monster in the darkness searching for her, coming for her. But now she’d seen him, and she’d gotten away from him. He wasn’t a monster, he wasn’t superhuman – he was just a man.

But he had been a step ahead of them the whole time. Even though they got away from him at the abandoned house, he had this backup plan the whole time.

And now Jeremy had everyone Tara cared about in the whole world right in one place. What could she do? She couldn’t let her aunt die. She couldn’t let Lorie and Mike die. Or Woods.

She was sure Jeremy hadn’t seen what she’d written down in her sleep, but it didn’t matter now. It was too late. She was going to have to change the plan – she couldn’t let all of them die because of her.

Woods drove his car out of the stand of trees and they saw Mike’s house in the clearing. It was a two story wood cabin built on stilts with a wraparound porch on the second level. Thirty yards to the right of the house was a two story, free-standing garage that looked big enough to park a school bus inside. The large double doors on the front of the garage were closed.

Woods parked his car in the large dirt parking area between the house and the garage. Mike’s black, fully-loaded pickup truck was parked closer to the house. It was the only other vehicle there. He assumed that Jeremy must’ve ditched his pickup somewhere in the woods on the property, or even on the way here, and walked the rest of the way so he could sneak up on therm.

Tara stared at the garage as Woods shut his car off and took the key out of the ignition.

“They’re in the garage,” she said.

“I know,” Woods answered.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

1.

For a moment Tara’s heart froze and her breathing stopped. What did Woods mean? How did he know they were in the garage? Was he a part of this? Had he been a part of this the whole time?

“I have some slight psychic ability,” Woods said after seeing the horror on Tara’s face. “That’s how I know. I believe everyone has some psychic abilities whether they realize it or not, whether they want to believe it or not.”

Tara let a breath out; it felt like the air had been burning in her lungs for a moment. Woods’ explanation reminded her of her aunt’s theory; she too believed that everyone possessed some degree (a rare few were definitely stronger than others) of psychic energy, it was just a matter of whether that person wanted to explore that ability or not.

“But my abilities are nothing like yours,” Woods continued quickly. “Or his,” Woods added, nodding towards the garage. “That’s why I needed your help.”

Tara nodded.

“Thank you,” he said and held her hand. “Thank you for helping me. For coming this far.”

“It’s not over yet.”

“We just have to stick to the plan, stick to what you wrote down in your sleep, and we’ll get through this. We’ll save your aunt and your friends. I promise.”

Tara nodded, but she felt the pit of fear aching in her stomach.

“We have to go,” Tara said. “He knows we’re here. He’s waiting for us.”

And then they heard a noise. They both looked at the garage doors. Somebody had just slid one of the doors back, opening it just enough to allow a person to slip inside. From the car all they could see was darkness inside the garage.

“I guess that’s our invitation,” Woods said and looked at Tara. “You ready?”

“Yes.”

And then he surprised her with a kiss.

And for a moment, she surrendered. For a split second she was lost in a cocoon of bliss and security. She felt safe in his arms again, as she had earlier this morning when he’d walked her back to their motel room with his arm around her shoulders. If she was going to die soon, then she was going to allow herself to enjoy this kiss, this feeling, for just a moment.

He pulled away and stared at her. “You are the most amazing and strongest woman I’ve ever met. Now let’s go kill this motherfucker.”

2.

Tara and Woods entered the garage through the large double doors. Woods went in first, his gun aimed into the darkness. And Tara followed right behind him.

It took a few seconds for Tara’s eyes to adjust to the gloom inside, but then she could see everything clearly.

The garage was vast inside, and now she thought that more than one school bus could be parked inside. The ceiling of exposed rafters was two stories above them, and there were eight thick wooden posts situated around the cavernous room to help support the massive ceiling. At the far end of the garage was a second story loft with a set of ladder-like steps on one side of it that led up to the platform. The garage looked more like it could be an additional living space if fixed up rather than a typical garage. The floor was concrete, many of the walls were paneled, and the upstairs level of the loft was finished with expensive woods and adorned with a few pieces of furniture.

Fifteen feet in front of the loft, Mike hung upside down from the rafters by his ankles which were tied together. His hands were tied behind his back and blood from his severed finger had dribbled down his back and onto the floor. His mouth was taped shut with several lengths of duct tape wrapped around his head. His body twisted slightly and the rope creaked in the silence. His face was dark red from being upside down and his eyes bulged so badly that they looked like they were going to pop out of his face. He looked close to passing out. His dark hair hung down towards the concrete floor where a large panel of thick wood laid right underneath him. Affixed to the wood panel in neat little rows were dozens of kitchen knives, all of the blades pointed up towards Mike’s hanging body. Some of the knives were from Mike’s own house, some of the other knives were from Jen’s house, some from Miss Helen’s house, and a few of the blood-stained knives had been used to peel the skin from Greg’s body.

The thick rope attached to Mike’s ankles went up to the rafters where it was looped around, and then it ran back down to Lorie, tied around her waist. She hugged a thick wooden support post and if she let go, the weight of Mike’s body would yank her up into the air away from the post and he would crash head-first down onto the rows of knives. The loops of the rope around the rafter took a lot of the weight off of Lorie, but she still had to hold on to the pole.

Lorie had several pieces of duct tape plastered over her mouth and her eyes and nose were red from crying. She moaned into the tape and her arms trembled from the strain of holding on to the post.

Jeremy stood right behind Lorie with a knife to her throat.

Woods took a few more steps inside the garage and aimed his gun at Jeremy.

“Let her go right now, Jeremy!”

Jeremy just smiled. “I’m helping her hold on. If I let her go, Mike will fall down onto those horrible knives.”

Tara glanced at Mike’s face which was turning purple now. His eyes had rolled up and only his whites were showing now. He didn’t struggle anymore, his body twisted slowly on the rope – he had passed out.

Woods took another step closer, his gun still aimed at Jeremy.

“Woods, wait!” Tara screamed at him.

He glanced back at her.

“Where’s my aunt?” she asked Jeremy.

“She’s alive. She’s safe for now. But you’re going to have to hurry if you want to save her. She probably doesn’t have much time left.”

“What have you done to her?” Tara growled at him.

Jeremy stared right at Tara with his dark eyes. “I only want you, Tara. I’ll let the rest of them go after I have you, I swear.”

“You’re a sick motherfucker,” Woods grumbled.

Tara was afraid she was losing Woods for a moment. She didn’t want Jeremy to slash Lorie’s throat, and she knew he would – she could see it in his eyes; she could feel it coming from him. If Woods tried to attack or shoot, then Jeremy would kill Lorie and Mike, and then he would run. And eventually Jeremy would find her again.

And she still needed to find her aunt; she had to be sure she was still alive. She could only imagine some terrible place he was keeping her in.

“There’s no choice,” Jeremy said and he pressed the blade of his knife even harder against Lorie’s throat, drawing a few drops of blood. “We don’t have a lot of time. Your friend here can’t hold on forever. I can feel her body trembling; I can feel the strength draining from her …”

Woods took another step towards Jeremy.

“Woods …”

Woods turned and looked at Tara.

“Please …” Tara moaned.

Woods’ shoulders sagged. His gun arm dropped.

This was going exactly as she and Woods had planned it so far, but everything was going to have to change soon – Tara didn’t have a choice now.

“Good,” Jeremy purred at Woods. “Now throw the gun over here to me.”

Woods hesitated for a moment and then he crouched down and slid the gun across the vast concrete floor. It stopped right at Jeremy’s feet.

“That’s good. You’re doing so well.” Jeremy let go of Lorie and she hugged the post even tighter. He crouched down with lightning quickness and picked up the gun and then slipped his knife into a sheath on the side of his belt. He was back up and behind Lorie’s body again, still bracing himself against her, but now he aimed the gun at Woods.

“Why don’t you just let them go?” Tara pleaded. “You can have me. I’ll go with you wherever you want, just let them go.”

“I will let them go. I promise. But I need some insurance first.”

Tara glanced at Lorie, at her body which trembled with the effort to hold on to the pole. She thought that Jeremy’s body might be taking some of the weight of Mike off of her, but when Jeremy moved away, it was going to be difficult for Lorie to hold on much longer.

They had to hurry if this was going to work.

“I’ll go with you,” Tara said in a soft voice, but the words sounded so loud in the garage.

Woods turned and stared at her with horror. “What? This wasn’t part of the plan!”

Jeremy aimed the gun at Woods. “I knew about your plan the whole time. Now get over there by that post.”

Woods hesitated.

Jeremy pointed the gun at the side of Lorie’s head. She squeezed her eyes shut and sobbed into the tape over her mouth. Her body seemed to be weakening by the moment, like she was on the verge of giving up.

“I’ll shoot her,” Jeremy said and his polite tone had turned mean, like he was losing patience. “She’ll die and fall back. Her lover boy will crash head-first down onto the knives and break his neck. And then I’ll kill you, Woods. And I’ll have Tara. But it doesn’t have to be that way. I don’t want it to be that way.”

Woods hesitated only a few seconds longer, and then he walked over to another wooden post, thirty feet away from Jeremy and Lorie. He stood by the post waiting for Jeremy’s instructions.

“Good,” Jeremy said, and he sounded more relaxed now.

“Turn around. I want to make sure you don’t have any other weapons on you.”

Woods turned around, his hands raised a little. His cell phone was hooked on his belt.

“Okay. Take the cell phone and your car keys out and throw them across the room.”

Woods did as he was ordered. The cell phone broke apart when it hit the floor, the back of the phone flying in one direction and the battery in another.

“Now take out your handcuffs.”

Woods hesitated.

Jeremy smiled. “I know you have them. Part of your little FBI disguise.”

Woods took out the handcuffs from his pants pocket.

“Handcuff yourself to the post with your hands behind your back.”

Again Woods hesitated, but he sighed and backed up to the post. He wrapped his arms behind him, around the post, and snapped the handcuffs over both of his wrists.

“Go check them,” Jeremy told Tara.

Tara went over and pulled on the cuffs.

“Where’s the key to the cuffs?” Jeremy asked Woods.

“It’s on my car keys over there by the phone,” Woods said with dejection.

“He has another one,” Tara said. “There’s another one in his pants pocket. The back pocket.”

Panic flashed across Woods’ face. “What are you doing, Tara?”

A tear spilled out of Tara’s eye and her face crumbled in sadness. “I’m sorry, Woods. I have to try. He said he would let all of you go if I do what he wants.”

“This wasn’t part of the plan!”

“I know,” she said in a soft voice. “I’m sorry.”

“You know he’s not going to let us go,” Woods told Tara. “He’s going to strap you down to a table and torture you for hours. And in that time Lorie will have let go of the pole and she’ll be hanging there helplessly, waiting for him to come back. And I’ll be waiting. And your aunt.”

What choice do I have? Tara wanted to shout at him. But she didn’t. She just wiped away at her tears and plucked the second handcuff key out of Woods’ back pocket. She looked at Jeremy.

“Throw it over there by the phone and car keys,” he told Tara.

Tara tossed the key across the room. It made a slight clinking sound as it bounced across the concrete.

Woods stared across the vast sea of concrete like he was looking to see where the key had landed.

Jeremy walked out from behind Lorie and she held on even harder to the pole when he moved away from her. Lorie’s fingers dug into her upper arms in her effort as she hugged the post. She had both of her legs wrapped around the bottom of the pole. But she wasn’t giving up yet. She wasn’t going to let Mike fall.

Jeremy walked over to Woods. Tara thought for a terrifying second that he was going to shoot him in the head. But he didn’t. He checked the handcuffs to make sure they were locked. Then he stared at Woods.

“You killed my brother,” Woods said to him as they locked eyes.

“I had to,” Jeremy told him. “He was getting too close. I couldn’t let him catch me. I had to find Tara. I had to complete my transformation. This is my destiny … I don’t expect you to understand.”

Jeremy turned and walked towards Tara. “Come with me inside the house. Everything’s set up in the dining room.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

1.

Jeremy instructed Tara to climb the wooden steps that led up to the wraparound deck. She walked a few paces in front of him as he aimed the gun at her back. He told her to keep walking around the house until she got to the other side.

She came to a sliding glass door and it led into a kitchen that was spacious and decorated with fine wood cabinets, granite countertops, and the best stainless steel appliances.

“Keep walking,” Jeremy said from behind her.

Tara walked through the kitchen and into a large dining room. She could already see that the dining room table had been altered – a pentagram painted with dark red paint (except she knew that it wasn’t paint – it was blood) in the center of it; it looked like the same design on the table at the abandoned house with the squiggly and strange symbols around the circle. And like the table at the abandoned house, there were ropes tied to the legs of the table, waiting to be tied to her wrists and ankles.

If he tied her to the table, everything was over.

On the walls more symbols were painted in blood. They looked a little sloppy, like some of this setup had been rushed. Groups of different colored candles burned on small tables in the corners of the room. The candles were white, red, and black; they gave off a strange aroma that Tara couldn’t place.

There was a chair on each side of the table. And on the table was an assortment of bowls and an ancient book that looked like an old bible, but she knew this book wasn’t holy. The other item on the table was a sacrificial knife with a handle made of bone.

Tara walked towards the table, and then she stopped.

“I want to see my aunt,” Tara said.

“She’s alive. You know she is. You can feel it.”

Tara thought she could hear a low moan coming from another room off of the living room, or maybe from up the carpeted stairs that led to a third floor. Yet she wasn’t sure if she’d heard the moan or “felt” it.

“Sit down in that chair,” Jeremey told her.

Tara sat down and she watched as Jeremy walked around to the other side of the table. But he didn’t sit down. He stood there, watching her, smiling like a lifelong dream had finally come true, like all of his wishes were about to be granted in this moment.

“After you tie me down to the table you have to let everyone else go,” Tara said, surprised that her voice was still strong.

Jeremy ignored her.

“I want to see my aunt walk out of here,” Tara continued and realized how foolish the words sounded to her own ears. Once she was tied down to the table then she was as helpless as all of the others. Woods’ words echoed in her mind and she could imagine them out in the garage: Mike falling, his head and face punctured from the knives, after Lorie let go of the post; Lorie’s body dangling ten feet up in the air, her arms and legs flailing; and Woods handcuffed to the post, helpless as he watched the whole thing play out, glancing at the garage doors, waiting for the monster to come back. And when the monster came, he would take his time with them.

Tara looked down at the bowl of blood in front of her. The blood looked dark and syrupy.

Jeremy stood there another moment, watching Tara. He unbuttoned his flannel shirt and took it off, revealing a muscular upper body, but the muscles of his torso were hidden by a corset of skin that he wore around his waist; the belt of skin went up from under the waistband of his pants up to his nipples. The skin looked hard and brittle and discolored now.

He picked up a black robe that was laid over the back of the other chair at that side of the table and he shrugged into it. There were more strange symbols on the robe – they looked hand-painted.

On the seat of the chair beside Jeremy, Tara saw something else, something the black robe had been covering up; it was the ceremonial mask – the same mask she’d seen in her dream when she’d drawn the abandoned house in her aunt’s hotel room.

Jeremy didn’t put the mask on yet, but Tara couldn’t take her eyes off of the gruesome thing. It looked like some kind of paper-mache mask, but it had been covered in layers and patches of human skin of various colors, sewn together. Above the eyeholes in the mask was a combination of eyebrows. Around the mouth-hole in the mask were different sizes of teeth, stuck there in some kind of invisible glue, a circle of three rows of teeth, like the mouth of a shark. And protruding from the sides of the mask were two horns that looked like bull horns.

“The blood in front of you is virgin blood,” Jeremy said.

Tara didn’t answer. She knew whose blood it was.

“It’s mixed with the ashes of a beloved one. It’s my holy water,” he added and the word struck a chord of fear in Tara. The squeeze-bottle was stuffed down into the waistband of her pants behind her and underneath her shirt. Did he know it was there?

Of course he knows it’s there. He’s always been one step ahead.

2.

Detective Perry and Detective Jackson were back at the police station. They hovered behind Dale who was hunched over his computer with Tara’s drawings spread out in front of him on each side of his desk. He was entering the information that they were giving him as quickly as possible.

First he entered Trinity and came up with Trinity, Florida – a remote area in Pasco County where wealthy people lived on large plots of land. There were some small farms there and a few housing developments.

Then Dale started entering the words like he was entering a street address, and as soon as he entered the word, suggestions popped up.

There was a Woods Road – but it was showing up for a few different cities, not in Trinity. There was a subdivision called “The Woods” but it was in another part of the county.

He tried the word Pine.

And instantly the street name Pine Woods Run popped up for Trinity.

“That’s it!” Perry said from behind Dale, making him jump. Having these two large and intimidating men right behind him wasn’t helping too much. He wanted to tell them that – but he didn’t.

“Try the numbers,” Perry told him.

Dale punched in the number nine. He got no addresses.

He punched in the number four. No addresses.

The number two. No addresses.

The number three. Bingo. There were addresses for the number three. Now all he had to do was get the rest in order, but at least he knew where to start.

Perry walked away and tried Lorie’s phone again. It was the fifteenth time he had called her. And this time the phone went right to voicemail like it had been shut off.

He knew Lorie was busy, and he knew she was spending time with her new boyfriend, Mike, but she wouldn’t ignore him like this. Especially since she’d just called him yesterday about what Tara had told her.

No, she was in trouble. He felt that with every fiber of his body, almost like he had a six sense, like he was picking up her terror through the air like an antenna.

Oh God, he thought. Please don’t let me be too late. Perry wasn’t a man who usually prayed, but today he did.

“Got it,” Perry heard Jackson say.

“Whose address is it?” Perry asked, and again he prayed. Please be an address that belongs to a man named Mike. If not, then all of this was for nothing.

“The house was just purchased by a man named Michael Copely.”

“Got a phone number?” Perry asked.

“Dale just tried it. It’s disconnected.”

Perry took a deep breath and stared at Jackson. “Call it in,” he told him.

Jackson stared at him. “You’re sure about this?”

“Yes.” More sure than I’ve ever been in my life, Perry wanted to say.

Jackson seemed like he was going to question Perry one more time, but he didn’t. He turned and went to call the Trinity police department and the Pasco County Sheriff’s office.

Perry wrote down Mike’s address on a scrap of paper and stuffed it down into his pocket. He knew he’d never get there before the local cops and paramedics got there, but he was going anyway. If they only sent one officer, things could go badly.

Perry felt like he needed to be there. He left without a word to Jackson and hurried to his car.

3.

Woods looked over at Lorie who struggled to hang on to the wood post. He could see that she was beginning to sweat now which was making it even harder for her to hold on. How long had she been holding on? he wondered. Probably only since they’d gotten there, he thought. Jeremy had wanted them to see this, a spectacle of his power; he had wanted them to see Lorie holding on to the post like a clock ticking down.

“Lorie, hold on,” he told her.

She had been squeezing her eyes shut as she struggled to grip the wooden post. She hugged it with her arms and legs, her fingers still digging into the flesh of her upper arms. After Jeremy and Tara left the garage, Lorie had managed to peel back the tape with the fingers of one hand while still holding on. She breathed in a rush of air and sniffled back her sobs.

“I can’t hold on much longer,” she wailed.

“I’ve got another key to my handcuffs,” Woods told her. “I hid it in my shoe.”

A sudden hope flashed in Lorie’s eyes and Woods could see some of the strength returning to her.

“Just give me a minute to get to it,” he told her. “You can hold on for another minute, I know you can.”

Lorie nodded, but she moaned. “Please hurry.” She glanced at Mike who twisted and turned on the rope, his eyes still shut, still passed out.

Woods kicked his one shoe off and moved it gently back behind the wooden post with his foot. But he didn’t want to kick it too far so that it would be out of reach from his hand. He had to be very careful.

He glanced back at the garage door, at the sliver of daylight beyond it, sure that Jeremy had Tara tied down to the table by now. He would come back to the garage and slaughter them. But he would take his time. He would have Tara to play with later, when the full moon was up in the night sky. He needed the full moon, it had something to do with his warped ritual, Woods was sure of that. And the hours in between now and the moonrise, Jeremy would have a good old time with knives and flesh.

Mike hanging upside down reminded Woods of the Reverend’s body. A witness. Jeremey might need witnesses for the ceremony he was going to perform inside the house. He would come back out here to the garage for his witnesses.

Woods had his shoe pushed behind the post and he hoped it was in the right place. He slid down the post until his butt was on the concrete floor and he felt gently with his hands for his shoe, his wrists straining hard against the metal of the handcuffs.

For a split second Woods couldn’t feel his shoe and he thought he had pushed it too far out of the way.

But then he found it. He pulled it closer to him with his fingers and then tipped it over. But the key wasn’t coming out. He lifted the shoe up and he could feel the key slide down to the heel of the shoe. He turned it over carefully and spilled the key onto the concrete. He had to go slow; he didn’t want the key tumbling out and sliding out of his reach.

His heart thudded with adrenaline as he forced himself to work slowly and carefully, yet the pressure that Jeremy would come back at any second was pressing on him.

And now Tara was inside with that monster. He couldn’t let anything happen to her.

He heard the key hit the concrete with a slight clink. He lowered the shoe and then pushed it away a little, hoping to God that he was not pushing the key along the floor with the shoe.

“Hold on, Lorie. I’ll be there in a minute.”

He found the key with his fingers and picked it up. He tried to position the key so that he could shove it into the lock on the handcuff. It was a slow process, and not as easy as Woods thought it might be. He had put the handcuffs on loose, but when Jeremy had checked them to make sure they were locked, he tightened one of them one more click and the other one three more clicks. The one on his right wrist was so tight that it was biting painfully into his flesh and it was hard to move that hand, the fingers on that hand were beginning to go numb.

He stood up, wanting to bolt right to Lorie as soon as he was free.

He had to hurry.

But as soon as he stood up he realized he’d made a mistake. And that’s when the key slipped out of the fingers of his left hand.

He heard the key hit the concrete and bounce away.

Oh God no.

CHAPTER THIRTY

1.

Jeremy stood at the other side of the table watching Tara. His robe was open, revealing the grotesque corset of human skin that he wore.

Greg’s skin, Tara thought. Greg’s skin on his body. And Jen’s blood and Miss Helen’s brother’s ashes in this bowl in front of me.

Jeremy still hadn’t put on his gory mask yet, he left it sitting there in the chair beside him. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry.

But Tara knew that Lorie couldn’t hold on to the post forever. How much longer? she wondered. And her Aunt Katie, what torturous position was she trussed up in? Was she holding on for dear life somewhere else on this property? Was she slowly running out of air? Out of blood?

Jeremy picked up Woods’ gun from his side of the table and aimed it at her.

“You don’t need to be afraid, Tara. Like I told you before, you’re not going to die. You’re going to live inside of me. You’re going to live through me. We’ll be one person, one entity. That’s the way it was supposed to be, the way it was always supposed to be. I could tie you down to the table, but I’ve decided that I want you to come willingly to me. I want you to give yourself to me.”

Tara couldn’t wait any longer. And even though Jeremy had Woods’ gun aimed at her, she reached behind her and pulled out the squeeze-bottle from underneath her shirt. She tore off the plastic lid and aimed it at Jeremy, ready to squeeze the bottle and shoot the liquid at him.

Jeremy didn’t move. He stood very still with Woods’ gun pointed at her, a smile on his face, amusement in his dark eyes.

“Holy water?” he asked. “Really, Tara. You think holy water is going to work on someone as powerful as me?”

2.

Woods turned his body around the post and searched the concrete floor with his eyes for the handcuff key. How far had it bounced away? Would he be able to reach it?

Behind him he heard Lorie moan in despair like her last hope had evaporated before her eyes, like all of her strength and willpower had expelled from her body with that moan.

He saw the key. It wasn’t too far away. He kicked off his other shoe and reached his right foot out for the key. He could barely reach it with his big toe, but he didn’t want to push it away, out of reach any farther. He strained his body as much as he could, his arms straining – it felt like his shoulders were going to pop out of their sockets and his right wrist was going to snap in half. The fingers on his right hand were almost completely numb now.

“I got it, Lorie,” Woods said in between panting breaths. “I’ve got the key. I’m going to get us out of here. Just hold on a few more seconds.”

“I … can’t …”

“Yes you can!” Woods snapped at her. He didn’t want to take any extra seconds to look at her. He needed to focus all of his concentration into lifting his foot up very carefully and laying his big toe down onto the key, and then dragging the key back towards him.

He had to be careful. So careful.

He dragged the key back with his foot very slowly. He’d lost the key once, he couldn’t lose it again – Lorie didn’t have much time left. And Tara didn’t, either. He took a deep breath and reached his foot out again and pulled the key back closer to him, listening to the small sound of it scraping gently across the concrete. And the closer he got the key to him, the less he had to stretch his body out and he felt the tension ease in his shoulders, elbows, and wrists.

He had the key in front of him now, right underneath his socked foot. He turned around on the post again and slid down to his butt. He picked up the key in his fingers that were becoming more and more numb by the second. He knew he didn’t have too many more chances until his fingers became useless stumps at the ends of his wrists.

He grasped the key in the fingers of his left hand and guided it slowly to the keyhole on the right cuff. He wanted to hurry, but he couldn’t drop this key again. This time he didn’t stand up. He sat down and stretched his legs out in front of him and leaned his back against the post. He took deep breaths and he tried not to think about Tara inside the house, or Lorie moaning from the other pole, crying that she couldn’t hold on anymore.

The only thing he concentrated on was getting that key into the right cuff.

He felt the key enter the hole and he twisted. For a split second he thought the cuff hadn’t opened, that it had somehow jammed. But then he could feel the blood rushing back into his right hand like a thousand ants dancing under his skin.

And he was free.

He pulled his arms out in front of him and he saw the deep red line around his right wrist. He shook his hand, trying to get the blood back into his fingers and he unlocked the other cuff and let the handcuffs fall to the floor. He stood up on shaky legs and shoved his feet back into his shoes, and then he hurried over to Lorie.

“Hold on, Lorie,” he told her. “I’m going to move the knives out from underneath Mike.”

Lorie nodded as tears flowed from her eyes. “Please … hurry …”

Woods sprinted across the garage and grabbed the edge of the thick square of wood. It was heavier than he expected, but the adrenaline was really kicking in now. He felt the blood and energy surging through his body now. He was going to save Lorie and Mike.

But what about Tara?

Was she still alive?

Could he get to her in time?

For a moment, Woods considered running to the house for Tara, but he couldn’t let Mike die. He couldn’t let Lorie watch her boyfriend plunge face-first down into the knife blades as she was hoisted up into the air from his body weight, swinging back and forth helplessly, screaming as she watched Mike bleed out, his neck snapped in half.

Mike was still unconscious; his face and neck were very red. Woods pulled the panel of wood far enough out of the way and it had let out a squeal as he moved it, a loud screech that filled the air.

Could Jeremy hear that from inside the house?

But he didn’t have time to think about that right now.

He rushed back to Mike and grabbed his shoulders, making sure he had a good hold on him. He looked over at Lorie. He was as ready as he was ever going to be. “Lorie,” he told her, “you have to let go of the pole now.”

Lorie hesitated.

“I’ve got Mike. I’m going to lower him down as soon as you let go. He’ll be okay, I promise. You’ll be okay.”

Again Lorie hesitated, but her arms and legs were loosening.

Loosening more and then …

… she flew back from the post, lifting up into the air as Mike’s body came crashing down onto Woods. He came down faster than Woods had expected, and he was heavier than he looked. But Woods saved Mike from crashing head-first down into the concrete.

Mike’s body was crumpled up on the floor, and Lorie was hanging in the air from her waist. The lengths of rope cut into her waist, choking off her breathing. She clawed at the ropes around her mid-section, but they were too tight.

Woods pulled Mike’s legs down more, hoisting Lorie up a few more feet. He could hear her gurgling, struggling for breath.

Woods’ fingers were tingling terribly now, but at least he had more control of them. He worked the knots loose from Mike’s ankles and almost let the rope slip through his hands as it came loose from Mike. But he caught it in time, holding Lorie there, and then he lowered her to the ground.

He glanced at the open garage door. He wanted to bolt to the house. But he had to get the rope off of Lorie’s waist. It had tightened so quickly and so much that it was cutting into her shirt, folded into her skin.

But she was breathing easier now.

“After I get this untied,” he told her, “I want you to get my phone. Put the battery back in and call the police.”

3.

Tara squeezed the plastic bottle and the clear liquid shot across the table and drenched Jeremy as he held Woods’ gun aimed at her.

“I’m too powerful for holy water,” Jeremy told her. “I’m way past that now. I’m too powerful for your gods and talismans.”

But Tara wasn’t listening. She made sure she squeezed out as much of the liquid as she could from the bottle.

Jeremy smiled in triumph. “And once my transformation is complete, I’ll be a god, a demon, a …”

Jeremy stopped like something terrible had just occurred to him. He sniffed at the air.

“It’s not holy water,” Tara told him. “I had Woods buy two squeeze-bottles, and he switched them. This one has lighter fluid in it.”

Jeremy’s eyes grew wide and he shook his head no in disbelief.

“This is all wrong,” he whispered.

He aimed the gun at her and squeezed the trigger.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

1.

Detective Perry sped north towards Trinity. He had his lights on and a siren wailing, but cars and trucks were slow to get out of his way.

Jackson called and told him that a squad car was being sent out to check on Mike’s house, and that a Sheriff would also be on his way out, too. Perry asked Jackson to get more police out there, whatever he had to tell them, even if it was a lie.

There wasn’t much time, and Perry felt that he was going to be too late.

2.

Aunt Katie was in a room off of the living room, it was going to be Mike’s office eventually but it wasn’t quite fully furnished yet because he’d only been moved in for a week now. But there was a computer desk with a laptop on it and an office chair on wheels.

Katie stood on top of the office chair, her hands tied behind her back and a noose tied tightly around her neck, almost cutting off her breathing, but not quite. The rope went from the noose around her neck up to the ceiling where Jeremy had pulled the drywall away to reveal a joist where he had tied the rope. She had to stand very still on the office chair because it not only rolled on wheels, but it also swiveled very easily. One slight turn and she would lose her balance and the chair would roll away from her and she would hang from this ceiling until she died.

Jeremy had stuffed a rag down into her mouth and pasted strips of duct tape over her mouth. The gag was making it even harder for her to breathe along with the noose around her neck, but she held on, and she tried to keep herself calm.

But then she wondered what Jeremy would do to her. Would he skin her alive, cut her up in small pieces, roast parts of her body with a blow torch? Maybe strangling to death would be better. Maybe she should just move the chair a little. It would be quick.

It would be better.

3.

Jeremy squeezed the trigger of Woods’ gun again.

And again.

Click.

Click.

Tara smiled at him. “I had Woods take the bullets out.”

The horror on Jeremy’s face thrilled Tara. He stood there for a moment in utter shock. For once he was a step behind.

“You didn’t see that, did you?” she said.

But Tara couldn’t waste another second.

She leaned back in her chair and kicked the edge of the table as hard as she could with both feet, using all of the strength and skill she’d learned in the karate classes through the years.

The table slammed into Jeremy’s thighs and knocked him backwards into the corner where the flames from the candles caught his robe on fire, the fabric went up with a whoosh of flame.

“You want to be a demon so bad?!” Tara screamed at him. “Here’s your first taste of Hell!”

Jeremy tried to pat out the flames, but in seconds he was engulfed by the fire – a human inferno. He slammed into the walls, trying to run, trying to get away from the fire, but he only crumpled to the floor screaming over and over again.

Like his victims had screamed, Tara thought.

4.

Woods ran from the garage to the house. He bounded up the stairs to the wraparound porch and ran down to a sliding glass door. He saw the fire inside. He saw someone burning on the floor. Part of the wall was on fire. He tried the sliding glass door, but it was locked. He beat on the glass.

And then he saw Tara.

Woods hurried around the deck to the open door and rushed through the kitchen. He heard Jeremy screaming from the dining room.

“I have to find my aunt,” Tara told him. “She’s in here somewhere!”

“I’ll check upstairs,” Woods told her. “You check the other rooms down here.”

5.

Katie had been about to step off the chair, but at the last second she heard voices from somewhere else in the house. And one of them sounded like Tara. Hope sprung in her chest and she tried to be as still as possible, but her legs were shaking so badly now.

She heard Tara shouting at someone – at Jeremy?

Oh God, please …

And then she heard screaming, but it didn’t sound like a woman’s scream, it sounded like a man’s scream.

She dared to hope.

And then she began screaming into her gag as loudly as she could.

6.

Tara was in the living room when she heard the moaning coming from the next room. Even over the sound of flames and Jeremy’s dying screams, she’d heard the moan.

And she felt that her aunt was very near.

The next room.

Tara bolted across the barely furnished living room to a closed door. She burst through the door and froze for a split second. She saw her aunt standing on top of a wheeled office chair on a wood floor, her hands tied behind her back, tape over her mouth, her eyes wide and red with fear. A rope was strung from her neck and tied to the rafters through the hole in the ceiling.

“Hold on,” Tara said. She grabbed her aunt’s legs, trying to keep her still, trying to keep the chair from moving, but she couldn’t hold on to her and get the rope off of her neck and wrists at the same time. Her aunt’s legs were shaking too badly and she was afraid to let them go. Tara looked up at her aunt who stared down at her and she saw the relief in her eyes.

“It’s okay,” Tara said, not even realizing she was crying. “I got him. I got Jeremy for what he did to my parents. For what he did to your sister.”

Katie nodded and tears slipped from her eyes.

“Woods!!” Tara shouted. She needed Woods’ help – she couldn’t do this without him.

7.

Lorie untied the ropes from Mike’s wrists and ankles. She pulled the tape off of his mouth and tried to wake him up. His face had been so red, almost purple, and his breathing was ragged.

But he seemed to be coming back to consciousness now. He opened his eyes and stared up at her like he was confused for a moment.

“Mike,” she said. “Can you stand up? We have to get out of here.”

She glanced at the open door of the garage, and then around the garage, looking for a place to hide. But she couldn’t drag Mike with her. He was too big and her body ached too badly from holding on to the post for so long.

If that monster came back …

But Woods said he was going to kill him. And she prayed he would.

And then her heart jumped and her eyes darted towards the open garage door again. She heard a sound in the distance … a car pulling up.

“You wait right here,” she told Mike and she was on her feet and running towards the open garage door with more strength and speed than she thought she had, her muscles functioning on the last of her adrenaline now. She got to the edge of the door and peeked out and what she saw almost made her cry out with joy.

A police car.

Lorie rushed out of the garage to the car as the officer got out.

“There’s a killer in the house!” she screamed at the cop. “He’s trying to kill us!”

The officer didn’t even try to calm her down or show any disbelief, he pushed a button on his shoulder mic and called for backup.

“Where is he?” the cop yelled at Lorie after he called it in.

Lorie looked towards the house and she saw the smoke coming from the other side, black smoke spiraling up towards the blue sky. “Oh God, what has he done?”

“You wait right here, ma’am,” the older officer told Lorie as he pulled out his gun. “Paramedics and backup are on the way.”

8.

Woods rushed into the office. He began untying Aunt Katie’s hands while Tara held on to her legs.

“Hurry,” she whispered.

Woods reached up for the noose around Katie’s neck, but he couldn’t quite get enough leverage to loosen the knot. He could go back into the burning dining room and get a chair, but he didn’t think he had time for that. Smoke had filled the dining room, and now it was filling up the living room, and drifting into the office.

“Hold this chair as steady as you can,” Woods told Tara. “Try to find something to block the wheels with.”

Woods climbed up on the chair beside Aunt Katie, very close to her body, both of their feet on the seat of the chair. The chair wanted to spin, but Tara held on to it, with her feet lodged in front of the wheels on the chair. Her muscles ached from the position she was in, but there was no way she was letting go.

Woods grabbed the knot on the rope at the back of Katie’s neck, the noose was tight, and he had to get his sore fingers dug into the knot and pull, but he also had to move as slowly as possible and not make any sudden movements. If the chair moved, he wasn’t going to be able to hold her up. He tried to reach up to the rafter, but it was too high above him. He wished he had something to cut the rope with.

He finally got the noose loosened and he pulled it up over Katie’s head. She ripped the tape off her mouth and pulled out the saliva-soaked rag.

And then they all heard a voice.

“Hold it right there!”

9.

Woods and Katie were still standing on the chair together, with Tara on the floor beside them, hugging on to her aunt’s legs. They all turned as one to the doorway and saw the older police officer standing there with his gun aimed right at them.

“What the hell are you doing!?” the officer yelled at them.

“Wait a minute,” Woods said in a slow and even tone, trying to keep the police officer calm. “I’m not the killer.”

“You two get down off that chair very slowly.”

“I’ll go first,” Woods told Tara. “Hold on to her.”

Woods got down off the chair as Tara held on to her aunt’s legs which were shaking even worse now.

“Just take it easy,” Woods said. “We’re not the bad guy. He’s in the dining room.”

“That guy who’s burnt to death is the killer?” the officer smirked, and it didn’t seem like he was convinced.

Tara was about to tell the police officer that Woods was telling the truth when Jeremy materialized out of the smoke – he tackled the older police officer, knocking him to the ground, knocking the gun out of his hand.

Jeremy was burnt, much of his skin black and smoking. His eyes were wild, like he couldn’t even feel the pain, like he’d moved beyond the pain and the only thing he felt now was rage. He pounded his fists down into the police officer’s face and knocked him out. And then he went for the gun on the floor.

Woods bolted from the chair out into the living room, knocking Katie backwards off the chair. She let out a small scream, trying to keep her balance as best she could.

Tara managed to break her aunt’s fall and then she spun around on the floor and watched as Jeremy grabbed the gun from the floor with his burnt hands, he stuck a blackened finger through the trigger guard. He turned towards Woods.

Woods slammed into Jeremy like a linebacker sacking a quarterback. They both fell down onto the floor, Jeremy’s body making a sickening crunching sound.

The gun went flying.

Even though Jeremy seemed supernaturally strong with rage, Woods was just as possessed. He squirmed around and was on top of Jeremy in a second, straddling his torso with his legs.

Woods punched Jeremy in the face.

He punched him again and again.

Jeremy raised his hands, trying to protect himself from the flurry of punches pounding his face, but there were too many.

“Your brother,” Jeremy said so low that only Woods heard it.

Woods stopped punching the monster, and he stared down at Jeremy’s burnt face as he heaved with quick breaths.

“What did you say?” Woods growled.

“Your brother screamed and screamed when I killed him. He begged for his life. He cried like a little baby.”

Woods hit Jeremy again. And again.

“Woods!” Tara yelled. She was already on her feet, standing in the doorway. The room was filling up with smoke from the fire in the dining room. They needed to grab the police officer and get out of here.

Jeremy lay on the wood floor underneath of Woods who still had him pinned down with his knees like an MMA fighter. Jeremy was only seconds away from passing out.

Woods looked at Tara with tears in his eyes.

“It’s enough,” Tara said. “It’s over. We have to get my aunt and that cop out of here.”

Woods nodded.

Aunt Katie bolted out of the office past Tara and ran to the kitchen.

“Where are you going?!” Tara shouted at her.

Aunt Katie didn’t have time to answer. She searched the cabinets in the kitchen until she found what she was looking for underneath the sink – a fire extinguisher.

She ran back to the fire that was consuming one wall and beginning to spread to another. The smoke was thick, but a lot of the smoke was pouring out of the sliding glass door which was still wide open. Katie sprayed the extinguisher all over the wall, dousing a lot of the flames, but not all of them.

Woods helped the cop up to a sitting position. He was coming back around and Woods handed him his gun back. Tara helped Woods get the officer to his feet.

They heard the sirens in the distance getting closer and closer.

10.

The fire fighters had the fire out in minutes and the cops and paramedics had Jeremy’s body strapped down and handcuffed to a gurney while several police officers watched with their guns ready. But it didn’t look like Jeremy was going to fight back anymore.

Another crew of paramedics worked on Mike who was still in the garage. He had come back to consciousness, but he needed some medical attention and they loaded him onto a stretcher bound for a different ambulance.

Woods, Tara, and Aunt Katie huddled together, breathing in the fresh air, letting the charred smell of the smoke leave their lungs with each breath.

Lorie was at Mike’s side as they wheeled him into the ambulance. But she had to let his hand go. She promised him that she would meet him at the hospital. Then she hurried over to Tara as the back doors of the ambulance closed and the vehicle took off across the grass towards the dirt driveway that ran through the woods.

“I don’t know what to say,” Lorie said as she stared at Tara. “Thank you so much.”

Tara just nodded and she couldn’t help crying. “It’s my fault he was here in the first place,” she said through choked sobs.

Lorie held on to her. “It’s not your fault. Don’t make excuses for that sick monster.”

Tara’s vision was blurry with tears as she held on to Lorie. She watched as the paramedics wheeled Jeremy to the other ambulance.

Jeremy stared right at Tara. He smiled – and then he winked at her. One white eye winking in his charred face. The Shadow Man. The Monster from her nightmares all these years.

It was finally over.

Tara felt her skin crawl and she forced herself to look away from him.

Lorie let Tara go. She was crying, too. She wiped at her eyes.

A plain squad car roared down the dirt driveway passing the ambulances as they left. The car skidded to a stop on the grass and Detective Perry jumped out and ran towards Lorie.

“Uncle Ronald! How did you know?”

He grabbed Lorie and bear-hugged her. “I’m sorry I doubted Tara,” he whispered into her ear. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

Lorie broke down into sobs and let her uncle hold her.

After a moment, they let go of each other and walked over to Woods, Tara, and Aunt Katie.

“Can you give me a ride to the hospital?” Lorie asked her uncle.

Perry nodded, but then he turned his ice blue eyes on Woods. “You know I’m going to have to arrest you for impersonating an FBI agent.”

Woods nodded – he understood.

“Isn’t there some other way?” Lorie begged her uncle.

“I’ll do my best to vouch for him,” Perry said as he stared at Woods. “But the arrest can wait until tomorrow. Go on and give your statements to the sheriff, and I hope to see you tomorrow afternoon at the station.”

Woods nodded. “Thank you. I’ll be there.”

Perry and Lorie walked back to his car, Perry with his arm around his niece.

Tara watched them walk away, and then she looked at Woods. “Will you stay the night with us?”

Woods smiled at Aunt Katie, and then at Tara. “Of course.”

EPILOGUE

1.

Woods spent the night with Tara and her aunt in Tara’s apartment. He and Tara slept in the same bed and talked until three o’clock in the morning. Woods wanted to try a relationship and Tara was willing as long as Woods could cope with her night terrors. He pulled her close to him and kissed her. He promised he could deal with anything just to be with her.

As promised, Woods turned himself over to Detective Perry the next day. Tara hugged him before Perry snapped a pair of handcuffs on him and led him away.

Woods did three months in the county jail while his court case pended. Tara visited him as much as she was allowed. When he went to court, he got time served from Judge Whalen because of Detective Perry’s influence.

Aunt Katie went back to Boston, but she only stayed long enough to pack. She moved back down to Tampa to be closer to Tara, and she rented an apartment not too far away from Tara’s home. Tara spent a lot of time with her aunt, and less and less time with Lorie. Lorie and Mike grew closer together, but Lorie always kept in touch at least twice a week.

Jeremy had been indicted on several murder charges, but his case hadn’t even started yet. He’d been in the prison infirmary the whole time on suicide watch. His burns were healing slowly, but he would be scarred for life.

The case was already a media circus as more and more details of satanic rituals leaked out to the press. And it was only going to get worse once it went to court. Tara and Woods knew they had a lot of time on the stand and meetings with lawyers in their future. Tara wished she could put the whole thing behind her and move on with her life, but she wanted to do everything she could to make sure that Jeremy was either executed for his crimes, or at least spent the rest of his life behind walls where he couldn’t hurt anyone anymore.

2.

As soon as Woods was released from jail, he moved in with Tara. He already had a job lined up and he promised he would to take care of her.

“We’ll take care of each other,” Tara told him.

A week after Woods moved in, he and Tara lay in bed watching the news, cuddled up close to each other, and of course the news reporters were talking about the case. The bedroom was dark; the only light came from the TV. They had shared a bottle of wine earlier with a dinner that Tara had prepared. They were full, slightly buzzed, and relaxed. Comfortable.

Tara felt safe beside Woods, safer than she ever had in her whole life. She’d had a few nightmares over the last few months, but nothing too bad. The dark presence that had suffocated her for much of her life was still there sometimes, Jeremy could still get to her that way, even from jail, but she no longer feared him finding her.

She felt good.

She felt safe.

She closed her eyes and went to sleep.

3.

Hours later Tara woke up in her bathtub with a drawing tablet on her lap and a pencil clenched in one hand. Woods shook her awake.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Tara nodded and glanced down at the drawing on the tablet. She handed the tablet to Woods.

He looked at the sketch of a pretty woman.

“I saw that woman in my dreams,” Tara whispered. “She’s going to be murdered soon. We have to help her.”

Woods helped Tara out of the bathtub and held her close to him for a few moments until she stopped shaking.

Tara stared into the darkness of the hallway over Woods’ shoulder.

It was happening again, she thought, but at least this time she could do something to help.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction and many locales in this story are completely made-up. For those of you who might be familiar with the areas of Hillsborough and Pasco Counties in Florida, you might have noticed that I took a few minor geographical liberties while writing this story.

Thank you so much for purchasing my book, and I hope you enjoyed it. I would really appreciate any feedback you might have. Please feel free to leave a review. I read all reviews and they are more helpful than you might realize.

I have more novels that I’m writing at this moment and they should be available very soon. They include: The Superhuman Gene and Devil’s Island and a collection of four novellas. I hope you’ll keep an eye out for these.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark Lukens is an author and screenwriter. He grew up in Daytona Beach, Florida, but after many travels and adventures, he settled back down in Florida, near Tampa Bay, with his wonderful and supportive wife, his son, and a stray cat they adopted. He is the author of: Ancient Enemy, Descendants of Magic, The Summoning, Ghost Town, and A Dark Collection: 12 Scary Stories.

Please feel free to comment or ask any questions at MarkLukensBooks@yahoo.com and he can be found on Facebook at MarkLukensBooks, and on Twitter @MarkLukensBooks.

Please feel free to leave a review – I would love to hear from you!