Dark Harbors

1

Come to me, Donny Lee. Come to the place of the rock. I wait in the spirals of the night. I wait in the black embers of your soul. Bring the sacrifice!

Donny Lee Hanes gasped as knifing pain stabbed his chest. His breath beat out and sweat streamed down his dirt-smeared face, despite the bone-biting chill of the late-autumn night. A trembling weakness swept through his limbs as he struggled to drag the teenage girl-who was bound at the wrists and ankles and gagged with his balled-up skivvies-deeper into the woods. Christ, he was getting soft. Five years in Dark Harbor Correctional hadn't done him a damn bit of good.

Unless you counted the fury and lust for revenge seething within him, building, building, building until he could no longer stand the pain, the pressure, could no longer tolerate the voice screaming inside his head.

The escape had been easy, too easy; why hadn't he gotten the balls to try it sooner? It had taken one dead guard-whom he'd butchered with a smuggled-in stiletto from a friend who'd been released two days earlier-and hiding out for a few waning hours of daylight. The rest was almost serendipitous. While making his way along the darkened waterfront, clinging to alleyways and unlighted corners, he'd chanced upon the girl: a sweet young thing, blonde and blue-eyed, she was in the ripening stages of development-half a girl, half a woman, just the way he liked 'em. Seeing her, dressed in the cute little pizza girl uniform, the fire of hate had raged again-the wanting, the needing to take her, humiliate her, destroy her. She made easy prey; the innocent always did. Perhaps he was taking too big a risk, snatching this woman-child, delaying his plans to seek revenge on the man who had left him in jail to rot, but he couldn't stop himself; hell, he didn't want to.

And the voice had demanded it.

Bring her, Donny Lee. Bring her to the place of the rock!

The rock, yes, the freaking rock.

Donny Lee gasped another breath, the stench of decaying leaves heavy in his nostrils. The girl struggled, kicking out her bound legs as his attention wandered and he slackened his grip for a second. Her heels thudded against the inside of his thigh, just missing his crotch.

Anger twisted Donny Lee's face, which was wrinkled and sun-dried, the legacy of his Florida childhood.

"Filthy little bitch!" he screamed, fury blazing through him like hell-fire. He threw her to the hard ground. She whimpered and the sound infuriated him even more. Cocking a fist, he lashed out. The blow took her full across the face and her head rocked. Her blue eyes rolled, dulled, and she ceased fighting, dazed. A welt streaked the length of her cheek, visible in the ribbons of moonlight slicing through the leafless branches and pine boughs canopied above him. Donny Lee stooped, bracing his palms on his knees. His breath heaved in and out as he fought the wave of nausea rising in his gut from over-exertion. He would have to do something about his physical condition if he were going to mess up Walters. There could be no weakness if Donny Lee were to get the better of that sonofabitch this time.

The rock.

As he swiped stringy brown hair from his sweaty forehead, he recollected the voice. Yes, he was to bring her to the rock. He had to kill her there for some reason; the voice hadn't told him why. What the hell did it matter? The pleasure would be the same. Hell, he didn't even question the voice anymore; he took it as a given, that some higher power had chosen him as its Messiah and he was damned lucky it had. Damned lucky, indeed.

Donny Lee straightened, peering around, scanning the brush, then the pine needle- and dead leaf-covered floor of the forest. Things looked different, more over-grown and confined than they had five years ago, when he used to come here to his secret place, to the rock. He supposed they would after that much time.

Bending, he grabbed the girl's bound wrists and hauled her up, slinging her over a shoulder. Christ, she was heavy; they must have made kids bigger since they put him away.

A little farther. The rock was only a little farther, now. He saw the moonlight thicken ahead, heard the frozen voice of the stream gurgling to his right. The clearing, the place of the rock.

Trudging on, frost-coated, decaying leaves crackling beneath his feet, he felt his chest ache violently with every step; he was glad he'd reached his destination before his damned heart blew a rod.

The woods opened into a tree-speckled clearing covered by a blanket of frosty pine needles. Near the south edge, he saw the rock. A chill shuddered through him.

"We're here, missy, we're here. The place...the place of the rock..." Donny Lee fought to control his ragged breath and steady his trembling body.

Bring her to me!

"Yes!" he shouted, steam blowing from his lips. He moved towards the rock, an odd-shaped boulder that reached nearly to his chest in height. In the sterile moonlight, it looked fashioned of talc, an illusion of moon glow and frost. He slid the girl from his shoulder, dumping her ungently on the ground, then stumbled against the rock. With frantic slaps, he brushed the layer of frost away, oblivious to the blades of coldness skewering his fingers.

A name! Carved in crude, scrawly letters: Philiatus. Beneath the name, a symbol resembling an inverted Egyptian ankh with two transoms.

Complete me!

A roar filled Donny Lee's head. It began as a whisper, ascending in volume and descending in pitch until he thought his skull would split.

"Nooo, you're killing me!" he screeched, blood rushing, boiling in his veins. Lust, murderlust. His eyeballs rolled up, lids fluttering, whites of his eyes demonic-looking in the alabaster moonlight. Sweat streamed down his face and his hand quivered as he fumbled in a pocket, bringing out a small flattish object. He pressed a button; a blade snicked out, six inches of steel glinting moonlight flashed across the terror-stricken features of the girl at his feet. He stooped, yanking the wad of underwear from her mouth.

"No, please...please..." the girl mumbled, tears leaking from her eyes.

Do it! Do it, now!

Donny Lee screamed as the roaring whispers in his head crescendoed, a million hissing angry voices laid one upon the other. Rushes of hate and rage careened through him, roaring whispers amplifying the emotions, making him feel as if his skull would burst and splatter the pine needles with his brains if he didn't give them an outlet.

Grabbing a handful of the girl's hair, he jerked her head back, exposing the tender white flesh of her throat and poising the knife before her face. The blade jittered as his hand trembled.

"Sorry, missy, I have to. I have to. I want to-" A grin spread over his lips and a malicious spark flashed in his eyes.

Donny Lee's hand jerked back, thrust forward, wielding the stiletto in a deft arc, a skill honed by years of butchery. The blade flashed with moonlight as it cleaved into soft flesh, opening a gory chasm across the girl's throat. Blood geysered, splattering the boulder in a weird inkblot pattern; it boiled instantly. Droplets vanished, sucked into the rock.

The girl didn't scream, goddammit! Donny Lee looked forward to that part the most. As he dwelled upon his disappointment, the whispers crowding his head began to subside. He straightened, limbs weak, trembling, hands bathed with crimson. He peered at the body of the girl, mesmerized by the mask of frozen terror on her face, the fear and helplessness welded into her widened sightless eyes.

Killing felt sooo good. He hadn't realized just how much he missed it while rotting in that cell. Donny Lee laughed, a reflex, a mirror of insanity, of the dark thing imprisoned in his soul.

A brittle crackling disturbed his reverie. Like a thin layer of ice braking, or eggshells crunching.

He tensed, listening: the sound of the breeze whining through bare branches, whispering through frost-cyrstalled boughs; the gurgling of the stream; the snapping of cold-embedded tree limbs. Had he heard a sound at all? It was hard to tell. Donny Lee had begun to hear all manner of sounds since his incarceration, sounds other prisoners claimed didn't exist. They told him that about the voice, too, that it was a figment of his imagination.

He knew better.

There! There it was again! More like glass shattering this time, coming from-

The rock!

Donny Lee's gaze riveted to the boulder. A network of spidery cracks appeared on its milky surface. They widened before his eyes, thickening, opening, forming a mazelike array of chasms and-a hand! A goddamned freaking hand!

A shudder rattled his body as he watched with saucer eyes and gaping mouth. A white-gloved hand thrust from a crevice, fingers curling, uncurling, clutching at the air as if endeavoring for a hold. Splotches of blood soiled the glove and its looseness suggested the absence of flesh on the digits beneath. Panic invaded Donny Lee's mind. What the hell was this? This was freaking impossible!

Surrender to me!

"No!" Donny Lee shouted, voice now edged with terror. Suddenly he wanted to run, run madly with all the strength he had left, but he felt frozen where he stood.

The hand worked itself upward until an arm appeared, an arm covered in the tattered remains of some sort of billowy costume. Through the tears, he could see clean white bone, glinting with moonlight.

In that instant, Donny Lee understood what had lived within the hearts of his victims. He knew the terror, felt the hopelessness, embraced the certainty of death. Donny Lee Hanes, convicted felon, never afraid of anything in his life, came face to face with Fear.

And he didn't like it one goddamned bit.

I will make you whole, Donny Lee. Fear me! Fear the depths of what you are. Cower in terror as I devour your soul...

Donny Lee let loose a shriek as the thing exhumed itself from its stone prison, cloth and bone passing through solid rock. In darkness ribboned with moonlight, two prisoners free of the confinement stood before each other.

A wave of blackness flowed up from the bowels of Donny Lee's mind, overwhelming his senses. In the last moment of life, an image welded in his mind-the image of a skeleton dressed in the remains of a shredded clown's garb; a grinning skull mouth streaked with blood-red lipstick, teeth riddled with worm holes; hollow black eye sockets circled by crimson, their depths endless and alive and clawing at his soul; papery white flesh stretched over arching cheekbones and hollows.

Darkness swallowed the grisly sight as Donny Lee crumpled into a heap at the skeleton clown's oversized feet. Somewhere in the fleeting remnants of his thoughts, Donny Lee uttered a name: Walters.

Then nothing more.