‘The Beast House beast?’ Jack asked.
‘Aye, the filthy spawn of hell.’
‘You’re saying that your father brought it to Malcasa Point?’
‘That he did, and I’m here to tell you the curse of it’s a heavy burden to bear. Heavy indeed.’ He took another drink.
Nora and Jack exchanged a glance as if they thought the man a lunatic. Abe was frowning.
‘The guilt.’ Captain Frank held up his thick, calloused hands. ‘Do you see the blood? I do. I see the blood of its victims, and God alone knows how many. They don’t tell it all on the tour. No indeed. Is my father there in wax? Is my sister Loreen, slain by the fiend seven years before I came wailing into this dreary world? No. You won’t find them on the tour. You won’t hear their names. How many others? Ten? Fifty? A hundred and fifty? Only God knows. God and the beast. People vanish. See their blood?’ he asked, slowly turning his hands.
‘You think it killed your father and sister?’ Nora asked.
‘Oh yes. Yes indeed. Little Loreen first. She was a child of three when he brought it home from some nameless forsaken island off the Australian coast. He was first mate, then, on the Mary Jane out of Sausalito. The summer of 1901, it was. They were becalmed, not a breath of wind, day after day, to fill the sails. The food went bad. The water casks emptied. They all thought surely they would die, and it’s a shame they didn’t. But on the thirteenth day of their travail, they spotted land. A volcanic island it was – all hills and jungle.
‘A party went ashore. Fresh water was gathered from a spring. Fruit and berries were plentiful, but the men craved meat and found none. Now what kind of jungle is that that has no wildlife? It’s none such as I have ever seen, or any of the men from the Mary Jane. It worked on their nerves, and many were anxious to return to the ship before nightfall. Even my father, as stout-hearted a fellow as ever walked a deck, confessed he greeted the sunset, that night, with unholy dread. But he wouldn’t abandon the island, not until he was certain it bore no wildlife.’
Captain Frank swigged down some beer. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, and stared into Tyler’s eyes as if she were alone with him. The noise of the bar – the talk and laughter, the clink of glasses, the clatter of pool balls, the pinging of the pinball machine, Willie Nelson’s clear voice from the juke-box – all seemed strangely distant to Tyler.
‘When darkness fell,’ he continued, ‘they surrounded the water hole. Men concealed themselves among the bushes and climbed into trees. Every last mother’s son of them was armed, ready to slay any animal that might come to drink.
‘The strategy worked. Near midnight, the creatures came. Twelve or fifteen of them wandered out of the jungle and waded into the pond to drink. My father admits he thought they were humans at first – some primitive tribe –but then he saw their faces in the moonlight. Their snouts. He knew they weren’t human, but loathsome, unearthly beasts. He ordered the men to fire. Every last one of the creatures fell. Not a one of them got away. My father’s face went ghastly pale when he told me of the slaughter, and what happened afterwards – how some of the men had their way with the female carcasses . . .’
‘Frank,’ Abe said.
The old man flinched as if startled from his dark reverie.
‘I don’t think we want to hear all this.’
‘I do,’ Nora protested. ‘It’s fascinating.’
‘I don’t mind,’ Tyler said. She was trembling. She hated the story, but she had to hear the rest of it, and even resented Abe’s interruption. She took a long drink of beer. Abe gave her a quizzical look, and refilled her glass from the pitcher.
‘Go on,’ Nora said.
Captain Frank looked to Abe for permission.
‘Doesn’t bother me,’ he said.
‘Then I’ll . . . the slaughter . . . When it was done, my father found a survivor, an infant creature beneath one of the females – its mother, no doubt. Her body had shielded it from the storm of bullets. Father took this infant into his care.
‘The others, the bodies, were . . .’ He glanced uneasily at Abe. ‘They provided sufficient nourishment to see the crew safely to Perth.’
‘They ate them?’ Nora asked.
‘My father claimed they tasted rather like mutton.’
‘Charming.’
‘He named his creature Bobo, and though he was never fond of it he considered the filthy thing a great curiosity and kept it with him in a cage on the journey home. My mother, rest her soul, thought Bobo appalling. She begged him to get rid of it, but little Loreen found the creature delightful and spent hours behind our home, talking to it through the bars of its cage as if it were a playmate. At last, Mother prevailed upon him to dispose of it. He agreed to transport it to San Francisco, where he hoped to sell it for a good price to a circus or zoo. Alas, Loreen must have overheard the talk, for she opened the cage, the very next morning, and Bobo fell upon her. My folks heard her awful screams, but she was past helping when they reached her. The beast, small as it was, had torn her asunder, and was having . . .’ Captain Frank glanced at Abe, and shook his head.
‘My father beat it senseless with a spade. He thought he’d killed it. He put the remains in the flour bag, and dragged it up into the hills behind the Thorn house. The place was under construction, then. Lilly Thorn was just having it built. He buried the creature up there.’
‘But it wasn’t dead?’ Nora asked.
‘Not much more than a year went by, and there were three dead in the Thorn house: Lilly’s two sons and her sister. Lilly escaped, but she was never right afterward and they carted her off to a sanitarium. The blame fell on a luckless chap name of Goucher, a handyman who’d stopped by, the day before, to chop wood. But my father’d seen the bodies. He had his suspicions, and spoke up for Goucher, claiming a wild animal must’ve got into the house, but he kept shut about Bobo, not wanting to bring blame on himself. Well, the crowd wouldn’t listen. They lynched poor Goucher, strung him up from a porch beam.
‘I wasn’t born till six years later, that’s 1909. I ’spect I’m what you’d call an accident, for I believe my folks were loath to have another child after what happened to Loreen. Oh, they treated me like royalty, but there was always a gloom in their eyes. The Thorn house, all the time I was growing up, stood deserted at the end of town. Nobody’d go near the place. It was said to be haunted. Every now and then, though, we’d have someone disappear. Then, in ’31, the Kutch family moved in.
‘They came from Seattle, and scoffed at warnings about the house, but they weren’t settled in more than a couple of weeks before the husband and kids were slaughtered. Maggie was scratched up bad, but . . . she’ll tell you all about it if you take the tour. What she won’t tell you – what maybe she doesn’t know – is that my father, the night after the funeral, took his Winchester and went off to kill the beast.
‘He was sixty-two at the time. He’d been living with the guilt for better than thirty years, and he told me that morning he couldn’t abide it any longer. It was then I heard the whole story for the first time, and how he knew it must be Bobo, still alive, behind the murders. I begged him to let me come along, but he just wouldn’t hear of it. He wanted me to stay behind, and look after Mother. It was as if he knew he would never come back, and he didn’t. He was a good shot. I ’spect Bobo must’ve snuck up on him, caught him from the back.’ Captain Frank raked the air, fingers hooked like claws, and knocked over his mug. Tyler flinched as it pounded onto the table. Beer flew out, splashing Abe, sliding in a sudsy spill across the wood. ‘Oh, I’m . . .’ The old man shook his head, mumbling, and swept at the puddle with his open hand. ‘Oh. I’m . . . I shouldn’t of . . . oh damn.’
The barmaid rushed up with a towel. ‘We have a little accident here?’ she asked, mopping the table.
‘Nothing serious,’ Abe said.
‘If Frank’s being a nuisance . . .’
‘No. It’s fine.’
‘I should’ve warned you,’ she said, castin
g a peeved glance at Captain Frank. ‘Going at his Bobo story, I bet. He’ll talk your ears off once he’s soaked up a few. We’ve had folks get up and walk out. Haven’t we, Captain?’
He stared down at his shirt. ‘The tale must be told,’ he muttered.
‘Gives the place a bad name.’
‘Pretty interesting stuff,’ Nora said.
‘Just don’t believe a word of it,’ the barmaid said. ‘Come on, Frank. Why don’t you go on back to the bar and leave these nice folks in peace.’ She took his arm and helped him stand up.
‘Hang on a second,’ Abe said. He lifted a pitcher and filled the old man’s mug to the brim.
‘Thank you, matey. Let me tell you.’ He met the eyes of everyone at the table. ‘The hours of the beast are numbered. One night, Captain Frank shall stalk it to its lair and lay it low. The souls of the dead cry out for its blood. I am the avenger. Mark my words.’
‘We’ll be pulling for you,’ Jack called after him.
‘Jesus,’ Nora said, and rolled her eyes.
Grinning, Jack shook his head. ‘The old fart waits much longer, he’ll be stalking it from a wheelchair.’
‘He’ll never do it,’ Abe said. ‘A guy talks it out that way, he doesn’t act on it.’
‘Did you believe it?’ Tyler asked. ‘About the beast?’
‘He didn’t disbelieve it,’ Jack put in.
‘Hey,’ Nora said. ‘We’ve gotta tell Gorman Hardy about this guy. Maybe he’ll put us in the Acknowledgment. “My gratitude to Nora Branson, Tyler Moran, Jack Wyatt, and Abe Clanton, whose valuable assistance led me to the true story of Bobo the beast.” I ask you, would that not be terrif?’
‘That,’ Tyler said, ‘would be almost too exciting.’
11
A sharp pounding on the door startled Gorman Hardy awake. He bolted upright and scanned the dark room, wondering where he was. Then he remembered.
It must, he thought, be Brian at the door. But why the frantic knocking?
Perhaps he had lost his key.
‘I’m coming,’ Gorman called.
The knocking continued.
He swung his legs to the floor and squinted against the brightness as he switched on a bedside lamp.
‘I’m coming,’ he called again.
The knocking didn’t stop.
Something, he thought, must have gone wrong. More than a lost room key. Something bad enough to panic Brian.
He felt on the verge of panic, himself, as he stood up.
For the love of God, what had happened?
He was naked. He put on a satin robe, tied it shut, and opened the door.
Brian was not there.
On the dark stoop waited a man and a woman. The man was about forty and bald. He wore a blue windbreaker. His fists were clenched at his sides. Gorman had never seen him before. The woman, an attractive blonde, looked familiar. She wore jeans and a checkered blouse and an open leather jacket. She looked like an older version of Janice. Gorman realized he had seen her at the Carriage House where she’d been performing hostess duties.
These people are Janice’s parents.
He felt a little sick.
‘Mr Hardy?’ the man asked in a taut voice.
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll try to be civilized about this, but it’s two o’clock in the morning and our daughter is missing. Is she here?’
‘No, of course not. Come in and see for yourselves.’ He stepped away from the door to let them enter. The woman shut the door and backed against it as if to prevent Gorman from escaping.
The man, after a glance at the beds, stepped into the bathroom and turned on a light. He came out a moment later, and checked the closet. He looked at the connecting door, then at Gorman. ‘What about Mr Blake?’
‘I really can’t answer for him.’
‘You’re together. You paid both rooms.’
‘He is my associate, yes. But I have no idea why you suspect either of us might be harboring your daughter.’ As he spoke, he walked past the man to the connecting door. He rapped it with his fist. ‘Brian?’ he called. He opened his side and tried the knob of Brian’s door. Fortunately, it didn’t turn. With any luck, if the girl was in the room, she would have time to get out. ‘Brian?’ he called again.
‘Let’s have a look,’ the man said, striding forward.
‘He drove her someplace,’ the woman said, speaking for the first time.
‘I’ll take a look anyhow.’
Gorman stepped out of his way. He watched Janice’s father insert a key and unlock the door. A lamp was on. Relieved, Gorman saw that both the beds were made. He waited while the man entered to search. Turning to the woman, he said, ‘Is the car gone?’
She nodded. Her face was grim, lips pressed together in a tight line, eyes glaring at Gorman.
‘I honestly don’t know what to say,’ he told her. ‘You suspect that she and Brian went off together?’
‘You wouldn’t know anything about that,’ she said, her voice bitter.
‘I’m afraid not.’
The man came back into the room. ‘Okay, buster, where’d they go?’
‘I have no idea. I don’t even know your daughter. Would she be the young lady who registered us?’
‘She would be.’
‘I haven’t seen her since then.’
‘Don’t lie to us!’ the woman suddenly blurted. She rushed to her husband’s side. ‘Show him, Marty. Show him!’
He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his back pocket. It shook in his trembling hands as he opened it. ‘We found this in Janice’s room,’ he said, and held it out.
Gorman took the sheet. He stared at it. The bitch, he thought. Oh, the bitch! She was supposed to hide it! Brian’s fault. Where is he? What could’ve possessed him to keep her out so late and allow this to happen? He’s ruined it. He’s ruined everything!
‘What do you say to that, Mr Hardy?’ the woman said, almost snarling.
He managed a smile as he handed back the contract. ‘Janice planned to surprise you,’ he said. ‘If the proposed book is as successful as my previous one, this agreement will likely earn her in the neighborhood of a million dollars.’
The news had its desired effect. Janice’s parents looked at each other, then at the contract. They seemed to soften, as if their pent-up rage was melting away.
‘Is this on the level?’ Marty asked. He sounded suspicious, but a hint of excitement glittered in his eyes.
‘It most certainly is. The agreement gives Janice fifty percent of all earnings from the book. This includes the advance and all royalties. We’re talking here about a hardbound sale, book club and paperback sales, foreign sales, probably a movie deal. So far, my previous book has brought in over three million dollars. I suspect the Beast House story will do as well, or better. And Janice will receive half of it all.’
And she will, he thought. Good Christ, she will. Now there was no chance of tricking her out of it. He felt sick.
The woman raised her eyes from the contract. She looked wary. ‘What did Janice have to do for this?’
‘The book was her idea. She initiated the contact with me. And she provided me with a resource that gives invaluable insight into the subject.’
‘What’s that?’ Marty asked.
‘Janice doesn’t wish that known, but since you’re her parents, I see no harm in telling you that she found a diary written by Elizabeth Thorn, the lady who . . .’
‘Where is Janice now?’ the mother asked. ‘I realize this puts a somewhat different light on the subject, but where is she? Does it have something to do with this?’ She nodded at the contract.
‘I honestly don’t know. When did you last see her?’
‘Around nine,’ Marty answered. ‘She said she was going for a walk. This was right after she came back from delivering an ice bucket to Mr Blake – which, by the way, he didn’t need in the first place. I saw two in there.’
‘I can only suppose,’ Gorman said, ‘that Brian
invited her to accompany him. Perhaps she lied to you, thinking you might disapprove of her traipsing off with one of the motel guests.’
Marty and his wife exchanged a glance.
‘I take it she’s done such things before.’
‘Wherever they went,’ Marty said, ‘they should’ve been back long ago.’
The woman said, ‘There’s no excuse for this.’
‘I quite agree,’ Gorman told her.
‘Where did he take her?’ Marty asked.
‘We have no proof that she went with Brian at all, but he left with the intention of exploring an area behind Beast House. He was hoping to locate and photograph a hole near the rear fence.’
‘A hole?’
‘It’s mentioned in the Thorn diary. Allegedly, an underground tunnel leads from the hillside to the house’s cellar. If Brian finds the opening, it lends a certain credence to the . . .’
‘Janice wouldn’t go anywhere near that place,’ her mother said.
‘Well, perhaps she didn’t. I’m simply pointing out the purpose of Brian’s search. That’s where he intended to go.’
‘She must’ve gone with him, Claire.’
Claire shook her head. She looked resigned, rather weary. ‘I guess I wouldn’t put it past her,’ she admitted. ‘This Brian, I saw him at the restaurant. He’s a very attractive man.’
Marty put a hand on Claire’s back. In a gentle voice, he said, ‘I’ll drive out and bring her home.’
‘I’m sure she’ll be right along,’ Gorman said.
‘We’ve been waiting up for hours, Mr Hardy. Have you got any idea what goes through a parent’s mind when your kid’s out at this time of night and you don’t know where she is, what’s happened to her? You tell yourself she’ll walk through the door any minute, and all the time you’re wondering if maybe some lunatic got hold of her, if maybe you’ll never see her again.’
‘I can assure you, Brian’s no lunatic.’
‘Why isn’t she home?’ Marty demanded. He sounded a little frantic.
Claire sighed. ‘She probably got carried away and forgot the time.’
‘I’ll remind her of the time,’ Marty snapped, ‘when I get my hands on her.’ He frowned at Gorman. ‘Where, exactly, is this hole supposed to be?’
The Complete Beast House Chronicles Page 30
