Delilah might have expected to find the deserted Main Street, the rusting gas pumps, and the crumbling roads that made up Cairo somewhere out west. Somewhere oil or gold, or oil and gold, had dried up, leaving the residents nothing to live or stay for. But here? In southern Illinois? Well, a ghost town of this magnitude—it had sprawling neighborhoods, and vast, empty public spaces—was bizarre, to say the least. Downright spooky, to say the most.
Okay, and yeah, she was saying the most. Because on a scale of scary from one to ten—one being slightly foreboding and ten being shit-your-pants terrifying—this whole town fell somewhere around an eight. Eight or nine…
“Lord almighty,” Mac breathed. “Looks like hell with everyone out to lunch.”
And that was one way of putting it, Delilah supposed. Another way of putting it was to say that Cairo, Illinois, was a horror movie set sprung to life.
She shivered as a gust of cool wind howled down the deserted street, rattling the shutters on the house next door like the ribs on a skeleton. And she tried, oh, man, how she tried not to let the gaping black windows of the dilapidated homes remind her of eyes, dead eyes. Of course, the fact that the entire block was pitch dark, illuminated only by the headlights of the bikes they’d parked on the street, didn’t help matters any.
And, then, leave it to Ozzie to go and make everything that much worse by loudly whispering, “Ahhh! Make the lambs stop screaming!”
Instantly, an image of Anthony Hopkins playing Hannibal Lecter—complete with spooky half-mask—flashed in her mind’s eye, and she instinctively reached for the hand closest to her.
It was Mac’s. And its warmth, not to mention its strength, kept her from turning around and jumping back on Big Red, leaving a mile-long trail of rubber in her wake as she hightailed it out of Dodge…er…uh, Cairo.
“Holy crow, Ozzie,” Mac grumbled. They were all standing on a disintegrating sidewalk and staring up at Charlie Sander’s house. And although it wasn’t in much better shape than the crumbling dwellings around it, it did appear to still have all its windowpanes. And the yard, though not manicured by any stretch of the imagination, did look like it’d been recently mowed. “This place is creepy enough without any Silence of the Lambs references.”
“Sorry,” Ozzie said, shuddering dramatically. “I just keep expecting some naked dude to come around the corner with his Johnson and nads tucked up between his legs, singing it rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again.”
Delilah squeezed Mac’s hand tighter, inching closer to his side and fighting the urge to glance over her shoulder. Was something back there? Watching? Waiting to sneak up and devour her soul in one greedy gulp?
Mac chafed her freezing fingers with his free hand before turning to glare at Ozzie. “What did I just say about Silence of the Lambs references? I swear by all that’s holy, Ozzie, if you don’t cut that shit out, I’m gonna be forced to feed you my gun.”
BKI’s tech guru held his hands in the air. “Sorry. Sorry. I just watched it again last weekend, so it’s kinda stuck in my head, you know?”
“Yeah,” Zoelner huffed, “and now, thank you very much, it’s stuck in all our heads.”
Another gust of damp, moldy-smelling wind. Another bout of bone-rattling shutter noise. Another shiver danced up Delilah’s spine.
This was her Uncle Theo’s friend Charlie’s house? Why would anyone choose to live like this? Why would anyone choose to stay in this godforsaken town? And, yeah, she totally got why her uncle decided to leave her back at the hotel in Marion…
Okay, okay. Just take a breath and focus on what’s important. Focus on why you came here, like—
“Uncle Theo’s bike isn’t here,” she observed, glancing toward the glaringly empty, grease-stained driveway. “Which means he’s not here.” And for a moment, a heavy wave of disappointment overcame her fear.
“It’s possible he’s parked in the garage,” Mac told her, giving her fingers another reassuring squeeze, a friendly squeeze.
“Yeah, hermano,” Steady said, “but the question is, who’s gonna go check?”
“Maybe we should state our intentions,” Zoelner suggested. “It is,” he checked the big watch on his wrist, “oh-five-hundred in the morning, after all. If Theo isn’t here, and this Charles Sander guy is, he’s not likely to be all that keen on a gang of bikers skulking around his house in the dark.”
“Agreed.” Mac nodded. He cleared his throat and called, “Theo! Charles! Are you guys in there?” His deep voice echoed down the empty street, bouncing back to them a second later. “Theo! Charles!” he tried again. But when no one answered him save for an echo and the cackle of dead leaves flipping down the road on another gust of wind, he changed tactics. “We’ve got Delilah here! Charles, as I’m sure you know, Delilah is Theo’s niece and she’s feelin’ mean as a mama wasp that Theo’s not answering his phone! We’re here lookin’ for him! So, don’t turn us into buzzard bait, okay? We’re gonna approach your front porch!”
Front porch…front porch…front porch…his words bounced around hauntingly before finally fading. Then, silence reigned over the derelict street.
“Okay,” Mac said, chafing her ice-cold fingers one last time. “Let’s do this.”
Uh-huh. That sounded simple enough, didn’t it? After all, she was with four big, tough men. It should’ve been easy to walk up to that chipped and peeling front door. It should have been. Unfortunately, someone, at some point, had glued her boots to the sidewalk.
“Jesús Cristo,” Steady harrumphed, the first to start stomping up the sidewalk. “Let’s hope the inside of this place is better than the outside.”
Mac ushered her forward. And was it just her? Or did the trip up to the front porch feel sort of like Dead Man Walking? As if she was heading toward her own funeral…
Okay, and now you’re just being fanciful. Stop imagining things.
“Mr. Sander?” Steady pulled the screen door open—well, frame of a screen door, really; there was no actual screen attached. “Mr. Sander!” Steady tried again, holding the metal doorframe open with his foot and banging on the front door. The thing might have been bright red at one point, but now it was a dirty crimson color, and the air on the porch hung heavy with the smell of the honeysuckle bush growing over the south side railing. Beneath that lingered the dank, moldy aroma of rotting wood mixed with a hint of dog piss and…was that marijuana? “Are you in there, Mr. Sander? We’re friends of Theo Fairchild!”
Silence. Dark, dense silence.
And, as if the place wasn’t atmospheric enough already, a barn owl, perched somewhere nearby, chose that exact moment to let loose with one of its screeching calls. Ozzie jumped, unholstering his weapon. “Seriously?” he shuddered. “I mean…Jesus!”
“Knock again. If you don’t get an answer, try the knob,” Mac instructed Steady, still firmly holding Delilah’s hand. And it was a good thing, too. She feared his tough grip might be the only thing keeping her on the porch and not beating feet in the opposite direction.
Steady knocked. Once. Twice. Three times. When nothing stirred inside the house, he turned the knob, pushing the door open.
Something huge and snarling barreled out at them. The next thing Delilah knew, she was airborne…