The Midnight Tour

In the darkness, nothing looked very familiar.

On the other hand, it all looked sort of familiar.

The right side of the road was bordered by densely wooded hills. On the left, across the narrow pavement, was a guard rail and a rocky shoreline and the ocean itself. The ocean looked black, but it didn’t go far. Some distance out, maybe a mile or two, it vanished under fog.

The fog stretched across the ocean like a low range of soft, white hills. Under the light of the full moon, it looked whiter than fresh drifts of snow.

Beautiful, Sandy thought.

Not so beautiful when you’re in it, though.

She sure hoped it would stay offshore.

Probably will, she told herself. It’d usually be in by now if it was coming.

She found herself remembering how it had come in during the afternoon that she and her mother were fleeing up the coast highway. The way it had reached up over the edges of the road like the tendrils of a ghostly sea creature testing the pavement, then silently crept all the way up, covering their car and the highway and the hills until all the world seemed gray. Until there was no longer a road to see, and they’d gone off into a ditch.

What if the fog had stayed offshore? Sandy wondered.

We wouldn’t have crashed. Maybe Mom would’ve kept on driving all the way through Malcasa Point. We never would’ve spent the night at the Welcome Inn or gone to Beast House the next day.

And everything would’ve happened differently from then on.

A lot of people might still be alive, she thought. Mom and I might still be together.

Or maybe Dad would’ve caught up to us.

Screw it, she told herself. The fog did come in and we crashed and it all happened and there’s no way to change it. And who’d want to change it, anyway, even if you had the chance?

Dad probably would’ve nailed us. I’d have spent the last three years dead.

There wouldn’t be any Eric, either.

“It’s funny how stuff goes,” she said.

Lib’s only comment was a soft, rumbling snore.

Chapter Twelve

THE DAY TOUR III

“Only sixteen nights,” Maggie said, her voice low and gruff through Owen’s earphones. Then it came after us. It came right up these stairs.”

Several tourists were on their way up the stairs. Owen, Monica and the others at Station Five stepped back a little to let them by as Maggie continued to talk into Owen’s ears.

“It was on the night of May seventh, 1931. Me and Joseph, we were in our bedroom just down the hall. We didn’t use Lilly’s room, as my husband figured it’d bring us bad luck. So we had the room across the hall from it. Our girls were way down at the other end of the hall, in the same room where Lilly’s boys got themselves slaughtered. They didn’t have no problems with it. Fact is, they claimed it was haunted by the little fellers, but liked ’em just fine. Now my little baby, Theodore, he was snug in the nursery. That’s at the end of the hall, too, but over on the right. I keep the door locked and you can’t go in. I don’t let nobody in the nursery. It ain’t part of the tour.

“Anyhow, it’d been a stormy, wet day—May seventh—but the rain slowed down after dark. We had our windows open. I recall how nice and peaceful the rain sounded when I was laying there in bed. I listened to it for a good long time. But it got hard to hear, ‘cause of Joseph’s snoring.

“By and by, I fell asleep, myself. I must’ve been sleeping light, though, ‘cause long about midnight I heard a noise. It sounded like it came from downstairs. Sounded like breaking glass. It was loud enough to wake up Joseph, too. Well, he jumped out of bed real quick and quiet and hurried over here to the chest where he kept his pistol.”

“This portion of the tour,” Janice’s voice broke in, “used to take place in Maggie and Joseph’s bedroom. She would walk over to their dresser, pull open a drawer and take out her husband’s old Colt .45 automatic.”

“This pistol!” Maggie announced gleefully. “Joseph kept the chamber empty, ‘cause of the girls, but he had a clip in it, all right. So he had to work its top like this.” Owen heard a harsh metallic chick-chack, and pictured old Maggie grinning as she jacked a round into the chamber. “It was awful loud, that noise. In the dark, like that. In the silence.

“With his pistol ready, Joseph snuck out into the hallway. I stayed in bed and listened. The rain had stopped by then, and the house was real quiet. I heard Joseph’s footsteps out in the hall. But then he started to go downstairs. That’s when I figured I’d best not just lay there. So I climbed out of bed and went out into the hall. I didn’t much like the notion that me and the children were left alone, you see.”

“At this point,” Janice interrupted, “Maggie put away the pistol and led her group of tourists out of the bedroom and into the hall. She brought them to the top of the stairway, where you are now standing.”

Maggie’s voice returned.

“I was right here when gunshots came from downstairs. BOOM! BOOM! And then Joseph, he let out a scream fit to send shivers up a dead man. Lord, it turned my blood cold. But Joseph, he no sooner quit that awful scream than I heard feet thumping and scratching over the floor downstairs. They were bare feet. I could tell that from the sounds they made. And I could tell they had claws. It was the claws that made the scratching sounds.

“The sounds came from downstairs, but they were rushing closer. And I knew they didn’t belong to Joseph. I thought maybe a bear had got into the house. But I’ve never been so wrong.

“I was scared solid. I stood here at the top of the stairs and I wanted to scream and run down the hall and get the kids out, only I couldn’t move.

“Then the thing was on the stairs. I couldn’t see much of how it looked, on account of the dark, but I saw how it stood upright like a man. It made snorty, laughing noises and hurried up the stairs. I still couldn’t run off, much as I wanted to. And then it got to the top and leaped on me and threw me down on the floor.

“It ripped at me with its claws and teeth. I tried to fight it off, but I didn’t stand a chance. It was so much bigger than me, and stronger than any man I ever seen. I pretty much counted myself a dead person, but all of a sudden my little baby, Theodore, started crying in his nursery. The beast heard him, climbed off me and went scurrying down the hall. It was going after Theodore.

“I was all scratched and bit and bloody, but I got to my feet and chased after it. Had to save my baby.”

Janice’s voice returned. “Maggie now led her tour group down the hall to the closed, locked door of the nursery. It is Station Six...”

Monica clicked off her player, looked Owen in the eyes, and raised her eyebrows.

Owen continued to listen.

“...the last door on the right, directly across from the boys’ room. You may now turn off your tape players and resume listening when you reach the nursery’s open door.”

He shut off his player.

“Beat you again,” Monica said.

“Yes, you did.” He decided to leave it at that.

“So now we have to walk all the way back to the other end of the hall again?”

“Looks that way,” Owen said.

“How stupid is that?” Monica said. “We just came from there.”

“You don’t have to go.”

“What am I supposed to do, wait here?”

“It’s an option. Whatever you want.”

“This is all so incredibly lame. And perverted.”

“Well, I’m sorry. But you don’t have to go through with the rest of it.” Owen didn’t want to start anything, so he tried to sound pleasant and sympathetic. “You obviously aren’t enjoying any of this. Why not just call it quits?