"What if—" She paused.
"What if we find Cummings first? That's why I'm opening the doors and not you. I'd lock you in a safe if I could." And just for a moment McNeely pictured the steel doors of the fire chamber.
"What's wrong? What are you thinking?"
He shook the idea from his head like a terrier shaking off a rat. She'd be safer with him. "Nothing. Let's try the study."
They continued down the hall, McNeely suddenly aware of the nearly solid silence of the house. Their footsteps, even on the thick Oriental runner that stretched down the hall, made a dull padding that he felt could be heard everywhere. Then Gabrielle tensed, her fingers grasping his with a strength that surprised him. "What is it?" he whispered.
"Listen." Only her eyes moved, darting from floor to walls to ceiling as if she could see the source of her phantom noise dancing about like some housebound will-of-the-wisp.
"What did you hear?" McNeely asked.
"A shuffling." She answered slowly and carefully, as if fearing that her own words would drown out the stealthy approach of what she had heard.
"We've got to move," McNeely said. "We don't have forever."
But if we meet Cummings, he thought, then we have forever. And ever and ever. McNeely had no doubt that Cummings could destroy them if he chose. He had the strength and he had the madness. No man could have remained sane after such a change. He'd looked at McNeely and Gabrielle like a giant cockeyed cat eyeing two fat mice he was saving to play with, a cat that had had a bit too much catnip, a drunken cat.
Drunk with power.
McNeely couldn't guess what had happened to Seth Cummings, except that the house was in some unimaginable way responsible. And there was no way, once the change had begun, that Cummings would ever be what he'd been before. That tremendous muscle growth must even now be pulling Cummings's bones and internal organs into an irreparable new alignment. No doubt about it, Seth Cummings was a dead man.
And so would they all be, unless they could get the hell out of that house and away from what had been Cummings. But the only way to do that, McNeely thought desperately, was to get four keys and four people to turn them. Cummings's own key was out of the question. It was undoubtedly buried somewhere along with its chain in that thick cord of neck muscle.
They were at the door of the den now, and Gabrielle walked by it, wanting to move on to the study to find David Neville, but McNeely stopped, grasping the knob. Gabrielle looked back at him, and the fear in her eyes was just as great as that in his stomach, but he turned the knob, knowing that they had to find Wickstrom as well, and knowing that he could be anyplace.
So could Cummings.
The den was empty, but McNeely wouldn't believe it until he checked the other side of the high-backed leather couch to make certain Kelly Wickstrom wasn't napping there (or Seth Cummings wasn't crouching in wait).
They tried the study next, and found it vacant. The library was across the hall, but McNeely paused at its door. He had suddenly thought of a TV game show he'd seen once in a Chicago hotel room, where the contestant picked one of nine numbered squares on a screen. Behind each number was either a word or an amount of money, and you could keep picking until you hit a thousand dollars or got the right combination of words.
Only there was a catch. Behind one of the squares was a cartoon dragon with long teeth and flaming nostrils, and if you picked that square . . . well, the game was over. You lost.
Pick the rooms, George, he thought, but don't pick the room with the dragon.
Or you're burned.
~*~
Kelly Wickstrom was thirsty. He had grown extremely fond of Bass ale in the short time (Long time? Who cares?) he was in The Pines and decided that when he got out, he would forsake Pabst, his long-time favorite, and pack Bass away by the case. Maybe he'd even buy the brewery. He tossed the coffee table book on baseball down on the couch, saluted a farewell to Willie Mays, who was smiling at him with "say hey" in his bright eyes, and left his suite.
The hall was empty, as usual, and he walked briskly down it until he reached the stairs, which he took two at a time to the third floor, thinking longingly of the half case he'd stuffed into the lounge refrigerator before his last sleep.
At the door of the lounge he hesitated, though at first he couldn't say why. Then he remembered. The door was closed.
It had always been open before, the lamps always on, pouring a welcoming wedge of light out onto the wall and floor of the hall. The tavern door is never closed.
But it was closed now. Wickstrom put his ear to the door and listened. He thought (dreaded) that perhaps Gabrielle and McNeely, or, worse, Gabrielle and Cummings, might be in there seeking privacy, might be—may as well say it to himself—fucking in there on the couch. She had the hots for George, Wickstrom noticed that easily enough, and it made sense. Her husband was a royal asshole, and George was a helluva good guy. Still, Wickstrom felt, if not jealous, a bit sad at the thought.
He listened more closely and thought he heard a faint sound from within. Should he open the door, see who was there?
He decided it was foolish not to. If anyone was having sex, surely they'd choose one of the bedrooms, which had so far been private and sacrosanct. If either George or Cummings were looking to pull off a quickie with Gabrielle Neville, it would only be natural to seek the privacy of a bedroom, where no one thirsting for a beer would catch them in flagrante delicto (flagrante delectable, Cohen at the station house had called it).
He opened the door. It was dark inside and he was fumbling for the light switch when he heard the noise. It was a growl, low and throaty. Polar bear. The thought came lightning fast, the inner vision followed: a mound of white, pure white, heaving up on its haunches, nearly invisible against a snowy background. The eyes, the tongue, even the claws were white, and he felt as if the dream he'd had had burst out of his head and taken form there in the darkness of the so familiar lounge. For a second he could not move. It was long enough to hear the other sound, a wet, smacking sound, and for a relieved moment he thought his first suspicions had been correct after all, that someone was having wet, sweaty sex on the couch, that what he heard was nothing more frightening than hot sex-slick asses slapping against leather.
"Hey," he said nervously, "sorry…"
The sound stopped. The growl returned, a growl with a chuckling laugh in its center. And the wet, rhythmic noise started again. He recognized it now for what it truly was. Chewing.
There is a monster here, Kelly Wickstrom thought dully, taking his hand away from the light switch as slowly as he would from a rattlesnake. He was more careful than he had ever been in his life. He did not want to bump that switch, to turn on those bulbs, to see what thing of madness burrowed there. It was something the house had made, something to frighten him, to drive him crazy if he'd let it.
Well, he would not let it. He would leave the room dark, and close the door, and go find someone to talk to.
And he did.
Gabrielle Neville saw him first, gliding down the stairs to the first floor like a wraith. She and McNeely had just finished checking the dining room, and she'd stepped into the hall when she noticed Wickstrom's stealthy form in a pool of shadow on the landing. "George!" she hissed fearfully before she realized that it was Wickstrom. McNeely was with her in an instant, and when he saw Wickstrom, he smiled in relief.
"Kelly," he called softly, beckoning to Wickstrom.
"Jesus, George," said Wickstrom, "there's something in here, something up in the lounge . . ."
"The lounge," McNeely repeated, glancing at Gabrielle. "We've 'seen it too, Kelly. Listen, take Gabrielle up to my suite. It's got hall doors in both the bedroom and living room. Good place to escape from. Maybe Cummings isn't fast enough to catch us if we've got a jump on him."
"Cummings?" Wickstrom said, shaking his head. "What do you—"
"Gabrielle will tell you about it. I've got to find Neville. Whatever you two do, stick together. I'll be there soon a
s I can."
Wickstrom and Gabrielle went up the main staircase while McNeely finished searching the first floor. Neville was neither in the pantry nor in the small rooms of the servants' quarters. McNeely went up the east wing stairway then and found the Nevilles' suite empty. There were two things he could do now.
One was to tackle the third floor—the observatory, the playroom which Gabrielle used as a studio, the gym, the three small bedrooms, and the large vacant room in the west wing—the room across from the lounge.
The other was to look in the cellar.
He felt uncomfortable with either, but knew that in order for them to get out of the house, Neville had to be found. He decided on the cellar first. There was only one way down, leaving no escape route, but the cellar was large enough so that if he had to, he might evade Cummings by slipping around him. That misshapen body had been created for strength, not speed.
McNeely padded down the east wing stairs and went into the kitchen. He hadn't noticed it before, but the door to the cellar was slightly ajar.
Could Cummings have come down here, have gone into the cellar while they were searching for Neville? Could he even now be crouching down there in a blot of shadow, or behind the stairs, ready to reach through and grasp McNeely's ankles with those nightmare hands, sending him crashing down the wooden steps to lie half-stunned at the bottom until that great hulking shape poured out into the dim light to do…
Whatever he wanted?
Come on! a voice yelled inside him. He'd been in 'Nam, Thailand, in Angola, in half a dozen more shitholes around the world, where every step was a step with death. What made this place so goddamned different?
Because, he told himself as calmly as he could, in 'Nam, in Angola, in Nicaragua he had known—known who his enemy was, known where he came from, known his firepower, known.
But how on God's green earth could he know what Seth Cummings had become or what had made him that way?
He made himself walk down the steps, thinking how good an Ingram .45 would feel right now, its butt cool against his palm, its trigger kissing his finger, its muzzle ready to explode into flame and cut the monster in two. But there was no Ingram, not even a fart-sized .22, though he doubted if a .22 slug would even partially penetrate those sacks of muscle that surrounded the essence of Seth Cummings.
At the bottom of the steps he turned and looked through the sideways gaping teeth of the stair boards. Nothing. No Quasimodo/Jonah in the cellar's belly. He hurried across the cold cellar into the large central area. The light was on, and McNeely wondered why there was nothing more to illuminate so large an area. The cellar seemed empty, but he wanted to check the fire chamber before he went back upstairs. It would be a perfect place for Neville to seek the solitude he seemed to want so desperately.
The door was closed and locked. McNeely ran his hand over the cold steel, looking for a keyhole. Finding none, he knew that Neville had to be inside. "Neville?" he called, knocking on the door, wincing at the loud clanging sound his knuckles made.
There was no answer.
"Neville!" he called again.
Neville's voice came back to him, thin and far away. "Go away. Leave me alone."
McNeely hammered violently on the door. Fuck the noise. If Neville doesn't come out, we've all had it.
Suddenly the door swung open, and for an instant, as he looked into the blazing eyes, McNeely thought that Cummings had tricked him, had spoken in Neville's voice, had lured him on to death. But the furious eyes were only Neville's, who shrieked in his rage.
"God damn you! I'd almost reached them! They're here—it's the strongest place in the house. They're all down here, and I almost reached them, and you! You come, ruining my concentration, frightening them—"
"Shut up." McNeely's voice was cold as ice. "Shut up and listen to me. We've got to get out of here. Now."
"Now? You're crazy! I won't leave now, not when I'm so close."
"If we don't leave now, we're all dead. Something's happened to Cummings. He's . . ."
He stopped dead as Neville's eyes widened in fear and wonder at something behind McNeely. He knew what it was even before he turned, and saw the huge twisted body of Seth Cummings in the doorway to the cold cellar.
Its arms and legs were still, but its shoulders vibrated up and down with a life of their own, sympathetically shaking the entire frame. McNeely realized it was laughing.
Then it spoke. "You were never close, Mr. Neville. Never even remotely. Your wife was right. The Master doesn't want you. It's me he wants. You're dying even now. I'm healthy, and strong. I'm going to live a long, long time. But you? And you, McNeely? Oh, no, I'm afraid not."
It moved then, shuffling raggedly across the stone floor. "You have to die, both of you. And Wickstrom too. I'll let the woman live. I need her. For this . . ." He thrust a sausage-fingered hand between his legs, ripping away the last vestiges of cloth. "And for when we leave. I'll have all you had, Mr. Neville, but I'll use it more wisely than you ever did. I'll use it for the Master."
It was about twenty feet away. When it came closer, perhaps ten feet, McNeely intended to charge it and quickly veer to its left and up the stairs.
But then he remembered his job.
It seemed like years ago, but he'd been hired to protect the Nevilles, and right now David Neville was within several yards and several seconds of having his head ripped off. The soldier took over then, with never a thought as to whether or not Neville was worth saving. McNeely edged closer to Neville and whispered. "When I say, run up the stairs."
Now stall. Relax him. Off his guard.
"Who is this Master?"
Cummings laughed gutturally. "Me to know, you to never find out." He came closer. It looked to McNeely as though the creature was ready to take them both. The mammoth arms were coming up and out, blocking their way to the stairs. One man, fast and agile, might be able to get past. But two? Never.
McNeely let his voice go softer. "Why kill us, Cummings? What's the point?" His voice cracked on the last word, so that a slight sob echoed and reechoed in the dismal room.
"Look at me!" Cummings boomed out. "The point is power! And I will have it all! Here first, then . . . ' He gestured with an arm like a railroad tie, "Out there! Out in the world." His voice dropped to a whistling husky sibilance. "The power to take those like you and crush you like bugs." He looked from McNeely to Neville and back again. Then he split the twisted clay of his face in a parody of a smile.
"Who's first?"
"Please …”McNeely choked out. "Please let us live. . . ."
"McNeely!" Cummings crooned in mock surprise. "I never thought you'd beg … such a strong man, a soldier, a man of such…"
"Don't kill us." McNeely's head drooped like a whipped dog, but his eyes still watched.
"… of such power! What a liar!" Cummings started to laugh, great dry heaving laughs that shook his body, relaxed the bunched, corded muscles. "What a liar!"
And McNeely moved.
"Now!" he shouted to Neville as he feinted right, then twisted left as if to run past Cummings's right side. But instead of dashing past, he threw himself into the air and lashed out with his right leg at the spot where Cummings's right ear pressed against his shoulder.
It was intended as a delaying maneuver. McNeely had hoped at best to stagger the behemoth, throw him off balance, perhaps with luck even to topple his top-heavy body so that there would be time for both him and Neville to get by and up the stairs. So it was a surprise to him when what happened, happened.
It began when he was in the air, drawing his leg back to lash out. It was as if time suddenly slowed for him, as if he had all the time he wanted to hang there in the air, measure his goal, take the move only when it felt absolutely, perfectly right. When that moment came, he unleashed all the power of his hip and thigh muscles, with the whole weight of his body behind it.
Then suddenly, terrifyingly, there was more.
He felt absurdly enough like a flyswatter made
of iron. An unknown hand took him and wielded him and thrust him against his enemy so that his foot hit the hollow of Cummings's neck with pile driver force, ramming the head to the left, compressing the thick neck muscles so quickly and powerfully that they exploded outward through the leathery skin, spraying a wet fog of blood and tissue into the air.
Neville had hesitated when McNeely had attacked. Instead of dashing past Cummings immediately, he had watched as McNeely had made his leap. Only when McNeely's foot smashed against Cummings did Neville start to run, just in time for Cummings to collide with him and bring him solidly up against the rough brick wall. Neville cried out at the pain, and in response Cummings's head swayed up on his ruin of a neck and turned almost completely around until it saw the man crumpled at the base of the wall. McNeely could scarcely believe that something that had taken a blow that had nearly decapitated it was capable of such blinding speed.
Cummings sought to cry out in anger and pain, but there was nothing left to scream with, and the air still in his lungs brought forth only a bloody froth that bubbled from his tattered throat. Then suddenly his arms were around David Neville.
Neville's face became a palette. It went from pink flesh to the white of shock to the gray of understood terror. Then the redness began, all in the time it took McNeely to cross the room. When he arrived at Neville's side, the man's eyes were already beginning to bug from the sockets.
McNeely grasped Cummings's arms, which embraced Neville's trunk just under the heart at the bottom of the rib cage. That some ribs were already broken McNeely knew. He'd heard them snap like dry sticks when Cummings had 'made his grab. But Neville was still alive, and McNeely intended to die himself to keep him that way. He tried to dig both hands around Cummings's left forearm, but could not find a hold. Cummings's arms seemed one with Neville's midsection, as if whatever warped alchemy that had changed Cummings was now exerting its force upon both attacker and victim, merging the flesh of the two men in a deadly union.
Neville's face was beyond red to purple now, and the whole upper half of his body seemed bloated with the lower organs that Cummings's arms were displacing. McNeely thought involuntarily of a tube of toothpaste squeezed in the middle, then of a balloon twisted tighter and tighter in the center until just a touch light of.
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