‘I’m sorry,’ Abe said.
‘I know. I’m sorry, too. That bastard.’
‘Jack?’
‘No, of course not. It’s not his fault. It’s that goddamn Gorman Hardy.’
‘I can’t let Jack go in alone.’
‘I know you can’t. I wouldn’t ask you to. But don’t you think there’s any way you can talk him out of it?’
‘A thousand dollars is a good piece of money. Besides, I’ve known Jack for a lot of years. He’s a guy who likes to take chances. He gets a kick out of it. Don’t let on to Hardy, but he could’ve got Jack to go in there for a six-pack of Dos Equis.’
‘What if I give him a thousand dollars not to? I’ll let Hardy have his goddamn interview, and turn the money over to Jack.’
‘You’d do that,’ Abe asked, ‘to stop him from going in?’
‘To stop you.’
He looked down at his plate as if no longer able to bear her tormented eyes. ‘I’ll see if I can talk him out of it. I know he won’t take your money, though, so forget about giving that interview.’
‘Do you think he’ll listen?’
‘I could stop him, if I had to. But he’s my friend. I know how eager he must be to get in there. Right now, he’s probably hoping there is a beast just to make things more interesting.’
Tyler peered across the dimly lighted dining room at the corner table where Jack and Nora sat. Jack looked like an overgrown kid, grinning as he shoveled steak into his mouth.
‘You think he really wants to do it that badly?’
‘I know he does.’
‘What about you?’
Abe raised his eyebrows. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Are you hoping there is a beast just to make things more interesting?’
He stared at her with solemn eyes. ‘A lot of killing’s gone on in that house. Whoever’s behind it – or whatever – murdered Dan Jenson. I take that personally.’
‘You didn’t even know Dan.’
‘You loved him once. If his killer’s in that house and happens to come after me and Jack – well, it’ll even things up a little. I don’t expect that to happen, but if it does I’d be pretty damn happy about it.’
22
Janice’s wait in the black room seemed endless. She regretted breaking the light bulb. She was glad to have a weapon, but the total darkness was bad. Some comfort came from the feel of the carpet under her rump and feet, the wall against her back. She even welcomed the pain of her wounds and the gurgling hunger growls of her stomach, for they helped confirm the reality of her body – a body she couldn’t see and sometimes doubted.
Her hands roamed constantly over invisible, bare skin. Sometimes she stretched out flat to feel the carpet and the solid floor on the length of her. In that position the floating, disembodied sensations faded.
Her mind wandered restlessly.
What if nobody should come? What if they left her here to starve? She would die of thirst before starving. God, her mouth was dry. Her teeth felt like granite blocks.
She hadn’t eaten since dinner last night. Breaded pork chops, white rice dripping with teriyaki sauce, iced tea. She wished she had a gallon of iced tea now. She would drink it straight from the pitcher, spilling some, letting it stream down her neck and chest.
They’ll come, she told herself. Sooner or later. They wouldn’t have brought me here and bandaged me just to let me die. They’ll keep me alive for the beast.
Oh God, the beast.
But I’ll fool them. They’ll open that door and I’ll be out like a flash and cut them up if I have to, they won’t get me, they won’t take me alive.
Or maybe the door will open and it’ll be Dad or maybe the cops. They must be looking for me. But they wouldn’t know where to look.
If only she had stayed home last night. It’s a punishment. She’d had the hots for Brian and now she has to pay. What happened to Brian? He’s probably dead. Maybe he’s alive, though. Maybe in the house. A prisoner.
Somebody is. Somebody with a baby.
Maybe the house is full of prisoners.
That’s why Kutch built it without windows. Not to keep out the beast, the way she sometimes claimed on the tours, but to keep her prisoners in.
Janice was sprawled flat on the floor, arms and legs stretched out, face pressing the carpet, her mind drifting from thought to thought when she suddenly heard footsteps. Her heart gave a lurch. She thrust herself up and crawled to the left, one hand raking the darkness in search of the wall. Her fingernails scraped against it. She slid her right hand sideways and felt the doorframe.
The footsteps sounded very close.
Patting the carpet, she tried to find the bulb. She’d left it near the door’s edge, its jagged glass down so she wouldn’t cut her fingers groping for it.
She heard the metallic scrape and snick of a key pushing into the lock.
Where is it?
Then the side of her right hand swept against the bulb. She clenched the grooved base, and started to rise as the door swung inward. The figure of a girl was silhouetted against the blue light from the corridor. She had a bag clamped under her chin, a can in one hand, a key in the other. Gasping, she took a quick step back as Janice lunged at her. The bag dropped to her feet.
Janice, surprised by the stranger’s smaller size and apparent youth, couldn’t bring herself to slash out. Instead, she grabbed a handful of the girl’s T-shirt and yanked her forward. She hooked an arm around the girl’s back, twisted, and slammed her against the doorframe. The girl grunted, but her left hand swung up, hammering the can against Janice’s face. The blow stunned her. She staggered backwards, hanging onto the squirming body, and they both fell.
Janice was on the bottom. She rolled. She caught hold of the flailing arms, forced them to the carpet. As the girl bucked and writhed under her, she crawled up the body. She straddled the chest, used her knees to pin down the arms.
‘Get off me,’ the girl demanded. ‘Get off!’ Her legs flew up. A knee smashed against Janice’s back. ‘Bitch!’
Janice raised a fist. The girl’s face, dim in the blue light from the corridor, looked fierce. But very young. She was probably thirteen or fourteen. She was part of this, though. She had to be taken care of. Janice shot her fist down. As it descended, the body jerked under her. The light swept away. A moment after her fist smashed the sneering face, the door banged shut.
She was in blackness again.
She punched blindly in a rage, each blow hurting her knuckles sending pain up her wrists and forearms.
The girl was sobbing. ‘No. Stop. Please!’
‘Shut up. Don’t move or I’ll kill you. I swear I’ll kill you.’ To prove her point, she clutched the girl’s throat.
‘I promise.’
‘Okay.’ She relaxed the pressure, but kept her fingers around the throat. ‘How do I get out of here?’
‘You can’t.’
‘Just watch me.’
‘You can’t,’ the girl sobbed. ‘The door’s locked.’
‘You unlocked it.’
‘Just to . . . get in. When I kicked it shut, it locked again. Try it . . . if you don’t believe me.’
‘Where’s the key?’
‘In the hall. I dropped it in the hall.’
‘You mean we’re both locked in?’
‘Yeah, and you’d better not hurt me or you’ll be sorry.’
Janice slapped her face. ‘Who else is in the house?’
‘You’ll find out.’
She slapped her again. ‘No more wise answers, you little shit. Who’s here?’
The girl sniffled. ‘Maggie,’ she muttered. ‘And Wick. And Agnes. And my mom and brother.’
‘I heard a baby.’
‘That’s my brother, Jud. He’s six months.’
‘And the beast?’
She hesitated.
‘Do they keep it here?’
‘They don’t keep it. This is its home.’
‘It just
wanders around loose?’
‘Sure.’
‘Great.’
‘They’ll come looking for me. When I don’t come back . . .’
‘That’s just fine. I’ll be ready.’
‘You can’t get out of here. It’s impossible. You think my mom’d still be around if there was a way out? She’s tried over and over but we always catch her.’
‘We? You mean your own mother’s a prisoner and you help the others?’
‘We can’t let her get away. She’d ruin everything.’
‘What kind of a kid are you?’
She didn’t answer.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Sandy. Sandy Hayes.’
‘Well, Sandy Hayes, I’m going to get out of here and ruin everything and you can fucking well count on it.’
‘Fat chance.’
Janice squeezed her throat. ‘Okay, lie still. Don’t even think about moving.’ She climbed off Sandy’s body. Kneeling beside her in the darkness, she felt along the T-shirt to the waist of the pants. She fingered a belt. She opened its buckle and tugged it free. Draping it around her neck so she wouldn’t lose it, she patted the pants’ pockets. They seemed to be empty. She unfastened the waist button, slid the zipper down, and yanked the pants down Sandy’s legs. The girl wore shoes. She pulled them off, set them nearby, and finished removing the pants.
She tried to put them on. They were much too small. After a short struggle, she gave up.
She slid her hands up Sandy’s legs and hooked her fingers under the elastic of her panties.
‘Hey!’
‘Shut up.’ She drew the panties down. She tried them on. The filmy material had enough stretch to allow a snug fit. She clutched Sandy’s thigh. ‘Okay, sit up and take off your T-shirt.’
She waited for it.
‘Here.’
She swept out a hand and took the garment. Spreading it against herself, she could feel that it was far too small. A tight fit would hurt her wounds. She stretched its neck, yanked until it tore, then split the fabric all the way down. She put the shirt on easily, like a smock, the opening at her back.
Using the belt, she bound Sandy’s feet together.
The hands were still free. A bra might be useful for binding them. She moved her hand up the girl’s belly and paused at the feel of tape. ‘You’re bandaged?’
‘I hurt myself.’
Her fingers glided over Sandy’s skin, touching two more bandages: one on the side, one on a breast. The girl wore no bra.
‘How’d you get hurt?’ Janice asked.
‘The same as you.’
‘What?’
‘You know.’
‘The beast?’
‘Yeah, the beast. He gets rough sometimes when we’re getting it on.’
‘You let him?’
Janice’s wrists were suddenly clenched in the dark.
‘You’ll let him, too. Just wait and see if you don’t. You’ll get so you can’t wait for him to come to you.’
Janice jerked free of the girl’s grip. ‘You’re nuts,’ she said.
‘You’ll see. Even Mom loves it. She won’t admit it but she loves it.’
‘That’s why she tries to escape.’
‘She just does that ’cause of the baby. She’s afraid they might kill it, but they won’t. See, they think she’d try to kill herself if they hurt Jud, and they don’t want that. They want her alive.’
‘What for?’
‘Same reason they want you alive. They want you. He wants you. To make babies.’
Janice felt a cold tightness inside, ‘Babies?’ she murmured. ‘Whose babies? Wick’s?’
‘Don’t be silly. Wick isn’t allowed to touch us. He tried to screw me once, and Maggie beat the crap out of him. Nobody touches us but Seth or Jason.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Sons of Maggie and Xanadu.’
‘Xanadu?’ A chill scurried up Janice’s back as she recognized the name from Lily Thorn’s diary.
‘He was murdered last year. Mom’s boyfriend killed him and Zarth and Achilles, but he paid for it. Maggie nailed him.’
‘My God,’ Janice muttered. ‘Those were all . . . beasts?’
‘Zarth was Maggie’s, and Achilles was Agnes’s. Xanadu was the father of both. Rucker killed all three, but Maggie nailed him before he got Seth or Jason.’
‘So . . . there are two beasts in the house? You said before there was just one.’
‘You said there’s one.’
‘You didn’t correct me.’
‘Why should I?’
‘You little shit.’
‘Look, why don’t you get off me? We can be friends. You’re gonna be here a long time, and it’ll be nicer for you if I like you. I can bring you up special stuff.’
‘How do I get out of here?’
‘I already told you, it’s impossible.’
‘Why?’
‘They’ll get you.’
‘We’re upstairs?’
‘Yeah, but . . .’
‘Which way’s the staircase?’
‘That’s for me to know, you to find out.’
Janice straddled the girl again, and pinned her arms down. ‘You said they’ll be up here soon. They’re gonna find you dead if you don’t give me answers. Now which way are the stairs?’
‘It doesn’t matter. You can’t get out anyway.’
‘Tell me, damn it.’
‘The door locks on the inside. Even if you . . .’
‘Where’s the key?’
‘I’ll never tell.’
Janice slapped her hard. The girl yelped with pain and twisted under her.
‘Go ahead,’ Sandy sobbed. ‘Do whatever you want. I won’t tell.’
Janice wondered where she’d lost the broken light bulb. Somewhere nearby probably. But she doubted she could force herself to cut up the girl anyway. She considered tearing off Sandy’s bandages and digging into her wounds. The thought of it repulsed her.
‘The key you used to get in here,’ she said. ‘Does it open the front door?’
‘No,’ Sandy murmured.
‘Maggie must keep it with her.’
The girl sniffed, but didn’t answer. Janice knew she must have guessed right. In that case, she would need to subdue Maggie to get the key – maybe take on the entire household. It seemed hopeless. ‘The beasts,’ she said. ‘They’re in the house?’
‘Maybe.’
‘If they’re not here, where are they?’
‘Sometimes . . .’ she sobbed, ‘sometimes they’re in Beast House.’
‘What do they do, wander back and forth?’
Sandy didn’t answer.
‘How do they get from here to there? They can’t just go walking across the street?’
‘Yes, they do.’ She said it too quickly.
And Janice suddenly knew.
It seemed crazy, but so did the rest of this, and it appeared to be the only possibility. The original beast, Xanadu, had burrowed from the hillside and come up in Lilly Thorn’s cellar. Why not another tunnel – one connecting the two houses? It would have to be a couple of hundred yards long, but why not? A tunnel leading from one cellar to the other. How else could the beasts move freely between the two houses? They certainly couldn’t travel out in the open, walk across Front Street and through the gate without someone spotting them sooner or later. There had to be a tunnel.
And she would find it.
She didn’t want Sandy to know what she had discovered.
‘I guess I’ll have to get that key from Maggie,’ she said.
‘You haven’t got a chance.’
‘We’ll see.’
She climbed off Sandy, rolled her over, and sat on her rump. She slipped the T-shirt off, and fingered the three strips of tape used to hold the gauze pad to her left breast and shoulder. The ends on her breast had come unstuck, and dangled like small flaps. Gripping them, she peeled the bandage away from her torn flesh. She tugged the cli
nging strips off her back. When she tore away the pad, she had three strands of tape, each nearly a foot in length. She tugged on them. They seemed sturdy enough.
She pressed Sandy’s wrists together and bound them tight with all three strips. She made sure the knots were secure. Then she rolled Sandy onto her back.
‘Open your mouth.’
She felt the lips. They were pressed together. So she pinched Sandy’s nostrils shut. The girl squirmed and moaned, but finally opened her mouth. Janice stuffed the bandage pad inside. She tore the center strip of tape off the bandage on her belly, stretched it across Sandy’s open mouth, and pressed it firmly to her cheeks.
‘No noise,’ she warned. ‘If I hear anything out of you, I’ll come over and knock you senseless.’
The groaning stopped. The only sound was air hissing through Sandy’s nose.
Janice put the T-shirt on again. She draped the girl’s pants over her back, and crawled away slowly, one hand gliding over the carpet in search of the light bulb. She found it. Its jagged edge pricked her palm. Carefully, she picked it up. Near the door she came upon the can Sandy had dropped.
She left the pants and bulb and can against the wall where she could find them easily, then tried the door knob. It didn’t move. The door had locked on shutting, just as Sandy had claimed. Though she was fairly sure the key had fallen in the corridor, she spent a long time searching for it.
Finally, she gave up. She sat beside the door, her back against the wall. She spread the pants across her lap and placed the bulb on them, base up. Then she picked up the can. It felt cold and heavy. It sloshed when she shook it.
Some kind of soda.
Her tongue rasped against the roof of her mouth, touched the dry blocks of her teeth.
Sandy had used the can as a weapon, bludgeoning her with it. Janice could use it that way, too, when the door opens.
But not if she drank its contents.
She licked the condensation off the can, and waited.
23
‘Suppose we go along,’ Nora said, ‘and wait in the car?’
‘Okay by me,’ Jack said. He hitched up his sweatshirt and slid his Colt .45 semi-automatic under the waistband at the back of his jeans.
‘I think it’d be better,’ Abe said, ‘if you and Tyler stayed behind. I don’t know where we’ll be leaving the car, but if a cop goes by and sees you two waiting, he might get suspicious.’