It glanced around the room, practicing the act of looking human. It twitched its facial muscles with precisely timed bursts of energy, doing its best to bring a look of life back into the boy’s dead flesh. Once satisfied, it walked to where a collection of lawn tools hung on storage hooks along the back wall and chose two long-handled garden shovels, adding them to the trunk.
The entity slid behind the wheel and once again used its control over electricity to activate the garage door opener and start the car’s engine, all at the speed of thought.
With the door up, it backed the car into the night.
It cleared the garage when the flicker of human life drew its attention, causing it to stop. Taillights stained the driveway red.
Looking to the left, it spotted the exact two humans it planned to go search for—Brad’s friends from the woods—both stepping off the street and walking across the lawn toward the house.
They eyeballed the Lexus with hard-faced features, each trying to look tough despite their earlier ordeal.
The entity created a wide grin on Brad’s face and rolled the window down.
“Where’d you two pussies run off to?” it asked in their friend’s voice. The sound came out gravely and uneven, and the entity adjusted the tissue of Brad’s throat. “We were just starting to have fun.”
The two stopped in their tracks, pausing to peer through the shadows of the sweatshirt’s hood.
“Us? Where the hell did you go, man?” It was the kid it had hit with the rock. “And what are you doing in your old man’s car?”
“I’m borrowing it,” it answered. “Want to go for a ride?”
“Yeah,” the second kid replied. “Take me over to that limp-dick Flemwad’s so I can kick his scrawny ass. That little bastard went psycho and nearly choked me to death.”
“Get in.”
The two piled in without hesitation. It didn’t know their names because it hadn’t bothered to read Brad’s mind while he died, and the dead organ inside his head was of no use to it now. It would scan their thoughts and learn their names on the road.
“All right,” the riled teenager growled. “Let’s go find Fleming and mess him up.”
The other nodded his agreement. “Yeah, and if we can’t find him, let’s burn his fucking house down.”
So much rage. Just like Kane had been at their age.
“That’s too kind,” it told them. “I have a better idea.”
“Like what?”
It grinned with genuine pleasure. “We’re going to dig up a dead body.”
The two stared in silence. They shared matching expressions of curiosity, but neither rejected the idea. They were rowdy, self-centered, and easily amused; just the sort of miscreants it should have sought out in the first place.
It dropped the car into gear and pulled out of the driveway. “There’s a cemetery in the forest not far from here. We’ll dig up the juiciest stiff we can find, track Tim down, and lock him in the trunk with it. How’s that sound?”
The boys laughed excitedly.
“Dude. Now that’s a plan.”
On the drive to the cemetery, the entity learned the boy’s names: Tom Fuller and Jay Dupree. Both remained sullen because of their previous run-in with Tim, but they were equally enlivened with the prospect of exhuming a corpse. It liked that about them.
They drove to the forest road, slowing to pass between the overgrown bushes that hid it from the highway. Gravel crunched below the Lexus’ tires like the sound of ground-up bones being dumped into an open grave. The entity maneuvered the car along the dirt driveway, steering around thick tree branches that overhung the path.
Around them, it sensed various animals emerge from burrows, dens, and nests, racing into the night to flee from its presence.
“I hope you know where you’re going” Dupree said, speaking around his split lip. “I don’t want to get stuck out here.”
They emerged from the forest drive, and the car’s headlights illuminated the churchyard’s dirt parking lot.
“We’re here.”
It pulled to a stop before the iron fence that extended off the church’s left side, using the sedan’s headlights to illuminate the property. It put the car in park without shutting off the engine.
“Damn,” Dupree commented. “I never knew this place was out here.”
“Me either,” Fuller admitted.
Ahead, tombstones sprouted from the overgrown weeds like relics of another age. Gnats, moths, mosquitoes, and flying beetles flittered between the graves, their black bodies transformed to ash-white in the headlights.
The entity stepped out of the car, prompting the others to follow.
Nothing had changed since its previous visits, yet it hesitated in the presence of the church. The place still appeared dead and forgotten, a nameless corpse left for the elements to gradually dispose of. But an invisible ocean of energy churned beneath the site’s physical façade, guarding the church and graveyard, keeping the entity out.
If only it had been stronger when Kane’s body died. Maybe then it could have recovered him in the asylum’s morgue without assistance.
Turning away from the church, the entity walked to the vehicle’s trunk and mentally opened the lock. It retrieved the two shovels, then lowered the lid again without latching it closed.
Fuller peered at one of the closest headstones. “Damn, 1862. These fuckers are old.”
“I’ll say,” Dupree added. “Which one should we open, Brad?”
“The newest addition,” it replied. “Kale Kane.”
They craned their necks to find the grave.
Dupree looked confused. “Who the hell is Kale Kane?”
“Dumb-ass,” Fuller said. “He’s the psycho who just keeled over. Watch the news once in a while.”
The entity thrusting the shovels into their arms. “You two go dig him up, that’s your job.”
Dupree smirked. “Us? What the hell are you going to do, sit back and supervise?”
“He must think he works for the city,” Fuller said.
“Cops check back here every now and then,” it lied. “I’ll keep watch on the road. When you reach the casket, haul it up and bring it over to the car. I’ll take care of the rest.”
“What rest?” Fuller asked.
“You’ll see,” it replied, smiling with Brad’s cracked, bloodless lips.
CHAPTER 39
BJ huddled in the bushes, eyeing the large shrubs of the next yard and listening for the crackling sound of movement.
Something at night is the same thing without light.
Something at night is the same thing without light.
His father’s reassuring bedtime poem echoed in BJ’s mind while he huddled against the ground. Often used while waiting for sleep, the nine-word verse reminded him that the room beyond his bed’s footboard—that area lost in oozy realms of shadow—was no different in darkness than before the lights snapped off.
Something at night is the same thing without light.
It seemed to make sense. He only hoped the same held true for the outdoors. He’d watched countless animal shows that stated nighttime became a whole new world when dealing with nature, a world comprised of nocturnal beasts who awoke at sunset to hunt and scavenge.
Something at night…
The snapping noise came again, closer this time. Not from the other yard like before, but right next to him.
He turned.
Two circular yellow eyes flashed into view deeper in the bushes.
BJ flinched at their appearance and his heart skipped a beat. The eyes hovered inches off the ground, level with his flattened body, staring straight at him.
The creature emerged from the bush’s lower branches, gliding into sight with the smoothness of a spirit rising from a grave. It stood up from where it had been lying in the shadows and rose to a height that would’ve come level with BJ’s shoulders had he been on his feet.