Last time, she must have been unconscious. But if it came to her now, she would see it, feel its teeth and claws ripping her, its penis battering into her.
No, don’t think about it. Maybe it won’t happen.
It’ll happen.
She pressed a hand tight against the pad between her legs.
I can’t let it happen, she thought.
I’ve got to escape.
Sure. No sweat. Just break down the door and run like hell.
Little Joni, last summer, had escaped easily enough from that maniac who had them prisoners in the cabin. And Joni’d been tied to a bed. At least I’m not tied up, Janice thought. But the cabin door hadn’t been locked from the outside, either.
They’ll open the door, she realized. They’ll have to. Someone, sooner or later, will come in to check on me, maybe to feed me, or—and the thought chilled her—to let in the beast.
When that door opened, she would get her chance.
But she had to be ready.
She rolled herself off the pillows, groaning as the movement awakened streaks and waves of pain. Crawling on her knees, she dragged several of the large pillows to the center of the room. She stacked them. As she pushed herself up to climb atop them, she realized that the bulb would be searing hot. She limped over to where she had been resting, and picked up another pillow. Its case felt like satin. She yanked, splitting one of the seams, and shook out the foam rubber stuffing. With her right hand wrapped in the slick fabric, she returned to the waist-high stack.
She stepped onto the top. Her foot sank in, mashing deep. Arms out for balance, she leaned in, brought up her other foot, and straightened herself. The pillows wobbled under her. She teetered for a moment, then was steady.
With her covered hand, she reached up and gripped the blue bulb. She felt its warmth through the layers of satin. She twisted it. The bulb turned easily, and went out.
Not a shred of light entered the room to relieve the total blackness. Janice kept unscrewing the bulb, but the dark disoriented her. Though she tried to stand motionless, the pillows seemed to be shifting slowly under her feet. She swayed. Only her gentle hold on the bulb kept her from losing all sense of direction and falling.
It came loose in her hand.
Quickly, she took a blind leap forward. She seemed to drop for a very long time as if plunging into an abyss. Finally, the floor pounded her feet. Windmilling, she fell backwards. The floor slammed her rump. The back of her head and shoulders toppled the pillows. She writhed against them as pain surged through her body.
Good one, she thought. You probably opened up everything with that stunt.
But she felt proud. There was a ripple of excitement under the pain. She’d done it! She pressed the bulb to her chest, and flinched at its fiery touch.
Smart move.
Smart, all right. Now you’ve got a weapon.
She waited until the pain subsided a little, then crawled on her knees through the dark. After a long while, she bumped a wall. The door, she thought, should be over that way—somewhere to the left.
She didn’t want broken glass where she would be waiting. Carefully, she unwrapped the bulb. It was still warm, but not too hot to handle. Gripping the base, she rapped its glass gently against the wall. Then harder. It burst with a pop that sounded very loud in the silence. Sliding her fingers up the neck, she felt a jagged rim.
She eased sideways. One hand on the wall, she made her way slowly through the darkness until she found the door. She sat down beside it. She leaned her back against the wall, drew up her knees, and waited.
From somewhere not far away came a sound like the cry of a baby. Maybe a cat, she thought. What does the beast sound like? No, it sounded too much like a human baby to be anything else. After a few moments, it stopped. The house returned to silence.
Janice frowned. A baby? Maggie Kutch was far too old to be its mother. Could it be, she wondered, that she was not the only prisoner in the house?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Twenty years went by,” Maggie said, “before the beast struck again.”
They were back inside the bedroom Maggie had shared with her husband. She was standing beside the red curtains that blocked one corner, a hand on the pullcord.
“This was 1951. Tom Bagley and Larry Maywood, a couple of youngsters twelve years old, broke into the house after dark. They should’ve known better, both of them. They’d come on the tour plenty of times, and heard me warn more than once that at night the beast prowls the house. I ‘spect curiosity got the best of them. Curiosity killed the cat.”
“Satisfaction brought it back,” mumbled the girl who’d stepped on Tyler’s foot.
Maggie heard the comment, and smirked. “Didn’t bring back Tom Bagley,” she said. The curtains slid apart.
The girl gasped and took a quick step away. Jack, behind her, protected himself with a raised forearm, gently nudging her to a stop.
The cowboy said, “Oh, wow.”
The wax body on the floor was mangled, its clothes torn open, a tatter of underpants draping its buttocks. The skin of its back was scored with scratches. Its neck was a pulpy stub. Its head lay nearby, eyes wide, mouth contorted in agony.
The other boy, about to raise the window, was peering over a shoulder at his dismembered friend. His face, oddly mashed and cracked, was somehow more unnerving to Tyler than the grisly remains on the floor.
“These two,” Maggie said, “were in the house for a long spell, nosing around. They’d tried to pry open the nursery door. They’d gone up to the attic. But they were snooping here in this room when the beast found them. He struck down Tom, and Larry ran for the window. While the beast was tearing up his friend, Larry got away by jumping. ‘Cept for me, Larry was the only soul ever to see the beast and live.”
Maggie smiled strangely. “Now there’s only just me. I hear Larry got himself killed in an accident last year.”
“What’s wrong with his face?” Nora asked.
“Took a spill,” Maggie said. “We tried as best we could to patch it up. Didn’t do too well, did we? We got us a whole new head on order, but it ain’t come in yet.”
She closed the curtains, and the group followed her out of the room. Hobbling past the top of the stairs, she stopped in front of the curtains that blocked the corridor. “Here’s our last exhibit of the tour,” she said. “We just got it in this past spring. It’s in a mighty inconvenient spot, but here’s where it happened so here’s where the display had to go or it just wouldn’t be right.
“It happened just last year, back in the spring of ‘78. We had us a family name of Ziegler on the tour—husband, wife, and their boy about ten. Well, the boy he got spooked on the tour. Started crying and carrying on, so his folks took him off before we finished up. From what the mother said later, the father was mighty annoyed with the boy. Thought he hadn’t acted manly. The last thing he wanted was a sissy for a son, so he dragged the youngster back here after dark.” A corner of Maggie’s mouth curled up. “Wanted to show him there weren’t nothing to be afraid of. Only he was wrong and the boy was right. They broke in the back door, and they got just to here before the beast got them both.”
She yanked the pullcord. The front section of curtains flew open.
The boy was facedown, shirt torn from his back, his neck mauled.
The man sprawled beyond him was torn up, his severed arm lying across one thigh.
On the floor between them was a man in the shredded tan uniform of a police officer. His throat was torn out. Tyler stared at the grimacing face. She blinked as the corridor darkened. A stark blue aura flashed around the body. Through the ringing in her ears, she heard Maggie. “A patrolman name of Dan Jenson, making his rounds…”