Now Playing: The Darkness
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Episode Ten concluded
with:
A meager light flickered back into
the room. Bertram Lowrie had lit a kerosene lantern. Driblets of blood were
spattered down Lowrie’s left cheek.
“Are you okay, sir?” Dehner spoke as
he got to his feet.
“Yes. Adrian Monahan doused this
lantern, then slammed me in the face with Cummings’ gun.
“Do you know where he is?”
Lowrie nodded toward the outside.
“He’s out there somewhere. We have a madman running loose in the dark with a
loaded gun.”
Episode Eleven
Bertram Lowrie rummaged quickly
among the supplies piled about the room and found a candle. After lighting it
and setting it in a mug on the table, he picked up the lantern and moved toward
the door. “I’ll begin searching. You tie up Wyatt Cummings, then join me.”
“Careful,
you’ll be a target carrying that lantern.”
Lowrie gave
his employee a harsh glare as if to say, “I know that!” Cautiously, he stepped
outside, then paused on the porch and listened as a frantic voice sounded from
the barn.
“I know
you’re in here! I’ll kill you again! I will not be betrayed! This time I’ll cut
out your heart!”
Lowrie
removed the pistol from his shoulder holster and moved toward the barn, gun in
one hand and lantern in the other. His approach was to a side of the open
doorway.
He placed
the lantern down and pressed his body against the side of the barn. Lowrie
listened closely. Adrian Monahan seemed to be pacing about inside. After a few
minutes the footsteps stopped and then started up again, but the sound was
different.
Rance
Dehner joined his boss. “I found some rope in the house, old but strong. Wyatt
Cummings won’t be going anywhere. How’s our ghost?”
“Monahan is
up in the loft of the barn.”
A loud
shout sounded inside the barn. “You’ll never get me! I’ll kill you first!”
“He seems
to be challenging us,” Rance said.
“Perhaps,”
Lowrie replied. “I am not at all sure he is addressing us. In any event we have
him trapped. This is the only door on the barn. The windows are too small to
allow escape.”
“We need to
give him a chance to surrender.”
“Be my
guest.”
Dehner
shouted, “Adrian Monahan, put down your gun and come out with your hands up!”
“I won’t
allow you to kill me!” Scrambling footsteps could be heard from the barn.
Monahan was running about in an empty hay loft. “You can’t kill me here! Nobody
can!”
A sharp
sound of cracking timber echoed in the old barn, followed by a scream. “Our prey
has fallen through the loft!” Lowrie carefully peeked around the open door, to
be greeted by a shot.
“Go away!”
Monahan fired another shot, this one at an empty doorway. “Go away!”
“Surrender,
Mr. Monahan,” Bertram Lowrie shouted. “Your situation is quite hopeless.”
A frantic
cry which sounded like that of a hungry infant came from the barn, followed by
a shot. Both detectives held their breaths for a few moments. Dehner broke the
silence, “Oh no.”
Lowrie
picked up the lantern. “This could be a trick, but I don’t think so.
Nevertheless, be prepared to use your weapon.”
Both men
entered the barn, guns ready. They advanced until they were under the hay loft
and standing over the body of Adrian Monahan.
“Oh…good…Lord,”
Dehner spoke those words reverently. “He shot himself in the head.”
“Yes, with
a Colt .44.”
Tomorrow: Episode
Twelve of The Darkness
