Kill Me Once Read online

  She lifted a delicate hand and knocked lightly on the door. It opened almost at once.

  ‘Annie, baby!’ Liza boomed, blocking out most of the narrow doorway with her huge body. ‘Where ya been, girl? Get your tight little ass in here, bitch! We’ve got us some studying to do!’

  The buxom redhead draped a heavy arm around Ahn’s slender shoulders and drew her into the warmth of the room and the tight circle of their friendship. Once inside, Ahn immediately felt the unease that had dogged her on the walk over drift away like smoke from the end of a burning cigarette.

  She was safe now. She was with her sisters.

  They cracked their books and studied in earnest for a solid hour before Lindsey snapped hers shut abruptly and tossed it aside. ‘I’m starving,’ she announced. ‘Let’s go raid the vending machines on the fourth floor for some quick brain food.’

  ‘I hear that,’ Liza said, her bright green eyes lighting up like emeralds at the prospect of some hard-earned sustenance. ‘I’m so fuckin’ hungry I could eat a goddamn horse.’

  She stopped, horrified. ‘Well, not Tinkerbell, my Appaloosa, of course, but you know what I mean. Let’s go, bitches.’

  Ahn and Lindsey exchanged a quick private smile, knowing full well that Liza would wind up consuming the lion’s share of the bounty, which was perfectly OK with them.

  Giggling happily, the girls dug through their purses and came up with several dollars in change between them before heading out the door and bounding up the stairwell toward the vending machines on the fourth floor.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  From his concealed post in the bushes, Nathan finally regained visual contact with the Asian girl just as she was ascending the metal staircase of an old red-brick dormitory building about a hundred yards away.

  He watched as she opened a door on the second floor and stepped inside.

  Five minutes later he was opening the very same door. He paused outside each of the rooms, but heard nothing but silence coming from any of them.

  Except for one. Room 232.

  Excellent. The Asian girl did indeed have friends – she hadn’t been making it all up.

  A full hour passed but Nathan didn’t mind. He was an exceptionally patient man, had learned patience very well as a child. He’d already waited years for this night to arrive finally, and waiting a little bit longer now certainly wasn’t going to kill him.

  But it might very well kill them.

  He ducked into the laundry room across the hall when he heard the girls’ plan through the thin plywood door. They were headed up to the fourth floor for some quick brain food. Good for them.

  It would be their last supper.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  The only thing Ahn Howser can think is this: It’s not real.

  Her eyes can clearly see what’s happening – it’s happening right there in front of her face, after all – but her flash-frozen brain is having trouble comprehending the ungodly images they are conveying to her.

  She, Lindsey and Liza have just returned from the fourth floor, arms laden with bags of potato chips, snack cakes and Diet Cokes. Ahn has come into the room first, followed by Liza. Lindsey is bringing up the rear.

  Dumping the packages from her arms onto the beat-up couch, Ahn turns around to say something to Liza, but the words die in her throat when she sees him standing there.

  He is a tall, menacing figure dressed entirely in black. Black jeans. Black turtleneck sweater. Black Navy-issue pea coat with tiny black anchors etched into its shiny black buttons. A black ski mask covers his face.

  In his right hand, the man is holding a long knife. Its shining blade glints a wicked silver in the fluorescence of the overhead light. Bright red drops of arterial blood drip from its sharp edge.

  Ahn lets her horrified eyes slowly drift downward and sees that Lindsey is sprawled on the floor just inside the doorway, one arm flung wildly above her head. An angry-looking slash pulses on the right side of her neck.

  Her jugular, Ahn thinks stupidly. He cut her jugular.

  The gold necklace and crucifix that Lindsey had been wearing just a moment before have been cleaved neatly in two. She seems to stare at the braided strands of ruined jewellery for a moment before her eyes suddenly flutter and roll to a complete, fixed stop in the back of her head.

  Everything is going in slow motion now, like an old horror film with bad special effects, as Liza strikes out at the man and rakes his throat just beneath the bottom of his ski mask with the long, perfectly manicured fingernails of her right hand. A pair of bright red lines appears at his black-stubbled throat at once. Twin scarlet streaks of blood spill through his wounds and slip down the surface of his neck.

  But he barely flinches under the assault.

  Instead his reaction is as swift as it is terrifying as he calmly whips the knife through the air in a preternaturally quick backhanded motion.

  Liza Alloway is nearly decapitated by the blow.

  It is a startlingly graceful movement, almost beautiful to watch. Liza’s green eyes briefly widen in surprise as she clutches at her throat. Rivers of blood spill through her fingers. Then her knees buckle and she collapses to the floor three feet away from Lindsey.

  When the man then turns his attention to Ahn, she watches his pink lips slowly curve upward into the shape of a smile. Glittering wetly through the holes in the ski mask, his eyes are the most demonic shade of brown she has ever seen, ringed with almost imperceptible striations of yellow and green.

  How strange. His eyes are so strange.

  ‘Get under the bed.’

  His voice is clear and strong as he speaks to Ahn, but comprehension is very slow to set in with her. He is staring at her so intently with his evil eyes, she is so utterly lost in his gaze at this exact moment, that her vision has completely overridden all her other senses. It is impossible to make sense of the words he is saying.

  He opens his mouth and speaks again, but this time his voice only sounds like a record being played at the wrong speed.

  When he repeats the order a third time, the chilling understanding finally dawns on her.

  ‘Get under the bed.’

  His voice is incredibly calm as he speaks to her. It is deep and gravelly and more than a little bit scary under the circumstances, but otherwise seems devoid of any discernible human emotion.

  Once his terrible instructions have been finally processed by her shocked mind, Ahn’s body instantly freezes. The fear and enormity of her situation have turned off a switch in her brain. She knows this much: he wants her to move. But she also knows she is thoroughly unable to comply with this order. She is having so much trouble even drawing breath into her badly constricted lungs that there is no way in hell she will ever be able to move.

  When she doesn’t immediately do as instructed, the large man takes a step in her direction, covering a quarter of the distance between them, but her feet feel as though they are nailed to the floor.

  Another step.

  No good – her legs still won’t work. Signals from her brain are getting crossed up; going haywire; zigging when they should be zagging; sabotaging her when what they should damn well be doing is concentrating on saving her life.

  Another step.

  Every fibre of her being is screaming out for her to move now. Just move, goddamn it! But her legs – her useless fucking legs! – are still refusing to listen. One more step and he’ll be upon her.

  When he takes that step, the man raises the bloody knife directly over his head. As the knife goes up, his eyes glaze over so completely that for a moment Ahn thinks he surely isn’t even human. Lost in his stare, dumbstruck by his peculiar eyes, her mind barely registers the fact that his arm is coming down on her now in a lightning-fast stabbing motion.

  Moving now! Dear Jesus, I’m moving now!

  OhthankGodinheaven. Thank you, God. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, God.

  The knife whistles through the air over her head, missing her throat by inches
as she lands on her belly and scurries under the bed, just another cockroach exposed to a bright overhead light. But she is all the way under the bed, just like he told her.

  Though she has finally followed his instructions, though she is still alive, the voice in Ahn’s head is still refusing to leave her alone. Now it is screaming out a new set of instructions for her to follow, but she is having trouble making sense of these as well.

  What, exactly, is it that she needs to do?

  Breathe, goddamn it! Breathe or you’ll die, you fucking idiot!

  But for several long moments Ahn can’t breathe. She is too terrified. She tries several times to inhale but might as well be trying to draw breath through a plastic bag that has been tied tightly over her face. Vaguely aware that she is growing dizzy from the lack of oxygen, the first black fringes of unconsciousness creep into the corners of her huge almond-shaped eyes.

  There!

  A single breath finally forces its way into her tortured lungs. It is the only thing that keeps her from passing out. But maybe it would be better if she did pass out. Just pass out right now and slip under the warm, dark blanket of sleep. Surely even he can’t get to her there.

  Can he?

  Get a hold of yourself! Mustn’t think like that now. She must stay conscious, stay alert so she can keep watching him. She can’t take her eyes off him for even an instant, for taking her eyes off him will surely mean death.

  Another cool rush of air into her lungs braces her. That’s better. She’s under the bed and she’s breathing again, just like he told her. Most importantly, she is still alive.

  When he then stares down at her under the bed – the cobra freezing its terrified prey in its hypnotic gaze – Ahn cannot possibly resist the siren call of those horrible eyes and once again raises her own stare to meet his, nothing more than a timorous supplicant trembling before his vast power. There is no escape. She is going to die looking into those maddening brown eyes.

  Like a hard punch to the stomach, she feels it physically when he releases her abruptly from the prison of his stare. If a mere look from him is enough to completely shut off her airflow and other vital functions, how much worse will it be when he is done with her friends and finally comes for her?

  Moving to Liza, the man viciously kicks her in the ribs with one of his enormous booted feet. An involuntary grunt escapes Liza’s mouth as the brutally expelled air rides up from her lungs and over her severed vocal cords.

  Stepping over Liza, the man is moving more quickly now. He kneels down next to Lindsey, and Ahn watches in horror as his gloved hands wrap around her hacked and bloody throat. A moment later, the horrible gurgling sounds that had been coming from Lindsey as she choked to death on her own blood fall silent.

  Poor, sweet, beautiful Lindsey: valedictorian, prom queen and everyone’s best friend.

  Lindsey Mae McCormick is dead.

  The man moves back to Liza and kneels beside her body, strangling the remaining breath from her lungs as well before once again rising to his feet.

  That’s when he pauses.

  If you haven’t been looking for it, it would be very easy to miss. But Ahn is so transfixed by the sight of him, noticing even the most minor muscle twitches around his terrible brown eyes, that she sees it.

  For the briefest of moments he has stopped in his tracks, looking almost … sick.

  Swaying on his enormous booted heels in the middle of the room, he then takes a deep breath that expands his massive chest almost to the point of bursting and speaks the words that cause the blood in Ahn’s veins to run ice-cold.

  ‘Richard Franklin Speck never wavered in his moment of truth, therefore neither will I waver in my moment of truth. And my moment of truth is upon me now.’

  These strange words seem to stabilise him, and the man is once again very sure of himself, in complete control of his movements as he steps over the lifeless bodies of Ahn’s friends on his way to the wall by the door. There he opens a large black briefcase that has been propped against a chair. He takes out a clean white towel and wraps it around the bloody knife before placing it inside. Next he takes out a large, sharp boning knife, studying it for a moment before shaking his head and putting it back. He is the cautious surgeon carefully choosing his instruments, and he has selected the pair of handheld pruning shears instead.

  Before Ahn has time to wonder what he’ll do with his odd assortment of tools, she finds out. Timidly peeking out from beneath the bed skirt – a frightened fawn cowering away from a pack of drunken hunters in the woods – she realises that her nightmare has only just begun. The large man picks Liza’s limp right hand off the floor, the one with which she had managed to scratch him.

  One by one he calmly chops off each of her fingers.

  The sound is nauseating as metal bites into flesh. It is the sound of bone-dry twigs snapping underfoot on a brisk walk through the woods on a crisp fall day. When he grunts softly with the effort, the bones in Liza’s fingers break. Sheared cleanly off, they fall to the floor with dull little thumps that will forever echo in Ahn’s traumatised mind.

  This is not really happening.

  She is not really here in this room. She is not really here in this room and this man has not really killed her friends. She is in a bad dream and she desperately needs to wake up.

  But deep inside her heart, in that dark, secret place within all of us where the only person you can’t hide from is yourself, Ahn knows she will never wake up from this terrible nightmare. She will never wake up from it because she isn’t sleeping, isn’t dreaming this up in her fevered mind. She is wide awake and what is happening now is very, very real. It is the realest thing that has ever happened to her and it is happening right here, right now and right in front of her very eyes.

  This man really has killed her friends, really is mutilating them, and there isn’t a goddamn thing she can do to stop him. She is too weak, too scared to fight him. If a mere look from him is enough to paralyse her lungs with such an all-consuming fear she can’t even breathe, how in the hell can she ever possibly be expected to stop him?

  He will kill her too, she knows. He will kill her just as soon as he is finished with her friends.

  She doesn’t know why, but the thought that suddenly occurs to her makes perfect sense, as if anything could make any kind of sense right now – perfect or otherwise.

  Reaching around to the back pocket of her jeans, Ahn withdraws a small plastic object the size of a credit card and holds it in trembling hands in front of her face as though it is a talisman meant to ward off a demon sent from Hell to steal her very soul. And she has no doubt this man is a demon. She has never been more certain of anything in her life.

  When he finishes his gruesome work with Liza, the large man calmly picks her severed fingers off the floor and drops them one by one into a large Ziploc sandwich bag. Placing the bag back into the briefcase, he snaps it shut, locking the macabre contents inside with a loud click.

  Turning to Liza, he kicks her again, audibly cracking several of her ribs this time. But even as he delivers this powerful blow, Ahn is surprised to see no real malice in his strange and terrible and demonic brown eyes as he does so.

  Towering over Liza, his fingers find the scratches at his throat. ‘Sorry about that,’ he says, though he surely must realise he is apologizing to a corpse. ‘I have to take your chubby little fingers with me, honey. You see, I learned a very important lesson from Timothy Spencer. You might know him better as the Southside Strangler. I’ll bet you didn’t know he was the first serial killer convicted through DNA evidence, did you? Yep, it’s true. He raped and murdered five little girls, which was very good, but he also slipped up by leaving his DNA behind, which was very, very bad. I’m not going to make that same mistake here. I’m smarter than that.’

  He pauses and runs his sparkling reptilian eyes over the length of Liza’s broken body. ‘Damn, girl, you’re not much of a scholar, but you’re one hell of a sexy little wildcat, you know that?
You and I could have been something really special, but you had to go and fuck things up before we got the chance to find out, didn’t you? Now look where it’s got you.’

  And that is all Ahn needs to hear. She has finally seen and heard enough. The man in the room with her is clearly insane, and she knows lunatics are completely incapable of regulating their own actions. This one simple and incontrovertible fact makes him exponentially more dangerous than all the other malevolence in the world combined.

  Violent, uncontrollable shivers rack her as she presses her tiny body up against the cold concrete wall under the bed – as far away from him, as far away from the demon, as she can possibly get. The bones in her skeleton rattle like loose window panes in a passing train as she waits for the unimaginably horrifying feeling of his blood-smeared gloved hand on the back of her neck. He will pull her out from under the bed now, she knows – just another terrified rabbit chosen for the slaughter. He will pull her out from under the bed and to her certain, horrible death.

  Several agonising moments pass as Ahn listens to him breathe. The rhythmic tide of his heavy breath is the only sound in the room now, dark waves of evil crashing loudly against the shores of insanity. His breathing sounds excited.

  Retching, she realises he is enjoying himself.

  There is a pause as he holds this last breath longer than the others. Then, unbelievably, she hears the sound of his footsteps as he turns and walks slowly to the door.

  He seems to pause there for several endless moments, as though he is trying to decide whether he should turn around and kill her after all, before she finally hears the door shut behind him with a soft click.

  Only silence now. Ahn strains her ears for the sound of his terrible breath.

  Nothing.

  He is gone. The demon has spared her.

  But why?

  The reason isn’t important. He is gone and that is all that matters now.