“Come in, come in, come in! Welcome to Toller Hasloch’s House of Fun—please make yourself right at home.”
He reached for her umbrella, and Claire, not sure of what else to do, surrendered it to him. There was no reason to believe that everybody here was of sinister intent; Professor MacLaren had stressed that most of them were probably innocent bystanders, completely unaware of Toller’s secret plans. Claire reminded herself of that firmly as she added her coat to the collection in the bulging hall closet and walked past the stairs and into the living room/dining room of the large white Victorian, clutching her purse tightly against her chest.
Miraculously, the old house had escaped the almost inevitable subdividing that had come with the trend to smaller families and the postwar urban flight of the last several decades. Half of the first floor was given over to two large rooms—the living room and the dining room or parlor—while the other side held kitchen, closets, foyer and stairs, and a small room that Toller used as a study. The two large rooms could be closed off from each other by oak sliding panels that were currently thrown open, making the two into one large room that was filled with local college students—a lot of people for a late party on a Thursday night when everyone had classes the next day. The record changer of the hi-fi set in the corner held a stack of current LPs, and the Chad Mitchell Trio was on the turntable, singing “John Birch Society.”
Most of the kids had taken their shoes off and were dancing. Others wandered in and out of the kitchen, emerging with Cokes and bowls of chips. Several people greeted her, and she smiled and waved, though with newly honed suspicion, Claire realized how few of them were in any of her nursing classes. In fact, this seemed to be almost a different crowd even from the usual for Toller’s parties—a lot of the people here were older than the average Berkeley student—she even saw one man with grey in his hair, standing to one side as if he were trying not to be noticed.
But then, she reminded herself, trying to be fair, Toller was a senior. He’d have his Bachelor’s next fall. Why shouldn’t he have older friends—she and Toller certainly didn’t run in the same circles; how could she pretend to imagine she knew who his friends were?
Only if that were true—and it was—why his painstaking care to include her in his festivities, as though she were one of his circle … ?
Unless, as the professor seemed to think, Toller, too, knew what she had the power to become, and was courting her for it, seducing her slowly from the paths of sanity and common sense.
Tommyrot, Claire told herself roundly. She’d only taken the vodka punch because Mother had just called on one of her drunken vendettas to tell Claire what a disappointment she was. Everyone on campus knew that Claire was the original wet blanket when it came to booze. Toller couldn’t have imagined she’d be having any when he’d slipped the LSD into the punch.
The crepe-paper Halloween decorations that had been in evidence the last time she’d been here had all been taken down, supplanted by a handmade banner wishing Toller a happy birthday. There was a brief, sickening moment in which the room seemed to shimmer and reel, caught between that moment and this, but then things steadied, and Claire knew where she was once more.
But the fact remained: he did take an interest in her.
Get a grip on yourself, girl. Everybody who drank that punch got Toller’s Mickey Finn—it wasn’t anything personal. If walking in the front door is enough to give you the heebie-jeebies, how are you ever going to handle the rest of it?
She’d find the strength. Claire squared her shoulders and walked into the nearest knot of partygoers.
It was easy to deceive them, Claire realized a few moments later. She wasn’t that good a liar, but none of them were paying any particular attention. There was drinking—there always was, at Toller’s parties—and once in a while Claire caught a whiff of a sweetish, burning scent that she thought was probably marijuana.
She didn’t see Toller anywhere. That wasn’t all that unusual, but Claire was grateful for it—she wasn’t sure she could face him down as easily as she had his guests.
No one noticed when she ascended the staircase to the second floor. She’d been up here before, but the fact that this time she was on a clandestine mission of sorts made her jumpy.
Someone was coming out of the bathroom just as she got to the top of the stairs, and Claire ducked past them into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. Safe!
Her heart hammered as she gazed into the mirror. The face that looked back at her was white and scared, and she took several deep breaths. Everything would work out all right. It had to.
She splashed a little water on her face, hoping that no one else would come upstairs wanting to use the bathroom. Her damp clothes clung to her clammily, reminding her of where she’d been earlier tonight and why she’d come here. On a hunch she opened the medicine cabinet; there was the usual collection of bottles, but there seemed to be an awful lot of prescriptions. There was also a packet of cigarettes—Luckies—but when she took down the red-and-white packet only the first two cigarettes looked normal. The rest of the pack was filled with yellowish, hand-rolled cigarettes, their ends twisted shut. Claire sighed and put them back where she’d found them, losing all interest in investigating further. The more she found out about Toller Hasloch, the more she wanted to be somewhere else.
She groped for the tube of lipstick in her purse and slashed it across her lips. The pale pink gloss gave her a bit of color, making her seem more alive. There. Nothing to be afraid of.
Just a return to that dark ambiguous place inside her, the one filled with indefensible certainties. Where she knew things she could not know, where she was asked to do things beyond all reason … .
Claire London took another breath and stepped out of the bathroom, shifting her purse to the other shoulder.
The hallway was deserted, the doors closed. Closets—bedrooms—a library. The room filled with books smelled of incense, and the titles of the books behind the glass cases made her faintly uneasy, but she did not think that this was the place she sought. The professor had told her she’d know it when she found it, but had refused to tell her more than that. Claire sighed in frustration and continued searching, and a few minutes later—other than having disturbed a few necking couples—was no closer to finding what she was looking for than she had been before.
And where’s Toller? He wasn’t downstairs; he isn’t here … .
She gazed dubiously at the steep narrow staircase that led into the attic. Searching the attic would take time, and be noticeable as well. Claire hesitated, trying to decide whether to risk it. But she had the feeling—faint, easy to ignore—that the attic did not contain what she was looking for.
Unless she’d missed something, the place she was looking for had to be down, not up.
It took her almost an hour to find it, by which time, Claire felt, Professor MacLaren, waiting in the car, must surely have given up on her. She was looking for a basement—it was the only place left for Toller to hide what she was looking for—and most California houses weren’t built with them anymore, a consequence both of a high Bay Area water table and the frequent earthquakes that plagued the region.
There was no door to a basement in the kitchen; she hung around the area for several minutes, wondering what she could have overlooked. There was a big sheet cake on the kitchen table. Its surface was decorated with symbols that looked vaguely familiar to Claire; barred circles, odd cross-shapes, crude sharp-edged designs that almost (but not quite) looked like letters.
Two doors led out of the kitchen. The one by the stove let out into a pantry and the backyard. The other opened onto an uncomfortably narrow corridor that led into the study.
It was the only place she hadn’t searched. But if she went barging in there and it was full of people, she was going to have to talk faster than she ever had in her life.
She didn’t have time to hesitate; people were coming in and out of the kitchen all the time and someone was sure to ask her what
she was doing. Claire slipped through the door and closed it behind her. There was no sound ahead, and she breathed a deep sigh of relief. The hallway was only a few feet long—more an architectural quirk of remodeling than an intentional space—and she quickly reached the other door.
Abandoned cups and bottles showed that this room too was in use. A fog of sweetish smoke hung in the air, its scent acrid and unfamiliar. Claire’s glance darted around frantically, looking for a door on the east wall that could be the cellar door she sought.
There it was! A bookcase was pulled halfway across it, and Claire nearly wasted time moving it before she realized that the door opened outward, and there was no need. Fortunately, it was not locked. Claire eased it open and slipped through. Dusty wooden stairs led downward, and the staircase smelled powerfully of dampness. There was the chill bluish glow of fluorescent light coming from the basement. She skipped down the stairs, her purse bumping heavily against her side, nearly tripping and falling headfirst in her excitement.
She reached the bottom in a wave of apprehension that nearly made her ill. Directly ahead of her was a wall of shelves containing anonymous glass jars and boxes, and stacked on the uneven cement floor were wooden cases of beer and soda. Rain spangled the tiny window set high in the wall, level with the lawn above. The droplets glowed pale yellow in the light from the nearby streetlamp, and the window was clotted with cobwebs. There was nothing here.
Then she looked down, and saw a wide arc worn into the cement floor. It started at the center of the shelving and extended halfway across the floor. Claire walked over to the shelves, every instinct screaming that there was danger here, something vile—a monster out of her childhood, of the adult fears that had stalked her earliest girlhood.
When she touched the edge of the shelf, she could feel a handhold carved into its frame, and up close, she could see that the jars and boxes on this section of shelving were glued down. It slid open as she pulled it toward her, the rubber casters on the bottom providing the explanation of the marks she’d seen.
Claire pushed forward. A heavy velvet curtain was hung from the ceiling eighteen inches beyond the false front of the shelving. For a moment Claire struggled with pulling the shelves closed behind her while finding a way through the curtain, but she finally managed both.
The space on the other side of the curtain was out of a different world.
The three walls of the room were paneled in dark wood and the floor was covered with thick wool carpeting in a rich deep maroon. Directly opposite the curtained opening, there was a long heavy table completely draped in shimmering white cloth. But it was the object above the altar table that claimed all of Claire’s attention, the last thing she would have expected to find under these circumstances: a wooden cross, about four feet high.
The cross itself was not inverted—somewhere in the back of Claire’s mind was the thought that this would be too facile, too easy. It was the figure on the cross that was reversed.
The body was carved of ivory, or possibly just painted to look as if it was. It hung from a loop of cord above the crosspiece that was also looped about its left ankle, and whoever had fashioned this blasphemous piece of art had carefully depicted the way that the cords dug deep into the ankle. Only one leg was caught up in that fashion; the other was bent at the knee, throwing the twisted body into stark, tense relief. The body was carved all over with the same spiky symbols Claire had seen on the cake upstairs, and here again the artist had taken care to give the marks the look of cuts made into living flesh. But the greatest mutilation was to the figure’s face. One eye had been completely torn away, and the left side of the face was awash with blood.
Claire felt as nauseated—as emotionally violated—as though she had unexpectedly come across a scene of actual torture. The whole room vibrated with a hideous secret delight that so stunned. her that for a moment Claire, paralyzed with disgust and horror, forgot what she must do.
She fumbled at her purse, dropping it so that the contents spilled out across the rug. The walkie-talkie had been almost too big to fit inside; seeing it now reminded Claire of what she was here to do. She picked up the remote transmitter and switched it on.
“Hello? Hello?” There was no sound at all. She tried to remember what the professor had told her, then pulled up the antenna. “Hello?”
An encouraging hash of static rewarded her this time, and she pressed the Transmit button, hoping he could hear her. “Professor, I’m down in the basement. The door to it is in a room just off the kitchen. It’s just what you said, and it’s horrible—”
“Horrible?” an amused voice interrupted from behind her. “After all my hard work at decorating it—and on top of a full course load, too.”
Claire, already keyed up, squeaked and dropped the walkie-talkie. It hit the rug with a dull thud, and the hiss of static stopped.
“If you wanted to come to my private party, Claire, why didn’t you just say so?” Toller continued. “I would have been happy to issue you a personal invitation.”
There was laughter at that remark. Toller was not alone. There were others with him—too many to easily count, perhaps a dozen—all wearing black robes with red tabards over them. Each tabard had a white circle over the chest, with one of the spiky designs in black. Toller’s was the barred circle.
Unconsciously, Claire retreated from them, until her back was pressed against the altar table. It was a solid, immobile weight against her back.
“What—what—” she stammered, the combination of the horrible feel of the place and the shock of Toller’s presence putting her fatally off balance.
“Poor Claire—suckered in by the Opposition already and nobody’s told you the rules. I will: the Light has had its day, and the sun always sets. It is our time now—the time of the glorious, fertile Dark, and the unchanging stars!”
She heard a few mutters behind him, and somebody said, “Knock it off, Toller.” Some of the people in the robes were her age and younger, and possibly not very serious about this, but Toller was serious enough for all of them. What the professor had told her she now heartily believed: there were some things so dangerous that they could not be approached even in play. Any dealings with them would always be real.
Toller darted forward and grabbed her, kicking the walkie-talkie away, and yanked hard on the front of her jumper. The zipper up the back split, and her blouse tore open. Buttons flew everywhere, and Claire made a sound of outrage.
“Come on,” Toller called to the others. “What’s she doing down here if she didn’t want to play? She deserves what she gets—don’t you, Claire?”
There was a hesitant mutter of agreement from the men behind him.
“Damn you, Toller Hasloch,” Claire said with sincere intensity. Toller laughed and flung her to the ones waiting behind him. She was caught by the man who had opened the door upstairs, the one with the blazing blue eyes. He yanked the jumper down off her shoulders, and Claire felt the predatory intensity in the room jump.
She struggled, but there were too many of them—most of them more than a little drunk and all of them imbued with the ugly psychology of the mob. In moments she was stripped to her panties, bra, and garter belt, her nylons laddered by the struggle.
Toller tied her hands behind her back, and threw Claire up onto the altar. She landed with a solid force, and while she lay there stunned, he grabbed her ankles and began to tie them as well. Despair seemed to seep out of the walls around her, it filled her like a cup, as sharp and sudden as physical pain—why waste energy in struggling when no success could come of it in the end? Claire lay limp, unable to control her shuddering as he tied her ankles together tightly. She was lying on her bound hands—her shoulders pulled awkwardly backward by the binding—and her body ached with cold, as though she were lying inside a walk-in freezer.
“We’re going to try a little experiment, my friends and I,” Toller said to her when he had finished. “We’ll all concentrate on you—all twelve of us—and see if
we can drive your soul out of your body. If we can, I’m afraid that the world will just think you’ve had another one of your spells, and this one—too bad!—will have been permanent. Of ourse, if we can’t … well, the human mind isn’t designed to stand up to that sort of pressure, is it?”
“You’re a fraud,” Claire flung at him through gritted teeth.
“I’m sure you wish that were true,” Toller told her kindly. “But it isn’t, and if you really thought it was, you’d never have come here. My apologies for the other night, by the way—I meant to have some fun and liven up my party, nothing more. It wasn’t meant for you.”
But you’d have taken advantage of it, wouldn’t you, if Jonathan hadn’t been there? She tried to remember that Professor MacLaren knew she was here, that there was at least some hope of rescue, but it was as if she were attempting to lift a weight beyond her strength. She could not manage to believe. :
“Let me go,” Claire said again. Tears welled up in her eyes, born of fury or fear or both.
“Don’t be silly,” Toller replied chidingly.
With a minimum of fuss, he and the others lit the candles scattered around the room, and then the dishes of incense that were placed on the shelf beneath the twisted cross. Silky blue smoke with a choking bitter odor began to stream up toward the ceiling, making the maimed face of the white figure seem almost alive. Claire closed her eyes and turned away, trying not to let herself know how scared she was.
Then Toller and his acolytes gathered around the altar and the silence became even more profound. Claire wanted to make some kind of smart remark, but a strange and powerful reluctance held her silent. They weren’t just quiet—they were doing something, something she could feel the way she could feel the force of an incoming storm; as a pressure in her chest, in her head.
In her head.
It was like a painless headache, like a sensation for which there were no sensory referents. She did not like it, but she could not say that it was painful, or even unpleasant. But the thing that it represented terrified her—as much for the possibility that it would go on, as for the moment it shattered and became something uglier—and there did not seem to be anything she could do to resist it.
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