The Cellar (6 page)

“I don’t know how long it’ll be. I think we’re a good hour or so from where we left the car. The girl at the motel didn’t say what time Axel went to get it.”

“If we aren’t gonna leave right away, can we go see Beast House?”

“I don’t know, honey.”

“It’s half-price for me.”

“Are you certain you really want to see a place like that?”

“What is it?”

“It’s supposed to be the home of a horrible beast that kills people and tears them up. It’s
where those three people were murdered a few weeks ago.”

“Oooh,
that
place?”

“Yes indeed.”

“Wow! Can we see it?”

“I’m not sure I’m up to it.”

“Oh come on. We’re almost there. Please?”

“Well, it wouldn’t hurt to see what time the tours start.”

Standing at the northern corner of the wrought-iron fence, Donna looked at the bleak, weathered house and felt a reluctance to approach it.

“I’m not sure I want to do this, honey.”

“You
said
we can check on the tours.”

“I’m not sure I want to go in there, at all.”

“Why not?”

Donna shrugged, unwilling to put words to her dark chill. “I don’t know,” she said.

She moved her eyes from the slanted bay window to the veranda with its balustraded balcony overhead, past a gable to a tower at the south end. The tower windows reflected emptiness. Its roof was a steep cone: a witch’s cap.

“Afraid it’ll gross you out?”

“Your language is enough to gross me out.”

Sandy laughed, and adjusted her slipping sunglasses.

“Okay, we’ll have a look at the tour schedule. But I’m not guaranteeing anything.” They started toward the ticket booth.

“I’ll go alone, if you’re scared.”

“You will not go in there alone, young lady.”

“It’s half-price for me.”

“That’s not the point.”

“What
is?
”

You might never come out,
Donna suddenly thought. She took a deep breath. The air, scented like high mountain pine, calmed her.

“What is the point?”

Donna made her grin as evil as she could, and muttered, “I don’t want the beast to eat you.”

“You’re awful!”

“Not as awful as the beast.”

“Mother!” Laughing, Sandy swung her denim handbag.

Donna blocked it with her forearm, looked up, and saw the man from the cafe. His eyes were on her. Smiling at him, Donna fought off another assault by her daughter.

She saw a blue ticket in his hand.

“Okay, honey, that’s enough. We’ll go on the tour.”

“Can we?” she asked, delighted.

“Shoulder to shoulder, we’ll confront the awful beast.”

“I’ll smash it with my purse,” Sandy said.

As she approached the line at the gate, Donna
saw the man turn casually to his nervous friend and start talking.

“Look.” Sandy pointed at a wooden clockface near the top of the ticket booth. The sign above it read, “Next tour departs at,” and the clock indicated ten. “What time is it now?”

“Almost ten,” Donna said.

“Can we do it?”

“All right. Let’s get in line.”

They stepped behind the last person in line, a pudgy teenage boy whose hands were folded judiciously across his belly. Without moving his feet, he swiveled enough to cast a critical eye at Donna and Sandy. He made a quiet “Humph,” as if insulted by their presence, and swung his shoulders toward the front.

“What’s
his
problem?” Sandy whispered.

“Shhhh.”

Waiting, Donna counted fourteen people in line. Though eight seemed to be children, she only saw two who might qualify for the “children under twelve” discount. If none of the others had complimentary tickets, she figured the tour would net fifty-two dollars.

Not too shabby, she thought.

The man from the cafe was three from the front.

A young couple with two blond girls stepped up to the ticket booth.

“That makes sixty-four,” Donna said.

“What?”

“Dollars.”

“What time is it?”

“Two minutes to go.”

“I hate waiting.”

“Look at the people.”

“What for?”

“They’re interesting.”

Sandy looked up at her mother. Even with sunglasses hiding most of her face, Sandy’s skepticism was obvious. But she sidestepped out of line to check the people more closely.

“Fiends!” someone shrieked from behind. “Ghouls!”

Donna swung around. Crouched in the middle of the street, a thin pale woman pointed at her, at Sandy—at all of them. The woman was no older than thirty. She had the trim, short hair of a boy. Her sleeveless yellow dress was wrinkled and stained. Dirt streaked her white legs. Her feet were bare.

“You and you and you!” she screeched. “Ghouls! Grave sniffers! Vampires, all of you, sucking the blood of the dead!”

The ticket-booth door slammed open. A man ran out, his gaunt face scarlet. “Outta here, damn you!”

“Maggots!” she shouted. “All of you, maggots, paying to see such filth. Vultures! Cowards!”

The man jerked his wide leather belt free of its loops, and doubled it. “I’m warning you!”

“Corpse fuckers!”

“That about does it,” he muttered.

The woman scampered backward as the man rushed her, belt high and ready. Stumbling, she fell hard onto the pavement. “Go ahead, maggot! The ghouls love it! Look at ’em gawk. Give ’em blood! That’s what they’re here for!” Rising to her knees, she ripped open the front of her dress. Her breasts were huge for a woman so small. They swung over her belly like ripe sacks. “Give ’em a show! Give ’em blood! Tear my flesh! That’s what they love!”

He raised the belt overhead, ready to bring it down.

“Don’t.” The word shot out, quick and sharp.

The man looked around.

Turning, Donna saw the man from the cafe step out of the line. He walked forward.

“You just stay put, bud.”

He kept walking.

“We don’t have need of interference.”

He said nothing to the man with the belt, but walked past him to the woman. He helped her to her feet. He lifted the dress, covering her shoulders, and pulled it gently shut in front. With a shaking hand, the woman held the torn edges together.

He spoke quietly to her. She thrust herself against him, kissed him wildly on the mouth, and sprang away. “Run! Run for your lives!” she yelled. “Run for your souls!” And then she dashed away down the street.

A few people in the crowd laughed. Someone
mumbled that the madwoman was part of the show. Others disagreed. The man from the cafe came back and stood silently beside his friend in the line.

“Okay, folks!” called the ticket man. He walked toward them, threading his belt through its loops. “We ’pologize for the delay, though I’m sure we can all appreciate the gal’s dilemma. Three weeks back, the beast took her husband and only child, tore ’em to ribbons. The experience unhinged the poor gal. She’s been hangin’ around here the past couple days, since we started doin’ the tours again. But now here’s another woman, a woman who passed through the purifyin’ fire of tragedy, and came out the better for it. This woman’s the owner of Beast House, and your personal guide for today’s tour.” With a grand, sweeping gesture, he led the eyes of the crowd toward the lawn of Beast House where a stooped, heavy woman hobbled toward them.

“Do you still want to do it?” Donna asked.

Sandy shrugged. Her face was pale. She had obviously been shocked by the hysterical woman. “Yeah,” she said, “I guess so.”

They passed through the turnstile, and gathered on the lawn in front of the old woman. She waited, ebony cane planted close to the side of her right foot, her flowered dress blowing lightly against her legs. In spite of the day’s warmth, she wore a green silken scarf around her neck. She fingered the scarf briefly, then spoke.

“Welcome to Beast House.” She said it reverently, in a low, husky voice. “My name’s Maggie Kutch, and I own it. I began showing the house to visitors way back in ’31, shortly after tragedy took the lives of my husband and three children. You may be asking yourselves why a woman’d want to take people through her home that was a scene of such personal grief. The answer’s easy: m-o-n-e-y.”

Quiet laughter stirred through the group. She smiled pleasantly, turned, and limped up the walkway. At the foot of the porch stairs, she wrapped a spotted hand over the newel post and pointed upward with the tip of her cane.

“Here’s where they strung up poor Gus Goucher. He was eighteen at the time, and on his way to San Francisco to join his brother working at the Sutro Baths. He stopped here on the afternoon of August 2, 1903, and split firewood for Lilly Thorn, the original owner of the house. She fed him a meal in payment, and Gus was on his way. That very night, the beast struck for the first time. No one, but only Lilly, lived through the attack. She ran into the street screaming as if she’d met the devil himself.

“Right away, the town got up a posse. It searched the house from cellar to attic, but no living thing was found. Only the torn, chewed bodies of Lilly’s sister and two little boys. The posse tromped through the wooded hillside yonder and found young Gus Goucher fast asleep.

“Well, some of the townspeople recalled seeing him by the Thorn place that afternoon, and figured this was their man. They gave him a trial. Weren’t no witnesses with everybody dead but Lilly, and her raving. They judged him guilty quick enough, though. A mob broke him outta the old jail, that night. They dragged the poor lad to this very spot, whipped a rope over the balcony post up there, and hoisted him.

“Course, Gus Goucher didn’t kill no one. It was the beast done it. Let’s go in.”

They climbed six wooden stairs to the covered porch.

“You can see this is a new door, here. The original got shot up, three weeks back. You probably saw it on the news. One of our local police shotgunned the door to get inside. He’d of been better off, course, staying out.”

“Tell me,” asked the critical boy, “how did the Zieglers get inside?”

“They got in like thieves. They broke a window out back.”

“Thank you.” He cast a smile toward the rest of the group, apparently pleased with the service he’d performed.

“Our police,” Maggie Kutch continued, “spoiled an antique lock we had on the door here. But we did preserve the hinges and the knocker.” She tapped the brass knocker with her cane. “It’s supposed to be the paw of a monkey. Lilly Thorn stuck it here. She was partial to monkeys.”

Maggie opened the door. The group followed her inside. “One of you get the door, if you would. Don’t want the flies to get in.”

She pointed her cane. “Here’s another monkey for you.”

Donna heard her daughter groan, and didn’t blame the girl a bit. The stuffed monkey, standing by the wall with its arms out, seemed to be snarling, ready to bite.

“Umbrella stand,” Maggie said. She dropped her cane into the circle of the monkey’s arms, then snatched it up again.

“Now I’ll show you the scene of the first attack. Right this way, into the parlor.”

Sandy took Donna’s hand. Sandy looked up nervously at her mother as they entered a room to the left of the vestibule.

“When I came into this house, way back in ’31, it was just the same as Lilly Thorn left it the night of the beast attack twenty-eight years before. Nobody’d lived in the house since then. Nobody’d dared.”

“Why did
you
dare?” asked the chubby, critical boy.

“My husband and I were duped, pure and simple. We were made to believe that poor Gus Goucher did the dirty work on the Thorn people. Nobody let on about no beast.”

Donna glanced at the man from the cafe. He was standing ahead of her, next to his white-haired friend. Donna lifted her hand. “Mrs. Kutch?”

“Yes?”

“Is it definitely known, now, that Gus Goucher was innocent?”

“I don’t know how
innocent
he was.”

Some of the people laughed. The man looked around at her. She avoided his eyes.

“He might’ve been rowdy and a sneak and a nogood. He was surely a stupid man. But everyone in Malcasa Point knew, the minute they clapped eyes on the poor man, that he didn’t attack the Thorns.”

“How could they tell?”

“He didn’t have claws, sweetie.”

A few in the group tittered. The chubby boy arched an eyebrow at Donna and turned away. The man from the cafe still looked at her. She met his eyes. They held her, penetrated her, set warm fluid spreading in her loins. He didn’t look away for a long time. Shaken, Donna tried to recover her composure. She finally returned her attention to the tour.

“…through a window out in the kitchen. If you’ll just step around the screen here.”

As they moved to the front of a three-paneled papier-mâché screen that partitioned off a corner of the room, someone screamed. Several members of the group gasped with shock. Others mumbled. Some groaned with repugnance. Donna followed her daughter around the screen, glimpsed an outstretched bloody hand on the floor, and stumbled as Sandy bolted back.

Maggie chuckled at the group’s reaction.

Donna led Sandy around the end of the screen. Lying on the floor, one leg propped high on the dusty cushion of a couch, was the form of a woman. Her shiny eyes gazed upward. Her bloody face was twisted in a grimace of terror and agony. Tatters of her stained linen gown draped her body, covering little except her breasts and pubic area.

“The beast tore down the screen,” said Maggie, “and leaped over the back of the couch, taking Ethel Hughes by surprise while she was reading
The Saturday Evening Post
. This is the very magazine
she was reading at the time.” Maggie stretched her cane across the body and poked the magazine. “Everything is just as it was on that awful night.” She smiled pleasantly. “Except for the body, of course. This replica was created in wax by Mssr. Claude Dubois, at my request, way back in 1936. Every detail is guaranteed authentic, down to the tiniest bite mark on her poor neck. We used morgue photos.

“Of course, this is the gown that Ethel actually wore that night. These dark places are made by her blood.”

“Was there sexual assault?” the white-haired man asked in a strained voice.

Maggie’s pleasant eyes hardened, flicking toward his face. “No,” she said.

“That’s not what I heard.”

“I can’t be responsible for what you heard, sir. I only know what I know, and I know more about the beast of this house than any other person, living or dead. The beast of this house has never carnally abused its victims.”

“Then I apologize,” he said in a cold voice.

“When the beast was done with Ethel, it rampaged through the parlor. It knocked this alabaster bust of Caesar off the mantle, breaking the nose.” The nose rested on the fireplace mantle beside the bust. “It dashed half a dozen figurines into the fireplace. It upset chairs. This fine rosewood pedestal table was thrown through the bay window. The racket, of course, awakened the rest
of the household. Lilly’s room was right up there.” Maggie pointed toward the high ceiling with her cane. “The beast must’ve heard her stirring. It went for the stairs.”

Silently, she led the group out of the parlor and up a broad stairway to the second floor hall. They turned to the left. Maggie stepped through a side doorway and into a bedroom.

“We’re now above the parlor. Here’s where Lilly Thorn was sleeping the night of the beast attack.” A wax figure, dressed in a lacy pink gown, was sitting upright, staring fearfully over the brass scrollwork at the foot of the bed. “When the commotion woke Lilly up, she dragged the dressing table from there”—she pointed her cane at the heavy rosewood table and mirror beside the window—“to there, barricading the door. Then she made her escape through the window. She jumped to the roof of the bay window below, then to the ground.

“It’s always been a wonder to me that she didn’t try to save her children.”

They followed Maggie out of the bedroom.

“When the beast found that he couldn’t get into her room, he came down the hall this way.”

They passed the top of the stairs. Ahead, four Brentwood chairs blocked the center of the corridor. Clothesline was strung from one chair to the next, closing off the center space. The members of the group squeezed between one of the lines and the wall.

“This is where we’ll put our new display. The figures
are already on order, but we don’t expect to have them much before spring.”

“That’s a shame,” the man with the two children told his wife in a sarcastic voice.

Maggie entered a door to the right. “The beast found this door open,” she said.

The windows of the room faced the wooded hillside behind the house. The room’s two brass beds looked much like the one in Lilly’s room, but the covers were heaped in disarray. A rocking horse with faded paint stood in one corner, next to the wash stand.

“Earl was ten,” Maggie said. “His brother, Sam, was eight.”

Their wax bodies, torn and chewed, lay sprawled face down between the two beds. Both wore the remains of striped nightshirts that concealed little except their buttocks.

“Let’s go,” said the man with the two children. “This is the most crude, tasteless excuse for a voyeuristic thrill I’ve ever come across.”

His wife smiled apologetically at Maggie.

“Twelve bucks for this!” the man spat. “Good God!” His wife and children followed him out of the room.

A trim woman in a white blouse and shorts took her teenage son by the elbow. “We’re going, too.”

“Mother!”

“No argument. We’ve both seen too much already.”

“Aw geez!”

She tugged him out the door.

When they were gone, Maggie laughed quietly. “They left before we got to the best part,” she said.

Nervous laughter whispered through the remaining members of the group.

“We lived sixteen nights in this house before the beast struck.” She led them through the corridor, past the blocking chairs and past the stairway. “My husband, Joseph, he had a distaste for the rooms where the murders happened. That’s partly why we left ’em well enough alone, and settled ourselves elsewhere. Cynthia and Diana weren’t so squeamish. They stayed in the boys’ room we just left.”

She took the group through a doorway on the right, across from Lilly’s bedroom. Donna hunted the floor for wax bodies, but found none, though a four-paneled papier-mâché screen blocked one corner and window.

“Joseph and I were sleeping here. The night was the seventh of May 1931. That’s more than forty years back, but it’s burned in my mind. There’d been a good deal of rain that day. It slowed down after dark. We had those windows open. I could hear the drizzle outside. The girls were fast asleep at the end of the hall, and the baby, Theodore, was snug in the nursery.

“I fell asleep, feeling all peaceful and safe. But long about midnight, I was awakened by a loud
crash of glass. The sound came from downstairs. Joseph, who also heard it, got up real quiet and tiptoed over here to the chest. He always kept his pistol here.” Opening a top drawer, she pulled out a Colt .45 service automatic. “
This
pistol. It made a frightful loud sound when he worked its top.” Clamping her cane under one arm, she gripped the black hood of the automatic and quickly slid it back and forward with a scraping clamor of metal parts. Her thumb gently lowered the hammer. She returned the gun to its drawer.

“Joseph took the pistol with him and left the room. When I heard his footsteps on the stairs, I stole out of bed, myself. Quiet as I could, I started down the hall. I had to get to my children, you see.”

The group followed her into the corridor.

“I was right here, at the top of the stairway, when I heard gunshots from downstairs. I heard a scream from Joseph such as I’d never heard before. There were sounds of a scuffle, then scampering feet. I stood right here, scared frozen, listening to footsteps climb the stairs. I wanted to run off, and take my children to safety, but fear held me tight so I couldn’t move.

“Out of the darkness below me came the beast. I couldn’t see how it looked, except it walked upright like a man. It made kind of a laugh, and then it leaped on me and dragged me down to the floor. It ripped me with its claws and teeth. I tried to fight it off, but of course I was no match for the thing. I was preparing myself to meet the Lord
when little Theodore started crying in his nursery at the end of the hall. The beast climbed off me and ran to the nursery.

“Wounded as I was, I chased after it. I
had
to save my baby.”

The group followed her to the end of the corridor. Maggie stopped in front of a closed door.

“This door stood open,” she said, and tapped it with her cane. “In the light from its windows I saw the pale beast drag my child from the cradle and fall upon him. I knew that little Theodore was beyond my power to help him.

“I was watching, filled with horror, when a hand tugged at my nightdress. I found Cynthia and Diana behind me, all in tears. I took a hand of each, and led them silently away from the nursery door.”

She took the group again past the rope-connected chairs.

“We were just here when the snarling beast ran out of the nursery. This was the nearest door.” She opened it, revealing a steep, narrow staircase with a door at the top. “We ducked inside, and I got the door shut only a second ahead of the beast. The three of us ran up these stairs as fast as our legs could carry us, stumbling and crying out in the darkness. At the top, we passed through that door. I bolted it after us. Then we sat in the musty blackness of the attic, waiting.