‘Good going.’
‘I was pretty lucky. I had a couple of minutes by myself, so I crawled down the hole and stayed.’
‘So that’s how it’s done.’
‘How I did it, anyway. But the thing is, when I came out of the hole, I took a look around. You know how there’s always a padlock on the Kutch side of the door down there?’
‘Sure.’
‘It’s gone. The padlock.’
‘Gone?’
‘Yeah. And I’m pretty sure it was there this morning. So somebody must’ve taken it off while I was down in the hole.’
‘The door isn’t locked at all?’
‘It opens. I opened it, just to see.’
‘Did you go through?’
‘The tunnel? No. I got out of there.’
‘But it goes to the Kutch house.’
‘I know.’
‘Nobody ever gets to see the Kutch house. This is the chance of a lifetime.’
‘Yeah, a chance to die.’
‘Oh, don’t be that way. Nobody’s going to die.’
‘That’s because we’re getting out of here.’ Turning away, he pulled at Alison’s hand.
She jerked her hand from his grip. ‘Not me,’ she said. ‘I’m not leaving till I’ve checked the place out.’
‘The padlock’s off.’
‘Right. Meaning we can go through the tunnel.’
‘Maybe someone already came through. From the other side. Doesn’t that scare you? We oughta get out of here right now. We’re lucky we haven’t already gotten . . .’
‘Nobody’s stopping you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You can go.’
‘I can’t leave you here.’
‘Well, I’m not going.’ She sounded so calm.
‘But . . .’
‘Okay, so the padlock’s off. Did you get chased or anything?’
‘No.’
‘See anything? Hear anything?’
‘No.’
‘So as far as you know – except for the padlock being off – the house is as safe as ever.’
‘But the padlock . . .’
‘Did you actually see it today?’
‘No, but I’m pretty sure it was there.’
‘But you didn’t see it with your own eyes. So maybe it wasn’t there. When was the last time you actually saw it?’
‘I guess maybe . . . early July.’
‘I did the tour last month,’ she admitted. ‘I saw it then. So that’s the last time we can be sure it was on the door. A month ago. So maybe it’s been gone for weeks.’
‘I don’t think so. That door’s always locked.’
‘Okay. Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. But even if someone took the lock off today, it doesn’t mean they’re in the house right now.’
‘I guess not,’ he admitted.
‘Come on. Let’s take a look around.’
‘I don’t think we should. Really.’
‘I do. Really.’
‘Alison . . .’
‘Mark. Come on. It took a lot of guts to do what you did today. You don’t want to bail out now, do you?’
‘Not really. But . . .’
‘Then don’t. Come on.’ She took his hand and led him through the kitchen.
‘Not the cellar,’ he whispered.
‘Of course, the cellar.’
‘Why don’t we go through the rest of the house first? Don’t you want to wander around and see all the exhibits? I thought that was supposed to be the main idea.’
‘It was. But this is our chance to see inside the Kutch house. Maybe our only chance ever.’
‘I think it’s a really bad idea.’
In an oddly chipper voice, Alison said, ‘I don’t,’ and led him into the pantry.
She suddenly stopped.
‘What?’ Mark whispered.
‘My God, it’s dark in here.’
‘Even darker in the cellar.’
‘Do you have something?’ Alison asked.
‘A couple of candles.’
‘Good. I meant to bring a flashlight. Glad you came prepared.’
‘Thanks.’ He let go of Alison’s hand, reached over to his right hip and slid open the zipper of his pack. When he tried to put his hand in, the headphones got in his way. He took them out. ‘Can you hold these?’
Alison found them in the darkness and took them.
‘Thanks.’
He put his hand into the pack.
‘Headphones?’ Alison asked.
‘To make me look like a tourist.’
‘Hmm. Smarter than the av-uh-ridge bear.’
Cellophane crinkled softly.
‘What’s that?’ she asked.
‘Wrappers. I had my lunch in here. I’ve also got an empty Pepsi can.’
His fingertips found the match book. He took it out, opened its flap and plucked out a match. He snicked it across the score and tiny sparks leaped around the match head, but it didn’t catch.
He tried again.
The match flared.
‘Now we’re cookin’,’ Alison said.
She looked golden in the glow of the small flame. Mark smiled when he saw that she was wearing the headphones.
‘Why don’t I hold this?’ Mark suggested, ‘and you reach in and get out the candles.’
‘Sounds like a plan.’ She slipped her fingers into the opening, then smiled at him. ‘You don’t have anything nasty in here, do you?’
‘I don’t think so.’
Her hand came out holding a pink candle. ‘Here’s one,’ she said. She raised it and held it steady, its wick touching the flame of Mark’s match.
When the candle wick caught fire, Mark shook out the match. Alison gave the candle to him.
‘Thanks,’ he whispered.
‘I get the other one?’
‘Sure. We might as well use them both.’
She put her hand into the pack again. ‘What’s this?’
‘What’s what?’
She removed her hand from the pack. And showed him.
‘Somebody’s glasses. I found them down in the beast hole.’
‘Really? Can I have a look?’
‘Sure.’
The cellophane made quiet crackly sounds as she unwrapped the glasses.
She raised them into the light of Mark’s candle.
Her eyes opened very wide.
She said, ‘Oh, my God.’
Chapter Seventeen
Mark suddenly felt sick. Again. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
‘They’re hers.’
‘Whose?’
‘Claudia’s.’
‘Claudia who?’
‘You know, Claudia. I don’t know her last name. That grody kid. Sorta fat and dumpy. She showed up for a while last year.’
‘Oh.’
‘Remember?’
‘Sort of.’ He vaguely recalled a pudgy girl with hair that had always looked greasy. ‘She was only in school a couple of weeks, wasn’t she?’
‘Try three months.’
‘Really?’
‘I should know. She spent them all hanging on me.’
‘Oh. She was always, like, following you around the halls.’
‘Yeah. Like a dog. She wanted to be my friend. I hated to be mean to her, you know? She seemed nice enough. But too nice, if you know what I mean.’
‘Fawning.’
‘Yeah. That’s it, fawning. God, she was aggravating. She would never take a hint. She never knew when to quit. She would like invite herself places, stuff like that. There was one time, I told her she should try to find herself some new friends and she said, “You’re all the friend I could ever want.” She was so awful.’
‘And she disappeared?’ Mark asked.
Alison stared at the glasses. Nodding, she said, ‘Yeah. I mean, it wasn’t like she disappeared. I never heard of search parties or anything. One day, she just didn’t show up for school. I figured she’d stayed home becaus
e she was upset at me. I’d really laid into her the day before. Told her I was tired of having her in my face all the time and how she was driving me nuts. I was pretty rough on her. But, jeez, what’re you gonna do? I mean, it was like having a stalker.’
‘That was the day before she disappeared?’ Mark asked.
‘Yeah. And when she didn’t show up for school, I was really glad about it at first. But after a couple of days, I started to feel guilty. I mean, I don’t want to go around hurting people . . . not even her. So I finally went over to where she lived, figuring maybe to apologize. I’d been to her place once before. It was this grody trailer over in the woods . . . know where Captain Frank’s old bus is?’
Mark nodded.
‘Over there. So I paid a visit to her trailer and her mom said she didn’t know where Claudia was. She hadn’t seen her in three or four days. Figured she must’ve run away from home. And, “Good riddance,” she said. What she really said? I couldn’t believe my ears. “Good riddance to bad rubbish.” Can you imagine someone saying that about her own daughter?’
‘That’s pretty cold,’ Mark said.
‘I couldn’t believe it. Anyway, she seemed to think Claudia had run off to San Francisco “to live with the dykes and bums”. Those are her words, not mine. “Dykes and bums”. Jeez.’ She turned the glasses in the candlelight. Then she muttered, ‘Guess that isn’t where she went.’
‘They probably aren’t Claudia’s.’
‘Oh, they’re hers, all right. I mean, nobody wears glasses like these. Nobody except maybe a stand-up comic trying to look like a doofus. And Claudia. You’d better show me where you found them.’
‘Well . . . Okay. Wanta light the other candle?’
Alison returned the glasses to Mark’s pack and took out the second candle. ‘Need anything else out of here?’
‘I don’t think so.’
She shut the zipper, then tilted her candle toward Mark and touched her wick to his. Her wick caught fire, doubling the light.
‘I’ll go first,’ Mark whispered, hurrying past her.
He didn’t want to go first, but he didn’t want Alison going first, either. Besides, he was the guy. When there might be danger, the guy is always supposed to lead the way.
He started down the cellar stairs, moving slowly. With the candle held out in front of his chest, he could see his feet and a couple of stairs below him. The bottom of the stairway and most of the cellar remained in darkness.
Alison was a single stair above him, but over to his right.
‘This doesn’t seem like such a good idea,’ Mark whispered.
‘It’s fine,’ Alison said. She put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Don’t worry.’
His legs felt weak and shaky, but he liked her hand.
We’ll be okay, he told himself. I was down here all day and nothing happened.
Anything could be down here. Crouching at the foot of the stairs. Hiding behind them, ready to reach between the planks and grab his ankle.
We’ll be fine, he told himself. Nobody’s been killed in here in almost twenty years.
Says who?
At last, the shimmery yellow glow found the cellar’s floor.
Nothing was crouched there, ready to spring.
Mark stepped onto the hard-packed dirt. Alison’s hand remained on his shoulder as he walked straight toward the beast hole. When he came to the cordon, he stopped. Alison took her hand off his shoulder and stood beside him.
‘How far in did you go?’ she whispered.
‘Pretty far. I don’t know.’
‘Want to show me where you found the glasses?’
‘You mean go in?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Not really.’
‘Come on.’ She unhooked the cordon from its stanchion, let it fall to the dirt, then walked almost to the edge of the hole.
Mark followed her. ‘We don’t really want to go down there, do we?’
‘I have to.’
‘No, you don’t.’
‘You can wait up here if you want.’
‘Oh, and let you go in alone?’
‘No big deal.’
‘It is a big deal. For one thing, it’s awfully tight. I almost got stuck.’
‘So stay here.’
‘This is crazy.’
‘If you say so.’
‘It’s just a stupid pair of glasses.’
‘Claudia’s glasses.’
‘Even if they are . . .’
‘Maybe she’s down there, Mark. Maybe it’s not just her glasses. I have to find out.’
‘No, you don’t. Anyway, she disappeared months ago. If she is down there, it’ll just be her . . . you know, her body.’
‘Whatever. Hold this.’ She handed her candle to Mark, then began to unfasten the buttons of her denim jacket.
‘You don’t want to go down there.’
‘Mark. Listen. Here’s the thing. She knew.’
‘Huh?’
‘Claudia. She knew. She was always hanging on me. She was with me when a guy asked me out. Jim Lancaster. She heard me tell him the condition.’
The one condition.
I want you to get me into Beast House. That’s where we’ll have our date.
‘Jim said I must be out of my mind,’ she explained. ‘No way would he try a stunt like that. So I told him he could forget about going out with me. After he went away, I said to Claudia, “Cute guy, but yella.”’
‘What did she say?’
Alison shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
She turned away from the hole, took off her denim jacket, hung it over the top of the nearest stanchion and came back. The long-sleeved blouse she wore was white.
‘Probably just laughed and said, “You’re awful.” Something like that. But this was only a week or so before she disappeared.’ Looking into Mark’s eyes, Alison slowly shook her head. ‘Never even crossed my mind. She didn’t run away to San Francisco. She came here. Just like you. To hide and stay till after closing time so she could let me in.’
‘She didn’t tell you anything?’
‘She probably meant to sneak out later and surprise me. But I guess she never made it out.’
Chapter Eighteen
‘Even if you’re right,’ Mark said, ‘that’s no reason to go down there.’
‘It’s my fault.’
‘It is not. You didn’t force her to do anything.’
‘She did it for me. Now I’ve got to do this for her.’ Alison bent over and peered down the hole.
‘They might not even be Claudia’s glasses.’
‘They’re hers.’ She turned her head toward Mark. ‘Are you coming with me?’
‘If you go, I go.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You’re gonna get filthy, you know. That white blouse.’
She glanced down at it, then looked at Mark.
Will she take it off?
‘I didn’t figure on crawling through dirt,’ she said and looked toward her jacket.
‘You can wear mine,’ Mark said. ‘It’s already a mess.’ He gave both candles to her, then unbuckled his belly pack, let it fall, and took off his windbreaker. She handed one of the candles back. He gave her the windbreaker.
‘Thanks.’ She poked the dark end of the candle into her mouth and kept it there, her head tilted back while she put on Mark’s windbreaker and fastened it. When the zipper was up, she took the candle out of her mouth.
‘Ready?’ she asked.
‘Not really.’
‘Look, you stay here. I’ll just go on down by myself.’
‘No. Huh-uh. I’ll go with you.’
‘Just tell me how far in . . .’
‘I don’t know. Maybe twenty feet. Twenty-five?’
‘Good. Wait here. It’ll be a lot quicker that way, too. I’ll just scurry in, have a look around. If I don’t find anything, I’ll come right out and we’ll have plenty of time to do some exploring and stuff.’
‘Well . . .’
‘Anyway, you’ve already spent enough time down there. It’s my turn.’
‘I don’t know . . .’
She sank to her knees. Looking over her shoulder, she said, ‘You wait here, Mark. I’ll be right back.’
‘No, I’ll . . .’
It came up fast, shiny white, almost human but hairless and snouted.
Alison was still looking at Mark and didn’t see it.
But her face changed when she saw the look on his face.
Before he could shout a warning, before he had a chance to move, the thing grabbed the front of the windbreaker midway up Alison’s chest and jerked her forward off her knees. She cried out. The candle fell from her hand. Head first, she plunged into the hole as if sucked down it. In an instant, she was gone to her waist.
Mark dropped his candle and threw himself at her kicking legs.
The flame lasted long enough for him to see that she was gone nearly to the knees. Then his body slammed the dirt floor. His head was between her knees and he clutched both her legs and hugged them to his shoulders as blackness clamped down on the cellar.
Gotcha!
Down in the hole, she was squealing, ‘No! Let me go! Leave me alone! Oh, my God! Mark! Don’t let it get . . .’ Then she yelled, ‘Yawww!’
Though Mark still clutched the jeans to his shoulders, he felt sliding movements inside them. He tightened his grip. The jeans stayed, but Alison kept going. Under the denim, her legs tapered. He felt her ankles. Then her sneakers were in his face and then they came off and fell away and he lay there hanging over the edge of the hole with Alison’s empty jeans in his hands.
‘Alison!’ he yelled into the blackness.
‘Mark! Hellllp!’
He pulled her jeans up, flung them aside, then squirmed forward over the edge and skidded down through the opening on his belly.
He bumped into her sneakers, shoved them out of the way, and scurried toward the sounds of Alison sobbing and yelping with pain and blurting, ‘Let me go! Please! It hurts! Don’t.’
Mark wanted to call out and tell her it would be all right. Even if it was a lie, it might give her hope.
But he kept silent. Why let the beast know he was coming?
Maybe I can take it by surprise.
And do what?
He didn’t know. But staying quiet made sense. It might give him some advantage.
Though he scrambled through the tunnel as fast as he could, the sounds from Alison seemed to be diminishing. She continued to cry and yell, but the sounds came from farther away.
The Complete Beast House Chronicles Page 115