backward, slamming him to the hallway floor. He jammed the gun muzzle against its side and shot. Another screaming howl. Then the weight was off him. He rolled to his stomach. The flashlight was still in his left hand. He found the white thing lunging at Larry, though two holes in its back poured blood. Larry raised the machete high. A sweeping arm caught the side of his face and raked the skin off. The machete fell.
Dropping the flashlight, Jud pulled the knife he’d taken from Roy. He scurried forward. In the dark, he saw the dim figure of the beast swing around, clutching Larry. Jud sidestepped. As his foot passed through space, he knew that he’d overstepped the top of the stairway. He dropped his knife and tumbled into the darkness. 4.
Donna listened, aghast, to the muffled outcries and gunshots coming from the house. She glanced down at Sandy. The girl stood transfixed, mouth gaping. At the crash of glass, she swung her eyes to the house in time to see a window of Maggie’s bedroom explode as a body burst through it, head first.
No, not a body. The wax figure of Larry Maywood.
Moonlight glowed on the white hair of the plunging man. Another figure tumbled through the window. She watched it spin, its arms and legs frozen, and knew this one was only wax. Larry’s scream stopped with the first thud of impact.
Without a word, Donna shoved open the low wooden gate and pulled Sandy behind her to the car. “Inside. Get inside.”
“But Mom!”
“Do it!”
As Sandy got into the car, Donna hurried to the rear. She opened the trunk. Leaning in, she pulled a road flare out of its wrapper. She stuffed it into her rear pocket. Then she unzipped a leather case and slipped out Jud’s rifle. She slammed the trunk lid. Pushing the rifle bolt forward, she watched a long, pointed cartridge slide into the chamber. She forced the bolt down and rushed to Sandy’s window.
“Keep the doors locked and windows up till I get back.”
The girl gazed as if her mind were far away, but she locked the door and began rolling up her window.
Donna ran for the ticket booth. 5.
Halfway down the stairs, where Jud lay clutching a baluster, he heard the smash of glass and Larry’s scream. Jud started climbing. The white creature appeared above him. It leaped. He fired once, point blank, before the claws hit his hand and tore the gun away. With an anguished screech, the creature shoved past Jud. It staggered down the stairs. Leaning over the bannister, Jud saw its pale shape moving toward the kitchen.
He hurried to the top of the stairs. Patting the floor near the bodies of Roy and the first beast, he found his flashlight. He turned it on. By its light, he found Larry’s machete. He ran up the corridor to Maggie’s bedroom. His light showed a broken window beyond the toppled, papier-mache screen. Then it picked up a headless torso. He was crouching over the body when he realized it was only the wax figure of Tom Bagley, Larry’s boyhood friend.
Jud ran to the window and looked down. Two sprawled bodies on the ground. A woman kneeling by one.
Donna.
“Is he alive?”
Donna’s face tilted up. “Jud, are you okay?”
“Fine,” he lied. “Is Larry alive?”
“I don’t know.”
“For God’s sake, get help. Get him a doctor. An ambulance.”
“Are you coming down?”
“I’m going after the beast.”
“No!”
“Get Larry help.” He pushed himself away from the window and crossed the room to the dresser. Shoving the machete under his belt, he tugged the top drawer open. The dead husband’s Colt .45 automatic was just where Maggie had left it. Depressing a button, he dropped its empty clip. He took the oversized, twenty-shot clip from his pocket and rammed it up the handle. It locked into place. Priming a cartridge into the chamber, he ran from the room.
In the corridor, he stepped over the bodies and rushed downstairs. He ran into the kitchen. His flashlight picked up blood on the floor. He followed its trail to the pantry, through an open door, and down a flight of steep wooden stairs to the cellar.
The moist cellar air was chilly and smelled of earth. Sweeping the area with light, he saw stacks of bushel baskets, shelves laden with dusty canning jars. Out of curiosity, he abandoned the trail of blood and stepped closer to the baskets. Behind them, just as described in Lilly Thorn’s diary, he found a hole in the dirt floor.
He returned to the dark blood spots on the dirt and followed them to the right where they stopped in front of an upright steamer trunk set flush against the wall. He saw quickly that the trunk was latched shut. The beast couldn’t have hidden itself inside.
Two gunshots came, faint with distance. For a moment, he worried. Then he realized that Donna must have fired his rifle to draw attention, to draw the police and help for Larry.
Setting his flashlight on the dirt floor to the right of the trunk, he tucked the Colt into a pocket of his parka. He slipped his fingers between the trunk and the wall, and pulled. With a gritty scraping sound, the trunk came away from the wall. A rope handle dangled from the back of the trunk. The rope was dark with wet blood.
Where the wall should have been, Jud found a tunnel. Picking up the flashlight, he entered it. 6.
Realizing that Larry was dead, Donna ran to the front door of the house. She used two shots to blast apart the lock of the door. Even then, she had to throw her shoulder against the solid wood several times to smash it open. She stepped into the entry hall. “Jud?” she called.
She heard no answer. She heard no sound at all. She called him again, louder this time. Still, no answer came.
Slinging the rifle over her shoulder, she slid the road flare out of her rear pocket. She twisted off its cap. Reversing the cap, she rubbed its striking surface against the end of the flare. At first, there was only a spark. On the second stroke, the flare sputtered to life, its brilliant blue-white tongue casting a glow that lit the entry hall and much of the stairway. Slowly, she climbed the stairs. She continued climbing, even when the light of her flare illuminated the bodies at the top: Roy face down, the nape of his neck mauled to red pulp; a strange white creature on Roy’s back. When she saw the stump of its neck, she gagged. Turning away, she threw up.
Then she resumed climbing. She reached the top of the stairs and stepped over the bodies. She walked down the corridor to Maggie’s bedroom, took one step inside, and called out, “Jud!” She crossed the hall to Lilly’s room, and again called to him. Again, she got no answer.
She returned to the head of the stairs. Even with the beast lying dead at her feet, she felt an icy reluctance to venture down the corridor to the other rooms. “Jud!” she yelled. “Where are you?”
When no answer came, she walked quickly down the narrow hall. She shoved aside two of the Brentwood chairs marking the future Ziegler exhibit. At the far end, she stepped into the room to her left. The flare cast fluttering light on the walls, the rocking horse, the twin beds, and the wax figures of Lilly Thorn’s slaughtered children. “Jud?” she asked quietly. Nothing in the room stirred.
Crossing the hall, she twisted the knob of the nursery door. When it didn’t give, she remembered Maggie saying it was always kept locked. She kicked it twice. “Jud?” Then she muttered, “Damn it.” She looked for a safe place to put the flare. Crouching, she propped it against the wall. The wallpaper began to blacken and curl. Standing, she unslung the rifle and shot through the crack where the lock tongue entered the jamb. She recocked it. Then she nudged the door with her shoulder. Feeling it give, she picked up the flare. She slung the rifle over her shoulder and shoved open the nursery door.
“Jud?” she called. She stepped into the room. Her flare lit an empty cradle, a playpen, a doll house nearly as high as her waist. It also lit buckets, a mop, three brooms, a carpet sweeper, and a table littered with sponges,
