The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [147]
But however the intrusion or his suspicion of the intruder, nothing could explain to Scratch how anyone could’ve penetrated the Bondo he’d applied to the side door’s keyholes. And, as he observed, the Bondo was still intact.
Wary and substantially paranoid, he retreated into the kitchen, closed and rebolted the door. He spun around with the sud-soaked kitchen knife poised within his left-handed grip. His intuition warned him like an acutely aware predator that someone might still be remaining within the house.
Hiding.
Contriving.
He resolved to canvass the inside of the house, just to make certain he was again alone. He cautiously entered the living room, sidestepped towards the shoddy thick wall of curtain concealing the inner house from the outer patio. He lifted his free hand, parted a corner section of the curtain in ill attempt to inspect the tenebrous shadows of post-dusk beyond the awning. This was not a good idea; if his visitor indeed escaped but chose to hang around for awhile in a concealed stake-out, Scratch risked complete visibility peering out as he was.
But his own reflection in the sliding glass window became at once an appalling distraction, and he swiped the curtain shut before he found himself drawn into the decaying features surrounding his own hollow eyes.
Had his attentiveness lingered upon the outside dark a moment longer, he would have witnessed the evasive specter of what might’ve been a man racing midway through the depths of the yard from one end to the other, a man perhaps but for the inhuman speed, which carried him back into obscurity.
Scratch was shirtless, attenuated and pale. His white cotton drawstring sweat pants were ragged and torn and soiled with stains of inconceivable tumult, of smeared charcoal black and brick-red dried blood and the drippings of food. With scrawny, vulture-like feet and toe nails curved into unkempt claws he crept slowly across a landscape cluttered with newspaper pages and crumpled discardings of trash and debris. His deteriorating countenance further suffered from an excessive loss of hair. Portions of his beard and scalp were barren in malformed patches as though randomly shaven for a dyslexic punk-cult group initiation. Scratch would have otherwise preferred that to have been the case; the truth was, he was losing his hair quite naturally or unnaturally, and he’d discovered it could be peeled off in clumps and portions much like removing prosthetic make-up. Aside from this, his stature had been decreased by at least a couple of inches, he was sure of it, and if he’d lost any more weight he’d be ghastly skeletal.
But no matter.
Alice Bradshaw was with child, that’s what it was.
With his child.
With him.
In no time, he would diminish completely until he was no more, to be reborn anew and sinless and perfect with a nice clean slate. He would emerge into a new life, Born Again into Christian upbringing even, and that frightening she-bitch Salvatia would never know what became of her stooge-of-a-Dreg named Simon BoLeve should she be seeking him out.
It’d been years now and Salvatia had never again caught up with him since the days of his youth. Neither would the law, neither would anyone or anything. Not even his sins.
Yes, he was damn good at lying low.
That, and given another month he’d be a hell of a scare come Halloween.
An island of cherrywood coffee table surfaced before him at the foot of the crimson sofa and matching love seat. It was here where Scratch spent a majority