House (12 page)

What made him think he could waltz into this dungeon of theirs, find Leslie, deliver her from the brute, and skip off into the woods without catching a blast from their guns? Or from White's. That's the likelihood that awaited them outside.

“We don't have a choice.” A few more blows and Stewart would be through. Then he added for Randy's sake, “They have to have more guns down here.”

Right. Guns.
He turned back down the stairs and descended quickly, now eager to follow his own advice. Gun first, Leslie second, because it was clear that without a gun, they were dead men. Whatever this house was, it wasn't a quaint little inn inhabited by ordinary proprietors filled with goodwill toward weary travelers.

The sickness here was palpable. Death hunted them all, and the only way to survive might very well be to kill.

Jack blinked at the boldness of his own thoughts and stepped onto the concrete floor. Randy clumped slowly down the steps behind.

The basement opened up before Jack. One low-wattage bulb hung from the ceiling. He let the lighter die. A wide concrete-and-brick hall with three corroded steel doors on each side ended in a solid redbrick wall. The corridor looked like something out of an old prison movie.

Water trickled down the right wall in a couple of wet trails, then ran along the floor into a grate.

“What's that smell?” Randy asked. “What is this place?”

“The basement.”

“Looks more like a . . . sewer.”

“Let's go.”

“That smell . . .”

Jack tried to ignore the sickly stench. He walked up the hall, now faced with an unexpected dilemma. The thought of opening one of the doors, any of the doors, struck him as foolish. But short of going back upstairs, there was no other option.

Jack hurried to the first one on his right. Put his hand on the rusted handle. He hesitated.

Crack!

The muffled sound of Stewart's progress on the heavy meat-locker door reminded him of the terror close behind. He turned the knob. Pushed the door.

The room that opened up to them was dimly lit by another bare low-wattage bulb. No immediate threat, no gun in the face, no booby trap, no spring-loaded arrow aimed for their hearts. Just a room.

No, not just a room.

Jack and Randy gazed about. Four burgundy sofas, two quite new, two very old with torn upholstery. Lots of throw pillows. A tan-and-black woven rug covered most of the concrete. Paintings. At least a dozen paintings hung on brick walls. Almost homey in an eccentric sort of way. A strange blend of the old and the new, grungy and clean.

Jack walked in. “Look for a gun, a gun cabinet. Hurry.”

There was an old potbellied stove at one end of the room, shined clean as if it had never been used. A thick cobweb peppered with mummified bugs stretched from the top of the stovepipe to the adjacent wall. Why would they clean the stove and leave the web?

Other interesting pieces of furniture were set about—a loom, a coatrack, an antique rocker . . . a rusted washing machine?

The room added a whole new dimension to Jack's understanding of Betty and Stewart. The problem was, the dimension wasn't clear.

And then Jack saw something that cleared things up a bit. There was a pentagram painted in red on the wall to his left. A threat scrawled in black ran through it.
The wages of sin is death.

Stewart's accusations filled his ears:
Guilty as sin.
Below the pentagram sat a sofa table, and on that table stood a ring of black candles. Looked like the hosts were a religious lot.

Somewhere deep in the house a door slammed.

“What was that?” Randy asked.

“Check that closet,” Jack said, pointing to a door beside the pentagram. He ran across the room to a second closet door. “Keep looking!”

The closet he tried was filled with junk. Candles. Rags. A broom. Nothing that looked like a gun or anything he could imagine using to incapacitate Pete, which he thought it might come down to.

“Uh, Jack?”

When he turned back, he saw that Randy's door opened into another room.

“What is it?” He hurried across the room.

“Another room.”

“I can see that. What . . .”

He poked his head into the room. Gray concrete, all sides. Heavy cobwebs in all the corners and along the walls. A single writing desk in the middle of the room. No other furniture. Looked like a huge study. Sort of.

Jack stepped in. Long red drapes framed a huge mirror on the left wall. Another pentagram with the same words appeared on opposite wall.
The wages of sin is death
. That was it. Just the desk, the mirror, the graffiti.

And three more doors, one of which looked like it led back out to the main hall. The other two stood straight ahead in the opposite wall. They led deeper into the basement, maybe.

“You think that door leads back out to the hall?” Randy asked. “This isn't good. I don't like it. We have to find the storage room, or wherever they'd keep guns.”

He hurried toward one of the doors directly ahead. “Tell me what kind of a freaking place this is . . . ?”

He's beginning to melt down,
Jack thought.

Weren't they all?

Randy reached for the knob, pulled up short. He was staring at the mirror. Why, Jack wasn't going to spend precious time finding out.

“Okay, we have to split up. Just go, run.” Jack ran toward the door that he guessed opened back into the main hall. “Cover every room and meet back in the hall.”

Jack threw open the door and bolted into darkness. Dripping water. Smelled musty, sweet next to the rotten-egg odor that permeated the room behind him.

Randy was still blinking at the mirror, waving at it now.

“Snap out of it, Randy! Did you hear me? We have to move!”

“I don't . . . Something's wrong with this mirror.”

“Who cares? Let's go!”

“I don't have a reflection.”

The ridiculousness of Randy's claim ballooned in Jack's mind. He released the door and crossed to Randy, who was still staring, stupefied.

Jack stood next to him and looked into the mirror. No reflection.

Correction: no reflection of them. The desk behind them was in clear view. So was the far wall.

“We should leave,” Randy said.

“It's a trick mirror or something. They make them like this.” Maybe Betty and company had once been a part of some gypsy circus. It might explain a few things.

“No, this isn't some trick mirror. We're like vampires down here, man!”

“Don't be an idiot. Come on, we have to be reasonable about this. Cover the—”

“I'm not splitting up.”

“Stop it! Leslie's out there!”

“We're going to die down here, Jack. All of us. We're all going to die.”

“Yeah, if we don't move. Follow me.”

He ran for the door he'd opened, Randy at his heels now.

“Find a switch.” He slapped the wall on the right. Wet and cool. No switch. He raised his hands and started waving high.

A string hung low several yards in. He gave it a gentle tug, lighting a bulb mounted to the beams above. Now this was the kind of room Jack expected to find down here. Wet, mildewed walls lined with wooden racks. Two more doors.

“Root cellar,” he said.

“Where's the hall?”

“Must be through that door.”

The fact was, based on what he'd seen down here so far, the basement wasn't laid out like any he'd ever seen. Jack crossed the cellar and pulled open the door. As expected, the main hall. He released the handle with a small measure of satisfaction.

Randy hurried past him.

“Try one of the other doors,” Jack said.

The sound of running boots pounded over their heads.

Randy jerked his head up and stared at the labyrinth of pipes that crossed the ceiling. “They're coming!”

As if to emphasize the point, a muffled shotgun blast boomed above. Stephanie? No, she was still in the closet, and the sound had come from the kitchen area. Unless she'd given up after five minutes and made a break for the back door. Would they come directly downstairs or search the upper floors first?

The faint sound of humming came again, as it had upstairs. Jack whirled. “You hear that?”

“The singing . . .”

But neither could place it.

Jack wasn't waiting. He tried the door directly opposite the root cellar's. Locked. The footsteps pounded in the other direction. They couldn't risk it. Jack grabbed Randy's arm and tugged him back into the root cellar. Closed the door behind them.

“Where we going?”

“Anywhere but the hall. Keep it down.”

They rushed through the cellar, ignoring a door on their left. Back into the study, past the freaky mirror.

“Where we going?” Randy asked again.

Jack pulled up. “Did we leave the door into the first room open?”

Randy stared at him with dawning horror. “They'll see it! They'll know . . .”

The humming again, from their right, very faint. Then silent.

Jack ran toward one of the doors they hadn't tried yet. He could now hear the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

“Don't say we didn't warn you!” Betty's voice echoed. “Not the basement, we said, but no, you wouldn't listen. Don't you dare say we didn't warn you!”

“Hurry!” Jack said.

He slid up against the door. If their hosts followed the trail of open doors . . .

He grabbed the door handle and pulled. The door moved an inch, then pulled free from his hands and slammed, as if sucked by a vacuum.

“Try the other door!”

Randy ran toward the only door they hadn't tried yet.

Jack pulled the door again. This time it opened six inches—wide enough for him to see the blackness beyond. A deep sucking sound filled the room.

“It's locked!” Randy cried.

Pushed by the threat of Stewart blasting into the room, Jack ignored the voice in his head that suggested forcing a door open against such a strong underground air current was not a good idea.

He pulled harder.

The door gaped wider. Where could such a strong draft come from? The study's one light dimmed. Something was very wrong with this room.

It became immediately clear to him that no matter what the threat behind them was, they could not, should not, enter the space beyond the door. Jack released the handle.

The sucking sound ceased. But instead of slamming shut, the door hung free, gaping where he'd released it.

Beyond, silence. No humming.

“Go!” Randy whispered. “Go!”

Wrong. Something was terribly wrong.

Jack reached out his hand. Before his fingers touched the handle, the door flew open of its own accord. Wide open.

For a brief moment Jack faced a doorway of inky darkness. No floor or walls that he could see.

He felt his body being pulled into the doorway before he became aware of any suction, any draft, any force that drew him.

It was quick and it was silent, like a magnetic force. One second he was staring at the blackness, the next he was flying into it.

Smack!
With a bone-crunching jar he crashed into a wall no more than five feet in.

Boom!
The door slammed shut.

11

RANDY MESSARUE STARED AT THE DOOR that had slammed shut behind Jack, frozen by indecision. He wasn't sure which was worse: following Jack in, or making a run for it alone. Usually he could make choices in a snap. Must be the house. This stupid, stinking house. And its wacko proprietors. His mind had started to fray the minute Stewart had snuck up on him in the bathroom.

And when the man had turned against them, the erosion of Randy's confidence had become a crumbling of his psyche. He could feel himself coming unglued, disjointed. Weak. Not the stuff CEOs are made of.

He hated himself for it. Hated the way his gut was telling him to run. Hated the fact that he would probably save himself at Leslie's expense if it came right down to it. Hated the terror that had him squealing like a schoolgirl in his own mind.

He was sweating profusely despite the basement's cool air. His hands were trembling and his heart was pounding.
Don't be a wimp
, his dad used to say before taking the belt to him. He probably deserved a good whipping, and Stewart seemed all too eager to oblige.

Clack, clack.
Shoes on the concrete, walking, not running. An image of Stewart's large leather boots striding across the floor flashed through his mind.

He leaped to the door and cranked the knob. It refused to budge.

“Don't you dare say we didn't warn you, you filthy atheists!”

Stewart was in the next room.

“Just go easy, Stew,” Betty was saying, trying to keep the calm when they all knew there wasn't a bone of calm in that inbred husband of hers. “They got nowhere to hide. You just go easy. Nothing rash.”

Randy was out of options. Two doors, locked. The root cellar exposed him to the hall. He spun, frantic for a way out. But there was no way out.
Hide. Hide, you pathetic little baby. Hide!

He tore his feet from the ground and ran past the desk. Too small. To the curtain that framed the mirror. Behind the curtain.

But he could not still the curtain, and his lungs were wheezing like worn-out bellows. He pressed his back against the wall and willed his muscles to relax.

Clack, clack
.

The boots stopped. They were in the doorway. Randy held his breath. For a moment the room fell silent.

“Where are you, you little rat?”

Stewart ordered Betty to shut the door.

The door shut. A lock engaged.

“That one too,” he said.

The door to the cellar closed. Locked.

“They came this way, didn't they? I can smell the city stink.”

“You think they made it to the tunnel?” Betty asked.

“Not unless they can walk through locked doors, they didn't.”