Chapters (41)
- Dexter in the Darkby Jeff Lindsay
- IN THE BEGINNING
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
Still, forms must be observed, and I had spent half a day on the scene making sure that no one had jumped out of a doorway and hacked the victims with a hedge clipper while they were being shot from a passing car. I was trying to think of an interesting way to say that the blood spatter was consistent with gunfire from a moving source, but the boredom of it all was making my eyes cross, and as I stared vacantly at the screen, I felt a ringing rise in my ears and change to the clang of gongs and the night music came again, and the plain white of the word-processing page seemed suddenly to wash over with awful wet blood and spill out across me, flood the office, and fill the entire visible world. I jumped out of my chair and blinked a few times until it went away, but it left me shaking and wondering what had just happened.
It was starting to come at me in the full light of day, even sitting at my desk at police headquarters, and I did not like that at all. Either it was getting stronger and closer, or I was going right off the deep end and into complete madness. Schizophrenics heard voices-did they ever hear music, too? And did the Dark Passenger qualify as a voice? Had I been completely insane all this time and was just now coming to some kind of crazy final episode in the artificial sanity of Dubious Dexter?
I didn't think that was possible. Harry had gotten me squared away, made sure that I fit in just right-Harry would have known if I was crazy, and he had told me I was not. Harry was never wrong. So it was settled and I was fine, just fine, thank you.
So why did I hear that music? Why was my hand shaking? And why did I need to cling to a ghost to keep from sitting on the floor and flipping my lips with an index finger?
Clearly no one else in the building heard anything-it was just me. Otherwise the halls would be filled with people either dancing or screaming. No, fear had crawled into my life, slinking after me faster than I could run, filling the huge empty space inside me where the Passenger had once snuggled down.