Something Deadly
Written by B.R. StatehamIn the dead of the night. An hour before dawn. The phone.
Suddenly demanding immediate attention.
Insisting.
“Yes.”
The voice was quiet. Measured. Unhurried. Almost a whisper. But there was something in the voice—something dark and lurking. Something deadly. Something incredibly deadly.
“Listen, Smitty. You got to stop him. Now—tonight! Before it’s too late. Jesus Christ, this is crazy. Fucking crazy!”
“Stop who?”
“Vinny. He’s gone nuts. Ever since that cop arrested his brother and sent him up to prison, he’s gone off his rocker. Got just enough alcohol in him to go nuts. He’s gone. Said he’s gonna make that fucking cop pay. Make ’em all pay for screwing his brother over. Stop him, Smitty. Stop him before it’s too late!”
“Where?”
“Cop lives on Melrose. That’s all I know. But Smitty… listen. Vince says he’s going to kill the cop’s family first. One by one and make the cop watch. Took a friggin’ axe with him. He’s gonna chop ’em all to pieces, for Chrissakes! I’m tellin’ ya, Vince has flat gone off the deep end!”
Click. The phone went dead.
The night.
Cold. Moonless. Fog drifting in off the lowlands. Over empty city streets, Smitty drove the car. Black leather gloves on his hands. Black eyes as dark as the ocean abyss. In the darkness of the Caddy, Smitty made no sound. Made no effort to hurry. Yet the drive across town went by effortlessly. The six or more traffic lights clicking green every one the moment he entered the intersection.
Fate, brother. Fate.
The Angel of Death is Fate itself when he slips through the night looking for his prey.
The Caddy rolled to a quiet stop behind a large red GMC van sitting in front of 11159 Melrose Drive. The passenger side of the van was wide open—hanging from its hinges in the night after being angrily flung open. Rolling out of his car, Smitty made sure each black leather glove was on tightly as he walked around the car and stepped onto the sidewalk leading to the low-slung, long ranch house. Eyeing the house, Smitty circled around to the backyard—and found a sliding glass door leading into the dining room wide open.
Darkness littered the interior of the house like a heavy blanket. But it was as if Smitty saw everything in the night as easily as he did in the daylight. Sliding in soundlessly, he moved through the dining room—through the living room—turning to enter the long hall that would take him to the bedrooms of the sleeping family.
And paused.
Ahead, to his left, he heard the half-snoring, half-wheezing of a man. Lying on the carpet in the middle of the bedroom door was a toy stuffed animal.
Vinny was in one of the kid’s rooms. Axe in both hands. Standing over the bed of a sleeping six-year-old blond waif. A tiny angel with a thumb stuck securely between his lips.
On Vinny’s lips, a mask of sheer insanity. Licking his lips, he gripped the axe firmly and began to lift it up and over his head.
Suffer they will, this cop. Suffer and grieve for sending his brother to prison.
The axe, high in the air, vibrated with pent-up rage as he gathered all his strength for the blow. With all his might, he started to hurl the axe toward the child’s face, the look of a madman’s joy in Vinny’s eyes.
From behind—from out of the blackness itself—a gloved hand reached out and grabbed the right wrist holding the descending axe blade. A grip as strong as the jaws of a Great White Shark. The gloved hand twisted to one side violently and then pulled backward. The pain, flooding through the mind of the madman, was enough to buckle his knees and make him want to scream out in the night. But a second gloved hand came out from nowhere, clapped around his mouth, and heaved him back and away from the child.
In the darkness of the hallway, they struggled. Angel of Death and Madness struggle. Veins on their necks and foreheads bulged. Twisting, staggering back, every ounce of strength both could muster being used to counter the other’s hold. The seconds moved slowly by. The short coughs of sudden breaths hurriedly taken, the only sounds the two struggling forms made.
But it ends. Ends with a sudden—definitive—finality.
There is a sharp Crack! Like the sound of a thick tree branch suddenly being snapped in two. Instantly, one of the black figures in the hallway went limp and started to collapse to the carpeted floor. But the second figure caught the falling body, bending down suddenly before standing up. Over his shoulders was the limp form of a lifeless Vinny. Quite dead. Never again to bother another soul.
Turning, meaning to leave as silently as he came, Smitty stopped in mid-stride and stared.
In the hall—for how long?—the dark form of a small child stood in the middle of the carpet and stared up into the night at the black forms in front of him. In one hand, the child clutched a small blanket behind him. In the other was a baby bottle stuck firmly to his lips.
For several seconds, child and the Angel of Death, laden with his prize, stared at each other. Neither breathing soul making a sound.
It was Smitty who moved first. Stepping around the child, the corpse of Vinny over a shoulder, he made his way down the hall, through the living room, and to the open patio door waiting for him in the dining room.
Behind him, the child followed, dragging his favorite blanket with him.
Closing the sliding glass door behind him, Smitty took two steps away from the house—paused—and turned to look back at the child standing in the house, peering out into the night.
For several seconds, each observed the other in stark silence.
And then a light far into the house exploded into life.
“Chuckie! Chuckie! Are you sleepwalking again?”
A woman’s voice. A mother’s voice. Filled with worry and love. Hurriedly, she found the child standing beside the patio door, staring out into the night. She bent down, folded the child into loving arms, and stood up. As she did, her eyes turned to stare into the darkness of the backyard.
Nothing. Nothing.
Only darkness and the vague image of patio furniture and children’s toys littering the patio landing.
“Let’s put you back to bed, baby. There’s nothing out there, hon. No monster out there to bother you tonight.”
Sleep, child.
Sleep the sleep of the innocent.
Sleep, mother.
Sleep knowing Fate has been kind, this night, to you and yours.
For the Angel of Death rarely slept.
