Her space would be dark. Out of the way. Hidden. Buried. Deep, deep, deep. He was certain that’s where he’d find her, if she was there at all.

  She’s there, he told himself. She had to be. The alternative was that he was crazy, and he wasn't crazy.

  Matthew paused a moment to remind himself of that. It was something he needed to hear again and again, and he indulged the part of him that demanded it. But such reassurance only went so far. The doubts preyed on his mind almost as much as she did. It was no longer enough to tell himself this was her doing, he needed to prove it—prove it and do something about it. He could live with the voices, her hellish vocals interrupting his day, disrupting his conversations, intruding on his most intimate moments. It was maddening, but he could handle it.

  Those dreams were another matter. He couldn't let himself sleepwalk while she was manipulating him like that. It was only a matter of time before she succeeded in making him do something horrible. He had to confront her. This had to end.

  “Young Steven Chambers, a two-year old known to friends and neighbors as “Boo-Bear,” lay on his parents’ bed, his lungs filled with water. Drowned, the evidence would show, in his own bath.”

  Matthew walked around the staircase, opening a door in the wood-paneled wall beneath it. Something was wrong. The entry to the basement should have been there. The door was properly positioned, but it opened to reveal only a closet filled with boxes. The layout of the house had been altered. Matthew wasn’t certain what to make of it, but he doubted it could mean anything good. The prospect of not being as familiar with the interior recesses as he had thought was more than disturbing.

  Another series of breaths, another pep talk about focus. He was not about to turn back. No way. The entry had to be somewhere down the hall. Somewhere deeper.

  Matthew entered the blackened corridor, heading deeper into the house, surveying the pictures astride him on the walls. So many pictures, each joined in some way to another until a larger picture seemed to emerge from the pieces. A happy couple, surrounded by bright colors, beaming smiles on their faces. Then the larger picture receded. With each passing door the photos showed Jill less and less, until she no longer appeared in them at all, conspicuous in her absence. The scenes that followed were somber, solitary portraits, colors washed out. Most depicted alcohol in some form. There were women in some of them. None of them smiling, and never the same one twice.

  The light became dimmer as he progressed. Concentrate, he told himself. The hall seemed to extend interminably, stretching forward into the distance like tracks into a tunnel. But he continued to walk. Continued to instruct himself. Continued to focus.

  The gathering blackness seemed to embrace him as he moved forward. He could feel it enveloping him, felt it taking his hand, caressing him with unspoken promises, urging him to give in to it.

  He struggled to maintain his concentration, forced himself to perceive the images around him despite the dearth of light. The photos were faded now, and the few scenes he could make out were austere. Sitting alone in a one-bedroom apartment. Drinking himself to sleep. Crying. A few more steps and they were completely colorless, limited to shades of gray, making them even harder to discern.

  Ten yards further and the photos were all empty sheets tinged the hue of an overcast sky held deep in the grip of the shadows. Ahead he saw a door.

  “Sitting next to Steven on the bed was Matthew Chambers, a prominent, young Atlanta architect. Police described him as all but oblivious to their presence as he stared at his son, stroking his wet hair. “I had to do it,” was all the officers recalled Matthew Chambers saying when they covered him with their revolvers, instructed him to step away from the child and place his hands on his head. Police testimony would later describe the scene as containing ritualistic elements, a bizarre arrangement of crystals and herbs and burning incense.”

  Behind the door a steep flight of stairs descended into an inky darkness. Once again there were photos and doors along each side, barely visible, but he avoided looking at them. Down, down, down, stopping at small landings, forcing himself to keep his surroundings in focus. After several flights the stairs terminated at another door. He opened it and stepped inside.

  The room swallowed him. He was standing in the center of it. A shadowy, windowless dungeon of a suite, one he knew very well. Everything was strangely visible, despite the surrounding shadow and no obvious source of light. The recognition that it was the bedroom from his old house, the place where his world was ripped out from beneath him, was immediate. As was the realization he was not alone.

  “I knew you’d be here,” Matthew said.

  She was sitting on the bed, Steven’s head resting in her lap, his eyes closed. She was looking down at the boy, petting his forehead.

  The sight caused his throat to tighten, making it difficult for him to breathe. Tears welled up, spilled over his lids and down his cheeks. The child was just as Matthew remembered him. Rosy cheeks and blonde hair. That tiny body prone to marathon sessions of horseplay as if it were powered by a compact dynamo. At that moment all Matthew could think of was how energetic his son had been, how he had always been running or jumping or climbing.

  Laying there now, the boy looked peaceful. Angelic.

  Melody did not.

  “Hello, Matthew.” Her voice was raspy, straddling some tonal line it had found between menacing and titillating. Her eyes locked onto his like the jaws of a pit bull. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  “Matthew Chambers—a man neighbors would describe as a loving father and pillar of the community—was arrested for murder. If that wasn’t shocking enough for the residents of the idyllic neighborhood that the Chambers’ called home, Matthew Chambers’ defense would certainly prove to be. Chambers’ lawyer was to plead the affirmative defense of justification.”

  She was just as she had appeared in his dreams, only more so in every way. Her face was a death mask, withered, mummified, her skin shriveled and desiccated, her lips peeled back in a constant grimace, displaying a rapacious set of teeth. Her body was thin, angular; leathery gray skin wrapped around long bones that were unsettlingly close to the surface. But none of those features could compete with her eyes. They were wide, round, piercing, with pupils that cut into the bright green of her irises like violent stab wounds. She was almost naked, with only a thin stretch of cloth—decayed and earthen—pasted around her torso. A wild mane of jet black hair framed her face. Every bit of her seemed feral. Predatory.

  “He was a beautiful child, wasn’t he?” she asked, dropping her head to gaze at the boy again. “You shouldn’t have caused his death.”

  Matthew felt his heart stomping against his ribcage. Surges of adrenaline and pangs of anxiety shot through his chest, each feeding off the other. He bit down and forced himself to focus, reminding himself of why he was there. What he came to do.

  “I didn’t kill him,” Matthew said, clipping his words. His breath hissed through clenched teeth as he tried to retain control. “I didn’t drown my son.”

  “Oh, you may not have physically held him under the water, but you most certainly were responsible for his death.” Melody leaned her face close to Steven’s, gently pinching a section of the boy’s cheek. “For both our deaths.”

  “The story Matthew Chambers told police caused almost as much controversy as the murders themselves. Chambers, the handsome, up-and-coming architect, admitted to killing his wife—but swore he had done it because she, not he, had drowned their son. Investigators initially dismissed his story, but the investigation became more complicated when Chambers passed an FBI polygraph—administered at the request of his defense team—and when forensic reconstructions seemed to support his version of events.”

  “You killed him, you sick bitch. You sent me outside, murdered him, then waited in the living room to tell me about it. How the hell did you expect me to react? I… You deserved what you got.”

  “Did I? Did I deserve for you to tell me you wanted a divorce? Did I deserve to be traded-in like a used car? Did I, Matthew? Did I deserve to bear your child, only to have you fuck that sleazy receptionist? Is that what I deserved?”

  “We were through, Melody. Finished. You knew that. Why did you make me go through the motions, let yourself get pregnant? And Steven… God, Steven. Why did you—”

  “Because I wanted you, Matthew. I was never going to leave you. Never. Once we had a child, I thought you would see. I thought you would realize we were meant to be together. I loved you, Matthew. I’ve always loved you.”

  Without noticing exactly how it happened, Matthew saw that her appearance had changed. At some point she had transformed into the trim, shapely brunette who’d caught his eye at the gym, the one he had married after a torrid fling. Instead of the tattered cloth, she was wearing a white cotton dress that gently clung to her at the breasts and hips.

  “I remember when it was me you wanted to fuck,” she said, lifting a leg beneath her son’s body and crossing it slowly, revealing the smooth, tan flesh of her calf and thigh. “All night, sometimes. Long lunch hours, mornings in the shower. Every chance we got. Do you remember, Matthew?”

  He remembered. He remembered the desperate feeling of needing to take a breath that wouldn’t come, of wanting out, of wanting away from the exhaustive weight of their marriage. Two weeks of unending sex culminating in a hop to Vegas, and he suddenly found himself with a wife. He wondered what he could have been thinking, how he could have been so moronic. Maybe his sanity deserved to be questioned, after all.

  “That didn’t last very long, Melody. You became more obsessive every day, smothering me, calling me at the office a dozen times before lunch, questioning every place I went, every move I made. You drove me away. We weren’t meant for each other. Whatever spark there was quickly died out.”

  “Not for me, you son of a bitch! What happened to love, honor and cherish, Matthew? Huh? What about that? All I ever wanted—all I ever demanded—was for us to be together.” Her voice softened as she looked down at the boy again, gently touching her forefinger to his nose. “You know, before Steven was born, when we were starting to have trouble, I even sought out a Wiccan. I learned what I could about love spells. I found one that was supposed to link our souls, that was supposed to ensure I’d always be a part of you. But still, you pulled away. So I tried a stronger one, one that required I sacrifice a part of me. A part of us. I put off doing it for a long time, Matthew, I agonized over it. But you gave me no choice.” She slowly lifted her head and hitched her shoulders, smiling. “I guess it worked, huh?”

  Matthew clenched his eyelids, pressing them tight.

  It wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t my fault. Oh, God, don’t let her do this to you. Get a grip. Remember why you came here. This was not unexpected. You have an objective. Focus, man, focus.

  When he opened his eyes, Melody was the cadaverous creature she had been before, grinning like a hyena.

  “I’m not insane,” Matthew said.

  “No, Matthew, you’re not.”

  “Matthew Chambers was charged with second-degree murder. Women’s rights advocates were outraged that a man would attempt to justify the murder of his wife by blaming the victim for her child’s death. Protesters carried signs and marched in front of the courthouse every day of the trial. The controversy only intensified when a plea bargain was struck before the verdict. Matthew Chambers would plead guilty to manslaughter, a deal that infuriated the many groups following the trial. Under state sentencing guidelines, he would be eligible for parole in three to five years. As part of the deal, he would also receive psychiatric counseling, despite having rejected an insanity defense. Court documents revealed his lawyers often heard him complain that his dead wife was somehow inside his head.”

  “Did you really think you could get rid of me so easily? All those sessions with the psychiatrists, all those useless drugs and therapies. After all those things didn’t work, couldn’t work, you really thought you could just push me away on your own, shove me deeper and deeper into the dark? Really, Matthew, bury me with willpower? You actually thought I would never come back? I was just biding my time, dearest husband. Waiting.”

  “Waiting? For what?”

  “Your new life, of course. To steal from you what you stole from me. Your marriage. Your family.”

  Jill.

  The thought sent a tremor though his body. Not Jill, the woman who had befriended him when he was at his lowest. The woman who heard him crying through the paper-thin walls of his tiny apartment, who wouldn't stop checking on him. The woman who drew him out of his isolation, who cried with him when he confessed what had happened, what he had done. The woman who believed him, who believed in him, who restored his confidence, who straightened his tie before interviews and never let him give up. The woman he loved in so many ways, for so many reasons.

  The entire structure of the house seemed to shake as he trembled with rage.

  “You leave her out of this. Don’t you dare touch her.”

  “Oh, I won’t lay a hand on her.”

  “I’m serious, you psychopathic cunt! Stay away from her.”

  “Really, Matthew, such language. You must learn to control your temper. I haven’t seen you this angry since, well, you know.”

  “If you so much as—”

  “Come now. How do you suppose I would do anything to her? You’re the one who is going to do it.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, Matthew. You. And once you do it, you’ll have atoned, and then we can be together forever. You can’t avoid it. I will make you do it, drive you to do it. Just like you drove me to do this.” She gestured down to Steven’s body, which no longer appeared angelic, but was instead now rotted and decayed, with patches of flesh the color of sewer water clinging to its bones. Then she gently lifted the boy’s skull off her lap, and Matthew saw she was now holding a baby. A tiny baby, hardly bigger than her hand.

  “Your unborn son, Matthew. Carried inside that slut you married.” She stretched her smile even wider as she placed a hand over the baby’s nose and mouth. “It is every woman’s choice.”

  “No!”

  Matthew lunged at her, his arms thrust forward. His hands found her throat, thumbs hooking it. She was laughing as he did it, the same screeching laughter he’d heard mocking him for so many months. Her face was grotesquely contorted, teeth jutting forward in a snarl. Mummified cheeks, putrescent lips and savage, feline eyes all now just inches away.

  This is why you came, he told himself. This is what you are here to do.

  He squeezed with all his might, digging his thumbs into her larynx, feeling the snap of bone and hearing the choking, gasping sound that he had heard only once before in his life and had tried so hard, for so many years, to forget. Then the death mask faded away. The skin became creamy smooth, with a pinkish hue. Everything else melted away, too, including his dreams. All of them, forever.

  “Oh. God,” Matthew said, releasing his grip. “Oh God no…”

  “That was close to nine years ago. Nine long years, and history has apparently—tragically—repeated itself. Inside the home behind me, police have just arrested Matthew Chambers once again, this time, incredibly, for the murder of his second wife. Officials report that police responded to a neighbor’s call concerning this house. Sources close to the investigation have told Eyewitness News that when police entered, they found Matthew Chambers with his hands still around the neck of his dead wife. Details remain sketchy, but the detective in charge has confirmed that paramedics pronounced Jill Chambers dead at the scene... Chambers, age thirty-four, the apparent victim of a strangulation.

  “A police spokesperson refused to comment on the rumor that, at the time of his arrest, Matthew Chambers had earbuds in his ears connected to a smartphone in his pocket, and that playing on his phone was what the responding officer described as a self-hypnosis audio. Police have also refused to comment on other rumors that the victim was approximately three months pregnant. There are indications she may have just returned from a doctor’s appointment when the murder took place, but again, none of this has been confirmed.

  “Witnesses did, however, observe a visibly agitated Matthew Chambers shouting hysterically for someone to “stop laughing” as he was led by police from his home. They also report that he was screaming things like, ‘she’s inside’ and ‘someone get her out of my head."

  “One thing is for certain: no matter how he pleads, Matthew Chambers is unlikely to escape punishment this time.

  “Back to you, Ted.”

  Hank Schwaeble is a World Fantasy Award nominee and the two-time Bram Stoker Award® winner of horror fiction that includes his first novel Damnable. Schwaeble is both a writer and an attorney who lives in Houston, Texas.

  Schwaeble’s short fiction has appeared in anthologies that include Alone on the Darkside, Five Strokes to Midnight, Horror Library - Volume IV and ZVR: No Man’s Land.

  In 2011 he released his second novel, Diabolical, and followed that up with his most recent, Angel of the Abyss, in December 2014.

  You know my father’s name.

  I took the suit out of the box in where had rested for three years. I had used it once for an interview that didn’t go well, then never returned it. It was my father’s lucky suit.

  The suit was black wool with narrow pinstripes, the fabric a bit shiny at the seat and elbows. As a kid I called it my father’s gangster suit, and he’d laugh. When he lent it to me as an adult he didn’t laugh. He just put a hand on my shoulder—because he wasn’t good with emotion—and said, “Good luck.”

  I picked a couple shirts from my closet and carefully folded them before adding them to my overnight case. One shirt was a green color that I thought looked good. The other was white, just to be safe.

  The tie was easy. Black.