Dead of Night (Dead of Night 1)

“Was that all he said?”

“No … but that was enough. I got it. He was telling me that he could hear what the Red Mouth said. What else could it mean?” Homer pulled away from her and sat up, resting his bare back against the door frame. The blood on his chest was clotted and dark and he scratched at it with a fingernail. His eyes were hidden by the shadows cast down from his heavy brow, but Selma could feel them on her. Boring into her like slow drills.

Selma licked her lips. “What else did he say?”

“Just one more thing. He said, ‘After you go, you won’t be gone. You’ll be with us forever. You’ll know forever. ’” Homer shook his head. “I wanted to thank him. It was the only nice thing anyone’s said to me since they busted me. ”

“Are you sure he meant—” She stopped herself.

Homer nodded. “I know what he meant. He hears the Red Mouth. He knows what it means to live forever in the sight of the Black Eye. He was telling me you know, you see. That was decent of him. I thanked him and told him I’d like to shake his hand. But someone else came in the room, so that was that. We were never alone again after that. ” He paused. “Except for a split second in the execution chamber. Doc Volker bent down to check the IV, and he shifted so that I could see his face. He mouthed the same words: ‘You’ll know forever. ’ Then the warden gave the signal for the circus to start. I … don’t remember much after that. ”

Selma looked down at the bloodstains on her robe. She tried not to flick a glance toward the cellar door, but failed. Homer caught it and his face tightened for a split second. Was it humor? Annoyance? Shame? She had no way to judge.

“Is that what happened?” she asked. “Did the doctor … rig things? Did he fake your death so he could get you out?”

Homer chewed his lip. Or so Selma thought until she realized with sick horror that he was sucking up some drops of dried blood.

“Has to be,” he said. “I don’t know how … but somehow he pulled a Gypsy switch and next thing I know I’m waking up in a fucking body bag in a funeral home. Scared the living shit out of the guy who unzipped me. He was chewing gum and listening to some lame-ass Celtic music shit when he pulled down the zipper and there I was. Eyes open, grinning at him. At least I think I was grinning. ”

A look of confusion crossed Homer’s face and Selma waited it out. The walls shuddered under a cold blast and the windows rattled like false teeth.

?

?I remember being hungry. So … insanely hungry. I’ve never been that hungry before. Not until … not until…” He ran his fingers across his bloody abdomen.

“What did you do?”

He leaned forward into a slanting beam of dusty light. Now his face was completely Homer Gibbon. The newspaper Homer. There was no trace of the child or the young man.

“The Black Eye opened,” he said softly. “The Red Mouth told me what to do. And it was clearer … God … it was clearer than ever. ” As he spoke these last words his eyes drifted shut. The way a connoisseur’s would when savoring the delicate flavors of a piece of perfectly prepared lamb. The garlic and rosemary, the tarragon vinegar, the mint. The blood.

“Did you kill Doc Hartnup?” Selma asked, and it cost her a lot to ask it. Her hands were shaking so badly that she had to ball them into fists around the flaps of her robe. “Did the, um … Red Mouth … tell you to do that?”

“Yes,” he said, soft as a whisper.

“God. ” Her voice was softer still. Tiny. Almost not there.

“And the woman. ”

“Woman?”

“I think she was Russian. Came to clean the place. Came just in time. ”

“Oh, Homer…”

“I had to. ” He opened his eyes. “The Red Mouth was screaming at me. Not whispering. Not talking. It was screaming!”

“And Mildred Potts?”

“Who? Oh … her. ” He nodded. “I never … in the past … I never heard the Red Mouth speak so soon after. But I got hungry. ”

“‘Hungry’?” She echoed the word, almost fainting at what it now meant.

“I was full … stuffed from. …” He let his voice trail off, and looked away with a half smile. “I was full and I was still hungry. You wouldn’t understand. ”

The phone rang.

It was so sudden, so loud, that Selma Conroy screamed. She recoiled from the sound as if it had tried to bite her.