Most of the equipment was light and Richie was able to pick up the weight bench at one end and thrust it toward his attacker, who backed away from the boy’s blow, but then grabbed onto the thing and wrested it from Richie’s grasp and tossed it onto the rowing machine, bending the device into a pretzel of shiny steel. Richie grabbed up the jump rope and whipped it at the intruder, who just grabbed it and flipped it away.
Richie put the treadmill between him and Dennis, who came at him and, in so doing, stepped onto the rubberized surface. The boy hit the switch and took the world out from under the deadly little man. When Dennis landed on his behind, Richie laughed, forgetting for a moment that this was no game, and scrambled behind the stationary bike as his assailant came storming over, eyes wild, spittle flying, and Dennis grabbed the bike and tossed it, sending it rattling down the stair well, where it lodged against the door and — in what for the attacker was a happy accident — locked them in.
Sgt. Jackson was on the other side of that door now, and he said, “Something’s blocking it — let’s take this thing off its hinges.”
“I’ll get a hammer and a wedge,” Roy said, and went quickly out.
The noise up there was clamorous and beyond unsettling. The mother looked at the officer and neither could say or do anything but join each other in frustration and fear.
Outside, Cutter was scaling that ladder, revolver in one hand making it a slower go than he’d like. Below, Janet Hodges held the ladder for him and watched apprehensively.
Richie was running out of things to get behind or to hurl at this small, unstoppable monster. What was left but to hide? He ran from the mini-gym toward the aisle of the storage space, hoping to conceal himself or make himself harder to catch, but before he could do either he tripped and skidded and almost hurled himself into his seated friend, who seemed to be an amused audience of one at this contest.
Instead he landed at the skeletal feet.
“Please,” he said, almost crying. “Please, please, please help me. Protect me, like Uncle Pete said!”
He could hear Dennis coming, cackling with mad laughter, bare feet slapping the wood-plank floor, which creaked in protest. The boy closed his eyes.
And when he opened them, he was looking into his friend’s eyes. Eyes that began to glow. Glow as red as that window had got when the police cars arrived.
And the mummy came to slow-motion life, rising on its ancient bony feet, and Richie could hear its heart beat loud and fast and louder and faster and faster and faster, and the mummy’s bony hands reached out and clutched the menace’s throat and lifted him from the floor like a nasty squirming and screaming child and walked him down that central aisle through all that spooky stuff and tossed him out the window, taking broken glass and wooden framework with him, his shriek like another siren in the night.
Dennis Lee flew over the head of Chief Cutter, who’d been just a few rungs away from that window, and reflexively ducked when the menace went windmilling out, long dark hair streaming, clawed hands seeking something to grip and finding nothing but air, the whites of his terrified eyes showing all round.
Then the ground came up to greet him, breaking the neck of a murderer and putting the tortured child within out of his misery.
Chapter 13
Roy and Helen Ryan found their son, very out of breath, covered in sweat, sitting at the mouth of the aisle into the attic storage area. At his feet lay the pile of bones and mummified flesh and decaying fabric that had once been a proud Aztec, including the once-colorful collar signifying some forgotten stature.
Helen hugged her son, gently, but hugged him.
Roy took one of the boy’s hands in both of his. “Are you all right, son?”
“Sure, Dad.” He was working at sounding brave and doing a pretty fair job of it. “I knew my friend wouldn’t let anybody hurt me.”
“What happened here?”
“Dennis... that’s what he said his name was... tried to kill me. My friend stopped him. Threw him right out the window.”
“You saw this, son?”
“I saw it. I guess we won’t need this.” He tugged at the stethoscope still around his neck.
“We won’t?”
“No.” Richie pointed to the sad, shredded remains of his friend. “He really is dead now.”
After hearing about the extent of his son’s struggle with the bizarre assailant, Roy took Richie downstairs and examined him thoroughly. Then he walked the boy into the kitchen where his mother had some hot chocolate ready for him.
Helen slipped an arm around her husband’s waist. Both were still in their nightclothes and robes. “How is he?”
“He seems fine,” Roy said. “Physically, he’s ready for those Olympics. A few bruises and minor contusions and that’s it.”
She frowned curiously, nodded to the ceiling. “What in goddamn hell happened up there?... And don’t say ‘language.’”
He shrugged. “Not really sure. You heard your son. His says his ‘friend’ saved him.”
She shook her head. “That boy and his imagination.”
Roy said, “Yeah,” but didn’t sound quite convinced.
Richie was sitting at the table in the kitchen having the hot chocolate his mother made him. Janet Hodges was sitting beside him, having a cup of coffee. The police were still active outside, but whirling cherry tops had been replaced by work lights on stands. Several ambulances had arrived for conveying the dead.
Cutter and Roy, at one end of the kitchen, spoke quietly.
“Afraid you’re going to have us,” the chief said, “and plenty other law enforcement under foot for a day or so. This is the most extensive crime scene I’ve ever encountered, and that’s after working Manhattan for a lot of years.”
“So how are you going to write this one up?”
“My official opinion,” Cutter said, and he was having coffee too, “is that Dennis Lee died trying to flee the police. He realized he was trapped in that attic and ran, and leapt to his death. Intentionally. Or misjudged that ladder and fell to his death. Accidentally.”
Roy raised a hand. “I have no argument with that.” Then he whispered: “But any thoughts about what really happened up there?”
Cutter sipped coffee. “Two theories. Either your son protected himself, and he’s ‘remembering’ it in a way that he can handle. Or...”
“That mummy did come to life?”
Cutter shrugged. “Any way you look at it, Roy... it never hurts to have friends.”
Later, on the couch in front of the fireplace where the only flames came from the hearth and not from a bottle sailing through the window, Roy said, “Well, I think he’ll sleep till noon. I’ve never seen Richie more exhausted.”
Helen shook her head, the blonde hair a lovely tangle. “What did happen up there, Roy?”
He told her what Cutter was going to say, on the record, and he shared the chief’s two theories as well.
Her forehead frowned and her mouth smiled. She began, “You can’t really think...”
“I think,” Roy said, “a boy’s best friend is his mummy.”
She laughed, shook her head. “You didn’t really just say that.”
“Well, his mummy and his daddy.” He kissed her. It took a while. Then he added, “Welcome home, honey.”