Page 52 of Call Off the Dark

“I don’t know,” she whispered back. It was the middle of the night, so all the neighbors should be asleep, unless they’d heard her scream. But if the noise had been the man still inside their apartment, robbing them, and she went for a phone, he’d stab her too.

Tyler rested his head back against the carpet, and his hands fell limp to his sides. “Helen, stay with me,” he pleaded, in a voice that sounded weaker with each word. “Don’t go out there. It’s not safe.”

Tyler might be right, so she rushed to their bedroom window and opened it. They were on the fifth floor, overlooking an alley that faced the brick side of another building. No windows across the way and no fire escape near their own window. A silent alley that she’d always appreciated because it kept things relatively quiet for city living. Now it couldn’t feel more desolate and hopeless.

She looked both ways down the alley. Empty. No one to help them.

She swore under her breath as she hurried back to Tyler. His eyes were still open, squinting in distress as he stared up at the ceiling, and she was shocked to see that blood was beginning to spread beneath his body on the carpet.

“Tyler, I need you to focus,” Helen whispered urgently as she pressed her hands to his wound.

His eyes fluttered shut, and he let out a sound halfway between a groan and a sigh.

She touched her lips to his forehead. It felt cold. “Baby?”

Tyler’s eyes opened, but he sounded groggy with his next words. “It’s a lot of blood, isn’t it?”

She needed there to be two of her. One Helen to press down on the wound, to hold her husband, to keep him there with her, alive and fighting. And another Helen to go out and try to get a phone.

“Press here, as hard as you can, and I’ll be back soon, I promise.”

“Okay,” Tyler mumbled.

Helen guided his hands to the wound and pressed them down, but as soon as she lifted her own hands, Tyler’s went limp. A wave of despair threatened to engulf her, but she pushed the feeling away. From the bottom of their bookshelf, she snatched four of the thickest books from her encyclopedia collection. She knew it automatically: volumes A, M, P, and S.

“I love you, darling. I’m going to rest these on you.”

She laid them on his stomach, but when the pile teetered, she removed the S volume. A three-stack of encyclopedias to stop the bleeding was nowhere near good enough, but it was the best she could think of in the moment.

Tyler sighed. “I’m so tired.”

The way he said it terrified her, as if he was being lulled into a distant nightfall. How dare some monster come into her home and destroy what she held precious.

She needed a weapon. Her eyes settled on the wrought-iron lamp on the dresser. It was heavy and sharp, and she was going to bash the masked man’s head in with it. But even as the brave thought fired in her mind, she could feel her rib cage shaking violently. It was a warning from her body, but she could not afford to stop and think. Ignore it! She had to act now. Right now! She yanked the plug from the wall, tossed the lamp shade aside, and hastily wrapped the cord around its base, all the while talking softly to Tyler: “I’ll be right back. You’re okay. You just hold on and the ambulance will be here to fix you up.”

“Helen . . .” Tyler’s voice wavered. “I need to tell you . . .”

Helen gripped the neck of the lamp in both hands, like a baseball bat. “As soon as I’m back, honey.”

The day needed saving, and it needed saving right now, while she was filled with guts and rage. She looked at Tyler for only one moment—savoring his face briefly—before she stepped into the hallway.

Almost right away, her courage faltered. In the bedroom, cracking the intruder across his skull with a lamp had been a plan. Now it might be about to happen. She had never been in a physical fight before, but she’d also never had so much adrenaline coursing through her blood. She wasn’t aware of her heartbeat or her breath. All she could feel was that strange shuddering in her center, like her rib cage was made of violin strings stuck in an endless, terrible vibration.

She forced herself to creep forward, pausing once to listen. Was that a creak she heard? He might be there still, clutching the same knife he’d used to stab Tyler.

Helen made it to the end of the hallway, to the edge of the tile foyer that separated the living room from the kitchen. The front door to the apartment was shut. Did that mean the masked man was still here, or that he was gone? She was desperate for clues and signs.

And then she saw the phones! Through the opening into the kitchen, she saw them charging on the counter. She raised the lamp in the air and started across the foyer, terror mixing with her resolve. If he was hiding in the kitchen, she’d fight him to the death. Anything to get her phone.

She released a silent scream inside her brain as she burst into the kitchen, ready to fight, but she found it completely empty. Untouched, even. The noise she thought she’d heard probably hadn’t even been him. Jesus, he was gone, and she’d wasted critical minutes afraid to leave the bedroom.

Helen yanked her phone from the charging cable and dialed 911. As it was ringing, she ran back down the hallway.

“Nine-one-one, where is your emergency?”

Helen gave the address quickly, then said, “My husband’s been stabbed. He’s bleeding from his stomach . . .”

She trailed off, because she was back in the bedroom now and she saw Tyler lying there, completely still.