Owen raised his hand.
Patty smiled at him and nodded. “You are?”
“Owen.”
“Hi, Owen.”
“Hi, Patty”
A quiet grunting sound came from Monica.
“The reason it almost didn’t get made?”
“Well, for one thing, they didn’t know how to deal on film with the beast’s ‘apparatus.’”
Several passengers laughed. Monica groaned.
“But that’s not what you’re looking for.”
“It’s something I try very hard to avoid,” Patty said.
More laughter.
“What I think you were getting at,” Owen continued, “is that a couple of things happened just before they were supposed to start principle photography. For one, the guy who was originally going to direct it... I don’t recall his name.”
“Marlon Slade.”
“Yeah, that’s him. He apparently assaulted Tricia Talbot, who was supposed to be playing Janice Crogan. I guess he tried to, you know, nail her But she got away from him and left town that night. And then be disappeared the next night.”
“He’ being Marlon Slade, the director.”
“Yeah. And I guess nobody ever found out what happened to him.”
“That’s right,” Patty said. “He vanished into thin air, went kaput, disappeared without a trace and has never been seen again. There is speculation that he ran off with a teenaged girl named Margaret Blume, who was the guide for the real Beast House tours before the arrival of the movie company. Slade’s assistant told authorities that he’d gone looking for the girl’s trailer home that evening. Evidently, he was planning to offer her the Janice Crogan role vacated by Tricia Talbot. But he never returned, and the beautiful young guide also disappeared, along with her trailer. Maybe she and Slade ran off together. Maybe there was foul play. Nobody knows. Another Beast House mystery.”
Chapter Five
SANDY’S STORY—August, 1980
After their shower, Sandy kissed Eric and lowered him into his crib. This time, she didn’t bother trying to lock him in; he’d already broken out to save her from Slade, destroying two of the wooden slats at the front. The gate of his crib looked to Sandy like a smile with two missing teeth.
Besides, he seemed groggy and ready for sleep.
Sandy turned off his bedroom light, eased the door shut, then walked quietly into her own bedroom. Her tan shirt and shorts were still on the floor. She picked up the shirt, studied it in the red light, and found several drops of blood.
“Thanks a lot, Marlon,” she muttered.
She went ahead and put it on.
Her shorts had caught some blood, too.
As she stepped into them and pulled them up, she figured that her days as a Beast House guide were probably over, anyway. She had to leave town. Someone—if only Slade’s assistant—knew that he’d intended to pay her a visit. He probably wouldn’t be missed until morning. When they did miss him, though, suspicion would quickly turn toward Sandy. She and Eric had to be long gone before that happened.
Fastening her shorts, she scowled at Slade’s body. The pudgy corpse lay sprawled on the floor, arms and legs in awkward positions that he never would’ve put them in on purpose. His shirt and trousers, ripped by Sandy’s knife, looked as if they’d been twisted crooked and pasted to his body with gore. His face looked horrible: tom, purple and slimy. His blood-sotted hair was flat against his scalp.
Got what he had coming, the crud.
It had sure felt good, stabbing him. Maybe she shouldn’t have done it so many times, though. She’d gotten a little bit carried away.
For a while there, he’d fought her. That accounted for plenty of his wounds. Sandy’d had to cut through his thrashing hands and arms to get at the vital areas. And he’d kept on struggling while she pounded the blade into his chest and neck and face. But she hadn’t quit stabbing him even after he’d stopped fighting back.
Even after she knew he was dead.
Because he’d thrown Eric. He’d flung her son across the room and hurt him. That was Slade’s worst offense. But he’d also inflicted himself on Sandy. If Eric hadn’t come to the rescue, he would’ve raped her for sure.
“You’re lucky I ever stopped stabbing you,” she muttered, then smiled as she realized what she’d said.
“Lucky,” she repeated. “You’re just brimming over with luck.”
But she’d made such a mess.
Too bad I didn’t strangle him, she thought, and shook her head. It would’ve been impossible to strangle the man. Without Agnes Kutch’s butcher knife, she wouldn’t have stood a chance.
He would’ve raped her, beaten her, maybe even killed her.
And God only knows what he might’ve done to poor little Eric.
The knife had been her salvation.
The bloody mess was part of the price that had to be paid for survival.
Before getting into the shower with Eric, Sandy had decided to leave the cleanup for later. First things first. Get the hell out of town, then worry about disposing of Slade’s body and trying to scrub the blood off the walls and floor.
She finished fastening her belt. Barefoot, she walked over to the body. The rug felt sodden and sticky under her feet.
Now I’ll be tracking blood through the place!
Annoyed, she crouched beside Slade’s right hip. She patted the outside of his front trouser pocket, felt a flat object and heard a slight rattle of keys.
She reached into the pocket. The wet lining clung to her hand. She wrinkled her nose, but dug deeper until she wrapped her fingers around the key case.
She pulled it out.
She wiped the black leather case against her shirt to clean it off, then dropped it into a front pocket of her shorts. Her hand felt tacky from Slade’s pocket, so she rubbed it on her shirt.
She hoped the sticky wet stuff was only blood.
Standing up, she wondered how to avoid leaving a trail of bloody footprints on her way out.
Earlier, she hadn’t been clear-headed enough to worry about such things. She’d carried Eric from the bedroom to the bathroom without giving a thought to the mess she was making. Those tracks would have to be cleaned up. But why double her work by making a new set all the way to the front door?
Her shirt was already ruined, anyway.
She took it off. Standing on her right foot, she used the shirt to wipe the blood off the bottom of her left foot. Then she took a giant step toward the bedroom doorway and set her clean foot down on a section of rug that didn’t seem to have much blood on it. She shifted her weight to that foot. Standing on it, she crossed her right foot over her knee and wiped it clean.
When she started down the hall, her feet felt dry against the rug. She knew she wasn’t leaving a trail, so she didn’t bother looking back. There wasn’t enough light to see much, anyway. Ahead of her, the bathroom light was still on. It filled the short hallway with a dim glow so she could see where she was going. She didn’t want more.
She entered the bathroom, filled the sink with cold water, and stuffed her shirt into it. The water turned rosy. As she swirled the shirt around, hoping to rinse off the worst of the blood, she looked at herself in the mirror and found no blood on her face or chest or belly.
She didn’t want to put the shirt back on. It would be cold and wet. Worse, it would still be stained with Slade’s blood in spite of the washing. The idea of his blood touching her skin... She couldn’t wear the shirt again. Wouldn’t. But she didn’t want to go for a clean one, either. She’d seen enough of Slade for a while. She’d smelled enough of him, too. And if she returned to her bedroom, her feet would get bloody again.