But I know who it is.
All at once my mind seems to open up like a night flower, and clearly, as if I’ve been gifted with second sight, I know who is out there and why I’ve felt so strange and what it is the Hunger and I have been waiting for, not just tonight but the two thousand previous nights. I know exactly what will happen in just a little while. I see the face close to mine, I hear the exchange of harsh words, I feel the outsurge of violent anger wash over me. An arm rises, something glints in soft light, the arm whips down—
Sharp knocking on the front door.
Inside me the mouth is active again, nibbling, licking downward in what quickly grows into a frenzy. More urgent than ever before, with a need so great it is unbearable. But the need is not for sex. The Hunger has never really been sexual at all; I understand that, too, now. From the first it was searching for another kind of release, another kind of fulfillment — I’ve been searching for them, yearning for them ever since Neal left me. Everything I’ve done in the past six years has been motivated by a single desire that I could neither admit to nor consummate on my own.
I yearn to go where Neal has gone. I ache to join him in the darkness or the light.
The knocking grows louder, more insistent. But I am not afraid; a feeling of peace seems to be settling into me. I smile as I move away from the window. Face the truth, embrace it, and it will set you free.
I make my way downstairs, not quite hurrying, and unlock the door. And I face Death standing there on the other side. And I say, smiling, “Come in.”
Richard Novak
I was halfway up the drive when John Faith came running out through the front door of Storm’s house.
The cruiser’s headlights picked out his car first, parked under the tree near the garage, and then him as he tore across the porch and off the stairs in one leap. The lights pinned him as he hit the path. His stride broke and he threw up an arm against the glare, took another couple of faltering steps. I jabbed the switch for the bar flashers, and when they came on, smearing the darkness with swirls of clotted red, he froze in a crouch with one leg bent and his eyes wide and shining, like a trapped animal’s.
I put the cruiser into a sliding half turn, jammed on the brakes; the rear end stopped a few inches from the Porsche’s, blocking it. My service revolver was in my hand as I got out. He stayed put; the only move he made was to lower the one arm to his side. Past him I could see the front door of the house flung wide open, light spilling out from inside. My stomach kicked over; I could taste bile in the back of my throat.
Storm.
I halted a few paces from Faith, the revolver on him belt high. “What’s going on? What’re you doing up here?”
“This isn’t what it looks like.” Eyes flicking from the weapon to my face and back to the weapon. “I’ve only been here a couple of minutes—”
“Not what I asked you. Why were you running?”
“On my way to call for help. I didn’t want to touch anything in there.”
“Where’s Mrs. Carey?”
“Inside. Better look for yourself.”
“Show me. And don’t make any funny moves on the way.”
The hallway lights were on; so were the lights in the front parlor. Faith went in there and off to one side, and when I saw her lying sprawled across the arm of the couch, broken and limp, the silky fan of her hair matted and dark red with blood, the sickness rose hot into my throat; I had to swallow three or four times to keep it down. Storm! Her name, this time, was like a scream in my mind.
“I didn’t do it,” Faith said. “I found her just the way you see her.”
Just the way I saw her. The deep wounds in the back of her skull... white and gray and red, bone and brain tissue and blood. And the thing beside her, flung down and half-hidden by the flare of her skirt, the goddamn thing that had done it... round and heavy, the glass surface all smeared with gore, like an organ that had been torn from inside her body and then cast aside. I tried to make myself go to her, check for a pulse, but it would be futile and I couldn’t bear to touch her like that. I dragged my gaze away, kept it tight on Faith.
He said, “It’s the truth — I found her like that. Not two minutes before you showed up.”
“What’re you doing here?” My voice had a wounded sound, hard and scraped raw.
“I was invited.”
“She invited you?”
“This afternoon. She came out to the place where I’m staying.”
“Just showed up at the Lakeside Resort and invited you to her home.”
“I met her at Gunderson’s last night. She was drunk and she tried to pick me up.”
“Tried?”
“I turned her down.”
“Woman like Storm Carey? Why?”
“I like my bed partners sober. The bartender there can vouch for the way it was.” No expression on his battered face as he spoke. Blood-scabbed cut on his cheek, I noticed then, and it hadn’t been there long. “She came out to the resort to apologize. Her initiative, not mine.”
“And then she invited you to her home.”
“That’s right.”
“At ten-thirty at night.”
“No, she wanted me to come earlier. For dinner, she said.”
“Why would she invite a stranger to dinner?”
“Why do you think? I told you she tried to pick me up last night. You must know the kind of woman she was—”
“Shut up about that. You didn’t know her, you don’t have any idea what kind of woman she was.”
His eyes kept flicking between my face and the revolver. He didn’t like guns pointed at him, that was plain. Afraid of me, the law? “All right,” he said.
“You didn’t come for dinner — why not?”
“Figured she was trouble and I’d be smart not to get involved with her.” His mouth quirked in that non-smile of his. “Looks like I figured right.”
“Why’d you change your mind?”
“I had it changed for me.”
“Yeah? How’d you get that cut on your cheek?”
“Part of what changed my mind. Hassle at the Northlake Cafe a little while ago, not my fault.”
“What kind of hassle?”
“The misunderstanding kind. I did somebody a favor and it got taken the wrong way and I got jumped for it. So I said the hell with it, I might as well get laid before I quit this lousy town. I drove here to see if she was still interested.”
“And?”
“Found her dead just like I said. I passed a car on the road, not far from her driveway. It could’ve come from up here.”
“What kind of car?”
“No idea. I didn’t pay much attention.”
“What color? New or old?”
“I told you—”
“Yeah, you told me,” I said. “I don’t think there was any car. I think you’re trying to throw up a smoke screen, divert suspicion. She was alive when you got here.”
“The hell she was.”
“What’d she do, Faith? Turn you down this time? Tell you she changed her mind, go away and leave her alone?”
“No. She was dead when I—”
“You got mad, you saw red, you picked up the big glass paperweight off the end table there—”
“No.”
“—and hit her with it. Hit her again, crushed her skull, and then threw the paperweight down and ran out in a panic—”
“Look at her, man, she’s been dead longer than a couple of minutes—”
“—and if I hadn’t shown up when I did, you’d’ve been halfway to the Oregon border by now. Isn’t that the way it really went down, Faith?”