Chapter 57

I FACED MY NIGHTMARE in the flesh. Whalen stood over me, green goggles covering his eyes, masking his face. He stood erect, body dripping rain water. I sensed him with every nerve and neuron in my body.

His right foot had come down on my right hand, boot heel crushing flesh and bone. The pain shot through my arm, passed the elbow and up into the shoulder, then up into my head. The entire right side of my body was on fire. I screamed, my voice howling into a night punctuated with rain, thunder and darkness. I heard my own voice echoing off the cliff-side, shooting out into the valley, out over the deep woods, out over the fields of tall grass, out over the valley and the farmlands.

I felt the pain with every exposed nerve in my body. I held to the edge, ran my free hand over the shale wall, searched for a chunk of loose rock. I located a piece about the size of my own hand. The rock was smooth on one side, with a sharp jagged edge on the other. I fit the rock into the palm of my left hand, gripped it with every ounce of my strength. Then, with one swift downwards swing of my arm, thrust the sharp edge into his foot.

He screamed, his high-pitched voice crying out into the deep night. He was the suddenly maimed monster. Whalen may have had the power to see in the night. But he never anticipated the chunk of sharp shale coming for his foot. He yanked his right foot out from under the rock, yanked it loose from the tip of the sharpened edge and fell flat onto his back.

The pain left me then.

There was only the bleeding and a rush of energy that shot up from the tips of my toes, entering into my limbs. I did not pull myself over the edge so much as leapt over it, landing directly on top of him.

I wasn’t me anymore. I’d become my sister.

It was as if Molly—her strength, her fearlessness, her courage—had entered into my body and my soul. Pressing knees against Whalen’s arms, I pulled the flashlight from my pant waist, raised it high. Using it like a club, I swung. There was the good feel of a tooth or maybe teeth breaking on contact, his lips popping, gums tearing. Two tubular incandescent eyes stared up at me while the monster once more screamed a high-pitched yodel that cut not only through the forest, but sliced its way into my skull and brain.

I loved every second of it. Molly loved every second. We’d been waiting for a chance like this for thirty years. Not even death was going to keep Mol from having her revenge.

I swung wildly, hitting the monster again and again. But the pain I inflicted seemed to do no good. Whalen lifted his head, spit blood into my face, and smiled. The devil smiled, worked up a gurgled laugh while swinging his right arm around so quick, I never saw the rock that slammed against my skull.

The tables had reversed themselves then. Now it was me who was on my back, left side of my head pounding in rapid pulses of sting.

I gazed up at green eyes.

“Kill me now!”

The air went abruptly still. The rain, the wind, even the lightning seemed to halt their fury as if God Himself were creating a still-life of the scene. Whalen wiped his mouth with the back of his gloved hand, did it without the least bit of effort as though impervious to the pain.

He spit another wad of blood and spittle.

“Little… kitten… has… lost… her… mittens,” he whispered through clenched, broken, blood stained teeth. “Cry, cry, cry little kitten.”

From down on my back I stared up into the mechanical green eyes, at the rain water that dribbled down off his shaved head, down onto bloody lips. I tried to speak. But no words would come. Only the silent motion of a mouth opening and closing. As if responding to the silence, he reared back and away from me.

Just like that, the devil shot off into the night.