by Tom Savage
Alone in this alien place yet feeling the eyes upon him, Mark Stevenson, who had once been Matthew Farmer, stepped forward into the house. He moved steadily out of the foyer, through the archway on his right into the living room. There was still no light anywhere, but he could make out the dark shapes of couches and chairs and tables, and a big black shape in one corner. The door he wanted would be on the other side of this room, O’Hara had said.
At that moment the French doors across the room were briefly lit up by another flash of lightning, and the thunder came only five seconds after it. The storm was getting closer. In that moment of light, Mark had seen the big shape in the corner clearly. A grand piano. And he’d noticed something else: the tables were set for games. He’d had a brief impression of a chessboard, and of some other kind of board game on another table, maybe Scrabble. Whoever lives here likes games, he thought grimly. He was obviously in the right place.
He walked slowly across the room, reaching out with his hands to avoid running into furniture, hearing the hollow echo of his shoes on the wood floor. Then he was on a carpet, and his footsteps were suddenly muffled. He wondered who was listening, who was waiting below him in the basement. Scavenger, certainly—but there were others. He was certain of it. And Tracy was there.
The staircase appeared before him in the gloom, and the door beneath it. He paused a moment, breathing deeply, preparing himself for whatever it was he would have to face. He readied himself to kill.
Tracy, he thought. Tracy.
Then he slowly opened the door and stepped onto the staircase that would lead him down, down, down to the basement.
51
She was sitting in the darkness, the tape across her mouth, breathing slowly through her nose. She had been trying to stop the tears that cascaded down her face, but it was useless. Whenever she thought of her plight, what was about to happen here in this dark room, she could only weep.
Tracy looked across the room, peering through the vast, shadowy place at the horrible scene near the stairs. She couldn’t see much of it from her perspective, but it was enough, and the music only made it worse. With a shudder, she closed her wet eyes, sending a fresh trickle down her hot cheeks.
She wished they’d put her in a softer seat. It was a plain, armless wooden chair, and her hands were behind the back of it. The sharp edge of the back was biting into her elbows, and the circulation was seriously compromised. She could feel the dull prickling from her aching shoulders all the way down to her fingers, and she wondered how much longer it would be before her arms fell asleep. Her back and legs were throbbing as well, protesting the unnatural position she was in.
Worst of all, worse than the creepy music or the scene across the room or her discomfort, was the presence in the dark beside her. He stood next to the chair, waiting, and he had a big knife in his hand. A very big knife. The table beside him held something else, something she didn’t understand. She stared at the object, wondering.
She wondered if she was going to die. She wondered if Mark was going to die. If they would die together tonight, here in this basement.
Mark. She knew he was here now, that he had entered the grounds, because one of the assistants had informed her host of the fact. They apparently had surveillance cameras in the driveway, and the blond man said he had seen him. Mark was alone, the man said, and he was driving a rented car. Only the man had not referred to him as Mark Stevenson. He had called him Matthew Farmer.
The two assistants had disappeared, were not here in the basement with them. She wondered where they were, what they were doing. This worried her most of all.
Maybe Mark isn’t really alone, she thought. If he’s been playing their game for a week now, maybe he’s figured it out. Maybe he knows what this creature is planning for him. Maybe he’s brought help. Maybe—
Then she heard it, and she heard the man beside her emit a single, soft hiss in the dark. He had heard it, too. It was directly above their heads, in what would be the living room, moving toward the entrance to the basement.
Footsteps. The footsteps of a single man.
She closed her eyes again and moaned, but the tape across her mouth muffled the sound. She wanted to cry out, to scream, to break free and run. But there was nothing she could do. She could only watch and wait, and pray. She trembled as she felt the man beside her move closer to her in the dark, and his sleeve brushed her bare arm.
The basement door at the top of the stairs swung open, and someone was coming slowly, cautiously down the stairs. She could only see the dark shape descending until it reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped out into the big room, into the light from the candles. It took her a moment to recognize him because of the blond hair, but then she knew.
It was Mark.
52
There was light at the bottom of the stairs. Candles. He made his way down, listening to the music emanating from the big room below him. “Night on Bald Mountain.” The light grew brighter as he descended, and now he could see the scene. He came to the bottom of the stairs and moved toward it, staring.
This is bad, he thought. This is the worst one yet, worse even than the Christmas decorations and the reproduction of my father’s head. They saved the best for last.
Four of them, the three women and the boy, were seated on two big couches facing each other, the coffee table between them. The women were dressed in black with tall, pointed hats on their heads and ugly green face masks with big noses and warts. The boy was dressed as a skeleton, the bone-white skull mask obscuring his face. There was a large, crudely carved jack-o’-lantern in the center of the table, surrounded by black and orange candles. Big orange bags filled with candy were on the floor near the two black dogs. Candy corn and gumdrops and bite-sized wrapped chocolates were strewn everywhere around them.
The women and the boy were mannequins, department store dummies, but the fifth figure in the tableau was real. He was seated in a big armchair at a right angle to the two couches, facing them, giving the appearance of presiding over the scene. His head, unlike Mr. Carlin’s head twelve years ago, was still attached, but his throat had been slashed from ear to ear. Bright red blood soaked his white shirt and black bow tie. He was not wearing a Halloween costume, and his face was not masked, so Mark had no trouble recognizing him.
Scavenger. The tall man with the scar who had followed him, drugged him, struck him. The man who Mark had, until hours ago, thought was the mastermind, the ringmaster, the inventor of the game. Scavenger was sitting here before him, dead.
Mark was still staring at his dead opponent when he became aware that another light had come on in the cavernous room behind him. Now he did not hesitate: he reached up and pulled the revolver from his pocket. He was not afraid, he realized. He was furious. Holding the gun firmly in his right hand, he turned around and looked across the room. As he did so, the music subsided in volume to a mere whisper. It continued very softly, as underscoring for what followed.
Tracy was sitting on a plain wooden chair some twenty feet away from him, bathed in the light from a single pinspot directly above her. Her hands were held behind the chair, and there was a strip of silver duct tape across her mouth. She sat unnaturally still, her wide, terrified eyes staring directly at him. And there was a huge silver blade pressed against her throat.
At first Mark thought the man who stood behind her was wearing a Halloween mask like the figures on the couches. He was wrong. As he walked slowly across the room toward them, he realized that one side of the man’s face was grotesquely scarred. Mark had seen burn victims before, and he recognized the damage immediately.
The left side of the man’s face was a splotchy red and purple welter of old burns. The left eye was smaller than the right, narrowed into a permanent squint, and closer inspection caused Mark to guess that the eyeball there was glass. The man’s left ear was gone, only a stump remaining where it should have been. There was no left eyebrow, and the dark hair on that side of his head grew in random, coa
rse patches. In vivid contrast to the devastation on the left was the fact that the entire right side of his head was perfectly normal, even handsome. This made the effects of the long-ago fire somehow more jarring, more horrible. He was hideous.
Perhaps the ugliest thing about the man was the hand that held the knife. The hand, like the left side of the head, was a mass of burned flesh, gnarled and raw, ending at unnaturally short, pudgy fingers. But the hand, ugly and misshapen as it was, had a firm grasp. The other hand, which had also been burned, grasped Tracy’s shoulder, holding her in place.
Mark arrived before them, his gaze riveted to the indentation at the side of Tracy’s throat where the blade was pressing. He didn’t have to be told: he slowly put the revolver back in his pocket and lowered his hand to his side.
The dark-haired man with the ravaged face gazed at Mark, a wicked smile on what remained of his lips. When he spoke, it was in the low, resonant voice from the phone.
“Good evening, Mark. I’m so glad you could join us for the final round.”
Mark tore his gaze from the blade and forced himself to look directly into the man’s eyes. “Who the hell are you?”
“First things first, if you don’t mind. Please remove the weapon from your pocket and place it on the table. Then take two steps backward, away from us.”
Mark complied, glancing down at the table as he did so. There was a large, flat box there wrapped in black paper, a black bow in the center. Beside it was a big portable CD player. He stepped backward, watching the man. “Let her go, and I won’t kill you.”
Now the creature laughed. His giggle, unlike his speaking voice, was high-pitched and girlish. Demented. “Oh, I don’t think so. We have to finish the game!”
“Who are you?”
Holding the knife firmly at Tracy’s throat, the man bobbed his head in a parody of a formal bow. “Seth Carlin, at your service.”
Mark stared. “Seth Carlin? The other son? But that’s impossible. Seth Carlin committed suicide years ago. Who are you?”
The man laughed again. He was obviously enjoying himself immensely. “Now, Mark, you’re the journalist, so perhaps you can remind me who it was who said, ‘The reports of my demise are greatly exaggerated.’ ”
Mark calculated. If he lunged for the hand holding the knife, he might not be fast enough, and Tracy would die. The gun was on the table a few feet away, but the same problem applied. He wouldn’t reach it in time. He thought, Where the hell is O’Hara?
“You’re Seth Carlin,” he whispered, wondering how to keep the man talking until O’Hara arrived.
“Yes, Mark, I am Seth Carlin, and my initials are S.C., and I am the avenger.” The high-pitched giggle again. “S, C … avenger. Scavenger, get it?” He continued to laugh, enjoying his joke, never once relaxing the grip of the knife.
Mark waved his arm, indicating the tableau on the other side of the room, the dead man with the scar. “If you’re Scavenger, then who is that?”
Now the man stopped laughing. “Nobody. A servant. Expendable. He helped me with the game, and then I had no more use for him. And speaking of the game, I have a final gift for you, on the table there. Aren’t you going to open it?”
Mark stared at the man, filled with loathing. Then, with a sigh, he took a step toward the table and reached down, his eyes on the gun.
“Ah! Ah! Ah!” Seth Carlin sang. “Not so fast, Mark. The box, not the gun, thank you.”
Mark stopped himself. He picked up the box, stepped backward again, and tore off the bow. The paper came next, falling to the floor at his feet. The black-lacquered lid and the black tissue followed it. Mark reached into the box and pulled out a hardcover book. It was his novel, Dark Desire. He stood there, blinking at it.
“Wait!” Seth Carlin cried, sounding remarkably like a television advertisement. “There’s more!”
Mark put the book down on the table and stepped back again, away from the gun. He reached once more down into the box and pulled out a silver-plated woman’s hand mirror. He dropped the box and looked back at Seth Carlin.
“What the hell is this?” he said.
The man who was Scavenger continued to smile.
“Isn’t it beautiful, Mark?” he said. “It belonged to my mother. It is the final article in our scavenger hunt. Hold it up and look into it.”
Mark blinked at him, then did so. His own angry face looked back at him.
“And there you have it, folks!” Seth Carlin announced triumphantly. “Congratulations, Matthew Farmer. You’ve found The Family Man!”
53
The mirror fell to the floor, filling the basement room with the clatter of silver on concrete and the tinkling of smashing glass.
Tracy watched Mark’s face.
“You’re insane!” Mark cried, taking another step backward. “You’re out of your mind!”
She shifted her gaze as well as she could, straining to look at Seth Carlin.
“Yes,” Carlin said. “You’re right, I am insane! And you, Matthew Farmer, are the reason. You killed my family—after you killed your own family. You killed them all.”
Now she looked back at Mark. He was staring incredulously at the man beside her.
“What are you talking about?” Mark shouted. “How can you say such a thing?”
She felt the cold blade press even more firmly against her neck. When Seth Carlin spoke again, his voice was once more low, reasonable.
“It was the book,” he said. “Dark Desire. Your so-called novel based on actual events.”
Mark blinked. “My book? What about it?”
“What about it?” the other man echoed. “Well, let’s see, how about page twenty-seven? Page one hundred fourteen? One eighty-nine? Two fifty-three? And there’s always my favorite, page three hundred twenty-six! Do you remember them?”
Mark blinked again and glanced absently over at the book on the table. “Not offhand.”
The blade bit into Tracy’s flesh, and she closed her eyes.
“The scenes of the crimes,” Seth Carlin said just beside her ear. She could feel his hot breath on her cheek. “You described them all so vividly, down to the smallest detail. Not like a writer would, but, rather like someone who’d been there. Someone who knew everything.”
Tracy opened her eyes again and watched Mark.
“So?” he whispered, still obviously confused. “What does that mean? It was all reported in the media. I’m a writer; I did my research.”
She knew without having to look that Seth Carlin was smiling again. She continued to watch Mark carefully as the other man spoke.
“Research,” Carlin murmured. “Yes. But the media reports weren’t good enough for you, were they? You decided to embellish the truth, didn’t you? You added your own dramatic little touch to it. You’re really not much of a journalist.”
Tracy felt the hand on her shoulder clamp down more firmly, and the tip of the blade pressed into her flesh. She winced, not daring to move her head or even to swallow. If Seth Carlin’s hand were jostled …
Mark was frowning as he stared at the damaged man beside her. “What the hell do you mean, you sick creep?”
She heard the sharp intake of breath beside her, and she braced herself for whatever was going to happen next. To her surprise, the hand on her shoulder was suddenly removed, but the point of the knife remained where it was.
“Now, Matthew, what did I tell you about your rudeness?” Seth Carlin said. His voice was once more calm, almost unnaturally so. “Look around you. This is where my family died. Everything is as it was that Halloween, but there’s something else. Something that wasn’t there. You put it there, in your book. Tell me, Mr. Matthew Farmer, what’s wrong with this picture?”
As Tracy watched him, Mark actually turned to glance briefly into the darkness behind him. Then he turned back to Seth Carlin, his expression now wary.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “What are you talking about?”
The odd, high-pitched lau
gh from the man beside her was as cold as death. Without for a moment relieving the pressure of the knife, he reached down to the table with his other hand and turned up the volume on the portable player. The room was filled with the lush, agitated strains of “Night on Bald Mountain.”
“Music,” Seth Carlin said.
She saw Mark blink, still confused. “What about it?”
A click. The music stopped, and the damaged hand returned to rest on her shoulder.
“There wasn’t any,” Carlin whispered. “Not here, not anywhere. Why did you make that up?”
Mark blinked again, and Tracy saw that now he was annoyed. More than annoyed: arrogant.
“Of course there was music!” he cried. “That shows how much you know about it! I’m the one who found the bodies of my family in Evanston! ‘Jingle Bells’ was playing.” He took a step forward, an expression of triumph on his face. His eyes glittered. “And what about ‘Stars and Stripes Forever’ in Los Angeles? And in New Orleans, ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’? What about that? What the hell do you mean, I made it up?”
Now she saw him glance down at the gun on the table some three feet away from him, calculating his odds. Before he could move, however, Seth Carlin’s voice stopped him.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
Mark froze, and Tracy saw his eyes widen. “What?”
“Thank you,” Seth Carlin repeated. “That’s all I wanted to hear you say, Mr. Farmer. Mr. Family Man!”
Mark did not move, nor did he remove his astonished gaze from the man with the knife.
“What?” he cried again.
There was a moment of silence in the room, and Tracy was aware only of her heart pounding in her chest. Then Seth Carlin spoke again.
“The one thing only The Family Man could know,” he said. “Only you could know. You, quote, found the bodies of your family in Evanston, unquote, so I guess you knew about ‘Jingle Bells.’ But how could you possibly know that there was music at the other places—to say nothing of precisely what music was playing—when nobody else knew about it? The music was the one piece of information withheld from the press and the public. Only the police and the FBI were supposed to know about it. How did you know about it, Matthew Farmer?”
