Sandy had claimed the key wouldn’t fit.
Janice decided not to chance it. Eyes on the blue room, she eased around the newel post and tiptoed up a dark passage that ran between the staircase and wall. She followed it toward the back of the house and entered a room with a slick floor. This, she guessed, must be the kitchen. She closed the swinging door and felt along the wall for a switch. She found it. Blue light filled the room.
She stepped past the stove. Along the far wall was a sink, a long counter, cupboards above and below, but no door. Near the sink was a knife rack. She set down her bulb and key, her remaining half of the soda can. She selected a paring knife and a long knife with a serrated edge. She slid the paring knife into her panties. Its blade was cool against her hip. She clutched the long knife tightly in her right hand, and stepped to a closed door beside the refrigerator.
It wasn’t locked. She pulled it open. Shadowy stairs led down to a blue lighted cellar. She pulled the door shut behind her. The air felt chilly. Shivering, she looked down at the blue carpet on the cellar floor. She saw a few scattered cushions.
Please, she thought, let it be empty.
Let there be a tunnel.
She took a deep shaky breath, and raced down.
The cellar was not empty.
With a gasp, Janice stopped abruptly. She squeezed the railing and stared through the dim light at the three figures.
They were against the wall. Two men and a woman. Naked and motionless. Their heads were drooped strangely. Janice took a step backwards up one stair before she noticed that their feet weren’t touching the floor.
“My God,” she muttered.
She descended the rest of the stairs. Slowly, she approached the bodies.
Corpses, she thought. They’re corpses.
One thigh of the woman was missing big chunks as if bites had been taken.
From the chest of each body protruded a steel point.
They’re hung up on hooks.
Janice felt sick and numb. She moved closer. Her legs were trembling.
All three bodies were badly torn, sheathed with dry blood that looked purple in the blue light.
She raised her eyes to a face, and slapped a hand against her mouth to hold in a scream.
One eye was shut. The other stared down at her. The tongue was lolling out. In spite of its contorted features, she recognized the face. It belonged to Brian Blake.
She looked at the face of the man suspended beside Brian.
NO!
Then at the woman.
IMPOSSIBLE! NO!!
Backing away, shaking her head, she stared at the faces of her parents. She fell to her knees. She covered her face.
From behind Janice came the metallic clack of a door latch. She twisted around and looked at the top of the stairs. The door to the kitchen swung open.
Jack, standing in the doorway, snapped a photo of the stairs leading into the cellar of Beast House. “Okay,” he whispered.
Abe turned on his flashlight. He stepped past Jack and started down. Halfway to the bottom, he stopped. He leaned over the railing and shone the beam into the space below the stairway. Nothing there. He leaned over the other side. A steamer trunk against the wall, but nothing else. Turning slowly, he raised his beam to the corner and swept it around the entire cellar. Along the walls, he saw a collection of old gardening tools: shovels, a rake and a hoe. Shelves, mostly empty but some lined with canning jars. Little else. The dirt floor was clear except for a few stacks of bushel baskets.
“Looks okay,” Jack said.
With a nod, Abe stepped down the rest of the stairs. He turned around and aimed his beam at the steamer trunk. Its latches were in place. “Get whatever you need,” he said, “and let’s go.”
Jack, at the foot of the stairs, took three shots. Abe kept his eyes shut against the quick bursts of light from the flash.
“Let’s go.”
“Hang on. I want a look around.”
Abe gave him the flashlight. As Jack started to wander the cellar, he gazed up the stairway at the door. He imagined it swinging shut. If someone came from above and locked it…
“Over here,” Jack said.
“What?”
“That hole Gory talked about.”
Abe hurried across the dirt floor and joined Jack beside a crooked stack of bushel baskets. The hole at his feet was roughly circular and almost a yard in diameter. It didn’t go straight down, but dropped away at a steep angle in the direction of the cellar’s rear wall.
Abe covered his eyes. Jack took a photo.
“That’s it,” Abe said. “Let’s go.”
“Take this a minute.” Jack handed the camera to him.
“What am I supposed to do with it?”
“Hang onto it.”
Crouching, Jack aimed the flashlight into the hole. He lowered his face close to the edge and peered in.
“The girls are waiting,” Abe said.
“I know.”
“We’re already late.”
“A couple more minutes won’t make that much difference.” Lying down flat, Jack started squirming head first into the hole.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Abe muttered.
“I won’t go far.” Jack’s voice came up muffled.
“The fun part,” Abe said. “will be backing out.”
In the last glow before the light faded out, Abe fell to his knees and clutched a cuff of Jack’s jeans. Then he was in darkness. Looking over his shoulder, he watched the dim patch of gray at the cellar door.
They could be up there, right now. They could be on their way out of the house.
He yanked Jack’s cuff. “Come on.”
Jack was no longer moving.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” His voice sounded thick as if he were speaking with a pillow over his mouth. “Goes on and on,” he said.
“Come out of there.”
“Oh, shit.”
“What?”
“Something up ahead. Looking at me.”
Abe felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. “What is it?”
“Let me get closer.”
“What is it? Is something coming?”
“It’s not coming. Huh-uh. It’s…an owl head. No owl, just its head. Man, there’s all kind of bones and shit down here.”
“Great. Time to leave.” He grabbed Jack’s ankles and started to drag him out.
Moments later, light appeared in the hole—a glowing rim around Jack’s shoulder. His head appeared. Abe kept pulling. Jack worked his way backward, elbows shoving at the clay.
Then he was out.
“Infuckingcredible,” he said. “I could only see about twenty feet, but you oughta see all that shit. Bones all over the place down there.”
“Human?”
“Nothing that big. Maybe dogs, cats, squirrels, raccoons. Smaller stuff, too, like from mice or rats. Why don’t you take a quick look?”
“Thanks anyway.”
“I wonder if I could get a picture of that stuff. Worth a try, huh?”
The quick, soft sounds of footsteps rushing down the stairs sounded more animal than human.
Janice pressed herself against the moist clay wall of the tunnel and stared into the blue light. Her heart felt as if it might smash through her ribs. Her breath came in harsh sobs. She clutched the knife with both hands, blade toward the cellar, and held her breath.
She only glimpsed the beast as it passed the tunnel entrance. Her knees sagged. She braced herself against the wall to keep from falling. Her stomach lurched. She swallowed the hot, bitter fluid that rose in her throat.
This—or one like it—was the thing that had raped her. Its claws had ripped her flesh, its snouted mouth had sucked and gnawed her breasts, its penis had been deep inside her and she could still feel the hurt from it.