The Hellfire Club

by Peter Straub

  Then she understood what he had done. Dick Dart had half-followed, half-chased her across the stream and toward the Mist Field. He wanted her to cower in a hidey-hole and wait for him to move past. In the meantime, he was on his way to Main House.

  “Oh, my God,” Nora said. She began to run along the edge of the meadow toward a point in the woods where she could wade back across the stream, cut past Honey House, and approach Main House from the west lawn. She stopped to pull off the clumsy boots. Bare-legged, the ground squashing beneath her feet, she started running again.

  A pale figure emerged from the woods at the far corner of the Mist Field. Nora froze. The revolver wanted to slip out of her muddy hand. Maybe it was empty, maybe not. If not, maybe it would fire, maybe not. The figure moved toward her. She raised the gun, and the man before her called out her name and became a drenched Jeffrey Deodato.

  99

  NORA LET HER arm fall. Jeffrey had lost his Eton cap. Covered with muddy streaks and smears, his raincoat clung to him like a wet rag. Other streaks adhered to his face. Because he was Jeffrey, his bearing suggested that he had deliberately camouflaged himself. He got close enough for her to see the expression in his eyes. Clearly she looked a good deal worse than he did.

  “You came after all,” she said.

  “It seemed like a good idea.” He looked down at the gun. “Thanks for not shooting. Where’s Dart?”

  Apparently Jeffrey had learned a good deal since their telephone conversation. “I killed him,” she said. “But it didn’t work.” She lifted the revolver and looked at it. “I don’t think there are any bullets left in this thing, anyhow.”

  Jeffrey delicately took the gun from her. “So you got away from him.”

  “It started out that way. But I think after a while he was chasing me away. He wanted me out of his hair so he could enjoy himself with the women at Main House. Then he could come back and have all the fun of hunting me down. We can’t stand around and talk, Jeffrey, we have to get moving.”

  He snapped open the cylinder. “You have one bullet left, but it’s not in a very safe place, unless you want to shoot yourself in the leg.” He moved the cylinder, clicked it back into place, and handed her the revolver, grip first. “Let’s get out of here and find a phone.”

  Frantic with impatience, Nora rammed the revolver back into her pocket. “The phones don’t work.” She looked around wildly. “We have to get to Main House.” Jeffrey was still examining her. The spectacle she presented obviously did not inspire much confidence in her ability to deal with Dick Dart. Nora glanced down at the ruined coat and her streaky legs. She looked like an urchin pulled from a swamp.

  “Main House?” Jeffrey asked.

  She grabbed the sleeve of his coat and pulled him back toward the woods. “If we don’t, he’ll murder everybody. Come on, if you’re coming. Otherwise I’m going by myself.”

  She saw him decide to humor her. “We’ll make better time if we stick to the edges of the path.” She started to say something, but he cut her off. “I’ll show you. All I need to know is where Main House is from here.”

  “There.” She pointed into the woods.

  Maddeningly, Jeffrey began jogging back in the direction from which he had come. She ran after him. “We’re going the wrong way!”

  “No, we’re not,” he said, unruffled.

  “Jeffrey, you’re lost.”

  “Not anymore, I’m not.”

  At the end of the meadow Jeffrey pointed to the strip of wet but solid ground directly in front of the trees. He was right. The path had turned into soup, but they could move along beside it without falling down. The faint light was fading, and Nora remembered what it was like to move through the woods in the dark. “Okay?”

  “Go,” she said.

  So close to the trees that Nora could feel roots under her bare feet, they began to move at a steady trot. “Too fast for you?” Jeffrey asked.

  “I can run as well as you,” Nora said. “What did you do after we talked?”

  Waiting out the storm in the gas station, Jeffrey had grown increasingly uneasy. Nora’s explanation of how she had come to Shorelands and her reasons for sending him back to Northampton seemed flimsy, her attitude unnatural. He had managed to coax the MG over the drowned roads to Shorelands and seen the Duesenberg in the parking lot. Just getting into his truck, Tony had ordered him off. Where is Mrs. Desmond? Jeffrey had asked. Tony said, If you’re a friend of that asshole Desmond’s, you can go to hell. His roof leaked” he could make it to his sister’s house in Lenox” he didn’t care what happened to Jeffrey. Jeffrey had pleaded with him to call the police, and Tony said that he couldn’t call the police even if he wanted to because the phones were out. Where is Pepper Pot? Tony had sworn at him and driven away. Jeffrey set off on foot through the storm. He passed Main House, moved up the path, found Pepper Pot empty, and entered the woods again. He realized that he had no idea where he was going. Then the storm relented, and he found himself at the edge of a field. Far off to his right he saw a muddy scarecrow, and the scarecrow pointed a gun at him.

  “I guess Tony doesn’t care much for Dick Dart,” he said. “Tell me about what’s going on in Main House.”

  Before them, the bridge in front of Honey House arched up out of a flat, moving sheet of water. Nora walked out from under the dripping trees and waded into the flooded stream while Jeffrey kept pace beside her, the bottom of his coat floating behind him.

  “I wish I knew. There are four women in there. Marian Cullinan, who works for the trust, Margaret Nolan, who runs the place, and two guides who used to work here in the old days.” On the opposite side of the streambed, they began trotting beneath the oaks again. “He wants to kill them, I know that much. A normal psychopath would sneak into their bedrooms and take them one by one, but Dart wants to have a party. He’s been chortling all afternoon.”

  “A party?”

  At the end of the avenue between the rows of oaks, Nora could make out the edge of the pond. “He loves to talk, and he loves an audience. He’ll want to get them all together and give himself some entertainment. He’d love the idea of making them watch while he kills them one by one.”

  “I hate to say this, but wouldn’t he want to get it over with as soon as possible so he can get away?”

  “Dart feels protected. He assumes he’ll be able to walk away, no matter how long he takes.”

  Jeffrey considered this while they moved toward the pond and open ground. “How much time has he had already?”

  “My sense of time went south with my sense of direction.” She tried to work out how long she had flown through the woods. “He really was chasing me at the start. He was in a rage. I stabbed him, and then I shot him.”

  “You shot him? Where?”

  “He was lying on his front, so all I could see was blood coming out of his head. He sure looked dead to me, but I couldn’t see the wound. I would have checked his life signs, but I couldn’t stand the idea of touching him. I guess I just grazed him, damn it. Anyway, I ran out, and about a minute later, he somehow got up and came after me. Hold on, Jeffrey, I want to do something.”

  She trotted up to the lip of the pond, plunged her muddy hands into the water, and scrubbed them clean before running back to him. “I don’t want that blasted gun to slip out of my hands.”

  He began gliding up the sodden lawn. “Could he have had half an hour?”

  Nora stopped moving. She stared at her wet hands, realizing that Dart had given them more time than they thought.

  “Not that long. He probably spent at least ten minutes coming after me before he changed his mind. He made sure I knew he was close behind me, and then he started toward the house. That might have been twenty minutes ago. It would take him ten or fifteen minutes to get to the house, but he wouldn’t start right away.”

  Jeffrey scratched his forehead, leaving a muddy smear which increased the camouflage effect. “Why not?”

  She held up the hands she had was
hed in the pond. “This guy is one of the most fastidious men on earth. The first thing he’d do when he got inside would be to clean himself up. There’s a bathroom in a little office corridor downstairs. He may even have taken a shower. Everybody was upstairs, and he had plenty of time to clean himself up for his party.”

  “This isn’t a joke?”

  “Jeffrey, this is a guy who goes crazy if he has to go a day without brushing his teeth. If he isn’t presentable, he won’t have half the fun he wants.”

  Jeffrey clearly decided to believe her. “I hope he doesn’t have another gun.”

  “No. But the last time I saw him, he was holding a cleaver, and the kitchen is full of knives.”

  They looked up over the lawn to Main House. Real night had arrived, and the curving stone steps rose indistinctly to the terrace. Beyond the terrace, the big windows of the lounge blazed with light. As Marian had predicted, the power had been restored with astonishing speed.

  Nora looked upward. All the second-floor windows were dark, but at the top left-hand corner of the house, the windows of Lily’s and Marian’s rooms showed light. “Dart likes knives,” she said.

  Jeffrey pointed at the windows of the lounge. “Is that where you think he’d take these women?”

  “He’s in a mood to strut his stuff. He wants to use the best room in the house, and that’s it.”

  “If that’s true, we’ll be able to see what’s going on.” Jeffrey unbuttoned his raincoat, yanked his arms out of the sleeves, and dropped the coat onto the grass. He broke into a businesslike jog across the lawn. When they had gone half the distance, they began moving in a quiet crouch.

  Together they glided up to the terrace stairs and squatted in front of the bottom step. They glanced at each other, came to a wordless agreement, and went up side by side, bent low to stay out of sight. Four steps from the top, they peered across the terrace floor to the bottom of the lounge window. Nora saw only the white fringe of a carpet, the wooden floor, and the polished cylindrical legs of a table. She put her head closer to Jeffrey’s and saw only a little more of the carpet.

  Jeffrey crept up another two steps and leaned out onto the terrace. He looked back at Nora and shook his head, telling her to wait for him, then flattened out and began crawling slantwise across the terrace. Nora came up behind him and watched the soles of his shoes work across the wet tiles. When they were about six feet away, she lowered the top of her body to the floor and crawled after him, grating her knees and toes on the stone. The coat’s metal clasps made a high-pitched sound of complaint against the terrace floor, and she scrabbled ahead on forearms and knees. Jeffrey slithered on before her with surprising speed and reached the window at the far end. Rain dripped steadily from the gutters.

  For the first time Nora became conscious of the deep silence encasing the sound of raindrops pattering against the ground, the delicious freshness of every odor carried by the air. Even the rough tiles beneath her face sent up a vibrant smell, sharp and alive.

  Jeffrey lengthened himself beneath the window, and she flattened out with her face next to his head, raised her neck, and looked into the lounge.

  In a blue nightgown, Lily Melville sat lashed into a chair near the middle of the room. Another length of rope stretched from her ankles to her wrists, which had been pulled behind the back of the chair. Her head was bent nearly to her chest, and her shoulders were trembling. Facing the window, Margaret Nolan, still in the dress she had worn to dinner and similarly bound, was speaking to her, but Lily did not seem to hear what she was saying.

  Margaret glanced over her shoulder, and Nora slid away from Jeffrey to be able to see the opening into the front hallway. Just appearing in the entrance was a hysterical Marian Cullinan, propelled from behind by Dick Dart. She looked as if she were trying to do pull-ups on the arm clamped around her neck. Dart held a long knife against her side with his other hand, and his face was alight with joy.

  100

  MARIAN HAD PUT on a low-cut, black, sleeveless dress for her poetic encounter. Dart was naked and completely clean. Only slightly mussed, his freshly washed hair fell over a bloody strip of gauze taped to the side of his head. He dropped Marian into a chair facing Lily Melville, shifted to her side, and bent down. She bolted forward. Without even bothering to look at her, Dart thrust out his left hand, closed it around her throat, and pulled her to the floor. Marian’s scream penetrated the window. Nora felt her body clench.

  Dart put down the knife and reached for something out of sight. Marian shot forward and flailed at him, and Dart pulled her off the floor by the neck, as if she were a kitten.

  “What are we going to do?” Nora whispered to Jeffrey.

  “I’m thinking about it,” he whispered back.

  Shaking his head, Dart raised Marian until her feet were off the floor. Then he dropped her, caught her around the waist, and pinioned her arms. While she thrashed against him, he brought a hand holding a rope back into view. He carried Marian back to the chair and slammed her down.

  She screeched again.

  Margaret turned her head toward Dart and said something surprisingly measured. Ignoring her, he knelt behind Marian, passed the rope twice around her, and released his hold. She jumped up and tried to sprint away with the chair on her back. He pulled her back and passed the rope over her shoulder, down, under the seat of the chair, then duckwalked to the front of the chair. She kicked at him, and he snatched her ankles, looped the rope around them, and worked it back beneath the chair. He sliced through the rope and knotted it behind her back. Margaret spoke to him again. Whatever he said caused her face to quiver.

  “Strong son of a bitch,” Jeffrey whispered.

  Marian bucked in her chair, bucked again, then sagged back.

  Dart jerked her chair into place and moved frowning past the three women, rubbing his chin. On either side of Margaret and a few feet in front of her, Marian and Lily sat facing each other. Dart came to a halt in front of them and stepped backwards toward the terrace. Considering the women, he gently fingered the gauze pad he had succeeded in taping over the wound in his back. His body winced, and a blotch of red at the center of the pad darkened and grew.

  Jeffrey tilted his head toward Nora. “Isn’t there another woman?”

  She pointed upward. “Sick in bed.”

  Dart wandered around the women, measuring the effect he had created. They watched him, Marian sullenly and Margaret in thoughtful concentration like Dart’s own. Even the back of Lily’s head expressed stunned terror. Marian flipped her hair and moved her lips in a sentence Nora could read: You hurt me. Dart went behind Lily, shifted her a little way toward the window, and patted her head. Margaret clamped her mouth shut as Dart tugged her chair a few inches backwards. Marian spoke again: Norman, why are you doing this?

  Margaret uttered a brief sentence. Marian’s body went rigid, and all emotion left her face.

  Dart, whose real name had just been uttered, held out his arms and twisted from side to side, acknowledging imaginary applause.

  “What are we waiting for?” Nora whispered.

  “For him to tell us what to do.”

  Dart swayed up to Marian and kissed her cheek. Talking, he went behind her chair and shook her hand. He stroked her arms, her hair, drew a finger along the line of her chin. Margaret watched this procedure without any demonstration of emotion. Marian closed her eyes and trembled. The freckles blazed on her face. Still talking, Dart went around the chair and kissed her. She jerked her head back, and Dart slapped her hard enough for the sound to carry through the window, then kissed her again. When he pulled away, the red mark on Marian’s cheek obliterated her freckles.

  Raising his hands as if to say, I’m a reasonable guy, Dart backed away from Marian and addressed all three women. He smiled and pointed at Marian. He put a question to the two older women. Margaret gave him an impassive stare, and Lily shook her head. Dart put his hand on his heart, he looked hurt. He bounced up to Lily and lifted her chin. Nora saw his mo
uth utter the words Lily, my darling, I love you. Then he sauntered over to Margaret and spoke to her. Margaret clearly said, No. He staggered back in mock disbelief. He was having the time of his life. For a time he wandered back and forth, engaged in some hypothetically puzzled debate. He waggled his head sadly. He walked over to the knife on the floor, pretended to be surprised to see it, and in glad astonishment picked it up.

  Nora looked at Jeffrey. Jeffrey shook his head.

  Dart strolled toward them across the carpet. First his head, then all of his body above his knees, disappeared behind the table. Jeffrey touched her hand: Don’t move. She jerked her head toward her side: The gun? Jeffrey barely moved his head, telling her, Not now. Dart’s legs spun around, and his feet padded away. When the rest of his body came into view, he was no longer holding the knife. He snapped his fingers and disappeared. Margaret’s eyes moved, and Marian twisted her neck to watch him go. The women’s faces registered Dart’s reappearance, and when he sauntered into view he held the cleaver. He displayed it to the women, chopped the air, and padded toward the table.

  Jeffrey somehow managed to flatten himself nearly to the lip of the sill below the French doors. Nora folded her arms over her head and held her breath. When she risked peeking at the window, Dart’s hairy legs still bulged out below the table. He was aligning his tools. One of his feet slid sideways as he turned to look back at the women in the chairs. One of them must have asked him a question. “The little woman?” he said, close enough to the window to be heard through it. “When last seen, my former companion was charging in full flight through the forest primeval. At the moment, she cowers in a thicket waiting for me to give up the hunt.” He came up to the window. “Nor-ma! Nor-ma! Come home, honey, the fun’s just beginning! Can you hear me, sweetie?” He turned to the women and lowered his voice. “Maybe she’s hiding right outside! Let’s see!”