“That looks pretty good,” Lynn said. “I’ll definitely run a tour tomorrow night for those of you who can make it—assuming that it’s not impossible for one reason or another.”
Done conferring with his wife, the camel sweater man said, “I believe we’ll be able to stay over for it.”
“Great,” Lynn said.
The cellar door banged shut.
Owen looked over his shoulder and saw Clyde bounding down the stairs in the beast suit.
“Couldn’t get through,” a voice announced The muffled sound seemed to be coming from Clyde’s mask.
“What do you mean?” Lynn asked him.
“The phone’s out.”
“The office phone?”
“Right.”
“You couldn’t go someplace and find a phone that works?”
The beast shook its head.
“You’re a lot of help.”
The massive white shoulders shrugged.
“I have a cell phone,” said Eleanor, the tennis lady.
“It won’t work down here,” Lynn said. A moment later, she said, “But it’s worth a try.” Holding out a hand, she said, “Here, let me see it.”
“I’ll have a go at it myself,” said Bixby. He reached into a pocket of his safari jacket and hauled out a cell phone.
“We might as well try it, too,” said the camel sweater man.
“Alison?”
His wife reached into her purse.
Shaking her head and laughing softly, Lynn said, “I’ll try 911. Somebody else try to get hold of an operator. Shit, just call anyone you can get. Tell ‘em where we are, that we need cops and an ambulance.”
The cellar came alive with twitters and beeps.
“I DON’T THINK SO!”
Owen looked around.
Clyde had taken the beast head off. His face was red and twisted, his eyes wild. The hideous mask seemed to be resting on his shoulder. But he suddenly cocked back his arm and hurled the white head forward like an oversized softball.
Owen heard a distant, heavy blam! that sounded like a gunshot.
An instant later, the beast head crashed through the dangling light bulb.
The bulb exploded.
The cellar fell dark.
All around Owen, screams erupted.
He swung Darke around to the front and she came up tight against him. He wrapped his arms around her back. He could feel her panting for air as chaos swarmed around them.
From every side came shrieks of terror, cries of pain.
People yelled—
“No!”
“Who’s that?”
“Watch out!”
“Connie Con, is that you? YAHHH!”
Lynn shouted, “Calm down, everyone! Don’t panic! Try to get to the stairs.”
“Oh, my God.
“Get away!”
“It’s the BEAST!”
“This isn’t too cool.”
“Dude. ”
“Help me! Help!”
Lynn yelled, “Shit! Get out of here, everyone! Run!”
“Leave me ALONE!”
“Owie?” Monica’s voice, a terrified whimper, came from directly behind him.
“Monica?”
“Owie, where are you?”
“Phill!”
“Get off me!”
“The DOOR’S locked!”
“Dude, let’s haul ass. ”
“Who locked the fuckin’ door!”
“Right in front of you,” Owen said.
“NO! PLEASE!”
“Dear God!”
“Andy? Andy, where are you?”
Owen felt a hand pat his right shoulder blade. Darke’s arms were hugging him much lower, just above his waist.
“Is that you, Owie?”
“It’s me. Are you all right?”
“Fine and dandy, honey. ”
Something punched into his back. He grunted from the impact. As a molten pain flashed through him, he felt the thing slide out. Then it pounded into him again. He squealed.
Darke made a strange grunting sound.
She suddenly jerked in his embrace, twisting him sideways and driving him backward. He bumped into people but kept stumbling backward as if Darke were playing a rough game of football in a strange, pitch black stadium—fierce little contender plowing against him, determined to drive him out of bounds.
At last, they fell.
On their way down, Darke turned him. They landed hard on their sides.
Darke pulled away from him. She turned him facedown against the cellar’s dirt floor.
Through the roar in his ears and the cries and shouts, he heard Darke say, “She stabbed you.”
“Where...?”
“In the back. The knife’s still in you.”
“Where is she?” Owen gasped.
“Don’t know. Maybe we lost her. She’ll never find us in the dark.”
“Unless I HEAR you!” Monica blurted, glee in her voice.
Owen squealed with pain as the knife was suddenly jerked out of his back.
Chapter Sixty
SANDY’S STORY—June, 1997
Pistol in hand, steel bracelets shaking and rattling around her wrists, Sandy scurried on all fours through the tunnel. Dana seemed to be following her closely; the flashlight cast shadows and patches of light ahead of her.
She hurt everywhere.
But that was nothing new.
Nothing new, but worse. Though she’d been scratched up by Eric when he attacked her in Terry’s beach house, that had been child’s play compared to what she’d gone through last night.
Child’s play
Litterally
At the time, barely conscious in the tunnel chamber, she’d expected not to live through it. She’d expected to end up like the two devoured bodies already hanging from the beam. And she’d figured that she most likely deserved it.
Payment in full for her many crimes.
Never should’ve raised Eric in the first place. Should’ve killed him when he was still a baby, before he could grow up and destroy so many lives.
Never should’ve killed Slade or Lib or Harry.
Never should’ve gotten Terry killed.
Never should’ve murdered Eric’s baby.
Did Eric know about that, somehow?
After running off, had he come sneaking back from time to time, spied on her during those endless nine months in the woods, maybe even watched through a window of the cabin as she gave birth...as she discovered that it was his son, not Terry’s, and with her pocket knife cut the umbilical cord first, and then the monster’s throat?
And this is payback time ?
But as the beast tore at her and thrust into her last night, she’d found herself wondering from a faraway place at the edge of consciousness whether this really was Eric.
Has to be.
There IS no beast but Eric. He’s the last of them.
Should’ve named him Chingachgook.
And when the bell did he take up smoking?
But now it all made sense. It had been an imposter. A manic in a beast suit, ripping her with fake claws and teeth, raping her with a rubber cock—or plastic or...
But it came!
Impossible, she thought. Must’ve been my imagination.
Unless maybe he took off the suit.