Darker Than Night

31

The apartment was quiet and dark, cool enough that the air conditioner wasn’t running. A faint breeze wended through the shadowed rooms from a window that was open a crack. The bedroom seemed, like the apartment and the city around it, to be asleep itself, or at least in a state unlike complete wakefulness. It was the kind of place where dreams visited the dreamer.

Mary Navarre woke up next to Donald, who continued to sleep peacefully beside her. She was sure she’d heard a sound in the kitchen.

She prodded Donald in the ribs and whispered his name urgently.

He mumbled something and raised his head to look at her.

“I’m sure I heard a noise out in the kitchen,” she said, hearing the fear in her voice.

“’Frigerator,” he said sleepily. “Icemaker or somethin’.”

“It was more like somebody moving around out there, trying to keep quiet. I thought I heard the refrigerator door open and close.”

He took in a deep breath, then sighed and propped himself up on his elbows. Donald was a big man, long-limbed but fleshy and with thinning blond hair. He was out of condition and not particularly strong to begin with, but his size was a comfort to her.

He cleared his throat and swallowed so he could be better understood. “So you want I should go out and talk to this hungry burglar?”

“You’re not taking this seriously enough. Maybe we should call nine-eleven.”

“Lotta trouble for nothing.”

“Maybe not.”

He wearily sat up in bed, then turned his back to her as he planted his feet on the floor. “I’ll go out and look. It’ll put your mind at ease, and besides, I could use a glass of water.”

She wondered if he was showing off, trying to impress her with his seeming nonchalance. “Okay, you go look while I call nine-eleven.”

“Don’t do that, Mary. Really. All it’ll be is a big pain in the ass. And next time, if something serious does happen and we call, they might not respond. I’m gonna go out there and find an ice cube on the floor, or something that fell over in a cabinet.”

“It didn’t sound like either of those things.”

He reached back and patted her knee. “Maybe not in your sleepy mind.”

“I was awake, Donald. I couldn’t sleep.” A lie. I’m afraid enough to lie to him.

He stood up and began plodding barefoot toward the bedroom door.

“Wait!” She was out of bed in a hurry, slipping on her robe. “I’ll go with you.”

While he waited, she went to a row of books on the windowsill and picked up one of the plaster pineapple bookends. It was painted plaster, but lead filled and plenty heavy enough if she had to use it.

Donald pried it from her rigid fingers. “I’ll take it.” He hefted the bookend in his right hand. “I wouldn’t want you to panic at a mouse and accidentally hit me with this thing.”

“We don’t have mice.”

Mary followed him from the bedroom. Why am I doing this? Why don’t I stay and call nine-eleven?

But it was all happening too fast, and she couldn’t let him go out there alone. Besides, he was probably right. She told herself he was probably right. Whatever she heard, or thought she heard, was probably nothing she needed to fear.

But she was afraid.

The kitchen was softly illuminated from the light on the stove. Mary stood just behind and to the side of Donald as he stepped through the doorway. She heard his intake of breath and saw his body stiffen, and she moved to the side so she could see around him.

A man was seated at the kitchen table. Before him was an opened milk carton, half a glass of milk, and a partly unwrapped loaf of bread. Mary realized she smelled something familiar and an instant later saw what it was—spicy lunch meat. The man was eating a pastrami sandwich. He was leaning forward over the table and had just taken a big bite when they’d interrupted him.

He seemed surprised, though not exactly. More like disappointed and angered.

What happened next took her breath away.

It was almost as if he’d expected to be discovered. He was ready to act. In one smooth and lightning motion, he was up out of his chair and around the table, wielding a long knife. Mary saw in that instant that he was wearing flesh-colored rubber gloves. The bite of pastrami remained in his mouth, forgotten and unchewed, a long red slab of the thinly sliced meat protruding like a shredded tongue. Donald, paralyzed with shock, had no time to react. It was as if his assailant had rehearsed for this moment, as if it were choreographed. The man was on him without hesitation and the knife blade flashed.

The explosive violence, the sudden blood flow and horror, rooted Mary where she stood. Donald lay folded on his side like a full-scale, discarded doll at her feet, the plaster pineapple still clutched in his right hand. It had all been so fast, so fast!

It has to be happening to someone else. I’m here but only watching, like a movie…. Time, time for everything, about to stop…

A powerful hand gripped her hair and yanked her head back and she knew her throat would be slashed.

Instead, the long knife blade lanced like ice low into the softness of her belly. It took her breath away and numbed her more than hurt. Each time she began to fall, the blade winked in the kitchen light, piercing her and holding her up with its force. Somewhere in her terror her mind was working. She wanted to drop, wanted this to end, but he wouldn’t let it happen. Not yet. She couldn’t die.

He knows where to stab me where it hurts but won’t kill me!

He’d been standing back from her and slightly to the side. So he doesn’t get too bloody. Now he shifted position and his face was inches from hers and in brighter light.

I know him! My God, I know him!

He stabbed her differently then, harder, just beneath her breasts and twisting up to touch and detonate her heart. The explosion of pain turned the world white and then dim, dimmer….

The last thing she saw was her killer’s leering face, with its lolling pastrami tongue—familiar, faint memory from a thousand nightmares that had become real. She sank, sank, and both her palms were flat on the floor, in warm liquid. Through silent blackness she crawled until her feeble, bloody right hand contacted something solid, a wall.

With her forefinger she blindly began to write.