“Whatever. Mrs. Plushing may not be that sick, if she’s sick at all. If she is sick, Hans could have left her side at any time without her even knowing it. And Betty has been by herself for the past hour or so. Any of them might have come up here and—” Anton strode purposefully to the door, opened it, looked out into the hall.
Ernie laughed. “You don’t think they’d still be hanging around, do you, Anton?”
“Wait a minute.” Andrea bit her lip and looked at Ernie. “Even if the door had been open, one of us might have shut it during the commotion to make it look as if there’d been an intruder.”
“Clever. A regular Sherlock Holmes, this one.” Anton closed the door again and walked back to his former spot. “You know who I think is behind this? Not Lynn — surprise, surprise — not me, perish forbid, or any of us in this room. Not Betty or Hans or the ones who’ve disappeared. Everson. This is his room, too; the book was found under his bed; Lynn doesn’t know how it got there, or so she says. Everson has been here before, might have had time to arrange a lot of nasty surprises for all of us, including that book. Maybe he’s a madman obsessed with justice, and has invited us all here to pay for some heinous crimes which we got away with years ago, cooking up elaborate, fitting punishments for us, and fooling us—some of us, at least—into thinking the ‘supernatural forces’ of Lammerty Island are responsible.”
“Ten Little Indians, ” Andrea whispered.
Lynn was not amused. “Stop it, Anton. John isn’t responsible for any of this.” She turned to Ernie and implored him, “Tell me what the book said about John. Please. You were about to. Before the lights. I have to know what’s going to happen to John. He’s going to be all right, isn’t he? Please tell me. I couldn’t bear it if he—”
Ernie swore. “My God. John. When the lights went out I’d just read about how he—or his counterpart—had come upon the foundation of the Pauling house. Something grabbed him—” He looked at Lynn. “I … don’t know what happened after that.”
“I thought you didn’t believe, Lynn,” Anton said.
Lynn ignored him. “I’m going to look for him.” She went into her closet, got out a coat, and began sticking her arms into the sleeves. “I’ll prove you’re wrong. John won’t even be there— where you said he was. He’s all right. He’ll come back. I’ll bring him back.” Lynn was in tears.
“We don’t know where the old foundation is,” Ernie said. “He was supposed to go to the Burrows House.”
Lynn’s mind was made up. “I’ll find him. And I’ll bring him back.”
“Listen—let me go look for him.”
“Ernie.“ Andrea grabbed him by the shoulder, squeezed his hand in hers. “Don’t go. Out there. I’m scared. I need you here.”
Anton frowned. “Touching. Well, I’m not leaving this house. The only time bad things happen to people on this island is when they go off by themselves.”
“Lynn,” Andrea pleaded. “Stay here. Or let’s all go together.”
“Not me,” Anton said.
Lynn’s mind was set. “I’ll go alone.” With a flick of her head, Lynn was out the bedroom door and racing down the stairs. Ernie tried to follow, but Andrea prevented it. “Please, Ernie!”
“I can’t let her go out there alone! She’s your friend, for Christ’s sake.”
Andrea looked as if she were carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. She pulled away from him, sat down on the bed. “I’m not so sure of that.”
“What do you mean? You don’t mean that she’s ‘our friend,’ do you?”
Andrea shook her head. “I don’t think so. But I know one thing for sure. We’ve both been friends for years, lived in the same city, and she’s never mentioned her psychic powers. Never mentioned it to me, of all people.
“She’s not telling us everything she knows.”
Chapter 44
Everson tried to pull away from the foundation, shaking his leg frantically in an effort to disengage whatever was holding his ankle. It was too late. He was wrenched through the surrounding underbrush and fell head over heels into the overstuffed hole. Sputtering, outraged, still half-hoping it was Eric or one of the girls playing a joke on him, he tried in vain to find a foothold amidst the vines and weeds and flowers which had come together to form a mat fully several feet above the bottom of the foundation. It was on this botanical cushion that he was struggling, thrashing wildly through the plant life like a man bouncing helplessly on a trampoline.
It was impossible to stand in this underbrush, although Everson gave it the old college try. He made an attempt to pull himself to his feet by holding on to the long-stemmed grasses growing up out of the hole, but succeeded only in slicing his palms open. The edges of the grasses were razor sharp. Within seconds, his hands were drenched with blood. He tried to lift himself up by throwing himself on the prickly vines growing at the edge of the foundation, but his arms and legs were punctured by the enormous thorns that covered the vines. He fell back on the “mat” and lay there gasping, his face contorted from the pain in his torn and bleeding limbs.
“Have to get out, must get out of here,” he kept muttering, reassured by the sound of his own voice. It seemed a ridiculous predicament to him, held captive by plants, but he would not entertain the notion that “sinister forces” were at work. Obviously his ankle had got caught on one of those vines. The more he had pulled, the more the vine had tightened.
But the pressure around his ankle had felt so much like fingers.
He waited until he had regained his wind, until his heart had stopped its pounding. He wondered if the girls had fallen in here—it certainly seemed difficult to get out once you were in. He looked around the enclosure but saw no one else. But the plant growth was so thick down here that it would be hard to catch sight of another victim unless they were moving about as he had been doing.
Still, just to be on the safe side, he called out the housekeeper’s names. Surely both of them hadn’t fallen in. In any case, the weeds were like cushions and it was unlikely they’d have been knocked unconscious. They would have been crying out for help; and even if they’d fallen asleep at some point, surely his fall into the hole, his voice yelling out, would have awakened them.
It was so dark down here. The rays of the moon seemed to be absorbed and neutralized as soon as they entered the hole. Well, time to try again, he told himself. He paused to investigate the cuts in his palms, the puncture wounds in his arms and legs, but the bleeding seemed to have already slackened. The wounds hurt like hell. He managed to rise to his knees without reaching out for one of the malicious bushes. He had enough painful injuries as it was.
He was about to try and stand up, hoping he could climb up the side of the embankment in a reasonably vertical position, when he felt a sudden, agonizing stab directly above his left ankle. The shock of it pulled him back down to a sitting position. “What the—!” It felt as if someone had shoved a fork into his leg. Pulling up his pants, he saw that a bluish-green vine was lying across the bottom of his leg, digging under his trousers. On the tip of the vine there was a small reddish flower, and in the center of this flower there were three long pistil-like growths which had attached themselves to his skin. Like needles, the pistils were inserted into his flesh. The whole surrounding area was swollen and turning blue. Everson looked at the vine and saw that it was slowly turning red in color.
The vine was sucking out his blood!
He tried to remain calm. Surely there was some other explanation. There were no man-eating plants in this part of the world. His face was hot, feverish, dripping with sweat. He stared and stared at the spot above his ankle, trying to see clearly in the dim light, seeing the pistils disappearing under the surface of the skin, bright red now, engorged with blood, his blood. He had to stop it. Grabbing the flower in his hand, he gave it a good wrench, but nothing happened. He pulled the vine, but the pistils were too deeply embedded in his flesh. Besides, pulling them out might only make it worse.
Just as he was about to give the flower another wrench, he felt that same horrendous pain as before, only this time digging into his right arm. He had. scarcely finished ascertaining that another plant had attached itself to this appendage, when he felt another terrible jab on his thigh. This time the pistils were sticking right through the material of his clothes. He was shaking now, moaning out loud in misery, on the verge of completely losing the control he’d fought so hard to retain all of his life. Calm, stay calm, that’s your only way out of this.
And then one of the flowers reached out of nowhere and pushed itself into his cheek.
He clapped a hand to the side of his face, wanting to pull out the pistils, but afraid his flesh would tear off with them. The plant would not let go of his skin. He could feel the blood being drained out of his cheek, felt the numbness, the tissue beginning to swell. He felt more stabs of pain: left leg, left arm, forehead, calf, forearm. They were coming at him from all sides, these horrible, vampiric plant forms, stealing away his life’s blood. He was reduced to a jibbering, quivering mess, screaming and flopping about like a fish in a fisherman’s net, his body being tossed and pulled in all directions by the greedy sucking monstrosities attached to his body. Caught like a hospital patient tied to dozens of intravenous tubes, he could only lay back helplessly while his blood was thoroughly drained.
The vines began to tighten as Everson’s body shriveled, an empty vessel devoid of life. It was as if each vine wanted to capture that last drop, that last delicious taste of fluid before the others could. The vines began to pull against each other, snapping the lawyer’s body taut until it hung three feet above the mat, outstretched and rigid. Tension showed in the vibrating arms and legs of the victim, the limbs strained to the breaking point.
Slowly, inevitably, the limbs began to separate; muscles popped, sinews stretched and broke, tissue began to tear. Somewhat like a horse thief drawn and quartered in days of old, John Everson was shredded into six messy but bloodless segments.
Chapter 45
“Another one of these and I’ll forget all about this island, that book, and everything in it.”
Anton drank down another in a long line of martinis, put down the empty glass and smiled. He was sitting on the sofa in the lounge, and had brought the bottle of gin, the bottle of vermouth, the ice bucket, and the jar of olives over with him and placed them on the glass table.
“Is that wise, Anton?” Ernie said. “Don’t you think we should all keep our wits about us considering the circumstances?”
“To hell with the circumstances. I need another drink. And if you were smart you’d have one, too. If we’re going to die, we’re going to die, and we might as well go out with a smile on our lips. Besides, when it comes my turn to face these— these psychic .forces, or whatever they are, I’ll be much more prepared to deal with them if I’m a little bit blitzed.”
Pacing back and forth across the room, Ernie looked up and said, “I think the best way of facing this situation is stone-cold sober. Drunk you won’t have a chance.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the pianist scoffed. “A drunk mind can deal with the horrifying, the terrible, the unreal, much more capably than the sober mind. A sober man can be driven out of his wits. A drunk man can only be shocked into sobriety. Ah, yes,” he sighed, holding up his new martini. “I can face anything with a pitcherful of these.”
Ernie smiled wryly. “I’m beginning to think you’re right.”
Anton was impressed. “Why, thank you.”
Ernie finally sat down over by the window, wondering how Andrea was doing. She had insisted they go back downstairs, then had decided to lay down in Ernie’s room again in the hopes of getting another fix on the stolen novel. Anton had begun tanking up again almost immediately, and Ernie—in spite of his dire warnings—was more than tempted to join him. But he wanted a clear head. Now most of all he needed one.
So he sat down, determined to protect Andrea from whatever was out there, with his life if need be. He was beginning to believe her, to totally accept all that she had told him, although part of him clung to the notion that it was only because it was dark out, because it was night, because they were on a spooky island and strange things were happening. Back home, in the cold light of day, he would have dismissed Andrea’s theories without a second thought. Yet here, now, in this awful quiet, this solemn darkness, he found himself embracing her theories wholeheartedly.
Even Anton was silent now, and Ernie found himself wishing the man would start yakking again, anything to shatter the oppressiveness of the atmosphere. No, be honest with yourself, you want Anton to talk because it will keep you from brooding, from questioning all this too closely, to stop you from wondering if Andrea, or Everson, or someone, is playing you for a fool.
Most of all he didn’t want to think about what a coward he was. He didn’t want to think about Lynn out there alone, about how he had let her go —about how he was glad that Andrea had held him, begged him to stay. It was still bugging him. He tried to pretend it was a lot of macho nonsense: the man rushing to the aid of the lady in distress—in this case, Lynn—who had pleaded with him to tell her what would happen to her lover. How could have he told her? How could he have told her what he’d read in that book? Bloodsucking vines? Malevolent plants?
How could he have told her that when she found her lover—if she found her lover—she’d find him in pieces?
So it didn’t take much urging on Andrea’s part for him to give up all thoughts of accompanying their hostess in her nightmarish quest. He didn’t know which repulsed him more: the thought of finding John’s corpse, of seeing it that way; the thought of becoming a victim himself of the same forces that had claimed the life of John Everson; or the thought of Lynn’s horror-stricken face as she gazed at the torn remnants of her lover’s broken body.
God, he was dying for a drink. He saw Anton sucking on an olive and was tempted to ask the pianist to make him a martini. He resisted the impulse.
Ever since they’d come downstairs he’d had the urge to do one of two things. The spirit was willing, but the flesh … the flesh was tired. He thought of looking through the house again for the book, searching the individual rooms as they did before, in the hope that whoever stole it had hidden it close by. His second urge was to check on Hans and Mrs. Plushing. He did neither of these things because he didn’t want to leave Andrea alone for a second. He would have stayed in his room with her, but she had insisted that she needed absolute privacy for the utmost concentration. No one could get in or out of that room, not Anton, not anyone, without first going past him, and he intended to make sure it stayed that way. Also in the back of his mind was the idea that the book—assuming it was indeed some sort of focal point for the island’s psychic forces-could also attract supernatural energy to the one who possessed it. He was rather glad it was temporarily out of his hands.
He wondered if he should ask Anton to check in on the cook and the handyman, but decided not to bother. Anton was going nowhere, that much was obvious.
Something else was bothering him. On their way downstairs they’d checked Betty’s room to see if she was all right, but it had been empty. He was hoping desperately that the poor woman had gone downstairs to help Hans with Mrs. Plushing, and not become one more victim of the island’s malevolent forces. He had to find out for certain.
Steeling himself for what he was sure would be a nasty rejoinder, he got up the nerve to ask Anton if he would go into the servants’ quarters and report back on who was there and what condition they were in.
The reply was not unexpected. “And why me, good fellow? You seem perfectly capable of looking in
to that miserable little sickroom yourself. I don’t like being near ill people, Thesinger. I might as well make that clear. I have always been extremely susceptible to other people’s germs.”
You are a germ, Ernie thought.
“No, I’m going to stay right where I am and keep my martinis nice and dry. Why don’t you be a good boy and see how the other half is doing yourself?”
“Because I don’t want to leave Andrea unguarded. She’s in a vulnerable position—”
“Come, come! Has she got you believing all that rubbish? All that woman is doing is catching up on her beauty sleep. Besides, if you need someone so desperately to protect her, what do you think I’ll be doing while you’re out of the room? I can look after her, I assure you.”
“Anton. I’m not leaving this room.”
“What? You don’t trust me? Is that it? What do you think I’ll do—molest the poor girl while your back is turned?”
The argument was brought to a halt when the front door flew open and a large, heavy figure moved brusquely in through the door.
“Hans! Where have you been?”
The handyman did not look happy. “Looking for a boat, Mr. Thesinger.”
“A boat?” Anton exclaimed. “What for? Planning to leave us?”
“Mrs. Plushing is sick. Very sick. I must get a doctor for her. Betty is in there watching her now and—”
“Thank goodness.” Ernie could breathe a little easier. “We didn’t know where she was.”
“She’s in watching Mrs. Plushing,” Hans continued. “I went to her room and asked if she would take over for me while I looked outside for a boat.”
“Did you find one?”
Hans shook his head morosely. “No. I looked everywhere. Up and down the shore. The shed out back. I found nothing.”
“What? No raft, no lifeboat?” Anton seemed anxious to subject the Swede to his teasing. “Perhaps we could pile into the Mary Eliza and sail her back to the mainland.”
Late at Night Page 20
