Black Lightning

CHAPTER 63

For the first time in almost two decades, the workbench area in the basement was completely clean. The bench, along with the rows of narrow shelves that had been built into the wall above it, had been there when he and Anne had bought the house. The previous owner, moving to a nursing home, had left everything in place, and there it had remained. Even during the total restoration of the main floors, the basement had never been touched. A tool had occasionally been located and used, an area had now and then been cleared to make way for a new project. But the clutter had always remained.

Until today, when, for some reason he didn’t comprehend, Glen hadn’t stopped with cleaning up the mess left from the filleting of the trout, but had kept on working, methodically going through the myriad plastic containers filled with nuts, bolts, nails, tacks, rivets, washers, and other assorted hardware, labeling each one of them, then sorting them first by contents, then by size, until, when he was done, the ranks of shelves offered an almost artistically elegant orderliness to the eye. The shelves finished, he’d gone on to clean out the area under the workbench, sweeping and vacuuming the floor until even the most recalcitrant speck of dust had succumbed. Then he’d set about rendering the same kind of order to the tools that had lain scattered on the table and bench, and when he was finally finished, the whole area had taken on a new look. Clean and bright under the fluorescent lights, with a place for everything and everything in its place.

As perfectly kept as any laboratory. Glen stood gazing at it for a few minutes, reveling in the satisfaction the cleanup had given him, then started up the steep flight of stairs to the kitchen. He was halfway up when the headache struck.

A stab of pain shot through his head, so intense it made him stagger against the wall, then drop to his knees. At the same time the pain struck, an explosion of light burst inside his head, blinding him.

A stroke! He was having a stroke. Out of nowhere, Franklin Roosevelt’s last words flashed into his mind: “I have a terrific pain in the back of my head.” Almost immediately, the president had fallen into a coma and died.

Now it was happening — he felt as though he was sinking into a great dark chasm, falling endlessly into a black, bottomless hole.

He tried to scream, but nothing came out. Then, almost from beyond the edges of his consciousness, he heard laughter.

Dark, scornful laughter.

The laughter of a maniac.

As he sank yet deeper into the lightless abyss, he heard the laughter again, and now he recognized it.

The voice — the voice inside his head, the voice that had whispered to him of evil.

The voice that only today had wanted him to open Kevin’s chest and hold his son’s heart in his hands.

No!

He couldn’t give in to it — he wouldn’t! He struggled against the blackness, forcing it back, willing himself not to disappear into the dark pit that yawned around him. Then he heard something else. A low rumble, slowly building, drowning out the mocking laughter. He concentrated on that sound, shutting out the laughter until the blackness began to recede. His vision cleared and slowly he realized the pain had vanished.

Not simply eased — it was completely gone.

But he felt exhausted, as if he’d just run a marathon. His legs felt rubbery, but as he climbed slowly back to his feet, gripping the rail with one hand, resting part of his weight against the wall with the other, they began to feel stronger, and finally he was able to make his way up to the kitchen. As he emerged from the basement door, he saw rain slashing against the window, and then there was a sudden blinding flash of lightning.

Once again pain slashed through Glen’s head like a hurled spear, and once again he was dropped to his knees by its blinding force. When the lights in the kitchen dimmed briefly as the lightning died away, Glen didn’t see it, for again the black abyss had opened before him. The clap of thunder that burst over the house a second later with enough force to rattle the windows sent him whimpering to the floor while from deep within him the terrible laughter once again erupted.

A visage of evil now appeared before Glen in the darkness, a face whose features radiated such heinous inhumanity that Glen recoiled from it. As the terrible pain in his head grew more intense, Glen cowered into the black shroud closing around him, no longer battling the blackness and the pain, but only seeking refuge from the torture being inflicted upon him.

And as Glen Jeffers’s spirit steadily weakened, the spirit of Richard Kraven — seeming to draw strength directly from the electrical storm that raged beyond the confines of the house — burst forth to take total control of the body that until this moment it had been forced to share. Now, seeming to draw more power with every bolt of lightning that flashed across the sky, Richard Kraven drove Glen Jeffers deeper and deeper into the abyss.

So deep that soon there would be no trace of Glen Jeffers left.

Never again would Richard Kraven have to wait for Glen Jeffers to sleep, nor would he have to steal quick moments when rage — the kind of rage only his brother and his mother had been able to inspire — gave him the strength to overcome Glen, at least for a little while.

Now, finally, Richard Kraven was utterly free to do as he pleased.

Rising from the floor, exhilarating in his liberation, Richard Kraven moved leisurely through the house.

Coming to the computer in the den — Anne’s computer — he quickly manipulated the mouse to trace the history of the files she had been studying.

Obviously she’d had no trouble figuring out to whom the pocketknife must have belonged.

Had she figured out how close to the truth Maybelle Swinney had come when she’d tried to make a joke?

Probably: unlike Maybelle Swinney, Anne was smart.

But where had she gone?

To Mark Blakemoor, probably. Even if she wasn’t with him right now, she soon would be.

But neither of them could yet suspect the truth, and in the end, when finally he lost this body as surely as he’d lost his own, at least his reputation would be restored.

Glen Jeffers would be convicted of all of it.

For Glen Jeffers, Richard Kraven had decided, would be caught in the act. Indeed, the only thing he’d changed his mind about was whom he would choose to be the subject of his final experiment.

Anne had been his first choice, of course. But now he’d come to a new decision.

An elegant decision.

The kind of decision that was worthy of a man of his intellect.

Anne would stay alive.

And in his own final moment — or at least in the moment before he left this body to find a new one — he would see the expression on her face as she watched her husband clutch her daughter’s heart in his hand and tear it from her breast.

For the rest of her life Anne would live with that memory.

Richard Kraven’s reputation would be totally restored.

And Anne Jeffers’s entire life would be utterly destroyed. Justice would be served.

Sitting down at Anne’s desk, Richard Kraven began writing one last note. And this time he made no effort to keep from leaving Glen Jeffers’s fingerprints all over it. Then, leaving the note where Anne would be sure to find it, he left the house. There were preparations to make for his final experiment.

The one he would perform on Heather Jeffers.