The Cellar

by Richard Laymon

  There she was. Maybe not Karen, but some woman on a chaise lounge, listening to music from a transistor radio. The lounge was facing away, so its back blocked Roy’s view of all but her slim, tanned legs, her left arm, and the crown of her hat. A white hat, like a sailor’s.

  Roy scanned the yard. High shrubbery enclosed its sides and rear. Good and secluded. Bending low, he raised his pants leg and slipped the knife from its sheath.

  Silently, he stepped closer until he could see over the back of the lounge. The woman was wearing a white bikini, its straps hanging off her shoulders. Her skin was glossy with oil. She held a folded magazine in her right hand, keeping it off to the side so it wouldn’t cast a shadow on her belly.

  Her hand jerked, dropping the magazine as Roy clutched her mouth.

  He pressed the knife edge to her throat.

  “Don’t make a sound, or I’ll open you up.”

  She tried to say something through his hand.

  “Shut up. I’m gonna take my hand away, and you’re not gonna make a sound. Ready?”

  Her head nodded once.

  Roy let go of her mouth, flung the sailor’s hat off her head, and clutched her brown hair. “Okay, stand up.” He helped by pulling her hair. When she was up, he jerked her head around. The tanned face belonged to Karen, all right. He could tell that, even through the sunglasses. “Not a word,” he muttered.

  He guided her to the back door.

  “Open it,” he said.

  She pulled open the screen door. They stepped into the kitchen. It seemed very dark after the sunny yard, but Roy couldn’t spare a hand to take off his sunglasses. “I need rope,” he said. “Where do you keep it?”

  “You mean I’m allowed to talk now?”

  “Where’s some rope?”

  “We don’t have any.”

  He put pressure on the blade. “You’d better hope you do. Now, where is it?”

  “I don’t…” She gasped as he yanked her hair. “We have some with the camping gear, I think.”

  “Show me.” He lifted the knife off her throat, but kept it half an inch away, his wrist propped on her shoulder. “Move.”

  They went out the kitchen, and turned left down a hallway. They walked past closed doors: closets, probably. Past the bathroom. Into a doorway on the right. The room was a study with bookshelves, a cluttered desk, a rocking chair.

  “Any kids?” Roy asked.

  “No.”

  “Too bad.”

  She stopped at a door beside the rocker. “In there,” she said.

  “Open it.”

  She pulled open the door. The closet held nothing but camping gear: two mummy bags suspended from hangers, hiking boots on the floor, backpacks propped against the wall. A metaltipped walking stick hung from a hook. Beside it were two soft felt hats. Yellow foam-rubber pads, strapped neatly into rolls, stood upright beside the packs. On the shelf was a long red stuffbag, probably containing a mountain tent. On hangers were outdoor clothes: rain ponchos, flannel shirts, even a pair of gray leather Liederhosen.

  “Where’s the rope?”

  “In the packs.”

  He let go of her hair. He took the knife away from her throat and touched the point to her bare back. “Get it.”

  She stepped into the closet and knelt down. She flipped back the red cover of a Kelty pack. She tipped the pack forward, reaching into it, and rummaged through it. Her hand came out with a coil of stiff, new clothesline.

  “Is there more?” He took it from her and tossed it behind him.

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Look in the other pack.”

  She turned to it without closing the first one. As she peeled back its cover, her arm seemed to freeze.

  “Don’t.” Roy slipped the blade through Karen’s hair until its point stopped against the back of her neck. She sucked a quick breath. Keeping the knife at her neck, Roy bent down. He reached over her shoulder and lifted the hand ax out of the pack. Its haft was wood. A leather case enclosed its head. He tossed the ax behind him. It thumped heavily on the carpeted floor.

  “Okay, now get the other rope.”

  She searched inside the pack and brought out a coil of clothesline much like the first, but gray and soft with wear.

  “Get up.”

  She stood.

  Roy swung her around to face him. “Hands out.” He pulled the rope away from her. He slid his knife under his belt and tightly bound her hands together. He stepped away from her, paying out rope. Then he picked up the hand ax and the spare coil. Pulling the rope, he led her out the doorway and into the hall. He found the master bedroom at the end of the hall. He pulled her into it.

  “Guess what happens now,” he said.

  “Aren’t I too old for you?”

  He grinned, remembering Joni. “You’re way too old for me,” he said. He led her across the carpeted room to a closet. He opened its door halfway and shoved Karen against the wall. With the door between them, he passed the rope over its top and pulled.

  “Damn it!” she muttered.

  “Shut up.”

  “Roy!”

  He yanked the rope. The door knocked against him as Karen hit its other side. He saw her fingertips over its top. No doorknob on the inside. Shit! He ran the taut line down to the bottom of the door. Crawling, he brought it under the edge to the front. He lifted one of Karen’s feet. She kicked at him. He punched her behind the knee, making her cry out. Then he brought the rope up between her legs and crossed it over her right leg. He tied it to the knob, next to her hip.

  He stepped back and admired his work. Karen stood pressed to the door, arms stretched to the top. The rope appeared at the bottom of the door, near the center, and angled to the right, passing over her leg to the doorknob.

  “Now tell me what I want to know.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Where’re Donna and Sandy?”

  “At their place?” she asked. In spite of her situation, her voice maintained a sarcastic edge.

  Roy sliced through one shoulder strap of her bikini, then the other. “They aren’t there, and you know it.”

  “They aren’t?”

  He cut through its back. He reached to her side, and tugged the bikini top from between her body and the door. “Tell me where they are.”

  “If they aren’t at home, I wouldn’t…”

  He sliced through the left side of her bikini pants. The edges flopped away. She clamped her legs shut to keep the pants from slipping down.

  “What time does your husband get home?”

  “Soon.”

  “What time?” He pulled the pants down to her ankles.

  “Maybe four-thirty.”

  “It’s only three now. That gives us lots of time.”

  “I don’t know where they went.”

  “Oh?” He laughed. “You may be able to take a lot of pain. I’ll be happy to give it to you. But let me tell you something: If you love that husband of yours, you’ll tell me what I want to know before he gets home. When you tell me where they are, I’ll leave. I won’t hurt you, I won’t hurt your husband. If I’m still here when he gets home, though, I’m going to kill you and him both.”

  “I don’t know where she is.”

  “Sure you do.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Well then, that’s too bad for both of you, isn’t it?”

  She said nothing.

  “Where did they go?”

  Crouching, he drew a question mark on the white flesh of her left buttock, and watched it bleed.

  CHAPTER NINE

  1.

  From his position on Front Street near the south corner of the wrought-iron fence, Jud watched half a dozen people leave Beast House. The final tour of the day was over. He looked at his wristwatch. Almost four.

  Maggie Kutch left the house last, and locked the door. She made her way slowly down the porch steps, leaning heavily on her cane. The strain of guiding tourists showed plainly in the weariness
of her walk.

  At the ticket booth, she met Wick Hapson. They finished locking up. Then, taking her arm, Wick walked with her across Front Street. They went slowly up the dirt driveway and finally disappeared into the windowless house.

  Jud slid a cigar out of his shirt pocket. He tore the wrapper off, crumbled it into a tiny ball, and flipped it onto the car floor. Then he took a book of matches from the same pocket. He lit the cigar and waited.

  At four twenty-five, an old pickup truck backed out of the garage beside the Kutch house and came down the driveway trailing a cloud of dust. It turned onto Front Street and headed toward Jud. He pretended to study a road map. The truck slowed and swung across the street.

  Looking up from his map, Jud saw a man leap to the ground and hobble toward the fence. At the corner was a wide gate, chained shut and padlocked. The short, heavy man opened the lock, unwound the chain, and pushed the gate open. He drove through, then locked the gate again.

  Jud watched the truck move over tire tracks worn into the lawn, and park at the side of Beast House. The driver climbed out. He let down the truck’s tailgate and hopped onto its bed. Bending down, he slid a board ramp to the ground. Then he rolled a power lawnmower down the ramp.

  As soon as the man started the mower, Jud made a U-turn. He drove slowly, studying the left side of the road. Two miles south of Malcasa Point, he found a fire road leading into the forest. Nothing closer. It was no good. He used it to turn around, and headed back toward town.

  A hundred yards behind the spot where he’d parked to watch the house front, he pulled completely off the road. He got out of his car. Nothing was in sight except the bending road and wooded slopes. He stood motionless for a few seconds, making sure.

  He heard the far-off motor of the lawnmower. He heard the wind stirring leaves high overhead, and the sounds of countless birds. A fly buzzed near his face. He waved it away and opened the trunk of his car.

  He put on the parka, first. Then he hooked a web belt around his waist under the coat, and made sure the holster flap was snapped shut. He lifted out a backpack, and put it on. He took out his rifle case. Then he shut the trunk.

  His trek through the pathless woods took him up the side of a hill, over rock clusters and fallen trees, and finally into the sunlight of a clearing at the top. He rubbed sweat out of his stinging eyes. He drank tepid water from his canteen. Then he started down the left side of the hill, seeking an outcropping of rock that he’d noticed that morning through the back windows of Beast House.

  He finally saw the rocks ahead. He made his way forward and easily climbed the outcropping, hopping from one rock to the next. When he peered over the top, a clear view of Beast House lay below him.

  The short, limping man, apparently finished with the front lawn, was now mowing the back. Jud watched him slowly walk the yard, disappear behind a weathered gazebo, and reappear.

  It would be a long wait.

  But he didn’t intend to do it this way, crouched and peeking over a ledge of rock. Too damned uncomfortable. He backed off. He found a level area between a pair of midget pines several feet from the top. There he set down his rifle case. He shrugged the pack off his shoulders and propped it against one of the pines. Then he removed his coat. The breeze cooled his sweaty shirt. He took the shirt off, used it to wipe his face, and spread it out on a rock to let the sun dry it.

  Next, he opened his pack. He pulled out his binoculars case, and a sandwich from a paper bag. Donna had made the sandwich for him earlier in the afternoon.

  They’d returned to the Welcome Inn after the scene with Larry at the beach. Donna and Sandy had changed out of their swimsuits, and Larry had wandered off, presumably to have a drink in the motel bar. Then Jud, accompanied by the two women, had walked into town. He bought the sandwich ingredients at a grocery store near Sarah’s Diner. Back in Donna’s cabin at the inn, she put the sandwiches together. Four of them. When she asked where he would spend the night, he told her only that he would return in the morning.

  With the binoculars and sandwich, he scouted for a suitable watching place. Crouching at the top, he found it: a level area halfway down the face, protected by a shield of upthrust rock.

  Before moving down to it, he unwrapped his sandwich, a sourdough roll packed with mayonnaise, jack cheese, and salami. He ate, looking across the distance at the back of Beast House.

  The guy was still mowing.

  Jud watched through his Bushnell binoculars. The man’s hairless head was shiny with perspiration. In spite of the heat, he wore a sweatshirt and gloves. Occasionally he wiped a sleeve across his face.

  Poor bastard.

  Jud looked down at the sweaty man, appreciating his own comfort: the feel of the breeze on his bare skin, the piny smell of the air, the taste of his sandwich, and the good solid knowledge that he’d found a woman, today, who mattered to him.

  Done with the sandwich, he climbed down to the flat area where he’d left his pack and rifle. His shirt was still damp. He loaded it into the pack, along with his binoculars and parka, then returned to his observation point.

  2.

  After the pickup left the grounds of Beast House, nothing moved inside the perimeter of the fence—nothing within the area visible to Jud, at least. That included the entire back of the house, and its southern side.

  Jud wasn’t much concerned about the front. In the Thorn and Kutch killings, the assailant had apparently entered by breaking rear windows. He must’ve come across the yard from the woods behind the house.

  If anyone entered tonight, Jud would get a look at him.

  But not a shot at him.

  That would have to wait. You don’t take down a bastard just because he goes into a house at night, or because he’s wearing a monkey suit. You’ve gotta be sure.

  He scanned the area with his binoculars. Then he ate another sandwich, washing it down with canteen water.

  When the sun was too low to keep him warm, he put on his shirt. It was dry, now, and slightly stiff. He tucked it into his jeans.

  Lighting another cigar, he leaned back against the steep rock face. The protective uprise of rocks at the front of his ledge blocked some of his view. The entire backside of the house was still visible, though. He would settle for that. A fair exchange, so he wouldn’t have to squat or crouch his way through the night.

  After watching the house for an hour, he folded his parka and sat on it. Its thickness not only padded the hard ground but also gave him extra height, improving his view.

  As he watched, he thought of many things. He concentrated on what he’d learned of the beast, searching for the most plausible explanation of its identity. Always, he came back to the time element: the first killings in 1903, the most recent in 1977. That certainly seemed to rule out the possibility that one man had performed all the killings.

  Yet he couldn’t buy the idea that the killer was some ageless, clawed monster. In spite of what Larry had said. In spite of Maggie Kutch’s stories.

  In spite of the scars on Larry’s back?

  A human could have made those scars. If not with fingernails, then with the claws of artificial paws. A human dressed up in a monkey suit—or a beast suit.

  What about the time element, then? Almost seventy-five years.

  Okay, several humans in beast suits.

  Okay, who and why?

  Suddenly he had a theory. The more he puzzled over his theory, the better it looked. As he began to reflect on ways to gather proof, however, he noticed that darkness had come.

  He crawled forward quickly to the stone lip. The house was black. Its lawn was a dark expanse, empty of detail like the surface of a lake on a cloudy night. Reaching into his pack, Jud pulled out a leather case. He opened its snap and removed a Starlight Noctron IV. Putting it to his eye, he made a quick scan of the house and lawn. In the eerie red light generated by his infrared scope, nothing seemed out of place.

  When his legs ached from squatting, he backed away from the front. He lowered th
e Starlight long enough to put on his coat. Then he stood, leaning back against the rock face, and continued his surveillance.

  If his theory was correct, he had nothing to gain by spending a cold night up here. He wouldn’t see any beast.

  Well, it couldn’t hurt to stick around.

  We should’ve put somebody inside the house. Bait.

  Who’d go in?

  Me, that’s who.

  Too early in the game for that. This is time for surveillance, a good look from a safe distance. Learn the nature of the enemy.

  If nothing else, I learn that the enemy didn’t enter the house tonight from the rear.

  The scope was growing heavy. He put it down and removed the final sandwich from his pack. As he ate it, he watched without the aid of his expensive scope, and could see little except darkness. He finished the sandwich quickly and returned to using the scope.

  After a while, he knelt and rested his elbows on the ledge of rock. He scanned the yard, the edges of the forest, the gazebo, even the windows of the house, though their glass would block most heat that the scope might pick up.

  Leaving the scope in place on the rock, he stepped around his backpack and urinated into the darkness.

  He returned to the scope. He swept the grounds. Nothing. He glanced at his wristwatch. Just after ten-thirty. He settled down, then, and watched for nearly an hour without changing position.

  During that time, he thought about the beast. Thought about his theory. Thought about other nights he’d spent alone with a Starlight and a rifle. Thought a lot about Donna.

  He thought about the way she looked that morning in her corduroys and blouse, hands tucked into the hip pockets of her pants. They became his hands, stroking the warm smooth curves of her rump. Then he saw his hands unfastening the buttons of her blouse, slowly parting it, touching breasts he had never seen but could vividly imagine.

  Hard, his penis strained against the front of his pants.

  Think about the beast.

  Into his mind came the fat, black face of General Field Marshal and Emperor for Life Euphrates D. Kenyata. One of the big, round eyes vanished as a bullet ripped through it and took out the back of the emperor’s skull.