Mac found his car and unlocked the door. He took one last look around the dark underground lot, freezing as he caught sight of those two figures again, standing in a shadowed corner across the way.
The wide one seemed a shadow unto himself, dark and evil, face obscured. The other, the Asian, took one step forward, an overhead light forming Karloff shadows on his narrow face. He stared at Mac and, grinning, pointed right at him.
Stunned, Mac dropped behind the wheel, slammed the door, and cranked the ignition. He shifted into drive and stomped the gas, tires screeching as his old car chattered toward the glowing green exit sign.
He didn’t even glance in his mirror.
As we made our escape from the tower with those howling hairy beasts at our backs, it became clear that it was not the woman directing them, but another, a man of Oriental persuasion, skin the color of saffron. Perched atop the battlement, his bald pate appeared to glow in the torchlight, grinning like a skull with a moustache of blackened broom-wisps, giving pointed commands to his ape-soldiers with onyx-clawed hands.
We took to saddle and spurred our mounts across that arid plain, blue as a sea in the moonlight, and none of us looked back as the chattering howls of those creatures tore the air in our wake, pounding the sand with their fists as they gave chase.
Reading in the armchair, Mac tilted the letter toward the window to catch the last of the dying sunlight, squinting to make out the writing. The piercing doorbell caused him to jump an inch off the seat.
He took a breath, set down the letter, and strode to the door.
He casually peered into the peephole. His hand froze on the doorknob as he saw, peering back at him, an Asian man, face distended in the fisheye view. Standing on the porch behind him, a dark wide figure, face hidden under a hooded sweatshirt.
Mac gasped, pulling his face away from the peephole.
As the doorbell rang again, Mac tiptoed through the room to swipe his car keys off the kitchen table. He pocketed the old letter and skeleton key, quickly sifting through a wad of receipts near the phone until he found the one he wanted.
Then out the back door he slipped, dialing his cell phone as he snuck to his car, parked in the driveway that hugged the side of the house.
“Mira?” he whispered when she answered. “It’s me... I can’t talk any louder! Don’t come home yet. Listen, those guys are here... the ones I told you about earlier! I’m serious! Look, just go over to Carol’s or something. I’ll call you later...”
He hung up, quietly opening the car and lowering himself behind the wheel. Leaving the door open, he shifted into neutral and used his foot to give a Fred Flintstone shove and get the car rolling backwards down the slight incline of the driveway.
He pulled the door in without shutting it, letting the car roll, tires crunching pebbles with little sound, past the front porch of his house where the two figures waited at the door, turned away from him.
He watched them anxiously, then checked the rearview for traffic and cranked the ignition as his car hit the street.
With the cough of the engine, the Asian and his hooded companion spun to see him making his escape.
Mac slammed the car’s door shut, shoved it into drive, and sped away as the Asian ran into the street, gesticulating wildly behind him.
Mac laughed victoriously, turning the corner and erasing the man from his rearview mirror.
The sun had set by the time he got to the house, sky the hue of ripe autumn squash. At the bottom of the hill, he switched the car’s dome light on, scanning the receipt again to check the address. The name on it was Hintze — why hadn’t he put that together before? — the same as on the note wrapped around the skeleton key, probably a distant relative of the family that held the auction.
He switched the dome light off, instantly enveloped by the gathering gloom. He got out of the car and peered apprehensively up at the house, a Gothic structure with sloping dormers, multiple chimneys, cornices bordering the several levels, and a shingled crest housing an attic. The only light from inside was a rounded oculus window glowing from an upper story, with sash bars like a cross to warn visitors away. Mac gulped fearfully, thinking of that creepy house in Psycho, wondering what he was doing here.
He knew the answer was in that house, the answer to what the skeleton key opened, maybe even the palimpsest itself. The Asian and his goon had some connection to this place. Maybe they knew what the key opened and were trying to get it back; maybe they hadn’t known the key was hidden in that old footlocker until it had been sold. Mac’s mind reeled with paranoid possibilities; they were after him for some reason and he hoped they wouldn’t figure out that he’d come here to the house. At least not until he’d had time to snoop around.
He crept up the sloping hillside, through scrub and rocky talus. Then across a lawn badly in need of maintenance, grass high and thick enough to conceal Viet Cong snipers.
As the last of the dying sun faded, he reached a corner of the old house, touching the splintered wood of one of the porch support beams. The house loomed large over him, taller than it appeared from the base of the hill, a malevolent shadow.
Mac skirted the wide front porch, looking for a back way in. He discovered most of the shutters locked over the darkened windows. Likewise the storm doors leading to the cellar, which inwardly pleased him; he didn’t relish the idea of sneaking through the cobwebbed basement of this spooky place.
When he came to the rear door and put his hand on the polished knob, it turned freely, surprising him.
With a creak, the door opened and he stuck his head into the darkness, eyes acclimating to view a pantry, its shelves nearly empty but for scattered mason jars of old fruit and stacks of rags and towels.
He stepped inside, softly closing the door behind him. He crossed through the pantry into a large kitchen, the only light a flickering fluorescent bulb over the counter, causing the black-and-white tile floor to strobe bluish before his eyes. Two shipping boxes sat open on the big wooden island, filled with cast-iron skillets and battered pots. An old refrigerator hummed in the corner. He opened it to find nothing but a few cans of Coke and a lone Hostess chocolate cupcake in open cellophane, nourishment for those clearing out the old house.
In the large dining hall, a chandelier hung high. Furnishings covered with sheets, the ghosts of sedentary creatures. The quiet seemed to suck the very air from the place and Mac’s tennis shoes made too much noise even on tiptoes.
He nearly tripped over an ottoman in the dark and it scraped across the wood floor, the echo like a dying rodent. He rubbed his shin, cursing himself for not grabbing his flashlight from the glove box, though knowing himself as he did, the batteries inside it were probably dead.
He lifted the corner of a nearby sheet, carefully, as if expecting a gargoyled hand to slash out from underneath, but discovered only a green velvet sofa. He moved about the room, lifting sheets, until he found a varnished oak desk with many drawers, one of which — on the upper right-hand side — had a dark keyhole.
He dug the skeleton key from his pocket and inserted it into the keyhole, but it wouldn’t turn. Frustrated, he lowered the sheet and kept looking.
In a dark hallway he uncovered a bureau, a bottom drawer of which was locked. Again he tried the key and once again was unsuccessful. He continued his search in the dark and quiet, berating himself for coming up with this stupid plan.
He moved up the curving staircase to the second floor, discovering what had once been the master bedroom. The four-poster bed seemed only bones without its mattress, an ornately carved relic waiting for a family member or perhaps a winning auction bidder to claim it.