She was unable to move. She wanted to run, but all of her joints–hips, knees, ankles–were rigid, locked, and she didn’t have the strength to make them move. She felt weak, as frail as an old, old woman; she was sure that, if she somehow managed to unlock her joints and take a step, she would collapse.
She couldn’t speak, but, inside, she was screaming.
Frye stopped less than fifteen feet from her, one foot in a cotton snowdrift of stuffing that had been torn from one of the ruined armchairs. He was pasty-faced, shaking violently, obviously on the edge of hysteria.
Could a dead man be hysterical?
She had to be out of her mind. Had to be. Stark raving mad. But she knew she wasn’t.
A ghost? But she didn’t believe in ghosts. And besides, wasn’t a spirit supposed to be insubstantial, transparent, or at least translucent? Could an apparition be as solid as this walking dead man, as convincingly and terrifyingly real as he was?
“Bitch,” he said. “You stinking bitch!”
His hard, low-pitched, gravelly voice was unmistakable.
But, Hilary thought crazily, his vocal cords already should have started to rot. His throat should be blocked with putrescence.
She felt high-pitched laughter building in her, and she struggled to control it. If she began to laugh, she might never stop.
“You killed me,” he said menacingly, still teetering on the brink of hysteria.
“No,” she said. “Oh, no. No.”
“You did!” he screamed, brandishing the knife. “You killed me! Don’t lie about it. I know. Don’t you think I know? Oh, Jesus! I feel so strange, so alone, all alone, so empty.” There was genuine spiritual agony mixed up with his rage. “So empty and scared. And it’s all because of you.”
He slowly crossed the few yards that separated him from her, stepping carefully through the rubble.
Hilary could see that this dead man’s eyes were not blank or filmed with milky cataracts. These eyes were blue-gray and very much alive–and brimming with cold, cold anger.
“This time you’ll stay dead,” Frye said as he approached. “You won’t come back this time.”
She tried to retreat from him, took one hesitant step, and her legs almost buckled. But she didn’t fall. She had more strength left than she had thought.
“This time,” Frye said, “I’m taking every precaution. I’m not giving you a chance to come back. I’m going to cut your fuckin’ heart out.”
She took another step, but it didn’t matter; she could not escape. She wouldn’t have time to reach the door and throw off both locks. If she tried that, he would be on her in a second, ramming the knife down between her shoulders.
“Pound a stake through your fuckin’ heart.”
If she ran for the stairs and tried to get to the pistol in her bedroom, she surely wouldn’t be as lucky as she had been the last time. This time he would catch her before she made it to the second floor.
“I’ll cut your goddamned head off.”
He loomed over her, within arm’s reach.
She had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
“Gonna cut out your tongue. Stuff your fuckin’ mouth full of garlic. Stuff it full of garlic so you can’t sweet-talk your way back from hell.”
She could hear her own thunderous heartbeat. She couldn’t breathe because of the intensity of her fear.
“Cut your fuckin’ eyes out.”
She froze again, unable to move an inch.
“Gonna cut your eyes out and crush them so you can’t see your way back.”
Frye raised the knife high above his head. “Cut your hands off so you can’t feel your way back from hell.”
The knife hung up there for an eternity as terror distorted Hilary’s sense of time. The wicked point of the weapon drew her gaze, nearly hypnotizing her.
“No!”
Sharp slivers of light glinted on the cutting edge of the poised blade.
“Bitch.”
And then the knife started down, straight at her face, light flashing off the steel, down and down and down in a long, smooth, murderous arc.
She was holding the bag of groceries in one arm. Now, without pausing to think about what she must do, in one quick and instinctive move, she grabbed the bag with both hands and thrust it out, up, in the way of the descending knife, trying desperately to block the killing blow.