The Lamplighters (25 page)

“Don’t run, come back, I won’t hurt you.”

Just his feet now, disappearing through the hole into the crawlspace beyond, or God only knows where. Jessie covered the final distance and dropped to her knees, intent on catching a glimpse of where the frightened, abandoned little lad was going to. As she kneeled there prostrate, peering into the gap, the air seemed to cool around her. A shadow fell, monstrously large, engulfing her. Something large was blocking out the scant light, turning the basement world into that of a photographic negative. Jessie felt suddenly so vulnerable and afraid that she inadvertently whimpered. Blind panic gripped every nerve ending, fear flooding every pore in her skin like coolant. Her eyes searched the filth for something to grab onto, some weapon or totem of defense. But there were no such amulets here. only the piss-stinking rags and tattered detritus of a childhood denied that increased the burden of her despair.

“M… Marla?” The sound of her own voice was hopeful as it rang in her ears. All hope was gone when she finally turned her head to see what was standing over her.

Marla picked herself up off the kitchen floor and dusted herself down. Damn Jessie, damn her all to hell. She’d done the worst thing possible in chasing the boy like that—he was already frightened enough. As she followed the distant clatter of footsteps through the house, Marla recalled seeing the child on the beach. He’d looked like a ghost then. But here he was a real flesh and blood thing, trapped in a big dark house and being chased by a mental American hippy chick half-soaked on ouzo. Marla picked up the pace—it would be better for everyone if she could do the talking.

Reaching the basement, Marla fancied that she heard Jessie’s voice. Not the usual cocky, wisecracking tone, but rather a—whimper? Had she injured herself? Perhaps she’d fallen over on the stairs or tripped in the mess of the cellar. Marla headed down the steps to the basement, taking care not to tumble down them herself, her nose wrinkling at the stagnant cocktail of smells emanating from the depths.

Marla’s eyes adjusted from the gloom of the stairwell to the dark of the basement, pupils widening to admit the scantest extreme of the spectrum. Another whimper. She turned to spy out its source. What she saw there shook her to the core. Jessie was, impossibly, levitating a full two feet off the floor. Her face was horribly contorted and streaked with dark shadows. Marla stood dumbstruck at the sight of her and tried to focus on what she was seeing, her eyes struggling to make sense of the details in the dim light. In what seemed like slow motion, her panicked brain pieced together the jigsaw. The dark streaks on Jessie’s face were rivulets of blood, held in their course by great fingers. Fingers that penetrated the flesh covering Jessie’s skull so Marla could not tell where the fingertips ended and where Jessie began. Even as the horror of the scene dawned on her, Marla saw that Jessie was not floating above the floor as she’d first imagined. The hideous fat fingers that had burrowed their way into her soft face were connected to great hands—as big as shovels—and these in turn were extensions of massive arms, like those of a circus strongman. The hulking form anchoring the weight of Jessie’s helpless body loomed darkly, becoming clearer to Marla’s eyes as it shifted its bulk in the shadows. Jessie looked like a doll in its massive hands. She made a pitiful whimpering, gurgling sound as the red lines of blood quickened from her face into the sinewy network of fleshy guttering that was the man’s hand. Marla took a step back, bile rising in her throat as she did so, and heard her foot scrape noisily against some hard object.
A brick? Did he hear it too?
Eyes, black and shiny as an insect’s, burned their answer at her from the shadows. She felt them on her. The hulking thing had seen her and mortal panic took her breath away. Then, a sickening crack as the shape twisted Jessie’s head in mid-air, snapping her neck as casually as a snap of the fingers. Marla turned and fled, desperate to be rid of the sight of this horror, feeling the sensation of her revulsion at the cellar and its secrets creep through every fiber of her body.

She clambered up the steps and wondered breathlessly how many—no, how
few
seconds would pass until she felt the grip of those foul butcher’s hands on her body.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Thud. Thud. Thud. Mara’s heart pounded inside her body, fit to burst. She’d battered and bruised herself clambering out of the basement in a white panic, bouncing off the walls of the narrow corridor like a pinball before clattering her way back through the games room. She felt no pain from her little injuries, the tidal wave of adrenaline coursing through her body saw to that. All she had was a kind of focus, like someone undergoing hypnosis keeping his or her gaze fixed on a pinpoint of light.
Don’t turn around, don’t turn around, don’t…
was the mantra pulsing in her brain like a drumbeat. And she did not turn around. How could she? Knowing that hulking thing was there in the shadows behind her, probably taking one giant step for every four or five of hers, closing in on her in the darkness with those great hands outstretched. Those hands—she remembered how they looked in the dark, like thick twigs growing out of twisted tree branches—slicked with Jessie’s blood. She pushed through a door into another corridor and it rebounded against the wall making a sharp cracking sound, like that of Jessie’s neck when he—that thing—snapped it so casually.
Don’t turn around! Don’t…

Bang. Bang. Bang. Was that the sound of her heart? Ready to split like a plum and sputter from her chest, utterly spent out of fear and terror and things that go bump in the basement. No, this was a new sound, joining the thudding of her heart in sympathy. Louder now. Bang! Bang! She turned her head towards the perimeter of the room through which she was tumbling and caught sight of the huge metal shutters there. The shutters—that was it. Fowler’s men were trying to break through the shutters! Marla’s face grimaced into what only a madman would recognize as a laugh at this new banging sound—this artificial mockery of her plight. In her mind’s eye she could see them, the men, outside. Under the watchful scorn-filled eye of Chief of Security Fowler they’d be hard at it, chiseling away for all their lives were worth, trying to gain access to the house through its cloak of impenetrable steel. And she’d wanted to keep them
out
. Jessie had put the same fear into her mind, the same paranoia that had warped her all these long months on the island—and for what? To be locked in with the very thing they should have feared most. Whatever that she’d seen in the basement, it was more terrifying than a thousand Fowlers, more awful than a million of his security guards pointing guns at her head. She’d wanted to keep them out.
Idiot!
Now she’d do anything for them to break through the damned shutters and rush in to cuff her and take her away. All the better to be away from this house, to be away from that thing.

Bang! Bang! Bang! What the hell was keeping them? Didn’t they know this house? Know all about its weaknesses? Couldn’t they find that chink in the armor and take advantage of it, peel open the protective skin keeping her from making good her escape. Bang! Bang! Marla skidded to a halt as she reached the foot of the stairs, damp oxygen raw in her throat.
Please don’t turn around
, she thought, but of course she did. She had to know if the monstrous shadow shape was there, ready to finish her before she took her first futile step. Trembling with fear, she took a scant look over her shoulder and saw only the shadows looming behind her. Her nostrils fancied they could smell the metallic taint of Jessie’s blood in the air and the meal she’d eaten earlier rebelled in her stomach, muscles ready to spasm. She swallowed hard and turned her revulsion into momentum, willing her legs into motion and lurching onto the steps. Marla felt numb, catching sight of her faint shadow like that of a puppet in a shadow theater on the wall as she propelled herself up the stairwell.

Each step was an enemy, willing her to fail. Marla pushed on, her breath whistling through clenched teeth. Reaching the first landing felt like a milestone and afforded the opportunity to look behind her once again. Ignoring the voice in her head that pleaded for her
not
to look, Marla glanced over the banister and saw only the stairs winding down into the hallway. Where was her pursuer? Her mind raced, conjuring visions of the monster appearing at the top of the stairs she’d been fighting to climb—cutting her off by way of some secret route. These terrors quickened her panic, but she remained rooted to the spot all the same. Her lungs needed oxygen and her heart needed respite, however brief, and so she stood leaning on the banister daring to catch her breath. The wood was cool and soft beneath her clammy hands. She noticed just how exquisitely carved the banister was for the first time. Devilish details suddenly struck her. Each vertical support was part of the whole, with no discernable join between it and the handrail. Her eye traced the flowing forms carved into the wood, finding suggested physical forms here and there. It was as if the entire banister had been washed up from the beach long ago, swallowing up human swimmers in its wake then settling here in this big house. More driftwood. Movement between the struts caught her eye and she saw a spider crawling into hiding. Good idea. She pushed on toward the top of the stairs.

The air was colder here at the top of the house and the perspiration from her labors began to cool on Marla’s skin. She crept across the landing to the door where she’d left Adam what seemed like an age ago. He’d managed to get the door open and just like he said, there was another door behind it. As she neared the door, Marla whispered Adam’s name. No reply came. She whispered it again, repeating it like a mantra. But all was silent, save the muffled banging of Fowler’s men from far below outside. She pushed against the inner door now with her trembling hand and it slowly swung open, emitting an agonizing creak as it did so. The air beyond smelled musty, old somehow, and there was something else. A sweet smell, like caramelized onions.
Past its “use by” date whatever it is
, thought Marla as her nose wrinkled. She stepped through the door.

“Adam?”

Her whisper was less a question, more a plea for help. But once more her plea went unanswered as she found herself standing alone in a vast attic. A shaft of silver blue moonlight lit the attic via an open skylight at the far end of the room. Sure enough, a broken shutter rattled in the wind, banging against the skylight’s frame—it must have been the source of the banging she and Adam had heard earlier. Where the hell was he? Perhaps he’d wriggled out through the skylight? No. Even if he could fit through such a gap, he wouldn’t just up and leave them here. Or maybe he would after seeing them drunk in the kitchen. Whatever, she was alone up here now and she’d have to decide on her next move before that nightmare thing came back.

The open skylight. She had to check it out, see if it was a viable exit. Dirt and debris lined the floor as far as she could see in the scant moonlight. A lump rose in Marla’s throat as she noticed that many of the floorboards were missing ahead of her. She would have to tread carefully here for fear of falling through the floor. Looking for signs of rotted wood, she began the long walk, treading as gently as she could and clenching her teeth at every creak and groan of the attic floor beneath her feet. Halfway across and the light dipped as clouds swam across the moon. Marla held her arms out, steadying herself like a tightrope walker as she continued across the rotting beams. She tried to ignore the stench. That sickly sweet smell had grown more intense the further she’d traveled across the floor. Then, something round squished beneath her foot. Another object brushed the ankle of her other foot and she almost cried out in fear at the sensation. As she took a reflexive step back, the floorboards seemed to moan, mocking her fear of this new unknown. The clouds drifted aside like a curtain, unveiling the moonlight once more, and now Marla could see exactly where she was standing and what she was standing in. Carcasses littered the floor around her feet. Her astonished eyes could make out the rotting forms of birds, rodents, a cat here and a dog there. That sickly sweetness was the stench of their decomposition, a rank herald of the foulness and rot within their bursting little stomachs. Maggots writhed in the skull cavity of what use to be a parakeet, feasting on the pools of jelly in its eye sockets. Marla bit on the knuckles of her right hand to keep from gagging. Focusing on her closest chance of escape from this hideous attic, Marla looked toward the skylight and to her horror and dismay she could see yet more tiny dead forms lining the roof supports and crossbeams. These animals had been nailed to the wall, or lashed to the wooden beams with wire, furry limbs and slick-feathered wings pinned out in cruel mockery of their anatomy. Whoever, whatever, had created this menagerie had torn the other dead animals limb from limb, breaking their little bodies and splitting them open. But those in the roof space seemed special—totems or offerings to something Marla could scant understand, nor have any desire to. Pinpoints of moonlight reflected in the cold, still eyes of the creatures as she moved past through their graveyard. She felt accused here, part of something dreadful just by walking through it to the other side. The skylight was almost within reach now. Just a couple more steps.

Floorboards creaked, split and cracked beneath her. She was falling. Marla grabbed for the roof beam above her, nails digging into rotting wood. Gaining purchase on the beam, she swung her body weight upward and tucked her knees around the beam, which creaked like the hull of an old boat beneath her weight. She looked down at the floorboards where she’d trodden just seconds ago. They’d fallen away, opening up into a void below. She shifted on the roof beam, inching her way to the skylight and welcoming the cool kiss of night air on her cheek. As she moved out of the path of the beam of moonlight for a moment, she saw a reflection through the hole in the attic floor. Black goggle eyes, looking up at her from a room far beneath. Perhaps a dead animal, fallen down there with the rotten floorboards, poor thing. But then the eyes moved, slowly, deliberately, and Marla knew what was looking at her.