Friday Night in Beast House (10 page)

‘That was the day before she disappeared?’ Mark asked.

‘Yeah. And when she didn’t show up for school, I was really glad about it at first. But after a couple of days, I started to feel guilty. I mean, I don’t want to go around
hurting
people…not even her. So I finally went over to where she lived, figuring maybe to apologize. I’d been to her place one before. It was a grody trailer over in the woods…know where Captain Franks old bus is?

Mark nodded.

‘Over there. So I paid a visit to her trailer and her mom said she didn’t know where Claudia was. She hadn’t seen her in three of four days. Figured she must’ve run away from home. And, “Good riddance,” she said. What she really said? I couldn’t believe my ears. ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish.” Can you imagine someone saying that about her own daughter?’

‘That’s pretty cold,’ Mark said.

‘I couldn’t believe it. Anyway, she seemed to think Claudia had run off to San Francisco ‘to live with the dykes and bums”. Those are her words, not mine. “Dykes and bums’. Jeez.’ She turned the glasses in the candlelight. Then she muttered, ‘Guess that isn’t where she went.’

‘They probably aren’t Claudia’s.’

‘Oh, they’re hers, all right. I mean, nobody wears glasses like these. Nobody except maybe a stand-up comic
trying
to look like a doofus. And Claudia. You’d better show me where you found them

‘Well…Okay. Want to light the other candle?’

Alison returned the glasses to Mark’s pack and took out the second candle. ‘Need anything else out of here?’

‘I don’t think so.’

She shut the zipper, then tilted her candle toward Mark and touched her wick to his. Her wick caught fire, doubling the light.

‘I’ll go first,’ Mark whispered, hurrying past her.

He didn’t want to go first, but he didn’t want Alison going first, either. Besides, he was the guy. When there might be danger, the guy is always supposed to lead the way.

He started down the cellar stairs, moving slowly. With the candle held out in front of his chest, he could see his feet and a couple of stairs below him. The bottom of the stairway and most of the cellar remained in darkness.

Alison was a single stair above him, but over to his right.

‘This doesn’t seem like such a good idea,’ Mark whispered.

‘It’s fine,’ Alison said. She put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Don’t worry.’

His legs felt weak and shaky, but he liked her hand.

We’ll be okay, he told himself. I was down here all day and nothing happened.

Anything
could be down here. Crouching at the foot of the stairs. Hiding
behind them,
ready to reach between the planks and grab his ankle.

We’ll be fine, he told himself. Nobody’s been killed in here in almost twenty years.

Says who?

At last, the shimmery yellow glow found the cellar’s floor.

Nothing was grouched there, ready to spring.

Mark stepped onto the hard-packed dirt. Alison’s hand remained on his shoulder as he walked straight toward the beast hole. When he came to the cordon, he stopped. Alison took her hand off his shoulder and stood beside him.

‘How far in did you go?’ she whispered.

‘Pretty far. I don’t know.’

‘Want to shoe me where you found the glasses?’

‘You mean go in?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Not really.’

‘Come on.’ She unhooked the cordon from its stanchion, let it fall to the dirt, then walked almost to the edge of the hole.

Mark followed her. ‘We don’t really want to go down there, do we?’

‘I have to.’

‘No, you don’t.’

‘You can wait up here if you want.’

‘Oh, and let you go in alone?’

‘No big deal.’

‘It
is
a big deal. For one thing, it’s awfully tight. I almost got stuck.’

‘So stay here.’

‘This is crazy.’

‘If you say so.’

‘It’s just a stupid pair of glasses.’

‘Claudia’s
gl
asses
.’

‘Even if they are…’

‘Maybe
she’s
down there, Mark. Maybe it’s not just her glasses. I have to find out.’

‘No, you don’t. Anyway, she disappeared
months
ago. If she
is
down there, it’ll just be her…you know, her body.’

‘Whatever. Hold this.’ she handed her candle to Mark, then began to unfasten the buttons of her denim jacket.

‘You
don’t
want to go down there.’

‘Mark. Listen. Here’s the thing. She knew.’

‘Huh?’

‘Claudia. She knew. She was always hanging on me. She was with me when a guy asked me out. Jim Lancaster. She heard me tell him the condition.’

The one condition.

I want you to get me into Beast house. That’s where we’ll have our date.

‘Jim said I must be out of my mind,’ she explained. ‘No way would he try a stunt like that. So I told him he could forget about going out with me. After he went away, I said to Claudia, ‘Cute guy, but yella.’

‘What did she say?’

Alison shrugged. ‘I don’t know’.

She turned away from the hole, took off her denim jacket, hung it over the top of the nearest stanchion and came back. The long-sleeved blouse she wore was white.

‘Probably just laughed and said, ‘You’re awful.’ Something like that. But this was only a week or so before she disappeared.’ Looking into Mark’s eyes, Alison slowly shook her head.

'Never even crossed my mind. She didn’t run away to San Francisco. She came
here.
Just like you. To Hide and stay till after closing time so she could let me in.

‘She didn’t tell you anything?’

‘She probably meant to sneak out later and surprise me. But I guess she never made it out.’

Chapter Eighteen

‘Even if you’re right,’ Mark said, ‘that’s no reason to go
down
there.’

‘It’s my fault’

‘It is not. You didn’t force her to do anything.’

‘She did it for me. Now I’ve got to do this for her.’ Alison bent over and peered down the hole.

‘They might not even
be
Claudia’s glasses.’

‘They’re hers.’ She turned her head toward Mark. ‘Are you coming with me?’

‘If you go, I go.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You’re gonna get filthy, you know. That white blouse.’

She glanced down at it, then looked at Mark.

Will she take it off?

‘I didn’t figure on crawling through dirt,’ she said and looked toward her jacket.

‘You can wear mine, Mark said. ‘It’s already a mess. He gave both candles to her, then unbuckled his belly pack, let it fall, and took off his windbreaker. She handed one of the candles back. He gave her the windbreaker.

‘Thanks.’ She poked the dark end of the candle into her mouth and kept it there, her head tilted back while she put on Mark’s windbreaker and fastened it. When the zipper was up, she took the candle out of her mouth.

‘Ready?’ she asked.

‘Not really.’

‘Look, you stay here. I’ll just go on down by myself.’

‘No. Huh-uh. I’ll go with you.’

Just let me know how far in…’

‘I don’t know. Maybe twenty feet. Twenty-five?’

‘Good. Wait here. It’ll be a lot quicker that way, too. I’ll just scurry in, have a look around. If I don’t find anything, I’ll come right out and we’ll have plenty of time to do some exploring and stuff.’

‘Well…’

‘Anyway, you’ve already spent enough time down there. It’s my turn.’

‘I don’t know…’

She sank to her knees. Looking over her shoulder, she said, ‘You wait here, Mark. I’ll be right back.’

‘No, I’ll…’

It came up fast, shiny white, almost human but hairless and snouted.

Alison was still looking at Mark and didn’t see it.

But her face changed when she saw the look on his face.

Before he could shout a warning, before he had a chance to move, the thing grabbed the front of the windbreaker midway up Alison’s chest and jerked her forward off her knees. She cried out. The candle fell from her hand. Head first, she plunged into the hole as if sucked down it. In an instant, she was gone to her waist.

Mark dropped his candle and threw himself at her kicking legs.

The flame lasted long enough to him to see that she was gone nearly to the knees. Then his body slammed the dirt floor. His head was between her knees and he clutched both her legs and hugged them to his shoulders as blackness clamped down on the cellar.

Gotcha!

Down in the hole, she was squealing,
‘No! Let me go! Leave me alone! Oh, my God! Mark! Don’t let it get…’
Then she yelled,
‘Yawww!’

Though Mark still clutched her jeans to his shoulders, he felt sliding movements inside them. He tightened his grip. The jeans stayed, but Alison kept going. Under the denim, her legs tapered. He felt her ankles. Then her sneakers were in his face and then they came off and fell away and he lay there hanging over the edge of the hole with Alison’s empty jeans in his hands.

‘Alison!’
he yelled into the blackness.

‘Mark! Hellllp!
’

He pulled her jeans up, flung them aside, then squirmed forward over the edge and skidded down through the opening on his belly.

He bumped into her sneakers, shoved them out of the way, and scurried toward the sounds of Alison sobbing and yelping with pain and blurting,
‘Let me go! Please! It hurts! Don’t.
’

Mark wanted to call out and tell her it would be all right. Even if it was a lie, it might give her hope.

But he kept silent. Why let the beast know he was coming?

Maybe I can take it by surprise.

And do what?

He didn’t know. But staying quiet made sense. It might give him
some
advantage.

Though he scrambled through the tunnel as fast as he could, the sounds from Alison seemed to be diminishing. She continued to cry and yell, but the sounds acme from farther away.

How could they be faster than me? he thought. It’s
dragging
her.

Though his eyes saw only utter blackness, his mind saw Alison skidding along through the narrow tube of dirt, on her back now, kicking her bare legs. The beast no longer dragged her by the front of the windbreaker; now, she was being pulled by her arms. Stretched as she was, the windbreaker didn’t even reach down to her waist. From her belly down, she was bare except for her panties.

It must really hurt, he thought. It must
burn
. Like a rug burn, but worse, her skin getting scuffed off.

That’ll be the least of her problems. When the beast gets done dragging her…

That’s when I can catch up.

Yeah, right. And get myself killed. It’ll take care of me in about two seconds.

But maybe those couple of seconds would give Alison a chance to get away.

It’ll be worth it if I can save her.

Worth dying for?

Yeah. Fucking-A right, if I can save her.

Anyway, he told himself, you never know. It might not come to that. Anything can happen.

One of his hands slid over something slippery in the dirt. Her panties? The way she was being dragged, she’d been sure to lose them. Mark snatched up the skimpy garment, stuff it inside his shirt and kept on scrambling forward.

The sounds from Alison seemed farther away than ever.

He tried to pick up speed.

What if they lose me?

According to the books and movies, there might be a network of tunnels behind Beast House, going all the way past its fence and into the hills.

What if it really is some sort of maze?

The thing drags her off into side tunnels and loses me, I might have a chance of living through the night.

So far, the tunnel seemed mostly straight but with minor bends and slopes, sometimes. It other tunnels had intersected with it, Mark hadn’t noticed.

Though the sounds were far away, they still seemed to come from in front of him.

That’s a good sign, he thought.

Sure it is. Good for who?

And a voice whispered in his mind,
I don’t have to keep going. I can stop right now. Turn around and go back to the cellar and get the hell out. Let the cops take care of it.

Better yet, don’t tell anyone. Nobody has to know about any of this.

‘Yeah, right,’ he muttered.

And kept on through the darkness, out of breath, heart thundering, every muscle aching, his clothes clinging with sweat, his hair plastered to his scalp, sweat running down his face.

I can’t keep this up forever, he thought.

So quit. That’s what you want to do.

I don’t want to quit, just slow down.

He stopped.

Just for a second.

Lying on his belly, head up, elbows planted in the dirt, he wheeze for air and blinked sweat out of his eyes and gazed into the blackness.

He couldn’t hear Alison anymore.

It doesn’t mean I lost her, he told himself. Maybe she stopped crying and yelling. Maybe she passed out.

In his mind, he saw her stretched out limp on her back, being dragged by her wrists, the windbreaker even higher than before so that she is bare from the midriff down. Her panties gone. Mark can see between her thighs. Her legs bounce as she is dragged over the rough dirt of the tunnel floor.

‘ALISON!
he shouted.

No answer came.

Chapter Nineteen

Mark wished he hadn’t yelled. His shout had probably carried through the whole length of the tunnel.

I can’t hear them, he thought, so maybe they didn’t hear me.

What if they’re just being quiet?

And
it
heard me.

In his mind, he saw the beast slither over Alison’s limp body and come scurrying back through the tunnel.

Get the hell out!

He shoved himself up to his hands and knees, but the back of his head struck the dirt ceiling. He dropped flat.