24
Lucas had placed the severed head in a bag and put it outside on the veranda. He didn’t know what else to do with it. He didn’t know if he should say a prayer, or what. Not being a religious person, he decided it would be hypocritical on his part.
Back in the house, Tracy asked, “And you think Jim is? . . .”
“Dead by now. They had driven a stake through his stomach. Among other things done to him. He’s dead.”
“Try to put it out of your minds, people,” Louisa said. “We’ve got to stay mentally strong to fight this.”
“Why don’t they just fire into the house and kill us all?” Anne asked, her voice shaky. “They certainly have the guns and the manpower—I assume they’re all men—to rush us and overwhelm us all with no trouble.”
“They want us alive,” David said. “As many of us as possible. For some sort of ceremonial use. And I believe they would rather not hurt the house if they can help it.”
Paul practically jammed his fist into his mouth to prevent his giggle from escaping. His eyes looked a bit mad.
“Steady, Paul,” Lucas said. “Steady, now.”
The rocking horse laughed and whinnied. The house took a deep breath.
The lights went out.
Amid the screaming of the women, the frantic yelling and calling of the men, and the frightened shrieking of the kids, Lucas could hear the rustle and scratching of something. Something—or some things—were making strange clicking sounds on the marble floor.
“Rats!” Mimi screamed. “There’s rats everywhere. Oh, God! George, get them off me.”
Lucas felt claws digging into his jeans. He cussed and slapped at the creatures, knocking half a dozen of the furry rodents from his legs. He suppressed a shudder of revulsion.
A squealing rat leaped from a lamp onto Nancy’s head, its claws digging into her hair.
Jan felt the sharp teeth of the rats snapping and tearing at her jean legs. She screamed in pure terror.
George rolled on the floor, attempting to dislodge the snapping, clawing, disgusting creatures.
The young people fought and screamed and slapped at the rats.
Tracy fled into the darkness, fighting her way through a seemingly endless sea of rats, trying to reach the children. She felt hands on her shoulders; hands that shifted to her arms and began dragging her toward the back door. She screamed for Lucas to help her, her screams lost in the confusing cacophony of many panicked voices.
A hard hand slapped her, stunning her into silence. As she was dragged down the hall, she wondered what had become of the rats.
That thought was torn from her mind as she was dragged from the kitchen and onto the porch. She fought the man, finally grabbing onto a railing post and holding on for dear life.
“All right, now!” The voice sounded somehow familiar to her. “That’s the way you want it. Fine. I’ll take you right here.”
The man backhanded her, again and again, until she lost her hold on the railing. She dropped to the deck of the veranda, stunned but not quite unconscious.
She felt the coolness of night air on bare skin as her blouse and jeans were jerked off, ripped from her. Her bra was yanked off, bruising her skin. Callused hands gripped her flesh until the pain tore through her daze, bringing her back to painful reality. Hot stinking breath fouled her face as her attacker panted and cursed, his face only a few inches from hers.
If he tries to kiss me, Tracy made up her mind, I’ll bite his damned tongue off and spit it at him.
A knee parted her legs and she felt a hot touch on her belly.
She lunged upward, attempting to bite the man on his face, his arm, anywhere. A fist exploded on her jaw, dropping her back into numbing semi-consciousness. Pain brought her back swiftly as the man forced himself upon her.
She screamed into the man’s ear. He jerked his head back, the shriek startling him.
“Shut up!” he snarled at her.
Dimly she was aware of the door opening as her attacker panted and hunched on her. Through the mist in her eyes, she could make out the form of her husband.
She opened her mouth to yell, then had the presence of mind to quickly close both her mouth and eyes as she realized what Lucas was only a heartbeat away from doing.
“You son of a bitch!” Lucas shouted.
The man looked up, turning his head.
Lucas leveled the muzzle of the shotgun and pulled the trigger. The explosion blew the man’s head completely off his neck. Blood, fluid, brains, and bone splattered over the porch and lawn.
Lucas, suddenly weak, leaned against the side of the house. The shotgun felt so heavy in his hands. Tracy scrambled to her feet and jerked her torn clothing around her. She pulled her husband into the house.
“Where are the rats?” she asked, looking around.
“There were no rats,” Lucas said flatly, fighting to regain control of his emotions. He handed her a roll of paper towels to wipe off her attacker’s blood that had splattered all over her. “It was some kind of illusion. Probably staged to aid in grabbing you.”
“How do you feel, Lucas?”
“Fine. The important thing is, how do you feel?”
“I’m all right. Lucas, you know who that man was you shot, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said with a sigh. “Edmund County Sheriff Bill Pugh.”
* * *
As abruptly as the horror-filled night had begun, the horror ceased. The night darkness seemed to hold nothing out of the ordinary. The bonfires went out, the sounds of dying faded. The night became as quiet as a grave.
But all inside the mansion knew many eyes were watching, waiting.
Jan was the first to speak after the fires went out. “What in the hell are they waiting for?”
“They’re playing a game of nerves,” Lucas said. “Just waiting for one of us to break and make a mistake. It would be a mistake that would cost somebody their life.’‘
“Stay alert, people,” Harry said. “Jesus!” He shook his head. “I sound like John Wane.”
“I sure would like to see the Duke come ridin’ up about right now,” George said. Then, realizing what he’d just said, muttered, “Anything’s possible around this place.”
Mark and Nancy chuckled softly at that.
“It’s . . . eerie,” Paul said. “And despite everything that is happening, part of me is screaming out that it’s all just a game. This is Georgia, 1984, and those are all civilized men out there. Or,” he sighed, “maybe it really isn’t happening.”
No one said anything in response. They sat in the darkened den and looked at Paul.
Paul glanced around him at the group, sitting in chairs, on the floor, some wrapped in blankets, resting on the marble floor. His gaze touched all eyes that were awake.
“All right,” the man said. “Let’s get it out in the open. I know you think I’m weak. And I know you’re thinking I’ll be the first one to crack under the pressure. Well, maybe I will be. Sure. I have before.”
“Paul . . .” Anne touched his arm. “You don’t have to bring all that up.”
“Yes, I do,” he said, shaking off her hand. “I cracked up in Vietnam. I pulled four months in combat and went to pieces. It used to be called shell shock. The doctors are much kinder now. It’s referred to as battle fatigue. And,” he struggled to continue, “I cracked up twice since Anne and I have been married.” His eyes touched his wife. “I’m still under a shrink’s care. So look out, folks. You never know about me.” He laughed bitterly.
Full of self-pity, David thought. Wanting people to feel sorry for him.
“Vietnam screwed up a lot of people, buddy,” Kyle spoke from where he and Louisa lay on a blanket on the floor. “And anybody who says you should be ashamed of it is a goddamned fool. God made us all different; some are stronger than others. Men of all units fell apart. And I mean all units. Don’t sweat the past, Paul. Just look ahead.”
“You were there?” Paul asked him through the darkness.
Kyle laughed, a strange note to the laughter. “I pulled eighteen months with various SEAL teams, Paul. So, yeah. I was there all right.”
“But you came back a whole person. Obviously, you did.”
“Sure,” Kyle said. “If you don’t count the dreams that never seem to go completely away. Or get any better with time. The memories that won’t ever leave you. The dead buddies. Yeah. And more. But what you have to do, Paul, is you put all those things into a tiny room in your head. And every now and then, you open the door to that room and look at all the horrible things; let them walk out into the light. Don’t keep them all shut up. Or try to. That’s what will drive you nuts. I’ll send you a bill for my services first of the month. Now, good night.”
* * *
The horrible screaming woke them. Awakened them with a cold, fearful sweat bathing their bodies. Only two of those present had ever heard anything like the howling that seemed to completely fill the night, shattering nerves like crystal hit with a hammer.
Even before Kyle could struggle out of the blankets, M-16 in his hands, he could smell that unforgettable odor. It threw him backward in time, spinning him back years.
“God !” Mimi said, wrinkling her nose. “What is that smell?”
“They’re burning someone alive,” Kyle said, his voice a deadly flat tone. “I saw several monks do that in ’Nam. To themselves.”
“Not again,” Paul sobbed, his face in his hands. “Oh, no. Please. Not again.”
Anne put her arms around him, pulling his head to her breast. “It’s all right, Paul,” she spoke gently, soothing the man. “It’s all right. Hang on.”
David, like many of the others, held a handkerchief to his nose. “Let me guess,” he said. “Paul saw something like what Kyle described during his tour of duty in Vietnam?”
Paul was silent for a moment, then screamed out, “Yes, goddamn it. I saw a bunch of doped-up G.I.’s pour gasoline on this VC prisoner. They set him on fire and laughed about it. I tried to stop them. I couldn’t. But goddamn it, I tried!”
Kyle grunted. His eyes found Lucas in the gloom of the room. “Not all the bad guys were Victor Charlie. We had our share of maniacs, too. Believe it.”
David left the room for a moment, returning with a bottle of pills and a glass of water. He knelt down beside Anne and Paul. “Here, Paul,” he said, holding out two of the small pills. “Take these. You’ll be asleep in ten minutes. I promise you.”
Paul gulped down the pills, chasing them with water.
“Stay with him,” David told Anne.
She nodded and lay down beside her husband.
David walked across the room to Lucas and Kyle. He said, “You both know what this means, don’t you?”
“The Brotherhood,” Kyle said.
“Yes. Through the powers of that . . . goddamned rocking horse, or this house, whatever, they’ve discovered Paul’s weaknesses and they’ll be working on them.”
“Wonderful,” Lucas said. “Now we have that to worry about.”
“That is correct,” David said. “I can’t keep him sedated for the duration. I don’t know how long that will be, and I don’t have that much medication with me, anyway. We’re going to have to watch him very closely.”
The guards inside the house changed shifts to the flickering lights of the human bonfire dancing off of and through the many windows of the east side of the mansion. The screaming of the burning human being had lasted no more than two minutes.
But those two minutes of intense, painful screaming were now seared into the minds of all those in the mansion.
And it was a memory that would never leave any of them.
In the dark ground level of the great old mansion, those beings and parts of beings stored there were growing restless as they heard the silent song from beyond the river of death. A pair of long-ago severed hands that floated in a large jar of formaldehyde, jerked once, then twice. The fingers, pale white and wrinkled, twitched as unnatural life touched them. The fingers closed into fists. A human head, its eyes long ago burned sightless from torture, moved in its jar of preserving fluid. The hair gently waved, reaching toward the top of the closed jar. The long hair coiled and wound together, created strong, thick rope-like strands. The ends of the strengthened hair formed knots and began punching at the sealed lid of the large container.
The tapping just faintly reached those on the floor above. No one among them cared to vocalize what they might be hearing.
In the musty, cobwebbed ground level of the mansion, in long narrow wooden packing crates, the lids nailed shut, strange life began stirring. Long-inactive arms and legs and fingers and feet began to slowly tremble with strange life. Bits and broken pieces of human bodies, carefully preserved over the long years, struggled to once more, come to be and serve the Master.
On the second level of the mansion, tired eyes looked out, but could only guess at what unknown horror lay waiting in the thick darkness. The fire from the burning body was gone, leaving only a charred lump of what had once been life. The stink of burned flesh and hair and organs formed a thick, almost tangible stench around the mansion, invading the nostrils of those trapped inside.
Waiting for the dawn that would, they hoped, they prayed, bring some sort of relief.
Dawn finally extended its gold-and-silvery-gray fingers, hesitantly, shyly, spreading faint light over the land.
But it brought no relief.
Jackie was the first of the young people to awaken. Being careful not to step on someone in the mattress-filled crowded room, she dressed and went down the hall to the bathroom. She emerged and walked softly to the kitchen. There, she poured a glass of milk and, leaning against the counter next to the kitchen door, her back to the door, she drank her breakfast.
She did not hear the whisper of footsteps on the veranda; did not see the shadow fall across the window of the door. She did not see the huge bulk of the man as he stood before the door, peeking in through the slightly parted curtains. She did not hear his breath quicken and become a harsh animal panting. She did not hear the key slide into the lock and gently turn. His big hand covered the door knob and turned it as a grin of triumph parted his thick wet lips. He very slowly and very quietly pushed open the door.
Jackie felt the coolness of air on her bare legs and felt just a moment of panic as she turned, opening her mouth to scream. It was too late. A big hand clamped over her mouth, shutting off the yell for help. She was lifted off her feet and jerked outside, past the porch, to the shrubbery that squared the mansion on all sides.
The girl felt revulsion when she looked into the demonic eyes of Burt Simmons.
Burt Simmons grinned, then whispered. “If you scream, girlie, I’ll kill you,” he panted the warning. “And you’ll die hard. It’ll take days. ’Cause I’ll pass you around to all the men—you understand?”
Jackie nodded her head. She knew what the man was about to do, and knew it was going to hurt. Better to be hurt than to be dead, the girl thought.
He took a dirty handkerchief from his pocket and forced the rag into the girl’s mouth, securing it there with a strip torn from his shirttail. His blunt fingers probed and pushed at her. Grunts of pain forced their way past the gag in her mouth as Burt’s long finger brushed her virgin flesh.
I’m trying to reach you, Jackie! the familiar voice rang in her head. Randolph.
Please hurry! she flung her thoughts.
I’m trying, Jackie!
“You got a funny look in your eyes, baby,” Burt said.
She closed her eyes.
More pain than Jackie had ever felt lanced through her as the man began his bulling attack.
Lucas and Tracy picked precisely that time to glance out the kitchen door. Lucas jerked open the door and stepped out onto the veranda just as Tracy screamed as she saw her daughter’s bare legs widespread in the breaking light.
All four of them heard the sound of galloping hooves.
Burt’s head came up as Lucas kicked out, the toe of his boot catching the man on the side of his face.
Burt’s jaw splintered with a loud pop and the man fell to one side, nearly unconscious.
The galloping hooves ceased.
Jackie painfully struggled to her feet and crawled up on the porch. She was bleeding and crying. Tracy pulled the girl into the house.
“Well, now,” the familiar voice drawled, coming from the side of the house.
Lucas turned to face Jim Dooley.
The man had an axe in his hand.
“Jesus God, Jim!” Lucas blurted. “Man, am I glad to see you. I thought you were dead. Looks like we all got here just in time, huh?”
“That’s one way of putting it,” Jim replied.
“Hurry, Jim. Come on in the house.”
Jim laughed at him.
“Jim . . . Look, I know you want revenge for what they did to Lyda. But . . . God, I’m sorry about that.”
“I’m not,” Jim replied calmly. “She got what she deserved before we cut out her tongue.”
Another piece of the complicated puzzle fell into place in Lucas’s mind. “You’re one of them, right?”
Jim grinned. “You got that right, buddy. Fooled you, didn’t I?”
The puzzle was nearing completion as Lucas said, “You’re Ira.”
“That’s right . . . brother. Fooled you about that, too, didn’t I?”
“I read what you wrote in Grandmother’s journal.”
“Yeah, I know it.”
“Who was the man with the stake through his stomach?”
Ira shrugged. “Some hitchhiker we found. We didn’t ask his name.”
Lucas watched as Jim shifted the axe in his hand to a two-handed grip. “You’re crazy, Jim. Give this thing up.”
Jim laughed at him. “Give it up, brother? No way. Crazy? Yeah, maybe. But I’ve learned to control it, though. And I did it without any help from those idiot shrinks.” Again, he grinned. “Just tell them what they want to hear, brother. That’s the trick. Yeah, that’s it. God, you have no idea how much I hate you.”
Lucas nodded his head. “You must hate me. I’ll agree with that.”
“I’m going to finish what stupid Burt started, brother.”
Lucas was attempting to gauge the odds of moving his hand to his holster, jerking out his .45, cocking it, and shooting his brother before Ira could swing the axe.
He decided the odds against him accomplishing that were very, very long indeed. But he had to buy some time. Somehow.
Then Ira shortened the odds to his own favor by stepping closer to Lucas. He smiled at his brother. “Guess what, baby brother?”
“I wouldn’t even try, Ira.”
“Time’s almost up for you.”
“You want to explain some things first?”
Ira smiled. The madness shone in his eyes. “Some things can’t be explained, Lucas.”
“That’s a cop-out, Ira, and you know it.”
Ira shrugged. “What do you want to know?”
“You, personally, have to kill me, right, Ira?”
“That’s right.”
“The house, the horse?”
But his brother would only smile at that question.
“Since we both know I’m not going to make it out of this alive,” Lucas stalled. “Tell me this: the Brotherhood is worldwide, isn’t it?”
“Yep. And gettin’ bigger.”
“Bradberry set this up for you, didn’t he? Getting me down here, I mean?”
“That’s right.”
“Any chance of Tracy and kids getting out? Do what you have to do with me, just let them leave.”
“No way, brother.”
“The Rejects turned against you, didn’t they?”
“No big deal. We’ll just hunt them down and kill them.”
“Maybe they’ll turn out to be on our side, like the Woods’ Children.”
That touched a sore spot in Ira, the irritation showing on his face. He pushed it aside. “Don’t make no difference.”
“All right, Ira. You managed to fool me. But how did you fool the people around here? Those not connected with the Brotherhood, that is.”
“Boy, you shore like to bump your gums, don’t you? That was the easy part. I met a young hippie on the road out in California. Just by chance. He was from this area. We was the same age and looked a lot alike. His parents were dead. No close kin nowhere around. I killed him. Took his I.D. and growed me a beard. I come back. I’m marked, brother. On my head. 666, just as plain as day. You was marked, too. But the damn thing faded out when you went to the side of the Light. Traitor, that’s what you are. You and me, Lucas, we could have had it all. Grandmother set it up that way. Equals. And I would have shared it all with you. Money, power, living six hundred and sixty-six years. But you blew it for us both. You son of a bitch!”
A faint light was glowing near the edge of the woods, catching Lucas’s eyes. It seemed . . . unnatural to him. He shifted his eyes back to his brother. But not before a new, strong resolve filled the man. Something deep within him stirred. It took him several seconds to recognize and pinpoint the sensation.
Survival. The will to survive and the knowledge that he was going to win filled him. Lucas smiled at his brother.
“What the hell have you got to smile about, you simple bastard?” Ira said. “Man, you’re the goofy one!”
“I’m going to beat you, Ira,” Lucas said. “I’m going to win this fight.”
Ira laughed aloud. “Not a chance, brother. I gonna kill you ’cause that’s what the Master wants.”
“The Master? Satan?”
Jim’s eyes turned sly. Spittle oozed from one corner of his mouth. “Maybe. Satan can take many shapes, many forms on this old earth, boy. He’s called many names. The Master has many servants and sub-servants.”
“And cults?”
“Oh, my, yes.”
“Some of them under the guise of organized religions?”
“Oh, yes, brother. It would surprise you just how many.”
“I doubt it,” Lucas said. “I’ve always suspected some of those off-the-wall religions.”
“I can’t hardly wait to get at your friends from the city, brother. We got a special treat in store for them.”
Lucas could not understand why someone didn’t look out the window and see why he hadn’t entered the house.
“Blocked out,” his brother told him. “Everyone is frozen in place.”
“Why haven’t you done that before?”
A pain look passed Ira’s face. “Can’t,” he said.
“You mean God won’t let you.” It was not put in question form. That inner resolve was growing stronger within him.
Ira became outraged at the mention of His name. He cursed Lucas, their mother and father, and God, until he was red-faced.
He stood glaring at Lucas, panting for breath.
“Are you really the Watcher?” Lucas asked.
“We’re related. And now you’re all out of time, brother. Bye, bye.”
He stepped closer and swung the axe.