Summer of Night (65 page)

Dale grabbed at his brother's ankles again, but the white hands were relentless. Slowly, kicking and writhing but silent, Lawrence was pulled under the bed.

"Mike!" screamed Dale, his voice shrill. "Get up here! Hurry!" He was cursing himself for not grabbing his own duffel bag on the other side of the bed… the shotgun, the squirt guns… no, there wouldn't have been time. Lawrence would be gone.

He was almost gone as it was. Only his legs protruded from the blackness.

Jesus, Jesus, he's being pulled into the floor! Maybe it's just eating him up as he goes! But the legs were still kicking; his brother was still alive.

"Mike!"

Dale felt the blackness begin to curl around him then, tendrils and tentacles of darkness thicker and colder than a winter fog. Where the tendrils touched, Dale's legs and ankles prickled as if they had been touched by dry ice. "Mike!"

One of the white hands released itself from the chore of feeding Lawrence to the darkness and grabbed at Dale's face. The fingers were at least ten inches long.

Dale lurched backward, lost his grip on Lawrence's ankles, and watched as the last of his brother was fed to the darkness. Then there was nothing under the bed but the black fog, receding on itself now, the impossibly long fingers sliding backward and down like the hands of a sewer worker lowering himself into a manhole.

Dale threw himself under the bed, reaching into the darkness, groping for his brother even as he felt his hands and forearms go numb in the terrible chill, even as the blackness folded on itself, tendrils pulling in like a movie of some ebony blossom folding up for night, run at high speed… and then there was only the perfect circle of darkness-a hole! Dale could feel emptiness where the solid floor should be!-and then he tugged his hands back as that circle contracted all too quickly, snapping shut like a steel trap that would have taken Dale's fingers off in an instant…

"What?" cried Mike, exploding into the room with his bag in one hand and the long-barreled squirrel gun in the other.

Dale was on his feet, sobbing but trying not to, pointing and babbling.

Mike dropped to his knees, rattled the barrel of the small shotgun across the solid floorboards. Dale dropped to his knees and elbows and pounded that floor with his fists. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!" There was nothing down there but boards and dust bunnies and Lawrence's dropped Uncle Scrooge comic.

A scream echoed up from the basement.

"Lawrence!" shouted Dale, running for the landing.

"Just a second! Just a second!" shouted Mike, holding him back until he could retrieve Dale's duffel bag and the radio. "Put the damn Savage together."

"We can't wait…Lawrence…" gasped Dale between sobs, tugging to get free. Another scream echoed from the basement, farther away this time.

Mike dropped the squirrel gun on the bed and shook Dale with both hands. "Assemble… the… Savage! They want you to go down there with no weapon. They want you to panic. Think!"

Dale was shaking as he put the shotgun together, locking the barrel in the stock. Mike stuck two loaded squirt guns in his belt, tossed the box of.410 shells to Dale, slung the walkie-talkie over his shoulder, and said, "OK, let's go down there."

The screams had stopped.

They pounded down the stairs, through the dark hall, across the kitchen, and through the inner door to the basement stairs.

THIRTY-SEVEN

"You want us over there?" asked Kevin over the walkie-talkie. Both he and Harlen Were dressed and ready in Kev's bedroom.

"No, stay where you are unless we call you," radioed Mike from the top of the stairs. "We'll push the transmit button twice if we need you." "Gotcha."

Just as Mike signed off, the lights in the Stewart house went off. He pulled his flashlight from his duffel bag and left the bag on the step to the kitchen. Dale reached for the flashlight his dad kept on a two-by-four cross brace near the head of the stairs. The kitchen and house beyond through the open door to the inside were dark; the basement was beyond darkness.

There was a scrabbling, slipping sound. Dale slid the.410 shell in, left the.22 barrel empty, and clicked the gun shut. He slid the barrel-select to shotgun. His flashlight beam played on the cinderblocks at the curve of the steps near the bottom. More scrabbling sounds came from around the corner.

"Let's go," he said, holding the flashlight with one hand and the shotgun steady with the other. Mike followed with the squirrel gun and his own flashlight.

They jumped down the last two giant steps, smelling the moist after-flood stink of the place. Ahead of them, the furnace and the hopper sent out pipes like a gorgon's hair. The slipping, rock-sliding noise came from their right, through the small doorway in the cinderblock wall. In the coal bin. Dale went in fast, the flashlight beam swinging left to right and then back again: the hopper, walls, the small heap of coal left from the winter, the north wall with its panel to the outside and the coal chute shoved in one corner, cobwebs along the near wall, back to the open space.

There was a faint glow in the crawlspace under the front of the house and the porch: not a light, not that bright, but a pale, phosphorescent gleam rather like the xadium dials on Kevin's watch. Dale stepped closer and played his flashlight into the low, cobwebby space.

Twenty-five feet in, where the crawlspace normally ended in rough stone and cinderblock at the south end of the porch, the flashlight glinted on the ribbed walls of a hole eighteen inches across, perfectly round, and still emitting the putrid green glow they had seen from the coal bin.

Dale shoved his stuff on the ledge and wriggled into the crawlspace, ignoring the cobwebs in his face as he began moving across the moist soil toward the tunnel.

Mike grabbed his ankles.

"Let me go. I'm going after him.”

Mike didn't argue, he pulled Dale forcibly backward until his pajama tops scraped over the cinderblock ledge.

"Lemme go!" shouted Dale, trying to free himself. "I'm going after him."

Mike grabbed his friend's face and silenced him, pressing him back against cold stone. "We'll all go after him. But that's what they expect you to do… go down this tunnel. Or go straight to where they're taking him."

"Where's that?" gasped Dale, shaking his head, still feeling the imprint of Mike's strong fingers on his jaw.

"Draw a line," said Mike, pointing in the direction of the tunnel.

Dale turned dull eyes toward the darkness there. Southwest. Across the schoolyard… "Old Central," he said. He shook his head again. "Lawrence might still be alive."

"Maybe. They haven't taken anyone before that we know of… just killed them. Maybe they do want him alive. Probably to get us to go after him." He keyed the transmit button. "Kev, Harlen, get all your stuff and meet us outside at the gas pump in about three minutes. We're going to get dressed and we'll be right there."

Dale flung himself around so that the flashlight beam illuminated the tunnel again. "OK, OK, but I'm going after him. We'll go to the school."

"Yeah," said Mike, leading the jog up the stairs, illuminating the dark hall and stairway with his flashlight,"you and Harlen find a way into the school while Kevin does his thing. I'm going to follow the tunnel."

They reached the bedroom and Dale tugged on jeans and sneakers and a sweatshirt, forgoing niceties such as underwear and socks. "You said they'd expect us to go to the school or follow down the tunnel."

"One or the other," answered Mike. "Maybe not both." "Why should you go.in the tunnel? He's my brother." "Yeah," said Mike. He took a tired breath. "But I've got more experience with these things."

Mr. Ashley-Montague had a couple of more drinks in the back of the limousine while the cartoons and short subject were on the screen, but he came out when the motion picture started. It was a new release, quite popular in his Peoria theaters: Roger Corman's House of Usher. It starred the inevitably hammy Vincent Price as Roderick Usher, but the horror film was much better than most of its kind. Mr. Ashley-Montague especially liked the predominant use of reds and blacks and the ominous lighting that seemed to throw each stone of the old Usher mansion into sharp relief.

The first reel was over when the storm came up. Mr. Ashley-Montague was leaning against the rail of the bandstand when the branches far above began to whip back and forth, loose papers blew across the park grass, and the few spectators either huddled under blankets or began leaving for the shelter of cars and homes. The millionaire looked over the roof of the Parkside Cafe and was alarmed at how low and fast-moving the black clouds seemed when they were silhouetted by the silent lightning. It was what his mother always called 'a witch's storm," the kind more often seen in early spring and late autumn than in the belly of summer.

On the screen, Vincent Price as Roderick Usher and the young gentleman caller carried the massiye coffin holding Usher's sister into the cobwebbed vaults of the family crypt. Mr. Ashley-Montague knew that the girl was only suffering from the family catalepsy, the audience knew, Poe had known it… why didn't Usher know it? Perhaps he does, thought Mr. Ashley-Montague. Perhaps he is a willing participant in the act of burying his sister alive.

The first peal of thunder cracked across the endless fields to the south of town, rumbling from the subsonic up through the teeth-rattling and ending on a shrill note.

"Shall we call it a night, sir?" called Tyler from the projector. The butler/chauffeur was holding his cloth cap in place against the wind. Only four or five people remained in their cars or under trees in the park to watch the film.

Mr. Ashley-Montague looked up at the screen. The coffin was vibrating; fingernails clawed against the interior of the bronze casket. Four floors above, Roderick Usher's almost supernatural hearing picked up every sound. Vincent Price shuddered and put his hands over his ears, shouting something that was lost under another peal of thunder. "No," said Mr. Ashley-Montague. "It's almost over. Let's allow it to run a bit."

Tyler nodded, visibly displeased, and held his suit tight around his throat as the wind rose again.

"Denissssss." The whisper was coming from the shrubbery under the front of the bandstand. "Deniiiisssssss…"

Mr. Ashley-Montague frowned and walked to the railing there. He could see no one in the bushes below, although the wild commotion caused by the wind and the relative darkness there made it hard to tell who might be crouching in the tall shrubs. "Who is it?" he snapped. No one in Elm Haven took the liberty of calling him by his Christian name… and few people elsewhere were granted that right either.

“ Deniiiiissssssss." It was as if the wind in the bushes were whispering.

Mr. Ashley-Montague had no intention of going down there. He turned and snapped his fingers at Tyler. "Someone is playing a prank. Go and see who it is. Remove them." Tyler nodded and moved gracefully down the steps. Tyler was older than he looked-he had, in fact, been a British commando in World War II, heading a small unit which specialized in dropping behind Japanese lines in Burma and elsewhere to create havoc and fear. Tyler's family had fallen on hard times since the war, but the man's experience was the primary factor in Mr. Dennis Ashley-Montague hiring him as body servant and bodyguard.

On the screen, the broad white canvas rippling wildly as the wind got between it and the wall of the Parkside Cafe, Vincent Price was screaming that his sister was alive, alive, alive! The young man grabbed a lantern and rushed toward the crypt.

Overhead, the first bolt of lightning exploded, illuminating the entire town in a moment of stroboscopic clarity, and making Mr. Ashley-Montague blink blindly for several seconds. The thunderclap was staggering. The last of the movie-watchers ran for home or drove off to beat the storm. Only the millionaire's limousine remained on the strip of gravel parking behind the bandstand.

Mr. Ashley-Montague walked to the front of the bandstand, feeling the first cold drops of rain touching his cheeks like icy tears. "Tyler… never mind! Let's load up the equipment and…"

It was the wristwatch that he saw first, Tyler's gold Rolex catching the flare of light from the next stroke of lightning. It was on Tyler's wrist, which was on the ground between the bushes and the bandstand. The wrist was not attached to an arm. A large hole had been kicked… or chewed… in the wooden latticework at the base of the bandstand. Noises came from that hole.

Mr. Ashley-Montague backed up to the rear railing of the bandstand. He opened his mouth to shout but realized that he was alone-Main Street was as empty as if it were three a.m., not even a solitary car moved down the Hard Road-he tried to shout anyway but the thunder was almost continuous now, one clap overlapping the next. The sky was insane with backlit black clouds and the winds of a full-fledged witch's storm.

Mr. Ashley-Montague looked at his limousine parked less than fifty feet away. Branches whipped overhead, one tearing free and falling across a park bench.

It wants me to run for the car.

Mr. Ashley-Montague shook his head and remained right where he was. So he would get a little wet. The storm would stop eventually. Sooner or later the town constable or the county sheriff or someone would stop by on their nightly inspection, curious why the movie was still running in the rain.

On the screen, a woman with a white face, bloodied fingernails, and a tattered burial gown moved through a secret passage. Vincent Price screamed.

Beneath Mr. Ashley-Montague, the wooden floor of the seventy-two-year-old bandstand suddenly bowed upward and splintered with a sound rivaling the crash of thunder overhead.

Mr. Dennis Ashley-Montague had time to scream once before the lamprey mouth and six-inch teeth closed on his calves and legs to the knee and dragged him down through the splintered hole.

On the screen, a long shot of the House of Usher was backlighted with lightning much less dramatic than the real explosions above the Parkside Cafe.

"Here's the plan," said Mike. They were all by the pump next to Kevin's truck shed. The doors were open to the shed and the pump was unlocked. Dale was filling Coke bottles but looked up now.

"Dale and Harlen go to the school. You know a way in?"

Dale shook his head.

"I do," said Harlen.

"OK," said Mike. "Start in the basement. I'll try to meet you there. If I can't, search the place on your own."

"Who has the radios?" asked Harlen. He had taken his sling off so both arms were free, although the light cast still made his left arm clumsy.

Mike handed his radio to Harlen. "You and Kev. Kev, you know what you're supposed to do?"

The thin boy nodded but then shook his head. "But instead of a couple of hundred gallons like we'd planned, you want it all pumped?"

Mike nodded. He was tucking squirt guns in the waistband on his back, filling his pockets with.410 shells.

Kev made a fist." "Why? You just wanted a bit of it pumped onto the doors and windows."

"That plan's not going to work," said Mike. He clicked open his grandmother's squirrel gun, checked the cartridge, slammed it shut. "I want that thing full. If we have to, we'll drive it right through the north door there.” He pointed across the schoolyard. The wind had come up, the lightning was ripping the sky, and the sentinel elms were waving yard-thick limbs like palsied arms.

Kevin stared at Mike." "How the heck do we do that? There are four or five steps on that front porch. Even if the thing is wide enough for the truck, it'd never get up those steps."

Mike pointed at Dale and Harlen. "You guys know those thick old boards they stacked up by the dumpster when they ripped the old porch off the west end of the school last year?”

Harlen nodded. "I know 'em. I almost fell onto them a few weeks ago."

"OK-we'll stick those on the front porch of the school before you go in. Like a ramp, sort of."

"Like a ramp… sort of," mimicked Kevin, looking in at his father's four-ton bulk tanker. Every time the lightning rippled across the sky-which was almost constant now-the huge stainless-steel tank reflected the flash. "You've got to be shitting me," he said to no one in particular.

"Let's go," said Dale. He was already starting down the hill toward the school, leaving the others behind. "Let's go!" There was no sign of his mother's car. All the lights were out in this part of town. Only Old Central seemed to glow with the same sick light that illuminated the interior of the clouds.

Mike clapped Harlen on the back, did the same with Kevin, and jogged down the slope toward Dale's house. Dale had paused across the street, looking back at his friend. Mike heard the edge of a shout but the words were drowned by the next roll of thunder from the storm. It might have been ' "Good luck." Or possibly "Good-bye."