Melissa shook her head in the darkness of the box freezer, casting off another bout of weariness that strove to drag her into sleep.
Her teeth clattered together.
She shivered uncontrollably.
Numbness had changed to pain in the bare portions of her skin that contacted the frozen corpse beneath her and no matter how often she shifted position she couldn’t escape it.
Death seemed inevitable now, and the realization came to her with a greater measure of acceptance than panic. She wondered how long it would be before anyone discovered her body, what speculations the papers would report on her disappearance.
Her head dipped down when she began to nod off again, and it took a few seconds to comprehend that she’d laid one cheek upon the dead person’s parted mouth.
She jerked away, hitting her head on the freezer’s cover.
Was her life meant to end this way? It didn’t seem right, not after a lifetime of striving to protect others. And with that thought in mind, she began praying for the first time since childhood, begging for God’s assistance with her hopeless situation.
At any other time she would’ve argued the question of why God should spare her when so many others died daily, from soldiers in battle, to the innocent bystanders killed in high school shootings, to the victims of accidents and natural disasters. In her line of work the contemplation of death followed her like a shadow, but she’d always avoided discussing it with fellow officers, much the same way she’d avoided the consideration of whatever came next, if anything. Now, however, with her end in sight, she let go of her disbelief and pleaded for her life and soul.
Her head was floating down toward the corpse’s mouth again when a ticking sound guided her back from sleep. She perked up and listened, hearing what could’ve been somebody testing the freezer’s door handle.
“Help,” she shouted. “If someone’s there, help me!”
After a short pause, there came the muffled reply of, “Hang on. I’ll get you out.”
Melissa exhaled a breath of shock, accompanied by an inner shiver of wonderment.
Metal grated on metal, chased by a piercing snap and the whoosh of rushing air when the lid finally burst open. Melissa breathed in one lungful after another, unable to recognize the man who helped her up until she’d had a few seconds to catch her breath and focus.
“Frank!”
With the overhead bulbs destroyed, darkness filled the basement. The only illumination came from Frank’s flashlight, which he tucked under one arm as he helped her out of the freezer. Even behind the shadows streaked across his face it was clear he shared her surprise.
“Detective Humble,” he said. “What are you doing here? Are you all right? I saw the blood.”
“It’s not mine,” Melissa cut in. She steadied herself, letting the chill ebb from her flesh. “What are you doing here, Frank? How did you find me?”
Frank grimaced at the curtness of her inquiry, then traced her line of sight to the pistol clutched in his right hand.
“Here, this must be yours,” he said, offering up the weapon. “I found it on the freezer top.”
She took the gun, hefting it in her hand, but didn’t put it away.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Frank asked.
“Do I look okay to you?” she fired back.
She’d smacked her head against the frozen corpse when she’d been hurled into the freezer, and her jaw still ached from the punch that had nearly knocked her unconscious. Ironically, her time spent in the cold seemed to have kept the swelling down, and when she ran her free hand across her cheek and mouth, the lumps didn’t feel too bad.
“I’ll be fine,” she said in a less defensive tone. “Just tell me what you’re doing here.”
The look of worry vanished from Frank’s face, replaced by an expression of dismay. “I didn’t put you in that box, if that’s what you mean. I’ve been driving around the area, looking for Kane’s gravesite.”
He told her about the discovery he’d made upon locating Judge Anderson’s home, how the surrounding area had once been the Kane family’s orchards, and why he believed Kane’s body must be nearby. She didn’t understand his obsession with locating the dead man’s remains, but she had to agree, if the Andersons’ neighborhood had been the killer’s old home, then the vicinity of the copycat murders might not be a coincidence.
“I was about out of places to look,” he continued. “But then, when I was coming back from the Saint Thomas Church near Corcoran City Hall, the geomagnetic field meter on my truck picked up a huge electromagnetic discharge in this area. I would’ve been here sooner, but it took me a while to pinpoint the—”
Melissa stopped him by holding up a hand. “Geomagnetic what?”
Frank nodded in the general direction of the driveway. “My Blazer’s custom-rigged with various meteorological and electrical sensing equipment. The expense seemed a bit extreme, even to me, but the gear paid off. I registered an EMP discharge of more than 200 milligauss about a mile away from here. Two or three is normal, 400 is considered harmful. The central surge must have been incredibly strong, but well focused. Unfortunately, the sensors on my truck weren’t designed for wide-range scans. I was able to track the residual static charge back to its epicenter using a negative ion detector. The trail led me here.”
He aimed his flashlight beam on the freezer. “I tried the front door, but when no one answered, I went ahead and checked the property for whatever could’ve caused the readings I detected. Eventually, I saw this handprint through the open window and noticed how someone had screwed the freezer’s lid shut at each end. It was like a bad memory repeating itself. I knew I was overstepping my bounds, but I had to check it out in case someone needed help—I sure didn’t expect to find you inside.”
They both glanced to the closed freezer and stood in silent deliberation of what had been found.
“I’d better call in a team and get forensics working on trying to find some prints,” she mumbled. “I’m going to catch this bastard if it’s the last thing I do.”
Frank shook his head. “You can forget about the forensic team for now. There’s not enough time.”
Melissa snapped her head up, not sure she’d heard him right. He looked to her thoughtfully and added, “They won’t find anything here that’ll help us catch our killer. They might even scare it away. The damned thing is saving these bodies, making sure they don’t decompose. It might come back here.”
“Hang on a second,” she protested. “You want to wait to report what we’ve found here? Yesterday morning I had a double homicide investigation, but since then it’s snowballed into a massacre. I’d say time isn’t exactly something I should be wasting right now.”
Frank studied her. “That’s why we have to hurry and find Kane’s grave. You know what we’re up against now; you must’ve seen it. Following conventional methods will only slow us down.”
She gave him a quizzical gaze, once again reevaluating his character. “What are you talking about? Would you please say something that makes sense for once? I was attacked by some guy, maybe two, and they might have left clues.”
“It was Kane’s guardian,” Frank said. “It was here, and we have to find it before someone else dies.”
Melissa felt her already strained patience ready to snap. “Don’t even start. You want me to believe that Kane’s accomplice is responsible for all that’s been happening lately, but in your book Kane’s partner is his own shadow. His shadow, for God’s sake!”
“I know how crazy it sounds.”
“Crazy?” she replied. “Frank, it’s impossible. You honestly expect me to believe that these people were murdered by a two-dimensional bogeyman?”
“It’s an entity,” he clarified.
“An entity?”
“Yes, a bodiless being of energy, like a ghost or a spirit.”
“So, now you’re saying Kane was possessed, is that it?”
“No,” he replied. “From what I’ve learned this thing can’t inhabit a living body, but it can construct bodies out of various materials or occupy items like dolls, statues, or bodies of the dead. It hides inside them like—”
“‘Like a seed of evil in a husk of flesh,’” Melissa quoted. “I read your book, Frank. It’s a nice line, but it doesn’t convince me.”
“You don’t believe it? Then, explain that.”
He angled his flashlight beam toward the floor, into the shadows to the right of Melissa’s feet. The rigid form of a woman’s corpse lay crumpled in a heap, the same woman from the freezer. Melissa stared at it, unblinking, having not seen the cadaver in the basement’s gloom.
She opened the freezer’s lid and saw only the man.
Stunned speechless, she directed her gaze back to the deceased, now noticing deep cracks in the woman’s flesh—most at the joints of her limbs—revealing the frozen, reddish-purple meat beneath her blue skin. Melissa recalled the sound of what she believed had been breaking glass just before her attack.
She shivered again.