Black Lightning

CHAPTER 32

The Experimenter’s eyes bored into the darkness.

The night was silent, yet something had awakened him. Even during the times when most men wouldn’t have been able to sleep at all, the Experimenter had always been able to close his eyes to the world beyond his own mind, to retreat within himself to rest undisturbed.

But tonight some outside force — a force over which he had no control — had roused him. With the silence of a phantom, he explored the upper floor, but all he could hear was the slow, steady breathing of the family who lay in their beds, sleeping in peace, blissfully unaware of his presence. At the top of the stairs he paused, not out of any sense of indecision, but to collect data with his acutely honed senses.

Whatever had awakened him was not in the house, for other than the normal creaks and groans of an ancient structure shifting uncomfortably in the night, all was quiet. Satisfied that whatever had roused him from his rest was beyond the protecting walls, he moved down the stairs and through the rooms of the lower floor, gazing out the windows into the comparative light of the urban night, searching for.… something. If he saw it — even sensed it — he would recognize it at once. But all was quiet beyond the windows; nothing moved; he felt no hidden presence lurking in the shadows.

Yet something had awakened him. He would not rest until he had identified that which had intruded into his sleep.

He moved into the kitchen, then out onto the back porch. The night air was cool against his skin, and unbidden memories of other times when he’d stood naked in the cool of the night flooded into his mind.

Nights when, his experiment finished but the ruined remains of his subject still to be disposed of, he’d stepped out of his laboratory into the refreshing cool of the night, sometimes to vent his frustration at failure in a howl of rage; sometimes simply to wash himself in the river even before beginning the tedious — but very necessary — clean-up process.

Sometimes, though, he’d simply stood naked beneath the eternity of stars sparkling above him, feeling like a newborn child of the universe, his skin glittering darkly with a glowing sheen of blood released only moments earlier from the heart of his latest subject. On those nights he would suck hungrily at the cold night air as if by inhaling deeply enough he might somehow take in enough of the life-sustaining oxygen to support not only himself, but also the ruined body that still lay inside the motor home. But even as he filled his lungs, he’d always known that oxygen was not enough. Without the spark, without the black, invisible lightning that emanated from somewhere deep within the body itself, no amount of air put back into his subject’s lungs could restore its body to life. That was when despair always overcame him, when the cool of the night air that had felt like the caress of a lover only a moment earlier became a dark cloak concealing an unseen enemy.

Tonight, though, the darkness was neither lover nor enemy. Tonight it was an enigma, bearing within its folds something that he needed to discover.

He stood still, waiting.

He felt the night, all his senses reaching out, searching for some clue as to exactly what had awakened him. Then, out of the steady drone of insects, frogs and traffic, a new sound emerged.

A latch clicking.

Hinges creaking.

Another latch opening.

A spring stretching, then the soft clack of a screen door striking wood siding.

Next door.

Though no light showed, someone was coming out of the house next door.

The Experimenter stood motionless, the patience of a scientist serving him now. No need to turn, no need to move at all. All he need do was wait, concealed in the dark shadows of the porch.

Soon, the source of his disturbance would reveal itself.

He had not long to wait, for within less than half a minute he heard the heavy tread of thick-soled shoes on wooden steps feeling their way tentatively through the darkness. The mind of the Experimenter automatically began applying the laws of logic. Whoever was descending the steps next door was not familiar with them, had not become accustomed to their width or their height.

Ergo, whoever it was did not belong there.

Perhaps that had been what awakened him; the unexpected sound of someone forcing entry to the house next door. From long experience he knew that it was possible to sleep through any noise, as long as it was an expected norm, while an unexpected sound could banish sleep instantly from an attentive mind. As long as he had existed he had been in possession of an attentive mind. Yet still he did not move, for now his interest was piqued. He hung in the shadows of the night like a phantom, waiting for the intruder to show himself.

A dark figure appeared, carrying a burden which for a moment was nothing more than a gray and shapeless mass barely visible in the blackness that surrounded it. But as the figure moved farther from the house, it came closer to the dim light that glowed above a narrow alley. In this no-man’s-land between two rows of opposing backyards, the intruder became more visible.

It was a man. The burden he bore was instantly recognizable to the watcher from the darkness.

A body.

A human body, held clumsily, with no wrappings to prevent blood from dripping to the ground.

As the figure carried the body closer to the alley, closer to the light, every muscle in the Experimenter’s body tensed.

The body had been stripped naked, just as he himself had always denuded the bodies of his subjects.

The chest had been laid open, but the surgery had not been neatly done. Rather, the thoracic cavity seemed to have been clumsily hacked open. Even from where he stood, the Experimenter could see that one of the woman’s large breasts had been all but cut away.

But the man who bore the naked body was fully clothed, and even in the badly lit alley, the Experimenter could make out the crimson stains of blood spread across the bearer’s shirt and oozing down his pants.

The Experimenter watched, and felt contempt, but still his mind worked, and slowly a logic began to form, though it was a logic with so many missing pieces that it could barely be called logic at all.

The body was naked.

The chest torn open.

Very roughly, if viewed through the eye of the ignorant, parallel to the end result of his own experiments.

Today there had been an article in the paper about the dead prostitute — what was her name? Shawnelle Something-or-other — the article written by the woman who lived in this very house, who was even at this moment asleep upstairs.

In her article, Anne Jeffers had suggested the Shawnelle killing might be a copy-cat of his own work.

The police had denied it.

If they were wrong, if the man who was now bearing his handiwork away wanted to draw full attention to what he was doing, how better than to strike next door to the reporter who was recording his deeds? But why was he literally leaving behind a trail of blood? It made no sense, unless the man unconsciously wanted to be caught.

Then, a moment later, the dim light suspended above the alley fell full on the bearer’s face, and the Experimenter instantly recognized him.

The pieces of the puzzle fell into place. The Experimenter, fury raging within him, retreated back into the house.