Dark of the Eye

by Douglas Clegg

Overview

Will they stop her - or will she stop them?A mother and daughter on the run fall prey to a monstrous hunt in this heart-pounding supernatural horror novel. A tragic accident leaves young Hope Stewart with an extraordinary power that is both blessing and curse. Her touch can heal those suffering from horrifying afflictions...or subject them to an unspeakable fate.

Hope's scientist father is determined to exploit her frightening gift, a relentless government agent is out to kill her - and a damaged soul called Monkey vows to deliver her to the mercies of the fiendish forces he serves...

For fans of Dean Koontz, Stephen King, and Guillermo del Toro.

"An omnibus of unexpected horrors!" - Publishers Weekly

"Douglas Clegg knows exactly what scares us, and he knows just how to twist those fears into hair-raising chills..." - Tess Gerritsen, New York Times Bestselling Author

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781944668075
Publisher:	Alkemara Press
Publication date:	07/27/2017
Pages:	436
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.97(d)

About the Author

Douglas Clegg is the bestselling and award-winning author of more than 30 books, including Neverland, The Hour Before Dark, and Bad Karma.

Date of Birth:

April 1, 1958

Place of Birth:

Alexandria, Virginia

Read an Excerpt

PROLOGUE

The First Death

1

November 2

2:15 P.M.

HE HAD NEVER KILLED A CHILD BEFORE.

Picture her dead. Already dead. Her face crushed. Life gone. No life. No live grenade. Put out of her misery. Picture death. Peace.

The man named Stephen Grace could smell death here in the room. It was a small bedroom, and something about the wallpaper reminded him of a prison. Only stripes, and candy stripes at that. He had been in a cage once, and he had been in prison many years before. But something about this room - perhaps the knowledge of what he must do - colored his perception, made everything in it seem ominous. The baby doll on the shelf; the brass lamp shaped like a horse; the child-sized French Provincial dressing table. Stuffed full of toys and games - the mother was a pack rat, that's what he'd been told. A pack rat and a manic-depressive, a pill-popper and a slob. So she had stuffed her daughter's room with childhood things. Wall-to-wall family photographs - Madonna and child, baby's first steps, first Christmas, baptism, first day of school, third grade picture. Only a few of the pictures had Daddy in them.

Only one photo of Daddy with child that was even in focus. Daddy had his horn-rims on and his dark hair slicked back and to the side, quite rakish and yuppie-looking, with that upper-class East Coast smirk like photographs were a joke. The girl - pretty, dark hair, squinty eyes from a smile too big for her face. But even with the smile, the girl looked uncomfortable, like she was forcing the look of happiness. Jesus, what some kids have got to live through.

But no more misery for this one.

The dry desert smell of death coming through the cracks beneath the window ledge. Coming with him, in his clothes, on his skin. Carried to her.

It was his mind, he knew. It got ahead of him. He rarely visualized success so thoroughly. He could picture her dead. He could picture this place covered with dustcloths. Picture the photographs coming down, the blinds being drawn, the relatives and friends milling around downstairs during the wake, while her mother came up the stairs slowly, remembering when her girl was alive. Coming into this room, listening to the echo of her own footsteps. To the foot of the bed, now a bare mattress, sheets neatly folded at its base. He could picture her mother weeping, holding the doll as if it were her daughter.

He looked over at the girl's face and flinched.

Gauze was taped across the bridge of her nose.

How the hell could he do it? Killing was one thing. But torture. Experiments. Christ.

The mutilation bothered him.

He found the circumstances repulsive. But he had trained himself long ago to suspend judgment in favor of outcome. Outcome was the thing.

Outcome was all.

He did not look at her face again until he had steeled himself.

She was not dead. Not the girl. Not yet. But she would be.

He would see to that.

He would visualize her as dead. He would look upon her as a dead girl, and then he could do his job.

"Hope," he said, too loud. But it didn't matter. No one else would come.

He saw the flat merciless sunlight through the window, and wondered what godforsaken act had brought him to this place of death. He had smelled it before, in jungles, in men, sometimes in women, but never in girls. None this young. None this innocent-looking. But, he told himself, she smelled now of death.

She looked up and he hoped she couldn't see him. She wasn't supposed to see him. She was supposed to be out. Completely out. She could hear him, but it would be some kind of fantasy, some half-dream she was having. Hell, she'd probably O.D. on whatever she'd been injected with. She didn't know him, so she wouldn't be able to identify him. It was hard for him to trust this scenario; it seemed so out of control. He had never enjoyed the kinds of assignments he got. They made him feel like a Mafia hit man, and he was anything but. There'd been only four since he'd come back from Southeast Asia. Only four, and this would be the fifth. He wanted out soon. They promised it. Of those he had done before, all were deserved. All were threats in greater ways than anyone could ever realize. He could smell death around them. They were contagious with it. They were spreading. They were Hitlers in the making, they were monsters who would send darkness across the land, they would infect others with their madness. The harbingers of Armageddon, of human putrefaction.

Like this girl.

Long dark hair, sunburned skin, lips half curled in a sphinx smile. Her face almost triangular, her chin willful in its jutting. Like a challenge. At another time he would see a girl like this and wonder why he never settled down to have children of his own, why that part of life had escaped him. But this girl was different. She was beyond human difference.

Not a girl, he told himself, but a live grenade. Whoever pulled the pin on this one should be given a dose of what she carried.

Live grenade.

"Hello," she murmured, drugged up and giggling softly.

A beautiful child like this, pumped up with the kind of shit he'd seen only street addicts do. Where was her mother? Jesus, it made him sick, and he thought he would get the hell out of there while he still had a shadow of conscience.

But it was his conscience that did him in. The old Jimmy Cricket. Animal and man separated by that one thing that man so often put aside to do the unnatural thing. Conscience.

She must die.

All because she was a live grenade.

He smiled at her. He prayed it would be quick. He prayed that she would feel little or no pain. He hated himself for this and knew he was destined for hell, if there was one. If not, at least hell on earth until he too smelled like death.

"Hello," he replied, thinking she looked like a damned angel and the world was filth if an innocent life could come to this, this death smell.

"Are we going somewhere? With the butterflies?" Her voice was sleepy, and he knew that she was still in some dream. He hoped it was a good one.

"Sure," he said. "You want to go for a ride?"