With a convulsive movement of its head, it rolled off Cal, all four legs pawing frantically at the air. Squirming and writhing on the slate floor, it fought to recover its equilibrium as it slathered green slime in large arcs. Camm watched with a mixture of awe and fear, instinctively backing away from the writhing creature. The rat finally came to rest on its stomach, forelegs splayed out in front, but it wasn’t dead.
It raised its head and turned to fix its glare on Camm. The rat knew where the painful shot had come from. Slowly, but steadily, it lurched to its feet. Then, deliberately, it ignored Cal and advanced on Camm, its head down and eyes intent on its new prey.
Shoulder blades moved fluidly underneath its thick hide as it approached, purposefully, one step at a time. Liquid darkness dripped from its side wound, streaming onto the cold floor. Black steam sizzled and curled from each drop and from the wound itself.
It wasn’t dead. This wasn’t what Camm had been expecting. It was supposed to be dead. She had shot it with the gun from the black box. Though at first it had seemed to be fatally wounded, it was now moving as if nothing were wrong. Why wasn’t it dead?
Camm’s mind raced a mile a second, but as she considered her options, the rat was creeping ever closer. If she shot it a second time, would that kill it? Did it take both bullets to kill it? What if it didn’t die with the second shot? They had no backup plan, no other options. The rat would kill them both, and nobody would ever know what happened to them.
Did she have to shoot it in a specific part of its anatomy? Camm hadn’t considered that possibility before. If the bullet had to strike it at one—and only one—specific part of its body to kill it, then she had one opportunity left to guess the correct spot. Was it the heart? Was it the brain?
Those seemed the two most logical choices. She couldn’t guess wrong. Next shot had to be the money shot; the one that counted. It was getting closer. She had to do something, but she couldn’t waste that last special bullet.
Camm put the derringer back in her jacket pocket and raised the shotgun to her shoulder, flipping off the safety. It was still cocked. The rat took another step forward, and she fired.
The rat lowered its head as if deflecting a handful of pebbles tossed at it. The shotgun seemed to cause some pain, perhaps slowing it, but not stopping it. Like the .357 Magnum, the shotgun seemed nothing more than a nuisance.
Camm cocked the shotgun again. The rat stepped forward. She fired the shotgun. The same result.
She repeated the sequence. Cock the shotgun. Watch the rat step toward her. Fire.
As unpleasant as the experience was for the rat, the shotgun blasts were barely slowing it down, but Camm needed to buy more time. She needed to figure out what to do with the last bullet in the derringer so it would really count.
Camm cocked the gun. The rat stepped toward her. She fired. No effect. Camm cocked again. The rat stepped closer. Click.
The shotgun was empty. For all the good it had done, now she couldn’t even annoy the rat. The rat’s lips curled back in a snarl. It could smell her fear. It knew she was helpless.
For a crazy second, Camm’s mind went to all the cheap action movies she had seen, in which someone fired their weapon to no effect, and in a last desperate attempt threw the gun at the attacker. As if when bullets wouldn’t stop something, a lamely thrown gun would. Instead, Camm dropped her shotgun and stepped backward.
She reached into her pocket for the pistol. If she had to waste the last shot, then so be it. She could think of no other options. The rat reared back, ready to pounce, ready to finish its prey. Camm raised the pistol to shoot, but from her periphery, she saw a blur.
It was Cal. She had forgotten about him. He was hurtling toward the rat at full speed, something in his hands. It was the San Angelo bar. He had retrieved it. Just as he came up behind the rat, it turned its snarling head toward him. Before the rat could react, Cal yelled his battle cry, “Remember Hughie?! DIE!”
Grasping the bar at the narrow end, he swung it with full force like a sledgehammer, striking the rat between the eyes. The impact was immense and jolted both the giver and receiver. The rat recoiled out of its pounce posture, trying to shake off the force of the blow. Cal had landed a solid hit, and the reverberations traveled down the steel bar and through Cal’s hands and arms, vibrating right into his bones. He gritted his teeth.
The rat swung around to face Cal, giving him its full attention. Cal was not intimidated by the hateful glare. He continued to swing the San Angelo bar at the rat’s head. With each impact, the rat backed up, and Cal stepped forward, swinging again. As the bar made contact, Cal yelled at the rat, one word with each solid hit:
“Why . . . won’t . . . you . . . freakin’ . . . die?!”
While the rat wasn’t dying, it was certainly disoriented.
This was Camm’s chance—the moment she’d wished for. This was her do or die moment. Cal couldn’t keep up the hits forever. Each blow seemed to have less of an impact on the rat, and more on him. Camm had to figure out what to do with her last shot. She had to figure it out fast, and she had to be right. She suddenly became very calm, standing in a vacuum of time while her mind galloped from thought to thought.
The gun and its bullets were designed to kill the rat, that’s why they were in the black box. There were no instructions, or were there? Was there something on the black box telling her what to do? The Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, was it there? No, not there. The numbers, was it there? 666 was the sign of the beast. The rat was the beast. What did the Bible say about the beast?
Camm systematically gathered memories. The devil gave power to the beast and caused that no man might buy or sell, except he that had the mark, the sign. Okay. What else?
Then, it came to her. “And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads.”
The rat had a right paw, not a right hand, but it did have a forehead. The sign, or mark of the beast, goes in the forehead. Camm raised the derringer again. She was ready now.
Cal stepped forward to hit the rat again, but he was visibly fatigued, slowing down. He raised the bar above his head, but before he could swing it, the rat struck him with a forepaw. Cal went down hard, rolling along the floor, the bar still in his hand. He tried to right himself, but the rat was advancing on him.
The rat pounced high in the air, its trajectory designed to bring it down directly on Cal. Lying on his back, Cal pulled the bar up, bracing it with both hands so that the wedged end was planted on the floor with the pointed end sticking up. Squirming, not able to stop its leap in midair, the rat came down right on top of Cal’s spear, the bar disappearing deep into its chest.
Its screech of pain was piercing. There it stood, balanced on its hind paws, directly over Cal, the San Angelo bar buried deep into its breastbone. Cal could not move, because the rat stood over him. With the steel bar holding it up in the air, the rat could not bend its head down far enough to get at Cal.
The rat and boy looked at each other, both gasping for air. Then it raised a paw and batted Cal away. His hoarse shout clipped short, Cal slid along the floor like a rag doll until he crumpled against a wall. He lay there in a fetal position, not moving. Camm could not tell if he was breathing or not. He could be unconscious. He could be dead.
With an enraged squeal, the rat reared up on its hindquarters. It couldn’t walk; the bar stuck out so far in front that it couldn’t stand down on its front paws. Falling onto its side, it pulled and pushed the bar this way and that, but couldn’t dislodge it from its chest. The bar was solidly stuck through its thick breastbone. Green pus streamed from its mouth and oozed from its chest wound as it lay gasping for air.
Seeing the rat incapacitated—at least momentarily—Camm resolutely stepped in its direction. As she reached it, the rat twisted its head violently toward her. Red eyes glared at her, hatred burning into her soul. Its foul breath blew over her, filling her nostrils, making her ret
ch. Slowly, it curled its lips back, showing its fangs as a vicious snarl rumbled from its throat.
She stood so close to the wheezing rat that Camm could have reached out and touched it. Instead, she reached out and put the barrel of the small derringer to the rat’s enormous forehead.
Camm hated the creature. It had killed Hughie. It had killed and eaten little children. It had killed Ginger and Mr. Samuel, when he had tried to save their lives. Maybe now, it had also killed Cal.
Camm’s face contracted into a snarl to match the rat’s. Now was the time to end this evil. Through gritted teeth, she spat out, “Die, you freakin’ son of a bitch. Die!”
Simultaneously with the last word, she shot the rat point blank in the forehead. The rat swung around in anguish, its tail catching Camm full across her torso, lifting her high up off her feet, throwing her across the hall, and dropping her onto the floor not far from Cal. She tried to raise her head, but her vision was swimming. She heard the rat screaming and saw it twisting in agony in a pool of green foam, under a thin cloud of black steam, the bar still buried deep in its chest.
Everything began spinning. Then, she saw red. Then nothing.
XVIII
Camm’s eyes fluttered open. She was in the mansion, lying sprawled out on the floor, her head resting in Cal’s lap. He sat with his back against the wall, one hand on the twelve-gauge shotgun and the other holding tight to the .357 Magnum. Eyes shut and breathing deeply, he seemed to be asleep.
When Camm tried to sit up, the room spun and her head ached. She didn’t know how long she had been out, but the fire in the huge fireplace had died down to smoldering embers, and yellow sunlight was streaming into the hall from an upstairs room.
Hadn’t they shut all the doors? Had the rat come in through that door? It must be early morning, she decided.
“You awake?” It was Cal.
“Yeah. How long was I out?”
“I don’t know.” Cal started to shake his head, then winced, leaning his head back against the wall again. “I’ve been in and out of consciousness myself. I set us up here against this wall a couple hours ago in case the rat came back. At least, I think it was a couple of hours ago. As crazy as it sounds, I think we both actually slept through the night in this haunted mansion.”
Shaking, Camm managed to stand up, bracing herself on Cal’s shoulder. “It’s not—” she started to correct Cal, but as soon as she was vertical a wave of nausea hit her. She quickly turned her head away from Cal and threw up all over the floor. She gagged and gasped for air, and then stepped away from her vomit and sank back down against the wall on Cal’s other side. She held her head in both hands, shivering, a cold sweat covering her body.
“I have such a horrible headache,” was all she could say.
“You have a concussion,” Cal said matter-of-factly.
“What are you now, a doctor?” Camm was breathing heavily with one hand still on her head. She placed her other hand over her sick stomach and burped loudly.
“No,” Cal explained, “I’m a football player. They teach us all about concussions, and I’ve had one myself. In fact, I may have another one right now. My head doesn’t feel too hot either. Here, let me look at your eyes.” Cal slid over close to her and examined one eye and then the other.
“What are you looking for?”
“To see if your pupils are dilated. They’re not, but you should probably see a doctor anyway.”
Camm rolled her eyes. “Here, let me look at your pupils.” She leaned forward until she was only a couple of inches from his face. She took a breath to tell him that his pupils weren’t dilated either, when he carefully took her face in both his hands and kissed her gently on the lips. She didn’t pull away.
He sat back against the wall again. “You taste like vomit.”
Camm giggled. “You are vomit.”
Cal considered that for a moment. “I guess we’re both pretty lucky not to be rat poop.”
Camm nodded gingerly in earnest agreement. “I guess so!”
Cal gazed around the hall with narrow eyes. “By the way, where did the rat go? During the night, I worried about getting us out of the mansion, but I could barely stand on my own. Whenever I tried to pick you up, I got dizzy and fell back down. You were too heavy, so I just dragged you over here.”
Suddenly alert, Camm was now checking out the hall, too. “Thanks. My hero.”
“While the fire was still burning, I could see the rat was no longer in the hall, and a green slime trail went out through the cellar door. I figured the rat had gone back down to its nest.
“Once I realized this was as far as I could carry you, I shut the cellar door, stacked chairs against it and gathered up our firearms and ammo and brought everything over here by you.”
Camm raised her eyebrows. “For all the good that would do.”
Cal just smiled and continued, “While I was gathering gear, I passed the grandfather clock. You sure got it good with the shotgun last night. Man, it’s a mess. All the glass has been blasted out of the front. The face of the clock is all torn up, the hands on the clock gone. Also, I couldn’t see the hanged man pendulum. I don’t know if it fell down inside, or what, but I figured if the clock was no longer working, then the green rat was no longer working either.”
He peered earnestly at Camm. “What was the last thing you saw before you blacked out? Did the rat get away? Or, did you get it with the last shot from the silver derringer?”
Camm looked around, still worried. “I shot it a second time with that little pistol right in the forehead, right between the eyes. The rat went crazy and knocked me over there, where I bumped my head. The last I saw it before I blacked out, it was writhing around on the floor like it was in pain, uh, right over there.” Camm pointed. “It still had that steel pole stuck in its chest. It was screeching and leaking green foam all over the place.”
The floor where she pointed was covered with a thick pool of green slime. A trail of the same green slime stretched across the floor and disappeared under the door to the cellar. Camm could see that Cal had piled some of the chairs from her barricade against the door.
“Well, it looks like you two had quite a party here last night.” Both Camm and Cal jumped in surprise, turning to find the source of the voice. Agent Allen stood nearby, her hands planted on her hips, studying them sternly. Camm struggled to get up, Cal pushing her up from his seated position. Camm then reached down a hand to pull Cal to his feet.
Agent Allen continued, “My buddies from the NSA are not going to be happy with this, not one tiny little bit. Someone really did a number on that backdoor, and the inside of the mansion has been totally trashed. Someone has broken a long list of laws, state and federal. There will be hell to pay for it too.”
Camm snuck a peek at Cal; he shrugged.
After a long moment of silence, Agent Allen said crisply, “Did you find what you were looking for?”
“We found what they were hiding,” Camm replied.
“Who is ‘they?’”
“Your buddies from the NSA, and Mr. Samuel.”
“And what were they hiding?”
“They’ve been hiding the truth about what was happening to Trona’s children.”
Agent Allen gave Camm a stern look. “What was that?”
“Come and see,” Cal said. He started walking stiffly toward the trail of green slime. As he passed a balcony pillar, he brushed a thick swag of cobwebs out of his way.
He stopped, a puzzled expression on his face as he searched the hall. “The mansion didn’t fix itself last night.”
Camm stared around in surprise, too. Dust and grime covered everything. All of the wood was in disrepair, cracked and worn. A balcony railing was broken, apparently from dry rot, and numerous bullet holes trailed along one wall.
“Someone really did trash the place,” Cal added.
“When did everything get so dirty?” Camm asked.
Agent Allen slowly shook her head. “Last night,
while you two were here, I guess. The kitchen is filthy, too, dead bugs everywhere. There are broken chairs in the dining room and bullet holes in the dining room door, which has been broken in half.
“I was in the dining room just yesterday with the NSA, and everything was spic and span, and in perfect condition as usual, but now the mansion looks like I expected it to look when I came in the first time. You two have obviously been very busy. This house has aged a half-century in just one night.
“Now, what were you going to show me?” Agent Allen was frowning at the obnoxious-smelling green slime on the floor.
Cal gestured toward the cellar door. “Come this way.”
Together they pushed aside a few chairs so they could force the door open. It groaned loudly, now stuck with age and lack of use. Grabbing flashlights from their backpacks, they started down. Dead bugs, cobwebs, and thick dust lay piled on each step. The trail of green slime led them down the stairs, across the floor and up to the secret stone door.
Camm picked up the sheet that was still covering the barrels. “Remember this? We saw this when I came here with you and the deputies. It looked familiar to me, but I couldn’t place it then. When Cal and I came back a few nights later, we realized this was Hughie’s costume, the one he wore the night he disappeared. It’s just been lying here for seven years, ever since Hughie disappeared. If only there had been a real investigation . . .”
Camm thrust the sheet toward Agent Allen, her fingers poking through the eyeholes. Then, pointing below the holes, she added, “I bet these blood stains will match Hughie’s blood type and DNA.”
Agent Allen solemnly studied the sheet. “Why didn’t you call and tell me about this?”
“I tried,” Camm said. “I called the very next day, but I just got your voicemail. Later, I did everything I could think of to get you to come back and see for yourself.”
“We found something else, too.” Cal pulled down on the hand-shaped candleholder. Agent Allen wheeled about, staring as the secret door screeched open. Cal pointed down the stairs. “See? The trail of slime keeps going. There’s one big rat down here. If it’s not dead, you will want your gun handy.”
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