Night Hunter (13 page)

Regina glanced at Amelia. Except for a tightness around the mouth, she looked calm and cool. Again Regina was reminded of a snake’s belly.

“
Nervous?” Regina asked.

“
No. You?”

“
Scared to death.”

Amelia’s eyes looked somewhat contemptuous before looking away.

“
Miss Classic, second runner-up, Amelia Travis Corde,” Donna’s voice rang out.

Amelia stiffened. Then with a look of sheer malevolence, she turned to glare at Regina. “You were supposed to be next. I should go last,” she spit the words out venomously. “I was the
queen.”

Regina lifted her shoulders and shook her head in confusion. There was a mix-up. Donna was supposed to call them in the order they had ended up, with Amelia claiming the title.

Stork, the lanky young floor director in a tank top and safari shorts, counted down, then gave the cue for Amelia to enter. She stood ramrod straight, not a muscle twitched.

“
Amelia ... ?” Regina said.

“
No.”

“
You’ve got to go,” Regina pleaded under her breath.

“
You’re not going to gang up on me again,” Amelia hissed. She seemed to be in a trance. “I was the queen.”

Donna called her name again.

Regina pushed gently but firmly. “Please, Amelia, we’ll get it straightened out.”

Amelia seemed to snap out of it, and then, smiling broadly, she stepped around the partition and moved onto the hushed set with long, regal strides, befitting a queen.

The applause, sporadic at first, became loud and steady.

Regina closed her eyes and let the air escape in a whoosh from her lungs.

Instead of sitting down, Amelia faced the camera and said, “As Miss Classic 1970, I wish to offer my prayers and best wishes to the lovely contestants of the 1990 Miss Golden Gate Model Search. Good luck, ladies, and may God be with you.”

“
Ladies and gentlemen,” Donna said when Amelia finally sat, “my co-producer and very dear friend, Regina Houston Van Raven.”

Stunned by the backstage incident, Regina felt numb, displaced. She moved out on cue, just wanting to get the whole crazy affair over with.

In a monitor to her right, inset in the corner of the screen, she saw a black-and-white picture of herself in an early seventies swimsuit. As she entered, she saw an image in bronze and teal with a halo of dark brown hair moving across the set, and wondered if that lovely woman was truly she.

Regina sat in the club chair at the far end of the semicircle. Donna directed several questions to her, which, thanks to the numb state she was in, she answered without a trace of self- consciousness. The others were brought into the conversation.

Regina heard a rushing in her head, like the sound of a seashell at her ear. She looked from one woman to another, seeing but not hearing. Tammy was talking, gesticulating broadly, her lips moving rapidly, her pale brows glistening on her bright crimson face. Amelia sat tall, her legs crossed at the ankles, hands folded neatly in her lap, her porcelain skin a striking contrast to her ebony hair. When she spoke her eyes closed briefly, then fluttered open. Very effective, Regina thought. There was something almost hypnotic about the gesture, making it difficult to look away from her face. Donna leaned into her guests, her expression amiable, benevolent — the peacemaker, the saint, the mother figure who encompassed all others with love and caring. Donna was the security blanket, the chicken soup, the cool hand to the fevered brow.

Regina snapped out of the trance with the following words “…food poisoning at the pageant.”

“
Yes, I remember,” Amelia said, her long lashes lowered, then fluttered upward. “The seafood at the banquet was bad. More than half of the contestants were gravely ill. I had a touch of it myself.”

“
I almost broke my neck coming down those stairs on stage,” Tammy said. “Halfway down my heel fell off. Just fell off.”

“
I’d forgotten about that,” Regina said softly under her breath, visibly perplexed.

“
One more freakish incident to confirm the jinx theory,” Amelia added.

“
Right,” Tammy said, swiveling around to face Amelia. “The jinx. The media really played that up, didn’t they?”

Donna interrupted to announce a station break. The red light on the camera blinked off.

Stork, headgear around his neck, approached. “Donna, there’s a lamp out above you. Can I get everyone to move off the set while we change it?”

“
Sure, Stork. How long?”

“
Five minutes. Ten tops.”

“
Okay, ladies, stretch your legs,” Donna said. “Don’t get too far from the set, though. We hate to lose a guest when we’re trying to tape a show.”

“
Would anyone like a soft drink?” Regina asked the three women. They all declined.

Stork hauled a ladder onto the set and climbed to the top. He donned a heavy leather glove and began to unscrew the bulb.

Regina scanned the set before going to the lounge. She saw Donna standing to the left of the ladder reading from the clipboard; Amelia was several feet away, digging through her reptile handbag, and Tammy was standing with her back to Donna, talking to Tom Gansing.

Regina hurried out, passing control rooms with eerie blue and red lights blinking and glowing through the tinted glass. In the lounge she recognized a few people from the audience at the coffee dispenser. A man was using the pay phone at the far end of the room. She inserted change in the soft drink machine, pushed the buttons, and caught the Sprite can before it hit the bottom. She hurried back to the studio.

She was just passing the control room, entering the set, when the large room plunged into darkness.

“
Damnit, Stork, what the hell’d you do?” Tom’s voice bellowed out in the black room.

“
I just unscrewed the bulb, that’s all,” Stork called back.

“
Someone get the friggin’ lights,” Tom’s voice again.

Regina heard shuffling. Someone was moving in the dark, and fast. She gripped the cold can, and trepidation, like a hovering black entity, made the hair at the nape of her neck rise.

And then she heard the gasp, followed seconds later by a nightmarish scream that seemed to paralyze nearly every part of her. Her mind, however, was clear and sharp. Word for word she recalled the phone conversation that afternoon in which a gravelly voice said: “Crucify the flesh with cleansing spirits.”

Oh, dear God.

She was bumped again. But still she couldn’t move.

The endless scream was tearing into her like the razor-sharp claws of a wild and pain-crazed beast.

CHAPTER 16

Donna heard the screaming, too. It seemed far off and in no way related to her and the agony that, at that moment, was paralyzing her breathing. She could feel, in a thousand different places, beads of red-hot molten steel eating into her.
Water.
She had to get water. A sea of water in which to submerge and, hopefully, mercifully, drown.

From where she stood in total darkness, clipboard gripped painfully in her fingers. Donna could see bits of glowing red and blue. With the clipboard held straight out, acting as a prod, she hurried toward that panel of lights, tentatively at first, then in ungainly yet rapid haste. She bumped someone, felt fingers pawing at her before she slapped them away and rushed toward her critical destination. The scream followed.

There was nothing for her at the place of the lights, no help, no savior or magic to erase the pain. The lights represented a path out of the blackness and nothing more. A direction in which to guide her toward that precious element — water. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry.

In front of her the green EXIT sign glowed like a rescue beacon. With both arms extended straight out, Donna charged through the wide door into the lighted hallway. The screaming stopped abruptly and Donna, realizing with a dull sense that the sound had been coming from her, felt a diminutive relief. Without the screaming, and with the presence of light, the situation seemed not quite so hopeless. She stumbled across the linoleum, falling to her knees and then coming up, only to fall again. With a strangled cry she lunged through the restroom door, her shoulder bashing painfully against the frame, as she ran toward the row of basins.

With the palm of her hand she frantically pushed the single lever on the faucet. Cold water gushed out and she scooped up a handful, splashing it toward her burning face and throat. The water seemed to intensify the heat. She screamed out, but continued, knowing she had to dilute the oily substance that was eating into her. Moaning in anguish, she pounded the water-saving faucet with both palms, scooping and splashing furiously before it shut off.

Water! Oh God, she had to have water! Lots of it —now! Again she thought of an ocean. Her legs quivered.

The burning was no longer confined to the flesh, it seared deep beneath the pancake makeup and the skin—skin she had so meticulously scrutinized for wrinkles on her birthday only the week before. Her peripheral vision caught fragments in the mirror above the basin. Donna forced herself not to look up. The acrid odor of scorched tissue—her own scorched tissue—made her violently ill. Gagging, she pivoted and ran into the nearest cubicle. She dropped to her knees and with no thought of anything but the reservoir of water before her, plunged her head into the toilet bowl; and as her hands forced the cool water against the raw, fiery skin, she held her breath and prayed.

“
Get the damn lights!” Tom shouted. “What the hell’s happening here?!”

Regina had glimpsed a flash of light from the direction of the hallway. Someone, the screaming someone—and Regina was almost certain she knew who belonged to that wretched scream —had gone through the door. She quickly followed, feeling the taped-down cables and wires under her feet. The way was clear as she made for the door. A red light eerily bobbed behind, seeming to keep pace with her.

There was no one in the hall as Regina charged through the door. Without stopping or even pausing, she rushed into the ladies’ room. Her pulse pounded in her brain, making her light-headed. She looked around desperately.

On the floor in the first cubicle was Donna.

Dear God, she prayed, let her just be throwing up.

She rushed into the cubicle, dropped to her knees, and began furiously to splash water over the raw skin. Sensing that the water was already polluted with the burning chemical, Regina pulled Donna to her feet and steered her back to the basin. They nearly collided with the man and his minicamera who had followed her in.

“
Sam, get help!” Regina shouted at the cameraman as she pushed Donna’s head into the sink. She pressed the faucet button and began to direct the gushing stream where the burns looked the most severe.

Tom Gansing ran in. “What the hell--? Oh God,” he finished weakly.

“
Ambulance,” Regina said. Her hand slipped off the faucet button, causing her to curse in frustration.

“
You heard her,” Tom barked at the man with the camera, grabbing him by the back of his shirt and whipping him toward the door. “Call the paramedics!” To Regina he said, “What is it?”

“
Acid.”

He knelt, allowing Donna to lean against him. He held the button while Regina flushed the burning skin. He softly crooned encouraging words into Donna’s ear.

The studio exploded with light.

Amelia grimaced and turned her head away from a blinding lamp. She called out Fletcher’s name. Through the entire incident while the lights were out she had whispered his name and had gotten no response. Fear and anger battled within her. She had seen him sitting in the audience during the taping, but at the break he had disappeared.