Virgil’s skull felt like someone had crawled inside it with a sledgehammer and now they were trying to pound their way out through his forehead. He had dented the heavy door with his boots and he was pretty sure a couple of his toes were broken. Finally, he’d shot through the lock, but someone had packed something heavy up against the inside of the door, and the best he and Cooder could manage was to wedge it open an inch, just enough to get a breath of air, but not nearly enough to save them from the heat that was turning the tiny room into an oven. Already Virgil could feel the skin on the back of his neck starting to blister and his lungs felt as though they had been belt-sanded. He kept slapping at his hair to make sure it wasn’t alight.
“Let’s try one more run at it,” he said, urging Cooder on. Cooder gave him a long, suffering look but backed away the eight feet to the far wall, preparing for their charge. Shoulder to shoulder they struck the door at full tilt, but all they got for their trouble were aching shoulders.
“We’re finished,” said Virgil, leaning heavily against the door frame, staring up at the hole over their heads that now looked like the bottom of a giant campfire.
Cooder shook his head.
“You got an idea?” said Virgil.
“She’s coming.”
“Who?”
“The woman.”
The sound of metal dragging across carpet alerted Virgil, and he shoved hard on the door, gratified to feel it give a little.
“Wait a minute!” a woman screamed.
“Audrey?!” he shouted. “Is that you? We’ve got to get out of here!”
“I’m trying to move the desk! I barely got it into place by myself. Hold on!”
As Audrey struggled to drag the heavy desk back, Cooder and Virgil put their weight into it again. The door finally screeched open and the charbroiled pair fell through into the corridor, gasping for breath.
“Is anyone else out there?” asked Audrey, peering past them at the flames that were starting to catch on the upper stair treads.
Virgil shook his head.
“Zach was here,” she said. “Just like I told you.” The pain in her eyes slashed him like a knife.
Virgil figured now was not a good time to stop to say he was sorry. “Where’s he now?”
“Tara’s got him.”
Virgil glanced back through the door as the flames danced down another two treads. He kicked the door shut.
“I barricaded us in to keep the smoke from getting down here and to conserve oxygen,” said Audrey. “I was afraid a beam or some of the masonry might collapse down into that little room and bust the door open.”
“Good idea,” said Virgil, helping Cooder shove the desk back into place after Audrey stuffed rags under the door again. With the door closed, the hallway was once more bathed in darkness broken only by the flashlight’s glow. Audrey pointed it at the floor.
“Richard’s been shot in the chest,” she said, scurrying back down the hall.
Virgil and Cooder followed close on her tail. Virgil glanced at Martha’s body lying on the floor of the sitting room as they passed it.
“Tara shot her too,” said Audrey, stopping. “She’s dead.”
“You sure?”
Audrey nodded. But Virgil dropped down beside Martha anyway, sliding his fingers onto her throat. He glanced at Audrey and shook his head. She shrugged.
She led them up the hall to the room where Richard now lay unconscious on his blanket. Virgil knelt beside Richard and pulled aside the bloody shirt Audrey had used for a bandage. He shook Richard gently and Richard came around again, enough to recognize him.
“You’re going to be all right,” said Virgil. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you out of here.”
Virgil glanced at Audrey and she gave him a brief, tentative smile as he gently tightened the shirt back around Richard’s chest.
“The bleeding has about stopped,” said Virgil. “You did the right thing, plugging the hole like that.”
“He’s not going into shock, is he?”
Virgil glanced at Richard. He might be. But they’d done everything for him they could right now, and there was nothing to be gained by worrying Audrey. “Not yet. But we need to get out of here and soon. You looked for another way out?”
Audrey shook her head. “There isn’t one. Just the stairs you came down. But the firemen will find us, right?”
Virgil’s expression said as much as his words. “Not for a while. The fire trucks will be hosing this one down all night. Then it could be a few days before the fire marshal really gets to investigating, and even then he might not find us down here for a week. The remains of the barn will collapse over the hole up there. Audrey, I’m afraid we’re buried.” He grabbed her by the shoulders when she started to sag. But there was steel in her eyes.
“Our car’s out front,” she said. “Your car must be out there. Won’t they be looking for us?”
“Oh, they’ll be looking all right. But even so, it could take days. They’ll be careful, sifting through the ashes. They’ll most likely assume we’re dead, so they’ll be looking for evidence, not survivors.” He glanced around the room. “I don’t feel the heat so much here just yet. I think we’re safe for the moment.” He had no idea of just how hot it might get in the basement. Maybe the surrounding soil would keep it at least liveable. Maybe not. But he didn’t think it would do any good for Audrey to think about that either. One problem at a time. “The trouble is oxygen. The fire is sucking it out and now all of us are using it too. I don’t know how long we can stay down here. You absolutely certain there’s no other way out?”
“Pretty sure,” said Audrey. “I found this cell where they kept Zach, another bedroom, a bathroom, a storage room, a workroom, and the room you saw. But no other exit.”
“Show me the workroom,” said Virgil, following Audrey two doors down. The one door on the other side of the corridor was closed. “What’s in there?” asked Virgil, pointing.
“The bathroom.”
Virgil passed by her into the workroom. Audrey stood in the doorway.
“Tara has Zach,” Audrey reminded him. “She’s going to kill him.”
“Why would she want to do that?” asked Virgil, wondering if she was going to confirm his theory about Tara’s research.
“She wants to experiment on him.”
Virgil closed his eyes, nodding.
“She thinks Zach has some kind of supernatural powers,” said Audrey. “And she believes she can enhance them. She’ll kill him. Just like she killed my sister and brother.”
“I thought your mother did something to your sister and brother.”
Audrey shook her head. “I did too. But it was Tara. I never remembered it before.”
Virgil rubbed sweat off his brow with the back of his sleeve.
“All right. Well, we have to find a way out.”
“How?” said Audrey.
“The obvious way would be to dig.”
“The walls and ceiling are concrete and they’re lined with lead,” said Audrey.
“What?” said Virgil, glancing around. He hadn’t paid any attention to the walls before. But the walls and ceiling in the little workroom seemed normal enough, painted a uniform shade of beige. He recalled Charlie telling him that Martha Remont’s cellar had been lead-lined. “Why lead?”
“I think my mother thought it would keep Tara away.”
“But it didn’t work.”
“Obviously not.”
“Not much here,” said Virgil, glancing at the worktable and shelves. He eyed the woodworking tools and small table with a vise attached to the side. “And mostly power tools. That’s not going to help us much.”
“Shine the light over here,” said Audrey, shoving aside a wooden crate. Virgil’s flashlight illuminated a row of metal ducts radiating off a single flue that dropped down through the ceiling. A large fan system was wired directly into the breaker panel.
“Did you do that?” said Virgil, pointing toward the blan
kets plugging the vents.
Audrey nodded. “Richard had me shut off the breaker to the fan. The ventilation system was sucking smoke down here.”
Virgil glanced at the dead lightbulb overhead, feeling a faint ray of hope. If they could use the power drill and circular saw, that might help. “Did you trip them all?”
“No,” said Audrey. “The power went out right after that.”
The hope faded.
Cooder hefted a small sledgehammer with a short handle and pulled a wide-bladed chisel off the wall.
“Whatcha gonna do with that?” said Virgil.
“Dig,” said Cooder, nodding up toward the ceiling.
“Case you didn’t hear anyone mention it,” said Virgil, “there’s a burning building right on top of us.”
Virgil watched that roll around inside Cooder’s skull. Audrey looked at Cooder, then Virgil. Virgil shook his head and rolled his eyes.
“Not in the bathroom,” said Cooder.
“Huh?” said Virgil, blinking.
“Feel the ceiling,” said Cooder.
Virgil reached up and placed his hand against the lead. It was warm, a lot warmer than a cellar wall or ceiling had any right to be. There was a fire directly over their heads.
“Not in the other room,” said Cooder again.
“How do you know that?” asked Virgil.
Cooder shrugged “The door’s cooler there.”
Virgil glanced at Audrey.
“Maybe,” said Audrey. “You get kind of lost down here. But I think the cellar follows the outline of the house above. Maybe the bathroom was added on later?”
“Maybe,” muttered Virgil, trying to orient himself. If the house was right over their heads here, then the bath across the hall might be out from under the fire, somewhere in the vicinity of the driveway. He found a household hammer and a short steel crowbar, and Cooder led the way back across the hall. Sure enough, the door did feel cooler. Virgil shoved it in, surprised to find a set of stairs leading up half a floor to the bathroom.
“Merle probably raised the bathroom so he didn’t have to put in a sewage pump to get the waste to flow to the septic system,” he said.
Audrey shook her head, not understanding.
“Sewage flows downhill,” said Virgil. “Plumbers’ll tell you it’s a pain to install a pump. Someone like Merle probably wouldn’t know how. With any luck, the bathroom isn’t much deeper underground than the regular house basement. Come on.”
The three of them marched single file up the tiny stairs, wedging into the bathroom. A small vanity and sink took up one wall. The toilet was on the other and a built-in fiberglass tub at the far end butted against a small closet. The walls were decorated in a floral wallpaper and most of the floor was concrete painted pink. The section under the tub and toilet was raised, however, sheathed in bare plywood. Clean towels hung from wooden rods and two toothbrushes rested neatly in a clean glass on the vanity. The room was definitely cooler.
“You have your moments, Cooder,” said Virgil. “I’ll give you that.”
Cooder grinned like a stroked puppy.
Virgil stared at the sink. “Looks like your mother lived down here with Zach.”
Audrey nodded. “She was so pale. I don’t think she’s seen daylight in ages.”
Virgil dropped the hammer and crowbar and took the tools Cooder was carrying, instead. He began to chisel a square opening overhead. He had only been working for a couple of minutes—he hadn’t even been able to tear the thin paneling away from the lead yet—when his arms dropped to his sides, and his heart throbbed in his chest. Cooder took the tools out of Virgil’s hands and his blows reverberated in the cellar. He managed to peel away the plywood and went to work on the metal. When Cooder began to tire, Virgil took over again. They worked that way for half an hour before they were finally able to pull down a man-size square of the quarter-inch sheet of soft lead.
Virgil immediately began chiseling at the concrete.
When his hands sagged again, the ceiling was chipped and grooved, but nowhere had he gouged deeper than the width of his little finger into the hardened cement. Cooder took over again, but still only cornflake-sized chips flew from the ceiling. When he finally tired, Audrey slipped beside him and began hacking wildly over her head with the sharp end of the crowbar, but all that accomplished was to send a low-pitched ringing echoing around the room.
“How thick do you think it is?” she said at last, leaning on the crowbar, catching her breath.
“No way of telling,” said Virgil. “Unsupported ceiling like that, might be six, eight inches or more and it’s probably steel reinforced.”
“Shit,” said Audrey, staring at the tiny bit of damage they had managed to cause.
Virgil sat down on the floor. The fire was barely audible down the hall, and he wondered again just how long they would be buried. Richard wasn’t going to survive long without medical attention, and even if the fire didn’t drain the air, he knew they couldn’t breathe in here much longer. To top it off, the temperature was steadily rising. It had to be near ninety even in the cooler bathroom. Virgil felt the walls of the cellar closing in on him.
“I have to get out of here,” said Audrey, mirroring Virgil’s thoughts. She didn’t raise her voice, but there was panic in it just below the surface.
“We will,” said Virgil. “We’re going to get out. Just give me a minute.”
“How?” she said.
“I don’t know yet.”
“A rat could get out,” said Cooder.
Virgil gave him a look he was certain Cooder had seen often enough before. “We’re not rats, Cooder.”
Cooder shrugged. “A rat could get out.”
“How would it get out?” asked Audrey.
“Audrey,” said Virgil. “Cooder … Cooder has some issues.”
“Through cracks in the walls… or the plumbing,” said Cooder.
“We can’t go through the plumbing,” said Audrey. “And the walls are stone or concrete. Just like the ceiling.”
“No,” said Virgil. “We can’t.” But he was rubbing his chin, musing. “The plumbing has to go through the wall or floor though. The concrete might be weaker there. At least there’d be a hole we could start with.” He stared at the plywood platform beneath the toilet and tub. “Pry that up,” he said, motioning Cooder to go to work with the crowbar.
They knocked the toilet off its stand and snapped the copper feed pipe. It pumped out about a gallon of water and then bled dry.
“No electricity. Pump’s off,” said Virgil.
The smell of raw sewage filled the room. Audrey backed into the doorway as Virgil and Cooder struggled with the flooring. The sound of groaning nails and rending lumber shrieked through the cellar. Virgil moved in beside Cooder and the two of them hacked and cranked at the ornery flooring. When Cooder shifted out of Virgil’s way to give him room, Audrey found herself staring directly into Cooder’s mesmerizing eyes.
“I’m Audrey Bock,” she said, realizing they’d never been introduced, offering her hand.
It disappeared in Cooder’s huge mitt. “Cooder.”
“You help the sheriff?” she said, still unable to take her eyes away. Cooder’s hands seemed impossibly warm and soft and she experienced a strange sensation of overpowering calm. Cooder appeared to realize the reaction he was causing. He smiled gently, but there seemed more to it than just a smile, as though he were discoursing with her on some level far below normal human communication. She knew that whatever was happening, it wasn’t about her telepathy. Cooder was touching her with something so basic it could only be understood as love. She felt wrapped inside a strong, safe place, the likes of which she had never experienced before. And without understanding how, she realized she knew things about Cooder he’d never told anyone.
Cooder frowned, ending the moment. “I seen bad things,” he whispered.
Audrey stood silent, trying to speak. Finally she nodded slowly. “I’ve seen bad things too
, Cooder.”
“Sometimes I can feel things.”
“Things about other people?”
Audrey waited as Cooder struggled to form a response.
“Yeah. Sometimes.”
“What do you feel now?” she asked, glancing down at her hand still wrapped protectively in his.
Cooder’s frown turned hard and his eyes grew distant. “Scared.”
She felt it too, now, radiating through her. “Because of the fire?”
“No.”
“Because of my son.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I feel that too, Cooder. But I don’t know what to do. What am I going to do?”
Cooder couldn’t possibly have the answer to Audrey’s question, and yet she found herself listening with bated breath.
“Don’t ever let her know.”
“Tara?”
A nod. “Doctor Beals.”
“Don’t ever let her know what?”
“That you feel people.”
“What did she do to you?”
Tears welled in Cooder’s eyes and Audrey felt as though she were melting. For just an instant her fear for Zach faded and she experienced some of the horror she had been tormented with in her garden. The blindness. The pain radiating outward in all directions. But she knew that she was feeling not only her own pain, but some of Cooder’s as well.
“Don’t let her know,” he whispered.
“She hurt you like that and you still lied to her?”
A nod.
She stroked the whiskers on his cheek and he smiled.
“He’s okay,” he said.
“I want to believe that, but I can’t feel him anymore.”
Cooder placed a brawny hand over her tiny shoulder. “He’s okay.”
“Shit!” said Virgil.
He dragged part of the dismembered box that had been the platform past Audrey and Cooder, and tossed the pieces down the stairs, shaking his head.
“What is it?” asked Audrey.
“There’s a hole all right,” said Virgil. “But it’s barely big enough to get a rat through.” He gave Cooder a discouraged look and disappeared back into the bathroom just as the sound of the sledgehammer pounding on concrete rumbled through the room again.
Night Terror Page 32
