Endless Night Read Free

right.
    Got me after going all the way through Evelyn.
    “Jesus,” she murmured.
    “What?”
    “Nothing. You’d better get dressed.”
    “I’m not moving. If I start to get dressed, you’ll turn the light on. Where’s Evelyn? What’s she doing, hiding someplace with a camera?”
    He’ll lose his attitude fast, Jody thought, if I tell him she’s dead.
    No, he’ll think it’s part of the gag.
    Besides, she couldn’t tell him. She knew she couldn’t force herself to say the words.
    What’s taking the goddamn monster so long?
    Maybe he isn’t coming. Maybe he’s gone.
    Fat chance.
    What am I doing here?
    Waiting and bleeding, she thought.
    Correction, not bleeding. From the feel of things, the wound had quit leaking. There seemed to be a single strip of blood, no longer going anywhere but making her skin itchy underneath it. The strip went down from the wound to the hollow at the top of her leg, then ran along the hollow at a downward angle to her groin.
    Now that she was thinking about it, the itch got worse.
    She wanted to rub it and wipe the blood away.
    Her hands were busy holding the baseball bat overhead.
    Just my luck, the second I let go ...
    The door swung slowly inward.
    Jody caught a whiff of the death stink. She held her breath.
    As the door opened more, a dim mist of light spread across the room. The edge of light found Andy’s bed, crept toward him, revealed him sitting cross-legged.
    His mouth fell open.
    His back straightened.
    He began to make a quiet, very high-pitched humming sound, a soft whine of panic as if he ached to scream but didn’t dare.
    A shadow blotted out the fan of dull light.
    A floorboard in front of Jody creaked.
    Go for broke, hon!
    She chopped the Slugger down with all her might.
    She’d played enough hardball with her dad to know the sound and feel of a good hit with the fat of the bat. This was a very good hit. This was a home run.
    The thock of the blow was followed by a grunt, then muffled thumps which Jody figured were the man’s knees hitting the carpeted floor, then a softer sound which had to be his torso landing, then another thump—his face making contact.
    Jody swept her forearm up the wall until it flipped up the light switch.
    The man lay face down, motionless on the carpet. The top of his hairless head was a collapsed, bleeding gully.
    Jody shut the door fast.
    “Oh, God!” Andy blurted. He was standing near the foot of his bed, prancing on the mattress to keep his balance, clutching a pillow to his groin. “Oh, God, what’s going on? Look at him! Look at him!”
    Jody stood over the intruder, holding her bat high, ready to strike again if he should move.
    He had come in with a machete, not a spear. It was still in his hand. Its blade was smeared with blood. Blood also speckled and smudged both his arms, his back and rump and legs.
    “Hit him again,” Andy said.
    “Shhh.”
    “What’s wrong?”
    “Everything,” Jody whispered. “It isn’t him.”
    “Huh?”
    “It isn’t him. This guy’s skinny.”
    “Look at his butt.”
    “You look at his butt.” She stepped toward the machete. “The other one’s still out there. The fat guy.”
    “It’s sewed shut.”
    When Andy said that, she had to look. She looked as she crouched to pick up the machete, and saw a crosshatch of stitches up the center of the man’s rump. She thought, How does he poop? And then she saw the rumples in his buttocks and the backs of his legs. Then the ragged edges hanging around his ankles.
    The rope of braided hair around his waist wasn’t merely an ornament. It was a belt.
    She looked up at Andy.
    “They’re pants,” he whispered. “They’re pants!”
    Still prancing on his bed with the pillow clutched to his groin, Andy suddenly rushed to the end of his mattress, bent over and vomited.
    The thick gush missed his bed, but splashed down on the head of the intruder. Jody stumbled backward to get away from it.
    Suddenly, she was having a very hard time catching