The tip of the trowel brushed the layer of twigs and grass.
He extended a bit more.
Stretching.
He gave a little poke.
His weight shifted slightly.
Just enough.
The aluminum ladder slid on the uneven ground.
“Shit!”
Billy tried to right it by adjusting his body. Frantically, he grabbed hold of the gutter.
Too late!
The ladder toppled. Falling away.
For a split second, Billy dangled by one arm, the gutter’s sharp edge cutting through his glove, finding flesh, then it too gave way, ripping from the building in a horrendous moan of twisting metal.
“Goddamn!” he swore. Hanging in midair, he caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye again. What the hell?
A wraith, dressed in black, slipped around the corner of the old pump house.
Satan himself, come to claim his own!
With an earsplitting screech, the galvanized steel gave completely away, ripping from the eave.
“Shit!”
He lost his grip, falling fast.
Thud!He hit the ground and heard his ankle snap, the gutter crumpling beside him. An upturned rake impaled his right arm in its jaws. “Yow!” Steel teeth cut through his shirt, slicing into his flesh.He sucked his breath through his teeth as the pain sizzled through his arm and shoulder. And his ankle. It was broken, sure enough. Throbbing, hot and hard.
He blinked. Staring upward. Hoping he’d imagined the specter.
But in that moment of agony, he locked eyes with Lucifer himself, his dark form looming over him. “Oh, sweet Jesus,” he whispered, trying and failing to scoot away.
Beelzebub, the damned Prince of Darkness, had come to claim his soul.
No!He tried to scream as he inched backward over the uneven ground.
No words escaped his dry throat as he saw the weapon—a sharp blade in the wraith’s hands.
Oh, sweet Jesus!
Quick as lightning, the demon struck, driving the instrument of death deep into Billy’s throat.
As blood gurgled from the wound, the specter grabbed hold of Billy’s head, raising it upward just long enough for recognition to dawn in Billy’s eyes.
Not the devil, but—
Slam!
The monster thrust Billy’s head down and onto the star-shaped blades of a garden tiller left to rust in the rain.