Rockinghorse (28 page)

The eyes stared up the stairs at the three. Louisa was in front, Anne in the middle, Jackie bringing up the rear.

The trio stepped further into the darkness. Jackie reached into her pocket for a small penlight and pressed the button. The light would not work.

The wet glowing eyes of Lige provided the only illumination.

The breathing of the house was now more pronounced. It was heavy, ominous, as if the trio were nearing the very heart of the mansion.

Louisa stepped onto the planks of the ground level floor. Anne went to her right, Jackie turned toward the left.

A creaking sound brought them all up, hearts hammering, eyes darting, bodies tense from fear. The lid of a long packing crate creaked again, slowly opening. But only Anne looked toward the sound. Jackie and Louisa were staring at several empty glass containers, both wondering what they had once held.

They were soon to find out.

As the lid of the crate slowly opened, Anne felt the blood rush from her face. She fought back nausea as the foulest of odors wafted from the crate.

Jackie found a candle stuck in an old bottle, a small box of matches beside the drippings-covered bottle. The hovering eyes watched her closely. When she dragged the head of the match against the side of the box, igniting the match, the eyes darted up the stairs.

No one noticed.

Louisa was busy inspecting a still-sealed jar; a jar that contained a perfectly preserved set of eyes. She wondered what they had blundered into, and the first feeling that she had been duped by the eyes of Lige came into her mind. She looked around at a gasp of surprise from Jackie.

The girl was watching Anne, who was looking at the slowly opening lid of the packing crate. Anne stepped closer to the blackness of the seemingly empty crate. Then closer.

A rotting hand came out of the blackness, grabbing at her arm. Anne screamed and tried to jerk her arm free. The rotting fingers tightened. The torso of a man appeared from out of the dark.

Louisa and Jackie were frozen in place with fear.

“What's going on down there?” Lucas called from the entrance above.

The rocking horse whinnied and laughed.

The house breathed a victorious sigh.

Lucas was suddenly flung backward, slammed to the floor. The door to the ground level closed.

In the candlelit room of the ground floor, the man who sat up in the packing crate was something straight out of hell. The flesh on its face and hands was rotting and stinking. The lips were completely gone, exposing blackened teeth. The foulness of long dead sprang from its mouth. It grinned at Anne.

“Darling Anne,” it rumbled. “Come to me and give your old grandfather a great big kiss.”

The candle went out.

* * *

“Where in the goddamn hell did Kyle say he was going?” Captain Denning asked.

“To the old Bowers house outside of Palma,” a sergeant told him. “Can't you get him on the radio?”

“No,” the captain replied shortly. “And there are no phones out that way, either. Crap!”

“You want me to have dispatch get hold of Edmund County Sheriff's Office?”

“I tried that. Bill Pugh is gone until Tuesday. I tried Jim Dooley's place, and Jim is gone until Tuesday. Edmund County is working short-handed. Three deputies out.”

“Until next Tuesday?” the sergeant asked.

“As a matter of fact, yes. Why did you ask?”

“Because Lancer, O'Brian, and Watson all called in sick. That was yesterday. They were supposed to work today, be off tomorrow, and since we're short-handed, be back at work Monday. This will put them all back on Tuesday.”

Denning shook his head. “Too damned many Tuesdays popping up here to suit me. Get Al on the phone for me. He'll be at home. Where I ought to be. Christ, it's Sunday night.”

“What's up, Carl?” the troop commander asked.

Briefly, Denning explained.

“Lot of damned Tuesdays in there, Carl. I agree with that. Might be coincidence, though.”

“Will you check and see if any of your boys have called in out until Tuesday?”

“I'll call you back from my office.”

He called back thirty minutes later. “I got three out, Carl. All called in sick and said they'd be back on Tuesday. We're the only ones, though. I'm checking local counties to see about deputies. Wait a minute—here it is. Yeah. Osburn County has three out. Davis County has three out. Custer County has three out. And McWill County has three out.”

“Now give me the bottom line, Al.”

“They'll all be back on Tuesday.”

“Now, goddamn it, Al—this is all wrong. I got a bad feeling about this.”

“I'm beginning to, myself.”

“I'm going to call all my people, Al. And they'd damn well better be tucked in bed like good little boys. Wait a second, Al. I was just handed something. Goddamn bifocals! I'll
never
get used to these damned things. It's from Kyle's desk. What the hell is this? I didn't assign him to the Garrett case.”

“What Garrett case?” Al asked.

Denning brought him up to date.

“I just vaguely remember that one. No, there was two deaths, wasn't there? Yeah,” he answered his own question. “Father and son. Some time apart. Well, if you didn't assign him, who did?”

“Sergeant!” Denning squalled. “Who assigned Kyle to reopen the Garrett case?”

“Jesus, Captain. I don't know. just got back. I took my family to Six Flags.”

“Oh. Yes. That's right. Sorry I yelled at you, Pete. Nobody knows nothing,” he told A. “Kyle has written this; see if it makes any sense to you: ‘The Brotherhood is real. I'm convinced Sheriff Pugh is tied up in it. Lucas did not kill his brother. I think Ira Bowers is and has been living in Edmund County for a long time.' Does that make any sense to you?”

“Maybe,” the troop captain answered slowly. “You didn't assign Kyle to the case. Well, how'd he get the idea he was?”

“Damned if I know.” He looked up. A knot of troopers gathered around. “One of you know something I need to know?” he asked.

“Well, Captain,” a young trooper said. “I come in late one evening last week and Lancer was in your office. I didn't say anything about it 'cause I didn't think he would be in there rummagin' around if he didn't have permission.”

“Well, I goddamn sure didn't give it to him. Shit! Now I know why I didn't assign Kyle to the case. I haven't seen the note I made to do so. Somebody must have taken it.” He remembered he had a troop commander on the horn. “Al, sorry. You hear all that?”

“Yeah. And I'm not liking it. You asked about the Brotherhood. Carl, my daddy used to scare me with stories about that bunch.” He paused for a minute.

When he didn't immediately return, Carl asked, “What's wrong over there, Al?”

“Oh, I got two young FBI agents snoopin' around here. Something to do with that Lige Manning shooting. They've heard one side of this conversation and they've perked up like a hounddog on the scent.”

“That's all we need. Two young hotdogs to complicate things. They still listening?”

“Practically sitting in my lap.”

“What the hell are they doing there at eight o'clock at night?”

“I might ask the same of you.”

“Been at the camp all day. Stopped by here out of habit. Dispatch has been trying to reach Kyle for two days. That got me worried. Look, can you shake those Bureau people?”

“Does a hounddog bark at a coon? What you said about those hoods, remember?”

“The Brotherhood, yeah.”

“We have to talk about that. You name it.”

“If I do, we're going to be up all night.”

“Suits me.”

“You got two boys you can trust?”

“Yep.”

“See you in Palma, then.”

“And my wife was gettin' in the mood tonight, too.”

“She'll just call somebody else to step in. Don't worry.”

“Carl, you're something else, you know that?”

Carl laughed and said, “See you in Palma.” He hung up and stood up, facing the small group of Georgia State Troopers. “Who just got off?”

Hands went up.

“This might be—probably is—a wild goose chase. But on the other hand, it smells to high heaven. And Kyle might be in trouble. I need a couple of volunteers who want to ramble all night—without pay.”

The same hands went up.

“Davis and Austin,” Carl said. “Call your wives and tell them you won't be home until . . . hell, who knows? Sometime late tomorrow, probably. Rest of you boys stay alert. If I start yellin' for you to roll—let the hammer down and come smokin'. Let's do it, boys.”

* * *

Anne was screaming and struggling to free herself from the rotting hands that held her in a death grip. Jackie ran to the woman's side and struck another match, sticking the small flame in the rotting corpse's face. The old man screamed as light touched its eyes. Light—that which the Undead fear most. The rotting hands left Anne's arms and jerked upward, to cover its eyes.

Louisa jumped forward and shoved the corpse back into the crate, slamming the lid down.

“Run,” she yelled.

“Louisa!” Kyle called.

“Jackie!” Lucas yelled, both men working frantically to open the stubborn door.

“Help us!” the woman called from the ground level.

Paul had raced to the rear of the house and now ran back, an axe in his hand. “Here!” He shoved the axe at Kyle.

“Stand away from the door!” Kyle yelled, and swung the axe.

Johnny spun around, spying an ugly face looking through a window off the veranda. He raised his slingshot and let fly a stone, the small rock hitting the man between the eyes, bringing a howl of pain and a gushing of blood.

“Spears!” George yelled, and like palace guards defending the parapet, the men and women raced to their assigned positions around the second level of the mansion.

The door began splintering under Kyle's axe. He kicked in what remained and jerked the women out, into the candlelit room. Then he could but stand and stare in horror as a pair of ghost-white hands floated into the room.

The hands went straight for Tracy's throat. She saw them coming, and tried to duck and run. Wherever she went, the hands followed, gliding effortlessly after the woman.

They locked around her throat.

Lucas ran to the panic-stricken woman and tried to pry the hands away from her. He could not find any purchase on the short wrists. Tracy's face was changing color as her air supply was closed off. In desperation he looked wildly around him, his eyes seeking some sort of weapon.

Jackie ran to a bookshelf, jerked out a small Bible and ran to her mother's side, laying the Bible on the pale killing hands.

An odor of old death filled the room as the flesh of the hands began to bubble and sizzle like frying fat. The hands trembled, the fingers relaxing until the hands fell away, to lie motionless on the floor. The smell of cooked meat was strong in the room.

Pale and shaken, Paul raised his bow and let fly an arrow toward the shattered door. Heads turned as the arrow, this one with a steel head on it, drove deep into the skull of Anne's grandfather. The old man grunted and stumbled backward, almost losing his balance. Then, grinning, the Undead took a lurching step out of the broken door.

Stepping forward, Kyle swung the axe. The blade struck the old man on the neck, severing his head. The head rolled awkwardly on the floor, the shaft of the arrow finally bringing it to a halt.

But the rest of the body would not die. It lurched on, stumbling around the room, headless and sightless.

Jackie and Johnny looked at each other, exchanging thoughts.

Fire! Jackie thought.

Johnny ran to the rear of the house, jumping over Jan, who was kneeling on the floor, tending to her husband. The boy grabbed up a small container of gas and raced back to the den.

“Open the front door!” Jackie yelled, the box of matches she'd found in the lower level still in her hands.

Without hesitation, knowing that somehow the kids were in control, David ran to the front door and jerked it open.

“Throw it on him, Johnny!” Jackie yelled.

The boy doused the headless, lurching body with raw gasoline.

“Push him outside!” Jackie ordered.

Kyle slammed against the old man, hurling him out the front door.

Jackie ran to the porch, struck a match, and tossed it on the gasoline-wet Undead. The gas exploded with a
wuff
as the fumes ignited.

The living dead ran from the porch and fell down the steps, rolling in a mass of agony on the lawn. The man staggered to his feet and stumbled toward the road. Before he got halfway, he sank to his knees as the flames ate the evil contained within. He became a fiery ball of mini-hell on the front lawn of the mansion.

But all had forgotten the head of the old man.

They turned as Carla began shrieking in pain. The head had sunk its rotting teeth into the child's leg, gnawing and chewing off bits of flesh.

Kyle brought the axe down on the head, splitting it in half. Maggot-filled brains splattered over the floor. The teeth loosened their hold on the child's leg and Mimi grabbed the girl.

“Board up that broken door!” Lucas yelled.

“I'll get my bag and tend to the girl,” David said.

And from the night that surrounded the mansion, evil laughter sprang, following by a horse's insane whinnying.