27
Kyle and Lucas and David walked out onto the front veranda. The men were armed with spears and knives.
“I feel like a fool,” David said, hefting his spear. “But I would feel just as foolish carrying around a gun.”
“Don’t make a big issue of it,” Lucas said. “But cut your eyes to your right. To that big oak tree by the road.”
The men looked. They could see two men crouched by the tree. They held clubs in their hands.
“Equals at last,” David said with a smile. “I don’t really understand what is happening, or has happened, but it seems our foes have discovered their guns are useless. But I’m wondering if they still have the power to cloud our minds?”
“As long as that rocking horse is still around,” Lucas said.
At the door, listening, Jackie and Johnny looked at each other, then stepped back away from the door, so the adults would not hear.
“It’s the house, Johnny,” she said. “You understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes. But I don’t think it would let us do it. I think it would stop us.”
“We have to do something. I think we’re running out of time.”
“I get the same feeling. Something has to be done real quick.”
The rocking horse whinnied. The house took a deep breath.
“They know what we’re thinking,” Jackie said. “We’re going to have to be very careful.”
“And keep it from Dad and Mom.”
“And the other kids, too. You understand, why, don’t you?”
“Yes. Tomorrow, Jackie. No later than tomorrow night.”
“All right. But how do we know these things?”
“I don’t know,” the boy admitted. “I think we just have to accept.”
“And obey.”
“Yes.”
The children slipped back into the depths of the house.
“We’ll have to warn the others to stay away from the windows,” Kyle said. “If we have spears, it’s a cinch those guys do, too.”
Harry joined them on the porch, a smile on his face. He had fashioned a slingshot from the fork of a branch Kyle and Lucas had left in back of the house. Using strips of rubber from an old innertube, he now had a wicked-looking weapon in his hand. He put a small, smooth rock into the pocket of the slingshot and looked around him, spotting the men crouched beside the oak tree.
Harry walked to the edge of the veranda, took aim, and let fly. The stone cracked one of the men right between the eyes.
“Oww!” the man hollered. “Goddamn it,” I’m bleeding! ”
Harry reloaded and took aim. The second stone hit the same man in the chest, bringing a grunt of pain.
The men moved back a good fifty yards, out of Harry’s range.
Kyle and Lucas and David laughed, Lucas saying, “Now that’s a damn good idea, Harry. Can you make some more of those?”
“I’m way ahead of you, buddy,” Harry said. “I made a dozen of these and passed them around. Mark and Nancy are out gathering stones now.”
“All right!” Lucas said. There was an idea forming in his mind. He turned to Kyle. “Kyle, the guns won’t work, right?”
“That’s right. So?”
“I don’t want to crank it up and give those guys out there any ideas, but I see no reason why my chain saw wouldn’t work.”
Kyle’s grin was nasty. “Oh, you sneaky bastard, you. What a weapon up close. Let’s crank it up and see.”
“But what about them?” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the woods.
Louisa spoke from the doorway. “They’re in a panic,” she said. “I’m receiving all sorts of wild thought-thrusts from them. They can’t leave this area for some reason.”
“That’s what I thought,” Kyle said. “Come on, Lucas. Let’s sharpen that baby and get it gassed and working. We can do some damage with this weapon.”
* * *
All knew that it was what the night would bring that they had to fear. None of the adults noticed as Jackie and Johnny quietly slipped outside and siphoned container after container of gas from the cars, carefully hiding the explosive fuel, stashing it in closets around the mansion.
But the house knew, and its breathing became heavy and angry. The adults could feel the trembling of the floor beneath them.
“Something’s happened to make this place mad,” George said. “God Almighty! What am I saying?”
“The truth,” Karen said. “The house is just as alive as we are. It knows all and sees all. But it’s stationary, and therein lies its weakness.”
Jackie and Johnny remained silent.
Night began creeping out of light, casting long purple shadows around the mansion. The breathing of the house had settled down to a whisper. As full dark settled around the countryside, they all heard the sounds of something moving on the floor beneath them. No one would venture a guess as to what it was.
But all had mental horrors roaming around in their minds.
“Stay alert,” Kyle told each guard.
“Me and my slingshot,” Harry said, forcing a grin.
Just as Kyle’s footsteps were fading down the hall to the den, Harry heard a noise just outside the kitchen, on the veranda. The mansion had been deliberately darkened at Kyle’s orders, to give them all better night vision. The windows near the guards were open, to enable them to better hear, the screens off.
Harry tested the rubber of his slingshot and slipped to the window. He could see the dark form of a man standing just a few feet away. He pulled back and let a stone fly.
The rock hit the man on the cheek, just under his right eye. The force of the striking stone knocked the eyeball from its socket and broke the man’s cheekbone. The man howled in pain and terror and his dangling eye gave him a very curious outlook on his surroundings.
Harry let fly another stone, this one hitting the man on the jaw, breaking it. The man fell off the porch and staggered off into the night, screaming and howling pain.
“Sucker shot,” Harry muttered. “Man, I was the terror of the neighborhood with a slingshot when I was a kid.”
An arrow flew into the kitchen, the sharpened point driving deep into Harry’s shoulder. “I’m hit!” he cried.
Ordering the others to stay put, Kyle ran to the kitchen. “Hang on,” he told Harry, after inspecting the bloody protruding point of the arrow. There was no arrowhead, just a sharpened end. “I got to pull this out.” He did so with one quick jerk. Harry passed out on the floor.
Kyle felt eyes on him. He looked around and swallowed hard. There were eyes on him all right. Just eyes, hanging suspended in the open doorway to the pantry.
“Get away from me, you bastards!” he said. “Get away.”
The eyes hung motionless in the air, wet and staring.
Then Kyle remembered where he’d seen them. In Lige’s head.
* * *
“Where the hell did Ralph go?” a Brotherhood member asked a friend. “He was standin’ right there a second ago.”
The men stared. Ralph could not be seen.
“Maybe he went to piss,” the friend replied. “He’s been scared shitless ever since he found we couldn’t get out of this place.”
“Jim says don’t worry about that. Soon as them people in the house is taken, it’ll all be OK.”
“Damn hard for me to call him Ira. Been Jim for too long, I reckon.”
A horrible scream cut through the velvet of soft summer night. The scream floated on the gentle air, then bubbled off into a painful whimpering.
“Goddamn!” a man called. “What in the hell was that?”
“Sounded like Ralph.”
But Ralph would never scream again. In the woods, near the edge of the estate, Ralph was hanging by his neck, jammed into the narrow fork of a tree. It had taken someone, or something, with enormous strength to lift the two hundred and twenty pound man up six feet off the ground and jam his neck into the fork. Ralph’s face was rapidly turning blue, his tongue sticking out of his swollen lips, the tongue an ugly black.
A member of the Brotherhood passed under where Ralph was hanging. The man’s nose wrinkled in disgust. But it was not from Ralph. This smell was more animal; a rancid, foul odor.
Smelled like the time when he was a kid and gone out coon huntin’ with his Dad. They were gathered around the campfire, listening to the hounds run, baying in the distance, when he and his Dad had smelled something very much like what he was smelling now. His dad had abruptly doused the fire, called in the dogs, and taken his boy home with only a terse explanation.
“Things in the woods, boy. Things that ain’t neither man nor beast, but a mixture of both. That’s what we smelt back yonder. Some say they’s the devil’s own. I don’t know. I don’t wanna know.”
Now, years later, the boy grown into a middle-aged man stood smelling the odor. Fear gripped him tightly, like a steel band constricting his chest. The odor grew stronger. The bushes around him rustled softly. The man spun around and looked into strange eyes, staring at him. He dropped his club and started to run from the dark, foul-smelling woods. A pawlike hand reached out and grabbed him, spinning him around. He hit the ground hard, knocking the breath from him. He felt leathery fingers claw at his face. Then he screamed in agony as the skin of his face was pulled off and flung to one side. The man’s screaming was cut off as his throat was crushed by a hard hairy fist.
The members of the Brotherhood looked around them in fear as the screaming abruptly stopped. They knew, without knowing how they knew, the scream came from one of their own.
And contagious fear began touching them.
* * *
Kyle almost lost control as he stared at the floating eyes staring back at him. “Louisa!” he called. “Louisa. Get in here.”
His wife ran down the darkened hall and stepped into the kitchen. She looked at the body on the floor. She could hear Harry’s ragged breathing. She lifted her eyes. She saw the floating eyes and fought back a scream of terror.
“Lige’s eyes,” Kyle whispered.
“Don’t fear them,” she said, sensing something her husband could not. “They’re not here to hurt us.”
The eyes moved, gliding through the air, moving toward the hallway. At the door, they paused.
“They want me to follow them,” Louisa said.
“Like hell you will!”
“There is nothing to fear,” she reassured her husband. “I’m not afraid.”
“I damn sure am!”
“Tend to Harry. I’ll send David in to help you.”
The eyes waited until she had stepped into the hall. Then they followed her, stopping before they entered the den.
Louisa went first, leaving the eyes shyly hanging near the archway. “David, would you please help Kyle in the kitchen. Harry’s been wounded, but not too severely, I’m thinking.”
Jan jumped to her feet and ran to the archway. There, she spotted the eyes.
She stopped, staring at the suspended eyes. She was as speechless as the silent eyes.
“Go on,” Louisa said. “They won’t hurt you.”
Her back pressed against the wall, Jan slowly edged her way past the floating eyes and made her way to the kitchen.
As Jan had done, David stopped by Louisa, looking up at the eyes. As a person is, when accustomed to dealing with that with which he has grown familiar, there was no fear in David as he looked at the eyes.
“What a paper this will be,” the professor said.
“The caretaker’s eyes,” Louisa said. “They want me to follow them.”
“But of course!” David said. “Unlocking yet another mystery. May I come with you?”
The eyes shifted uncomfortably in the air.
“Perhaps another time,” David said, understanding the silent message. He went on into the kitchen.
The eyes looked toward Anne, then shifted to Jackie.
“Anne, Jackie,” Louisa said. “I guess we’re chosen.”
“He’s up to something,” Lucas said, then realized the inanity of his statement.
The wet eyes seemed to bug in protest.
“I don’t think so,” Jackie said, walking to Louisa’s side, looking up at the eyes. “Are you, Lige?”
Baby padded into the room and stood snarling up at the eyes. The mastiff whined softly.
The eyes floated into the den as yet another painful shriek ripped the outside air. The eyes veered toward the sound.
“That’s the third scream in an hour,” Mark said. “It seems we have unknown allies out there.”
“They will always be unknown to us,” Louisa said. She looked at Karen. The woman nodded her head.
The eyes moved, staying close to the wall. They moved toward the door leading to the ground level.
“Oh, no!” Jackie murmured, just loud enough for her mother to hear.
At the door to the ground level, the eyes paused, waiting patiently.
“Let’s go,” Louisa said.
Lucas handed her the key to the locked door.
Louisa unlocked the door and swung it open. The stench struck them all, offending their nostrils. The darkness below yawned at them.
The eyes darted into the darkness and disappeared. Louisa stepped inside.
Another scream cut the darkness outside.