the front seat, throwing himself against the rolled-up windows, barking and snarling.
Someone had locked Hangtown’s dog in the car, and the normally mellow German shepherd was totally beside himself, a hundred and twenty savage pounds of fangs and muscles. Mitch didn’t know why he’d been locked up. But he wasn’t going to let him out. Not the way he was acting.
The front door to the house was wide open.
Mitch proceeded inside, calling out Takai’s name, calling out Hangtown’s name, listening, hearing nothing in response. No sound at all except for his own heart pounding in his chest. Dripping wet, he headed straight for the phone in the kitchen to call for help. Des. He would call Des. He picked up the phone and was starting to punch in the numbers when he realized it was dead. Nothing but stone-cold silence greeted his ear.
The line was out. Someone had made sure it was out.
Mitch did have a cell phone for emergencies, but in his mad haste he had left it in his truck. He was standing there in the big farm kitchen thinking seriously about going back for it when he heard the scream.
It was a woman’s scream. A scream of absolute terror. No time for phone calls. Only time to do something. The scream had come from the direction of the living room. Mitch started that way… Only now he could hear footsteps running directly overhead. Doors slamming. A cackling of maniacal laughter. Another scream-this time it seemed to be coming from the basement.
The passageways. They were in Hangtown’s secret passageways.
He grabbed a flashlight from the counter and dashed into the living room, trying to remember which suit of armor activated which hidden door. And exactly where that damned trapdoor in the floor was. He was not anxious to take another wild funhouse ride down to the cellar. Bracing himself, Mitch took a deep breath and raised the right gauntlet of one of the suits… and the trapdoor immediately dropped open right next to his feet. Greatly relieved, he lifted the visor on the other suit, opening the bookcase next to the fireplace. He barged through it into the utter darkness of the narrow secret passageway, flashlight in hand, fingering his way along its damp, cobwebbed walls. His knees did not feel entirely normal. Rubbery was not normal. And the beam of the flashlight was beginning to flicker. The batteries were almost gone, and a horrified Mitch was suddenly realizing…
My God, I have seen this movie a million times. There’s always a tight shot on the Amiable Boob who’s just trying to help out. And as he stupidly gropes his way along, the Drooling Madman jumps out of the darkness behind him with an ax and the audience sees him and the Amiable Boob doesn’t and… WHAM! Only I am NOT sitting safely in a darkened theater with a jumbo-sized tub of hot buttered popcorn in my lap. I am IN this. Moose and Melanie are really dead. That cop out at the gate is really dead. And, if I don’t watch out, I am really dead.
Now the floor fell away before him. He’d reached the spiral staircase to the cellar. He went down slowly, the narrow wooden stairs creaking under his weight as small creatures skittered along the water pipes right near his head, squealing. Rats. They were rats. At the bottom of the stairs he reached a cement floor, the flashlight’s dimming beam falling on the slick catacomb walls. He inched his way forward, hearing footsteps running above him, alongside him, next to him. And cackling. He heard a man cackling. And now a woman’s voice was crying, “No, don’t! No!” Christ, where were they? And now, yes, he was in the wine cellar. He’d found the wine cellar. Fumbling for the light switch, he flicked it on.
Nothing. No lights came on.
Mitch waved the flashlight’s faltering beam around. The hidden cupboard in the wall, the one where they used to stash booze during Prohibition, was wide open. He searched the shelves in hopes of finding candles or matches. But he found nothing but dust. And now his flashlight was practically dead and he was going to be stranded down here in the blackness, blind and helpless, if he didn’t come up with a plan, and fast…
The kitchen. There were kerosene lanterns in the kitchen. If he could just find that passageway that Hangtown had led him down… Yes, here it was. This one… Okay, good, and here was the other spiral staircase, the one that led up to that secret corridor behind the upstairs bedrooms. On the other end of that corridor was the old service staircase to the kitchen. It was a plan. He could do this.
Mitch felt his way up the winding stairs from the cellar to the second floor in almost total darkness. His flashlight was barely giving off a glow now. Groping the wall for balance, he heard a door slam. And then Hangtown’s voice cry out, “You won’t get away from me! You will never get away!” And Takai shriek, “Father, you don’t know what you’re doing!” Both of their voices seemed only inches away from him. But all he could see was blackness.
Where were they? Where?
Now he stumbled. There were no more stairs. He had reached that narrow second-floor corridor. He’d forgotten just how low the ceiling was. He ran headfirst into the cobwebs, his face covered with them. A spider moved across his cheek en route to his mouth. He swiped it away, his skin crawling, and felt his way blindly around one sharp corner, then another…
Until suddenly he came upon blessed, golden light. It was the secret doors in back of the bedroom closets. They’d been flung open, the bedroom lights flooding the passageway with illumination. Blinking, Mitch halted at the first room he came to and parted the clothing that hung there in the closet before him. The entire room had been trashed. Furniture was overturned, bedding strewn.
Now he heard a tremendous crash from the room next door, followed by a shriek.
And Takai was streaking down the narrow corridor toward him, her face stricken with terror. Takai’s white silk blouse was ripped to shreds, her gray flannel slacks torn at the knees. And she was limping. One shoe was off, her bare foot bleeding. “Oh, thank God, thank God, thank God!” she cried as she ran smack into Mitch, hugging and kissing him madly, hysterically. She was absolutely out of control, her breath sour and hot as she clutched him, great sobs coming from her throat. “You’re here! You’re really here! Oh, thank God!”
Mitch could hear glass being smashed in the next bedroom, heavy footsteps thudding on the floor. “Where are you, princess?!” Hangtown roared. “I’ll find you! I’ll kill you!”
“What’s happened?” Mitch demanded, shaking Takai by the shoulders. “Tell me!”
“Where’s your gun?” she sobbed. “You must… you’ve got to shoot him!”
“I have no gun. Try to get a hold of yourself. What’s going on?”
“He’s gone c-completely mad!” Takai managed to get out. “First he shot the cop at the gate. Now he’s trying to shoot me. He’s been chasing me all over this crazy house. H-he has the Barrett, Mitch. That giant shotgun he used on Moose.”
“I’ll kill you!” Hangtown’s footsteps were coming closer now. “You can’t get away from me!”
Takai let out a scream. Mitch grabbed her by the hand and yanked her roughly back down the corridor into the darkness.
“Mitch, I can’t see!” she protested breathlessly, stumbling against him as they descended the spiral staircase blindly.
“Just hold on to me,” he whispered, Hangtown’s footsteps growing fainter as they escaped farther back down into the blackness, Takai’s slim hand cold and clammy in his. “He shot Moose, is that it?”
“Yes, Mitch. God knows why. He loved her. He needed her. He…” Takai’s voice trailed off in the darkness, her breathing shallow and uneven. “He keeps mumbling something about his damned will, of all things.”
“What about it?”
“I don’t know. He’s making no sense… God!”
“Do you know where he keeps it?”
“What difference does that make? We have got to get out of here before he kills us both!”
“My truck’s down at the gate. So is my cell phone, I’m afraid. Your phone is out.”
“I know-he cut the outside wires. And stole my cell phone out of my shoulder bag.”
“Does he keep his will in that wall safe in the living room?”
“I think so,” she replied, as they inched their way down the staircase, step by step. “But I don’t know the combination. No one does, except for Father.”
“Okay, that’s not a problem.”
“Are you saying he told you the combination?”
“He didn’t have to-I know how his mind works.”
“I’ve known that awful man my whole life and not once have I known him. How can you even say that?”
Because he was certain, that was how. In fact, Mitch had never been as certain of anything in his whole life.
They reached the passageway at the bottom of the staircase now, standing there in the blackness as Mitch
