Page 78 of Fifty-Fifty

It was the lamp lying on the floor, not on the nightstand, that was making her grind her teeth until it hurt. She always had a lamp on the nightstand.

Bloch liked everything to be just so. Something out of place in a room would feel like a stone in the bottom of her shoe. She thought about where she could get a socket extension lead at this time of night. Bloch told herself she was letting this get way out of control. She got out of bed and went to the bathroom.

A dental night guard lay in a glass by the wash basin. She was supposed to wear it every night to stop her grinding her teeth, but it hurt her gums and made it even more difficult to get to sleep. She rinsed the guard, and was about to put it in her mouth, when she heard a dog barking.

It wasn’t coming from Kate’s father’s house, next door. Louis didn’t have a dog. Must’ve been the other neighbor, the young couple from San Diego who drove the Taurus and kept parking it too close to Bloch’s driveway.

Thunder cracked.

The dog let off another volley of barks. It wasn’t too loud. Bloch could tell the dog was inside, somewhere. If it had been in the back yard the barking would’ve been much louder. These houses were not built to keep out noise. Rain hit the house like a hose. Bloch put in the bit, switched off the bathroom light and was on her way back to the bedroom when she heard something other than the rain.

It sounded like tapping.

It was coming from downstairs.

She leaned over the rail and cast an eye into the gloom below.

Listening, she could hear nothing.

She straightened, raised the bit to her lips, opened her mouth, and then she heard it again.

It wasn’t tapping.

Someone was knocking on her door.

It was late. So late it was actually early.

She walked briskly to the bathroom, dropped the night guard in the glass and then slowly walked down the stairs. There were two pictures hanging on the staircase wall. A picture of her on her graduation day from the police training facility, and another one of her mother and father together on a beach somewhere. They looked happy. Her mother held an ice cream cone to her lips

while her dad planted a kiss on her cheek. The kiss had caused her mother to half close her eyes. Bloch could tell by the wrinkles at the corner of her mother’s eyes that she welcomed the kiss – that it was as sweet as the ice cream.

Bloch continued down the steps, but as she passed the picture of her mother and father, she bent low and took up the claw hammer she had left on the stairs earlier that evening after hanging the pictures.

The hammer felt good in her hand. Ideally, Bloch should have gone back upstairs and picked up her gun before even approaching the front door. Whoever

it was at this time of night – they sure as hell wouldn’t have anything good to say.

Bloch padded, barefoot, dressed in her cotton pajamas to the front door. She stood there for a time, listening. She tightened her grip on the hammer, let it fall to her side and then turned the latch, which disengaged the deadbolt. It clicked when the bolt retracted back into its housing within the door.

She put her hand on the latch, unlocked that too, and turned the handle, wary of what she might find on the other side of that door.

SHE

She locked her fingers around the hilt of the knife, drew it out, and held it behind her thigh. Angling her body to the left, she made sure it would not look obvious that she was holding a weapon out of sight.

Her senses heightened. She felt at one with the world. With nature. A natural predator at the top of the food chain. Her ears picked up the mechanical click of the door unlocking, the almost imperceptible scrape of metal on metal as the door latch drew back, drawn into retreat by the turning handle, and then the door opened just a fraction. Dark hallway revealing itself in slow motion, the drawing in of breath, and she readied herself to move suddenly, violently. Her shoulder muscles bunched, she stood on her toes, like a tigress primed to leap from the tall grass for its prey, maw open, claws bared.

The door opened further …

HARRY

Harry pulled open the door slowly, his left hand on the handle, his right bunched into a fist. As the street slowly revealed itself, he saw a figure standing there.

The figure wore the night like a shroud.

Clarence began to whimper and howl.

SHE