nursery. Well, the beast heard it and climbed off me and went scampering down the hall.
“I was hurt bad, but I went chasing after him. I couldn’t let him get my baby.”
She started hobbling down the corridor. Once again, Tyler pressed herself close to the wall to avoid contact with the curtains. There must be bodies inside, she thought. Mutilated corpses of wax.
Just across from the boys’ room, Maggie stopped. She tapped her cane on a closed door to the right. “This stood open,” she said. “I peered inside. There, in the dark…”
“Aren’t we going in?” asked the redhead.
Maggie glared at her. “I never show the nursery.” Then she looked at the door as if she could see through it. “There, in the dark, I saw the pale beast lift my infant from his cradle and tear him asunder. I was watching, numb with horror, when something gave my nightdress a yank. I found Cynthia and Diana behind me. Well, I took a hand of each, and we rushed off. We went this way.”
They followed Maggie through the gap on the other side of the curtains. She stopped at a closed door across the stairway. The group formed a half-circle around her.
“We got this far,” she said, “before the beast leapt into the hall and came after us.” She pulled the door open. Peering into the dim recess, Tyler saw a staircase. The stairs led upward until the darkness consumed them. “We ducked inside here, and I pulled the door shut. It was dark as a pit. I threw open the attic door at the top, and bolted it after us. Then we huddled in the musty blackness.
“We knew the beast was coming. We heard the creaking stairs, and he made quiet hissing sounds like he was laughing. Then he was sniffing at the door. We waited. The girls were sobbing. I can still feel how they both trembled in my arms. Suddenly, the door burst open and the beast fell upon us.”
Maggie eased the door shut. She leaned a shoulder against it, and let out a deep sigh.
“The screams,” she said. “I’ll never forget the screams, the snarls of the beast, the wet ripping sounds as he tore up my two little girls. I fought him until the screams stopped and he had me down. I don’t know why he didn’t kill me, and there’s many a time I wished he had, but he just pinned me to the floor. I was too weak to fight him anymore, and I begged him to end it for me. After a minute, he scampered down the stairs leaving me alone up there with the bodies of my daughters. I never saw him again after that night. But others have.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Janice lay motionless, staring at the mirrored ceiling. Sprawled on top of the pillows, she looked blue and dead like a corpse discarded on a rubbish pile. She was thinking about ways to commit suicide.
So far, she’d come up with a couple of possibilities. The light fixture in the center of the ceiling was about three feet beyond her reach. By stacking pillows, she could get to it. Unscrew the blue bulb. Stick in a finger. Electrocute herself. That would probably work. An easier method, the one she thought she might prefer, was to remove all her bandages and let herself bleed to death. Exploring her wounds, however, she’d found most of them to be superficial, little more than scratches and bites. They weren’t bleeding much. She would have to work them open, or maybe take down that bulb and break it and use its glass like a knife to open her wrists or throat. She could do that.
There was one problem.
She didn’t want to die.
They couldn’t let her go, she was sure of that, but they had bandaged her wounds so they must want her to recover. Why? She could think of only one reason, and it sickened her: they wanted her alive as a plaything for the beast.
Last time, she must have been unconscious. But if it came to her now, she would see it, feel its teeth and claws ripping her, its penis battering into her.
No, don’t think about it. Maybe it won’t happen.
It’ll happen.
She pressed a hand tight against the pad between her legs.
I can’t let it happen, she thought.
I’ve got to escape.
Sure. No sweat. Just break down the door and run like hell.
Little Joni, last summer, had escaped easily enough from that maniac who had them prisoners in the cabin. And Joni’d been tied to a bed. At least I’m not tied up, Janice thought. But the cabin door hadn’t been locked from the outside, either.
They’ll open the door, she realized. They’ll have to. Someone, sooner or later, will come in to check on me, maybe to feed me, or—and the thought chilled her—to let in the beast.
When that door opened, she would get her chance.
But she had to be ready.
She rolled herself off the pillows, groaning as the movement awakened streaks and waves of pain. Crawling on her knees, she dragged several of the large pillows to the center of the room. She stacked them. As she pushed herself up to climb atop them, she realized that the bulb would be searing hot. She limped over to where she had been resting, and picked up another pillow. Its case felt like satin. She yanked, splitting one of the seams, and shook out the foam rubber stuffing. With her right hand wrapped in the slick fabric, she returned to the waist-high stack.
She stepped onto the top. Her foot sank in, mashing deep. Arms out for balance, she leaned in, brought up her other foot, and straightened herself. The pillows wobbled under her. She teetered for a moment, then was steady.
With her covered hand, she reached up and gripped the blue bulb. She felt its warmth through the layers of satin. She twisted it. The bulb turned easily, and went out.
Not a shred of light entered the room to relieve the total blackness. Janice kept unscrewing the bulb, but the dark disoriented her. Though she tried to stand motionless, the pillows seemed to be shifting slowly under her feet. She swayed. Only her gentle hold on the bulb kept her from losing all sense of direction and falling.
It came loose in her hand.
Quickly, she took a blind leap forward. She seemed to drop for a very long time as if plunging into an abyss. Finally, the floor pounded her feet. Windmilling, she fell backwards. The floor slammed her rump. The back of her head and shoulders toppled the pillows. She writhed against them as pain surged through her body.
Good one, she thought. You probably opened up everything with that stunt.
But she felt proud. There was a ripple of excitement under the pain.
Smart move.
Smart, all right. Now you’ve got a weapon.
She waited until the pain subsided a little, then crawled on her knees through the dark. After a long while, she bumped a wall. The door, she thought, should be over that way—somewhere to the left.
She didn’t want broken glass where she would be waiting. Carefully, she unwrapped the bulb. It was still warm, but not too hot to handle. Gripping the base, she rapped its glass gently against the wall. Then harder. It burst with a pop that sounded very loud in the silence. Sliding her fingers up the neck, she felt a jagged rim.
She eased sideways. One hand on the wall, she made her way slowly through the darkness until she found the door. She sat down beside it. She leaned her back against the wall, drew up her knees, and waited.
From somewhere not far away came a sound like the cry of a baby. Maybe a cat, she thought. What does the beast sound like? No, it sounded too much like a human baby to be anything else. After a few moments, it stopped. The house returned to silence.
Janice frowned. A baby? Maggie Kutch was far too old to be its mother. Could it be, she wondered, that she was not the only prisoner in the house?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Twenty years went by,” Maggie said, “before the beast struck again.”
They were back inside the bedroom Maggie had shared with her husband. She was standing beside the red curtains that blocked one corner, a hand on the pullcord.
