Free A Killer in the Wind by Andrew Klavan Page B

windows. I lived on the second floor. The landlord lived below. Ed Morris, his name was. He was a cranky but basically decent old gramps who owned a couple of the houses on the street and spent his time complaining about the tenants.
    I had a private entrance. A flight of white steps on the house’s side. I remember climbing the stairs heavily with a bag of groceries under one arm. I remember my apartment door swinging in. I remember stepping out of the gray day into a bleak and irascible darkness. The blinds in the apartment hadn’t been opened for days. Sandwich wrappers and beer cans were still on the low coffee table. I’d never gotten around to fully furnishing the place and it looked particularly empty and uninviting now, like a cheap motel room at the end of a long day’s ride. Nothing there but a TV and a sofa and the coffee table.
    What else do I remember before the withdrawal hit full force? I flushed what was left of my supply of Z down the toilet, shaking the Baggie at the water even after it was empty—just in case I got tempted, I guess. I cleaned off the coffee table. I sat on the sofa. I cracked a fresh beer. I turned on the TV with the remote. Skipped past the video of bodies being brought out of the woods. The “House of Evil” surrounded by cops. “A noted psychiatrist says Emory may have been the victim of abuse himself . . .” A school snapshot of a smiling little girl, one of the victims who had been identified. I stopped on the sports channel. Stared at the screen and sipped my beer. I wondered if I’d pumped all five bullets into Emory at once or stood over him after he went down and planted the last two in his head more deliberately.
    Well, there was no point getting sentimental about it. Monahan was right. The bastard deserved much worse.
    It took about two hours for the real withdrawal horror show to get started. Once it was under way—Dr. Lee was right: It was pretty impressive.
    The sportscaster on TV had just finished speculating about some off-season trade the Yankees were planning.
    “If the Yanks don’t fill the holes in their roster, they could be looking at another long season,” he said. Then, he turned in his seat just slightly and looked directly at me. He said, “Aunt Jane is waiting for you, Champion. She’s waiting for you in hell. You’re going to burn down there with her forever.”
    Well, that was kind of creepy—and it got worse. The sportscaster started spewing obscenities at me, a long, guttural rant of unbroken filth. He grinned and his eyes burned through the TV screen. The tirade went on and on and on a long time without commercial interruptions.
    After a while, I found myself lying on the carpet at the base of the sofa. I was curled into a ball, clutching my midsection in pain. The sportscaster did a sizzling, staticky fade into the bowels of the machine. He was replaced by images of horror—images of the children Emory had tortured. I saw them tortured. I saw them killed.
    “A noted psychiatrist says Satan may have been a victim of abuse himself,” the announcer said.
    But at this point, I had other things to divert my attention. There were, for instance, the snakes and spiders covering every inch of the walls, oozing down and spreading over the carpet toward me like a twining, chittering stain. I writhed and screamed in agony and terror as they came toward me.
    And oh yeah, Dr. Lee was right about the vomiting too. That also went on and on and on.
    I wasn’t sure how much time had passed. I wasn’t sure whether it was night or day. It didn’t matter. I didn’t want to know. There was only one thing I wanted now. I wanted the strength to crawl to the door . . . to tumble down the outside stairs . . . to reach my motorcycle . . . to get to Harlem . . . to get to Janks . . . to get some more Z and make this agony stop.
    I was in the process of clawing my way across the carpet to that end when I heard the knocking—or no: when I realized that I had been