Dark Screams: Volume Two by Robert R. McCammon, Graham Masterton, Richard Christian Matheson

over it, and went for the bedroom door. She tried to turn the key, but it jammed, like it often did, because it was old and worn and always needed coaxing. What had she been thinking about when she locked it? She should have realized that she might need to escape.
    She glanced frantically over her shoulder, and as she did so the black-faced man stepped out of the wardrobe and turned toward her. He not only
looked
burned, he was actually wreathed in acrid-smelling smoke, which lazily curled its way across her bedroom. His white eyes were staring at her and his black teeth were bared in a snarl. He started to make his way around the end of the bed, with both hands raised in front of him like blackened claws.
    Dawn jiggled the key in the lock and at last managed to turn it. As soon as she pulled open the door, though, the black-faced man came up behind her and slammed it shut again.
    “Bitch!”
he said. His voice was so harsh he sounded as if he had grit between his teeth. He stank so strongly of charred wool that Dawn could hardly breathe. “Why’d you tell ’em it was me, you bitch? You see what they done to me? You see what they done?”
    Dawn was unable to speak. She sank down onto her knees, her hands crossed over her breasts like a religious supplicant, and all she could do was whimper.
    The black-faced man stood over her. She was too frightened to lift her head and look up at him, and all she could see was his black, ragged trousers and his burned lace-up boots, with smoke leaking out of them.
    He seized her upper arms. His fingers were blistered and rough, and he gripped her so tightly that she felt that he was trying to twist her arms out of their sockets. With a deep grunting noise he hoisted her up off the floor and flung her backward across the bed. Immediately he climbed on top of her, straddling her hips. He glared down at her, with his black flaking nose only an inch away from hers.
    “Please,” she said. “I don’t even know who you are.”
    “Oh, you really
are
a bitch, aren’t you?” He growled at her, and she feel his spit prickling on her face. “You don’t even know who I am? You knew who was I right enough when they came asking questions about your baby. You knew who was I then, all right.”
    Dawn dug her heels into the mattress and tried to kick herself out from under him, but he clenched his thighs together even tighter, and then he slapped her across the face, twice. Her eyes burst out with tears and her cheeks felt as if he had set them on fire.
    “Bitch!”
he said, each time he slapped her.
“Bitch!”
    With his left hand he kept her shoulder pinned against the bed, while he reached down with his right hand and started to tug at his belt buckle.
    “Might as well do it, if I’m to be blamed for it!” he spat at her. “Might as well relish what I was punished for! What do you say, bitch? What do you say to that?”
    He wrestled his trousers halfway down to his knees. The hair on his thighs was thick and crisp and scratchy. She felt his hardened penis press against her leg, and that felt rough and dry, too, as if he were jabbing at her with a wooden rolling pin. He grabbed the hem of her cotton nightshirt and tore it upward and sideways, so that the buttons were pulled off.
    Dawn struggled furiously, but the black-faced man was far too strong for her. She screamed, again and again, or at least she thought she did. All she could see was his white eyes, staring down at her, and all she could smell was his burned body hair and his charred woolen clothes, and all she could feel was his weight bearing down on her, crushing all the breath out of her, crushing her rib cage.
    He forced her thighs apart, and pushed one knee in between them. As he did so, however, somebody rapped against the window, very sharply. The black-faced man hesitated, and looked around, although he still kept Dawn pressed down on the bed.
    The rapping was repeated, and then Dawn heard a muffled voice outside the window