Slippin' into Darkness

8:13 A.M.

Amy had long since stopped screaming, but she hadn’t moved from the corner of the basement. Her shoulder muscles cramped. Earthen cold leeched from the concrete walls and chilled her bones.

It could have been worse. She could have been Doug Douglas, dead on the floor, with skin fading to arctic white.

Doug. He’d held his silence for nearly eighteen years. If he had kept his mouth shut another eighteen, he might still be alive.

The thought gave Amy no relief, and she turned away from the dead man. April Destino’s corpse stood unmoving in the far corner. Mud stains dappled the hem of her red dress; her long blonde hair was twisted in a dry, almost fashionable tangle; her skin was oyster gray and slack. April’s blue lips were swollen in a half pout, half pucker, as if she were awaiting a final kiss from an uncertain lover.

Amy drew a shallow breath. Her chest was so tight with fear that it seemed she was breathing through a straw. She had come here intending to give Doug a good scare. She had come here to teach April how an expert played the game.

And she realized that she hadn’t even known where she was. This wasn’t Doug’s house. It was Steve Austin’s. Ozzy Austin’s. Doug’s words came back to her: You get in that fancy car of yours and you follow the yellow brick road. She was the one who was learning. She had thought that she was the smart one, the unflappable one, but now here she was, huddled in a corner, hiding in the shadows, worrying that her body would shatter if she so much as moved an inch.

But she had to move. She eased away from the cool concrete wall. Dank air stirred behind her, and her naked legs grew gooseflesh under the short cheerleader’s skirt. She moved forward slowly, a wary prizefighter answering a final bell, but April’s corpse didn’t advance from the opposite corner. Thank God, Amy thought. This isn’t turning into a horror movie after all.

The doorknob twisted easily in her grip, and the lock popped free. Her heart jumped. She tugged the knob and the door gave a fraction of an inch, but then it held tight. Frustrated, she pulled harder. Something slapped against the wood, and she realized that there was another lock on the opposite side of the door.

Shit. Amy’s fists thudded against varnished oak, and the sound told her the door was solid. She backed off, eyeing it. Expensive knob. Brass hinges.

The basement air seemed suddenly colder, heavy with the earthy stink of the grave. An icy whisper filled Amy’s ears. She whirled, instinctively retreating toward the corner, her eyes trained on April’s pouting blue lips, but April’s corpse hadn’t moved. It still leaned at a crazy angle against the far wall-half hidden in shadow, half bathed in flickering light.

Light that created the illusion of movement.

It’s just an illusion.

The hem of the corpse’s dress was a curtain made of stone.

There’s the proof. She’s not moving. She’s not breathing. She’s dead.

Once again, Amy’s throat was nothing but a straw, only now someone was pinching it. The light brightened and April’s face became a pool of milk in a bone-china bowl, and then shadows poured over April’s forehead and dripped down her face, transforming the blue pout into a sagging frown.

An icy buzz redirected Amy’s attention to the bank of fluorescent tubes in the lone ceiling fixture. There were three tubes, and only one of them was working. It didn’t look like it would be working for long.

The tube buzzed, then flickered.

Shadows seemed to pour from the corners.

Now you see it, now you don’t.

Now you hear it, now you don’t.

The light was the source of the sound that had startled her. Her back had been turned while she examined the door, and she had heard the fluorescent light buzzing.

No. She had heard a whisper.

Don’t be an idiot. Stay cool and you’ll get out of this. Start imagining things and you’ll be swimming in dangerous waters.

The door. It was the only thing keeping her here. Maybe she could get the hinges off. If she had a screwdriver and a hammer, she could pop the pins easily enough. But a quick search told her that there weren’t any tools in the room. She tried to loosen the pins but couldn’t get a grip on them. They were lodged tight. And her purse was in the Mercedes. She kept a Swiss army knife, a gift from Ethan, in the zipper pocket. If she had that…

But she didn’t. Her car was parked out front.

Unless Steve Austin had moved it.

There had to be something she could use.

Doug Douglas lay at her feet. There was no other choice. She bent low, close to him. She could smell soap, deodorant, and blood…and she knew instantly that Doug had fouled himself in death.

But her hand was like a snake that had been charmed. Her fingers burrowed into the dead man’s pockets. A tangle of wet Kleenex was the first thing she found. She threw it into the shadows and wiped her fingers on Doug’s pants, gagging in disgust. She tried again. Found only his wallet. Then came a cheeseburger wrapper from MacDonald’s. Just one.

Empty. She was coming up empty.

Doug lay on his side. There was one pocket left, and she couldn’t get to it without rolling him over. She nudged his shoulder with the heel of her hand. He wobbled for a moment before collapsing onto his back, the sound like a huge blob of Jell-O dropping to the floor.

Doug’s chest sagged. He sighed, and his teeth clacked together sharply. Amy drew back in horror, but not fast enough to escape the cold breath of death that tickled over her cheek.

Just that one breath. That was all that was left in him. He was dead. He lay there, his lips peeled back in a sick little grin, a sliver of lettuce stuck between his teeth. Amy thought of the pathetic little cheeseburger wrapper and had to look away.

To his pocket. The one pocket that remained. The pocket which masked a bulge that was completely meaningless in death.

No. That was a lie. She wouldn’t reach into that pocket. She wouldn’t touch that thing, no matter how brief the contact was… He was dead…

But she had to. Unless…

Quickly, she tugged at the exposed corner of the pocket and pulled it inside out. The roll of film hit the floor. It had to be the roll that Doug had shot outside Ethan’s window, but Amy didn’t even smile, didn’t even take the time to destroy it, because the real treasure came next.

Doug’s keys. She snatched them up and went to work on the door a second time, trying to loosen the pins, the molding, anything. She worked until her fingers began to ache, with no success.

She bent three keys before she gave up. There were others, but Amy doubted that they were any stronger. She sighed, long and low. And when she drew another breath through pursed lips, the sigh seemed to continue.

She turned, confronting pouting lips twisted into an expression that was just this side of amused.

Amy’s hands curled into fists at the sight of April’s corpse. Okay. Things were getting just a little bit out of hand. She was upset and she was scared. But she had every right to be. She’d spent the better part of the evening playing games with a fat slug who thought that he was clever. Said slug had directed her to the home of a man who kept a dead bimbette in not-so-cold storage, a man who mistook her for some kind of reincarnation of the heretofore mentioned bimbette. She’d watched the man become most distressed when he realized that she wasn’t exactly eager to step back into his life for round two. So he’d locked her up along with the expired object of his affections in said not-so-cold storage before going off to work like it was just another day.

Oh, and there was a little matter of murder in there somewhere, too-she’d sent said slug to the big flower-bed in the sky.

Amy laughed. The whole thing was David Lynch weird. If she wanted to appear on Geraldo when she got out of this, or sell her tale to the tabloids, sky would be the limit.

I WAS A GHOST IN THE CELLAR OF HORROR!

Hell, maybe this could even be a TV movie.

AMELIA, AND NECROPHILIA.

The slim bone of light flickered above. If it out…

God, she didn’t want to think about that.

She searched the room again. April’s corpse was there, of course. And there was a fancy La-Z-Boy that looked like it came from the nearest Grandpa Standard Equipment outlet. But there was nothing she could use to free herself.

A pair of muddy baseball cleats lay on the floor in front of the chair. A Jack Daniel’s bottle sat on a small table next to it. The bottle was half empty, or half full, depending on your perspective. A prescription bottle sat next to the JD bottle, two bullets remaining.

Amy examined the pills. Halcion. Sleeping pills. Amy had read about them. Critics claimed they could be dangerous. Lawsuits were flying back and forth. She seemed to remember something about psychotic episodes brought on by the drug. The pharmaceutical industry was denying everything, but the standard-issue skepticism of a corporate attorney’s wife told Amy that this stuff was bad news.

No wonder Steve thought that she was April. He was whacked out of his head on a world-class mindbender.

A bookcase stood to one side of the door. One of those teak Scandinavian Designs things that weren’t much more than coated fiberboard. Amy examined the spines of the books. Most were worn paperbacks. She wasn’t really surprised by what she found. April’s library had prepared her for it.

She ran a finger over the cracked spines of a half-dozen books that dealt with the mysteries of dreams. The dream section was bracketed by sections concerning numerology and reincarnation, and there were also books on ghosts and hauntings and out-of-body travel. The library was a near twin to April’s own, though much smaller. Amy studied the titles, trying to remember what Steve had said about April.

She sighed, brushing Farrah Fawcett curls away from her eyes. She really should take off the wig. She really should get out of the cheerleader’s outfit. But what else would she wear? There wasn’t anything else here in the basement, unless she wanted to swap outfits with a corpse. So she opted for the books. Reincarnation. Ghosts. With enough time, she could read each one and decipher the demons that had invaded Steve’s brain. Certainly, that would happen in her TV movie, AMELIA, AND NECROPHILIA. Plucky heroine Amelia Peyton-portrayed by Morgan Fairchild, no doubt-would do some heavy-duty speed-reading while the bad guy was away, earn a degree from the plucky heroine school of reverse psychology, outwit the nut and get him to deliver her straight to the cops. And if that wasn’t enough plot for two hours of prime time, maybe old Morgan could do some therapeutic role-playing and straighten out the poor confused villain. A happy ending would probably boost the ratings.

But Amy didn’t need to read anything. She was certain that she already knew the scoop. April Destino and Steve Austin. A match made in eternal-misery heaven. Reincarnation books. Ghost stories. Brought to you by the Trailer Trash Psychic Library.

April bites the big one, self-induced. Maybe she’s hoping things will be better on the other side of the fence. Steve goes nuts. Drinks too much and drugs too much. And he begins to hope that all the self-diverting nonsense April believed is really true. He stews in these juices good and proper, and then he digs her up. And what happens? Why, he’s real disturbed to discover that April is stone cold, eviscerated, sewn-up dead.

And then she shows up. Young, thanks to plenty of makeup and subdued lighting. Bouncy, thanks to plenty of tissue. Dressed in a cheerleader’s outfit. Steve is whacked out of his head and just a little confused. So he locks up his best girl together-both of them-and he does what any man would do. He goes to work and figures he’ll worry about the whole thing later, because it’s a little much to expect that something as simple as a man can handle all this stuff at once. After all, a man can’t work and think at the same time. But maybe he’ll have some free time on the weekend or something, between ball games and pay-per-view bikini contests. Get down to brass tacks then.

In the meantime, he’ll just let his little problem keep.

Both of her.

Together in not-so-cold storage.

Men. They were like little robots. Wind ’em up and watch ’em go. Want to figure them out? Open them up and look at the gears. Metal and wire. The schematic hadn’t changed in several thousand years.

But April Destino was another story entirely. Amy realized that. April had some part in this, too. She had set Doug Douglas in motion. She had left the cheerleading outfit. And while Amy recognized that her own anger had brought her here, she also knew that her anger had been stoked by April Destino. Her strings had been pulled by an expert, and now she was walking in April Destino’s shoes. Quite literally.

Amy returned to the corner. The room seemed very small. It didn’t seem like Steve Austin’s room at all. April’s books were here, and April was here. Nothing seemed as amusing as it had just a minute or two before. Amy stared at her feet, resisting the fear that churned in her belly.

She stared at April’s corpse.

She saw what April had become.

“You brought me here,” Amy said. “You made me come.”

Silence. Blue lips pursed as if to speak, but now Amy’s hard eyes discerned the dark slivers of thread on those lips. The pursed expression was a result of an undertaker’s shaking hand, a needle worked too fast through flesh that had always been much too pliant. A task performed too quickly, as if fearful that something dangerous might spill from those cold lips.

“Why did you do it, April?”

The question was simple. Amy waited for an answer, but none came.

No words would spill from April Destino’s lips ever again.

The fluorescent light refused to whisper. The stitched silence was as impenetrable as a locked room.