by Ed Gorman
Bobby wanted to leave.
Go home and face the old man and get it over with for being such a jerk at the dinner table tonight.
Just get it over with and go to sleep and in the morning get up and go play some video games and just accept the fact that he was a nerd and a turd and a coward.
He didn’t want to know the things Minerva had just told him.
“You want to be brave, don’t you?” Minerva said.
Bobby stared at her.
“How can you tell?” he asked.
“The way you looked so ashamed when I asked if you were and the way you said no. There was shame in your voice, I’m sorry to say.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to go downstairs and do something for me. Save a young girl’s life.”
“I don’t know if I could.”
“You think you could?”
He thought a moment. “No.”
She smiled. “Well, there’s worse things to be in this life than a coward.”
“Like what?”
“A killer, for one.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s right.”
“But maybe now you’d better run along home.”
“Why?”
“Because things are going to get pretty bad.”
“The basement?”
“Yes.”
“Aren’t you afraid for yourself?”
“Honey, at my age, I’ve learned to live with being afraid.”
“I would if I could.”
“You could if you tried.”
Bobby put a foot on the steps.
“You go with me?”
“Yes.”
Bobby put another foot on the steps.
Started to climb upwards.
What Minerva had told him about the basement—it terrified him.
Not even thoughts of Bruce Lee gave him courage.
But maybe that was the trouble, anyway.
Maybe that’s what Minerva meant by living with fear. All his young life he’d looked for heroes. Maybe he should be his own hero.
“Shit,” he said, “it’s dark in there.”
“It sure is.” She took a metal rod from her dress pocket. “Maybe this’ll help.”
With her flashlight leading the way, they proceeded inside.
Muffled screams from beneath the house pressed up against the floor.
“Damn,” Bobby said. “Maybe I—” He tensed, trying to make his breath come steadily, confidently. “Maybe I’d better get down there.”
“Now would probably be a good time,” she said.
“All right,” Bobby said. Then he said, “You wait upstairs.”
She started to protest.
“Upstairs,” Bobby said. “You’ll be safe.”
He had never heard his voice sound so deep and resonant.
The attic had told Carnes and Beth nothing other than how old the house was.
The cobwebbing was as thick as the fake stuff on TV monster movies.
Moonlight spilled over decades of accumulated dust and discarded toys and clothes long out of fashion.
Nothing.
He wondered now if he would ever find his daughter.
He turned to see that Beth had started down the stairs again. The dust had begun to work on her sinuses. Suddenly Beth stopped.
“What is it?” Carnes asked.
“I’m not sure,” Beth said. “Something’s going on downstairs.”
“Come on,” Carnes said.
They reached the second-floor landing and then the wide staircase leading to the vestibule.
From the top of the stairs Carnes saw Bobby Coughlin and shouted out, “Stop right there!”
For a moment, Bobby Coughlin froze in place. The man coming down the stairs looked like a lunatic. Anger and frenzy fought for dominance on his face.
Minerva scurried out of the man’s way. Apparently she knew who he was.
The man grabbed Bobby before the youth could even raise his arms to defend himself.
“I want to know what’s going on!” Carnes screamed.
Carnes started slamming Bobby against the wall trying to get him to talk.
Bobby Coughlin was terrified.
“I—I—” Bobby stammered. And finally the words came. He told Carnes everything Minerva had told him.
The story went this way: Kenny Foster was a killer. His mother had discovered this, as had the sheriff, when the lawman found the body of a dead girl in a forest drainage ditch and a piece of Kenny’s clothing close by. Terrified of the fate awaiting her son, Mrs. Foster desperately made a threat to Sheriff Wayman and the town council—if they identified Kenny as the murderer and helped imprison him, then she would see to it that her husband moved the meat factory. The town of Burton would be ruined.
Ruth had clung desperately to the notion that Kenny would someday be all right and carry on the Foster tradition in Burton.
The town council thought this over for two days. At first the council was outraged by such a suggestion of blackmail. But the longer they debated her proposal, the more obvious it became that she could in fact do just what she threatened—utterly ruin the local economy.
Finally, the “greater, good” in mind, they capitulated and struck a bargain with the woman.
In return for the safety of her son, she had to promise to send him away and keep him away from the town forever.
She had agreed.
But after several years—years in which she saw his sickness get worse instead of better—she realized that only she could help him, only she could hide the family name from shame.
So she devised an idea. At that time Kenny was living back East. She found a plastic surgeon for him to contact. Through the man’s work Kenny had become Jake and as Jake he had returned to Burton.
For three years Ruth Foster had hopes that her son had changed. He spent much of his time in the subbasement, where they saw each other. But then he had killed again and the sheriff and the town council had realized that he was back. All they could do was hope that the women he killed would be transients.
They could hardly arrest Kenny, what with their complicity in his first killing. They even overlooked the fact that Laumer was helping Kenny find victims, a job Laumer enjoyed.
Beth’s husband had begun to piece certain things together about the pact between the council and Mrs. Foster.
Which was why he had been killed.
And now Kenny...
“Kenny, he’s in the basement,” Minerva said, obviously terrified. “In the subbasement.”
“The basement,” Carnes said, “My God!”
He jumped immediately toward the cellar door.
Bobby surprised himself by following.
7
Carnes slammed into the doorway as he made his way into the basement. But he kept on running.
He was filled with the sense that he could yet save Deirdre if he hurried.
He took the steps as quickly as he could without tumbling.
Then he ran down the corridor to the cubicle Minerva had mentioned, Bobby close behind him.
They reached the lip of the opening and peered down just in time to see a bloody man crawl painfully to his feet and pull something out of his pocket.
Carnes could not believe what he was seeing. The man had a hand grenade!
Without thinking, Carnes leaped to the opening in the cubicle floor and flung himself down through the trapdoor.
Just as his hand grabbed the man’s hair, an explosion rocked the entire subbasement.
Carnes felt blackness, cold, chill blackness reach out and grab him.
8
Carnes awoke with dust and silt covering him.
He lay sprawled over the man who had thrown the grenade.
The man was cold. Dead.
Bobby was shaking Carnes, trying to drag him out of the rubble.
Carnes struggled to his feet and peered into the room just ahead of him.
Ru
bble from exploded walls covered half the entrance. He had to crawl over, dust filling his mouth. There was little light to guide him.
On the other side of the entrance, he stepped on something.
He looked down.
A hand.
Another dead man, this one with a ludicrous Halloween mask around his neck.
Next to him was a gray-haired woman. He assumed this was Ruth Foster.
Then he heard the moan.
And recognized it at once.
A beam had fallen across the back of the room.
Then he heard Beth’s voice as she came down the steps.
“I’m all right!” he called. “In here!”
Which was when he heard Deirdre’s voice for the first time in twenty-four hours.
“Daddy! Daddy!” she cried.
Chapter Sixteen
The doctor said, “I think you should give her that vacation now.”
He smiled down at Deirdre, who looked beautiful with her pale face against her hospital pillow.
“She’ll be out tomorrow,” the doctor finished.
Deirdre smiled back at the doctor. “I think maybe I’ll go home for a few days, if you don’t mind. Right now, my own room sounds pretty good.”
Carnes, who stood next to Beth Daye on the other side of the bed, laughed. “She has a whole gallery of Michael Jackson posters, Doctor.”
“So does my daughter,” the doctor said.
Beth squeezed Carnes’s hand.
Earlier she had asked him if she thought Deirdre was going to have any trouble accepting her.
From the way Deirdre beamed at her, the answer was obvious.
A proud young Bobby Coughlin peeked in the door and smiled at Deirdre and set a vase of roses on her table. Then he ducked shyly out before anybody could speak to him.
At the window, five minutes later, the doctor gone and Deirdre and Beth talking, Carnes looked out the window at the town of Burton.
It had been part of a terrible pact for more than thirty years.
Now, if such a thing was possible, it had recovered its innocence.
The sunlight that touched its greening trees and blooming flowers promised a new and better world.
One Carnes wanted to be part of.
Watch for
Toys in the Attic
AWARD-WINNING Author
ED GORMAN
Writing as
DANIEL RANSOM
Visit www.speakingvolumes.us
GREAT BOOKS
E-BOOKS
AUDIOBOOKS & MORE
Visit us today www.speakingvolumes.us
Join Our Mailing List
Be the First to Know
FREE Books, eBooks, Audiobooks and More offered every week just for being a loyal Speaking Volumes customer. Subscribe to our email newsletter and be notified of our latest titles from our award-winning and best-selling authors.
Sign Up Now for Free!