“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 lightbulb. 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 clinging 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 lightbulb. 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.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“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.”
“Yeah,” Tyler agreed. “That makes sense.”
“Why don’t you wait at the Carriage House?” Jack suggested. “Have a couple of drinks. We’ll be back before you know it.”