The Midnight Tour

Dana raised her flashlight, swept it here and there, and found the dangling light fixture. “Here we go.”

Tuck dragged the trunk into position directly beneath the fixture, then climbed up.

Dana shined her flashlight on the jagged remains of the bulb. “Careful you don’t cut yourself.”

“Have you got a rag?” Tuck asked.

Dana plucked a handful of fabric out of the left front pocket of her shorts. Too late, she realized it was Warren’s underwear—her souvenir from last night in his car. She handed it to Tuck, anyway.

Holding the good bulb in her mouth, Tuck balled up the underwear. She held the fixture with one hand. With the other, she shoved the bunched briefs up against the sharp remains of the broken bulb.

As she twisted it, Professor Bixby stepped closer to watch.

The base came loose. Tuck tossed it away, handed the underwear down to Dana, then took the fresh bulb out of her mouth. Twisting it into the fixture, she said, “This is how many tour guides it takes to screw in a light bulb.”

Suddenly, the bulb flared to life, filling the cellar with light.

“Good show!” Bixby proclaimed.

Dana shut off her flashlight and looked around. She saw Phil dead on the dirt floor just behind the tunnel hole, his throat ripped open. No sign of his wife, Connie. No sign of Andy or Alison Lawrence, either. Eleanor was on her knees, stuffing her folded tennis sweater underneath the head of her husband, Biff. He’d been ripped down the chest. His knit shirt was shredded and bloody, but he was conscious.

Dennis and Arnold seemed to be missing.

Off to the right, Owen lay facedown, bare to the waist. Vein’s black leather jacket was spread on the floor underneath him. Darke, on her knees beside him, used both hands to press a cloth against his back—probably his own shirt. She held a red-handled pocket knife in her teeth.

A few feet away from them, Vein had Monica pinned to the floor. In black satin bra, leather short-shorts and boots, Vein sat on top of Monica like a punk Dracula groupie, pressing a knife to her throat.

“Vein?” Dana called. “What’s going on?”

“She stabbed Owen.”

“Who stabbed him?”

“Monica.”

Darke met Dana’s eyes. Unable to talk because of the knife in her mouth, she nodded her head up and down.

“I did not,” Monica protested. “They’re lying bitches. She stabbed him. She was jealous!”

“He’s hurt pretty badly,” Vein explained. “We need to get him to a hospital.”

Tuck jumped down from the trunk. “Whatever the hell Clyde did upstairs—other than locking us in—I’m damn sure he didn’t call for an ambulance or cops. If we can’t bust the door open, we’d better...”

Tuck’s voice stopped.

Heads turned.

From somewhere down the Kutch tunnel came a chain of gunfire. Muffled and far away, the shots crashed together so fast they almost sounded like heavy cloth or canvas being ripped down the middle.

“Holy shit,” Tuck said.

“What is that?” Dana asked.

Bixby, eyes wide behind his glasses, said, “Machine gun.”

“That can’t be good,” Tuck muttered.

The weapon went silent.

“Could Eve’s gun sound like that?” Dana asked.

Bixby shook his head. “If you mean the nude lady with the pistol, I’m afraid not.”

Tuck stared at the entrance to the Kutch tunnel. “Eve’ll be okay,” she said. “Nothing can stop her.”

Suddenly leaping away from her injured husband, Eleanor blurted, “We’ve gotta get out of here!” and raced up the stairs.

“Can’t get out that way,” Tuck called to her. “The door’s locked.”

“Maybe we should go see what happened with Eve,” Dana suggested.

“Where’d everybody else go?” Tuck asked.

“I don’t know.”

“They went chasing after Eve,” Bixby explained. “Oh, perhaps half a dozen of them. Including those teenagers.”

From the direction of the Kutch tunnel came a single, quick bam!

A smile spread across Tuck’s face. “That was Eve’s gun,” she said.

They listened for more shots.

And heard a low grumbling noise that sounded very much like the growl of a vicious dog. But it didn’t seem to be coming from the Kutch tunnel.

It came from somewhere in the cellar.

Dana twisted around.

Out of the hole in the floor protruded a hairless, snouted head. It swung from side to side, pale blue eyes darting about.

Tuck yelled, “SHIT!”.

This can’t be happening, Dana thought. Clyde was the beast.

Who’s THIS?

The shiny white mouth writhed as it bared its teeth.

And Dana knew this wasn’t anyone in a beast suit.

She felt herself shrivel inside.

This had to be the creature that savaged Warren, that snatched Eve and ripped and fucked her and left her handcuffed in its lair—that devoured those other two poor people.

No. Eve’s beast was Clyde. It bad to be. The cigarette stink, the keys...

As if it were in no hurry at all, the creature began to climb out of the hole.

“What’s going on down there?” Eleanor called from the stairway.

“We’ve got a beast,” Tuck said. She sounded strangely calm.

'I say,” Bixby muttered.

“A what?” asked Eleanor.

In a loud, firm voice, Tuck said, “Tine to scram, everyone! Go for the Kutch tunnel! Run like hell!”

Bixby twisted around and raced for the Kutch tunnel.

Eleanor came rushing down the stairs, tennis skirt flouncing around her thighs.

Darke let the knife fall from her mouth. “I can’t leave Owen..”

“Stay put,” Vein said. “You, too,” she told Monica as she climbed off. Knife in hand, she turned toward the rising beast.

Suddenly free, Monica scurried up and dashed for the Kutch tunnel.

Vein whirled, flipped her knife and caught it by the blade, then cocked back her arm to throw it.

“No!” Darke yelled. “Don’t! You’ll lose your knife!”

Vein lowered her arm.

Monica sprinted into the tunnel, Eleanor racing in dose behind her.

The beast now stood on the cellar floor in front of the hole, flexing its claw-tipped fingers as its head turned slowly. It seemed to be studying each of the four women. Its growl sounded like a loud, rumbling purr.

Clyde’s suit had been a good replica.

But this was no costume; this was skin. Snow-white skin that rippled with muscles, that gleamed with a sheen of slime. The teeth of this creature were yellow. The mouth drooled.

Unlike Clyde’s suit, it had no permanent erection.

The erection grew as the creature stood there, eyeing the women. Grew longer and longer, thickening and rising.

It had the mouth, all right.

The shaft pointed at Tuck. The mouth bared its teeth and flicked its forked tongue at her.