The House of Thunder (7 page)
But that had been thirteen years ago. In the meantime, she had taken precautions to be sure he would not find her when he got out of prison. She had long ago stopped looking over her shoulder.
And now here he was.
He looked down at her as she sat helpless in the wheelchair, and she saw recognition flicker in his wintry eyes. In spite of the years that had passed, in spite of the emaciation that had altered her appearance in the last three weeks, he knew who she was.
She wanted to bolt out of the chair and run. She was rigid with fear; she couldn’t move.
Only a second or two had passed since the elevator doors had opened, yet it seemed as if she had been confronting Harch for at least a quarter of an hour. The usual flow of time had slowed to a sludgelike crawl.
Harch smiled at her. To anyone but Susan, that smile might have appeared innocent, even friendly. But she saw hatred and menace in it.
Ernest Harch had been the pledge master in the fraternity that Jerry Stein had wanted to join. Ernest Harch had killed Jerry. Not by accident. Deliberately. In cold blood. In the House of Thunder.
Now, still smiling, he winked at Susan.
The fear-induced paralysis relaxed its tight grip on her, and somehow she found the strength to push up from the wheelchair, onto her feet. She took one step, trying to turn away from Harch, trying desperately to run, and she heard Mrs. Baker call out in surprise. She took a second step, feeling as if she were walking underwater, and then her legs buckled, and she started to fall, and someone caught her just in time.
As everything began to spin and wobble and grow dark, she realized that Ernest Harch was the one who had caught her. She was in his arms. She looked up into his face, which was as big as the moon.
Then for a while there was only darkness.
4
“In danger?” McGee said, looking puzzled.
At the foot of the bed, Mrs. Baker frowned.
Susan was trying hard to remain calm and convincing. She possessed sufficient presence of mind to know that a hysterical woman was never taken seriously—especially not a hysterical woman recuperating from a head injury. There was a very real danger that she would appear to be confused or suffering from delusions. It was vital that Jeffrey McGee believe what she was going to tell him.
She had awakened in bed, in her hospital room, only a few minutes after fainting in the corridor. When she came to, McGee was taking her blood pressure. She had patiently allowed him to examine her before she had told him that she was in danger.
Now he stood beside the bed, one hand on the side rail, leaning forward a bit, a stethoscope dangling from his neck. “In danger from what?”
“That man,” Susan said.
“What man?”
“The man who stepped out of the elevator.”
McGee glanced at Mrs. Baker.
The nurse said, “He’s a patient here.”
“And you think he’s somehow dangerous?” McGee asked Susan, still clearly perplexed.
Nervously fingering the collar of her pajama top, Susan said, “Dr. McGee, do you remember what I told you about an old boyfriend of mine named Jerry Stein?”
“Of course I remember. He was the one you were almost engaged to.”
Susan nodded.
“The one who died in a fraternity hazing,” McGee said.
“Ah, no,” Mrs. Baker said sympathetically. This was the first that she had heard about Jerry. “That’s a terrible thing.”
Susan’s mouth was dry. She swallowed a few times, then said, “It was what the fraternity called a ‘humiliation ritual.’ The pledge had to withstand intense humiliation in front of a girl, preferably his steady date, without responding to his tormentors. They took Jerry and me to a limestone cavern a couple of miles from the Briarstead campus. It was a favorite place for hazing rituals; they were fond of dramatic settings for their damned silly games. Anyway, I didn’t want to go. Right from the start, I didn’t want to be a part of it. Not that there was anything threatening about it. The mood was light-hearted at first, playful. Jerry was actually looking forward to it. But I suppose, on some deep subliminal level, I sensed an undercurrent of ... malice. Besides, I suspected the fraternity brothers in charge of the hazing had been drinking. They had two cars, and I didn’t want to get into either one, not if a drunk was driving. But they reassured me, and finally I went with them because Jerry wanted in the fraternity so badly. I didn’t want to be a spoiler.”
She looked out the window at the lowering September sky. A wind had risen, stirring the branches of the tall pines.
She hated talking about Jerry’s death. But she had to tell McGee and Mrs. Baker everything, so that they would understand why Ernest Harch posed a very real, very serious threat to her.
She said, “The limestone caverns near Briarstead College are extensive. Eight or ten underground rooms. Maybe more. Some of them are huge. It’s a damp, musty, moldy place, though I suppose it’s paradise to a spelunker.”
Gently urging her on, McGee said, “Caverns that large must be a tourist attraction, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of them.”
“Oh, no, they haven’t been developed for tourism,” Susan said. “They’re not like the Carlsbad Caverns or the Luray Caverns or anything like that. They’re not pretty. They’re all gray limestone, dreary as Hell. They’re big, that’s all. The largest cave is about the size of a cathedral. The Shawnee Indians gave that one a name: ‘House of Thunder.’”
“Thunder?” McGee asked. “Why?”
“A subterranean stream enters the cave high in one corner and tumbles down a series of ledges. The sound of the falling water echoes off the limestone, so there’s a continuous rumbling in the place.”
The memory was still far too vivid for her to speak of it without feeling the cold, clammy air of the cavern. She shivered and pulled the blankets across her outstretched legs.
McGee’s gaze met hers. In his eyes there was understanding and compassion. She could see that he knew how painful it was for her to talk about Jerry Stein.
The same expression was in Mrs. Baker’s eyes. The nurse looked as if she might rush around to the side of the bed and give Susan a motherly hug.
Again, McGee gently encouraged her to continue her story. “The humiliation ritual was held in the House of Thunder?”
“Yeah. It was night. We were led into the cavern with flashlights, and then several candles were lit and placed on the rocks around us. There were just Jerry, me, and four of the fraternity brothers. I’ll never forget their names or what they looked like. Never. Carl Jellicoe, Herbert Parker, Randy Lee Quince ... and Ernest Harch. Harch was the fraternity’s pledge master that year.”
Outside, the day was rapidly growing darker under a shroud of thunderheads. Inside, the blue-gray shadows crawled out of the corners and threatened to take full possession of the hospital room.
As Susan talked, Dr. McGee switched on the bedside lamp.
“As soon as we were in the caverns, as soon as the candles had been lit, Harch and the other three guys pulled out flasks of whiskey. They had been drinking earlier. I was right about that. And they continued to drink all through the hazing. The more they drank, the uglier the whole scene got. At first they subjected Jerry to some funny, pretty much innocent teasing. In fact, everyone was laughing at first, even Jerry and me. Gradually, however, their taunting became nastier ... meaner. A lot of it was obscene, too. Worse than obscene. Filthy. I was embarrassed and uneasy. I wanted to leave, and Jerry wanted me to get out of there, too, but Harch and the others refused to let me have a flashlight or a candle. I couldn’t find my way out of the caverns in pitch blackness, so I had to stay. When they started needling Jerry about his being Jewish, there wasn’t any humor in them at all, and that was when I knew for sure there was going to be trouble, bad trouble. They were all obviously drunk by then. But it wasn’t just the whiskey talking. Oh, no. Not the whiskey alone. You could see that the prejudice—the
hatred—
wasn’t just an act. Harch and the others—but especially Ernest Harch—had a streak of anti-Semitism as thick as sludge in a sewer.
hatred—
wasn’t just an act. Harch and the others—but especially Ernest Harch—had a streak of anti-Semitism as thick as sludge in a sewer.
“Briarstead wasn’t a particularly sophisticated place,” Susan continued. “There wasn’t the usual cultural mix. There weren’t many Jews on campus, and there weren’t any in the fraternity that Jerry wanted to join. Not that the fraternity had a policy against admitting Jews or anyone else. There had been a couple of Jewish members in the past, though none for the last several years. Most of the brothers wanted Jerry in. It was only Harch and his three cronies who were determined to keep him out. They planned to make Hazing Month so rough for him, so utterly intolerable, that he would withdraw his application before the month was over. The humiliation ritual in the House of Thunder was to be the start of it. They didn’t really intend to kill Jerry. Not in the beginning, not when they took us to the cavern, not when they were at least half sober. They just wanted to make him feel like dirt. They wanted to rough him up a little bit, scare him, let him know in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t welcome. The verbal abuse escalated to physical abuse. They stood in a circle around him, shoving him back and forth, keeping him off balance. Jerry wasn’t a fool. He realized this wasn’t any ordinary hazing ritual. He wasn’t a wimp, either. He couldn’t be intimidated easily. When they shoved him too hard, he shoved back—which only made them more aggressive, of course. When they wouldn’t stop shoving, Jerry hit Harch in the mouth and split the bastard’s lip.”
“And that was the trigger,” McGee said.
“Yes. Then all hell broke loose.”
Thunder grumbled again, and the hospital lights flickered briefly, and Susan had the strange, disquieting notion that some supernatural force was trying to carry her back in time, back to the waterfall roar and the darkness of the cavern.
She said, “Something about the mood of that place—the bone-deep chill, the dampness, the darkness, the steady roar of the waterfall, the sense of isolation—made it easier for the savage in them to come out. They beat Jerry ... beat him to the floor and kept on beating him.”
She trembled. The trembling became a more violent quivering; the quivering grew into a shudder of revulsion and of remembered terror.
“It was as if they were wild dogs, turning on an interloper from a strange pack,” she said shakily. “I ... I screamed at them ... but I couldn’t stop them. Finally, Carl Jellicoe seemed to realize that he’d gone too far, and he backed away. Then Quince, then Parker. Harch was the last to get control of himself, and he was the first to realize they were all going to wind up in prison. Jerry was unconscious. He was ...”
Her voice cracked, faltered.
It didn’t seem like thirteen years; it seemed almost like yesterday.
“Go on,” McGee said quietly.
“He was ... bleeding from the nose ... the mouth ... and from one ear. He’d been very badly hurt. Although he was unconscious, he kept twitching uncontrollably. It looked like there might have been nerve or brain damage. I tried to ...”
“Go on, Susan.”
“I tried to get to Jerry, but Harch pushed me out of the way, knocked me down. He told the others that they were all going to go to prison if they didn’t do something drastic to save themselves. He said that their futures had been destroyed, that they had no real future at all ... unless they covered up what they’d done. He tried to convince them that they had to finish Jerry off and then kill me, too, and dump our bodies down one of the deep holes in the cavern floor. Jellicoe, Parker, and Quince were half sobered up by the shock of what they’d done, but they were still half drunk, too, and confused and scared. At first they argued with Harch, then agreed with him, then had second thoughts and argued again. They were afraid to commit murder, yet they were afraid
not
to. Harch was furious with them for being so wishy-washy, and he suddenly decided to
force
them to do what he wanted by simply giving them no other choice. He turned to Jerry and he ... he...”
not
to. Harch was furious with them for being so wishy-washy, and he suddenly decided to
force
them to do what he wanted by simply giving them no other choice. He turned to Jerry and he ... he...”
She felt sick, remembering.
McGee held her hand.
Susan said, “He kicked Jerry ... in the head ... three times ... and caved in one side of his skull.”
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