F. Paul Wilson - Reprisal

"Sure," she said. "As long as they don't have bowls of pretzels sitting around."

His laugh was music. "You're on!"

The man in the white shirt and pants hung up the phone and leaned back on the white sofa in the white living room of his condominium townhouse. He smiled and traced letters in the air. His fingertip left trails of depthless black as it moved: L… I… S… L.

"Contact," he said in a voice that was barely a whisper.

He rose and walked to his back door, glided down the pair of steps to his backyard, and stood barefoot in the moist grass. He smiled again as he gazed up at the wheeling constellations in the moonless sky. Then he spread his arms straight out, level with the ground, palms down.

Slowly, he began to rise.

Everett Sanders jerked upright in his bed and stared at the window.

He'd never been a good sleeper and tonight had been just like all the rest: a series of catnaps interspersed with periods of wakefulness. He'd been lying here with just a sheet covering him, tilting on the cusp of a doze, when he thought he saw a face appear at his window.

He rubbed his eyes and looked again. Nothing. The window was empty. Nothing there but the screen, nothing moving but the drapes swaying gracefully in the breeze.

Nothing there at all. But then, how could a face have been there? His apartment was on the third floor.

He lay back and wondered if it had been a dream or an hallucination. He'd hallucinated years ago. He didn't want to go through that again.

Everett Sanders rolled onto his side and searched for sleep. But he remained facing the window, opening his eyes every so often to check if the face was back. Of course it wouldn't be. He knew that. But it had seemed so real. So real…

Will Ryerson awoke sweating. At first he thought it might be another of his nightmares, but he couldn't remember dreaming. As he lay there in the dark he had a strange, uneasy sensation, as if he were being watched. He got up and went to the window, but there was no one outside. No movement. No sound except the crickets.

Yet the sensation persisted.

Slipping into an old pair of loafers, Will grabbed a flashlight, turned on the yard lights, and went out to the front yard. He stood there in his undershirt and Jockeys and trained the flashlight beam into the dark recesses of the tree-lined lot. Somebody was out there. He was sure of it.

Why? Why would someone be watching him? He was sure no one knew about him. If someone did, they'd surely turn him in. So who was out there?

He sighed. Maybe no one after all. Maybe just his paranoia getting the best of him. But why tonight? Why now, after all these years?

The phone call. That had to be it. In the three days since it had happened, his subconscious must have gone into overdrive. He was beginning to feel the effects tonight.

As he turned to go back inside, he glanced up and froze.

Far above him, a white cross floated against the stars.

It was moving, drifting toward the south. As Will squinted upward, it appeared less like a cross and more like a man—a man all in white, floating in midair with his arms spread.

Will felt his saliva dry up as his palms began to sweat. This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening. A nightmare— this was the nightmare. But after his real-life nightmare experience in New York five years ago, he knew that the rules of reason and sanity were not constant. Sometimes they broke down. And then anything could happen.

Far above, the man cross-drifted over the trees and was gone from sight.

Trembling with dread, Will hurried back inside the house.

THE BOY at six months

May 19, 1969

Oh, Jimmy — what's wrong with you ?

Carol Stevens stared down at her sleeping son and wanted to cry. Lying prone in his crib, pudgy arms and legs spread wide, round-faced with soft pink cheeks, wisps of dark hair clinging to his scalp, he was the picture of innocence. She studied the delicate venules in his closed eyelids and thought how beautiful he was.

As long as those eyelids stayed closed.

When they were open he was different. The innocence disappeared—the child disappeared. The eyes were old. They didn't move like the eyes of other infants, roving, trying to take in everything at once because everything was so new. Jimmy's eyes stared, they studied, they… penetrated . It was unnerving to have him watch you.

And Jimmy never smiled or laughed, never cooed or gurgled or blew bubbles. He did vocalize, though. Not random baby noises, but patterned sounds, as if he were trying to get his untrained vocal cords to function. Since his birth, his grandfather Jonah would sit here in the nursery with the door closed and talk to him in a low voice. Carol had listened at the door a number of times but could never quite make out what he was saying. But she was sure from the length of the sentences and the cadence of his speech that it wasn't baby talk.

Carol turned away from the crib and wandered to the window where she looked out on the Ouachita Mountains. Jonah had brought them here to rural Arkansas to hide until the baby was born. She'd followed his lead, too frightened by the madness she'd left behind to do anything else.

If only Jim were alive. He'd know how to handle this. He'd be able to step back and decide what to do about his son. But Jim had been dead a little over a year now, and Carol could not be cold and logical and rational about little Jimmy. He was their son, their flesh and blood, all she had left of Jim. She loved him as much as she feared him.

When she turned she saw that Jimmy was awake, sitting in the crib, staring at her with those cold eyes that started out blue but had darkened to brown within the past few months. He spoke to her. It was a baby's voice, high and soft. The words were garbled but clear enough to be understood. She had no doubt about what he said: "I'm hungry, woman. Bring me something to eat."

Carol screamed and fled the nursery.

FOUR

Manhattan

"Letter for you, Sarge," said Potts, waving the envelope in the air from the far side of the squad room.

Detective Sergeant Renaldo Augustino glanced up from his cluttered desk. He was reed-thin with a ruddy complexion and a generous nose. His dark hair was combed straight back from his receding hairline. He took a final drag on his cigarette and jammed it into the crowded ashtray to his right.

"The mail came a couple of hours ago," he told Potts. "Where you been hiding it?"

"It's not regular mail. Came over from the One-twelve."

Great. Probably another late notice for dues to a PBA local he no longer belonged to. He'd been transferred to Midtown North over two years ago and they still hadn't got the message yet.

"Chuck it out," he said.

"Could be a bill of some sort," Potts said.

"That's what I figured. I don't even want to see the damn thing. Just—"

"A phone bill."

That brought Renny up short. "Local?"

"No. Southern Bell."

His heart suddenly thudding in his chest, Renny was out of his chair and across the squad room so fast, he frightened Potts.

"Give me that."

He snatched the envelope from Potts's fingers and strode back to his desk.

"What gives?" said Sam Lang, leaning over Renny's desk, slurping coffee from a foam cup.

They'd been partners for a couple of years now. Like Renny, Sam was in his mid-forties, but balding and overweight. Everything Sam wore was rumpled, tie included.

As Renny sped through the text, he felt the old anger rekindling.

"It's him!" he said. "And he's up to his old tricks!"

Puzzled creases formed in Sam's doughy brow.

"Who?"

"A killer. Name of Ryan. Nobody you'd know." He scanned the letter again. "Any idea where Pendleton, North Carolina, is, Sam?"