The Homing

by John Saul

  A girl.

  A girl with long, flowing dark hair.

  Hair like Julie’s.

  But that wasn’t possible—he’d seen Julie leave with Kevin a little while before he himself had left. They’d been heading over toward Vic Costas’s, where Kevin’s friend Jeff Larkin lived.

  And yet, even in that fragmentary glimpse he’d caught before Carl Henderson pulled the door closed, Otto was almost certain it was Julie who was in the back room.

  “What’s going on down here, Henderson?” he growled now, taking a step toward the much younger man. “What’s Julie doing here?”

  “Julie?” Henderson echoed, his eyes fixing on the old man. When he spoke, his voice was low, but steady. “She’s not here, Otto. You interrupted me this morning, remember?”

  Otto paused. Was it going to be this easy? Was Henderson going to admit what he’d done? But why wouldn’t he? There was no one here but the two of them. Why would Henderson care what he said?

  Carl Henderson’s lips twisted into a dark parody of a smile. “It wasn’t what you think, Otto,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to rape her. I wouldn’t do that.”

  Otto’s jaw began to work as anger rose in him once again. “I saw it, Henderson,” he rasped. “I know what you were doing.”

  “No you don’t,” Henderson told him. “You don’t know at all. But I’ll show you.” He paused for a moment, his smile broadening into a twisted grin. “Would you like to see my collection, Otto?”

  Collection?

  What was Henderson talking about? Wasn’t that what he’d been seeing all over the house? “I already saw it, Henderson,” he growled, “and if you ask me—”

  “I didn’t ask you,” Henderson cut in, his voice low, but suddenly as cold and hard as a marble counter. “I didn’t ask you to come here at all, Otto. I didn’t ask you to break into my house.” His eyes narrowed as he saw Otto flinch at his last words. “You did break in, didn’t you, Otto? You must have, because I always lock the house before I come down here.” He paused for a fraction of a second, then repeated one of the words he’d just spoken: “Always.”

  There was something in the way Henderson spoke the word that made Otto Owen’s blood run cold, and instinctively he took a step back. It was as if the action triggered something in Carl Henderson. Suddenly the younger man was beside him, the fingers of his right hand closing on Otto’s shoulder.

  Fingers that were far stronger than Otto had imagined they would be.

  “You can’t leave, Otto,” Carl told him. “After all, I can’t have you spreading stories about me, now can I?”

  “Get your hands off me—” Otto began, but again Henderson cut his words short.

  “But you’ve only seen part of my collection, Otto. The rest of it is back here.” He began moving Otto toward the closed door at the back of the cellar, his fingers digging painfully into the flesh of the older man’s arm. “Come along, Otto. Don’t you want to see my best specimens?”

  As a terrible premonition began to expand in Otto Owen’s mind, Carl Henderson propelled him toward the door. When they were finally in front of it, Carl reached out with his free hand and grasped the knob. Then he paused, and his eyes fastened on Otto as he spoke. “You understand that after you see my collection, you won’t be able to leave.”

  Before Otto could answer, Henderson twisted the knob and pushed the door open.

  The harsh smell of disinfectants instantly grew stronger.

  The lights inside the room were off, and as the door swung slowly and silently on its hinges, the scene within was revealed in a strange kind of slow motion.

  It wasn’t Julie that Otto had seen in that brief glimpse when Henderson had first come out of the room only a few moments ago.

  It was someone else.

  Someone Otto didn’t recognize.

  A girl with long dark hair.

  Hair that spilled down her shoulders, hanging almost to her waist.

  She was suspended against the far wall, hanging from one of the floor joists by a thick rope tied around her wrists. Her hands, blackened and distended, must have turned gangrenous before the rest of her body had died, for even though her arms had paled as blood had drained from them after death, her hands had not, and their mottled dark purplish hue stood in stark contrast to the alabaster tone of her forearms.

  From her chest the head of a large spike protruded; a spike that had been driven completely through her body and into one of the original support posts of the house’s foundation.

  Her head hung down, as if she was staring at the floor, but Otto could still make out her features.

  She appeared to have been about Julie’s age.

  Otto had no idea how long the girl had been dead, nor exactly how she had died. But even as his gorge rose in protest against the horrific sight, a fleeting prayer ran through his mind.

  A prayer that the girl had died before Carl Henderson had administered the final indignity of pinning her to the wall in a grotesque parody of the way he’d pinned so many thousands of insects into the boxes that were displayed all over his house.

  The girl, though, unlike the insects, was no longer intact.

  Rather, her body was in the process of being devoured.

  Ants swarmed over her legs, picking at her skin and flesh.

  Her feet, suspended only a few inches above the floor, had already been stripped almost clean of their meat, the bones of her toes held together now only by threads of cartilage.

  The girl’s belly was grotesquely distended, and as Carl’s eyes fixed on her rotting flesh, a maggot appeared, erupting from her skin like a pustule, then dropping—squirming—to the floor, only to be instantly overrun by the ants that were working their way up her legs, devouring everything they touched.

  Otto stared at the grotesque figure, stunned into mute immobility by the sheer horror of it.

  “She’ll be gone soon,” he heard Carl Henderson say. “But it’s all right.” Henderson’s lips curled once more into the dark smile he had shown Otto a few minutes ago. “There are lots of girls out there, Otto. Even if I can’t bring Julie down here, I’ll find someone.”

  Otto’s lips worked helplessly for a moment, but finally a single word emerged from his throat: “Why?”

  Carl Henderson’s cruel smile froze. His eyes darkened, glazing with a manic fury that set his entire body trembling. “It’s the way they look,” he rasped, his teeth clenched as his crazed eyes fixed on the girl. “It’s not my fault. Something happens when I see them. I can’t—” Abruptly, he cut himself off and forced his gaze away from the body on the wall, to stare contemptuously at Otto. “Maybe I just want them to feel what you’re going to feel right now, Otto.”

  In one quick motion Henderson stepped out of the room, snapping the light off and closing the door behind him.

  In the scant second before the door clicked shut, Otto turned around and took one lurching step toward it. But it was too late. As he was plunged into darkness, Otto heard the rasp of the lock being turned.

  Carl Henderson savored the look he’d seen in Otto Owen’s eyes in that last half second before he closed the door, locking the old man into the room where he kept his most valuable specimens.

  It was a look of pure terror, a look that told him Otto knew what was coming next—knew he was about to die.

  The only thing Carl wished now was that he could watch Otto’s face for the next few minutes—or hours, depending on how long it actually took for death to come to the old man. But that, of course, was impossible.

  In order to do that, there would have to be light in the room, and light was the one thing Carl’s victims were never allowed.

  Their fear, he’d long ago learned, was far more intense when they were unable to see what was happening to them; when their imaginations made their agonized deaths more terrifying than even the most grotesque torture he himself could devise.

  The only problem with Otto Owen was that Carl couldn’t take nearly as much time as
he would like.

  The last girl—the one who was even now pinned to the wall of the pitch-black room—had taken days to die, though her mind had shattered into fragments even before the first night was through.

  Like all the others, he’d found the girl hitchhiking south on the freeway, as he was on the way back from an overnight trip to Sacramento. And like all the others, she was just about fifteen years old, with long dark hair.

  He’d known the minute he’d seen her that he was going to bring her home. He’d begun to feel the familiar rage when he spotted her walking along the shoulder of the highway.

  He’d concealed it, though, smiling at her, acting as though he didn’t care whether she got into his car or not.

  She’d seemed like a nice girl, too. Her name was Dawn.

  Dawn Morningstar, according to her.

  He hadn’t believed her, of course—no one’s name was Dawn Morningstar. But it didn’t make any difference, either. Not in the end.

  Carl let his mind drift back to the day he’d met Julie Spellman. From the moment he’d caught his first glimpse of her, he’d known that he had to make room for her in his basement.

  Which had meant it was time for Dawn Morningstar to die.

  And die she had, while he’d savored every moment of her final agony. Now, though, it was time to put the delicious images of Dawn’s last moments back into the recesses of his mind, and turn his attention to Otto Owen.

  Should he, perhaps, kill and mount Otto as he’d mounted Dawn? But no—he simply wouldn’t have the luxury of time. Not that it mattered, for to Carl, Otto himself didn’t matter.

  He wasn’t like the girls. In fact, if Otto hadn’t come here tonight, he wouldn’t have bothered with him at all. But now that Otto knew his little secret, Otto would have to die.

  A simple matter of logistics, really. Otto must die quickly, and in a way that wouldn’t send anyone else to his house.

  Even as Carl Henderson posed the problem to himself, the answer came to him.

  Moving to one of the terraria on the rack against the wall, he paused for a few seconds to admire its contents.

  Centruroides limpidas. Scorpions.

  Dozens of them.

  Small, pale in color, nearly indistinguishable from the local variety.

  But more dangerous. Far more dangerous.

  Carefully, using a long pair of tweezers, he began transferring the arachnids from the terrarium into a box he had constructed especially for the purpose of moving his prized specimens from their glass homes to the darkroom.

  When the box was full of the aggressive creatures, Carl closed its top, then took it to the chute that led through the wall into the darkroom. The box fit perfectly, and when he was certain it was properly secured, Carl pressed a button that opened one end and released the scorpions into the lightless concrete chamber.

  Then he sat down to listen.

  Otto Owen struggled to control the fear that had gripped him the moment the velvety darkness had closed around him. Suddenly he felt dizzy, as if he’d lost not only his ability to see the walls of the room, but even to distinguish up from down.

  He stood swaying on his feet for a moment, trying to regain his bearings.

  He was facing the door, which couldn’t be more than three feet in front of him.

  The body pinned to the wall was behind him, maybe six feet away.

  He shuddered as he thought about it, then determinedly put it out of his mind.

  The main thing right now was not to give in to the panic that seemed to be an almost palpable force in the darkness.

  And certainly not to think about the corpse on the wall, nor the ants that were devouring it, nor the maggots that infested it.

  Instead he must concentrate on escaping from the trap he’d been stupid enough to walk into.

  Because if he didn’t, Carl Henderson was surely going to kill him.

  Otto moved finally, stepping gingerly forward in the darkness, his hands held out in front of him. As his fingertips touched the solid wood of the door, the fear that had only a moment ago threatened to overwhelm him abated slightly. Now, at least, he no longer had the terrible sensation of being adrift in the darkness.

  His legs suddenly weakened beneath him, and he instinctively let himself sink to the floor, his back resting against the wall behind him.

  His heart was thudding in his chest, and for an awful moment Otto wondered if perhaps Henderson wouldn’t have to kill him at all, if perhaps he was simply going to die of a heart attack right now.

  The moment passed, though, and slowly his heartbeat began to return to normal.

  He was about to get back to his feet and continue exploring the blackness of his prison when he heard something.

  On the opposite side of the wall, something was happening.

  He listened, trying to figure out what it might be.

  A moment later he heard a click, followed instantly by a sound almost like that of a mousetrap snapping shut.

  He paused again, listening, but heard nothing else.

  Then, just as he was about to stand up once more, he felt something.

  Something crawling up his leg, under his pants.

  Instinctively, Otto tried to brush it away.

  And instantly felt the first burning sting as the scorpion’s barbed tail lashed into his flesh.

  Otto tried to scramble to his feet, but as he put his hand on the floor to push himself up, another of the creatures attacked him. As he felt the second stinger plunge into the flesh between his thumb and forefinger, he jerked his hand away from the floor and reflexively put his palm to his mouth to suck the poison from the wound.

  The scorpion, still clinging to his fingers, leaped to his face and whipped its tail again.

  Otto screamed then, and tried to roll away from the attack, but now the floor seemed to be covered with the deadly creatures, and he felt first one, then another penetrate his shirt.

  He was thrashing helplessly now, the poison surging through his system. Everywhere he moved, another scorpion waited.

  “No!” he screamed as he felt one of them scuttle onto his face. “Help me!” His voice rose into a keening plea: “For the love of God—”

  But even as he uttered the words, more of the stingers sank into him, lashing into his face and chest, and finally, whimpering, he sank back against the wall.

  A new and even darker kind of blackness began to close around Otto.

  A blackness from which he knew he would never emerge.

  He whimpered, tried to lift his hand against his unseen tormentors once again, but then the darkness overwhelmed him and his hand fell back to the floor.

  Mercifully, Otto Owen felt no more of the scorpions’ stings.

  CHAPTER 10

  Julie had never experienced anything like it.

  Growing up in the San Fernando Valley, the nights had never been like this.

  Always, there had been lights.

  In the neighborhood where the Spellmans had lived since her father died, brilliant halogen bulbs had glared down from high overhead, casting an almost shadowless light over the streets and sidewalks, washing away the night in an attempt to tear the protective shield of darkness from the drug dealers and gang members whose rule had spread over wider areas every week.

  Even before that, when they’d lived up in the hills above Studio City, where the warm glow of the glass-enclosed bulbs sitting atop their concrete posts had only created small pools of illumination in the nighttime streets, nothing had ever been truly dark.

  Not like it was out here.

  Everything, always, had been dimly lit by the indirect glow of the hundreds of square miles of lights that carpeted the entire Los Angeles area.

  But tonight, avoiding the power lines and the road, she and Kevin had headed across country, making their way through the perfectly cultivated fields that spread over the valley floor.

  Soon even the glow of the little town was behind them, and though Julie could still se
e an occasional light twinkling in the distance, the blackness around her was almost complete.

  Overhead, filling the sky, were more stars than she had ever seen before—millions and millions of them, glimmering in the blackness, the great swath of the Milky Way slashing across the cosmos like a cascade of diamonds on black velvet.

  But even more than the stars, it was the sounds of the night that touched something deep inside Julie, resonating within her in a way she’d never felt before.

  Back in Los Angeles there had been a steady drone of traffic noise, always there, always in the background. Most of the time she’d simply tuned it out, becoming conscious of it only when its rhythms changed: the sudden squeal of brakes; a scream of tires spinning on the pavement.

  In the summer, sometimes, she was vaguely aware of crickets chirping in the night.

  But nothing like the symphony of sound that enveloped her tonight as she walked through the fields.

  The thrumming of crickets formed a steady rhythmic background, but over that she could hear other sounds—sounds she couldn’t even begin to identify.

  “Listen,” she whispered to Kevin. Her pace had been steadily slowing as they moved through the darkness; now she came to a complete stop and her hand tightened on Kevin’s.

  “What?” Kevin asked, turning to look at her in the darkness, but seeing only a dark shadow against the backdrop of the night.

  “Don’t you hear it?” Julie went on, her voice so low Kevin could barely hear her. “It sounds like music, doesn’t it?”

  Kevin frowned in the darkness. Music? All he could hear were the sounds of millions of insects all around them, chirping and buzzing as they worked their legs or wing covers together to attract mates out of the darkness. “What are you talking about?” he finally asked, lifting the can in his free hand to his lips and draining off the last few drops of beer. “It’s just a bunch of crickets and stuff.”

  Julie shook her head. “But it’s not,” she told him. “It’s like music! I’ve never heard anything like it before.”