The Dark: A Collection (Point Horror) Read Online Free PDF Page B

afraid when the lights on the bus had blinked off on the way home.
    Bianca could walk
back inside that theater and sit down beside Rick. With these
turquoise earrings on and that memory of Doc kissing her fresh in her
brain, she could do anything. After all, the movie was supposed to
end in less than forty minutes. Marianna had said so. Bianca could
survive forty more minutes in the dark.
    Bianca put her
make-up back into her purse. She took her time about it, wasting as
much of the remaining forty minutes of the movie as possible. She
snapped her handbag shut, thinking about how she could persuade Doc
to forget about that nurse with the shapely legs.
    Just then the lights
went out.
    Were the theater
staff locking up? Maybe it was much later than Bianca imagined, and
the movie was over. After all, Marianna had been desperate to get out
of the place. Nobody wanted to work a minute longer than they had to.
Perhaps Rick had left without Bianca, thinking that she'd run out
of the theater and had gone home by herself. It was her own fault.
She'd taken too long about coming back. Probably even Doc was gone.
    When the slow,
methodical, heavy footsteps started toward her, her stomach sank.
This wasn't any casual visitor to the ladies' lounge. This person
knew that she was here and knew what he was about.
    Suddenly she heard
them again — the footsteps on that night two years ago. They echoed
through her mind — slow, heavy, and loud. They had sounded like
this, right above her head.
    Bianca's hands
spasmed. She dropped her handbag. Thoughts of the off-duty policemen
inside the theater flashed through her head. There was no way she
could call them now.
    "Clumsy of you,
wasn't it?" a falsetto whisper hissed. It didn't sound like
anybody's real voice. She couldn't tell whether it was male or
female, old or young, someone from Georgia or elsewhere.
    The person was so
close he was almost touching her. He stooped down and retrieved her
purse. He shoved it into her hands.
    "I was watching you
inside the theater. Your face was like an open book for anybody to
read."
    She didn't say a
word. She was too scared.
    "You were so
pathetic. So obvious. When you watched that murder on the screen you
remembered me, didn't you?
    He had come back.
This had been her worst nightmare over the past two years, wondering
when the murderer of Mrs. Ingersoll would show up, knowing he could
do so at any time. Bianca's knees knocked together.
    "Maybe you didn't
remember much. Just a hint, a clue. The bad thing is that you're
starting to remember. One thing will lead to another, won't it,
especially since it's almost two years to the day of the killing?"
    He was walking around
her in a circle, sizing her up as if he could see in the dark and she
couldn't. The darkness pressed around her, crushing down on her
shoulders until they hurt.
    "No — no, I don't
remember a thing. Honestly I don't," she pleaded. "I was afraid
of the dark back there. That's what you saw."
    Pretty soon her legs
would collapse. She would fall to the floor. The darkness swirled
around her. It was getting hard to breathe.
    A cold finger brushed
against her neck. She cringed and moved away, trying not to cry out.
That hand! There had been hands like that on that night two years
ago. . . But no! She didn't want to remember.
    A dark laugh escaped
the murderer's lips, a laugh so distorted that it didn't sound
human.
    "I didn't plan to
murder Mrs. Ingersoll, you know. She was a big, fat tub of a woman
who didn't know how to mind her own business and got in the way.
Now you're getting in my way. So guess what could happen to you?"
    She groaned.
    "I'm up for
murder one if anybody catches me. One more victim would hardly make
much difference, would it? The jury would find me just as guilty
either way."
    Dear Lord! How much
longer could this go on? If he was going to kill her, why didn't he
do so and get it over with? Why this prolonged torture?
    Those huge monster
hands tightened about her windpipe.