Rockinghorse

by William W. Johnstone

  Now Lucas’s elbow hurt as well as his split knuckles.

  Lucas could scarcely make out the shape of his wife getting to her feet.

  “The kids!” she cried. “Where are the kids, Lucas?”

  Before he could answer, someone grabbed him from behind and pinned his arms to his side. Lucas leaned forward slightly, twisted like he’d seen tough guys do in the movies—and to his surprise, it worked. The man flopped on the floor. Enraged, yelling—even though he would not know he was doing so until afterward, when Tracy would tell him he had been roaring like an angry bull—Lucas stomped the man in the face with his moccasin.

  Now his foot hurt, too.

  He looked around. Tracy was on her feet, struggling into her torn pajama bottoms. That done, she picked up a cane-bottomed chair and said, “I’m all right, Lucas. Go find the kids, please.”

  Lucas grabbed a man who was moaning, attempting to rise from the floor, and with one hand firmly on his collar, the other hand on the man’s jeans’ seat, bodily hurled him out the open doorway. The man smashed into a wall across the hall. He slumped to the floor, stunned.

  “Jackie!” Lucas yelled. “Johnny! Where are you kids? Sing out!”

  To Jackie, the men who now held her, fumbling at her youthfulness, were like creatures from another planet. They were formless, shapeless, faceless. When she was much younger, between seven and nine, her overriding passion had been watching any movie that held monsters and hideous things within its celluloid frames. Her parents had not caught her obsession in time, and had not known she was staying up all hours of the night listening and watching TV in her room, the sound pouring into her head from an earphone. She was on the verge of not being able to separate reality from fiction when her parents caught it, due mostly to a drastic drop in her grades at school. Always a straight-A student, her grades had plummeted to near failure. Jackie had undergone intensive therapy with the best child psychologist Lucas and Tracy could find, and finally the problem had been solved—they hoped.

  Now it all was returning, much more swiftly than it had originally come.

  Hot stinking breath filled Jackie’s nostrils as hands roamed her young body. She was flung back several years, back to when she imagined all those beings and monsters were real (no one had ever fully convinced her they weren’t). Now she was their captive.

  She screamed, the sound finally pushing past her lips, the shrieking filling the level of the house. It brought her dad on the run, the killing rage building within him.

  Lucas threw a rolling block into the legs of those surrounding his daughter, sending several thrashing on the floor. He would not feel the bruises on his body until the next day. Lucas began fighting like a madman, both fists pumping and flailing, his blows missing more often than striking a target. But it was effective.

  He heard someone call out, calling in a muffled tone of voice. He could not make out the words. The black-draped shapes began dissolving into the darkness.

  Huddled in a near-naked ball of hurt and confusion in a corner of the room, Jackie’s sobbing brought Lucas panting back into reality. He found her torn clothing and she slipped into what remained of her pajamas.

  Lucas looked around the gloom, listening intently. He could detect no alien sounds. Whatever had attacked them appeared to be gone.

  Lucas cautiously, and as quietly as possible, gathered his family around him. Tracy worked the nearest light switch. The lights popped back on in the great mansion, all of them, as if centrally controlled by one switch.

  “How? . . .” Tracy let that slide off into silence.

  “Dad?” Jackie sobbed. “Who were those people? Why were they doing that to us?”

  “I don’t know, baby,” Lucas told her as he stroked her hair.

  She put her arms around his waist and he held her close.

  “I hate this damn house!” Johnny said, considerable heat in his voice.

  “Well, folks,” Lucas said, “I’m not too terribly thrilled with it myself—at this moment. But let’s all try to get ourselves under control and maybe things will look better in the daylight. OK? We’ll talk about it then.”

  It was at that moment the shakes hit them all. To a person they felt their knees go weak and the muscles in their legs turn to jelly, unable to support their weight. They all either leaned against the wall or sat on the floor until the trembling stopped.

  “God!” Tracy said. “I always thought the actors’ reactions were staged for the camera after some death-defying scene. Never will I laugh at them again.”

  “Can we all stand?” Lucas said. “Good. Jackie, take your brother’s hand and grab onto your mother’s hand with the other. Everybody got a grip? OK. We’re going into our bedroom. Let’s go.”

  With Lucas leading the way, they marched down the hallway. Along the way, they saw nothing ominous except shadows, playing what to them seemed hideous scenes in the darkness of the mansion. In the bedroom, Lucas firmly closed the door behind them.

  Making certain all the windows were shut and locked, Lucas found the answer to his earlier unspoken question concerning guns. He took the .45 from his nightstand drawer, jacked a round into the chamber, and slipped into his trousers, putting on slip-on boots he had bought in Palma. He slipped some cartridges into his pocket and turned to his family.

  “Lock the door behind me. Don’t let anyone into the room that you don’t personally know. Tracy, get that butcher knife and be ready to use it. You think you can?”

  Her smile was unpleasant. “You just let someone try to hurt these kids,” she said, the fierceness of motherhood surfacing.

  Lucas smiled through his pain. He was beginning to feel as if he were one large walking bruise. “I think I know what is happening here, gang. I don’t know who is behind it, but I believe someone, or a group of people, is doing their best to run us out of here.”

  “Why?” Tracy asked. “What would they have to gain by doing that?”

  “That I can’t answer. But it’s got to have something to do with the house. It has to. That’s the only explanation.”

  “What are you going to do right now, Lucas?” she asked.

  “I am going to make sure this house is secure.” He looked at Johnny and Jackie. “Hang in there, gang.”

  “Yes, sir,” they said.

  “One thing for sure, Lucas,” Tracy said, just before Lucas stepped out into the hall. “I gave one of those men a terrible bite on the forearm. I bit a chunk of flesh out.”

  “Be sure and tell that to Kyle. OK, gang. Wish me luck.”

  Tracy kissed him on the cheek and he stepped into the hall.

  The bedroom door closed behind him, and he stood there until he heard the lock slide in place. Jacking back the hammer on the .45, he began his prowling of the house.

  He could hear his heart thumping in his chest, the life-sustaining muscle still not beating at its slow regular rate. Expecting the lights to go dark at any moment, Lucas shifted the .45 to his left hand, wiped his sweaty hand, then once more gripped the butt firmly in his right hand.

  He prowled the entire first floor. He found all kinds of damage, much of it done deliberately, wantonly—acts of malicious vandalism. The damage filled him with anger. It also filled him with determination to stick this out, come what may. If, he softened his resolve, his family agreed. He did not want to put them in further danger. They’d have to talk about it. But he knew he was staying.

  He rang the newly installed buzzer for Lige. The man did not respond. And that irritated Lucas.

  At the foot of the landing leading to the top floors, Lucas paused, looking up at the landing. The rocking horse seemed to be looking down at him. Lucas smiled and shook his head. But, of course, that was impossible.

  Standing in the kitchen, he thought he heard a low moaning coming from the veranda. He listened more intently. Yes, there it was. A scratching sound came to him.

  He went to the closed door and listened more closely. He could hear a low panting wound. He could
not tell if it was human or animal.

  Or some combination of both, the thought came to him.

  Gripping the doorknob in his left hand, Lucas slowly turned it. The panting sound stopped. He smelled something foul coming from the veranda. He jerked open the door. A scream filled his head. A stinking garment or bag of some sort was thrown over his head. He was jerked out of the kitchen and onto the veranda floor. He struggled and fought his way out of the bag and rolled away, the .45 coming up in his hand. A miracle it hadn’t gone off.

  His eyes found a dark shape. He pulled the trigger, the booming loud in the night stillness.

  An awful shriek filled the air. Then something slammed into the back of his head. Lucas was plunged into darkness.

  When he could open his eyes and bring them into focus, he looked up into the concerned face of Tracy. Her frown turned into a smile.

  Lucas groaned. “Well, a mighty warrior, I ain’t,” he said.

  “For a city boy, you do all right,” she assured him. “I wouldn’t trade you for a mule.”

  “Two mules?”

  “Well . . .”

  He smiled up at her.

  “Whatever it was attacked you, you hit it. There’s blood all over the wall there.” She pointed.

  “How long have I been out?”

  “No more than two or three minutes. It must have been a glancing blow. There’s no blood on your scalp. Not even a bump.”

  He sat up, rested for a few seconds, then got to his feet. He felt no dizziness. He walked to the wall where she had pointed. He could see the hole left by the big. 45-caliber slug. And all over the wall, blood was splattered.

  Lucas looked at the blood for a moment. He felt no spasms of sickness as he looked. Then he leaned forward and sniffed the blood.

  Tracy was appalled. “Lucas, what in God’s name are you doing?”

  “Smell it,” he said.

  “I most certainly will not!”

  “Come on, honey. Smell it. Then tell me the first thought that comes into your head. It’s important, Trace.”

  Hesitantly, reluctantly, she came to the wall and sniffed. She recoiled in horror. She looked at her husband. “Lucas, it’s . . . old. It smells old. But how can that be?”

  “I don’t know. But I’ll bet you, and give you odds, that’s the same blood, or same type of blood, that was found on my walking stick. It’s old blood, Tracy.”

  “But . . .” She trailed off into silence. She looked at the blood-splattered wall, then at her husband. “I’m scared, Lucas.”

  “I’m not real happy with our position, Trace. But they—whoever they might be—will not run me away from this place. I’m not running. I mean that. You and the kids can go on back to New York if you like. But I’m staying.”

  “We’ll talk about it in the morning. Lucas, you can’t be serious!”

  His eyes grew bleak. “I’m staying.”

  10

  The breaking of dawn found the family tired, even though most had catnapped during the remainder of the night, with Lucas and Tracy taking turns standing guard. Lige Manning had still made no appearance, which both irritated and aroused a great deal of suspicion within Lucas.

  While no more violence had been perpetrated against the Bowers family, a more subtle form of harassment had filled the mansion, turning nerve endings raw with tension and filling them all with helpless anger. For there was no place for them to direct their rage.

  Laughter had taunted them all night, sometimes mocking, sometimes whispering indecipherable phrases, other times gurgling out the vilest of profanities, going into great detail what might happen to Jackie and Tracy if the family did not leave immediately. Finally, as the monologue of a very profane comedian is prone to do, the vulgarity numbed the listeners, and they paid scant attention to the ugly words. No room in the mansion was safe or free from the taunting, the cursing, the impossible and insane voices that seemed to spring from the air all around them.

  Voices with no human forms behind them. Lucas made a cursory inspection of as many rooms as possible, but could find no hidden speakers. He finally gave up his searching.

  “Then where is it coming from, Lucas?” Tracy asked.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I don’t believe in ghosts. There has to be some sort of reasonable explanation.”

  Then, as the first gray fingers of dawn began to open, allowing God’s light to once more flood the horizon, the hideousness ceased, stopped as abruptly as someone flipping a light switch.

  It was almost as if the source behind the laughter, the taunting, the ugly whispering was fearful of the light.

  “Is it over?” Tracy asked wearily.

  “I guess so,” Lucas replied. “For now.” He held Johnny in his arms; the boy finally fell asleep, scared but too exhausted to stay awake any longer. “All of you try to get some sleep. I’ll watch for a couple of hours and then wake you, Trace.”

  Above them, on the landing, the rocking horse had rocked itself to the railing. It looked down with an ever-seeing eye at the family, huddled together in a unit.

  The rocking horse smiled.

  * * *

  Kyle stood in the open doorway of the mansion and looked in at the wreckage. He shook his head in astonishment. He had the next few days off, and had stopped by to see if Lucas wanted to accompany him fishing. But God! The interior looked as though a tornado had ripped through it.

  A sleepy-looking Lucas walked into the reception area. He had heard the sounds of Kyle’s car. “Morning, Kyle. No, we didn’t have a wild party here last night. Come on, I’ll make us some coffee and tell you all about it. I was going to contact you later on this morning.”

  “With obvious good reason,” the trooper said very drily.

  Kyle noticed the man’s right hand, swollen slightly, the knuckles split open; iodine covered the cuts. Blood was splattered all over the front of Lucas’s T-shirt.

  “Yeah,” Lucas said, managing a laugh. “It was an interesting evening, to say the least.”

  The trooper followed Lucas into the kitchen. Along the way he stepped around broken vases and chairs and other debris that littered the hallway. “Jesus,” he muttered.

  In the kitchen, Lucas pointed to the veranda outside. “Whatever it was that attacked us last night, I hit one of them. Right out there.”

  Kyle looked out. The once-blood-splattered wall was clean.

  “What do you mean, Lucas?” Kyle asked. He looked again. He could see nothing out of the ordinary.

  Lucas put down the coffee pot and walked to the door, looking out. The wall was blood-free.

  “Kyle, that wall,” he pointed, “was splattered with blood not four hours ago. Tracy saw it, too. The blood was . . . well, it smelled, old. We both agreed on that.”

  Kyle was thoughtful for a moment. “Like the blood on your walking stick?”

  “Right. Yes, that’s the very first thing I thought of.”

  “Umm,” the trooper said.

  Lucas had to smile. “Now that, Trooper, is a professional statement if I ever heard one.”

  Kyle smiled and stepped out onto the veranda. Very carefully, meticulously, he began his inspection. After only a moment, he left the veranda and returned a few moments later with an evidence bag. He knelt down and began removing something from the wall. “They didn’t get it all, Lucas. People almost never do. Blood’s difficult to remove.”

  Lucas made coffee while the highway patrolman worked. Kyle came into the kitchen, sat down, and said, “All right, Lucas. I believe you. Not that I have now or ever had any reason to doubt you. Pour us some coffee and then take it from the top.”

  “You’re going to find this very hard to believe, friend.”

  A very strange look came into the trooper’s eyes. “Believe me when I say, Lucas, that I’m more used to strange than you are. Go ahead.”

  Lucas thought that statement very odd, indeed. He’d pursue that later, tucking it back in his mind. The trooper listened intently, profes
sionally, not interrupting. He took notes in a small pad, his handwriting surprisingly tiny and neat. As a trained lawyer, Lucas’s memory was excellent, and he kept his reporting succinct.

  He began with the events at the Gibson house and the strange behavior of the people living there. He ended with Kyle walking through the front door of the mansion.

  When Lucas finished, Kyle drained his coffee cup, got up and poured fresh, sat back down, and said, “That, ol’ buddy, is strange. I’ll sure have to give you that.”

  “Does that mean you don’t believe me?”

  “Not at all,” Kyle said quickly. He leaned back in his chair and looked at Lucas. “Lucas, I know this part of the country pretty damn well. I’ve been hearing stories about this old mansion—the Bowers home—all my life. Back, oh . . . ’bout fifteen or so years ago, I guess it was, a group of so-called ‘ghost hunters’ came into this area. I never found out exactly what they were looking for—people told me they wouldn’t come right out and say—but they concentrated their search in this general area; say a fifteen-mile circle of here. They couldn’t get permission to inspect this house, and I’m told that really ticked them off. But they stayed for a long time, talking to a lot of people, tape recording it when the people would let them, writing it down when they had to.” He then paused and lowered his head, staring into his coffee cup, swirling the liquid about in the cup.

  When he didn’t continue, Lucas asked, “Well, what was their conclusion?”

  Kyle looked up. “No one knows. The house they were renting burned one night. Killed them all. Destroyed all their notes and tapes and things they’d picked up around the area. It was a very mysterious fire, so I’m told.”

  “I see, I guess. You weren’t here at that time?”

  “No. I was in ’Nam. But to me, it’s . . . well, odd, Lucas.”

  “How do you mean, odd?”