In the Language of Scorpions. Charles Allen Gramlich

him up, then waited for her husband to awaken before sodomizing him. The bastard had let the music box play during the assault, and it scared Dena to think that Troy might have taken it with him.

      A loaded magazine for the pistol was hidden under an old TV Guide in the drawer, and Dena stuck it in the gun and chambered a cartridge. The slide popped loudly as it closed and Dena reached out and switched off the lamp. It was near black in the house with all the windows dressed in plywood, and she didn’t want to silhouette herself with light while anyone else could stay invisible in the shadows. Besides, what if the lights went out like the phone and her eyes weren’t adjusted to the dark? Anything could come at her then. And she wouldn’t know until it had her.

      With the gun in her right fist and her left hand feeling along the wall, Dena moved back toward her son’s room. She stopped just inside the door there, listening to everything with ears as wide as they would go. They reported nothing but the storm outside, nothing but rain and wind.

      Inside, Jeremy slept, curled up with one bandaid-ornamented knee out from under the covers and both hands clutching his stuffed panda. Dena decided against waking him. God! She had to make sure no one could hurt him, but she didn’t dare run for it through the darkened house with him. And the plywood was nailed over the windows from outside; they couldn’t get out that way. She’d have to go downstairs by herself. Dena gripped the pistol tighter, wishing she’d practiced with it more.

      She stepped into the hall and every hair follicle on her body came to life as the chimes belled out a jangling, discordant note, as if they had been ripped from the ceiling to adorn the body of someone dancing a berserk chorea. Dena sucked in a mouthful of air and almost yelled. The chimes gonged and clanged. Her finger tightened on the automatic’s trigger and she clenched her teeth instead. A gagging sound came from downstairs. Quiet followed.

      “Mommy?”

      Dena jumped, and turned to see Jeremy sitting up in bed. He was rubbing his eyes and she moved quickly over beside him, putting her arms around him as she lay the small head back on the pillow.

      “It’s all right, Sweety. Just a noise. Go back to your dreams.”

      Jeremy’s arm found his panda and pulled it to him. “Kay, Mommy,” he said. As fast as that he fell asleep again.

      Dena turned back to Jeremy’s door, peeking around it to study the upstairs hallway. Her eyes were fully dark adapted now but the house stood so black that she couldn’t make out her own feet. Her ears could listen, though, and had gotten better at screening out the gale. She found herself able to ignore the outside and focus on what was inside. There was nothing to hear, however, as if all sound had been flushed from the house and the tank had to refill itself. She found herself wishing for a sound, a drip of water in the tub, a clock ticking, just something to let her know the rest of the world wasn’t all gone away.

      Even more than sound, Dena wanted light. The switch for the stairwell tickled just under her hand, but she wouldn’t let herself touch it. If she touched it, she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from turning it on. And once she had light she would never be able to stand the dark again, even though the dark would come. Through the agency of the hurricane, or through a more human act, the dark would come. Dena could picture herself screaming when that happened, and it would be better not to have had the light at all.

      As she fought her need for light and won, Dena felt the blunting of her adrenaline rush. At least temporarily, her physiology was listening to her brain. She knew someone was in the house now. She knew she had to protect Jeremy. But she could visualize the place better in the dark than her visitor could. And she had a gun. True, she hadn’t shot much in the last few years, but she had grown up in hunting country with four older brothers and she understood how to squeeze a trigger and hit what she aimed at. She shut Jeremy’s door behind her and padded softly toward the stairs.

      Dena’s way to the first floor was clear and at the base of the steps she crouched. The front door stood behind her and she could have walked out easily if she’d brought Jeremy down. But she hadn’t known the stairs would be safe. To her left opened the garage. Across the other way was the kitchen. In front of her ran the hall that split kitchen and living room off from the den and from her home office beyond. Dena’s eyes hurt as she strained to see down that hallway. Even as she stared, a set of chimes rang, as if someone’s head had brushed lightly against them.

      Now Dena would allow herself light, but not the room-brightening light of the overheads. She needed something to ruin her visitor’s night sight and leave hers alone. That meant the heavy duty Maglite in the closet just down the hall. She started snailing her way toward it.

      Somewhere ahead of her was a slow drip. A leak from the rain, Dena guessed. Her foot found the residue of it just as she reached the closet, and the slick wet spot that had spread across the floor almost felled her. She grabbed the doorknob for support and it creaked under her hand. The chimes rang, soughing as if a faint wind ghosted among them. Dena wanted to run, her imagination telling her that something was coming down the hall toward her in the blackness. Instead, she forced herself to open the closet and reach in for the Maglite, her skin crawling as the sleeves of raincoats and old sweaters brushed against her hands like the shed husks of monstrous insects.

      The long, thick handle of the flashlight made a comforting weight when Dena’s fingers gathered it in. She didn’t turn it on yet, though. Her mind shrieked for a look down the hall but she didn’t want to be holding the flash when it lit. That would only shout out her own location. She stepped into the closet and knelt, laying the Maglite on the hall floor. Then she switched it on and quickly stood up amid the clutter. One glimpse down the hallway made her wish she’d left things in the dark. The drip she’d heard didn’t come from the rain.

      Where the hall intersected the living room there hung a cheap, brass chandelier, and a body in black clothes and black knitted cap dangled from it. Blood dripped from the leg to the floor, but the person had not been killed at that spot. Someone had dragged them across the linoleum, leaving red smears behind. Those swirled patterns started outside the closet and Dena looked down to see her feet stained and sticky with crimson. The sight made her gag and she fought to swallow the acid lifting in her throat. Then it hit her. The killer had hid in this closet too!

      Dena stiffened, started to suck in air that seemed too weak to feed her. In the reflected light of the flash she could see shoes sitting next to her reddened feet, and she could imagine them full of legs. She could imagine the empty clothes behind her gradually swelling with human shapes. She could hear breathing, ragged. You’re hyperventilating, her mind yelled, but the adrenaline was shouting too loud for anything else to be heard. Something brushed her cheek and she whooped in fear as she leaped out of the closet. Her feet slipped in blood and she fell.

      The chimes whipped into sound as Dena’s fingers scrabbled for the Maglite. They found it, closed around the handle. The closet was empty; she could see that now. But the sliding glass door at the back of the house had just grated open. Dena pushed to her knees, both the gun and the light stabbed down the hall. A gust of hurricane struck her in the face. Shadows spattered before the light, made grotesque by the gale-stirred movements of the dangling corpse. The plywood that had covered the sliding door at the rear of the house was peeled back and the glass was open, letting rain into the living room, letting in wind that sent the chimes into a mad skittering dance.

      Dena jumped to her feet and ran across to the back door, trying not to glance at the dead body hanging from her chandelier. The killer must have fled, she figured, and through the left-open doorway the gale came roaring into Dena’s living room. She pushed the glass closed and locked it, the chimes falling silent as their wind supply dried up. The house still thrummed in the big wind outside, and Dena could see trees in the yard bending down like old men. She also saw something else, an odd design scrawled on the glass door. It was a heart with a cobra inside it, drawn in shiny lipstick. When she realized what it was she stepped back, her stomach suddenly churning with bile.

      The symbol represented a tattoo, the one Troy’s rapist had worn on his chest. Troy’s attacker had hidden behind a mask and a long blonde wig, and the tattoo had been the only identifying characteristic Dena’s husband could remember. Dena had sat in horror