Deep Night

  DEEP NIGHT

  Greg F. Gifune

  Digital Edition

  Deep Night © 2014, 2011 by Greg F. Gifune

  All Rights Reserved.

  A DarkFuse Release

  www.darkfuse.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  OTHER BOOKS BY AUTHOR

  Judas Goat

  Long After Dark

  Midnight Solitaire

  Rogue

  The Bleeding Season

  The Living and the Dead

  Check out the author’s official page at DarkFuse for a complete list:

  http://www.darkfuseshop.com/Greg-F.-Gifune/

  For Chuckie.

  And for Big Ern.

  Life can never be the same without you guys.

  See you when I get there, fellas.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to L7 for fighting the power with “Bricks Are Heavy.” It’s even more relevant now than it was in ’92. Thanks also to my wife Carol for everything, including keeping me (relatively) sane. Thanks to my sister Kim for spending numerous hours patiently discussing this novel with me from conception to completion, and for her thoughtful suggestions and loving encouragement. Thanks too to my mother Carla, and to all my friends and family for the continued support. Thank you to everyone who purchased Deep Night, I wouldn’t be able to do this without all of you. And as always, special thanks to Shane Staley at DarkFuse—unquestionably the coolest cat in the business—for his friendship and tireless dedication to getting my work out there.

  ALPHA

  “There are more things in heaven and earth…than are dreamed of in your philosophy.”

  —William Shakespeare’s Hamlet

  CHAPTER 1

  There are many places in the everyday world reserved for the condemned, the damned, the lost and the hopeless. The holding room was but one example. Sterile, lifeless and painted a dreary off-white, it housed a long table, two plastic chairs and little else. A speaker, microphone and camera system was installed into one wall, a two-way mirror in another.

  In one of the plastic chairs sat a haggard and ragged man who looked as if he’d been through a tremendous ordeal, yet possessed a strange air of composure that seemed in direct contrast to his physical appearance. His hands were shackled in front of him and rested on the table, fingers interlocked and folded together casually.

  He stared straight ahead, eyes blank.

  From the other side of the mirror, Detective Frank Datalia stood watching as his partner, Detective Dexter Clarke, left the man alone in the holding room and closed the door behind him. “He says he’ll talk, but only to you,” Clarke said with an annoyed air.

  “Yeah,” Datalia said, “I heard.”

  “It’s hell to be popular, huh?”

  “What’s the deal with his lawyer?”

  “Supposed to be a public defender on the way for him.” Clarke let loose a weary sigh. “We’re still recording, full audio and video. You gonna go in there and see what you can get or what?”

  “Something strange about this one,” Datalia said, studying the man through the glass. “Way passed composed. The flat-liner types always bother me.”

  “Motherfucker shows no remorse, no guilt, just sits there with that look on his face like he knows something we don’t.”

  Datalia shrugged. “Maybe he does.”

  Clarke held up the file containing what little information they had to that point and looked back into the mirror. “Look at him, calm as could be. Pure psycho is what that is. Piece of shit’s not even human.”

  “That’s exactly the problem with his kind, Dex.” Datalia reached for the doorknob with one hand and took the file from his partner with the other. “They’re too goddamn human.”

  The man seemed to come out of his trance when the detective entered the room. He looked Datalia over, as if truly seeing him for the first time just then.

  Frank Datalia had just celebrated his forty-fourth birthday, was of average height and slightly overweight, but carried it well and was dressed nicely. He wore a goatee and looked as Italian as his name sounded. His hair had begun to thin rather badly on top, and the sides were specked with gray. His eyes were perhaps his most outstanding feature, not because they were particularly beautiful or soulful, but because they were so strikingly melancholy. Though they had probably once been jovial and full of life, they had witnessed things over the years that had dulled the spirit within them, and like the battle scars they were, they showed.

  “Detective Clarke said you wanted to see me?”

  The man nodded. “I’d like to tell you what happened.”

  “You’re under no obligation to speak with us until your attorney arrives.”

  “I agree to speak to you without a lawyer,” the man said softly. “You won’t believe a word of it anyway—and I won’t blame you—but I’m still going to tell you because it’s the truth, Detective Datalia, and nothing but the truth. So help me God.”

  “This session is being recorded. Anything you say can and will be used as evidence against you, do you understand that?”

  “Yes, sir, I do.”

  “All right then.” The detective took his suit jacket off, hung it over the back of the chair on the opposite side of the table then pulled the chair out and sat down. Something in this man’s eyes bothered him. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but something was askew. “What is it you’d like to tell me?”

  “Everything,” the man said, a faint smile creasing his lips, “and nothing at all.”

  PART ONE: BEFORE

  “And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning falls from heaven.”

  —Luke 10:18

  CHAPTER 2

  He couldn’t be sure why he dreamed of lightning that night, particularly during a snowstorm, but he had. At first he had no idea what it was meant to symbolize or suggest, only that the curiously violent, otherworldly storm left him feeling insignificant and strangely powerless. Later, he realized this wailing tempest of his dreams had masked other sounds, awful sounds no one should ever have to hear, like those of skin splitting, clothes tearing, and the screaming echoes of pain, horribly excruciating pain. The heavens shook, and from somewhere deep within the swathe of sleep, came the diseased murmur of ghosts, voices veiled in darkness and swallowed by the din of a blizzard wind. Just before the sky crumbled and fell, crashing down on him in pieces like a shattered windowpane, the whispers of the dead turned again to screams.

  His brother was gone.

  “Raymond!”

  A violent chill shook him awake. It was cold, colder than it should have been, than it could have been had the door still been shut. Breath from his nostrils and mouth exited as mist, billowed like dragon-smoke and skipped through the darkness in search of the ceiling. For a brief moment, Seth Roman was unsure of where he was, but as the room came into focus and he sat up, he remembered the cabin.

  The moon was not particularly bright that night, but evident enough for him to make out traces of the beds next to his and the two sleeping bags on the floor betwee
n them. Louis had taken the bed closest to his own and was awake as well. He lay stretched out on his stomach, head raised slightly from the pillow, hair mussed and his face twisted into a grimace of annoyance and confusion. In one of the sleeping bags on the floor, Darian laid fast asleep, one arm protruding from the bag as he snored quietly.

  Raymond had apparently slipped into the second sleeping bag at some point after they had all fallen asleep, but now it was empty, the zipper undone and the flap thrown aside as if he had exited it quickly and angrily.

  The cabin door stood open. Outside, a snowstorm raged, blowing fresh flakes and occasional blasts of arctic wind through the doorway and into the cabin.

  Seth stared at the door a moment, unable to initially comprehend what he was seeing. The whispers from his dreams slowly receded, left him. “What’s going on?” he asked dully. Or had he only thought the words? Everything still seemed dreamlike, blurry and washed out, like sleep had not entirely freed him and was pulling him back into darkness.

  While he lay there trying to make sense of things, time lost all meaning, and though his eyes remained open, memories from earlier in the day played across his mind’s lens, film passing through a projector, showing him things he had already seen…

  * * *

  Raymond noticed her before the rest of them had, but within seconds they’d all seen her. Despite the peculiarity of the moment, as if mesmerized, no one spoke or reacted.

  The woman—more a girl, really—her small frame breaking the horizon as she stumbled haphazardly over a crest of trees in the distance, appeared as if from nowhere, emerging from the thick forest at a full run. She stumbled, nearly lost her balance and fell but regained it in a forward-stagger without ever slowing her pace. She moved with the frenzied velocity of one being pursued as she travelled down the embankment toward the small clearing separating Seth and the others from the surrounding forest.

  Seth looked beyond her to the forest from which she’d come, but there was nothing, no one following her. Yet she moved as if the gates of Hell had burst open behind her. The closer she got the more petite and young she appeared, her long hair scruffy and mussed, looking like it needed a good washing, as did the rest of her. Dressed in tattered jeans and an embroidered shirt reminiscent of 1970s hippie fashion, she looked like someone who had dropped out of a time warp. Despite the cold, her feet were bare and she wore no jacket, but these things didn’t seem to concern her. Her eyes revealed a level of terror Seth had seldom before seen, and her movements were comparable to those of a wild animal cornered and frightened but prepared to fight for its survival if need be.

  When she was within twenty feet of the cabin she stopped abruptly with a jerking motion, planting her feet and flailing her arms like someone on the edge of a cliff trying desperately to stop and maintain their balance without falling off. Her head snapped back and forth in a rapid arc, taking in the four men she was suddenly confronted with, and she went quickly into a low stoop, hands out in front of her to ward them off as she circled back and away, keeping the men in her immediate line of sight.

  “Easy now,” Seth said, mind racing. “Easy.”

  At closer range they could see that her face was smeared with dirt, her feet had been split in places from the frozen ground and she appeared to be no more than seventeen or so. But the most troubling realization was that her shirt was not decorated with red embroidery at all.

  It was spattered and soaked with blood.

  Darian dropped the wood he’d been carrying. He and Louis had been gathering it from a large pile stacked next to the cabin while Seth and Raymond retrieved anything from the SUV they might need but had left there on their arrival the day before. It was probably the only time all four men had been outside at the same time since they had gotten there, but upon hearing the weather report on the radio that the severe snowstorm originally thought to hit later in the week was in fact beginning that very afternoon, they knew they’d be confined to the cabin for at least the next twelve to fifteen hours, perhaps longer.

  The young woman continued her odd crouching movements, eyes wide and wild.

  “What’s going on?” Darian asked, breaking the eerie silence, his normally smooth voice shaky and uncertain. “It’s OK, what—what’s happening here?”

  She said nothing, her eyes darting from one man to the next.

  Louis looked to the forest behind her. “Is some-body chasing you?”

  Seth moved a bit closer to her but she jumped back. He opened his hands and held them out in front of him. “It’s all right. No one’s going to hurt you, do you understand? It’s all right, you’re safe.”

  “She’s bleeding pretty bad,” Louis muttered.

  “Miss,” Seth said calmly, “it’s OK, everything’s OK, just calm down, all right?”

  Louis nervously shifted his attention from her to the woods then back again. “Come on, lady, we need to know what’s happening here. Is somebody after you or what? We can’t help you if we don’t know what’s going on.”

  Darian glared at him. “Don’t yell at her, Louis, what the hell’s the matter with you? She’s frightened out of her mind.”

  A gust of icy wind pushed through the trees and down across the clearing, cutting right through them. The gray sky threatened snow. It would begin soon.

  “I’m getting my rifle.” Louis headed for the cabin.

  Seth motioned for them to be quiet and to stay put, but kept his hands raised and his eyes trained on the girl. Louis was right; she’d sustained a serious wound, probably in her abdomen, as the portion of her shirt covering her midsection was drenched in blood. “It’s all right,” he told her again. “We’re not going to hurt you, miss. We want to help you, do you understand?”

  When she gave no answer, Seth turned slowly and looked back at the others. Neither Louis nor Darian had moved, and Raymond, who was closest to the cabin, stood watching, some extra blankets he had taken from the SUV in his arms. There was a strange remoteness about him at that moment—even more so than usual, Seth thought—something overtly analytical in his expression. He was studying the young woman, searching her with his eyes, and within seconds something changed in his face, altered it the way a slowly dawning thought might.

  The woman made a groaning sound that emanated from deep in her throat, more a growl than an attempt at cogent speech, and her posture relaxed to whatever degree it was still capable of in a slow, deflating motion.

  As her shoulders slumped she looked even smaller and more fragile than she had before. She opened her mouth to speak, perhaps to scream, but this time no sound came at all. Instead, a single violent tremor shook her and her eyes rolled back to white.

  Seth bolted forward in an attempt to catch her but she collapsed and hit the ground with a sickening thud before he could reach her.

  “Jesus!” He slid down on his knees next to her, pushed a hand under her head and gently lifted it an inch or so from the ground. With his free hand, he quickly checked her wrist for a pulse. It was steady and surprisingly strong but she was completely unconscious. “We need to get her inside,” he said, trying desperately to remember everything he’d ever known or heard about caring for someone in such a condition. “Fast, let’s go.”

  “Moving her might not be such a good idea, man.” Louis came closer. “They always say that. Never move somebody if they’re hurt, right?”

  “That’s only if it’s a neck, head or back injury, isn’t it?” Darian stepped over the cords of wood he’d dropped and knelt next to Seth and the young woman.

  “Well, she just whacked her head on the ground pretty goddamn hard.”

  Ignoring Louis’s comment and still supporting her head and neck with one hand, Seth put the other on the small of her back and adjusted his position into a crouch so he could lift her. “We have to get her inside and apply pressure to the wound before she bleeds to death.” As he rose slowly to his feet, the young woman lifelessly cradled in his arms, he motioned to Raymond with a tilt of his head.
“Bring those blankets. We need to make her as warm as possible. Come on, hurry.”

  “Careful now,” Louis said encouragingly. “Try to hold her neck steady.”

  When they reached the cabin door, Darian went ahead of them to the first bed and knocked a few spent beer cans to the floor. Louis followed, slipped inside then moved to the side of the doorway where he would be out of the way but could still watch what was happening. Seth staggered in and carefully placed her on the bed. “Christ, there’s so much blood,” he said breathlessly, noticing how much of it now stained his shirt as well. He crouched next to the bed and carefully peeled the woman’s shirt back, away from her body. “Get some towels,” he said to no one in particular.

  Raymond walked through the door slowly, tentatively, the blankets still in his arms. “You better get her to a hospital.”

  “She’ll never make it. We have to stop this bleeding or she’ll be dead in minutes.”

  “Town’s thirty minutes by car from here on a good day, and that’s if the roads are clear,” Louis said. “But you guys saw that place. Not but maybe fifty people in it, and there sure as hell isn’t any hospital there. Shit, we’ll be lucky if there’s a doctor. In these parts there’s no telling how far the closest actual hospital might be.”

  “Was she shot?” Darian asked.

  “Bullet to the gut’s the worst wound there is.” Louis craned his neck so he could see over Seth’s shoulder. “She wouldn’t have been able to run the way she was if she’d been shot in the belly, trust me. No way in hell.”