A fancy carriage pulled up in the drive. A man and a woman got out. Both were dressed in the evening attire fashionable in the late 1880s and early 1890s. They were chatting about the new agricultural-political movement that was just gaining strength among the farmers of Missouri.
“Eighteen-ninety,” Jerry said, struggling to remember his Missouri history.
“Close enough,” Bud said. He knew the exact date and time, but saw no point in further alarming the unwilling and frightened travelers.
The man secured the team to a hitchrail and together they walked past the group, continuing to chat brightly.
“Hey, you!” Voyles called. “You with the stupid-looking suit. Look around at me!”
The man and woman walked on past without acknowledging Voyles’s presence, or the existence of any of the others.
“As I stated,” Bud said. “They cannot see any of you. Now go. Follow them inside.”
The drumbeat began anew, its rhythmic cadence more oppressive and heavy than before.
“That thing is getting on my nerves,” Voyles said irritably.
“Yeah,” Vickie added. “Mine, too. What is that thing anyway?”
“You are listening to the Manitou’s heart. The pulse of evil.”
“That, I will certainly agree with,” Janet said.
“Well,” Jerry said, trying his best to maintain a brave front, “Maryruth, is your dance card all filled up, my dear.”
She took his offered arm. “I know you’re trying to cheer us all up, Jerry. But please, cool it with the jokes, huh?”
“Come on, Rhett,” Janet tugged at Voyles. “Let’s go show these folks how to boogie-woogie.”
“There is only one small problem with that,” Voyles said.
“Oh?” She looked up at his hat and stifled a giggle.
“Yeah. I don’t know how to dance.”
“You have to be kidding!”
“Nope.”
Heather looked at Marc.
“You ain’t getting me out on any dance floor,” Marc informed her.
“God,” Leo said. “I wish I had a drink!”
2
The summer evening had turned out to be rather cool and pleasant, but the heat from the many lamps and candles and chandeliers inside the Lancaster house quickly brought beads of perspiration to the foreheads and faces of the outsiders.
“A tribute to modern living,” Jerry observed, wiping his forehead. “We’re so used to air conditioning.”
“Give me modern living anytime,” Maryruth said.
But they were all impressed by the lushness of the mansion. Velvet drapes hung in thick, magnificent splendor from the tall windows. The rugs were Persian; expensive even at that time. Many paintings were hung in the large room, more than a few of them signed originals, and the chandeliers were beautiful, the glow of the flickering candles highlighting their natural beauty. The furniture was of the best quality available at the time, the wood polished and gleaming, the fabric spotlessly stitched and sewn.
Maryruth could but stand in open shock and near horror as she spotted the woman playing the piano. It was like looking into a mirror that spun time backward.
“Jerry,” she breathed.
“Yes, I see her, Maryruth. It’s . . . it’s eerie. Look over there,” he said, pointing to a group of young people.
The group all stared in amazement at a boy and girl standing with some other children near the base of the beautiful curving stairs.
They were mirror images of Heather and Marc.
“This is totally wild,” Heather said.
“Ditto,” Marc whispered.
Except for Bud, everyone was in a state of mild shock, not really wanting to believe this was happening. It would take something much more shocking to jerk them back to full awareness.
That would take place soon enough.
Meanwhile, Heather said, “Well, I’m going over there.” She grabbed Marc’s hand and pulled at him. “Come on, Marc.”
Before he had time to protest, they were halfway across the large room.
“I feel like an idiot in this stupid costume,” Marc complained.
“How do you think I feel,” Heather fired back, “dressed in this silly sack?”
They walked up to the young group.
“Hi!” Heather said brightly.
No reaction.
“You got a bugger hanging out of your nose,” Marc told a boy.
They might as well have been attempting to converse with a wall. None of the boys and girls so much as glanced at them. Marc reached out to touch Heather’s counterpart on the shoulder.
His hand went clear through her, almost throwing him off balance.
Then it came home to him. This was no game; this was not something out of a bad dream; he was not going to wake up in a warm safe bed. This was real.
“You all right?” Heather asked, taking note of Marc’s pale face.
“Give me a minute.”
“Let’s see what happens if we sit on the steps,” she suggested.
Still shaken by his experience, Marc asked, “What do you mean, Heather?”
“You look like you need to sit down.” Marc agreed with that; his legs were shaky. “And” she continued, “let’s see if people go around us, over us, or through us—what?”
They sat at the base of the curving stairs and watched the people and the party. Champagne flowed freely. It was served by expressionless black people dressed in dark clothing. There was lots of laughter, and Heather observed several whispered secret assignations being arranged between men and women who were obviously not married to each other. She pointed that out to Marc.
“I noticed,” he responded glumly. He sighed. It was obvious to her he was thinking about his parents. “I guess nothing ever changes, does it?”
“Guess not,” she agreed. “Marc, you know I didn’t really tell the whole truth to Lieutenant Voyles, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but neither did I,” he admitted. “My Mom had a boyfriend before we moved . . . wherever we were. And my Dad, I guess, has always had his . . . girls.”
“He’s looked at me kind of funny more than once,” Heather said. “Gives me kind of a creepy feeling. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah. I don’t doubt it.”
“My Mom and Dad were not faithful to each other. I mean, they’ve had some real knockdown and dragout fights about it, too.”
“I can dig it. It’s been the same with my Mom and Dad. He’s hit her a couple of times.”
“I don’t think being grownup is all it’s cracked up to be,” she said, a sour note in her voice.
“Well, I think it’s what you make out of it,” Marc said. “Heather? This is stupid.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re sitting here talking about our folks running around on each other, and we don’t even know if we’re going to get out of this mess alive. That’s what I mean.”
“I’m talking to keep from thinking about it. To tell the truth, Marc, I really feel like crying.”
“Yeah, me too,” he admitted. “But neither of us can afford to do that. It won’t help any. Look! Here comes somebody.”
A man approached the young people. He stopped at the base of the stairs and put an arm on the highly polished bannister. He lit a long slender cheroot, and stuck it between wide cruel lips. The man was stocky, not from fat, but from thickly padded muscle. His eyes were small and mean looking. He smelled of expensive cologne.
Suddenly he turned his head and looked directly at the kids.
Both Heather and Marc held their breath.
The man began smiling. But it was evident to both he was not smiling at them.
“He can’t see us,” Heather said. “But I get the feeling that’s not going to last.”
“I feel the same way. How come we know these things?”
“I don’t know.”
The man paid no attention to their words.
Heather reached out to t
ouch the man on his forearm. Her small hand went right through him and came to rest on the polished wood of the bannister. She removed her hand. Marc noticed it was trembling.
“The house is real,” Marc said. “I think most everyone else is ... dead.”
“Yeah,” Heather said. “Dead.”
They both shivered as a damp chill touched them. They felt as though a bony hand from the grave had run fleshless fingers over their skin.
Then the kids saw why the man had smiled. A very lovely young woman, no more than sixteen or seventeen, walked to his side and smiled at him. When she spoke, her voice had a hollow sound—and another quality that Marc could not identify.
“Wormy,” Heather said with a shiver.
Marc felt something evil clutch at him with slimy fingers.
“I feel it, too,” Heather said. “Try to fight it off.”
“I can’t wait much longer, Clint,” the young woman said.
Marc looked at the young woman through decidedly male eyes. “She sure is stacked,” he said.
“Won’t be long for you,” Heather said, annoyance in her tone.
“I can’t help it.”
“This conversation should be interesting,” Heather said.
“Yeah. Juicy.”
“God, Marc! Girls may mature earlier than boys. But boys must be born with sex on the brain.”
Marc grinned at her.
“Don’t get icky,” Heather warned him.
“Later tonight,” Clint told her, his voice containing that same hollow, wormy quality. “In the basement.”
“I need to be punished, Clint. I’ve been a bad girl.”
“I will see to it,” he promised.
She licked her ruby lips. “What about Maryruth?”
“Don’t worry about her,” Clint assured the teenager. “It’s over between us. All I have to do is come up with some way to get rid of her and those damned kids.”
Heather and Marc looked at each other. “Did you just hear something strange?” Heather asked.
“Voices,” Marc said. “Tiny voices.”
“Yeah. Like someone calling for help.”
The young woman licked her lips again, the moisture shining in the flickering light. “I never knew it could be like that,” she said. “It hurt so good. I want you now.”
“Contain yourself, Charlotte. It won’t be long. I don’t see your parents here this evening. Never knew them to miss a party.”
“They had to go to Memphis on business,” she said with a smile. “They left this morning on the Delta Queen. They won’t be back for several days.”
Clint returned the smile. “How convenient for both of us. Until later, my dear?”
“Yes.”
Charlotte walked away. After a few seconds, Clint followed, angling off in another direction.
“What a stupid conversation,” Heather said.
“Don’t you know what she was talking about?” Marc asked.
“I’m not ignorant, Marc. But I certainly don’t want to discuss that with you.”
“Excuse me,” Marc said, not really sure what his friend was talking about and not certain he knew what he was talking about.
The drumbeat began, even louder and stronger than before.
The adults came to the children’s side, gathering around the base of the stairs.
Heather told them what they had seen, done, and heard.
Maryruth looked at Dick. “A little perversion in the town, huh?”
“It would appear so.”
Voyles grunted.
Heather and Marc wished the adults would elaborate on the subject; but they did not.
“Look!” Vickie said, pointing.
The men and women and the young people at the party were beginning to fade in and out of sight, their forms sparkling in many-colored hues. They no longer moved about, but they did seem to be struggling with some invisible force which held them captive between two worlds.
Someone in the depths of the great house suddenly screamed out in anguish, the hideous sound startling the travelers.
“No, daddy. No!” a young voice cried out, it was filled with pain and horror. “Oh, God, Daddy! It hurts.”
“I can’t breathe!” another young voice joined in. “Please—let me out, let me out!”
The voices ceased.
The forms of the people at the party vanished.
Only the tinkling of the piano filled the otherwise silent house.
The melody was unfamiliar to the reluctant visitors from another time.
Jerry walked over to the piano. He stared in undisguised horror. The ivories were being pressed down to produce sounds, but no one sat on the bench.
Claire opened the door to the closet and stood for a moment, gazing at the naked, tortured, skinned, and emasculated men. Flaps of flesh hung from their bodies like tattered rags from a beggar. She held out her hand.
“Come,” she said. “It is time.”
The men rose stiffly from the floor of the still-lit closet and followed her outside. They limped along, their severed tendons supporting their weight. They lurched more than walked, and their arms flapped at their sides. They got into the back seat of her car. She backed out of the drive and soon connected with highway 61, heading south, toward Good Hope.
“I can’t reach Chuck,” the dispatcher told the chief deputy.
“When was the last contact?”
“Over an hour ago. I’d say closer to two hours. We got busy all of a sudden and I forgot all about him.”
“Was he ten-ninety-eight last time you talked to him?”
“Yes. Worked a thirty-seven. He called in, but didn’t tell me where he was going.”
“Shit!” the chief deputy cursed. “He knows better than that.”
“Want me to keep trying to reach him?”
“Yes. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. No! I won’t. I’m heading out to the Bolling house. Chuck may have gone out there and run into some kind of trouble. I’ll keep in touch.”
“Ten-four.”
The chief deputy, Bob Vanderhorn, nearly broke the sound barrier getting out to the Bolling house. With a cop’s sixth sense, as soon as he pulled into the drive, he knew he was about to walk into something awful. Chuck was a newly married man, and basically a good Christian boy, so women—other than his bride—had no place in his life. Chuck was too busy at home.
Bob spotted Chuck’s patrol car. He walked over to it and put his hand on the hood. The metal was cold to the touch. He used Chuck’s radio to call in.
“I’ve found Chuck’s car,” he told dispatch. “At the Bolling house. I’ve got a bad feeling about it. Stand by on your end and alert all rolling units to begin a swing in this direction. I’m not going to wait. I’m going in.”
“Ten-four.”
Bob Vanderhorn was an old experienced hand. He’d been a street cop in St. Louis for ten years before moving back to Sikeston and joining the Sheriffs Department as a patrolman. He’d worked his way up to the chief deputy position. He was a savvy old hand.
He ran to the back of the house and began edging his way along. By the time he reached the front porch, he had listened intently to the natural sounds of the house, one ear to the wood, at several locations. Before he stepped onto the porch, he was ninety-five percent certain nothing alive was inside.
However, that remaining five percent caused him to pull his .357 from leather. Bob knocked on the door for a full minute before trying the doorknob. He didn’t want some slick lawyer building a case for illegal entry. Once he got in there, he intended to touch nothing, pick up nothing, and see just enough to call for a warrant.
The doorknob turned easily under his palm. Stepping to one side, Bob pushed open the door.
“This is the Sheriffs Department!” he called out. “Everything all right in there?”
Only silence greeted him. That, and the thick odor of blood.
“Forget a warrant,” he muttered. “Hello, the house!” he shoute
d. “If anybody’s in there, sing out, please.”
Nothing.
Bob thought for a few seconds. A missing deputy, a cold Sheriffs Department car parked beside a deserted house, and the smell of blood. Hell with it, I’m going in.
Using his left hand, he fumbled around, finally locating the bank of light switches. He flipped the far switch up, flooding the front porch with light.
Wrong switch.
“Shit!” Bob cursed.
He started to turn off the porch light and then said to hell with it. He felt certain no one alive was inside the house. He flipped on the foyer lights, took a quick look-see, cut them off, then went in fast and low, racing for the end of the small entranceway. His pounding heart telling him he needed to quit smoking and get more exercise, Bob flipped on the lights in the den.
“Aw . . . shit!” he said, taking in the gore-splattered walls. He looked at the floor. It was covered with puddles of thickening blood.
He left the house immediately, not wanting to get into any hassle with a legal beagle over the exclusionary rule.
He was glad to be outside, glad to be away, even momentarily, from the smell of death. He radioed in, ending with, “Contact the sheriff, Paul. I think we got us a bad one.”
Vickie looked around, startled by the empty room. “Where’d everyone go?”
She received no reply to her question. No one left in the room knew the answer.
No one the travelers could see, that is.
Heather and Marc left the adults and walked across the large room to the grand piano. They stood in silence and awe, watching the keys being depressed by invisible fingers. The melody had changed to something slower and much more somber. It reminded both of them of funeral music, but it also seemed to be a warning prelude.
Jerry walked to the front of the house and looked outside. He saw Bud and Leo standing by a huge oak tree. They were staring at the house.
Maryruth came to his side. “Why don’t they come in?” she asked.
“I don’t know. But I think we’d better get used to the idea that we are going to be alone in this. By that, I mean, without Bud’s help most of the time.”
A very faint rattling sound began to emanate from the top floor of the mansion. All heads swung in that direction, all eyes glanced up. The rattling sound grew louder.
Sweet Dreams Page 22
