A Halloween Eve In Slatersville - Laura Norquist-Weatherbee (best thriller novels of all time TXT) 📗

The door was ajar, an elusive breeze of charmed horrors sneaking out to throttle her senses as she reached for the knob. Treetops in the vast distance echoed mysterious tunes. Birds she couldn’t see shrilled and shrieked; the panic in their cries a warning to her that she should turn around and leave … quickly … before it was too late.
Like a painting done in an off color pastel, one that could only be seen hanging in the dank cellar of a morgue, the moon suspended above in the night sky began to glow; its unfading glimmer reflecting against tree limbs that were stripped of life.
Bravely she walked into the dark apartment. She could hear the leaky kitchen faucet, and the sound of her own heart, which seemingly became louder with every step she took. The sweat above her brow began to trickle down the sides of her face; the fear and apprehension swam deeper into her eyes.
It was a brisk, belligerent October evening, the eve of Halloween. But this year in Slaterville there would be no Halloween, no trick-or-treating for the youngsters. This year Halloween in Slaterville would be an evening masked –so appropriately indeed – in chilling bleakness, unnerving reticence. Every door would be bolted and locked, every curtain drawn, every neighborhood street bathed perversely in an uncomfortable eerieness.
There was something not quite right going on in Slaterville, something evoking panic through out the town. There was a murderer lurking within its midst.
She knew who it was... her brother. Already he had ruthlessly knifed to death his best friend and then his employer. The slaterville police had not yet tracked him down. Most of the town’s people were convinced he had fled. Yet there were those skeptical few who felt different, that, in fact, he was still in Slaterville. With every howling of the wind, every dying leave that whisked across a silent street, something spoke of an unsettled score, and a stranger manipulating the once calm.
“Mom?” she called out to an unresponsive wall of pale yellow, the murmur of hope being slaughtered by the cold hands of immobility within the apartment she had dared to enter.
An untouched cup of coffee sat upon the kitchen table; a cigarette, unfinished, though no longer smoking, lay in the ashtray. The clock above the stove hummed not a sound, not a click, click, click to record the movement of seconds that were certainly going by.
Behind her the growling winds slammed the door shut. She jumped, her heart thundered. ‘This is all just a nightmare’, she kept telling herself, trying to maintain her sense of reality.
The light from her mother’s bedroom was the only light emitting detail to the apartment; its hue spread into the hallway and just touched the outer creases of the kitchen.
Bracing herself, she crept silently toward the bedroom, visions of terror cycling through a vivid passage in her mind. Encountering the doorway she took in a deep breath and proceeded to clutch onto the frame of the door, her entire body shaking uncontrollably, sweat moistening her palms.
Nothing … no sign of her mother, merely the familiar arrangement of furniture, a neatly made bed, a dustless dresser.
Then … she thought she heard something, a faint, almost indefinable noise coming from the bathroom, behind her. She stood imperiled, her bottom lip quivering, a severe dryness developing in her throat. Her coordination became endangered as the weakness seized her knees and clutched at her senses.
She heard it again, this time grasping onto the sound to determine its origin. It was just a hollow plunk, like a penny being thrown into a well; a shallow, hollow ‘plunk’.
‘Just run!’ was her immediate thought. ‘Just go for the door and run … now, while there’s still time’.
But she couldn’t. She had to find her mother. She had to be certain that she was okay.
She turned toward the closed bathroom door. Harsher were the gusts of wind as they pushed up against the windows and spit venomously the beginning of rain. Ever so cautiously she pushed open the door to the bathroom, the light from behind her accompanying her path. There, before her, she encountered a sight that sent ripples of coarse chills up her spine and caused her stomach to heave upwards. Immersed in a tub full of discolored water, fully clothed, was her brother. His eyes were closed, his body unmoving. Blood stains covered the front of his shirt.
She blinked and blinked, thinking the picture would change, that what she was seeing was nothing more than an illusion, that her imagination had gotten the best of her.
But then an air bubble suddenly escaped from his lips.
She gasped, teetered backwards, and felt the hysteria embrace her like a callus friend.
His eyes opened and slowly he rose, lifting his head above the water and quickly taking in the breath that he needed to regain full consciousness. Clutching the sides of the tub he pulled himself up, a demonic grin appearing across his lips. He was holding a butcher knife in one hand. Clothes dripping wet, his hair matted to his skull, nostrils flaring, he began to laugh as he looked at her. And he lifted the knife, the steel blade shimmering in the light.
Urgency splurged through her like a jolt of electricity in her veins. She ran out of the bathroom and to the back door. But he was right behind her, breathing heavy … or … maybe it was ‘her’ breathing heavy and that’s all she could hear. She was crying now, her hand on the knob. And she kept turning it, but it wouldn’t open. It wouldn’t open and her hand wouldn’t remain steady.
Then he started laughing, a mean, and nasty, guttural laugh. He was right there, right there behind her. She could feel his breath on the back of her neck.
Suddenly, from far away, as far away as where the birds were crying their ominous warnings, an alarming voice cried out to her, “Wake up! Wake up! It’s only a dream!”
And then she saw her mother’s face, just outside the door, blood seeping from her skull, her eyes black and lifeless.
It was then that she realized that her mother hadn’t come to help. She was holding the door from the other side so that she couldn’t get out.
“It’s only a dream!”

Publication Date: 04-28-2010

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