9
“All right,” Lucas said flatly, tension and anger in his voice. “It’s time, past time, for them to be back. I’m going to spank some butt when I find them.”
“Keep your temper in check, old man. Come on. Let’s go look for them. They’re an hour overdue, and you and I both know this isn’t like them at all . . .”
“I know.” He went into their bedroom and looked at the nightstand where he kept his .45. After a few seconds’ pause, Lucas opened the drawer and stuck the pistol behind his belt. He slipped a few extra cartridges into his pocket and walked out to where Tracy was waiting. “Let’s go,” he said.
She looked at the pistol in his waistband but said nothing.
Husband and wife, each trying to keep the worry from the other, rode the old dirt-and-gravel road, each of them scanning their side of the road for any sign of the children.
Nothing.
They rode the last half-mile in silence. At road’s end, Lucas stopped the wagon, sighed heavily, and turned around.
“Shit!” Tracy said.
“Yeah.”
They headed back.
They retraced their route, slower this time, the station wagon just creeping along.
“There!” Tracy said, pointing.
Lucas stopped the wagon and got out, Tracy following him.
“This is the only road leading off this one,” Tracy said. “But how can we know for sure if the kids are down this road?” She looked into the gloom of the dark, rutted road. Her eyes fell on the “No Trespassing” sign. “Oh, boy,” she said. “Look at that.”
“Yeah. It would be like Johnny to ignore it. Well, we’ll leave the wagon here and walk down.” He looked into the gloom. He could see the tracks of bike tires going in, but none coming out. He pointed to them. “Right there, honey. They went in, but didn’t come out.”
“Lucas . . .” Her fingers dug temporary trenches in his arm.
“Easy, now,” he replied; but his words fell flat. He touched the butt of the .45 and sighed. “Come on.”
They walked into the gloom.
* * *
“You better turn us loose,” Jackie told the men and women gathered around them in the large room. It was a scary room, filled with all sorts of skulls and old bones and upside-down crosses and other witchcraft paraphernalia. “This is kidnapping, you know.”
“Wrong, girl,” the man with the small mean eyes said. His voice was harsh and heavy, with a slight accent. “You both were trespassing on private property. That is against the law. You will both stay here until your parents come for you. These woods are very dangerous. There are creatures out there,” he waved his hand, “much like the bigfoot of the great Northwest.”
“That’s not true,” Johnny said.
The man’s eyes turned even meaner. “Do not dispute me, boy. And, yes, it is true.”
“Our folks will call Trooper Cartier on you bums,” Johnny fired back. His initial fear was gone, replaced by youthful anger and recklessness.
“Yes, we know all about Cartier and your family,” a woman said. A very pretty woman, Jackie thought. But that sure was a funny-looking medallion she had hanging around her neck. “However, you children did a very wrong and foolish thing. You must be pun-wished.”
“You put a hand on either of us and I’ll call a lawyer!” Jackie announced.
The four adults found that very amusing. But the humor did not quite reach their eyes. They remained hostile.
The second man said, “You won’t have to call very loudly. One is approaching now.”
“How do you know that?” Jackie asked.
“Ve have our vays,” the man said mysteriously. The other woman laughed. “Your father and mother are coming for you.”
The brother and sister jumped up and ran to the only window in the room that wasn’t barred and shuttered. Neither could see any sign of human life; only the huge, fierce-looking Dobermans that roamed the fenced-in yard.
“You’re wrong,” Johnny said, turning around.
“Relax,” the second woman said. She wasn’t quite as pretty as the other woman, but a nice-looking woman. Blonde, where the other woman was dark complexed and had black hair. “They will be here in about fifteen minutes; they are cautious traveling. Now listen to me. Both of you have been given cold drinks and been fed. You have not been harmed. We could not allow you to go back into the woods. All this was for you own good.”
“You say!” Jackie said hotly.
“That is correct, girl,” the woman said calmly. “We say. But, for now, we have to call in the dogs so they will not harm your parents. You see the trouble you both have caused us?”
Jackie looked at Johnny at that remark. The boy said, “You people are the weirdest bunch of people I’ve ever seen.”
This time, the adults did not find his remarks so amusing. “More than you know, little one,” the dark-haired woman said. “Oh, my, yes. Much more than you know. For now.”
The strange look in her dark eyes shut the boy’s mouth and kept it closed. She walked to a bookcase and took down a human skull. She held it in her hands and looked deeply into the empty eye sockets, then slowly swung her gaze back to the kids. And slowly, like a huge fist closing, fear once more gripped the boy. It was infectious, closing around Jackie as well.
The others laughed, the laughter rattling the old dry bones of the skeleton hanging from a hook on the wall.
* * *
Tracy spotted the bikes first. She ran to them. She could see no signs of any struggle, or that which she had been both fearing and anticipating: blood.
“Easy, baby,” Lucas said, taking her hand and helping her to her feet. “Come on. They left their bikes here for a reason. We have to keep thinking they’re all right. Let’s see what’s around that bend in the road.”
They walked on, Tracy saying, “It’s damn spooky in here.”
“Yes.” Lucas did not want to pursue that line of talk.
Before they reached the bend in the dirt road, they heard the man’s voice calling to someone—or something.
Then they saw the house behind the fence. They both stood for a few seconds, gazing at the strange-looking structure. They both spotted the gargoyles at the same time.
“Jesus Christ,” Lucas said.
A man walked to the open gate and waved to them. It was by no means a friendly greeting, but more a gesture of impatience indicating that he both demanded and was used to instant obedience.
“I don’t like him at all,” Tracy said.
“Friendly sort,” Lucas said sarcastically. Raising his voice, he called, “You seen two kids out here? A boy and a girl?”
“They are in the house, and they are quite safe. We will send them out to you. Come no closer. Instruct your children to never—never—come back to this place again. Neither you nor your children are welcome here. We have our reasons for this, and will not tolerate any questioning or violation of them. Just do as you are told.”
“Buddy,” Lucas said, struggling to keep a lid on his temper, “if you’ve held our children against their will, I’ll call the highway patrol.”
“And charge us with what?” the man asked, a slight smile curving his cruel lips. “Your children can, I suppose, read. They both admitted they saw the warning signs and chose to arrogantly ignore them. The dogs that patrol these grounds are dangerous to strangers. We brought the children into our home for their own protection. The boy and girl have been fed and given cold drinks. They have been treated as guests. Now, what charges could you bring toward people who cared for your children’s welfare and nothing more?”
Lucas’s legal mind could think of several possible charges, but he let the matter slide for now. “Send the kids out to us.”
The man waved his arm and the kids shot out of the strange-looking house at a flat run.
Both parents were much relieved to see the kids safe, but were also still very angry at them for disobeying orders.
Lucas pointed down the dark road. “Get your bikes and wait for us at the car. Move!”
The kids’ tennis shoes kicked up dust as they left.
Lucas turned to the man at the gate and was surprised to see the number had grown by three. Two men and two women. The gate was shut. Huge black Dobermans now slobbered and snarled and growled behind the locked gate.
How the hell did that happen so quickly? he questioned silently. Jesus! My head wasn’t turned for thirty seconds.
Before Lucas could speak, a woman said, “You are not welcome here. Take your wife and children and do not come back—ever.”
The quartet turned as if controlled by one central mind and walked in a single file back to the house. They entered without looking back.
The dogs snarled and bit at the fence that stood as a barrier between the man and woman and the savage animals.
“My God,” Tracy breathed the words. “What in the world do you suppose that was all about?”
“I don’t know. But I am certainly going to take it up with Jim and Kyle.”
“After we talk with the kids,” Tracy said.
“Tattoo that on your arm, love.”
She smiled and patted his hand. “Thanks, dear, but one in the family is quite enough.”
* * *
“All right, gang,” Lucas said, fixing his sternest look on the kids. “What do you think your punishment should be?”
The boy and girl glanced at each other, looking sheepish, and then shrugged. “Whatever, Dad,” Jackie said.
Lucas and Tracy had listened to the kids’ story. Their anger had quickly abated when they both realized the terror the kids must have experienced. The anger had then shifted to the men and women in the odd-looking house.
“Your mother and I will discuss it,” Lucas said. “For now, both of you go to your rooms and stay put.”
Alone on the front porch, Lucas asked Tracy, “What do you think?”
“I’m willing to forget it if you are. I think they’ve been through enough. I can’t see them ever going back to that . . . place.”
“But we don’t have to tell the kids that right away,” Lucas said with a smile. “I don’t want them to think they’re getting off so lightly.”
“No. We’ll let them stew awhile. Lucas, what kind of people are they? ‘The unknown is here’; human skulls in the den; telling the kids there are monsters in the woods; a skeleton; upside-down crosses; black magic and voodoo paraphernalia, and the kids say they knew we were coming. Good God, Lucas, who do we have for neighbors?”
“A bunch of crackpots, I’m sure. I guess the rumors were right, those things that Jim told me. I guess those people do . . . as silly as it sounds, worship the devil.” He shook his head and breathed a deep sigh. “I’m just very relieved the kids are safe.”
“Are you going to talk with Kyle about what happened?”
“Oh, yes. Certainly. I imagine he’ll be around sometime tomorrow.”
She looked at her wristwatch. “God, look at the time. It’s three-thirty. I don’t want to take a nap; I won’t be able to sleep tonight. But I don’t remember being so tired.”
“Tension, I guess. Got us both. I think we’ll be able to sleep quite well tonight.”
On the landing above them, the rocking horse began to grin and twitch its tail; it rocked slowly back and forth.
* * *
The music awakened them. For a moment, neither could quite make out what was happening. Then the faint tinkling of a piano drifted to them through the closed door of their bedroom. The melody was not familiar to either of them.
Then they both opened their eyes, wide awake, sitting up in bed. The first tiny fingers of fear touched them.
The sound seemed to be coming from the ballroom of the great old mansion.
“What the hell?” Lucas muttered.
“Why am I suddenly afraid?” Tracy asked. “Lucas, what’s happening here?”
“I don’t know.” He sat on the side of the bed and slipped his bare feet into moccasin-type house shoes.
“Maybe it’s the kids listening to a radio?” Tracy suggested. There was a hopeful note to her questions.
“Our kids listening to classical music?” Lucas said. “Not likely. I’m going down the hall to see about this.”
“Not without me!”
In night clothes and slippers, the couple made their way silently down the dark hall leading to the ballroom. A noise behind them spun them around, cold damp fear touching them.
Jackie and Johnny stood a few feet away, both of them rubbing their sleepy eyes. Tracy put a warning finger to her lips. The kids nodded their understanding.
Jackie slipped to her mother’s side and whispered, “What’s going on? Where is that music coming from?”
“We don’t know, baby. We’ll see. You two stay behind us.”
“For sure,” Johnny whispered.
“You got your gun, Dad?” Jackie asked. Her eyes were frightened and large in the darkness of the hall.
“No,” he said shortly. Somehow the question irritated him—does everything have to be settled with a gun?
He was soon to discover the answer to that unspoken question.
With Lucas leading the way, the quartet made their way carefully to the archway leading into the ballroom.
The ballroom seemed even blacker than the hallway.
The piano music grew louder, changing from a quiet lovely melody to one that, to the ears of those listening, seemed somehow ominous . . . and something else. Evil.
Lucas motioned for the others to stay back. He slipped through the archway and felt for the light switch. Finding it, he took a deep breath and flipped the switch, flooding the room with the harshness of artificial light.
The room was empty of life.
“Dad?” Jackie said, moving to his side. She pointed. “Look at the keys on the piano.”
The family moved slowly into the ballroom and stared in disbelief.
The piano bench was empty, but the keys were being depressed, the music swelling, louder and wilder than before.
Lucas heard Tracy suck in her breath in shock and disbelief. “Steady, now,” he cautioned them all. “It’s got to be some sort of . . . Christ, I don’t know. Player piano, I guess. Because that,” he said, pointing to the polished grand piano playing by itself, “is impossible.”
With his words still echoing in the hallway, the music became still louder and wilder, the invisible fingers pounding the keys.
Laughter began ringing through the house. Above them, the sounds of a horse whinneying and nickering came to them.
“That horse again,” Jackie whispered to her brother, too low for the parents to hear.
Johnny swallowed hard and nodded his head. He did not trust himself to speak.
“What in the hell is going on in this house?” Lucas offered up the question to anyone who might have an answer.
No one did.
The music came crashing to an end, leaving a dead, still silence.
Someone, or something laughed from the depths of the huge old mansion. The laughter was mocking.
“All right,” Lucas said. “This has gone on long enough. Who are you?” he yelled. “What do you want?”
His words echoed back to him in the silence of the great house.
The lights went out.
“Somebody’s in the house!” Johnny said. “I can hear them.”
“They’re coming at us!” Jackie yelled, her cry startling everybody. “Across the room!”
All could now make out shapes and forms, rushing toward the small group.
“Dad!” Johnny yelled, as hands fell on his slender shoulders, spinning him around. The boy whirled and broke free of the hard hands. He kicked out, his bare foot striking his attacker in the groin. The black-clad form screamed in anguish. Johnny put a shoulder into the belly of a second man, sending the man sprawling on the marble floor.
Tracy felt herself lifted off her feet, a hard, callused hand fumbling under her pajama top, squeezing her breasts. She screamed as her old, almost-but-not-quite-forgotten fear returned to her. She fought the man, but he was much bigger and much stronger. His breath was hot on her face and it stank. She struggled but could not prevent herself being dragged away from her family, into a small dressing room off the ballroom. She was forced to the floor, on her back. Her screaming intensified as black fear gripped her in a sweaty hand, turning her almost mindless.
In the hallway, Jackie clawed and bit and struck at the shapes that surrounded her. She slapped at hands that tried to touch her in forbidden places. She screamed for someone to come to her, to help her, not realizing that no sound was pushing past her lips.
The girl was powerless to prevent her attackers from fondling her. They laughed as they did, their stinking breath fouling the air. Their bodies pushed close to the terrified girl, the old sweat odors almost making her sick.
Johnny had lost sight of the murky forms of his parents and sister. Panic seized the boy and he tried to rush into where he believed the moving melee to be. He was grabbed by the shoulders and flung backward, sliding on the marble floor, hitting his head on a baseboard. Bright lights whipped through his head, and he was momentarily stunned as blackness took him into cold arms.
Lucas had not had a fistfight since his early college days. He had never been a troublemaking youth, and going to public school as he had, had never played much contact sports. But one memory that he had finally had to seek psychiatric help to deal with, and had thought he had whipped after all these years, returned to him in a hot rush of ugly recurrence. Lucas screamed in rage, striking out at the forms and shapes that threatened his family and himself.
An eerie light began shining and seeping downward from the top landing of the mansion. The sounds of galloping hooves reached his ears.
“In the house?” he said aloud.
His voice gave away his position in the dark hallway. A hard fist caught him a glancing blow on the shoulder, knocking him spinning and sprawling to the floor.
The breath was knocked from him and he struggled to get to his feet, his wife’s almost-insane screaming filling his head.
He found himself pinned to the floor, with people pounding on him. But not with fists. They were using sticks. Lucas howled in rage as his oldest fear boiled once more to the surface. He rolled on the floor, but was unable to get away from the sticks that struck him painfully. Each time he tried to rise, he was pushed back to the cool floor, and the beating continued. Little by little, he felt his adulthood being stripped away from him, spinning him back in time, back to his young teens, back to that awful afternoon in that alley in New York City.
Back to when . . .
“NO!” he screamed. “NO!” He mustered all his courage and mentally fought away the horrible memories he had tried for so long to dissolve in his mind.
“Lucas!” Tracy screamed. “Oh, God, Lucas, please help me.”
Tracy’s pajama bottoms had been torn from her. Strong hands spread her naked legs wide and pinned her ankles to the floor. Hands fumbled between her legs, fondling her, attempting to bring wetness to the dryness.
“Lucas!” she screamed.
Lucas lunged against the legs that encircled him. He kicked out and heard the breath gush from one man as the toe of his moccasin struck the man in the stomach. Lucas’s kicking and jerking startled the circle of men, almost as if they had suspected he would not do something like that. Or had been told, the fleeting thought came to Lucas.
He fought away the dark shapes and rose to his feet just as Jackie’s cries reached him. That, coupled with his wife’s cries for help, gave the man new strength. He fumbled in the dark and found a vase, jerking it from its stand. He smashed the expensive vase over the head of a shapeless form. The man—Lucas supposed it was a man—crumpled to the floor, unconscious.
“Tracy!” Lucas called.
“Here!” she returned the shout.
Lucas ran through the open door, colliding with several black-dressed forms, knocking them all sprawling. He grabbed another and slung him against a wall. Lucas drew back his right arm and smashed his elbow into the man’s face. The whatever-in-the-hell-it-was screamed hoarsely and jerked his gloved hands to his face, not in time to catch the sudden spurting of blood from his mashed and broken nose. The blood gushed all over Lucas’s T-shirt.
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.”