Drawn

by James Hankins

  In the hall, they slowed outside the door of the first bedroom. They had to be sure Larry didn’t hear them. Something thumped inside the room, far too close to the door. Then something heavy crashed, as though Larry had tipped the armoire and let it crash to the ground. Beside her, Miguel jumped at the sound and tried to stifle a surprised cry. Oh, God, Alice thought. Immediately, footsteps pounded toward them. He’d heard.

  “Run,” Alice said.

  Miguel bolted for the stairs and Alice tried to limp after him but Larry burst into the hall at that moment, between her and the stairs, down which Miguel was scampering. Larry, just three feet away, glared at her. She gasped at the sight of him. The skin on the right half of his face must have torn even more as he chased them; it flapped loosely now and blood covered his face and neck and shoulder. The look of hatred and violence in his eyes was even more frightening than his face. He said—or maybe growled—something and blood sprayed as he spoke. He took half a step toward her, then turned suddenly as Miguel stumbled on a stair, righted himself, and kept going. Immediately, Larry turned, raised his pistol and fired at Miguel.

  “No,” Alice cried as she stepped forward on her bad ankle and struck at Larry with all her strength. Although she hadn’t actually stabbed him, her knife sliced across his upper arm and he twisted to the side even as he fired a second shot at the fleeing boy. Larry had been standing at the top of the stairs and his foot slipped and he stumbled, fell, and began to roll. Miguel kept running; the second shot had missed.

  With Larry on the stairs, Alice had no choice but to turn and flee farther into the house. Wanting to put as much distance as she could between herself and Larry, she made for the stairs leading to the third floor. Somehow she ignored the needles in her ankle, adrenaline raising her pain threshold, giving her the power to climb the stairs with a speed she hadn’t dared hope for.

  Behind her, the wounded monster roared.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  “MY GOD, WERE those shots?” Nathan asked.

  “I think so,” Boone said. “Got your knife?”

  Nathan nodded. “Wish I had a gun now.”

  “Yeah, that’d be nice. What’d you get us into here, Nathan?”

  They trotted the remaining twenty feet to the castle. Nathan saw Boone stumble on something, heard him curse under his breath, but he managed not to lose his footing.

  As they stood by the castle wall, Nathan said, “I know we should probably get back in the boat and find a phone somewhere, but I can’t leave. Jeremy led me here for a reason and I have to find out why.”

  Boone said, “Did you hear a woman scream, just before the shots?”

  “A woman? No.”

  “I think I might have. I’m going in.”

  Just then, footsteps rapidly approached and a young boy, dark-haired and skinny, ran pell-mell around the corner of the castle and bumped into Nathan, nearly knocking him to the ground. The boy tried to scramble away but Nathan grabbed his arm and held on. The boy swung his free arm and, almost too late, Nathan saw the knife. He avoided the blade and, as the boy slashed again, Nathan shot his hand forward and took hold of the boy’s wrist. The boy thrashed wildly but Nathan hung on.

  “Whoa, son, hey, calm down,” he said. “We’re here to help. Slow down.”

  “I’m going,” Boone said.

  The boy, secure in Nathan’s grasp, finally stopped struggling.

  “Wait, Boone,” Nathan said. “Maybe this boy can tell us what we’re walking into here. Give me a second, will you?”

  He heard Boone’s frustrated grunt.

  “Come on, son,” Nathan said urgently, “we want to help you. What’s going on in there?”

  The boy—Hispanic, by the look of him—appraised Nathan with eyes too old for a boy so young. Finally, he nodded and Nathan released his grip on the kid’s arms but kept an eye on the knife. The boy said, “There’s a very bad man in there who wanted to hurt me, and then Alice came along—”

  Beside Nathan, Boone stiffened. “Alice?”

  “—and he chased us through the woods, to this place, and Alice is in there with him now and I know he’s going to kill her. She made me run and I did and I thought she was behind me but now I see she’s not and he’s going to find her and kill her.”

  “Alice?” Boone asked again.

  “Son,” Nathan said, “there’s a boat just a few yards down over there. You go—” He saw blood soaking the boy’s shirt. “You’re bleeding. Are you okay?”

  “Fine, fine,” the boy said with an impatient shake of his head.

  “Okay,” Nathan said. “Go get in that boat over there, take it someplace where you see lights, a house with lights, and you go there and get them to call the cops, tell them we’re at the Bloomington Castle. You know how to work an outboard motor?”

  “No,” the boy said.

  “Well, go figure it out. We gotta get inside there.”

  “No, Nathan,” Boone said beside him, “I do. You have to stay with him.”

  “Boone, you can barely see—”

  “I do all right, like I said. Stay with the boy. If it isn’t me or the woman who comes out of that castle…well, take off in the boat with the kid.”

  Nathan looked at the boy, then the boat. He turned back to Boone, but the younger man was already rounding the corner of the building, heading for the front door.

  LARRY STOPPED ROLLING halfway down the stairs. He was lucky he hadn’t shot himself during his tumble. He stood. He had a decision to make. Chase the boy through the forest or chase the woman up the stairs? Then he remembered seeing the backpack over the woman’s shoulder. He didn’t care about the money, but David Rosetti’s wallet was in that bag, along with a length of pipe with David’s blood on it. If the kid got away, it would be bad for Larry. He’d be arrested and stand trial for abducting the boy, taking him across state lines for immoral purposes, and a long list of other really serious offenses. And, God forbid, if they searched his house before he was able to get home to clean it out, they’d find his little room in the basement, along with video recordings of some of his favorite moments, his greatest hits, and they’d link him to a couple of dozen murders of other runaway boys. Of course, he might be able to make it to the Canadian border before then. Doubtful he’d get across with his facial wounds, but there were ways around things like that. First, he’d have to get away.

  His biggest problem at the moment, though, was the backpack—more accurately, the evidence inside it. If David Rosetti was implicated in anything pedophilia-related, his father would never rest until Larry was dead—and Larry would be dead only after he’d suffered horribly. He knew what Paul Rosetti was capable of. He’d never seen it with his own eyes, but he’d heard stories from guys who had. And the stories weren’t exactly fairy tales.

  So Larry decided to get the woman, get the backpack, then see if he could run down the kid. If he couldn’t catch the kid, well, he’d cross that bridge later. First, he had to get the bag from the woman. Unfortunately, he no longer had time to have any fun with her. He’d have to just kill her and get after Miguel.

  Damn the bitch for wrecking his plans. What a weekend this could have been.

  He started up the stairs.

  ALICE PASSED RIGHT by the third-floor landing and continued through an open, arched doorway, up the stairs beyond. She had been able to tell from the outside that the castle had only three floors, so this must lead to an attic. She hoped Larry might take the time to search the third-floor bedrooms while she used that time to find a way down from the attic. Maybe there was a window she could climb out, a roof she could crawl across, then…well, she didn’t know what then. Or maybe she’d get lucky in the attic and find a weapon—a mace or a battle-ax or something sharp or heavy enough to take Larry’s head off the moment he stepped through the door.

  She reached the wooden door at the top, which was ajar, and pushed it open, praying it wouldn’t squeak as loudly as the front door downstairs had. It didn’t. She stepped th
rough the door and was surprised to find that she wasn’t in an attic at all; rather, she was on the roof. The waist-high crenellated walls surrounded her. The lake shimmered in the moonlight off to her left. Dark woods stretched around her on three sides. The rooftop was barren. There were holes in places where it had rotted through, but the roof was otherwise relatively featureless.

  There was nowhere to hide.

  BOONE STOOD IN the entrance hall and closed his eyes. With his extra-sharp hearing he heard nothing on the first floor, but suddenly picked up something from above, a thump, too faint to have been on the floor right above him. Must have been on the third floor, then. He cocked his head as he moved, navigating by his peripheral vision through the moonlit castle. He mounted the stairs and climbed quickly, trying to keep his footsteps light and silent. He gripped his knife tightly and steeled himself for the possibility that he might have to use it on whoever wanted to hurt Alice.

  Alice? Could it possibly be that Alice? What were the odds? But Alice wasn’t a common name. And Boone’s relationship with Nathan had already convinced him that coincidence wasn’t necessarily the guiding force in all of this—whatever this was.

  Boone reached the second-floor landing and saw what looked, from the corner of his eye, like half a dozen doors—some open, some closed—and decided to keep moving, trusting that he was right about the sound coming from the third floor. He started up again. At the next landing, he saw more doors. It was darker up here, the only light spilling from the window beyond a single open doorway to his right.

  The carving knife was slippery in Boone’s sweaty grip.

  He paused, listening. Nothing. Then…

  A voice coming from above, a strange voice, almost inhuman; the sounds it made—guttural and angry—were almost words but not quite. Boone passed through a doorway and started up the stairs.

  LARRY TOLD THE woman very simply that she was a goddamn bitch and he was going to enjoy killing her. He knew she couldn’t understand him but he said it anyway. She was just standing there in the middle of the roof, a pathetic little steak knife in her hand, Miguel’s backpack at her feet. Just standing there. She had to know she was a dead woman. She saw the gun in his hand. Maybe she hoped she could buy Miguel a little more time. Maybe she expected Larry to launch into one of those speeches villains always seemed to take the time to deliver during a movie climax, the delay giving the heroes time to turn the tables. Well, seeing as Larry had just about lost the capacity for human speech because she and the boy had ripped his face in half, he was going to have to disappoint the bitch there. Instead of giving her a speech, he was going to just shoot her and take the bag. With any luck, he’d catch Miguel and still have some fun. His hunger for sexual gratification was gone for the night, but his lust for inflicting pain was greater than ever.

  He started across the roof, glancing down now and then to make sure of his footing. He was an excellent shot with his .45, practicing regularly at close range and long range, and could have killed her easily across the twenty feet between them, but he’d rather get right up close, smell the fear on her as he put the bullet into her stomach. Then, while she lay gut-shot and praying to die, he’d snatch that little knife from her hands, stick it in her mouth, and slice her cheek open wide. Finally, he’d put another bullet between her eyes. Then he’d go after Miguel.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  ALICE SAW TWO things at once, one she understood and one she didn’t. As Larry started toward her, he raised his pistol and pointed it at her. Behind him, a dark shape rose in the doorway from downstairs, a shape too large to belong to Miguel. Whoever it was stepped from the shadows and into the bright moonlight. Alice saw who it was…and couldn’t begin to make sense of it.

  It was the man from the rest stop, the one with the burn-scarred cheek. His face and neck were bleeding in a dozen places.

  “Boone?” she said.

  Larry turned as Boone broke into a run, his head cocked awkwardly to the side. He ran, heedless of the danger of crashing through the rotted roof, and in four steps he reached Larry, slamming into him, his momentum driving the bigger man off his feet. Boone landed on top of him and the pistol discharged.

  Larry screamed something, spraying Boone’s face with blood.

  “Run,” Boone said to Alice.

  “But you—”

  “The kid needs you.”

  She hesitated only a moment before running for the door, leaping a ragged hole, then another, passing the men as they rolled, grappling, seeking an advantage. As she passed, Alice saw that Larry’s hands were empty. Boone must have knocked the gun from them. For a brief moment, she considered searching for it, but Boone cried out again—“Run, damn it”—and she did.

  NATHAN WAS WITH the boy at the boat trying to understand all of this. The boy had filled in a few more details, but they didn’t track with anything Nathan had expected. Based on the boy’s description, the man who had chased the woman and him was obviously not Jeremy—not that Nathan could ever have imagined Jeremy doing something like that. But the boy—Miguel, he said his name was—hadn’t seen anyone other than the man who was chasing him—Larry, apparently. So how did Jeremy fit into the puzzle? And, of course, how then did Nathan fit in?

  Then he heard the gunshot.

  “Boone,” he said.

  Nathan looked at the boy, then back at the castle. He was old. He had a balky knee and a bad back. He’d been trained to fight in the Army, but his fighting days had been over for decades. And whoever was in there had a gun, while he had only a knife.

  Yeah, all that was true, but he also didn’t have a lot to lose, not now that Jeremy didn’t seem to be waiting for him inside the castle, at least not alive.

  “Listen, son,” he said, speaking quickly, “I’m going in there. You gotta take this boat and get help.”

  “I don’t know how to—”

  “It’s easy, you just turn this thing here, then—”

  “Alice,” the boy called, and Nathan looked up to see a young woman limping around the corner of the castle forty yards away.

  “Alice,” Miguel called again loudly. She spotted Miguel and hobbled toward them. When she reached the boat, she dropped to her knees and hugged Miguel.

  “You’re okay,” she said with obvious relief.

  “You, too,” the boy replied.

  Nathan put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “What about the man who just went in there?” he asked. “Did you see him?”

  She looked up and, to her credit, didn’t ask who the hell he was.

  “He’s inside,” she said. “Larry was about to shoot me and Boone tackled him and I ran, Boone made me run, told me Miguel needed me, and I didn’t want to leave him, but I—”

  “You know Boone?” Nathan asked, despite the urgency of the situation.

  “A little. And he’s up there right now fighting with a monster.”

  Nathan turned to her. “Think you could work this boat?” he said, nodding to his outboard.

  She appraised it, then nodded.

  “Get somewhere safe, find help if you can. I’m going inside.”

  He gripped his knife and started for the castle. When he was halfway there, he heard the outboard motor growl to life.

  THE MAN WAS on top of Boone now, the blood running from that horrible wound on his cheek, flowing down his chin, dripping onto Boone’s face. Boone had his knife in his hand but the man had Boone’s arms pinned to the roof beneath them. God, the guy was strong. He seemed to be saying something but Boone had no idea what it was. The damaged half of his face sagged horribly, paralyzed, and the half of the mouth that worked simply didn’t have the tools to form words. But that didn’t stop the guy from cursing Boone or taunting him or whatever the hell he was doing. With every sound he made, with every exhale, he sprayed blood and spittle. Boone thrashed, trying to dislodge him, but the man was made of iron. Boone kicked his legs and something cracked. He kicked again and both of them shifted as part of the roof fell away near their
feet. The momentary distraction allowed Boone to free his left hand, the one without the knife. He threw a fist up into the guy’s face, right into the gaping wound of his right cheek, and connected, knuckles against blood-slicked bone. The man howled and spun away on his knees. Boone scrambled to his feet and the man did the same. He let loose with a string of animalistic snarls and grunts that might have been attempts at words but might have been nothing more than the voice of pure rage. Boone held his knife out in front of him. He cocked his head to the side to try to see better. And he waited, knowing that he was smaller and weaker and a lot blinder than the other guy.

  LARRY DIDN’T KNOW who the hell this bastard was, or where he came from, but there was something strange about him, other than his ugly scarred face…it was the way he was tilting his head.

  “You can’t see shit, can you?” Larry said. Or tried to say. His words were loose, half-formed.

  The other guy shrugged.

  “You’re dead, you dumb shit,” Larry said.

  He looked around and saw Miguel’s backpack lying on the roof. Well, at least he had that. If the kid got away, Larry would still have some explaining to do, which he didn’t want to have to face if he could avoid it, but at least the cops wouldn’t have any physical evidence against David Rosetti. Then Larry spotted his .45 lying on the roof just a few feet away. He looked at the man facing him. He obviously had no idea the gun was there. Larry stepped over to it and the other guy, with his head still tilted off to the side a bit, turned his body as Larry moved.

  “I don’t know who you are, asshole,” Larry said with no idea whether the guy could understand him, “but you stepped in the wrong shit tonight.”