The Lingering Dead by J. N. Duncan Page A

Other than a small cut over her left eye, Charlotte appeared to be unharmed physically, unless Drake had forced himself upon her as well, but Nick was not about to pursue that avenue at this moment.
    â€œAll right, Charlotte,” Nick said. “Let’s get you over to that sofa, and cleaned up a bit. Would you like some water?”
    When he released her hand, Charlotte latched onto his with both of hers. “Everyone is dead. Nobody stopped him.”
    Nick pulled her up and guided her over to the sofa. “I know. He’s an evil man, Charlotte.” After she sagged back against the cushion, Nick sat down in the chair next to her. “Where are your parents? Are they here in the house?”
    She nodded, sniffled, and pointed at the staircase. “They’re dead.”
    Nick already knew. This was not the first time Drake had left a lone survivor for him to find. “Is there anyone else? Brothers? Sisters? Hired help?”
    Charlotte blinked at him in silence, eyes pooling with tears, and then she looked down to her lap, where one hand picked absently at the fingernails of the other. The tears began to drop one by one onto her dress. “Becca.”
    â€œIs that your sister?”
    The hand continued to pick while the tears soaked into the wool. “Not no more.” She looked back up at him, despair and incomprehension molding her face. “Nobody tried.” Charlotte’s voice crumbled. “I didn’t ... know ...”—she shrugged, lip quivering, and wiped at her running nose—“what to do.”
    Nick picked up a blanket from off the shelf beneath the couch’s end table and unfolded it, draping it over Charlotte’s legs. “Stay right here, Charlotte. Can you do that? I want to have a look around and see if anyone is still alive.”
    Charlotte nodded and reached out toward his face until her fingers brushed across his cheek and then fell back to her lap. “Becca’s dead.”
    He patted her knee and stood up. “I’m sorry, Charlotte. Truly, I am.”
    The mother was in the pantry, her head barely attached to her body thanks to a severe slice to the throat. Blood had sprayed across the wall and floor. Why he simply shot some victims and at other times rended the flesh from their bodies, Nick still did not fathom. He suspected that those who were reminders of something from his past inspired this insane kind of blood lust. Nick had stopped trying to decipher the meaning long ago. The man was smart enough to know what he was doing and never followed any kind of discernible pattern.
    The father had been bled out in the tub, with long, thin slices through the veins of his arms and legs. The hilt of a knife still protruded from his chest. And it was in one of the bedrooms that Nick found the remains of what once was Becca. He sagged against the doorway when he saw her, sprawled on the blood-soaked sheets of her bed, her insides spilled out. It was an all-too-familiar image from his past, and Nick was about to turn away, when it occurred to him that he was looking at Charlotte. Becca had not just been her sister. They were twins.
    Nick rubbed a hand over his face and shook his head. “God damn you, Cornelius.” He turned quickly away. There was no point in lingering there any longer. Back downstairs he stooped before Charlotte. “I need to check the mill and then I will return to help you and find someone in town who can take care of you.”
    Charlotte nodded, but said nothing.
    The body outside of the mill appeared to be a sheriff’s deputy. He had a single, dark hole in the middle of his forehead. His gun remained holstered. Nick reached down and closed the man’s eyelids, to shield his dead eyes from the rain. At the door to the mill, he kicked the mud off of his boots and stepped inside. The room was stocked with barrels of grain. Sacks of flour lined a shelf along one wall, and on the opposite, a water