Demon Child (13 page)

    He waited outside her door for several minutes, but when he saw that she wasn't going to open it to him, he finally turned and walked off. She listened to his footsteps going down the corridor and then down the stairs. When there was nothing to be heard but silence, she left the door and went to her bed where she curled up against the headboard like a child in its mother's lap.

    She had no mother, though. And for the first time in nearly a year, the pain of that knowledge made itself felt. She began to cry. She rolled over and buried her face in her pillow and cried until her stomach hurt and until there were no more tears.

    She went into the bathroom and washed her face, daubing her eyes with cool water to make them less bloodshot. She combed her hair, then gave it a hundred strokes with a brush. The shimmering beauty of her dark mane made her think of Walter Hobarth and how much she wanted to look nice for him. Thinking of Walter made her less gloomy.

    After all, she thought. I am safe now, locked in my room. No one can get in that door. It's a thick and sturdy door. And no wolf could ever climb those stone walls outside to reach a second floor window. As long as I don't go out alone or let myself alone with Richard, I'm safe.

    And as long as Walter Hobarth was here, she intended to stick it out. Nothing could happen to her as long as the man she loved was close by.

    Loved?

    Did she truly love him, then? If she could have a thought like that, so casually, then it must be true. Now it was up to her to do her best to make him feel the same thing toward her.

    She smiled at the mirror.

    I am pretty, she thought. And intelligent. I would make a fine wife for a psychiatrist.

    She went to the wardrobe and picked out the prettiest dress she had brought. She would wear that, along with lemon-scented perfume, and she would be fresh and bright and attractive at supper this evening. He would notice; he always did.

    Suddenly, a spider ran across the top of the dresser, eight legs pistoning furiously, and it seemed like a sign, a warning of things that were to come…

    

    Jenny was awakened early the following Tuesday morning by a soft knock at her door. She yawned, rolled over and looked at the alarm clock. The time was five minutes before eight. She had slept late most every morning this past week, a luxury she had never allowed herself before coming to the Brucker estate. No one had urged her to earlier rising, so who could this be?

    “Yes?” she asked.

    “It's me, Walter,” Dr. Hobarth said. “The hunt forms at nine. I thought you'd like to use the spare horse to come along.”

    “Just a minute,” she said. She put her robe on and went to the door, opened it. “They don't want a woman along, do they?” she asked.

    He was dressed in jeans, boots and a short-sleeved workshirt. The inevitable pipe was with him, smelling of cherries. “Oh, there's no danger,” he assured her. “What with the hounds ready to tear it up and most of the men armed. We'll stay in groups to cut the chance of danger even further.”

    “I don't know whether I should.”

    “Oh, come on, Jenny! It'll be exciting!”

    She did not fancy coming face-to-face with the murderous animal no matter how safe the confrontation might be. But it was obvious that he wanted her to come along. This was another sign of his interest in her that she would be foolish to ignore.

    “I'll have to shower,” she said.

    “Time for all that if you hurry,” he said. “Nine o'clock at the stables. I'll have a horse saddled for you.”

    When she reached the stables, dressed comfortably in jeans, a blue sweater and brown riding boots, the others were already mounting for the hunt. Eight men from neighboring farms had volunteered for the chore. Though Jenny would have called it a chore, the others seemed more favorably disposed. Most men, of course, enjoyed a hunt no matter how civilized and urbane they might be. It was a primitive bloodlust that ran beneath the skin of all men-and women-no matter how much they might deny it. But on top of that natural drive, most of those present also looked upon the day's venture as a mark of acceptance. These were all gentleman farmers, lawyers and businessmen who maintained farms not for living so much as for the status such ownership implied. To have been asked to join a Brucker family hunt was a sign of some minor aristocratic standing in the area. They had all accepted, surely, with the same smugness and self-assurance that the
nouveau riche
exhibited in accepting a party invitation from an old-line family like the Vanderbilts or Rockefellers.

    The two state patrolmen wore simple blue riding uniforms with black rank patches on their sleeves. They were large men, but agile, and they had the most beautiful chestnut stallions Jenny had ever seen, enormous animals with powerful shoulders, thick necks and haunches. Horse and master, here, made a splendid single unit, as if the two were parts of the same organism, some centaurlike being.

    Richard was here, sitting on a black mare, talking to one of the neighbors who had joined the hunt, a fellow who looked-with his gray hair, mustache and full sideburns-like an English baron.

    There was a wiry little man on a spotted mare who kept a pack of hounds around him with nothing but his soft commands. This, she supposed, was Gabe Atchison.

    Walter sat on a mottled black-brown stallion behind the others, holding the tether of a second saddled but unmounted mare which Jenny recognized as a horse called Tulip which was kept next to the stall where Hollycross had died.

    “Here. Hurry!” Walter called. “We're about to begin.”

    She ran the last few yards, got her foot in the stirrup and swung onto Tulip's back. The horse snuffled, shivered all over but made no attempt to test the girl's horsemanship.

    “It's the first time I ever saw state policemen riding horses instead of prowl cars,” she said.

    “I understand Pennsylvania's state police are supposed to be the best-trained force in the world. They learn how to do nearly everything that might come in handy. That chap there, name's Halliwell, told me that they even have a championship horse team that does nothing but go all over the world from one international show to another. And they win medals more often than not.”

    Both of the officers were checking saddle-slung carbines before starting the day's activities. They looked like capable men, and they made her feel safer by their presence.

    “Are you worried?” Walt asked.

    “A little.”

    “Don't be. With so many guns about, the beast will be in tatters before he could finish half a charge at us.” She saw that not only the police carried rifles. Indeed, only she and Walter were weaponless.

    Jenny looked at the sky and wished it were a better day. Low, flat clouds scudded from horizon to horizon, an even gray color that did not threaten rain but promised no sun either. The morning seemed just a bit chilly for a June day. She supposed it would get hot enough shortly. Then they would all be cursing the humidity.

    “What are you doing here?” Richard asked, trotting his stallion toward them. He was dressed in black slacks and a black, short-sleeved shirt. “Did anyone tell you to come along?”

    It was a rhetorical question. He was not expecting any answer.

    “Yes,” she said.

    That surprised him. “Who?”

    “I did,” Hobarth told Richard before the young man could say anything. “I didn't see that it was dangerous. If we trap the critter, she and I will stay well back from the action.”

    “I don't think it's a woman's place,” Richard said.

    “And where is my place?” she asked.

    He did not reply.

    “Oh, look here, Richard,” Hobarth said. “It's mostly a game. You look around at these stalwart men of yours and tell me differently. They're all out for sport. If a single man here is expecting danger, I'd be surprised.”

    “
I'm
expecting danger,” Richard replied.

    “Are you really?” Hobarth asked.

    Richard looked at Jenny, appeared to be ready to say something, then shrugged. “She might as well stay,” he said. He reined his horse to the right and went back to the front of the column.

    Walter leaned across and patted her right hand which gripped the pommel of the saddle.

    “He frightens me,” she said, though she had not intended to confide in Walter-or in anyone. Not just yet, at least. She did not want to make a fool out of herself if Richard's rudeness proved to be nothing more sinister than mere bad manners.

    “Who? Richard?”

    “Yes.”

    Hobarth looked after the Brucker heir. “He's
very self-contained, I think. Too self-contained. We all need to open ourselves to other people now and again.”

    Richard swiveled a quarter turn in his saddle and addressed the mounted men behind him. “We follow the dogs. We stay in a single group unless the dogs split up. Then, Trooper Halliwell, Gabe, Rudy, Samson and I will form one party. The rest of you will form the other. Both Dr. Hobarth and Jenny will be in the second group. Neither has a gun or is more than an observer, so look after them if the need arises.”

    Everyone gave Jenny and the doctor a covert but still obvious inspection.

    Richard turned to Gabe Atchison. “Are they ready?”

    “They're more than,” Gabe said.

    Richard turned back to his fellow hunters. “And remember: no indiscriminate shooting. If we spot it, the dogs will run it down and corner it. We'll shoot it like a pig in a pen.”

    Several of the men nodded agreement.

    Richard looked back at Gabe Atchison. “Okay,” he said. “Turn them loose.”

    Atchison yelped something that sounded like it was in a foreign language. The dogs replied. A caterwauling mass of tails and legs and snouts stumbled over each other and were off-all in the same direction, across the open fields to the north of the stables, toward the dense woods.

    “None of the woods is too thick for single-file horsemanship,” Richard said.

    Then they were off.

    The thunder of horse's hooves made Jenny's teeth vibrate in her jaw. The ground bounced around them as her mare galloped to keep up with the others.

    Walter waved at her and bent toward his own stallion's neck. He was obviously enjoying all this.

    She decided she would too. She hugged her mare and let it go full steam toward the shadowy forest at the top of the long, rising field.

    

    The hounds reached the woods and ran parallel to the trees, their noses to the ground, ears flapping, barely managing to keep out from under one another. They might have been a comic sight if their purpose and their prey had not been so grisly. Several times, they stopped to regain the scent, backtracked a few feet, turned and hurried confidently forward, whining and snuffling, now and then pausing to bay in anticipation as they inclosed on their quarry.

    For those on horseback, it was alternately exciting and trying. One moment, they would be urging their mounts forward at top speed in order not to lose the hounds. The next moment, the hounds had stopped, forcing the hunters to rein in and mark time until the next frantic burst of forward movement.

    Jenny didn't mind the breaks as much as the others, for she was not accustomed to such a furious pace and needed the short moments of rest to regain her breath and reposition herself in the saddle. Too, the pauses gave her and Walter time to talk, exchange brief observations on the hunt and the land. She valued these especially. Every time they spoke and shared a joke, she was less apprehensive about the day ahead and where it might lead them.

    After they had run along beside the fringes of the forest for more than five-hundred yards, the hounds surprised the men following them by abruptly taking to the trees and the brush. They were almost instantly gone from sight, leaving mountain laurel trembling in their wake. Howling more excitedly than ever, slavering and yelping, falling over one another in their haste to make contact with their quarry, they somehow still managed not to lose sight of their objective.

    The scent had grown stronger; the wolf was nearer!

    The state trooper named Halliwell led the procession along a narrow, beaten trail between the elms and the pines. Far ahead, in the dark tunnel of foliage, the last of the hounds was in sight. Halliwell spurred his mount forward. Behind him, the rest of the hunting party followed in single-file as many of the men began unsnapping the flaps of the rifle cases strapped to their saddles.

    “It looks as if it might not be a long affair, after all,” Walter said in the short moment before it was Jenny's turn to goad her horse into the woods. “Those brutes are yapping right on the heels of something. It might be only minutes now.”

    Then the horse before her had gone forward, and she had to follow it into the shade of the trees where the sunlight came through in thumb-sized patches and dappled everything beneath the branches. Behind her, Walter Hobarth followed, enjoying himself.

    But he had been mistaken. The hunt was not about to be concluded at all. They followed the noisy dogs for another hour, twisting through dangerously narrow forest paths, urging their horses around low-hanging branches, sometimes crossing blessedly open fields only to enter the trees once again at some other point.

    Shortly before ten-thirty, they found the cave.

    “What is it?” Hobarth asked as he drew his mount even with Jenny's mare, wiping at perspiration that beaded on his broad forehead.

    They had come out into a mid-forest clearing some two-hundred yards across and roughly circular in shape. On three sides, there were trees, a few meandering animal trails like the one they had just left. On the third side, to their right, there was a stone wall approximately forty-feet high. Set into this was a wide-mouthed cave that wound backwards into the land, into purple darkness.