32
Jackie whispered to Johnny, “The house is playing with us.”
“I know,” the boy replied. “And it’s getting stronger, too.”
“But those outside are getting weaker.”
“The house feels it’s forever,” the boy said. “I think. . . I think the house feels it can always get other people to follow it. That sounds stupid. But I don’t know any other way to put it.”
“What are you kids whispering about?” Lucas asked.
The house sighed.
Jackie found a notepad and a pencil and went to her dad’s side. She wrote: The house must be destroyed. Don’t say your reply aloud. Write it down on this paper.
The house began breathing heavily, as if frustrated.
How? Lucas wrote.
Those not on guard gathered around in silence, watching and reading.
A thumping sound came to those grouped on the second level. They looked up. The rocking horse was moving awkwardly down the steps, its eyes glaring with hate.
Stop that horse! Jackie wrote.
Several of the adults turned around.
“No!” Johnny cried. He grabbed Peter’s hand and jerked the boys toward the steps.
The boys stood on the steps, facing the advancing rocking horse. The horse stopped, seemingly unsure of its next move. Behind the horse, a glow appeared, shining brightly. The horse spun around. It howled in anger.
But it stopped its advance.
“What is that glow?” Trooper Austin said, his eyes fixed on the sparkling glow that seemed to pulse with life.
“One of the Woods’ Children,” Jackie said. “Probably Randolph.”
“Ain’t y’all afraid of that thing?” B. C. asked.
“No,” Jackie said with a smile. Then it came to her; she knew why the horse had stopped. “I know how to win. We can win.”
The house took the longest breath any of them had ever heard it take.
“Stand firm, Johnny, Peter!” Jackie said. “Don’t let the horse past you. It can’t hurt you!”
The house shook with locked-in fury. Chairs and sofas suddenly tumbled and toppled over. Chandeliers tore from their ceiling mounts and fell crashing to the floor.
The rocking horse snarled and turned around, facing the boys. It began awkwardly thumping down the steps.
Johnny pointed a finger at the advancing horse. “You . . . stop!”
The horse stopped.
Jackie took Carla’s hand and Carla took Betty’s hand and Betty took Ruth’s hand. They walked toward the bottom of the stairs.
The rocking horse suddenly became very nervous. Its tail twitched and its eyes flashed, rolling from side to side.
The house let out a long moan.
Louisa said, “The children can’t be harmed by the evil of the house and horse.”
“Obviously,” Mark said. “But why?”
“The Woods’ Children have already paid that price,” the woman said. “Normal children can be bad—according to adult standards—but normal children have not yet been corrupted by the world; so they don’t know evil.”
“Evil can only take that which is in a person to use against others,” David said. “So if the children have no inherent evil, the source of any present evil is powerless against them.”
“The children can’t be hurt,” B. C. said. “But that still leaves us.” He shifted his wad of chewing tobacco to the other side of his mouth and looked around for a place to spit. He walked to an open window and puckered up to spit. He spat everything onto the ground at the sight that greeted him.
The pale face of Burt Simmons was looking through the open window.
And the window was a good ten feet off the ground.
* * *
“Would you repeat that, Colonel?” Governor Rovere asked.
“I said, sir, we have twelve troopers missing and unaccounted for.”
“Couldn’t be on special assignment, could they?” the governor asked.
Colonel Rodman gritted his teeth. Only a politician would ask the head of a state police force a question like that. “No, sir,” the colonel replied respectfully. “I would have that information available to me, sir.”
“Oh, yes. Right. Well . . . what do you intend doing about this, Colonel?”
Rodman stared at the wall of his office for a few seconds. He took a deep breath and said, “Sir, I am going to launch a full-scale investigation into this matter immediately.”
“That’s a very good idea, Colonel,” the governor said. “Please keep me informed. Oh, and, ah, Colonel?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Let’s keep the press out of this, shall we? There is probably some logical explanation. And you know how the press loves to make public officials look bad.”
“Yes, sir.” The colonel hung up. He glared at the phone. “I know how they like to make you look foolish, you ignorant, clod-hoppin’, cotton-chopper!”
Colonel Rodman had used a state police helicopter to fly into Captain Denning’s HQ, after first landing at Captain Johnson’s HQ. He stalked out of the office after talking with the men who had been present when Denning took off to Palma. He got behind the wheel of a patrol car and jerked up the mike.
Two dozen patrol cars were lined up along the side of the road, lights flashing.
Colonel Rodman switched to a Tac frequency and said, “Turn off all those goddamned lights!” He glanced in his rearview. The lights went off. “Looked like a damned carnival,” he muttered. “Last car in the line switch on lights.”
The patrol car in the rear cut on its lights.
A trooper ran out of the HQ building and up to Rodman’s car. “Sir. Edmund County Sheriff Bill Pugh is missing, and so is the chief deputy. Deputy Burt Simmons is missing, and so is the constable of Palma. All communications into Palma are out. The local wrecker operator doesn’t answer on his radio. Governor Rovere was just on the phone. He says he’s calling out the National Guard.”
“Will you go back in there and tell him not to do anything until I’ve had a chance to check this out?” Rodman yelled the words.
Rodman dropped the gear selector into D and pulled out, the line of troopers right behind him.
The young trooper watched the parade until it was out of sight. “All we need now,” he muttered, “is Goldie Hawn. Then we’d have the Sugarland Express in Georgia.”
* * *
B. C. let out a squall that startled everybody in the room. The chief deputy recoiled from the open window with a burst of energy that surprised even him.
Jackie ran to the window and looked at Burt, who was grinning evilly at her. “I forgive you,” the girl said. “Now go away.”
Tears began rolling down Burt’s pale face. The tears seemed to melt the flesh, misting the image of the man. The house shook with rage as Burt Simmons became no more.
“Where the hell did he go?” Captain Johnson asked.
No one replied because no one really knew the answer.
“What did you mean, you forgave him?” Captain Denning asked. “Forgive him for what?”
“He raped me,” Jackie said. “Uncle Ira was trying to hit Daddy with an axe; he hit Burt instead and cut off his arm.”
“Jackie,” Carla called.
The girl turned around. The rocking horse was awkwardly climbing the steps, slowly making its way upward. It disappeared into the attic. The door slammed behind it.
“Now what does that mean?” Trooper Scott said.
“I think it means we’ve won,” Lucas said, looking up at the closed door.
“Not yet,” his daughter told him. She pointed to an open window. “Here they come.”
The men of the Brotherhood were running toward the mansion, racing across the estate grounds, spears and clubs and homemade bows in their hands.
The newly arrived troopers all reached for their pistols. To a man, they let their hands drop away from the butts of the sidearms as they realized the weapons were useless.
Kyle turned to the captains of the highway patrol. “You were both in Korea, right?”
“Both of us for two years,” Carl said.
“Ever handled a Molotov cocktail?”
The captains smiled. “Where are they?” they both replied.
The thin line formed a widely separated ring around the mansion. Kyle lit the first cocktail. “Now!” he shouted.
The gas bombs were lighted and hurled toward the shouting, cursing men. Both captains recognized the missing men from their command. The captains hurled the cocktails directly at their turncoat troopers.
The exploding gasoline turned the wavering line of Brotherhood members into a screaming inferno. The oil in the hair of the men exploded like a lightning-struck pine tree. The stench of burning, bubbling human flesh filled the mid-morning summer air. The line broke apart, sending what remained of the Brotherhood running for the woods.
“I recognized about half of those boys,” B. C. said. “We get out of this mess, I start fillin’ out warrants.”
“Watson got away,” Denning said. “I’ll get him.”
“I saw Gibson cut and run,” Johnson said. “I think we got the rest of them.”
“Then it’s over,” George said.
“Not yet,” Jackie said. She looked at Kyle. “You have more of those firebombs?”
“All you want, honey,” the cop said. “The house has to burn, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. If it will let us, that is.”
All of them heard the house take a deep, angry breath.
The rocking horse whinnied. But this time there was no menace in the sound. It was a frightened whinny.
B. C. caught a flickering flash of light in the morning. He turned and looked down the road. “Looks like the whole damn Georgia Patrol is here,” he said.