67

Liz struggled in the grip of her unknown captor. It was a man—that was all she could tell. He had one hand clasped over her mouth while he used the other to hold both her arms behind her back. Since pulling her into the secret passageway and sliding the panel shut, the man had not spoken. Instead, he had hurried down the corridor in the darkness, seeming very familiar with the layout. Several times Liz had tried to break free but she’d had no success. She tried also kicking backward with her foot, but her efforts had no impact on the man.

Finally, some ways removed—so that Nicki couldn’t hear their voices through the wall, Liz presumed—the man shoved her roughly to the floor. Liz pulled herself up against the wall, her knees in front of her chest. She strained to see through the dark. The man stood over her, and she could hear him making sounds with his tongue. Terrified, Liz pulled her phone from her pocket and shined the light up at him. She gasped.

It was Paul Delacorte.

“What? Why?” Liz stammered. “What are you doing?”

He smiled. In this strange light, Dr. Delacorte looked like a ghoul standing over her. His eyes were so deep-set that they were lost in shadows. His face looked like a skull.

“I was sent to bring you to safety,” he replied. “Such a terrible storm, isn’t it?”

“Safety?” Liz got to her feet. “I hardly feel safe being dragged inside the wall like that. My friend Nicki is out there . . .”

“I was only told to bring you,” Delacorte said, stroking his short, clipped white beard.

Liz wanted to turn her light away from the sight of him, but she feared being left in the dark with such a creature. “Where is Mrs. Hoffman?” she asked.

“Waiting for you. They’re all waiting for you.”

“Who . . . are they?”

“Our guests, of course.”

From outside they could hear the battering the house was taking from the wind. There were snaps and cracking sounds. Even here, inside the walls, the moisture had permeated. Liz felt sticky and damp.

“What do you mean, guests?” Liz asked. “And where are you supposed to take me?”

Delacorte’s smile seemed hideous in the glare of the flashlight. “Oh, we have a little time. They’re trying some other things first. But I know what we really need to make our little party a success is you.”

“What are you talking about?” Liz screamed at him. “I want out of here!”

“In fact,” Delacorte said, ignoring her, “we have so enough time that maybe we can have a little fun. Afterward, you know, that won’t be possible.”

“What are you talking about?” Liz asked again, her voice becoming weaker, more frightened.

He took a step toward her. Liz backed up down the narrow passageway, keeping the light from her phone shining directly in Delacorte’s face.

“Come on, baby, it’s now or never,” the man said.

His hands cupped her breasts.

Steady, Liz, she thought to herself.

In one swift motion, she brought her right knee up and smashed it into his balls.

Delacorte let out a shriek of pain and collapsed. Liz turned and bolted down the narrow passageway, shining her light in front of her.

“You goddamn bitch!” Delacorte was shouting. “You goddamn fucking biiiiitch!”

The farther Liz ran the more distant his voice sounded. She had no idea where she was running to, but her brief experience with these passageways had suggested that they ran all through the house. So there had to be other exits. She just had to find one. She flashed her light along the wall, hoping to spot a seam. But she saw nothing. And she didn’t want to stop and try to find one, not with Delacorte behind her. She had a sudden terrifying sense of herself, as if seen from above: a hamster running helplessly through a maze, never finding her way out.

“Get back here!” Delacorte’s voice echoed through the passageway. It sounded closer now; he was gaining on her. “They are expecting you!”

Who were they? And why did the idea of meeting them frighten Liz even more than being caught by Delacorte?

“You can’t get out of here!” he shouted, and now his voice seemed right on top of her. Liz swung her light around. She caught a glimpse of her adversary rounding the corner, panting and winded. She also caught a glimpse of something else: a ladder leading up to the second floor.

“Now listen to me,” Delacorte said, removing a syringe from an inner pocket of his jacket. “Don’t struggle anymore. There’s no point. You don’t want to die in here when the hurricane knocks the house to shreds, do you?”

“No,” Liz said in a very small voice. “I don’t want to die.”

“So be a good girlie then,” he said, approaching her with his syringe.

I’m an anesthesiologist, she heard Delacorte saying at the dinner table. I put people to sleep.

She waited until he drew close to her. Then she attacked again.

Her right hand clenched in a fist, she swung and connected with Delacorte’s jaw. His head snapped backward in surprise. Liz heard the syringe go flying from his hand, bounce off the wall, and skitter across the floor.

In a flash she leapt onto the ladder and started up, keeping her phone gripped tightly in her left hand as if it were a magical amulet for protection.

In some ways, it was. Otherwise, she’d be plunged into total darkness.

Making it up the ladder, Liz stepped into a passageway on the second floor. Going up a floor wasn’t very smart during a hurricane, Liz knew. But she’d had no choice. It was her only escape route from Delacorte. She hoped she could find an exit up here. She knew there was at least one, in the last room on the left in the servants’ quarters. But whether she could find it, she wasn’t sure.

Suddenly the house shook. It felt less like wind than an earthquake. There was a terrible, high-pitched screech and the very walls around Liz began to come undone. In an instant the darkness disappeared and there was light—a gray, muted light, but light nonetheless. There was also rain, and falling shards of wood. Liz looked up. A piece of the attic had been ripped off the house. The ceiling above her was buckling and collapsing in a dozen different places. Liz covered her head against the falling debris.

Yet even more horrifying than any of that was what came with the wood and plaster.

Three dead bodies—two of them practically skeletons. They fell to the floor just a couple of feet away from Liz. In the impact, the head of one corpse snapped from its spine and rolled toward her, coming to rest at Liz’s feet. Dead, blackened eye sockets stared up at her.

Liz screamed.