Heart drumming, sweat drenching his body, The Survivor slid into the side entrance of his home, an old house in a respectable, if not expensive, part of town. Without turning on a light, he hurried down rickety stairs to the basement with its cobweb-strewn beams and low ceiling. It was damp down here, smelling of the earth that surrounded it, the few high windows covered with bars on the inside and vines on the outside.
He was getting careless.
And he couldn’t afford to.
Not now.
Not when he was so close to accomplishing everything he’d planned for so long.
Nikki Gillette’s friend had seen him. Perhaps recognized him.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
When he’d been so careful for so long.
That was two mistakes…. First, the kid in the woods, and now, this encounter in the restaurant. No more…He couldn’t afford another one. As it was, he’d have to deal with the problem up north with the kid who’d looked him in the eye and now…He gritted his teeth. How had he been so foolish, so heedlessly bold?
But it had been so tempting, a seduction he couldn’t resist when, after sending the E-mail to Reed, he’d realized he’d have time to follow Nikki…
And then, he’d messed up.
He slapped his head.
Hard.
The voice came, then…with agonizing precision. It seemed to reverberate through this tiny cellar and straight to his soul.
What are ya, a girl? Damned dumb-assed cunt, that’s what you are. Can’t do anything right! Stupid little shit!
The insults cracked through his brain, ricocheting through his skull, causing fear to jet through his blood. In his mind’s eye he viewed a thin lip curled into a disgusted sneer, witnessed a long, wicked belt snaking out of dirty denim loops, pulled by thick, hairy fingers with big knuckles and bitten-down nails, a strap of well-worn leather ready to slash welts into his backside.
“No!” he yelled, tasting the salt of sweat on his lips, focusing on the here and now and what he had to d
o. He was smart. A smart man. Not a girl. A man! Not a cunt.
“No, no, no!” Tears of shame burned his eyes even though he told himself that those ancient insults held no water, that they’d just been spouted from the mouth of an ignorant, useless and mean son of a bitch. Yet his breath came in short, scared bursts and the taunts he’d carried with him for a dozen years preyed like demons in his mind.
He’d prove they were wrong. That everyone had been wrong about him. He wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t a girl…he wasn’t shit!
On unsteady legs he moved the bookcase with its boxes of old, forgotten junk and stooped to enter his private room, the space he’d devoted to his other self, his private self. The strong self.
Just stepping into his private hideaway, he felt more stable. In control.
The Survivor.
And Grave Robber.
Smarter than the rest.
From one shelf he extracted his scrapbook, then laid the album open on his homemade table. Yellowed newsprint with grainy pictures and faded text was pressed flat between clear plastic sheets. His eyes devoured the articles that he knew by heart.
Slowly, he flipped the pages until he reached the back of the book where the photographs he’d collected stared up at him. All the faces, some smiling, some grim, others distracted, were innocently unaware that they would face the same fate.
But they would learn.
He had survived.
They would not.