David Wiltse: The Edge of Sleep

Reese followed her into the bathroom. She pulled back the shower curtain and revealed a man lying in the tub, fully clothed. His eyes were wide and staring.

“Who…”

“My husband,” Dee said. “He slipped, I can’t wake him up. Do something, do something, please.”

The man’s head was tilted crazily to one side as if his neck were broken. Reese stared at him, uncertainly, then to the woman who stood next to him, one hand behind her back. The guy looked to Reese as if he were beyond first aid, looked, in fact, as if he’d been dead a day or two.

“See if he has a pulse,” the woman said frantically. “Please see, Lyle.”

Reese didn’t know why she called him Lyle, if he had heard her right. He didn’t want to check the man’s pulse, didn’t want to touch an obvious corpse at all if he could help it, but he felt that he should give the appearance of trying to help before doing the obvious thing and calling the ambulance.

He leaned over the tub, reaching for the man’s wrist. Dee made one swift pass with the razor blade across Reese’s jugular vein, then drove her knee into his ass, propelling him headfirst into the tub. His head hit porcelain. Dee continued the pressure with her knee while lifting on his belt, keeping him upside down and off balance.

Reese barely felt the slice across his throat; it was the banging of his head that enraged him. The crazy woman had him up on his toes, his face pressed onto the corpse so they were nose to nose. Reese tried to push up off the tub, but she kicked him behind the knees so his legs went out from under him and he tipped farther forward. Something hot and liquid gushed past his face and across his eyes, but he didn’t know what it was. He flailed backward with his right hand, reaching for his gun, but she grabbed his wrist and used his arm like a lever, pushing him still farther into the tub. His lips pressed against the corpse’s mouth and Reese wrenched his head away and more steaming liquid poured into his face and he tasted blood. He was not even yet convinced that it was his own blood when his strength seemed to leave him entirely. As he slumped forward and fell atop the body in the tub, he was dimly aware that his throat had been cut. The slice was beginning to hurt. He reached for his neck and felt a moment of terror as the blood pumped over his fingers, and then he was gone.

Dee pushed Reese’s feet into the tub so that the officer lay along the length of Edgar’s body; then she drew the curtain closed. She rinsed the razor blade and put it on the sink, then picked it up again when she heard the sound from the other room.

The door was ajar and Karen called through it, “Officer Reese.” She had completed her run of the units and was looking impatiently for Reese now so that she could begin the second phase.

“Reese? Are you in there?”

“Thank God you’ve come,” came a frantic feminine voice. The voice sounded faintly familiar to Karen. She pushed the door open all the way and saw Dee rushing at her.

“I’ve been calling and calling,” Dee said. She grabbed Karen’s sleeve and pulled her into the room, but she knew immediately that the agent had recognized her. There was no time to repeat the charade at the tub, so Dee turned and slashed at Karen’s throat with the razor blade.

Karen jerked back instinctively. The blade cut her neck but missed the jugular, and Karen managed to get her arm in the air to partially fend off the return swipe. Dee struck again, more wildly this time, and the blade sliced into Karen’s scalp, then again, into the protective hand Karen had thrown before her face.

Karen recoiled, then kicked out, her instep hitting Dee just above the knee. Dee staggered back, surprised by the pain. Karen dug inside her jacket for her gun when Dee lunged forward again. The razor slid across Karen’s temple.

The butt of the gun was slippery in Karen’s hand because of the blood on her palm, and the weapon tumbled to the floor. Before she could reach for it. Dee was on her again, slashing wildly. Karen stepped to one side and kicked out again, knocking Dee back a few steps, but she kept coming.

Blood was flowing down Karen’s face from her temple, clouding the vision in one eye. She tried to circle the other way, keeping her clear eye on Dee while swiping at the bloody one with her hand.

Dee was on her again, head lowered, her arms swinging around in a bear hug. Karen hit down with her balled fist into Dee’s face, felt something crack, then hit her on the back of her neck with a karate chop. Dee’s arms were around Karen’s back and Karen felt the razor slash into her again and again like an animal’s claws. Dee was working the blade upwards, searching for Karen’s neck, but with her own head lowered she could not reach quite high enough without releasing her hold on the agent.

The razor pierced Karen’s jacket and tore down the length of her shoulder blade. Karen dragged Dee backwards, imprisoning the other’s arms against the wall, but the pressure of their combined weight drove the blade deeper into Karen’s flesh. The pain made Karen yell, but she leaned into it, using her shoulders as a fulcrum as she brought her knee into Dee’s stomach. She drove her heel into the instep of Dee’s foot, then savagely brought the knee up again. Dee groaned and Karen drove the heels of both hands into the side of Dee’s head at the ears.

She fell Dee’s knees buckle and drove her knee into her once more and followed it with another chop to the back of the neck. Dee crumpled, sagging to the floor, and Karen came off of the wall enough to release Dee’s arms. The woman fell in a heap.

Karen tried to clear her eye of blood again and suddenly felt the razor rip across the tendons at the back of her knee. She tried to kick out, but the leg was suddenly useless and Dee was rising, grinning. Her nose looked broken and was pouring blood and she had lost teeth, but she was smiling, her eyes still glinting dementedly.

“You dirty bitch,” she said, panting. “You’ll never take him away from me again.” She lifted the razor blade, now scarlet with Karen’s blood, still gripping it lethally between her finger and thumb.

Karen’s gun lay on the floor, ten feet away. Too far with two good legs, impossible with only one that worked. She cast wildly about for a weapon, saw the telephone on the table a few feet to her left. Karen lunged for it as Dee struck again. The razor caught her high on the forehead, ripped all the way across, then sliced the edge of her ear as Karen’s momentum continued to carry her away. Her hand grasped the telephone, slipped momentarily because of the blood, then held and Karen swung it round with all of her strength, ripping it from the wall. Dee was rushing right into it, eager to get at Karen. The telephone caught her flush on the temple and she collapsed to the floor, sprawling onto her back.

Karen tried to walk across the room, but her leg would not hold her and she hopped, fell, then crawled on hands and knees to her gun. She swiveled quickly, seated, her back against the door, and lifted the gun with shaking arms toward Dee, who lay where she had fallen, twitching slightly.

Gasping for breath, Karen lowered the gun to her lap and tried to assess her condition. She seemed to be bleeding everywhere. Her hands were cut, her legs, her arms. She could feel the pain of the spot in her shoulder where the razor had been driven deeply, but the rest of the cuts did not seem to hurt. But how they bled. The slice across her forehead was pouring blood now and she had to wipe her face with her sleeve to keep her vision.

Head wounds always bleed a lot, she reminded herself. You’re not dying, you can still move, you can still think. But you need help.

Dee stirred and moaned and Karen lifted the gun to point at her. She needed the woman alive in order to find Jack. She had to get up, get help, get this woman under control and out of here. Where the hell was Reese?