“He’s still there, Annette. Somehow, Erwin’s come back. I don’t know what he wants, but I’m going to find out.”
His words had the effect on her that a defibrillator might have on a dying man. Her arm jerked from his gentle touch and her head snapped toward him. Her eyes were wide and feral behind the hair that hung before them.
“You’ve seen him?” Her voice was a whisper, but it held the urgency of a scream. Her hand scrabbled at the desktop, and the photo along with the crossword fell like leaves to the floor.
Lance leaned forward, his hands out in a placating gesture. “Yes. I think something’s happening at the house, but you’ve helped me. You’ve helped me understand.”
Her fingernails danced across the desktop with a chittering sound.
“He’ll be so angry that I’ve told. He’ll come. He’ll come in the night when there’s no one and …” Her eyes blinked as she faced the wall. They moved up to the window, where dark clouds now held the majority of the sky. “They showed us ways. So many ways if we were caught. Heinrich showed me how. ‘Not too straight,’ he said. You have to angle it up.”
Annette grasped the sharpened pencil from the desk and raised it to her face. Before Lance thought to reach out, she put the black tip of the lead end into her nostril, and with a quick slap of her other hand to the eraser, the pencil disappeared into her head.
Lance cried out as blood erupted from his grandmother’s nose. She sat that way for a heartbeat, her eyes expanded with the shock of pain and her spine rigid. Then she slumped forward, her face hitting the desk like a heavy steak.
“Fuck!” he yelled, and scrambled backward, knocking his chair over as he stood.
The young nurse ran into the room, an expression that politely said can I help with something? She then noticed the dark blood running in a steady stream off the desk and onto the floor, and a scream that didn’t seem possible from such a petite woman barreled up out of her lungs. Her hands rose to her cheeks, and her eyes found Lance, asking and accusing at the same time.
“I didn’t” was all he could muster. His hands came up near his shoulders as he shook his head. “She did it to herself. I couldn’t stop her.” Shock began to numb his senses, but something urged him to get out of the building and away from what had happened.
The nurse still stood in the doorway, her mouth open in what otherwise would have been a comical O shape.
“Please, help her,” he managed, pointing at what he knew was an already cooling corpse.
The nurse nodded, and then she was in motion and kneeling at his dead grandmother’s side. Her hands prodded at the old woman’s sagging throat for a pulse that Lance knew she wouldn’t find.
He backed out of the room and into the desolate hallway. The open space of the hall was a relief, and he hurried to the elevator and punched the button to call the car. His heart slammed in his chest, as he saw the pencil vanish into Annette’s nostril over and over. He squeezed his eyes shut and willed the image away, as he became aware of another sound that filled the hallway. It was a shuffling that seemed familiar, yet he couldn’t place it. When he turned and saw the source of the noise, he barely restrained the urge to scream and pressed his back against the doors of the elevator.
The man he had seen on his first visit was shambling toward him, but this time, instead of a look of utter fear gracing his features, there were no features at all.