Dead Hunger: The Flex Sheridan Chronicle (4 page)

CHAPTER TWO

I walked away from the Suburban, turning back once more to make sure Trina had her head down.  No sign of her.   Good.

No calling out
to anyone
this time.  As quiet as I could be.  I needed my heart and my brain, and
even more than that,
Trina needed me to k
eep them, so stealth was my new modus operandi
.

I
planned to go
back
inside
the house where I would have light.  I’d not yet completed my search there, and before I considered going into the back yard, I would be bathing that area in the light from the back porch – and the switch was only accessible from inside.

Holding the Smith & Wesson out in front of me, I used one finger to hook around the slimy screen door handle.  I didn’t want any more of that blood on me.  I’d already touched enough and seen enough.  I had no idea how much more I’d see as the next days passed.

I
eased
the door open.  Everything inside was as it had been.  With a last glance toward my truck, I went inside and guided the door closed quietly behind me.  I moved back down the hall and stopped by the kitchen.

A flashlight.  Who didn’t have one in the junk drawer?  I went in and opened it.  Sure, I knew which one it was
– I’d been here a thousand times –
and a
s
soon as I opened the
drawer
I saw the four inch LED light with the
rubber power
button.  I pushed it, and that sucker lit up like a
tiny
football stadium.

I smiled then.  I was proud of myself.  I have no idea when the next time I smiled was.  I might have done it for Trina – to make her feel like everything was okay, but it wasn’t real.  I may have done it for Gem, when I saw her again – no maybe
about it;
I
did
smile when I saw Gem again, but that’s for later.

The hallway was foreboding, and I didn’t get why.  I knew there were still unexplored places down there, but it was so out of place for me to feel anything but comfort and a desire for a beer in this home.  All I’d ever experienced before this night was love in this place.  Now I could add terror and relief to that list.  But right now I was back to the terror part.  I was an electrician, and the worst thing I usually run into is the odd spider or rat.

I stopped across from the laundry room and stared for a moment at the
closed
bi-fold doors.  The hall light was still burning, so
I didn’t need my flashlight yet.  I pulled open one of the doors, and in the silence of the house, it squealed like a 16 penny nail being dragged over a chalkboard.

Then I saw the dress.  It was hanging out of the closed washer lid.  I’d seen the dress before.  I’d seen
Jesse
wearing it.  My breath caught in my throat, and I
transferred
my gun to my left hand and pointed it down toward the end of the empty hallway
where the door to the back patio was,
just to make sure I was ready in case someone – or something – appeared there.

I turned my eyes back to the washer.  The closed lid. 
Jesse
’s dress.  It no longer looked like a washer, but like a coffin.  A crypt.  Then I snapped, realizing I had to take action and shake off the bullshit fear I was experiencing.  One more glance down the hall.

Empty.  Back to the washer.  I pulled that lid up as fast as I could.  The washer was turned off, but the tub was filled with dirty water.  Rust colored.  The dress was white with red polka dots, so it could have been the color running into the water, but my heart pounded out the words in my ears
:
It’s
Jesse
in there
. 

My jaw was sore from clenching my teeth together, and my gun hand was shaking.  I
tugged firmly
on that dress, sure I’d feel the resistance of a little girl’s dead body weighing it down.
  But it slid out easily and fell to the floor. 

An involuntary sigh
of relief
left my body
.  Back to relief.  Thank God. 
It was so much better than the terror part. 
The dress was not on
Jesse
.  The dress was just a dress, and I didn’t care how it got like that.  I moved away from the utility r
oom and further down the hall.  I pulled the mini flashlight out of my pocket and shined it into the bathroom on the left at the end of the hall.  Nothing in there.  No closets big enough to hide in, so I pushed the door back to make sure nothing – okay, nobody – hid behind it, and then pulled it
softly closed
.  I
shined
the light toward the master bedroom and saw nothing.  As I went to reach inside to hit the light switch, I heard a sound, like a metallic reverberation and a thud.
My hand froze.

It sounded kind of random, l
ike it was being made by a something, not a someone.  I discovered I was holding my breath again
, and my sore jaw reminded me not to clench my teeth so tightly
.
 
I checked behind me again, down the hall, looked at the bathroom door. 
I r
eached over and tried to turn the knob to the patio door.  I
t
was
locked
. 
Everything
was as it
had been
just a moment ago
, which really shouldn’t have surprised or relieved me, but it did both
.
  I
felt with my fingers along the wall of
the bedroom
, found and flipped the light
switch
up,
and the room
came
into view.  Nobody
lay
in wait.  T
he
metallic banging
sound persisted. 

Then I looked down and saw them.  How could I have missed them?  The bloody footprints that led into the bedroom did not appear until they stained this carpeting.  The carpeting i
n
the hallway had been a deep brown, and the blood, having dried to a darker color
,
was not readily visible.  But as I looked back behind me, I saw not only the blood on the floor, but the blood on the walls. 
How could I have missed it? 
My heart pounded in my chest suddenly, and I could hear it in my ears.  It drowned out every other sound
and I gripped the revolver with both hands, swinging it to all corners of the room, my eyes falling toward the floor as I stepped after the bloody footprints.  They led to the window.

It was open.  The sheer curtains were blowing into the room, and the half-open aluminum mini blinds were banging against the wall.  The bloody handprints
were all around the window, on the sheers, and on the sill.  I saw a footprint on the sill and I guessed what had happened.

Trina had slipped into her bedroom closet, or under a bed while running from her mother. 
Jesse
had run into the
back room
and
was
trapped when her mother, covered in blood and God knew what kind of gore, came in behind her. 
Jesse
opened
the window and scrambled through it, and she had been pursued by something that was no longer her mother, but something . . .
something hungry
.  Something with a hunger that apparently could not be satisfied.

I wanted to turn on the light, but there was no time.  If there was any chance – any chance at all that
Jesse
was alive – that Jamie was not responsible for this and that she was alive, I had to find them.  I had wasted enough time.

I pulled the flashlight and pushed the button, lighting the 10 mini LED lights.  I stepped through the window and onto the back patio
.
  The
hall
door would have taken me out to the same area, but I wanted the benefit of following the bloody footprints directly.  I didn’t want to have to pick up the trail again.

I shone the light down.  They were fading now, but every now and then there was a dark chunk of something on the concrete pool deck, and the trail led toward the dark water
of the pool
.  And then away. 

When Jack and Jamie had
been discussing putting in a pool, she’d mentioned considering a black-bottomed pool
.  I’d heard that wasn’t the best idea, because chlorine would fade it in time, but she did it anyway.  What it served to do was to mak
e the pool appear as black and murky as a pond when the moon was non-existent.  But I could see the bloody footprints stopped on the edge of the water, and then several prints and chunks of gore were centralized on the edge.

Jamie – or what used to be Jamie – stopped here.  For a long time.  Watching?  Waiting? 

Fuck. 
Jesse
.

I jammed the gun into my pants and dove into the water.  I could see nothing, but I swam hard to the bottom and ran my hands along it at the deepest point, moving side to side until – until my hands fell on cloth.  And skin.  I screamed underwater, the bubbles escaping my mouth, and I pulled on the child’s body, lifting her out of the watery prison, toward the surface.  When I broke through I had her pressed against me, her lifeless, limp body.  I
paddled with
my free arm,
struggling
up the inclined bottom of the pool until I was in the shallow end and co
uld walk more easily
.  When I reached the edge, I
rested my niece’s
body down on the
pool deck
and leaned over her, pressing my hands on her chest, pumping, pumping, but feeling nothing in response. 

I realized with each compression I was saying, “
Come on!  Come on!  Breathe!”
but I couldn’t stop myself.  It was as if my very words could force this little girl to come back to life.
 
Breathing hard, I finally gave up.  I dropped my head down beside hers and I cried, pulling her cheek to mine.  Cold.  But her body was intact.  She was not torn open.  She
had not been
attacked.

She had drowned.

And when I looked up, I saw what was, at one time, my sister staring back at me.  She stood just outside of the pool enclosure, her skin pale white, her cap-sleeved tee shirt torn and bloody, her mouth open to reveal gnashing teeth that looked like they were always chewing, chewing, eating, eating. 

“Jamie,” I said softly.  “Jamie, it’s me, Flex.”

Her eyes filled with something like concern for just a split second.  Then she started to tear at the screening, trying to get to where we were.  The door was right in front of her, but it was closed. 

And she spoke as she did this.  Not clear.  Garbled.  But the words I could still make out.

“I’m hungry hungry starving hungry hungry . . .”  Her eyes glowed, but there was no light reflecting in them.  The pupils were dilated huge, so that no irises were visible, only black.  Against her pale white skin, this increased the oddness of it.  Her hair, once so shiny and beautiful, was stringy and even beginning to fall out in places.  What had happened to her had happened fast.  I couldn’t imagine that we’d spoken on the phone just earlier
that
day.

“Jamie, baby.  It’s me, Flex!  I’ll help you!  You’re sick, sis.  Just sick.  Sit down there on the grass, and I’ll get someone to help you!  Just stay there and –
”

I stopped talking.  She didn’t hear anything, and her guttural grunts and moans as she continued tearing down the screen mesh just obscured what I was trying to get across. 
She was making headway through the screen and as it broke through
,
she
began her
scramble
over the lower crossbar
. 

I looked at her, then
looked at sweet
Jesse
’s limp body lying on the concrete in front of me, and there was no fucking way I was going to let this . . . this
thing
get to her.  I’d never forgive myself.  I pulled
Jesse
’s soaked body
into my arms and back into the water.  I carried her to the deep end and let her body slip beneath the surface to the dark bottom again.

As
I headed back toward the shallow end
, the Jamie-thing had made it through and was staggering toward the pool. 
I stood about five feet from the edge and watched her. 
As
she
reached the edge
of the pool again, she
stopped and stared down.

Afraid?  Unable to judge the water,
perhaps even confused as to
what it was?