A Welcome Grave by Michael Koryta Page B

pockets, braced against the October wind, and stared at nothing for a while. It was cold, but I didn’t want to go back upstairs. I closed the door and locked it, then walked around the corner of the building and started west down Lorain.
    I’d known Amy for a year and a half, spending more and more time with her with each passing month, and I’d never instigated anything beyond friendship. Then, the night she explains that she’s accepted that as a permanent—and appropriate—situation, I’m ready to make a move. Perfect. I’m a master of timing.
    I hung a left on Rocky River, went down to Chatfield, and then walked east, taking as close to a circular route as you can get in a city where everything’s laid out in rectangles. A car swung in beside me and parked at the curb in front of a house with a giant inflatable witch on a broomstick, her face glowing a bright electric green under the pointed black hat. Halloween was one week away. I was headed for Joe’s house, but unintentionally. He’d probably still be up, watching whatever old game was being aired on ESPN Classic tonight, but I didn’t know if I really wanted to drop in on him and hit him with this news. Maybe because I didn’t want to bother him so late, and maybe because as the weeks stacked up he was starting to feel less like my partner and more like a guy I used to work with.
    Several other houses along Chatfield were decked out in the holiday spirit, grinning jack-’o-lanterns in the windows and gleaming skeletons hanging from the trees. All holidays are bizarre when you think about where they started and what they became, but Halloween may be the strangest.
    My breath fogged out in front of me as I walked, moving quickly, my hands still in my pockets, keeping my arms pressed against my sides for warmth. My wet hair soaked in the chill, made me shiver a bit. Just begging to catch a cold.Maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing, though. I’d have to stay home, stay in bed, stay out of the world and all of the twists it could throw at you.
    The attacker ran through the grass instead of on the sidewalk, so I didn’t hear his footsteps behind me until the last second. A car door had opened and closed, but I’d assumed it was the people who’d pulled up in front of the house with the witch decoration, and I hadn’t bothered to glance back. I was half turned to see what was coming when he hit me, a tackle that lifted my feet off the sidewalk and slammed my shoulder against a tree before I fell heavily to the ground.
    I landed on my back, which put me in the best position to defend myself against the next attack from a man I saw only as a dark shape, his face obscured by the shadows and a baseball cap pulled low on his head. I pushed myself off the ground as he swung at me, ducked, and lunged toward him as the blow missed by inches. From the sound his hand made as it passed by my ear, I knew he was holding a weapon, something with some weight to it. He stepped back deftly and quickly at my move forward and, instead of collecting himself for another swing, he simply reversed his body and momentum and threw his right hand at my head again, this time in a smooth, fluid backhand, like a tennis player. He did it so fast and so hard that I thought I tasted the blood in my mouth before I was knocked into a black oblivion.

11

    T he first thought I had when I regained consciousness sent a bolt of pure horror through me—I was blind. I’d come around slowly, groggy, but then I was awake and alert, blinking and trying to focus and finding that impossible. There was nothing but blackness, and for a few awful seconds I knew a fear as great as any I’d ever felt, thinking that my vision was gone, maybe permanently. Then I felt the cloth on my face, and I realized there was some sort of bag over my head, fastened tight around my neck.
    Someone prodded me in the ribs. “You back?”
    I was starting to get my bearings now—on the ground, cool, wet grass