Demons

by Bill Pronzini

  Key might be here somewhere, I thought.

  It was, but I almost missed it. I opened drawers, cabinets, the doors under the sink… and the whole time it was hanging in plain sight from a hook screwed into the wall next to the refrigerator. “Get your eyesight checked,” I muttered aloud, and took the key off the hook and unlocked the door.

  It opened inward into heavy blackness. The fan sound was loud now and I could feel the breeze from it. The air was cooler in there but still sluggish-and rank with smells that closed my throat, made my stomach dance. Dry earth and must, soiled clothing, body odor and body waste. Instinctively I wanted to back up, get away from the stench and what was hidden by the dark. Instead I dragged the flashlight off my belt, fumbled for the switch.

  Something stirred in the darkness.

  Something made a whimpering noise.

  Something said in a cracked voice that made my skin crawl, “Baby? Please let me come out, Baby. Please don’t make me stay in here anymore. Baby? Please, Baby, I’ll be good to you.”

  I clicked on the flash.

  The light pinned her, and she made the whimpering noise again and flung an arm up in front of her face. I made a sound, too, when I saw her. She was crouched on all fours, wearing nothing but bra and panties, her hair hanging down and shiny black in the glare. But it was her face, her eyes that tore the sound out of me. Jesus, her eyes…

  “Baby?”

  I had found Nedra Merchant-what was left of her.

  CHAPTER 21

  I TOOK THE LIGHT off her, swept it around. Grotesque shadows capered over wood and stone and packed earth; an object gleamed in one corner like a creature with a huge dead eye. Overhead, the beam picked up a low-wattage bulb suspended from a rafter, a piece of string dangling below it. I moved ahead, caught hold of the string and yanked. Most of the dark disintegrated under a burst of dim yellow.

  It was like a cave in there. Or an animal’s lair.

  Or a prison cell.

  The part just inside the door had once been a pantry about six feet deep. Shelves covered the bare-wood walls on both sides, some bearing a small cache of canned goods; the lower section of one shelf had been torn down, torn apart, its broken pieces since picked up and stacked neatly to one side. You could see where a wall and another door had enclosed the rear of the pantry: the vertical beams and hinges were still there. The rest of the construction had been removed to open up the part where the woman was, where I now stood.

  That part was maybe ten feet square, with a low, sloping ceiling that was no more than six feet high at the far end; limestone walls shored up by thick crossbeams and a floor that was partly packed earth and partly bare rock. Root cellar. Houses in this section of the state, those built into hillside notches like this one, still had them; they made for relatively cool storage places in the hot climate. A hole had been bored through the rock from under the house and a length of one-inch PVC pipe inserted through it-probably for ventilation purposes. A four-outlet extension cord ran in here from a wall plug in the pantry; the fan was plugged into that. So was the object that had gleamed like a dead eye: a small TV set. The rest of the space was cramped with a rollaway bed, a rocking chair, a portable camper’s toilet, and a table piled high with magazines and artist’s tools-sketchpads, pencils, paints.

  Nedra Merchant was crouched on the bed, her hands covering her eyes now-the posture of a child. Her fingers were cut and torn, two of the nails ripped completely off, all painted now with iodine. She’d tried to batter her way out with shelf wood, dig her way out with her bare hands: there was a pathetically small hole in the earth along one wall. She was stick-figure thin, her ribs showing, bones jutting against dead-white skin, her cheeks and eyes deeply sunken as if all the flesh were rotting away. Her hair was clean, washed within the past couple of days, and she’d been put in here with a fresh white dress that she’d taken off and thrown on the floor, and she wore lipstick that made her mouth look like a bloody wound. All prettied up and waiting for Baby.

  The wound opened and words came out. “Turn off the light, Baby. It’s better in the dark.”

  “Open your eyes, Nedra. Look at me.”

  The unfamiliar voice brought her hands down; she blinked several times, peered at me through slits-and then shrank back hard against the wall. “You’re not Baby,” she said in a whimper.

  “Who is? Who did this to you?”

  “I don’t know you. What are you doing here?”

  “I’m a friend. I came to help-”

  “No. Where’s Baby? I want Baby.”

  Looking at her, listening to her, had unleashed a storm of emotions in me-rage, compassion, a sickening remembered dread. It was as if I were back in that frigging Deer Run cabin, looking at myself after all those days I’d been chained to the wall, seeing myself as I would have looked if I hadn’t been strong enough, if my ordeal had broken me as Nedra Merchant’s had broken her. The parallel was terrifying. I had come away scarred but whole. Nedra Merchant was going to come away in pieces that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men might never put together again.

  How long had she held out? A week, a month, two months, longer? Fighting until she couldn’t fight anymore, and then… what? Had she gone over the edge clawing and screaming or had she just let go? One thing for sure: When she’d landed it had been in a place that submerged her fear, turned hatred for her jailer into clinging need. In that soft, twisted place he had stopped being her tormentor and become her protector, the only person who could save her and set her free.

  I wanted to kill him for what he had done to her, just as I had wanted to kill the man who imprisoned me. Nobody, no matter who she’d been or what she’d done in her life, should have to suffer the way Nedra had; the person responsible deserved to die for it. The impulse was so strong in me I began to shake. I had to take a double grip on the flashlight, clutch it tight against my chest to keep my hands still. The bloodlust, and the heat and the foul air, brought on a dizziness, a churning in my stomach. I needed to get myself out of here almost as much as I needed to get her out.

  I moved toward her. Doing it slowly so I wouldn’t frighten her any more than she already was. But she scrambled backward anyway, came off the bed onto her feet. “No! Stay away from me; don’t come near me!”

  “I won’t hurt you, Nedra.”

  “Stay away!”

  “I swear I won’t, I only want to help you…”

  I kept on crooning to her, gently, moving all the while. She hugged the wall, crouched and motionless, until I was within two steps of her; then she yelled, shrill and wild, and flung herself at me with her hands hooked into claws.

  Even as emaciated as she was, she had a maniacal strength. I dropped the torch and caught her wrists, but I couldn’t hold her. Broken nails raked across my neck; she brought up a knee that I turned away from just in time, took on my upper thigh. I drove her backward with my body, pinned her against the rock, got her arms locked down at her sides. She went right on twisting and straining against me, all boneless sinew and muscle, like a cat struggling for release.

  “You’re safe now, Nedra, it’s all right, you’re safe…”

  She spit in my face, twice; screeched obscenities in my ear. I went on crooning in a soft monotone. The soothing quality of my voice, if not what I was saying, got through to her; or maybe she just ran out of breath and strength. The obscenities trickled off into little mewlings, and her struggles grew feeble, and finally she sagged limply in my grasp.

  I relaxed my hold a little, to find out if she was shamming. She wasn’t. I backed up, taking her with me; let go of her wrist and slid my arm up and around her shoulders and turned her toward the door. She came along all right, muttering something under her breath-the same words over and over, as if she were reciting some kind of lesson.

  “I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care…”

  I walked her into the pantry section, into the open doorway to the kitchen. There was sweat in my eyes from all the ex
ertion, impairing my vision like rainwater on window glass; I couldn’t wipe it away because of my grip on Nedra. I saw movement on my right as we passed through the doorway, but indistinctly, and when I turned that way, blinking, she came alive in my arms.

  She brought her heel down hard on my instep, emitting the shrill cry again, and then tore loose. I clutched at her, missed-and something hit me from the side, high up across the bridge of my nose. My vision went completely cockeyed. A second blow, hard on my left temple, thrust me backward; my feet slid out from under me and I went down, banging my head against one of the shelves.

  I lost consciousness. Not for long-a clutch of seconds, no more than a minute. All at once, then, I was aware of a ringing in my ears, of pain. And then I was up on one knee, shaking my head, pawing at my eyes.

  When I could see again I was looking at the door to the kitchen. It was closed now, shut tight. I heaved to my feet, stumbled to it, twisted the knob and shook the door; it wouldn’t open, wouldn’t open-

  Baby had come back. And Baby had Nedra again.

  And now I was locked in this hellhole in her place.

  ***

  THE CLAUSTROPHOBIA STARTED immediately, building fast, spiraling into raw terror. I started to shake again, a violent trembling like an old structure in an earthquake-shaking itself apart from the inside out.

  Don’t panic!

  I told myself that over and over, leaning against the door, but the part of me where the terror lived refused to listen. Curb the panic or it would cripple me, turn me into the same gibbering thing Nedra had become.

  Off the wall, turn around-movements that brought sharp surges of pain in my head, face, leg. Pain, I thought. And I was seeing the boards from the torn-down shelf stacked against the wall. And in the next second, or what seemed like the next second, I had one of the boards in my hand and was swinging it like a baseball bat against my sore left knee.

  I swung it again, then a third time, with as much force as I could muster. On the third blow the leg buckled and I was back on the floor. By then the pain was high and hot in my knee and inside my head-a fire that consumed the terror, reduced it to glowing ashes.

  I sat there trying to get my breath, waiting for the fire to burn itself out. It took a minute or two, and at the end of that time I could think clearly again: I was back in control.

  The first time I tried to stand, my left leg wouldn’t support me and I collapsed. I’d cut the knee up with the board; my pant leg was torn and there was a bloody gash that ran two inches down from the kneecap. No swelling though. Sweat stung my eyes, in a bleeding cut on my forehead, in the furrows left by Nedra’s nails; the hand I swiped across my face came away smeared with a mixture of water and blood. I rested for a minute or so, massaging the knee, before I shoved upright for another try. This time, when I put weight on the leg, it held me.

  Agony on the first few steps. Then that pain began to fade as I slow-paced back and forth between the pantry and the end of the cellar. Eight, nine, ten times I retraced my steps, until I could walk more or less normally again.

  By then I was aware of every inch of that damned cell, of everything in it. Evil place… but it wasn’t escape-proof. It was not an isolated cabin in the wilderness, I was not chained to a wall, that locked door was not impregnable. There were tools at my disposal. I could get out of here. I would get out of here-and soon, long before any of my own private demons came raging back.

  I bent to examine the door. I’d left the key in the lock on the kitchen side; all he’d had to do was turn it. Had he thrown the eyebolt too? I yanked on the knob, up and down, back and forth. Maybe not. There was some give, more than there would be if the door were double-locked into the jamb. Good, fine. I had my Swiss Army knife, with its multitude of blades and gadgets; and the wood of the jamb was old and relatively soft, scarred by deep gouges where Nedra Merchant had dug at it with some kind of makeshift tool. I could work on it until I exposed the bolt, then pry or break it loose. But that would take hours, possibly even a full day, and I did not have that much time to spare; I’d come apart for sure.

  Had to be another way, a quicker way…

  I pawed among the cans on the shelves. Cans were all there was… no help there. I walked back into the cellar; except for a faint dull ache, my knee gave me no trouble. Nothing I could do with the toilet or fan or TV set or rocking chair. The table? As a battering ram? It looked solid, but when I swept off the artist’s supplies and picked it up, I saw that it wasn’t solid at all. One good bang against a hard surface and it would break up into kindling.

  The bed?

  I got down on my good knee next to it for a close look. It wasn’t new and it didn’t appear to be very sturdy; I remembered creaking sounds when Nedra moved on it. But the two long and two short sections of the frame were made of forged steel. Seeing that gave me an idea, one that might work if I could get the frame apart.

  I stripped off the mattress and box spring, then lifted the frame up onto its side so I could tell how the corners had been joined. Riveted and spot-welded, the stubby castered feet attached the same way. Cheaply made, too; rust spots speckled the metal and I could feel the give when I put pressure on one corner. I took a tight grip on the thing and banged it down hard on the bottom corner, driving it into the bare rock where the cellar floor met the wall.

  But getting the rivets and weld to snap wasn’t as easy as I had hoped. There wasn’t much room to maneuver and I kept having to stop and dry my slick hands. The exertion, combined with the heat and the stink, brought back the sick, dizzy feeling. I remembered the fan and moved it over to where it would blow on my face. That helped a little. Helped keep my hands drier too.

  I worked in a steady, mindless rhythm: any kind of thinking would only have gotten in the way. It might have been ten minutes and it might have been half an hour before the one joint finally broke apart. I tried standing on one of the longer sections and using brute force to tear it free at the other corner. The strain weakened the joining but didn’t snap it. To do that I had to turn the frame over and continually beat the corner against rock, as I had the opposite one.

  Another ten or fifteen or twenty minutes… and the frame split into a pair of uneven right angles. I took one of them to the door, wedged the short piece under the knob against the casing, with the long piece angled down to the floor. Fulcrum, pry bar. Bent forward at the waist, with my legs spread, I locked hands under the lower end, lifted, then heaved upward against the knob with all the strength in my upper body. Once, twice, three times. The effort left me panting. I wiped my face, dried my hands, took another grip and tried again.

  This time the wood above the knob began to wrinkle.

  Lift, heave. Lift, heave… driving upward with my legs, grunting like Hulk Hogan. Blood-pound in my ears, tearing sensation across my shoulders. And lift, heave…

  The knob bent, the wood around it splintered.

  One more heave and the knob snapped, throwing me off-balance. I lost my grip on the section of bed frame and it dropped clattering, barked one of my shins on the rebound.

  I righted myself against the shelves. Picked up the frame, backed off, drove the short piece against the casing. The eyebolt hadn’t been thrown; the door popped open as soon as the Schlage dead bolt tore loose on my second thrust. I threw the frame away behind me, kicked the door the rest of the way open, and staggered out into the kitchen.

  There was so much blood and sweat in my eyes I was nearly blind. I groped across to the sink, ran cold water, and put my head under the stream until my vision was clear and the heat flush on my face eased. I dried off with a towel from a wall rack; the still-bleeding cut on my forehead stained the towel red. Then I leaned on the drainboard to wait for my pulse rate to slow, some of the tension and the last vestiges of the claustrophobia to drain away.

  I’d banged my watch a few times while I was working in there, but the second hand still rotated on the dial. Good old Timex-takes a licking and keeps on ticking. The time surpris
ed me: not even four o’clock yet. As impossible as it seemed, I had been trapped less than an hour.

  Through the window I could see my car parked in front of the garage-the only car out there. They were long gone. But I did not feel any real urgency, not anymore.

  I knew who Baby was; I’d known it from the moment I laid eyes on Nedra Merchant in her prison.

  And I knew where he would take her from here.

  CHAPTER 22

  ON THE WAY OUT OF NICE I had a wrangle with myself. Call the county sheriff? Baby and Nedra would be out of Lake County by now, and the law up here was not going to put out a pickup order on my say-so, not unless I came in and showed ID and told my story in person. Call the SFPD? Branislaus had had weekend duty, which meant he wouldn’t be working today; I’d have to talk to another inspector, fill him in, try to convince him to make this a priority matter-and by the time they acted, Baby and Nedra would be at their destination. So would I, probably. Besides, if the cops came bulling in on them, there was no telling what he might do. He hadn’t harmed her directly and he wouldn’t as long as there was no provocation, but if officers with guns and bullhorns showed up… No, this was a situation better handled by me alone, one on one. Time was on my side too: I was only about an hour behind them, and if I got lucky, drove faster than he did, I might be able to cut the gap down to half an hour or so.

  I got half lucky. Traffic heading west on Highway 20 was fairly light once I passed Upper Lake, and I was able to make pretty good time except for a two-mile snag behind a slow-moving camper. It was just five o’clock when I reached the junction with 101 above Ukiah. On the freeway I opened up to seventy, to seventy-five on the straighter stretches; I was afraid to risk any higher speeds. If a highway patrolman stopped me, I would have to sit still for questions and maybe some hassle. Before leaving the Thornapple house I’d taken an antiseptic bandage from the first-aid kit in the trunk and covered the cut on my forehead, but my face was still beat-up and my neck bore the marks of Nedra’s nails. Any cop would take one close look at me and become suspicious as hell.