Chapter 88
“ALEX, THERE’S SOMEONE inside, the house. Alex, someone’s in here with us,” Nana whispered close to my ear.
I was up and out of bed before she finished speaking the words. Years on Washington’s streets had taught me to move quickly.
I heard the softest thump somewhere. Yes, someone was definitely in the house. The noise hadn’t been manufactured by our ancient heating system.
“Nana, you stay here. Don’t come out until I call you,” I whispered to my grandmother. “I’ll yell when it’s okay.”
“I’ll call the police, Alex.”
“No, you stay right here. I am the police. Stay here.”
“The children, Alex.”
“I’ll get them. You stay here. I’ll bring the children. Please obey me this one time. Please obey me.”
There was no one in the darkened hallway upstairs. No one I could see, anyway. My heart raced uncontrollably as I hurried to the children’s room.
I listened for another sound in the house. It was too still now. I thought about the horrible violation: someone’s inside our house. I chased the thought away.
I had to concentrate on him. I knew who it was. I’d kept my guard up for weeks after Sampson and I had returned with Maggie Rose. Finally, I’d let it down just a little. And he’d come.
I hurried to the children’s room. I started to run down the upstairs hallway.
I opened the creaking door. Damon and Janelle were still asleep in their beds. I would wake them quickly, then carry them both back to Nana. I never kept my gun upstairs because of the children. It was downstairs in the den.
I switched on the lamp beside the bed. Nothing! The light didn’t come on.
I remembered the Sanders and Turner murders. Soneji had loved darkness. The darkness had been his calling card, his signature. He had always turned the electricity off. The Thing was here.
Suddenly, I was struck very hard, with terrifying force.
Something had hit me like a speeding runaway truck. I knew it was Soneji. He’d sprung on me! He nearly took me out with one blow.
He was brutally strong. His body, his muscles, had been tensing and untensing for his entire life. He’d been doing isometrics since he’d been locked away in the basement of his father’s house. He’d been wound tight for almost thirty years: plotting to get even with the world, plotting to get the fame he thought he deserved.
I Want to Be Somebody!
He came again. We went down with a loud crash. The air was crushed from my stomach.
The side of my head struck a sharp edge of the children’s bureau. My vision was clouded. My ears rang. I saw bright dancing stars everywhere.
“Dr. Cross! Is that you? Did you forget whose show this is?”
I could barely see Gary Soneji’s face when he screamed out my name. He tried to physically hurt me with the ear-splitting scream, the sheer force of his voice.
“You can’t touch me!” he screamed again. “You can’t touch me, Doctor! Do you get it? Do you get it yet? I’m the star. Not you!”
Blood was smeared all over his hands and arms. Blood was everywhere. I could see it now. Who had he hurt? What had he done in our house?
I could see shapes in the shifting darkness of the children’s room. He had a knife raised high in one hand, canted in my direction.
“I’m the star here! I’m Soneji! Murphy! Whoever I want to be!”
I realized whose blood was swabbed all over his hands and arms. My blood. He’d stabbed me when he hit me the first time.
He raised the knife to strike a second time and growled like an animal. The children were awake now. Damon screamed, “Daddy!” and Jannie started to cry.
“Get out of here, kids!” I shouted. But they were too terrified to leave their beds.
He feinted with the knife once, then the blade slashed at me again. I moved, and the knife cut a glancing blow across my shoulder.
This time the pain was there, and I knew exactly what it was. Soneji’s knife had sliced into my upper shoulder.
I yelled loudly at Soneji/Murphy. The children were crying. I wanted to kill him now. My mind was going to burst. There was nothing left in me but rage at this monster inside my house.
Soneji/Murphy raised his knife again. The lethal blade was long, and so sharp I hadn’t even felt the first wound. It had cut right through.
I heard another scream—a fierce shriek. Soneji stood frozen for the eeriest split second.
Then he whirled around with another growl.
A figure came sweeping at him from the doorway. Nana Mama had distracted him.
“This is our house!” she shouted with all her fury. “Get out of our house!”
A glint of light caught my eye on the bureau. I reached out and grabbed the scissors on top of Jannie’s book of paper dolls. A pair of Nana’s shearing scissors.
Soneji/Murphy slashed out with his knife again. The same knife he’d used in his murders around the projects? The knife he’d used on Vivian Kim?
I swung the scissors at him and felt tearing flesh. The shearing scissors slashed down across his cheeks. His cry echoed through the bedroom. “Motherf*cker!”
“Something to remember me by,” I taunted him. “Who’s bleeding now? Soneji or Murphy?”
He screamed something I didn’t understand. Then he rushed at me again.
The scissors caught him somewhere on the side of his neck. He jumped back, pulling them right from my hand.
“C’mon, you bastard!” I yelled.
Suddenly he reeled and staggered out of the children’s bedroom. He never struck out at Nana, the mother figure. Maybe he was too badly wounded to strike back.
He held his face in both hands. His voice rose in a high, piercing scream as he ran from the room. Could he be in another fugue state? Was he lost inside one of his fantasies?
I had gone down on one knee and wanted to stay there. The noise was a loud roar in my head. I managed to get up. Blood was splattered everywhere, on my shirt, all over my shorts, my bare legs. My blood, and his.
A rush of adrenaline kept me going. I grabbed some clothes and went after Soneji. He couldn’t escape this time. I wouldn’t let him.