“I’ll have a go at it myself,” said Bixby. He reached into a pocket of his safari jacket and hauled out a cell phone.
“We might as well try it, too,” said the camel sweater man.
“Alison?”
His wife reached into her purse.
Shaking her head and laughing softly, Lynn said, “I’ll try 911. Somebody else try to get hold of an operator. Shit, just call anyone you can get. Tell ‘em where we are, that we need cops and an ambulance.”
The cellar came alive with twitters and beeps.
“I DON’T THINK SO!”
Owen looked around.
Clyde had taken the beast head off. His face was red and twisted, his eyes wild. The hideous mask seemed to be resting on his shoulder. But he suddenly cocked back his arm and hurled the white head forward like an oversized softball.
Owen heard a distant, heavy blam! that sounded like a gunshot.
An instant later, the beast head crashed through the dangling light bulb.
The bulb exploded.
The cellar fell dark.
All around Owen, screams erupted.
He swung Darke around to the front and she came up tight against him. He wrapped his arms around her back. He could feel her panting for air as chaos swarmed around them.
From every side came shrieks of terror, cries of pain.
People yelled—
“No!”
“Who’s that?”
“Watch out!”
“Connie Con, is that you? YAHHH!”
Lynn shouted, “Calm down, everyone! Don’t panic! Try to get to the stairs.”
“Oh, my God.
“Get away!”
“It’s the BEAST!”
“This isn’t too cool.”
“Dude. ”
“Help me! Help!”
Lynn yelled, “Shit! Get out of here, everyone! Run!”
“Leave me ALONE!”
“Owie?” Monica’s voice, a terrified whimper, came from directly behind him.
“Monica?”
“Owie, where are you?”
“Phill!”
“Get off me!”
“The DOOR’S locked!”
“Dude, let’s haul ass. ”
“Who locked the fuckin’ door!”
“Right in front of you,” Owen said.
“NO! PLEASE!”
“Dear God!”
“Andy? Andy, where are you?”
Owen felt a hand pat his right shoulder blade. Darke’s arms were hugging him much lower, just above his waist.
“Is that you, Owie?”
“It’s me. Are you all right?”
“Fine and dandy, honey. ”
Something punched into his back. He grunted from the impact. As a molten pain flashed through him, he felt the thing slide out. Then it pounded into him again. He squealed.
Darke made a strange grunting sound.
She suddenly jerked in his embrace, twisting him sideways and driving him backward. He bumped into people but kept stumbling backward as if Darke were playing a rough game of football in a strange, pitch black stadium—fierce little contender plowing against him, determined to drive him out of bounds.
At last, they fell.
On their way down, Darke turned him. They landed hard on their sides.
Darke pulled away from him. She turned him facedown against the cellar’s dirt floor.
Through the roar in his ears and the cries and shouts, he heard Darke say, “She stabbed you.”
“Where...?”
“In the back. The knife’s still in you.”
“Where is she?” Owen gasped.
“Don’t know. Maybe we lost her. She’ll never find us in the dark.”
“Unless I HEAR you!” Monica blurted, glee in her voice.
Owen squealed with pain as the knife was suddenly jerked out of his back. .
Chapter Sixty
SANDY’S STORY—June, 1997
Pistol in hand, steel bracelets shaking and rattling around her wrists, Sandy scurried on all fours through the tunnel. Dana seemed to be following her closely; the flashlight cast shadows and patches of light ahead of her.
She hurt everywhere.
But that was nothing new.
Nothing new, but worse. Though she’d been scratched up by Eric when he attacked her in Terry’s beach house, that had been child’s play compared to what she’d gone through last night.
Child’s play
Litterally
At the time, barely conscious in the tunnel chamber, she’d expected not to live through it. She’d expected to end up like the two devoured bodies already hanging from the beam. And she’d figured that she most likely deserved it.
Payment in full for her many crimes.
Never should’ve raised Eric in the first place. Should’ve killed him when he was still a baby, before he could grow up and destroy so many lives.
Never should’ve killed Slade or Lib or Harry.
Never should’ve gotten Terry killed.
Never should’ve murdered Eric’s baby.
Did Eric know about that, somehow?
After running off, had he come sneaking back from time to time, spied on her during those endless nine months in the woods, maybe even watched through a window of the cabin as she gave birth...as she discovered that it was his son, not Terry’s, and with her pocket knife cut the umbilical cord first, and then the monster’s throat?
And this is payback time ?
But as the beast tore at her and thrust into her last night, she’d found herself wondering from a faraway place at the edge of consciousness whether this really was Eric.
Has to be.
There IS no beast but Eric. He’s the last of them.
Should’ve named him Chingachgook.
And when the bell did he take up smoking?
But now it all made sense. It had been an imposter. A manic in a beast suit, ripping her with fake claws and teeth, raping her with a rubber cock—or plastic or...
But it came!
Impossible, she thought. Must’ve been my imagination.
Unless maybe he took off the suit.
She had no memory of anything like that, but she supposed that it might’ve happened. Plenty must’ve gone on; she only remembered bits and pieces...
Bastard could’ve brought in five buddies for a gang-bang for all I know.
Crawling as fast as she could through the tunnel, Sandy wondered if she would end up pregnant again.
That’d be just what I need.
Don’t do it to me, God, please, Are you there, God? It’s me, Sandy. Don’t do it to me again. Please, please. I swear, if you do, I’ll let it live. You can’t ask me to kill my own baby more than once per lifetime, okay? It wouldn’t be fair. Are you listening?
The earth beneath Sandy’s hands and knees began slanting upward.
We’re coming out!
And me without a stitch of clothes on, she thought.
So what else is new?
Too bad good old Blaze isn’t here to capture it on canvas. He’d love it. Call it ‘Last Charge of the Cave Girl,’ sell it for thousands. Only I don’t look so terrific at the moment. He’d have to clean me up and put me in a nice see-through gown...
She realized the flashlight’s beam was no longer reaching past her. Maybe because the slope was too steep.
She churned her way upward.
The top of her head punched into something heavy but yielding.
A body?
Had somebody fallen across the opening?
Sandy reached up with one hand and touched wet fabric. She shoved hard. The barrier rolled away.
She climbed out of the hole and into complete darkness.
Though her ears still rang from the gunshot, she heard wild outcries, shouts and shrieks.
Somebody bumped into her and yelped, almost knocking her off her feet. From the quick feel of fabric against her bare skin, she knew it wasn’t Clyde. She shoved the pe
rson away. Crouching slightly, she moved through the chaos with her left arm out to feel the way ahead and block assaults. Her right hand kept the pistol close to her side.
All around her, people were weeping, groaning, shouting.
“What was it?”
“You okay?”
“Where’d it go?”
“Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”
From high in front of Sandy came harsh thuds of someone pounding on wood—the cellar door?
“Who ARE you?”
“SOMEBODY GET US our OF HERE!”
A brilliant red light suddenly came on, spinning and flinging out crimson as if a fire truck had somehow made its way into the cellar. Sandy glimpsed blood-red bodies rushing about, some sprawled on the floor, others huddled in corners, a few on the stairway.
And a beast inside the Kutch tunnel, running away.
The barred door stood wide open.
Just inside the entrance, mounted on the shoring of the tunnel wall, was the whirling red light.
Sandy raced for the tunnel, dodging and leaping over bodies that. blocked her way.
“Look at her!”
“Fuckin’A!”
“She’s got a gun!”
“Help us!”
“Let’s go with her!”
Sandy shouted, “EVERYBODY STAY BACK!” and ran into the tunnel.
Clyde had already vanished around a bend.
Sandy glanced at the spinning red light and saw a motion sensor.
Clyde must’ve set it off when he ran by.
How’d he get the door unlocked?
Had the key for it, stupid.
As a kid, Sandy had never liked this tunnel. It gave her the creeps, so she’d avoided it whenever possible.
Now, she wished she’d spent more time down here.
Though her memories were vague, she recalled that the tunnel had plenty of twists and bends, nooks, places where it split in two for a short distance, and even a couple of detours that led to dead-ends.
He could jump me so easily.
Slowing down, she jogged around a curve. Up ahead was another spinning red light.
No sign of Clyde.
She slowed to a quick walk.
What’s he up to? she wondered. Planning to make his getaway through Agnes’s house?
Feeling a strange mixture of longing and dread, Sandy realized that she would very likely be encountering Agnes within the next few minutes.
The woman had once been her best friend, her only friend, almost like a mother—more like a sister, maybe. Sandy hadn’t seen her since the summer of 1980, the day before Marlon Slade showed up at the trailer and ruined everything.
Though she had eventually come back to town in search of Eric, she’d eagerly looked forward to a reunion with Agnes.
Her first day back, she’d gone to the door of the Kutch house, knocked, called out, “Agnes, it’s me. Sandy. How are you? I’m back in town. I want to see you.” But there’d been no response from inside the house.
The next day, she’d tried again.
Still, no response.
After two weeks of secret visits, knocking and identifying herself, she’d finally gotten an answer from the other side of the door.
“Go away,” the voice had said.
“Agnes? It’s me, Sandy. You remember me, don’t you?”
“I remember.” Agnes sounded sour about it.
“I want us to be friends again.”
“Get lost.”
“Agnes? What’s wrong?”
“Got no use for you. Run off with the child. He was OURS. You hadn’t got no RIGHT!”
“I bad to leave. We where... ”
“Don’t wanta hear no excuses. Get lost. Go kill yourself.”
After that, Sandy had made no more attempts to contact Agnes.
Maybe Clyde and I can finish this in the tunnel, she thought. Before he gets all the way across to Agnes’s place.
She must really hate me.
I don’t want to see her.
But maybe if we meet face to face...
“Wait up!” someone called from behind Sandy.
She looked back. Two geeky-looking teenaged boys were hurrying along behind her. Following them was a husky young woman in a flannel shirt and jeans. The woman’s face was bleeding.
“Go back,” Sandy said.
“We wanta help you,” said the taller kid.
His chubby friend stared at her and nodded.
“He killed my husband!” blurted the woman.
Two more people rushed into view behind her. A slim, dapper man in a bloody camel sweater and a dazed-looking woman who was clinging to his hand. “Is this a way out?” asked the man.
“No, it’s not,” Sandy said. “Go back to the cellar. All of you. You’re interfering with police business.”
“You a cop?” asked the tall kid.
“I don’t see no badge,” said the chubby one, leering at her breasts.
“Want my sweatahirt?” asked the tall one. He started pulling it up.
“Go!” Sandy shouted. Then she whirled away from them and ran deeper into the tunnel.
To make up for the delay, she picked up her pace. Arms pumping, legs flying out, she ran as fast as she could—too fast for the bends in the tunnel.
If he’s waiting for me around one of these...
She dodged a dirt wall, lurched around a curve, bumped a wall with her shoulder.
And came out of the curve to find a section ahead that was as straight as a school hallway. This was the place, Sandy realized, where the tunnel passed underneath Front Street.
It was awash in scarlet from still another spinning light.
She spotted Clyde in the distance, a human head atop the body of a beast.
Running away for all he was worth.
Fifty, sixty feet away and moving fast.
Sandy lurched to a halt and raised her pistol. “POLICE!” she shouted. “STOP OR I’LL SHOOT!”
Twisting halfway around, Clyde looked back at her. Then he gasped out, “Don’t!” He raised his arms high, slowed down, turned until he was facing Sandy, and halted completely.
“Keep your hands up,” Sandy ordered. “Don’t move.” Right arm straight out, pistol aimed at his chest, she walked toward him.
“I give,” he gasped. “You got me.”
From behind Sandy came sounds of footfalls on the dirt floor. Then she heard quick, labored breathing.
She didn’t look back.
She walked straight toward Clyde. “Get down on your knees,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
As he sank to his knees, someone behind Sandy said, “Whoa!”
Another voice said, “Duuuude!”
“Shoot his ass!”
She didn’t look back, kept walking toward Clyde.
“You got him!” a woman blurted.
Still fifteen or twenty feet from Clyde, Sandy halted.
Keeping her pistol aimed at him, she spoke sharply. “I told you people to go back to the cellar. Now do what I say.”
“We wanta help,” said a kid.
“Is there any assistance we can give you?” asked an adult male voice. She supposed it belonged to the man in the bloody sweater.
“Thanks, but no. I want you all to leave. Go back to the cellar immediately.”
“Don’t!” Clyde blurted. “Don’t go! She’s gonna kill me! She’s gonna shoot me down in cold blood!”
“Is that true?” asked the man.
“Do it,” urged one of the teenagers.
“Kill his ass,” said the other.
“Maybe we’d better stay,” said a woman. Probably the man’s wife.
“GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE! NOW!”
“Don’t go! Please!”
Sandy heard someone rushing up behind her.
“Look out!” a kid warned.
She looked back. The chubby gal who’d lost her husband was lurching toward her, reaching out. “Gimme that!” the gal blurted.
“I’ll kill him.”
“Nobody’s going to kill...”
“Oh, my God!” someone cried out.
“Shit!”.
“Look out!”
“HIT THE DECK, CLYDE HONEY!”
Sandy knew that voice.
Jerking her head forward, she saw Clyde throw himself flat on the dirt floor.
Beyond where he lay, Agnes Kutch waddled up the middle of the tunnel. Her hair looked rosy in the flashing red light. She had put on a lot of weight over the past seventeen years. As she trudged closer, her massive body flopped and bounced and swung inside her sheer nightgown.
Down low, clutched in both hands with its stock clamped against her bulging right side, Agnes carried something that looked very much like a Thompson submachine gun with a drum magazine.
“AGNES!” Sandy shouted. “DONT SHOOT! ITS ME! DROP THE... ”
“Gimme!” a woman squealed into Sandy’s ear. An arm reached past her face and a body slammed into her back, crashing her forward.
She stumbled, trying to keep her feet.
But it was no use.
As she began to fall, Agnes opened up. The Thompson jumped in her hands, spitting flame and bullets, deafening Sandy with its pounding roar.
On the way down, the gal on Sandy’s back tried to grab her wrist.
But suddenly jerked.
Blood exploded over the back of Sandy’s head and neck.
The weight of the woman smashed her against the tunnel floor. The impact knocked her breath out, but she kept her head up.
Agnes kept firing, her grin awash in the lightning of her muzzle flashes, her whole body jumping and shuddering as the Thompson jerked in her arms.
Flat on her belly, hurting all over, Sandy blinked her eyes clear of sweat and blood, stretched out her arm and fired a single shot.
It smacked Agnes in the forehead.
She keeled backward on stiff legs, raking the tunnel ceiling with gunfire, and landed flat on her back.
The Thompson went silent, stood erect by her side for a moment, then fell over sideways.
Sandy rolled out from under the body of the woman who’d wanted her pistol. The gal flopped over. She’d caught one in the right eye.
Clyde was still sprawled flat on the floor.
Sandy stood up.
She didn’t much want to turn around.
She turned around, anyway.
All of them were down, knocked sprawling by the heavy slugs of Agnes’s submachine gun: two teenaged boys, the man in the camel sweater and his wife. She looked at them only long enough to see that they’d been riddled beyond help. They were dead or dying.