It Comes Back

By John Penney

It knows what you did... It will use it against you.

Everyone feels guilty about something. Some people's guilt is small, but others aren't so lucky. Some people are forced to live every day knowing they let a person they loved die. Officer Bianca Vale is not one of the lucky ones.

After his wife is stabbed seven times in the back, Ray Cutter is arrested and detained at the Yucca Valley police station as the obvious suspect. Bianca, fresh off another failed date, takes on the night shift simply biding her time until the San Bernardino police pick up Ray and transport him to prison. However, what begins as a routine detention for Bianca and her colleagues quickly escalates as a sinister force manifests itself as each officer's greatest regret and picks them off one by one.

Bianca is not the only person at the police station racked with guilt and when the officers are forced to come to terms with their own pasts, no one is safe. Especially when the police station loses all contact with the outside world. If Bianca hopes to make it through the night, the only key might be Ray himself.

From the screenwriter of Return of the Living Dead 3 and The Kindred, comes a new entry of terror!

"John Penney's latest masterful suspense novel is a spine-tingling delight from Page One, until its shattering conclusion! I've been a huge fan of Mr. Penney's brilliant work from the beginning, and he just gets better and better. This book gets under your skin and creeps into your soul! Brilliant insights into the psychology of guilt and terror make it an unforgettable page-turner! Do NOT miss this fantastic read!" - Stephen Carpenter (Creator of "Grimm" on NBC)

"In his latest book John Penney serves up horror with a vengeance! During a single hellacious night at a remote desert police station this roller coaster ride of a thriller brings us face to face with a unique supernatural horror that feeds off guilt and loss. It is a riveting and satisfying nightmare." – Brian Yuzna (Director of Society and The Dentist)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Encyclopocalypse Publications
• Release date: May 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215574195

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Alison Cutter’s eyes snapped open. She looked over at the glowing red clock on her nightstand. It was 3:30. She lay for a moment on her side, giving her groggy mind a chance to focus. Why was she awake in the middle of the night?

The dark room was still. Deathly quiet. Alison rolled over the other way, stretching her arm out for her husband.

Ray?

The bed on the other side was empty. Nothing but rumpled covers. Alison took another moment to focus, then slowly sat up. She swept her dark hair from her eyes.

Ray?... Baby? There was no answer. Alison’s expression darkened. Where did he go? She slowly untangled her long, slender legs from the sheets and dropped her feet to the berber carpet. She sat for a moment on the edge of the bed, scanning her shadowy, contemporary California bedroom. Everything was in place.

Alison coughed to shake off a dry tickle in her throat, and looked across the dark room at her reflection in the dresser mirror. Effortlessly beautiful with a narrow nose and gracefully long chin, her face held perfectly balanced dark eyebrows that framed her deep green eyes. But there was also a sadness that seemed to permanently linger on her thirty-four year old face. It was sadness that had settled deep within her seven years ago and had never left.

Why am I awake?

Alison slowly rose , tugged on her over-sized t-shirt and padded slowly to the bedroom door. She paused again, taking in the moment. Something wasn’t right. She reached out and pushed open the bedroom door.

The hallway was dark. Empty. Pale light streamed in from the far end near the kitchen. Alison took a silent step out the door, and then she heard voices.

Or something that sounded like voices. They were hushed, low, and murmured. One purred deeply like a grown man, but the other was higher, soft and shallow. First there was one, then the other. A conversation of some kind… But how could that be? It didn’t make any sense.

Alison stepped slowly down the dark hall. The family pictures that lined the walls emerged from the dark shadows as she passed them. They were pictures of her life in happier times. Her husband… Their son… Sunny backyard pictures. Stiff, buttoned down professional portraits. Wedding pictures. They lingered now as taunting, cruel reminders of the life that had vanished seven years ago. But they remained defiantly. To take them down would admit the ultimate defeat.

Alison wasn’t looking at them this time as she passed. She was looking straight at the faded blue bedroom door halfway down the hall. The door with a faded collage of stickers. Star Wars stickers. Harry Potter stickers. The door to a child’s bedroom.

Danny’s room.

The muffled, murmured voices swelled slightly louder as she grew closer to the door. Alison finally paused just outside. Her breath involuntarily halted so that she could listen intently… Yes. There. The voices again. They were definitely coming from inside. She leaned forward, straining to hear. The low murmured voice hummed once again. It sounded like Ray. Alison waited for the higher voice to respond again. A few seconds passed…. Then a few more. There was no high voice. Alison slowly exhaled.

She stared for a moment at Danny’s door. In the weeks and months after it had happened, she had gone into that room and cried herself to sleep on the narrow little bed. When she woke up again, she cried all over until she fell asleep. The pattern repeated itself throughout those first long and agonizing nights. Ray had always been the strong one. She called it strong but really he was just as shell-shocked as she was. He had just managed to wall himself off from it all. Wall himself off from her. Alison thought that the bottom of the pit was when they lost Danny… But it wasn’t. The real bottom came when Ray moved out and they separated for those six months.

The low murmured voice rose again from inside the room. It was definitely Ray. Was he inside mourning the way she had done?… Alison suddenly felt for him. She leaned up close to the door and raised her voice, Ray?

The murmured voice instantly stopped.

And then there was silence again. The same deathly stillness that she had felt when she had awoken. A chill tremored through Alison. Surly he just heard her. Why wasn’t he answering? She forced her hand to rise from her side and slowly reach for the doorknob. Her fingers stretched out toward the glossy brass orb. She felt the cool metal on her fingertips as she touched it. She hesitated again. Waited. Still nothing. Just silence. Her fingers slowly tightened on the knob, pressing into the slippery cold metal. She gave a twist.

Click. The knob hit the mechanism inside. She slowly twisted it the other direction. Click. Same thing. The door was locked. Alison stared at the door not sure what to do. The moment stretched in time. And still there was nothing. Just the deathly stillness and the silence. Alison slowly withdrew her hand.

And that’s when there was something else.

The sound of buzzing flies. It was a discord that didn’t make any sense.

Flies? Why would there be?...

An intense rotting odor singed her nostrils. It was vile and deathly. Alison involuntarily choked and covered her nose and mouth. She jerked back from the door and her bare foot splashed into something beneath her. She looked down. In the dim, pale light that streamed from the kitchen down the hall, she saw the rotting, lumpy blood that puddled out from under the crack in the closed door.

Alison’s racing mind tried to make sense of jarring sensory overload. What was all this? The odor burned down her throat and her eyes watered. She staggered back from the door as she felt a wave of nausea rise up from an involuntary spasm in her stomach. She gagged and stumbled further back, her bare feet slipping on the rotting slime. She slammed hard against the far wall, then twisted and pushed herself away. The rising bile from her stomach caught in her throat and she choked it back, gasping in more of the repulsive air. This time she couldn’t stop it. She vomited. The bitter liquid splashed on the floor, just missing her bare feet. She forced herself further down the hallway, desperately trying to find clean air.

She reached the edge of the kitchen and inhaled again. This time it was better. She staggered to the island in the middle of the shadowy room and wiped the tears from her eyes. She spotted her cell phone next to the tea kettle and reached for it. As she was lifting it to her face, she saw an impossible sight.

A mid-thirties nude man stood in the open refrigerator door, drinking from a carton of milk. His skin was pale and drawn tight against his sinewy frame.

Tom.

Alison froze. Her mind scrambled desperately to process the strange sight. Part of what she was seeing made sense; she had seen Tom standing like this before in their kitchen, but the fact he was standing there tonight made no sense at all. He had been out of her life for over a year. It had been a desperate but ultimately doomed relationship she had thrown herself into when she and Ray had been separated for those six long months. Tom was a strikingly handsome but deeply troubled man who had captured her attention and triggered an intense physical affair that had started as abruptly as it had ended.

The overwhelming guilt she felt over the affair and what he had done to himself when she ended it overpowered any remote sense of nostalgia. She had pushed Tom far out of her mind. So why was she dreaming all this?

Shhh… don’t wanna wake your husband, Tom said as he smiled at her in the pale light from the open refrigerator. Ready for another round? His voice was warm and intimate. This wasn’t a dream. It was real. Tom was standing right in front of her.

How did… What are you doing here? Alison could hear the words coming out of her mouth even though the question seemed so impossible.

Don’t fight this, Alison. We both know what you really want.

Alison slowly shook her head, the guilt swallowing her alive No… no, I—

CRACK!

A wet percussive sound suddenly came from Alison’s chest. She looked down, puzzled.

A steel blade from a kitchen knife protruded through her from behind. Blood dripped off the glossy tip. Alison stared as if she was looking at this from somewhere far away. And then—

Crack! Crack! Crack! Three more blades shot through her torso from behind. A surge of blood pushed out from the wounds and spread across her t-shirt. An intense burning feeling shot through her body like electricity.

And then she collapsed to the floor.

CHAPTER TWO

The moon-less night sky over Joshua Tree National Park had a shimmering energy all its own. The strange and twisted silhouettes of the spongy Joshua trees below distorted by the parasitic beetles that thrive within them and the outcroppings of shadowy, wind-worn monzonite rock formations gave the landscape an otherworldly feel. The near-silence was occasionally punctuated by the tortured howls of coyotes giving testament to the difficulty of survival in this hostile world.

And then there was the sound of a car engine.

It was revved high and straining in the thin, dry air. Headlights stabbed over the horizon. The twin lights from the old Dodge bobbed and swung wildly with each depression and curve in the rutted dirt road that they gradually revealed in the inky terrain. Seconds later, the oscillating sounds of a siren joined in, followed by the appearance of flickering blue and red lights through the cloud of dust in the Dodge’s wake.

It was a desperate high-speed pursuit that seemed to have taken an unlikely turn into this desolate landscape.

Inside the Yucca Valley police squad car, Officer Arnie Bright squinted through the dust and wrestled with the steering wheel that shimmied and jerked in his grip. Arnie was late forties, stocky with white hair, who spoke with a faded Boston accent; the picture perfect favorite uncle type. Next to him was Jim Briggs, an early thirties ruggedly handsome officer who gripped the radio mic with white knuckles as he spoke. That’s affirmative. Off road in Joshua Tree. Just inside the West entrance off Yucca Mesa Drive.

Ten four. Proceed with extreme caution. Suspect is armed and dangerous. Repeat – Armed and dangerous, the voice on the radio crackled back.

Jim and Arnie had gotten the APB call about twenty minutes ago on their way back from the BBQ place on 29. Normally Yucca Valley’s finest patrol by themselves but, Jim and Arnie just happened to be together because they were on dinner break. As recently as a few years ago, they tried to increase the