The Midnight Tour (74 page)

“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.

She had no memory of anything like that, but she supposed that it might’ve happened. Plenty must’ve gone on; she only remembered bits and pieces...

Bastard could’ve brought in five buddies for a gang-bang for all I know.

Crawling as fast as she could through the tunnel, Sandy wondered if she would end up pregnant again.

That’d be just what
I
need.

Don’t do it to me, God, please, Are you there, God? It’s me, Sandy. Don’t do it to me again. Please, please. I swear, if you do, I’ll let it live. You can’t ask me to kill my own baby more than once per lifetime, okay? It wouldn’t be fair. Are you listening?

The earth beneath Sandy’s hands and knees began slanting upward.

We’re coming out!

And me without a stitch of clothes on, she thought.

So what else is new?

Too bad good old Blaze isn’t here to capture it on canvas. He’d love it. Call it ‘Last Charge of the Cave Girl,’ sell it for thousands. Only I don’t look so terrific at the moment. He’d have to clean me up and put me in a nice see-through gown...

She realized the flashlight’s beam was no longer reaching past her. Maybe because the slope was too steep.

She churned her way upward.

The top of her head punched into something heavy but yielding.

A body?

Had somebody fallen across the opening?

Sandy reached up with one hand and touched wet fabric. She shoved hard. The barrier rolled away.

She climbed out of the hole and into complete darkness.

Though her ears still rang from the gunshot, she heard wild outcries, shouts and shrieks.

Somebody bumped into her and yelped, almost knocking her off her feet. From the quick feel of fabric against her bare skin, she knew it wasn’t Clyde. She shoved the person away. Crouching slightly, she moved through the chaos with her left arm out to feel the way ahead and block assaults. Her right hand kept the pistol close to her side.

All around her, people were weeping, groaning, shouting.

“What was it?”

“You okay?”

“Where’d it go?”

“Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”

From high in front of Sandy came harsh thuds of someone pounding on wood—the cellar door?

“Who ARE you?”

“SOMEBODY GET US our OF HERE!”

A brilliant red light suddenly came on, spinning and flinging out crimson as if a fire truck had somehow made its way into the cellar. Sandy glimpsed blood-red bodies rushing about, some sprawled on the floor, others huddled in corners, a few on the stairway.

And a beast inside the Kutch tunnel, running away.

The barred door stood wide open.

Just inside the entrance, mounted on the shoring of the tunnel wall, was the whirling red light.

Sandy raced for the tunnel, dodging and leaping over bodies that. blocked her way.

“Look
at
her!”

“Fuckin’A!”

“She’s got a gun!”

“Help us!”

“Let’s go with her!”

Sandy shouted,
“EVERYBODY STAY BACK!”
and ran into the tunnel.

Clyde had already vanished around a bend.

Sandy glanced at the spinning red light and saw a motion sensor.

Clyde must’ve set it off when he ran by.

How’d he get the door unlocked?

Had the key for it, stupid
.

As a kid, Sandy had never liked this tunnel. It gave her the creeps, so she’d avoided it whenever possible.

Now, she wished she’d spent more time down here.

Though her memories were vague, she recalled that the tunnel had plenty of twists and bends, nooks, places where it split in two for a short distance, and even a couple of detours that led to dead-ends.

He could jump me so easily.

Slowing down, she jogged around a curve. Up ahead was another spinning red light.

No sign of Clyde.

She slowed to a quick walk.

What’s he up to? she wondered. Planning to make his getaway through Agnes’s house?

Feeling a strange mixture of longing and dread, Sandy realized that she would very likely be encountering Agnes within the next few minutes.

The woman had once been her best friend, her only friend, almost like a mother—more like a sister, maybe. Sandy hadn’t seen her since the summer of 1980, the day before Marlon Slade showed up at the trailer and ruined everything.

Though she had eventually come back to town in search of Eric, she’d eagerly looked forward to a reunion with Agnes.

Her first day back, she’d gone to the door of the Kutch house, knocked, called out,
“Agnes, it’s me. Sandy. How are you? I’m back in town. I want to see you.”
But there’d been no response from inside the house.

The next day, she’d tried again.

Still, no response.

After two weeks of secret visits, knocking and identifying herself, she’d finally gotten an answer from the other side of the door.

“Go away,”
the voice had said.

“Agnes? It’s me, Sandy. You remember me, don’t you?”

“I remember
.” Agnes sounded sour about it.

“I want us to be friends again.”

“Get lost.”

“Agnes? What’s wrong?”

“Got no use for you. Run off with the child. He was OURS. You hadn’t got no RIGHT!”

“I bad to leave. We where
... ”

“Don’t wanta hear no excuses
.
Get lost. Go kill yourself.”

After that, Sandy had made no more attempts to contact Agnes.

Maybe Clyde and I can finish this in the tunnel, she thought. Before he gets all the way across to Agnes’s place.

She must really hate me.

I don’t want to see her.

But maybe if we meet face to face...

“Wait up!” someone called from behind Sandy.

She looked back. Two geeky-looking teenaged boys were hurrying along behind her. Following them was a husky young woman in a flannel shirt and jeans. The woman’s face was bleeding.

“Go back,” Sandy said.

“We wanta help you,” said the taller kid.

His chubby friend stared at her and nodded.

“He killed my husband!” blurted the woman.

Two more people rushed into view behind her. A slim, dapper man in a bloody camel sweater and a dazed-looking woman who was clinging to his hand. “Is this a way out?” asked the man.

“No, it’s not,” Sandy said. “Go back to the cellar. All of you. You’re interfering with police business.”

“You a cop?” asked the tall kid.

“I don’t see no badge,” said the chubby one, leering at her breasts.

“Want my sweatahirt?” asked the tall one. He started pulling it up.

“Go!” Sandy shouted. Then she whirled away from them and ran deeper into the tunnel.

To make up for the delay, she picked up her pace. Arms pumping, legs flying out, she ran as fast as she could—too fast for the bends in the tunnel.

If he’s waiting for me around one of these...