fabulous sums. I used to joke with him about the banks be robbed.
One night he looked at me and said, 'Not banks.'"
I felt fear and guilt tap me on the shoulder with cold fingers. Vicki
went on.
"He started to get mean. He started bringing home whisky and
getting drunk. The times I asked him about his job he evaded me.
One night he told me point-blank to mind my own business."
"I watched him decay before my very eyes. Then one night he let a
name slip - Weinbaum, Steffen Weinbaum. A couple of weeks
later he forgot his midnight lunch. I looked up the name in the
telephone book and took it out to him. He flew into the most
terrible rage I have ever seen."
"In the weeks that followed he was away more and more at this
terrible house. One night, when he came home he beat me. I
decided to run away. To me, the Uncle David I knew was dead. He
caught me - and you came along." She fell silent.
I was shaken right down to my boots. I had a very good idea what
Vicki's uncle did for a living. The time Rankin had signed me up
coincided with the time Vicki's guardian would have been cracking
up. I almost drove away then, despite the wild shambles the lab
was in, despite the secret stairway, despite the blood trail on the
floor. But then a faraway, thin scream reached us. I thumbed the
glove compartment button, and reached in, fumbled around and got
the flashlight.
Vicki's hand went to my arm "No, Danny. Please, Don't. l know
that there's something terrible going on here. Drive away from it!"
The scream sounded again, this time fainter, and I made up my
mind. I grabbed the flashlight. Vicki saw my intention. "All right,
I'm coming with you."
"Uh-uh," I said. "You stay here. I've got a feeling that there's
something ... loose out there. You stay here."
She unwillingly sat back. I shut the door and ran back to the lab. I
didn't pause, but went back into the garage. The flashlight
illuminated the dark hole where the wall had slid away to reveal
the staircase. My blood pounding thickly in my temples, I ventured
down into it. I counted the steps, shining the flashlight at the
featureless walls, at the impenetrable darkness below. "Twenty,
twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three "
At thirty, the stairway suddenly became a short passage. I started
cautiously along it, wishing that I had a revolver, or even a knife to
make me feel a little less naked and vulnerable.
Suddenly a scream, terrible and thick with fear soon sounded in the
darkness ahead of me. It was the sound of terror, the sound of a
man confronted with something out of the deepest pits of horror. I
broke into a run. As I ran I realized that the draft was blowing
coldly against my face. I reasoned that the tunnel must come out in
the outdoors. I stumbled over something.
It was Rankin, lying in a pool of his own blood, his eyes staring in
glazed horror at the ceiling. The back of his head was bashed in.
Ahead of me I heard a pistol shot, a curse, and another scream. I
ran on and almost fell on my face as I stumbled over more stairs. I
climbed and saw stairs framed vaguely in an opening screened
with underbrush above me. I pushed it aside and came upon a
startling tableau: a tall figure silhouetted against the sky that could
only be Weinbaum, a revolver hanging in his hand, looking down
at the shadowed ground. Even the starlight was blotted out as the
hanging clouds that had parted briefly, closed together again.
He heard me and wheeled quickly, his eyes glazing like red
lanterns in the dark.
"Oh, it you Gerad."
"Rankin's dead." I told him.
"I know." he said, "You could have prevented it if you had come a
little quicker"
"Now just hold on," I said, becoming angry. "I hurried "
I was cut off by a sound that has hounded me through nightmares
ever since, a hideous mewing sound, like that of some gigantic rat
in pain. I saw calculation, fear, and finally decision flicker across
Weinbaum's face in a matter of seconds. I fell back in terror.
"What is it?" I choked.
He casually shone the light down into the pit, for all his affected
casualness, I noticed that his eyes were averted by something.
The thing mewed again and I felt another spasm of fear. I craned to
see what horror lay in that pit, the horror that made even
Weinbaum scream in abject terror. And just before I saw, a
horrible wall of terror rose and fell from the vague outline of the
house.
Weinbaum jerked his flashlight from the pit and shone it in my
face.
"Who was that? Whom did you bring up here?"
But I had my own flashlight trained as I ran through the passage
way, Weinbaum close behind. I had recognized the scream. I had
heard it before, when a frightened girl almost ran into my car as
she fled her maniac of a guardian.
Vicki!
CHAPTER SEVEN
I heard Weinbaum gasp as we entered the lab. The place was
swimming in the green, liquid. The other two cases were broken!. I
didn't pause, but ran past the shattered, empty cases and out the
door. Weinbaum did not follow me.
The car was empty, the door on the passengers side open. I shone
my light over the ground. Here and there were footprints of a girl
wearing high heels, a girl who had to be Vicki. The rest of the
tracks were blotted out by a monstrous something I hesitate to
call it a track. It was more as if something huge had dragged itself
into the woods. Its hugeness was testified, too, as I noticed the
broken saplings and crushed underbrush.
I ran back into the lab where Weinbaum was sitting, face pale and
drawn, regarding the three shattered empty tanks. The revolver was
on the table and I grabbed it and made for the door.
"Where do you think you're going with that?" he demanded, rising.
"Out to hunt for Vicki," I snarled. "And if she's hurt or " I didn't
finish.
I hurried out into the velvet darkness of the night. Gun in hand,
flashlight in the other, I plunged into the woods, following the trail
blazed by something that I didn't want to think about. The vital
question that burned in my mind was whether it had Vicki or was
still trailing her. If it had her...
My question was answered by a piercing scream not too far away
from me.
Faster now, I ran and suddenly burst into a clearing.
Perhaps it is because I want to forget, or perhaps it is only because
the nigh was dark and beginning to become foggy, but I can only
remember how Vicki caught sight of my flashlight, ran to me,
buried her head against my shoulder and sobbed.
A huge shadow moved toward me, mewing horribly, driving me
almost mad with terror. Stumblingly, we fled from the horror in the
dark, back toward the comforting lights of the lab, away from the
unseen terror that lurked in the dark. My fear-crazed brain was
putting two and two together and coming up with five.
The three cases had contained three something from the darkest
pits of a twisted mind. One had broken loose. Rankin and
Weinbaum had been after it. It had killed Rankin, but Weinbaum
had trapped it in the concealed pit. The second one was
floundering in the woods now and I suddenly remembered that
whatever-it-was, was huge and that it had a hard time lifting itself
along. Then I realized that it had trapped Vicki in a gully. It had
started down easy enough! But getting up? I was almost positive
that it couldn't.
Two were out of commission. But where was the third? My
question was answered very suddenly but a scream from the lab.