House of Reckoning

by John Saul

  He was going to Hell, and he was going to burn forever, burn like he was burning now, but the pain would never end, and he would never escape it and it would go on and on and on and on until—

  “Stand back!” a voice ordered.

  A voice? How could there be a voice? He was in Hell and he was burning and—

  “Back!” the voice commanded. “You hear me?”

  Mitch Garvey’s eyes snapped open, but all he saw was gray stone. His arms were still flailing, but there were no more ants.

  And his body was still burning up, but there were no more flames.

  He heard the jangle of metal on metal, the same jangle he heard every day when he opened a barred door.

  The sound of a key.

  A lock was opened.

  Mitch stared at the heavy oak door whose planks were strapped together with thick wrought iron, and in a moment it began to swing open.

  Two men appeared, holding a large fire hose.

  “Didn’t we tell you to stop hurting yourself?” one of them demanded.

  Mitch’s mind reeled. Where was he? How did he get here? What was going on? Then he looked down at himself.

  Blood was dripping from his arms where he’d tried to scrape away the ants.

  His nostrils were no longer filled with the stink of burning flesh, but with a far more foul stench, and then he could feel the mess he’d made in his own clothing.

  He peered up at the men and reached out a trembling and supplicating hand. “Please,” he whispered, his voice rasping through vocal cords worn raw from screaming. “Help me … please … help me.”

  “Oh, we’ll help you, you crazy bastard,” one of the men said. They tightened their grip on the hose’s nozzle, and one of them nodded.

  Before Mitch realized what was about to happen, a thick jet of ice-cold water slammed into him and he sprawled out on the floor. When he opened his mouth to beg them to stop, they hit him full in the face with the stream and he felt water forcing its way down his throat.

  He was going to drown!

  He was going to drown right here, with two people blasting him mercilessly with a stream of water that held him pinned to the floor.

  And then it stopped.

  “That’ll keep ’im quiet for the rest of the day,” one of the guards said.

  Mitch rolled over in the puddle as the door was closed and relocked. Finally, he gathered enough strength to crawl over to the door and pull himself up to peer through a small barred window, to find himself gazing at the flickering mantel of an old-fashioned gas sconce. His eyes moved away from the light and he peered down a long narrow hallway, with more of the old gas lamps placed just close enough together to fill the corridor with dim light.

  Between the sconces were more doors, doors with barred windows just like the one he was looking through.

  From one or two of them Mitch thought he saw insane eyes peering back at him.

  From the others there was nothing.

  Nothing except the occasional scream, or a hopeless moan.

  He sank back to the wet floor, the cries and whimpers of his future echoing through the corridors of the hell he knew he would never escape.

  Chapter Thirty

  Angie Garvey turned away from the reflection of herself she caught in the mirror that hung on the wall next to the coat tree, but it was too late. The image of her bloodless face, twisted with terror and fury, was seared into her mind. Even worse than her expression, though, was that what she’d seen in the mirror bore no resemblance to what Angie knew she looked like. The face in the mirror had aged; it was as if she were looking fifty years into the future. Her hair, thin and gray, hung lank around a face dominated by a pair of empty and hopeless eyes. Her skin was sagging and deeply creased, and though there was nothing in her reflection that she recognized, she knew it was her. What was happening? Dan West had vanished and now Mitch—Mitch! Panic rising, she moved to the door through which he had scrabbled. It swung open even as she reached for the knob, and Angie felt a surge of relief. Mitch was all right, and he was opening the door, and—

  The door swung open to reveal the study just as it had been a few moments ago.

  Empty.

  Empty, and silent.

  “M-Mitch?” Angie said, but now her utterance was heavy with her fading hope.

  “He’s gone,” Nick Dunnigan said quietly, though his voice echoed in Angie’s ears with the slow cadence of a funeral march.

  … gone … gone … gone … gone …

  She wheeled on Nick. “Where?” she screamed. “What did you do to him? Where did he go?”

  “We don’t know, Angie,” Bettina said, reaching out as if to offer her hand to the distraught woman.

  Out! She had to get out, and she had to get out before whatever had happened to Mitch and Dan West happened to her, too. Spurning Bettina Philips’s outstretched hand, Angie turned to flee toward the front door, but after taking only a single step, she abruptly veered around and found herself lurching toward the staircase.

  What was happening? She didn’t want to go upstairs! She wanted to leave! Leave before—

  She wheeled around, clinging to the banister as she raged at the three people who were looking up at her. “Let me go!” she screamed. “What have you done? What have you done to Mitch—” Her voice broke and she began sobbing as she lost her grip on the rail and started climbing the stairs once more, her hands still reaching for something to hang on to, her voice reduced to a nearly incoherent babble. “No … let me go … I’m sorry … sorry for everything … sorry for—” She was at the landing now, and as she made the turn to climb to the second floor, her eyes suddenly fastened on Sarah and her fury erupted. “You!” she screamed. “This is your doing! You’re evil and you’ve always been evil and you should burn in—”

  Her words were cut short and she felt herself being hurled up the stairs, her head slamming against the steps, her body crashing first against the wall to one side, then against the thick wooden balusters on the other.

  Then she was at the top of the stairs. Regaining her footing, she fled down the corridor.

  Doors!

  There seemed to be doors everywhere. If she got through one of them—found a window—

  Locked!

  All of them, locked so tight they might as well have been nailed shut.

  She came to the end of the corridor. There was only one door left now. She reached for the knob, but even before she touched it the door swung open and she hurtled into a second staircase, a narrow staircase.

  Down!

  If she could get down, maybe she could get out! But as she turned to start down the steep flight, she saw something move.

  Something small, coming up the stairs.

  A second later she recognized it.

  A rat.

  Huge, and gray, and coming right at her!

  Behind it was another.

  And another and another and a—

  Screaming, Angie turned back to the door, but it slammed shut even as she lunged toward it, and her right hip smashed against it, sending a terrible pain shooting down her leg.

  The rats were coming closer now, and Angie stumbled up to the third floor, pulling herself on the banister, her right leg dragging limply, the pain from her shattered hip slashing through her body like a whip. She came to the top of the stairs and found herself at the end of another corridor, this one far narrower than the one on the floor below, but up ahead she saw a door.

  An open door!

  Behind her the rats were flooding up the last flight of stairs, and Angie forced herself to stand up.

  Clumsily, bracing herself against the walls with both her outstretched arms, she began hopping toward the open door.

  Now the rats were coming at her not only from the stairs behind her, but from under the closed doors on either side of the hallway.

  She flung herself through the open door, slammed it shut behind her and collapsed on the floor, her heart pounding, her lungs strai
ning to suck in enough air to let her catch her breath, her ruined hip burning beneath her.

  Outside the closed door she could hear the rats chittering, and she crept a little farther into the room, which was so brightly lit it almost blinded her.

  The noise changed, and for a moment she didn’t know what was happening. Then it came to her: the rats were no longer chittering.

  Now they were gnawing, and soon they would gnaw their way through the door.

  She pulled herself a little farther from the door. A way out! There had to be a way out—all she had to do was find it!

  Her eyes adjusted to the light, and then she saw it.

  For a moment she couldn’t believe her eyes: One whole wall was lined with French doors opening onto a terrace, and beyond the terrace she saw a broad lawn sweeping past a huge stone building—perfectly rectangular, with a black slate roof that looked like pictures she’d seen of the old institute that had been torn down so many years ago—down to the edge of a shimmering Shutters Lake. Leafed trees swayed in the breeze.

  An illusion—it had to be an illusion!

  Then she understood. An illusion was exactly what it was! It was nothing more than a painting. There was a name for it: tramp … tromp …

  Trompe l’oeil!

  That was it—a painting that looked perfectly real, so you felt like you were looking out windows even though it was only a wall.

  A blank wall!

  She heard the chittering then, and the scraping, as the rats began to penetrate the door behind her. She glanced back and saw them, coming through the door, and out of the walls, and—

  Panic seized her, and without thinking, Angie pulled herself to her feet, ignoring the agony in her right leg and hip as a stream of adrenaline surged through her, spurring her onward.

  Out! She had to get out before the rats could reach her. If she couldn’t—

  She could already feel them, biting into her legs, tearing her flesh from her bones, ripping at her until—

  She hurled herself toward the image of the world outside, where the sun was shining and the flowers were in bloom and it was a perfect summer day and—

  One of the French doors flew open before her, and Angie tumbled through it, falling into a swirling maelstrom of air and and light.

  Bright light, light that hurt her eyes.

  Unearthly light.

  She closed her eyes tight against the blinding light and tried to twist her body away from the pain of her broken bone.

  “Okay, move her out,” a woman said.

  Angie opened her eyes. A heavyset woman in an ancient nurse’s uniform stood over her, glowering down with furious eyes. “Are you going to behave now?” a harsh, guttural voice demanded.

  Angie tried to move but couldn’t. She could barely even breathe. “Let’s go,” the woman said sharply, clapping her hands.

  Two men lifted Angie off a bed. Except it wasn’t a bed at all—just a few wooden slats in a frame.

  She could barely move her legs and her upper body was immobile.

  She looked down and finally understood. With its large buckles and the heavy cloth, there was no mistaking what she was wearing.

  It was a straitjacket.

  Bound in a straitjacket, she was being half carried and half dragged by the two men through the door of a tiny cell and into a dark hallway, barely lit by the gaslights hung along its walls.

  She tried to speak, tried to ask where she was, but even though she could work her lips, no sound came out. Now she looked frantically around for someone who might help her, but except for the two men flanking her and the stolid woman marching ahead, all she could see were glimpses of haunted-looking faces behind the barred windows that pierced each iron-strapped door she passed.

  Muffled voices muttered.

  A woman screamed.

  Fingers came through a window, as if reaching for her.

  They were near the end of the long corridor when Angie Garvey’s eyes suddenly locked on to those of someone whose face was all but invisible in the darkness of his cell. But it didn’t matter, for she recognized those eyes in an instant, and finally found her voice.

  Her mouth opened and with all the energy she could muster she howled out the name of the man behind those eyes.

  “MIIIITCH!”

  Her husband’s name echoed up and down the corridor for what seemed to Angie like an eternity, then faded away.

  For her, though, eternity had just begun.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Kate Williams drove slowly through the early morning rain as she turned off the highway toward Warwick. The morning had dawned unseasonably warm, and the heat along with the rain had dissolved almost all evidence of the snowstorm that blew in so suddenly last night.

  Ed Crane’s voice on the telephone this morning had struck a chord with the nagging feeling growing inside her that things might not be entirely right at the Garvey house. She had managed to shelve that feeling in the hope that she was wrong and that she wouldn’t have to add Sarah Crane to her already crushing caseload. But Ed Crane had sounded not just worried, but actually frightened, and right after his call, she canceled her entire morning calendar and headed for Warwick.

  Kate turned onto Quail Run and parked in front of the Garvey house. The draperies were still drawn, as if the household hadn’t awakened yet.

  She grabbed her shoulder bag, walked up to the door and pressed the bell. She heard the spaniel bark, but nobody came, and finally she opened the storm door and tried the knob.

  It turned.

  She hesitated. Should she go in? Or should she call the police? But what would she say? That she’d found a house left unlocked on a Saturday morning with nobody home but the dog? They’d think she was an idiot!

  She pushed the front door open. “Hello?”

  No answer, except the tail-wagging of the dog, who ran toward the back door, whining to be let out.

  Kate paused in the living room. “Is anybody home?” she called. More silence, so she continued on through the small dining room into the kitchen.

  Half-cooked chicken lay in a cold frying pan on the stove. Wilted salad sat in a bowl on the counter. And the dining room table was set for dinner. The Garveys had left last night, and they’d left in a hurry. She let the dog out to relieve himself, waited for him to come back in, then retraced her steps and left the house, closing the front door firmly behind her but leaving it unlocked, just the way she’d found it. She paused on the porch, surveying the Garveys’ neighborhood.

  It looked exactly as it should on a quiet Saturday morning.

  The door to the house next door opened, and a man in his bathrobe stepped out to retrieve the morning paper. “Good morning,” Kate called to him.

  “Eh?” He looked startled, but then nodded. “Yuh—it is a good morning, isn’t it?”

  “I’m wondering if you might know where the Garveys are this morning?”

  The man frowned, pursing his lips as if wondering just how much he should say to this person he’d never seen before in his life. But as Kate was reaching into her purse for her county identification card, he answered: “The wife said their girl was in some kind of accident last night. Saw it on the news.”

  “Which girl?” Kate asked, the quick breakfast she’d grabbed forty minutes ago suddenly congealing in her stomach.

  “’Ats all I know,” the man said. “Some crazy weather, eh?” He waved his paper at her and went back inside.

  Kate ran down the steps and got into her car. She’d been to the Warwick police station a couple of years ago, and now found it in less than two minutes. She parked in front and strode through the glass entry.

  The uniformed deputy behind a desk glanced up at her. “Take a seat,” he said. “I’ll be with you in a minute.” Before she could protest that she had an emergency—which might not exactly be true—he’d turned his attention back to a distraught woman who was sitting in a chair next to his desk.

  “He didn’t come home last nigh
t,” the woman said, twisting a sodden handkerchief, then dabbing ineffectively at her eyes. “Dan always comes home. Always!”

  The deputy spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “I’m really, really sorry, Andrea, but there’s nothing I can tell you. We haven’t heard from him, and believe me, we’ve been trying to get hold of him for hours.”

  But the woman wouldn’t be put off. “Zach Garvey said Dan went with his parents to Bettina Philips’s house. Have you been out there yet?”

  Kate sat up straight.

  “Bill Harney and I just got back from there half an hour ago,” the deputy said. “Dan isn’t there and neither are the Garveys.”

  “What about his car?” the woman demanded. “Where’s his car?”

  The deputy shook his head. “I don’t know that, either, Andrea.” His voice took on the kind of weary note Kate had often heard from police officers trying to respond to all the demands of distraught people whose spouses or children had vanished, often because they wanted to vanish rather than because they’d fallen victim to some sort of crime. “I know it’s not at the Philips place, and I put out an APB on it, but I haven’t heard anything. You’ve got to give it some time.”

  “Time?” the woman echoed, her voice rising and taking on a note of hysteria. “My son’s been murdered and my husband is missing, and you say I have to give it ‘time’?”

  “Conner wasn’t murdered, Andrea,” the deputy said quietly. “It was an accident.”

  Kate stood up. “Excuse me,” she said. “I’m Kate Williams with the Vermont Department of Social Services, and I’m here looking for the Garveys.”

  Andrea West turned a puffy-eyed face toward her. “We’re all looking for the Garveys,” she said. “And my husband,” she added, her gaze shifting back to fix on the deputy again. “Who is the sheriff here!”

  Kate saw the deputy redden. “I’m actually looking for Sarah Crane, the Garveys’ foster child,” she said.

  Andrea’s expression changed then, morphing into a mask of pure fury. “She’s the one who murdered my son!” she burst out. “And almost killed Tiffany Garvey, too!”