The Devil in Gray by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online

pair of boxer shorts when he heard it again. Click — click — click .
    He stepped into his shorts and then stood perfectly still and listened. Almost half a minute passed. Then click — click — click . And then a rattle.
    It sounded as if there were somebody in the kitchen, rather than the living area. Decker opened his closet door and took out his baseball bat. He just hoped that if it was an intruder, he hadn’t noticed that a fully loaded Colt Anaconda was hanging from the hat stand right outside the kitchen doorway.
    Click — click . Decker eased the bedroom door open a little wider and then stepped out into the living area, keeping his back close to the wall. His holster was still where he had hung it up, thank God. But the odd thing was that the front door was still locked, and the security chain was still fastened.
    He made his way across the wooden floor, trying not to make sticky noises with his warm feet. He reached the opposite wall and flattened himself against it, breathing deeply to steady himself.
    The clicking continued, intermittently. Then he heard something else, and his back prickled as if cockroaches were rushing down it. Singing. High-pitched, breathy singing . Quite tuneless, and the words were barely distinguishable. But it was singing and it was Cathy. She had always sung like that.
    Decker felt as if the entire world were tilting underneath his feet. Cathy was dead. He had seen Cathy dead. He had convinced himself that ghosts didn’t exist and spirits couldn’t be summoned back and yet here she was, singing in his kitchen in the middle of the night. It gave him a feeling of dread far greater than any intruder could have inspired. He lifted the baseball bat and his hands were shaking so much that he had to lower it again. Besides, what was he going to do, if it really was her? Hit her?
    Decker took a sharp breath and stepped into the kitchen doorway. The singing abruptly stopped and there was nobody there. He stood there for a while, not knowing what to do. He cleared his throat and said, “Cathy? Are you here, Cathy?” but of course there was no reply. He took another step forward, and sniffed, in the hope that he might be able to smell her, that distinctive flowery perfume she always wore, but there was no trace of it.
    He peered around the corner of the kitchen toward the brightly lit countertop next to the sink. On top of his seasoned-oak chopping board there was a pattern of pale, glistening lumps. At first Decker couldn’t understand what he was looking at, but with a growing sense of eeriness he realized that it was a face , with staring eyes and jagged teeth—not a real face, but a face that had been fashioned out of slices of raw chicken, with a pointed breastbone for a nose, two slices of banana for eyes, and teeth made from diced-up apple.
    It was unsettlingly lifelike, and the way it was looking at him made him feel as if it were just about to speak. But who had created it, and why, and how? A small sharp knife lay beside the chopping board, but whoever had used it had completely vanished.
    Decker paced slowly up and down the kitchen, waving his baseball bat from side to side, as if it might come into contact with somebody invisible. Again, he whispered, “Cathy? Are you here, sweetheart? Talk to me, Cathy.” But there was still no reply, only the mournful hooting of a ship on the river.
    He went back into the living area and checked behind the drapes. The windows were closed and locked, so nobody could have escaped by climbing out that way. Besides, it was a sixty-foot drop to the street. He went back to the bedroom and opened all of the closet doors. Nobody. He frowned down at the photo of Cathy beside the bed. “Was that you? Or am I going out of my mind?”
    He returned to the kitchen. He stared at the chicken-meat face for a while but he had no idea what significance it had, if it had any significance at all. He thought