He looked at Gia again. 'Come on. I'll be right at your side, holding on to you.'
'Damn right you will,' she muttered. She shuddered, then straightened. 'All right, let's go. But if it's awful, we get out of here, promise? We head home and we never come back.'
'Promise.'
They moved like Siamese twins, edging down the hall hip to hip, avoiding the blood on the floor. Stepped into the kitchen, then made the turn and stopped at the top of the cellar steps. A single bulb lit the narrow stairwell. A two-inch railing ran along the right wall. Below, near the bottom steps, he could see Lyle and Charlie, their postures tense, hunched, as they stared into the basement. The steps made a turn where they stood, putting the basement out of Jack's line of sight.
'I'll go first,' he said, and started down. He felt Gia close enough behind him to be riding piggyback, a hand on each of his shoulders, squeezing. He steadied himself by gripping the wobbly railing.
Below, the Kenton brothers looked up at him. Lyle's face was tight with strain, Charlie's was slack and beaded with sweat. They looked like frightened kids. Jack wondered what could put these two grown men in such a state.
A few more steps and he found out.
'Holy...'
'Oh, dear God!' Gia said into his ear and she leaned against him and peered over his shoulder.
The basement floor was awash in bright red liquid. It rose to the level of the bottom stair tread and lapped at the one above it. And it moved, circulating in a slow, counterclockwise rotation.
Jack said, 'That's not...'
'Damn right it is,' Lyle said. 'Can't you smell it?'
Gia's fingers suddenly turned into talons, digging into Jack's shoulders.
'There's someone in there!' she cried.
Jack leaned forward, squinting at the surface of the red lake. 'Where?'
'There!' An arm speared over his right shoulder, finger pointing. 'Dear God, don't you see it? Right there! A hand, reaching up from the surface! It's a child! That little girl! She's in there!'
'What you talking 'bout?' Charlie said. 'Ain't nobody in there.'
Jack had to agree. Barely a ripple on the surface from wall to wall.
'I don't see anything either, Gi.'
'Are you all blind?' Her voice was taking on a panicky tone. 'That little girl is drowning! There's her arm, reaching up for help! Can't you see it? For God's sake, somebody grab it! Please!'
Lyle turned to her. 'I don't see a thing. I'm not saying you're not, okay, but even if somebody were in here, it's only a foot deep, tops.'
Her eyes wild, Gia began trying to squeeze past Jack. 'I can't stand this, Jack! I've got to do something!'
Jack wouldn't let her pass. 'Gia, no. We don't know what's going down here, and you're too close already.' He didn't know what effect whatever was happening might have on the baby.
'Jack-'
'You know what I'm talking about. You shouldn't-'
'The level's rising!' Charlie cried.
Jack turned and saw that the blood had reached the tread of the next to last step.
'Let's all back up a little,' Lyle said.
But as he stepped up, his foot slipped. He let out a startled cry as he fell back, arms out, one hand clawing for purchase on the wall, the other reaching for his brother. But Charlie had turned his back and by the time he responded it was too late.
With pinwheeling arms, Lyle hit the pool and sank from sight. Charlie shouted and crouched to jump in after him, but Jack reached out and grabbed his shoulder.
'Wait!'
Jack stared in mute shock at the crimson froth where Lyle had disappeared.
What the hell? Even though the level continued its rise, faster than ever now, the pool couldn't be more than two feet deep. And was it his imagination or was the blood circulating faster too?
Seconds later Lyle broke the surface, splashing and gasping, his head and face coated with blood.
'Praise God!' Charlie cried. He gripped the rickety railing with one hand and leaned out over the pool, reaching with his other. 'Get up here!'
But Lyle continued to splash about, trying to shake the blood out of his eyes as the flow pulled him away from the stairs.
'Lyle!' Jack called. 'Stand up!'
'Can't! Floor's gone! No bottom!'
'Jack!' Gia said. 'The little girl-I don't see her arm anymore! She's gone!'
The blood was lapping at the fourth step now. The flow had rotated Lyle to the far side of the cellar, and as Jack watched he saw an eddying depression begin to form in the center of the blood. The velocity of the rotation accelerated.
'A whirlpool!' Charlie shouted. He leaned further out over the blood, stretching his arms, reaching toward his brother. 'Lyle! Grab hold when you come 'round!'
A bottomless whirlpool of blood, Jack thought. Turning counterclockwise. With the level rising instead of falling. In a cellar in Queens.
Not the weirdest sight he'd ever seen, not by a long shot, but he knew of only one thing that could be behind something like this.
He'd deal with that later. Right now he had to get Lyle out of that pool and Gia out of this house.
He gripped Charlie's arm as Lyle started to float toward them. 'I've got you. Grab him as he comes by.'
But as Lyle rotated their way, the sucking center of the whirlpool pulled him closer to it and further from the walls. He tried to swim toward Charlie's outstretched hand; Jack could see the desperation in his blood-soaked features as he reached for it, heard his cry of dismay as his fingers fell short by inches and he swirled away.
'Swim!' Charlie shouted. 'Swim toward the walls!'
Jack could see Lyle struggling in the thick fluid, doing a crude dog-paddle. He was a lousy swimmer.
'Can't!' he gasped. 'Current's too strong!'
'We need rope!' Jack told Charlie. 'Got any?'
'Rope?' Charlie's panic seemed to ease as he concentrated on the question. 'No... we've got string but-'
'Never mind,' Jack said. The solution had been right in his hand. He turned to Gia. 'I need you to go back up to the kitchen for a minute.'
'I'm not leaving-'
'Just stand in the doorway. Please. I need you out of the stairwell to do this. Hurry. We may not get another shot.'
She turned and padded back to the top step and turned, watching him with frightened eyes. Jack followed her a few steps, then grabbed the railing with both hands.
'Charlie-help me rip this out of the wall.'
Charlie frowned, then brightened. 'Right!'
Ten seconds later Jack was easing toward the red pool with the ten-foot railing in his hands. The blood had risen past the halfway mark on the walls and was moving faster. Lyle had rounded the far side of the whirlpool and was coming their way again, but now he was even closer to the black-hole center.
'Quick!' Jack said to Charlie as he stepped onto a blood-covered step. His stomach clenched-it was warm. 'Grab my belt so I don't go in too.'
'Oh, Jack, please be careful!' Gia called from above.
With Charlie steadying him from behind, Jack gripped one end of the railing and thrust the other toward Lyle as he swirled by. The far end struck the surface, splashing blood into Lyle's face. He whipped his arms about blindly, slapping his hands on the surface, grasping only air. Jack leaned farther out and felt a tearing pain in his right flank but kept trying to steady the railing against the current and push it closer to Lyle. He hoped he hadn't popped his stitches.
