The Midnight Tour

  “Good morning,” Rhonda greeted them, smiling and somehow looking too young and too shy for the job. “May I see your tickets, please?”

  Owen gave them to her.

  She tore them in half. “Be sure to save your stubs,” she said, returning half of each ticket to Owen. “You can get into the Beast House Museum on Front Street for half price.”

  “We’ve already been told that,” Monica said.

  Rhonda blushed. “Oh. Anyway.” She shrugged, then turned around. The outer wall of the ticket shack looked like a huge, open cupboard. It was lined with shelves. About half the shelves were empty. The others held audio cassette players.

  Rhonda pulled one down. It was slightly smaller than a paperback book, black plastic, with a bright orange strap. Earphones were attached. “Here you are,” she said, and handed it to Monica. “You just hang the player around your neck by the strap.”

  “I can see that.”

  Rhonda blushed again.

  Owen felt like smacking Monica.

  When Rhonda gave a player to him, he smiled, hung it around his neck, and said, “Thank you very much.”

  “You’re welcome. It’s a self-guided tour, and the players are all ready to go. You should wait until you reach the porch, which is Station Number One. You’ll see a sign with the number one on it. Then stop there and push Play, which is the oblong button on top.” She pointed it out on Owen’s machine. “And this is the Stop button here. After the porch, you proceed from station to station. The tape will tell you what to do. But feel free to take as long as you wish with the tour. Okay? When you’re done, just bring the players back to me. I’ll be right here.”

  “Okay, thank you,” Owen told her.

  They started up the walkway toward Beast House.

  “I love it already,” Monica said. By the snide tone of her voice, Owen figured that her remark was inspired by the sight of the mannequin hanging from the porch beam.

  “That’s poor Gus Goucher,” he explained.

  “Yeah, I remember them lynching some guy. Which movie was that in, number two?”

  “The Horror 3 in 3-D. But it happened in real life, Monica. Gus was a real person.”

  “I know that.”

  They halted behind a small group near the foot of the stairs. All wore headphones. Some turned this way and that as if surveying their general surroundings while they listened. Some looked down. A few whispered comments, nodded, chuckled. But most stood motionless and gazed up at the dangling body as they listened to their tapes.

  “Lovely,” Monica muttered.

  “He’s not supposed to be pretty,” Owen whispered.

  "He isn’t.”

  Gus’s eyes bulged. His black, swollen tongue stuck out.

  His head was tilted sideways at a nasty angle so that his right ear almost touched his shoulder. But the worst part, for Owen, was the neck.

  It was way too long..

  That’s why they call it "stretching his neck.”

  He’d seen photographs of such things.

  But he didn’t like how it looked.

  The stretched neck made things seem a little too real.

  From the shoulders down, Gus looked all right. He wore a plaid shirt, blue jeans and boots.

  Monica lowered her head, inspected her cassette player for a moment, then thumbed one of the buttons on top of it. Owen heard the click. He started his own player, then gazed up at Gus.

  After a brief, hissy sound, a woman began to speak.

  “Good morning, and welcome to Beast House. My name is Janice Crogan.”

  Janice!

  Her voice was rich and exciting, but not the voice of a teenaged girl. This was Janice grown up.

  “I’ll be your guide today, with the help of old Maggie Kutch. Maggie created Beast House as an attraction after her family was murdered here, many years ago. If you had come here before her death in 1979, she would’ve been your guide. Old Maggie, fat and scarred, would’ve stood on the porch steps just in front of you, cane in hand as she introduced herself.

  "'Howdy, folks,’” said a low, husky voice that clearly didn’t belong to Janice. It sounded distant and a little scratchy like an old-time recording of a live concert or political speech. ‘“Welcome to Beast House. My name’s Maggie Kutch, and I own it. I started off showing the place just after my husband and three children was butchered by the beast. Now, you might be asking yourselves how come I’d wanta show you my home after it was the scene of such awful grief to me. The answer’s easy: m-o-n-e-y.’

  “What you just heard was the actual voice of Maggie Kutch,” Janice explained. “She conducted her tours for a great many years until her death in 1979. Even though she had rules against bringing recording devices into the house, quite a few people sriuck them in anyway. We’ve been lucky enough to obtain several recordings of the tours, so you’ll be able to hear Maggie tell the story in her own words, as if she herself were hobbling through the house as your own personal guide.

  “You are now at Station One, which depicts the hanged body of Gus Goucher. Maggie never had a figure of Gus. He was added to the attraction in recent years, after my purchase of Beast House. If you’d been here in Maggie’s day, she would’ve pointed her cane at the beam from which Gus now hangs, and told you...”

  Maggie’s voice returned. “‘Right here’s where they strung up poor Gus Goucher. He was only eighteen years old, and stopped by town on his way to San Francisco. He was going there to get a job at the Sutro Baths, where his brother worked. You know the Sutro Baths? They was like giant indoor swimming pools of hot water— salt water—right on the coast over near Cliff House. Cliff House, it’s still there. Some of it is, anyhow. The Sutro Baths’re long gone, but you can see the ruins down the bluff if you go to Cliff House.

  “I reckon the Baths was quite a swell place, back then. Only Gus never made it there, because he showed up at this house on August 2, 1903.’” Owen heard a couple of hard thumps and pictured Maggie pounding the tip of her cane against the porch floor. "'Lilly Thorn, the outlaw’s widow, lived here then, along with her two children and her visiting sister, Ethel. Gus split some firewood for Lilly, late that afternoon, and she paid him with a supper. Then he was on his way.

  “‘That night, the beast struck. No one, but only Lilly, lived through the attack. She ran into the street, screaming like a madwoman and waking up half the town. Well, the sheriff come along and searched the whole house from top to bottom. He didn’t find no culprit. He found nothing but the torn up, chewed up bodies of Lilly’s sister and two little boys. So then a posse was got up. They all went tromping around in the hills near the house, and who should they stumble on to but poor Gus Goucher, fast asleep by his campfire.

  “‘Some of the posse recalled seeing him around Lilly’s house. And there wasn’t nobody to stand up for him, since he was just a stranger passing through. He might’ve sailed by, anyhow, if he’d only had them two strikes against him. But the third was the clencher. Gus had some blood on his clothes. So they dragged him back to town and had a trial for him over at the court house, which ain’t around any longer as it burned to the ground back in 1916.

  “‘At the trial, Gus said he was innocent. He claimed the blood came from a cut on his finger, and he had the cut, sure enough. Only the prosecutor said he might’ve cut himself on purpose so he’d have an excuse for the bloody clothes. And the jury, they believed him.

  “‘What about Lilly?’” asked a young man. From the volume of his voice, Owen suspected he might’ve been the person secretly recording the tour. “She saw what happened, didn’t she? Why didn’t she take the stand and clear Gus?’

  “‘Why, son, she couldn’t. Poor Lilly, she’d gone stark raving mad on account of the slaughter. She wasn’t in shape to testify about nothing. At any rate, the jury took about two minutes flat to make up their minds. They found Gus guilty of triple murder, and the judge sentenced him to swing.

  “‘Only thing is, the law never got a chance to ca
rry out its sentence, because a mob beat it to the punch. The night after the trial, a bunch of town folks dressed up in masks busted Gus out of jail. They dragged the poor lad to this very spot, whipped a rope over that beam right there, and strung him up.

  “He was an innocent man, of course. Leastwise, as innocent as any man ever is. He didn’t kill nobody at the Thorn house that night. Not unless he had claws. The beast done it. The beast done it all. Let’s go on in, now.’

  “You may climb the stairs, now,” Janice said. “As you enter Beast House, you should note that this is not the original front door. The original was blasted open by a police shotgun in 1978, and is on permanent display at the Beast House Museum on Front Street.

  “You should now proceed to Station Number Two, just inside the foyer and to your left. Stop the tape, and resume it when you’re inside the parlor.”

  Owen pressed the Stop button on his machine.

  Monica smirked at him. “Do you suppose it gets any better?”

  “Let’s go in and find out.”

  Owen had been vaguely aware of people moving on, climbing the porch stairs and disappearing into the house while he’d been listening to the taped voices. Looking behind him as he followed Monica up the stairs, he saw a whole new bunch listening at Station One. Some gazed up at the hanged man with disgust, some looked fascinated, and others averted their eyes.

  At the open door to Beast House, Monica stopped and turned to Owen. “You first,” she said.

  “If you’d rather not go “in...”

  “I’ll go in.”

  “You don’t have to. You could wait out on the lawn, or go around to the snack shop or something.”

  “And miss all the fun?”

  “You don’t seem to be having much fun.”

  “Oh, you noticed?”

  “Really. Why don’t you just wander around for a while. I’ll hurry.”

  “I’ll go in. Just remember I’m doing it for you, Owie. I’ll hate it, but I’ll do it—because I love you.”

  Chapter Nine

  SANDY’S STORY—August, 1980

  The woman behind the steering wheel tried to say something, but the sounds she made were muffled and mushy.

  With the thumb and forefinger of her left hand, Sandy dug into the woman’s mouth and started pulling out Bill’s hair. It disgusted her. It reminded her of cleaning out a bathtub drain, except that flesh and teeth came out along with the gobs of sticky hair.

  When the mouth was just about clear, the woman gasped, “Bless ya, girl. Bless ya.”

  “Are you okay?” Sany asked.

  The woman choked out a rough, slurpy laugh, then said, “Did I kill da cocksucker?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Go look. Gotta know.”

  “I’m not going over there, lady. How bad are you hurt?”

  “Don’ know.”

  “Can you move?”

  “Don’ know.”

  “See if you can start the car.”

  The woman slowly raised her right hand and turned the ignition key. The engine grumbled, caught, and rumbled on, staying alive. The woman turned her head toward Sandy. She grinned a bloody smile.

  Though feeling a little sick, Sandy said, “Scoot over and I’ll drive.”

  “Huh-uh. What about Bill?”

  “Look at him. He’s dead. You think he’s not dead? My God, you probably swallowed some of his brains.”

  The woman gurgled another laugh, then said, “He sure pucked up my teet. But I gotta know.” She fumbled with the latch of her seatbelt.

  “I tell you what,” Sandy said.

  “Huh?”

  “Go on and move over. Keep your eyes on me. I’ll take care of things, and then we’ll scoot.”

  “Okay.”

  Sandy trotted into the white beam of the headlight. She threw a huge shadow ahead of her. Her shadow darkened Bill’s bare back.

  When she got to him, she stepped aside so that neither her body nor her shadow would ruin the woman’s view. Then she sank to her knees.

  Bill looked as if his head had been buried in the ground to the tops of his ears.

  Sandy clutched the hair on the back of his head. When she pulled, his head slid across the ground. It wasn’t buried, after all—just smashed flat.

  She tugged hard, pulling the body away from the tree, lifting its head as much as she could, wondering if the woman in the car could see that Bill’s skull was caved in and half empty.

  Then she reached around the front with her butcher knife and slit his throat.

  She ran back to the car.

  She threw herself into the driver’s seat and slammed the door.

  “Tanks,” the woman said.

  Sandy smiled at her. “Glad to help.”

  “I’m Lib.”

  “Lib?”

  “Libby, Lib.”

  “Good to meet you, Lib. I’m Charly. With a y. Let’s get outa...Hey! All right!”

  “Huh?” Lib asked.

  “You’ve got automatic transmission!” She shoved the lever, then started to back up. For a moment, she was afraid that the right front of the car might remain stuck to the tree. But it came away all right with sounds like clinking glass and crunching tin.

  “Where we goin’?” Lib asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  She didtn’t know. The main thing, for now, was that the car worked. She carefully turned it around, then started driving slowly back through the woods and up the slope.

  About halfway to the top, she spotted her dish towel on the ground. But she didn’t dare stop for it.

  She left the rag behind and kept her foot on the gas pedal.

  They crept over the crest of the hill.

  “There!” she gasped.

  “What?”

  “Made it.”

  Not really, she thought, steering carefully through the woods. This is just the start. We’ll probably get to the road okay, but then what?

  “Where do you live, Lib?”

  “Here.”

  “Here in Malcasa?”

  “Huh-uh. In my car.”

  “You live in your car?”

  “Yeah.”

  “In this car?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You don’t have a real home?”

  “Hab you?”

  “I’ve got a trailer,” Sandy said “It’s not very far from here.”

  “I got a trailer hitch.”

  “I know. I saw it. But we’ve got one dead headlight and a smashed windshield. We’d be pulled over by the first cop that sees us. Then we’d both be busted.”

  “Id was selp-depense. He beat me up.”

  “Yeah, but he wasn’t doing it when you ran him down. If they find out what happened, you’ll end up in prison.”

  “Puck dat.”

  When the road came into sight through the trees, Sandy shut off the headlight. She drove to the edge of the pavement and stopped. The road looked dark and empty. She stared at the little MG.

  “We take years?” Lib asked.

  “It isn’t mine.”

  You was...”

  “I know. The guy it belongs to is dead. I killed him.”

  “Yer kiddin’.” She let out a wet, snorty laugh.

  “He attacked me. and my kid tonight.”

  “Ya killed him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Ain’t dat a hOOt? You’n me, we bote killers!”

  “I don’t know what to do about his car.”

  “Can’t pull no trailer wid it.”

  “I know.”

  “Leab it.”

  “It’s got my fingerprints on it.”

  “Better wipe ‘em opp.”

  “Yeah. Okay. Wait here.”

  Sandy left the engine running. When she opened the door, the overhead light came on. She looked over at Lib.

  They looked at each other.

  Lib had cleaned most of the blood off her face. She held a wadded, red bandana against her nose and mouth.
A large, golden ring dangled from one of her ears. The lobe of her other ear was torn . and bloody. She might be about thirty years old, but it was hard to tell because of her battered face. She was larger than Sandy, had broad shoulders, and looked strong. Her shaved head made her seem tough, even though her face was torn and puffy.

  Lib took the rag away from her mouth and asked, “Where’s yer shirt?”

  “Where’s your hair?”

  “Haw!”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Sandy climbed out of the car and shut its door. She hurried up the roadside to the MG, dropped into its driver’s seat, and pulled out the ignition key.

  She stuffed the key ring into a front pocket of. her shorts. Then she leaned sideways and opened the glove compartment.

  It held a small revolver.

  Sandy pursed her lips, quickly pulled out the handgun and stuffed it into her pocket.

  Then she reached into the glove compartment again. This time, she found a few maps and a small stack of paper napkins—Slade must’ve saved the napkins from visits to fast food joints.

  Sandy took them out and snapped the compartment shut. There seemed to be six or eight napkins. She used them to wipe the front of the glove compartment, the dashboard, the gear shift knob and the steering wheel. She opened the driver’s door, then wiped the inside handle.

  The road was still dark and empty.

  She climbed out, shut the door, and rubbed the outside handle. And the area around the handle. Then she made a quick swipe along the top of the door.

  Shoving the napkins into a pocket, she hurried back to Lib’s car.

  “Whose car is this?” she asked Lib.

  Lib sniffed loudly, then said, “Mine.”

  “Are you the real owner?”

  “Sure.”

  “The registered owner?”

  “Y’kiddin’ me?”

  “Is that a yes or a no?”

  “Puck no.”

  “It’s stolen?”

  “Y’betcha.

  “Great.

  Sandy pulled onto the road, turned left, and headed for her trailer.

  “How hot is it?” she asked, and put the headlight on.

  “We’b had it a mont.”

  “A month?”

  “Stole it in Mexico. It’s good ‘n sape.”