Dark Horror Dreams: The Serial Killer Box Set

By Dan Padavona

THREE bestselling books from the author Brian Keene calls, "One of the most exciting writers to burst upon the scene in quite some time!"

This 500-page horror anthology is full of terror, gore, and bloody scares. From bestselling dark horror novel, CRAWLSPACE, to the bone-chilling classic, THE FACE OF MIDNIGHT, to the mysterious horror of SEVERITY. Be prepared for hours upon hours of jump scares and claustrophobia.

"Terrifying from start to finish...The tension and claustrophobia made my chest feel tight and my hands shake. Part of me wanted to put it down but I knew I couldn't. It's hard for me to get scared nowadays, but Dan seems to have found the secret." - Amazon Review
 

Crawlspace

"Just as Jack Ketchum, Richard Laymon, and the Splatterpunks did a generation ago, Dan Padavona's CRAWLSPACE represents a seismic shift in the horror genre. An instant -- and important -- classic." - Brian Keene

Somebody is watching them

Jerry moves into Kelli's decrepit apartment complex, where a series of bloody murders occurred years ago. Soon Jerry discovers a hidden entrance into the attic, a crawlspace through which he can secretly enter his neighbor's apartment.

But he isn't the only person aware of the secret entrance. 

And now his friend has gone missing.

Is someone hiding in the crawlspace?
 

The Face of Midnight

Becca is homeless, but she sleeps in the finest homes.

She might even be sleeping in your bed right now. 

But danger is closing in on Becca. New York's most-feared serial killer, The Midnight Killer, is butchering victims on his way across the state. 

After Becca flees from a deranged stalker, she takes shelter inside an abandoned farmhouse. Something evil lurks within the house, and a freak October storm has trapped Becca inside. 

And it's Halloween Night.

 

Severity

Somebody wants to kill her.

Marissa tries to catch her adulterer husband cheating, but someone is stalking her, and a series of bloody murders follow Marissa's every move. 
Who can she trust?

Now she must stay ahead of a bloodthirsty serial killer to discover the horrible truth about her marriage.

If she fails, she dies.
 

Grab your copy now to save 50% over buying the books individually.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dan Padavona
• Release date: May 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386753186

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Roadkill

I flew over the crest of Court Hill without a bike helmet. My headphones were on, which is why I never heard the pickup truck creep up on my back wheel.

When the driver laid heavy on the horn, I nearly jumped out of my skin. You can’t appreciate how loud a big truck’s horn is until the grille is two feet from your ass. You don’t just hear the horn, you feel it blasting hot air against the back of your neck while the wail rattles through your bones. The horn made me lose control and nearly careen over the curb, but I straightened the front wheel and managed to stay upright. I twisted my head around and saw the hardened, beady eyes of a man laughing at me over the steering wheel.

Doing what any sane person outweighed by 6000 pounds would do, I edged toward the curb to give the driver room to pass.

He didn’t pass.

He swerved the grille directly behind me again and blared the horn. I inched closer to the curb, afraid the bike pedal would clip the concrete and I’d tumble over the handlebars. He flicked on his high beams.

The smartest choice would’ve been to hop the curb and get onto the sidewalk, but it was too dangerous to attempt at high speed. The sun was almost down, and downtown, at the bottom of the hill, was still a mile away. I realized we were the only two people barreling down the incline. If the driver was crazy enough to run me over, there would be no witnesses.

When I looked over my shoulder, the driver stuck his middle finger up at me and rode the horn for several seconds. I swerved into the oncoming lane, hoping he’d finally pass. As I angled across the road at over twenty mph, the headlight beams swept across the pavement and followed. I veered back, the driver right on my tail.

We zigzagged again; I couldn’t shake him.

The horn brayed in triumph, and I did another stupid thing: I flipped my middle finger back at him.

The pickup lurched angrily forward and grazed my back wheel. The touch was so subtle that I wouldn’t have noticed if every nerve in my body hadn’t been on high alert, red-hot and standing at attention. The bike trembled dangerously. I white-knuckle-gripped the handlebars, knowing that if I so much as touched the brakes, the bike would fly out from under me, and three tons of steel would drag me under.

The faster I pedaled, the more the driver pressed down on the accelerator. We were one entity, the truck and I, accelerating in lockstep toward downtown. A quarter-mile below, a train of vehicles crossed the intersection, growing closer by the second. I felt the trap closing around me. The motor growled down the back of my neck.

Then the truck whipped around me and passed. He shot downhill doing highway speeds in a residential zone, the red eyes of the taillights glaring back at me. Watching the truck instead of the road, I lost control. The bike tires flew out from under me, and for one awful, frozen moment, I saw the cruel macadam rush underneath and imagined the amount of skin it would tear off my body when I landed.

In that precious split second, I had enough presence of mind to clutch my arms protectively around my head. The bike careened over the curb. I smashed shoulder-first against blacktop.

The air rushed from my lungs, and the pavement peeled away skin from shoulder to hip. It seemed as though I slid forever across that cheese grater of roadway before I finally stopped. Ringing trailed through my eardrums, and when I tried to make a fist, my hands refused to respond.

Shaking, I rolled gingerly onto my stomach. I didn’t want to see how much skin I’d lost. Strips of shirt were torn away and in pieces up the incline. What I saw of my arm I didn’t recognize: the layer of skin the macadam had excavated was as white as January snow, dotted by pinpricks of blood. I think my body was too shocked to bleed.

As I lay at the base of the hill, a car pulled up beside me. A middle-aged man in glasses leaned out the window.

Good Lord. Are you okay?

His wife stared from the passenger seat, both hands over her mouth. A young girl in the backseat held a stuffed dog in front of the window, making it dance for me. She seemed quite amused.

Putting his phone to his ear, he waved reassuringly and said, I’m calling 911.

No, don’t, I said to his amazement. My school health insurance had lapsed because I took the spring semester off, and my family’s health plan wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on.

Look, you could have broken bones and a concussion—

I’m fine, I said, cutting him off. He shook his head, muttering something about idiot college kids, and squealed off toward downtown.

Then she was there.

A thousand wasp stings stabbed my skin when I moved my shoulder, but when she knelt down and offered me her arm, I took it and crawled up to my knees, vaguely aware of her car, a pearl blue Mazda RX-8, purring curbside. The first thing I noticed was her legs—tan, fit, and sexy beneath a jean miniskirt that barely caressed her mid-thigh. I must have stared for too long, because she said, My eyes are up here, Don Juan.

I rushed my eyes to her face, thinking she wouldn’t take kindly to them lingering elsewhere. My legs were gelatin, and if she hadn’t grabbed hold of my arm, I would have collapsed.

You okay now?

I don’t have a clue.

I looked into her eyes and gasped. I know how corny this sounds, and believe me, I’m no romantic, but I wanted to melt in the endless depth of those blues. My knees buckled again, and this time she ducked under my arm and let me lean against her. I caught scent of her perfume, subtle yet alluring, redolent of distant wildflowers after a warm rain. The sun flooded orange and red into her blonde curls, which draped down to her shoulders and tickled my nose.

Her eyes considered the bike—twisted, bent carbon, the brand name nearly scraped away by blacktop.

Hmm. No saving the bike, I fear. But if you want me to throw it in the trunk—

Just leave it, I said.

I turned away. The scrapes across the bike’s body reminded me of what had become of my skin. I found no sign of my headphones or MP3 player. They were probably halfway up the hill, in worse shape than the bike.

All right. Can you walk to the car if I help?

I told her I could, though each step made my head swim and my stomach turn. She watched me closely as we took it one step at a time, concern etched into her face.

We should really get you to the hospital.

No doctors.

I expected her to protest, but she just shrugged her shoulders.

Good. I don’t trust doctors.

I pulled the passenger door open, and she eased me into the car. New car smell and pungent black leather met me as I slumped into the seat. I should have told her to drive me to the hospital, insurance or not. My head seemed to float off my shoulders, and the yellow stripe of dividing line snaked and slithered out the window as though alive. Maybe I had brain trauma. Maybe I was minutes away from an aneurysm.

Screw it.

I rolled the dice and put my life in her hands. There were worse fates than dying in the front seat of a sports car with the sexiest girl in Kane Grove beside me.

What do they call you, Don Juan? she asked, slipping into the driver’s seat. I would’ve stolen another glimpse of her legs, but I felt sure I would vomit if I didn’t keep my eyes fixed on the undulating road.

Jerry.

Jerry like Seinfeld, or Jerry like Cantrell?

I smiled to myself. An Alice in Chains fan. Could she be more perfect?

The last thing I remember was trying to form an answer.

Jerry…Laymon.

Everything went black.

My eyes squinted open to a blur of traffic lights whipping overhead, the windows rolled down, letting in a cold splash of upstate New York air. Where was she taking me? What if the short skirt and pretty face were meant to lure me into her car before she slashed a razor across my throat, stole my wallet, and left me in a countryside ditch?

I still hadn’t asked for her name. Or had I? My mind was a needle on a skipping record.

After losing consciousness for several minutes, I awakened to the grumble and jounce of tires along a gravel road. The high beams were on, painting field grass in monotonic whites and grays. A creek sluiced beyond a line of barren trees, reflecting the twilight, mirroring her eyes.

She swung the Mazda up a rocky incline of a driveway. Just up the hill, a long apartment complex seemed to grow out of the earth, like the dead rising.

Where are we?

She jumped, the dashboard lights cast back against her face.

Jesus, you scared me. I thought you were asleep…or dead.

I feel like I am, I said, trying to rub away the sensation that a layer of putty lay beneath my face.

The beams swept across an apartment on the lot’s right end and shut off. She killed the engine, and a chorus of cricket songs rang through the open windows.

Home, sweet home.

Home, sweet home?

The L-shaped complex, with its chipping paint and dingy windows, made me think of the Bates Motel. One of the apartment’s shutters hung askew like the broken wing of an injured bird, and there was a smell—a stale, musty odor that blotted out the scent of spring rising off the dewy grass. I wondered why she chose to live here, why she of all people scraped my carcass off the blacktop and drove me to her house without knowing the first thing about me. That got me thinking again about who she was and whether or not I should trust her.

As she helped me up the steps, I took in the string of connected apartments, a queer familiarity tickling recollection down the less-traveled corridors of my memory. I’d seen this place before. But where? A faded wooden sign welcomed all to Gardenia Apartments. At the base of a pitched roof, five dark letters spelled MOTEL, each letter flickering and dying like moths to a flame. I should have known this place, but the memory hid lost and unrecognized, like a ring in the dark, smutty murk of a catch pipe.

She unlocked the door, and I limped with her assistance from the entryway to the couch. The downstairs barely looked lived in—little in the way of furniture, a small television, an absurdly small dining room table. While I slouched against the cushions, she disappeared around the corner to the kitchen. I heard cabinets opening and closing and the sound of running water, and a few minutes later she returned with a first aid kit, a box of gauze bandages, and a glass of water.

You look prepared for the worst, I joked, as she dunked cotton into a bowl of iodine. She didn’t answer.

This is gonna hurt, she said, holding my gaze until I nodded that I was ready.

She dabbed the cotton, soaked with purple savagery, against the newly-exposed layers of my excavated skin. It felt as if she’d run a blowtorch across my arm. I bit down on my tongue to keep from screaming. Even after she took the cotton away, the burning went on incessantly.

The hurt means it’s working, she said, giving me a wink. At least that’s what Mom always told me.

My mother said the same, I said through gritted teeth. I thought she was full of shit back then, and that iodine is payback for all the hell kids give their parents. Iodine and Bactine—the suburban parent’s favored choices for torture devices. Nothing since has changed my opinion.

Now she held a pair of scissors. A needle and thread rested on the end table, and I hoped to hell she didn’t intend to stitch any wounds. She cut the gauze to size, and I looked away as she moved it toward my bleeding arm.

"You never told me your name." I tried to change the subject, hoping she’d slow down and let me recover between torment sessions.

Yes, I did. But you kept falling asleep during the ride.

Don’t take it personally.

I didn’t. You had a valid excuse. This time. The bandage felt like sandpaper against my arm. She moved her attention toward lesser wounds, applying a dab of antibacterial cream here, a small bandage there. And it’s Kelli Tyler, by the way. Kelli with an ‘I’, not a ‘Y’.

Nice to meet you, Kelli with an ‘I’. Do you always make it a point to pick up roadkill and take it home?

You needed help.

I didn’t ask for help.

In a fair world, you shouldn’t have to ask.

Something flashed in her eyes when she said it. Anger? Hurt? It came and went before I could decide.

She pulled the bottom of my shirt up to my armpits and cursed. I glanced down at a trail of gravel buried into flesh which appeared as though someone had gone at it with an acetylene torch. Feeling such pain made me regret my decision not to see a doctor. If it were up to me, I would’ve given up and gone to the hospital no matter the cost, but she bit down on her lower lip and went to work.

Kelli nursed my wounds for what seemed like the entire night but was probably about thirty minutes, removing every last bit of gravel, applying ointments, washing and rewashing wounds. When she finished, I still looked like hell, but I was clean. No infection could have survived the nuclear assault of ointment applications she administered.

Expect the skin around your wounds to feel tight for a few days. You should feel a lot better by next week. Do you still feel dizzy, nauseous?

My stomach felt unsettled, but the room wasn’t spinning.

Not as bad as before. Look, if you could just drive me back to my—

Not a chance. You’re staying here. On the couch. Someone has to keep an eye on you tonight.

How do you know I don’t have someone to look after me at my apartment? She raised an eyebrow. Okay, yeah. I’m a loser, and I live alone. That’s my story. But what’s yours? I still don’t know why you’d pick up a total stranger and let him sleep on your couch.

You’re not a total stranger. I’ve seen you around campus.

Kane Grove University?

Yes. I’m working on my psychology masters. We’ve crossed paths in the Jamison Science tower. I recognize you, though I don’t think I’ve seen you around lately. Did you graduate?

I took a leave of absence.

Her eyebrow cocked higher.

Any particular reason?

There was a lot I chose not tell her. I was already $35,000 underwater in loans, and this year’s aid package had fallen much below last year’s. True, I was only 36 credits from a bachelor’s of science, and conventional wisdom stated that I should have bitten the bullet and paid the last forty grand of tuition and board. But conventional wisdom wasn’t paying my bills. I was. And to be totally honest, I’d started to hate university life—the sense of entitlement among the student body, star professors who were more interested in getting their research papers published than in teaching, the whole scam that is higher learning in the twenty-first century.

I mean, it’s just a shell game when you get right down to it. The university takes your money, draining your family’s life savings, then delivers a vague promise about job prospects for graduates, while forcing you to waste two-thirds of your credits on poetry and theater classes which don’t have jack to do with your major. They roll out bar charts comparing the lifetime earnings of college graduates versus the general population, all the while subtly painting the trade schools as the great unwashed masses. After four years, your savings are replaced by a mountain of debt, and no one in your career field is hiring. College is a confidence trick. Anything which takes so long and costs so much has to have an incredible payoff. Right? Yet when you leave campus for the final time, you look back over your shoulder and see the same bright-eyed prospective freshman sitting at the recruitment table, watching the shells slide back and forth.

I needed some time away.

I don’t blame you. We could all use some time away from Kane Grove. Intensity flared in her eyes, again so brief that I almost missed it. Anyhow, you can tell me all about it later. We’re staying up late tonight.

We are?

Well, I am. I’ll wake you several times during the night to check on that head of yours. You’re probably fine, but I don’t want to take any chances.

I slept uncomfortably on Kelli’s couch, which was really more of a loveseat. I’m a pretty short guy, but my head hung over one arm, and my feet draped over the other.

As promised, Kelli came to wake me once an hour, though the discomfort of the cramped couch and the searing pain every time my skin stretched kept me wide awake or in a state of semi-sleep. I was delusional through much of the night. I remember talking about old friends and lost loved ones, as though Kelli was family. I dreamed she cried at my grandmother’s funeral. Don’t ask me what that was about. Another time she kissed me fully on the mouth, her tongue searching for and finding mine. That couldn’t have happened, either—not to me, and definitely not with a girl so beautiful. Yet when I awoke the next morning, I wasn’t convinced I’d dreamed the kiss.

Kelli left for class mid-morning. I dozed uncomfortably on the couch, a forsythia blooming vibrant yellows against the window as the sun climbed through a hazy sky. I managed my pain with ibuprofen capsules. She’d left the bottle on an end table with a glass of water. Exhaustion took me, and I fell back to sleep.

I jolted awake a little after two o’clock to a man’s face staring down into mine.

Who the hell are you?

I pulled the blanket to my chest. I was shirtless and in boxer shorts under the blanket, and even though I felt weird about a stranger looking at my half-naked body, I was more concerned about the size of him.

I’m Jerry.

His eyes interrogated. His arms were taut cords that shirt sleeves could barely contain, not an ounce of fat visible on his intimidating frame.

You a friend of Kelli’s?

Sort of. We met last night.

He ran his gaze up and down the blanket, having seen my bare chest and boxers.

Bullshit.

What’s bullshit?

I know Kelli. She wouldn’t sleep with some random dipshit on the first date.

Dipshit?

Quick as lightning, he reached out and ripped the blanket off me. I tried to snatch it back before it was beyond my fingertips. Flesh stretched and screamed in protest, and I fell back into the cushions, clutching at bandaged wounds. He stepped back, the blood drained from his face, unable to fix his gaze on one spot as though he were staring at a burn victim.

Jesus. What happened to you?

Bike accident.

Bike accident? You look like you were dragged down the highway under a tractor trailer.

Thanks a lot. You’re not too far from the truth. Can I have the blanket back?

Yeah, he said, holding the blanket at arms’ length as though my wounds were contagious. Sorry. I didn’t realize you were…Shit, man.

Yeah, well. It feels a helluva lot worse than it looks.

Realization suddenly dawning, he said, She rescued you, pulled you out of whatever accident you’d been in and brought you home to take care of you. Derision returned to his face. You’re another one of her fucking reclamation projects.

Hold on just a second—

So what happened to you, college boy? Got drunk and fell out of the dorm window? Let me guess, you slipped and fell on Daddy’s money and gave yourself the world’s worst paper cut.

As big as the intruder was, if I hadn’t been injured I probably would have swung at him.

You don’t know shit about me, I said, anger tightening my muscles and stretching lacerations into agony. But I bet I know who you are. Let me guess: Kelli’s jealous ex, who can’t get over being dumped, so he shows up to scare away every new boyfriend.

He leaned down so his face was even with mine. I smelled beer on his breath. It took all of my will not to flinch. I was scared to death. Picking an unwounded patch of skin on my chest, he jabbed his finger into me.

Watch what you say, college boy. Whatever happened to you, I can make you feel a lot worse in a hurry.

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I leaned back into the cushions. He smiled, victory achieved.

So if that isn’t your story, what is? I asked, the vigor gone from my voice.

He stood considering for a moment before offering his hand.

Jay Hamel. Kane Grove, class of 2013. Should have been, anyhow.

Jay Hamel.

I’d never seen Hamel out of his helmet and football gear. Hamel had been the star senior quarterback of the Kane Grove University football team when I was a sophomore. As a rule, small-college football players almost never make it to the NFL. Out of over 300,000 players, maybe one or two get invited to the pro combines each year, and invites rarely make it past the tryout. But the talk around campus was that Hamel had a legitimate chance to play in the NFL.

Two weeks after the season ended, with the riches and grandeur of a pro contract almost in his grasp, Hamel inexplicably attacked Dr. Vernon Jennings, Kane Grove’s star psychology professor, in the administration building’s parking lot. Nobody knew the reason, though we all had our theories. The strongest rumor circulating purported that Hamel was failing Jennings’ class and that the professor refused to give Hamel leeway just because he was a star quarterback. This theory had holes. If Hamel could turn pro, why would he care if he graduated?

Hamel spent a few nights in jail for assault, the college expelled him, and the pros never looked at him again. Until now, I’d forgotten he existed.

Jay Hamel, holy shit. What was he doing in Kelli’s apartment?

I remember you, I said, trepidation blanketing the awe I might have felt two years ago. If Hamel was crazy enough to beat up a professor and throw away his NFL career, he wouldn’t think twice about hurting me.

A lot of people do, Sport. But I’m not that guy anymore, if I ever was at all. He ran his eyes anew over my injuries. So I need to know. What thresher spit you out?

I told him of the truck nearly running me down on Court Hill, how I’d wiped out and lain bleeding until Kelli came along.

He nodded.

Never trust a gap-toothed townie. They’ll fuck with you just because you’re a college student.

I wish he hadn’t been right.

The antagonism between Kane Grove and its university was well-known. Town residents routinely wrote scathing newspaper op-eds about rowdy drunkards disguised as students ruining Kane Grove. The more brazen were known to travel in packs, looking for students to rough up. The university president, Dr. Branson Horwith, sent a letter to the student body, advising us to avoid town bars. But students didn’t pay Horwith’s note much heed, and at least once each semester a fistfight broke out downtown between a student and a townie. Not surprisingly, alcohol was almost always involved.

Yet I’d never heard of a townie trying to murder a student.

In the next week, spring began to rush toward summer. I’d lived with Kelli for a little over a week, resting on the loveseat and feeling guilty and inadequate. The fragrance of wildflowers from the surrounding meadow breezed through open windows into her apartment, the temperature rising into the sixties each afternoon.

I longed to be outside after being shut in during the long and brutal winter, wanted to ride my bike again, wished the strengthening sun’s rays wouldn’t make my skin feel like I was submerged in hot tamale sauce.

Kelli dutifully changed my bandages and applied ointments and creams twice a day. My wounds slowly mended, and by the end of the seventh night of sleeping on her couch, I was able to change my bandages and walk to-and-from the bathroom without a hint of vertigo.

I started taking walks while Kelli was at school, first meandering down the long driveway, then expanding my scope to explore the meadow which hummed and buzzed with insect life and smelled of damp, fecund earth. I shuffled with the apprehensive steps of the elderly, always worried I would stumble and tear open the lacerations. The walks loosened my flesh, which felt a few sizes too small for my frame, and accelerated my recovery until I was able to walk at my normal pace without discomfort. Once I thought I saw someone standing where the forest met the meadow, but the sun in my eyes might have played tricks with me.

Hamel came and went almost as often as Kelli. He showed me no hostility, yet he regarded me as I though I were an unsightly piece of furniture which didn’t quite match the room’s decor. Sometimes I heard them arguing upstairs, their words indecipherable through the closed bedroom door. After the arguments, Hamel would invariably storm down the stairs and slam the door behind him. I refrained from asking Kelli the nature of her relationship with Hamel; I didn’t feel it was right of me to pry.

Whenever I told Kelli I was ready to move back into my apartment, that I’d overstayed my leave, she insisted I remain a few more days to be certain I was okay. And when those few days were up, there was always an excuse for me to stay a little longer—the kitchen window was partially off its hinges, a hole in the screen let in flies and needed patching, the gas stove burner wouldn’t ignite. One afternoon she drove me into town to pick up a new igniter at the hardware store, afterward stopping at my apartment so I could gather clothes. I returned to the car with two days’ worth stuffed under one arm, and she kept sending me back until I’d nearly cleaned out my dresser drawers.

Two weeks into our living arrangement, Kelli talked me into moving in with her permanently and even offered to pay my final month’s rent. I couldn’t let her. Living for free made me feel sleazy as it was.

What about Hamel? I asked, leaning over the sink and rinsing dinner remains down the garbage disposal. We’d eaten rigatoni, and the pasta remains stuck to the colander gave me fits.

What about him? He’s not my boyfriend.

She brushed a suds bubble off my chin, giggling.

Maybe not, but he sure has a jones for you.

She rolled her eyes. Men. You’re all too concerned with tying knots and being an official couple. She made air quotes with her fingers to emphasize official couple. Take the two of us. We’re friends, maybe even good friends. We work well together, get along great. It only makes sense to share a living space.

People will talk, I said, watching her out of the corner of my eye.

Let them. I’ve had plenty worse said about me. Just know that I expect you to pick me up when I’m down, just as I did for you. That’s the only commitment I require.

The next time a lunatic townie tries to run you over with his truck, I promise to drive you home.

Jerk.

As sudden and rushed as the proposal seemed, moving in with Kelli made a lot of sense. I’d sold my car last fall to finance my living expenses after I’d determined to take a semester off, and I’d burned through most of the revenue. And well, you know about my bike. I had no job, and I still hadn’t decided whether I’d enroll for fall classes or walk away from college forever.

My landlord, Mr. Dantoni, was a frail-looking senior who’d spent too many decades renting to students and wanted out of the business. I caught up to him one morning fixing a clogged stove burner in the vacant neighboring apartment, moaning about his back and how arthritis was slowly taking away his hands. When I offered to pay him an extra month’s worth of rent to break the lease, he gladly accepted.

I’m getting too old for this, Jerry. He shuffled to the kitchen window and looked down at the line of cars crawling from light-to-light down Main Street. You were one of my favorite tenants, you know? Never any parties or complaints about loud music in the middle of the night. Not like some people.

He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. The room upstairs was noisier than a frat house.

But couldn’t you choose a better place than Gardenia? Bad things happen there, Jerry.

I won’t lie to you. I had it bad for Kelli. Our friendship was platonic. Hell, I’d never even seen her bedroom, never even kissed her—at least, not that I could remember—but I couldn’t keep my eyes from following her whenever she walked past. For her part, she flirted without scruples. Besides the low-cut shirts, short skirts, and nightshirts which barely kissed her hips, she touched a lot when she talked. Sometimes it was subtle, like putting a hand on my arm when she consoled me over my worries about the future. Other times she’d drape her bare legs over my thighs while we sat on the couch, a courtship tease under the guise of watching a movie.

Hamel’s appearances became less antagonistic. Almost fun sometimes. We’d sit around the table, share a few beers, and talk football, me always skirting the subject of why he threw away a professional contract over a moment of rage. Kelli never drank with us. Sure, she’d sip a tiny bit of wine to be sociable. But mostly she just watched us, like an edgy parent watches her child meet someone new. Play nice, kids.

Things couldn’t have been better for me. Money was less of a concern, the pain was gone, and I was living with the prettiest girl I’d ever known. I’d almost convinced myself that job prospects for Kane Grove graduates weren’t so bad after all, that the mountain of loan debt I’d accrued would become manageable once I got a real job. Optimism brimming, I decided I’d meet with Breck, my school adviser, and return to college next fall.

Just before April turned to May, Kelli and I had our first date.

Then she scared the hell out of me.

On Friday night Kelli took me to dinner at Teresa’s Kitchen, an Italian-Mexican fusion restaurant which seemed vastly out of place among Kane Grove’s bars and pizza joints. Over dinner she drank three glasses of a local Chardonnay from a Finger Lakes winery she liked to visit in Aurora, and while she wasn’t too buzzed to drive, her inhibition vanished like spring snows on a south-facing hill. Under the table she slipped out of her heels and ran her foot up and down my leg in clear view of the other patrons. An elderly couple sniffed at us, the woman looking down her nose disapprovingly. An angry looking townie watched us from the bar, leaning over to whisper into another man’s ear, the friend balling his hands into fists and nodding in our direction. I knew it was time to make our exit before trouble started.

We eschewed the Friday night traffic for the back roads to Gardenia as the sun slipped below the horizon. Kelli pushed the RX-8 to sixty mph around sharp curves, my fingers clutching the side handles, knuckles white. Newly-budding trees blurred past the windows. I feared she’d misjudge a turn and roll us into a ditch or impale us on an oak tree.

You’re no fun, she said, glancing at me as we accelerated through serpentine hooks.

She thought she was skilled enough to maintain highway speeds while laughing across the seat at me.

She wasn’t.

I kept thinking of Jan and Dean’s Dead Man’s Curve and the despairing screech of tires that always precedes a high-speed rollover.

I’m plenty fun. You just haven’t known me long enough. But wrapping ourselves around a tree isn’t fun.

Relax. You’re riding with a professional.

She pressed down on the accelerator. The engine seemed to growl, the sports car bounding forward like an escaped predator. Maybe she is too buzzed to drive, I worried.

My prayers for a straightaway were answered when the twisting road finally committed to an eastward direction. The yellow centerline stretched toward infinity, disappearing beneath a decline a few miles up the road. The RX-8 hit eighty mph, alarming but not terrifying on this stretch of road. The reds and oranges of the dashboard lights looked like warpaint across her face.

I’d relaxed my grip when a pickup truck came over the crest, appearing to climb out of the earth. Kelli ripped the steering wheel left and took us into the oncoming lane, the speedometer shooting past ninety mph.

Shit, Kelli!

She ignored me. Her lips curled into a smile, an impish grin that chilled my flesh.

The truck flashed its brights twice. When the RX-8 barreled faster, the truck lights flashed again. We were an alien ship hurtling toward a shooting star, obliteration closing in fast.

I didn’t dare reach for the wheel. Any sudden movement at ninety mph would wreck us.

The truck started honking, the horn like the cries of a frightened animal.

Don’t worry, she said. He’ll move.

What if he doesn’t?

They always chicken out.

Headlights strobed.

The truck horn honked in desperation, closer now.

We were seconds from impact, and neither vehicle had given way. I tried to imagine the man who ran me off the road behind the wheel, but my mind only saw a family, a young, sleepy-eyed child with her head leaned against her mother’s shoulder, coming awake to the baying horn and the panicked screams of her parents.

The gap closed frighteningly fast. The truck’s horn was all I heard, the onrushing head beams all I saw.

Grinning through thin slits for eyes, Kelli slammed her foot on the gas. The car responded with a hunger for destruction. I tried to close my eyes, but they were frozen open. We were going to die.

At the last possible moment the truck swerved into the other lane. My head swung around as the pickup skidded on the gravel shoulder before gaining traction and swerving back across the center line. I saw one silhouetted driver and no passenger. As my heart did a drum roll, I repeated the mantra that the driver was a student-hating redneck who had it coming and not a kindhearted family man on his way home to see his wife and children.

My mind formed the words of an angry parent; my tongue stayed quiet. Rage poised behind my lips.

We drove in silence for a few minutes, reaching the crest and descending through a tunnel of pines dripping from afternoon rains. That was another thing—the road had been wet in spots. What if we’d hydroplaned?

Kelli touched my thigh to break the ice.

Hey, I would’ve swerved if he hadn’t.

I know, I said.

The truth is, I’m not sure she would have.

CHAPTER TWO

The Walking Tree

The game of chicken should have scared me off. Instead, my feelings for Kelli only strengthened. You see, up until that night I’d only known the safe, after-school-special version of Kelli with an ‘I’. We all have skeletons in our closets, even if hers had teeth. She needed me as much as I needed her, and I no longer saw her as my savior, but as my equal.

All the same, my near-death-experience, the second I’d had in a little under a month, was the hot branding iron on the ass that got me moving.

Monday I met Breck Oxford, my college adviser and favorite physics professor, for lunch and a beer at Uncle Johnny’s, a restaurant and bar straddling the tenuous border between Kane Grove University and downtown. Sun and clouds kept fitfully jockeying for position over the city, the sky undecided between shine and storm. The interior to Uncle Johnny’s seemed impossibly dark, almost cavern-like in comparison.

We sat across from each other at a backroom table, far enough from the jukebox rocking The Lido Shuffle and You Shook Me All Night Long to converse without shouting. The scent of garlic bread was ingrained in the walls. Framed photographs of Italian-American sports heroes lined the corridors—Joe DiMaggio, Rocky Graziano, Rocky Marciano, Ed Marinaro. There wasn’t a splash of color in the joint. Spike Lee’s character, Mookie, wouldn’t have been happy.

We spoke over the clink of glass and shouts of laughter coming from a raucous bunch at the bar. Breck’s expression lightened with my decision to return to school.

You made the right choice, Jerry.

Speckles of gray in otherwise dark hair marked Breck’s march through his mid-forties, though I got the distinct impression he still saw himself as the 19-year-old kid who’d almost dropped out of school to follow The Grateful Dead. He was a Kane Grove University lifer, a decorated physics student who’d transitioned from masters to doctorate to professorship. He’d been a part of the university and the Kane Grove community for the last thirty years, allowing him to blend seamlessly into the student and townie population, not unlike Uncle Johnny’s.

"And I completely understand your disillusionment. College is a shell game. The payoff doesn’t come close to approaching the price tag, most of academia is wasted on coursework which we all forget a decade after graduation, and campus protests are usually over causes students find trivial after they’ve spent a few years in the real world. You’re not the only student with those feelings. You just happen to be one of the few with the balls to do something about it. But don’t be a fool. You’re only two, maximum three semesters away from graduation. Cross the finish line, for Christ’s sake. Otherwise you’ll have wasted three years of tuition and have zero to show for it."

He was right. I’d become the prototypical entitled undergraduate I so disdained. The university didn’t owe me anything beyond its false promises, for I’d known what I was buying into as a freshman and gotten what I paid for.

The last suds from Breck’s second glass of beer trickled past his lips, his hand already signaling for a third. I suppose his normal inhibitions, the ones he reserved for his students, didn’t apply to me and my in-limbo status.

You still have your apartment on Main?

No. I’m living with a friend at Gardenia.

Gardenia? He scrunched his face as though an odor reached his nostrils. What on earth prompted you to move into that dive?

Let’s just say living with my friend has its benefits.

His eyebrows raised. Must be some friend. Nevertheless, I advise you to find a place closer to campus as soon as you are able. Commuting disadvantages aside, Gardenia is no place for a scholar.

Problems?

Problems aren’t the half of it, my boy. Drug running, assault. It used to be a motel, you know? Stayed that way until the early seventies.

The sign is still on the roof.

Indeed. Removing the letters costs money, and apparently none of Gardenia’s owners thought the property held enough value to bother. There was a nasty fire shortly after I’d completed my doctorate. Shame it didn’t burn Gardenia to ashes.

An ample-bosomed waitress with an overbite placed beer number three on the table, then moved on.

Winking, he said, I guess you can’t kill evil.

I leaned my head back and laughed. The laugh turned to a nervous chuckle when I found no amusement in his eyes.

Oh, come off it. You don’t believe in the existence of evil.

Hitler was evil. The Manson family…

You’re reaching. Buildings aren’t evil.

What about the murders? Don’t they give you pause?

Murders? The first night at Gardenia streaked back. My face must have been contorted in deep thought, for he leaned over his glass, bewildered.

Don’t tell me you don’t remember. The last Gardenia murder occurred your first weekend on campus, if memory serves me correctly.

A bucket of ice water splashed down on me. I remembered where I’d seen Gardenia before.

In my mind I saw the front page of the newspaper again, the apartment complex silver in the moonlight, a haunted policeman named Patrick stumbling through an open door, eyes blank, looking past the camera at some alternate reality. But the story had broken on my first weekend on campus when I was away from home for the first time, scared to death I’d flunk out, head whirling with life’s rapid fire changes. No wonder why I’d pushed the story to the back of my mind. The murder was something horrible that had happened on the outskirts of town, a million miles from campus. It didn’t affect me.

Jerry? The Gardenia murder?

Breck’s voice shook me out of my stupor.

I remember now.

You do realize the police never caught the killer, don’t you? Never a sign of forced entry, no forensic evidence. Quite the little mystery.

I shook my head, not having followed the drama in the newspapers. Hell, if my roommate hadn’t plopped the article in front of me, I might not have known about it at all. That was the first and last time I’d read the GROVE PRESS.

"You said murders. What else happened at Gardenia?"

He sipped his beer, considering how much he wanted to say. A few of the bar’s patrons swiveled around on their stools to watch us, though I couldn’t be sure if they’d overheard the conversation or were simply trying to decide if we were trespassers in their territory.

You wouldn’t know about the first killings, he said, leaning closer and lowering his voice. "Because the initial murders took place nearly three decades ago. That, my boy, was my freshman year at Kane Grove."

Jesus.

"Back then Gardenia was known as East Wood Rentals and under different ownership. A despicable couple named The Maldens occupied the last apartment on the left. The owner wanted to evict them but was too frightened to try. The husband, Eldon, was a hulk of a man, so intimidating that Kane Grove residents used to refer to him as The Walking Tree. His wife, Kara, was supposedly too frightening to have a nickname. The residents assumed she was a witch, and while that might be a whole lot of horse manure, the truth is Eldon and Kara Malden were into some pretty scary stuff: drug running, money laundering, rumors of contract killings. And if you listen to any of the old timers around this place, Breck said, cupping his hand to the side of his mouth so no one else would hear, the Maldens worshiped the devil."

I rocked back in my chair, holding in a laugh.

This is beginning to sound like a B movie.

That may be, but what happened at East Wood was very real.

I still don’t get it—a couple with big city mob ties living in Kane Grove.

Nothing strange about it at all. It’s easy to hide in plain sight in a place like Kane Grove, and it puts you only two to four hours away from New York City, Rochester, Buffalo, Philadelphia, and Albany. Have you ever considered how centrally located Kane Grove is?

The bar cleared out somewhat, a fair percentage of its patrons heading back to work after elongated lunch breaks. The bucktoothed waitress cleaned a vacated table nearby. Breck patiently waited for her to move beyond earshot before continuing.

The Maldens were in their thirties, no children, nothing to tie them down to Kane Grove. I think they liked the cover of living on the outskirts of a small town, but some people watched. A young priest at St. Mary’s Church, contacted by one of the apartment neighbors, a Betty Arnold, started to cause trouble for the Maldens. You see, everyone in town was too frightened to challenge them. Even the police steered clear for the most part. What’s a small town cop to do against people with rumored big city mob ties? But Father James didn’t fear Eldon and Kara, or perhaps he thought it was his Catholic duty to make a stand against rumored Satan worshipers. He conducted his own investigations into their drug running, brought evidence to the police, the landlord, the mayor, to anyone who might arrest or at least evict the Maldens.

What happened?

Nothing for several weeks. There were whispers that the police had enough proof to link Eldon and Kara to a drug cartel operating out of New York and Philadelphia, and that arrests were forthcoming, provided the priest would take the stand in a trial. Then Father James went missing. He didn’t show up for Sunday services, didn’t answer his phone. Around the same time, some of the neighbors started to complain of an odor in the apartment complex. It seemed to originate from Ms. Arnold’s apartment.

A bell tinkled as the front door opened and closed. Now it was just Breck and I in the backroom, the jukebox silent, isolated conversations from the few remaining guests trickling in from the restaurant’s main room.

The police broke down Arnold’s door and found the priest nailed to an inverted cross, white as a ghost, drained of his blood. Arnold was in the bedroom, beheaded, body diced into bits and neatly arranged around a Satanic symbol drawn in chalk on the carpet. He winked over the rim of his glass, the beer two-thirds drained. Hence the legend that the Maldens worshiped the devil. And just like the last murder three years ago, the police never solved the murder. No sign of forced entry, not a drop of blood at the scene, no fingerprints or hair samples to collect. Odd.

Thunder rumbled out of the hills. The room turned a shade darker.

An urban legend exists in Kane Grove that the Maldens escaped into the meadow behind the apartment complex and took refuge in the hills. Kids in town like to tell ghost stories. They say Eldon and Kara still practice their dark arts in the forest, that evil keeps them young and strong. I know these stories exist because my own children tell them.

I suppose the stories suggest the Maldens were responsible for the Gardenia murder three years ago.

Of course. After all, they’d need new blood for their sacrifices, wouldn’t they?

He chuckled. The laugh never met his eyes.

That’s ridiculous. By your timeline, the Maldens would be at least sixty-years-old now. I’m not saying they’re old enough to be subsisting on Metamucil, but if they’re still alive, they’re probably fat, dumb, and happy, living off dirty money, not claiming fresh victims at Gardenia.

How much money they walked away with is a matter of great debate. The stories all agree on one point: that the Malden’s divorce from the mob was less than amicable. One rumor purported that Eldon and Kara were murderers long before they became contract killers, that they were responsible for dozens of murders in the Northeast and New England and never stopped killing on their own. Imagine murderers too contemptible for the mob.

Though he lowered his voice, Breck sounded uncomfortably loud in the nearly silent restaurant. Dishes clinked inside the kitchen, yet the staff worked without talking, as if they listened in on us.

But you’re right, of course. My belief, also, is that the Maldens are long gone and most likely dead. Considering their line of work, one would presume a shortened life expectancy. You’re always thinking logically, Jerry, which is what makes you a fine scholar. But there’s more to this story.

Isn’t there always?

Chew on this. Dr. Norman, a fine physicist who’s since moved on to Brandeis, lived at Gardenia two years ago. Last apartment on the left. The Malden’s old place. I’d tried to warn him of the Gardenia clientele; many of us had. But a nontenured Kane Grove professor barely earns enough to make his monthly house payment, and Gardenia was the cheapest option he’d come across.

Don’t tell me he saw ghosts.

Dr. Norman was never sure what he saw, only that it scared him half to death. Norman always kept his doors and windows locked—at least he took my advice about security—yet sometimes he’d awaken to find the room different than it was when he’d gone to sleep. Books moved from one table to another, the bathroom light inexplicably turned on, his phone off the hook. He went as far as putting alarms on each door and window, so that if they were opened just a crack while he was asleep, the alarms would make enough noise to wake the dead. His alarms never triggered, yet one morning he found his phone cord sliced at the wall jack and his school papers torn and scattered around the living room. As he turned to run, he swore he heard something breathing inside the darkness of the closet. That was enough for ole Norman, as you might imagine. He moved out that day and slept on various professors’ couches until Brandeis gave him the good news.

I thought about Kelli, back from class and alone at Gardenia. A chill ran down my spine.

But enough talk of murders, ghosts, and witchcraft. Who is this special friend of yours, this wondrous damsel who you are so willing to risk life and limb for by living at Gardenia.

When I told him I lived with a psychology graduate student named Kelli Tyler, he choked on a mouthful of pretzels and leaned over the floor, coughing. I rose to help him, but he motioned me to stay seated. After a long while he composed himself and gulped down the last of his beer. Then he turned to me.

Get out of there, Jerry. Get out of there. Now.

The room felt tense, as though a whip had cracked.

Gone was my friend and mentor, replaced instead by a stern parent staring disapprovingly across the table.

Get out? Why?

Call your old landlord. Tell him you want your apartment back. If you need me to pull some strings and get you into one of the honors dormitories—

You’re not making sense. Do you have something against Kelli? How would you even know her? She’s not a physics student.

I’m not at liberty to say. But you must, must pay heed to my command. Stay far away from Kelli Tyler.

This is insane. You can’t possibly—

Dammit, Jerry. You’re an adult, and it’s time you start acting like one. If you want any sort of future upon graduating from Kane Grove, you’ll break off this foolhardy relationship.

Slamming his glass down, he wiped the napkin across his lips and pushed himself up from his chair.

I should go now. I’ve said too much as it is.

The hell you have. You haven’t told me anything specific.

I met his glare. She’d saved my life, and I wasn’t about to let anyone speak poorly of her.

Breck’s shoulders slumped, and for a second the angry parent vanished, and the friend reappeared.

I would tell you more if I could. I don’t want to see you hurt, Jerry. You’re too smart, too kind, too talented. Don’t destroy your future for this woman. He tossed a handful of cash onto the table. That should cover the bill. Until all ties are severed, I can’t help you.

He walked away without looking back.

The cab dropped me off at the bottom of the driveway. I shouldered the building wind for a long time, thinking, not yet prepared to face Gardenia and Kelli. Breck had left me with a lot to chew on, yet he’d left me with too many questions. My imagination vied to fill in the blank spaces of what Breck hadn’t told me, but my mind kept wandering back to that newspaper photo of the Gardenia crime scene and the story about Dr. Norman.

By the time the first raindrops smeared the