stairs. With a final yank he threw her onto the landing.
“Okay,” he said. “Up.”
She couldn’t force herself to move.
Gorman stepped over her. He planted a foot beside each hip, and clutched her sides. A finger dug into the bullet hole under her arm, stunning her with a bolt of pain. He lifted her. First to her knees. Then to her feet. As she tried to lock her knees, he swung her around and pushed.
She plunged head first. She seemed to fall forever, a scream swelling in her chest as the stairs below drifted up at her. She flung an arm across her face. The arm went numb. The plank it hit burst apart. The top of her head skidded across the next one as her legs flew high and swung down. The edges of planks slammed her back and buttocks and legs. They scraped her back, bumped her head as she slid. Then she came to a stop, her rump on the cellar floor, her back against the stairs.
“My goodness,” said a voice above her. “You fell.”
She brought her head forward, feeling a dim sense of relief that she could move it. Her legs were stretched out across the dirt. They seemed to belong to someone else. A sneaker had been lost in the fall. She wiggled her bare toes.
“But you’re still alive.” She heard footfalls on the stairs. “You must be part cat. Are you part cat, Janice? You’re harder to kill than your mother was. A regular Rasputin.”
Across the cellar, near a stack of bushel baskets, a hand reached out of the ground.
Out of a hole in the cellar floor.
A dead-white hand, smudged with dirt but glistening in the lantern light. A hand with long, hooked claws.
Janice tumbled forward as something—Gorman’s foot?—thrust against her back. Grunting, she sprawled face down.
Gorman rolled her over.
He straddled her, sat on her belly, smiled down at her “Unfortunately,” he said, “you broke your head in the fall.” He gripped both sides of her head. “I’m not sure I’m strong enough for this, but we’ll give it the old college try.”
She drove a fist into his side. He grunted and his face twisted.
“Oh, you’re a tough one.” He started to smile again, but then he looked up and his mouth sprang open. A shadow fell across Janice. The beast stood above her, reaching for Gorman. He sucked in a loud breath and flung out an arm to ward the thing off. His other hand went to his hip. Lifting her head, Janice saw him try to tug a revolver from his front pocket. He jerked the gun free as the beast’s hands clamped the sides of his head. With strength she didn’t know she possessed, Janice flung her right arm across her body, grabbed the rising barrel, and tore the gun from Gorman’s hand.
The beast lifted him by the head. His feet swept past Janice’s face. His shrieks hurt her ears.
She rolled over. Braced on her elbows, she turned the revolver around and cocked it.
The beast still had Gorman by his head. He waved his arms and kicked and screamed as it shook him. Then it flung him against a section of shelves. Wood splintered. He fell sprawling to the floor under an avalanche of jars. “Shoot it!” he cried in a choked voice. He staggered to his feet. He stumbled backwards as the crouching beast lurched closer.
Janice fired.
The slug knocked a leg out from under Gorman.
He flopped onto his back. The beast sprang onto him. He let out a piercing scream as its snout thrust into his groin, snapping and ripping. Soon, he was only whimpering. The beast raised its head and seemed to stare at him for a few moments. Then it scurried up his body, opened its mouth wide, and bit into his face.
Janice watched.
She watched until Gorman no longer groaned and whimpered, until the convulsions stopped shaking him and he lay motionless.
The beast climbed off him. Its body was smeared with Gorman’s blood. It turned toward Janice and stared at her.
Its penis thickened and grew and stood upright.
She fired.
The bullet whined off the stone wall beyond its head. Hunched over, the beast hesitated. Janice aimed at its chest. As she squeezed the trigger, the creature lurched aside. It sprang across the cellar floor toward the tunnel where the other beast lay dead. Janice swung the pistol, fired again and again. Then the hammer fell with a dry clack. The beast vanished into the tunnel.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Tyler stopped abruptly when she heard the sound—a single
“Aye,” said Captain Frank.
She stood motionless in the dark, hanging onto the old man’s hand, and wondered what it might mean. Nora had a pistol, but had left the house and probably wouldn’t be back yet. That left Gorman. Who—or what—had he fired at?
“Trouble back there,” Captain Frank said.
“Yes.”
“Let’s not poke.”
With a nod that he wouldn’t see in the blackness, Tyler pulled his hand and led the way forward. Her shoulder bumped a wall. She stepped to the right, and kept going.
Another gunshot resounded through the tunnel, followed soon by a quick flurry that all ran together and might have been three shots or four.
“Lord,” muttered Captain Frank.
Tyler stood still. She listened for more gunfire, but heard only the thump of her heartbeat and the old man’s quick breathing.
“Strange business,” she said.
His hand was hot and slippery in her grip. She kept hold of it, and started walking again. She swept the pistol from side to side ahead of her, feeling for walls. Her knuckles brushed moist clay. She turned slightly away.
She wished they hadn’t left the Coleman lantern behind.
With light, they would be out of this tunnel by now, not staggering blindly along its twists and curves.
They must be nearing its end.
But the tunnel seemed to stretch on forever.
With Abe in the lead and Jack covering the rear, they had walked the length of the upstairs corridor. Every door was shut. At each of them, Abe pressed himself to the wall and tried the knob. Every door was locked.
At the end of the corridor, he whispered to Jack, “Let’s start by the stairs and smash them open.”
They were halfway back when a door swung open twenty feet ahead. They crouched and took aim.
“We’re comin’ out.” Abe recognized the husky voice of Maggie Kutch. “Don’t shoot us.”
“Come out slowly,” Abe said. “Keep your hands in sight, and they’d better be empty.”
Through the doorway sidestepped a young woman. Maggie, behind her, had a hand around her neck and held a revolver to her head. The woman cradled a baby in her arms. It was silent, but awake and fingering a strap of her nightgown.
“Drop your guns,” Maggie said.
“You drop yours,” Abe said, “and place your hands on top of your head.”
“I’ll shoot her brains out.”
The possibility sickened Abe. Without their weapons, however, they would be at Kutch’s mercy. He had little doubt that she would fire on them the instant they were disarmed.
