The Cellar (11 page)

A quiet knocking on the door woke Donna. Raising her face from the pillow, she saw that the window was wrong: off to the side instead of directly over the bed. Strange room. Still dark outside. Somebody knocking. Fear made an uneasy flutter in her belly.

Then she recognized the room, and remembered.

Jud. It must be Jud.

She rolled out of bed. Cold. No time, in the darkness, to find her robe. She stepped quickly to the door and opened it a crack.

Larry stood there in striped pajamas, hugging himself against the chilly wind.

“What is it?” she whispered, alarm knotting her stomach.

“Judge. He’s back. He’s been hurt.”

She glanced over her shoulder at Sandy’s bed, and decided not to wake the girl. Twisting the handle button, she locked the door. She stepped out, pulled the door shut, and made sure it was secure.

Following Larry across the parking area, she felt the cold breeze and the sway of her breasts inside her nightgown as if she were naked. It didn’t matter. Only Jud mattered. Besides, she could borrow something over there to put on.

“How bad is he?” she asked.

“The beast got him.”

“Oh my God!” She remembered the wax figures, shredded and bloody. But he couldn’t be like that. Not Jud. He’s hurt, but not dead. He’ll be fine.

Larry opened the door of Cabin 12. A lamp was on between the beds, but both beds were empty. One had obviously not been slept in. Donna surveyed the room. “Where is he?”

Larry shut the door and locked it.

“Larry?”

She saw how he looked down her body as if surprised and distracted by the way it showed through the nightgown.

“He isn’t here,” Donna said.

“No.”

“If you think you can…”

“What?” Larry asked, and looked up from her breasts. His eyes were vague.

“I’m leaving.”

“Wait. Why? I’m sorry if I embarrassed you. I…I was just…”

“I know what you were just doing. You just thought you’d use Jud as a pretext to lure me over here so you could…”

“Oh heavens no. Good heavens.” He laughed nervously. “Judge asked me to get you.”

“Well, where
is
he?”

“Over here.”

She followed him across the room.

“Judge didn’t want to leave blood on the bed, you see.”

He opened the bathroom door. Donna saw a pile of clothes on the floor. Then she saw Jud sitting in the empty tub. Blood sheathed his back and stained the rear of his Jockey shorts. He finished taping a wide bandage onto his thigh.

“That takes care of that,” he said, and looked up at Donna.

She dropped to her knees, leaned over the side of the tub, and kissed him. She pushed a hand through his damp hair.

“You look awful,” she said.

“You should’ve seen me before I showered.”

“Do you always shower in your shorts?”

“I didn’t want to shock you.”

“I see.” She kissed him again, longer this time, taking pleasure in the warm spread of desire through her loins, and wishing Larry would go away.

“I wouldn’t spend all night smooching,” Larry said. “After all, the man
is
bleeding.”

“Would you like to bandage my shoulder?” Jud asked her.

“Sure.”

“Larry’s too squeamish.”

“Blood nauseates me,” Larry said, and left the bathroom.

When Donna squeezed a washcloth above the shoulder wounds, water spilled down, rinsing off blood. “The
beast
did that?”

“Something did,” he told her.

“They look like claw marks.”

“That’s how they feel, too.”

She patted them gently with the washcloth.

“Pour on some hydrogen chloride,” Jud said. “It’s probably by your knees.”

She let it spill over his cuts, fizzing and foaming. Then, with a large gauze pad from the first-aid kit on the toilet lid, she covered the wounds. “You sure come prepared,” she said, taping the pad in place.

“Mm-hmmm.”

“Anyplace else need fixing?”

“That should do it. Thank you.”

“Now let’s clean you up. Can you keep your leg dry, if we run water?”

“If it isn’t too deep.”

She plugged the drain and turned on the water. With his knee up, Jud kept his thigh bandage above the rising water level. Donna shut off the faucets, and began to scrub his back with a soapy washcloth.

“Did you go in the house?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Boy, that’s the height of something.”

“You don’t approve?”

“You might’ve been killed.”

“I came fairly close.”

“How did you get away?”

“I threw gas on him. I guess he was afraid he’d go up in flames.”

Jud’s back was clean and slick. Leaning over the side of the tub, she kissed it. The skin made her mouth wet. “All done,” she said.

“Thank you, ma’am. Could you hand me a towel?”

She gave him one, and watched him press it against his upper leg, to keep water from running onto the bandage as he stood.

“I’ll be out in a minute,” he said, climbing from the tub.

“Will you?” she asked, smiling at him and trying to look as if she didn’t know he was asking her to leave the bathroom.

“Oh, you prefer to stay?”

She nodded. Reaching behind her, she pulled the door shut. Its handle made a snapping sound as she locked it.

“This isn’t the most comfortable place in the world,” Jud said.

“It’s fine with me.”

Hands brushing her shoulders, Jud slipped the
straps of her nightgown down. She let the nightgown fall. The effect on him was immediate. Dropping to one knee, Donna freed the erect penis from his shorts and tugged the shorts down his legs. Then she stood naked in front of him. First, his eyes caressed her. Then his hands traced the curves of her shoulders, the slopes of her breasts. He pulled her against him, the stiff penis prodding her belly.

As they kissed, Donna’s hands explored the dips and rises of his back, the firm globes of his buttocks. She moved a hand to the front, and fingered his scrotum, the long smooth shaft of his penis. She felt his fingers down low between her legs, and moaned as they stroked.

Jud kicked the pile of clothes aside. He spread two bathtowels on the floor, and Donna lay back on them, knees high and parted. Jud knelt over her.

She felt the light touch of his tongue, first on one nipple, then on the other. Then came the slippery pushing. He went deep inside her.

Gasping through her open mouth, she tried to stay quiet. Didn’t want Larry to hear. But her breath was coming louder now, and she couldn’t help the trembling sound of it. Then she no longer cared. There was only Jud on top of her, inside her, filling her, stroking her to an unbearable urgency that tightened and tightened and finally broke. He muffled her outcry with his mouth.

“For heaven’s sake, what took you so long?” Larry asked, looking up at them from the television.

“I thought it was rather quick,” Donna said, smiling.

Jud, wearing only a towel and his bandages, took a robe from the room’s closet. He put it on and removed the towel.

“So,” Larry said. “Now that we’re both here and you’re nicely patched up, would you be good enough to tell us what happened to you?”

“Do you want to stay?” Jud asked Donna.

“I want to know,” she said. “I’m chilly, though. May I?”

“Help yourself.”

She pulled back the covers of the bed that had not been slept in. She sat on it, propped the pillow against its headboard, and leaned back. “All set,” she said, and pulled the blankets shoulder high.

Jud told them what had happened: He told of watching the house from the hillside, of seeing the woman enter, of following her inside, of finding the gasoline can on the stairway.

“Ah,” Larry said. “Good woman. She was going to reduce the filthy place to ashes.”

“I wonder why she waited so long,” said Donna.

“Could be a lot of things. She probably left town after the killings, to bury her husband and
boy. Do you know where they’re from?” he asked Larry.

“Roseville, out near Sacramento.”

“It’d only take a few days to bury them and get back here. What was she doing the rest of the time?”

“Trying to figure out how to take her revenge, maybe. Then planning for it, making preparations. When I left there tonight, I used a hole under the fence. I think she probably dug that hole, herself. Once her preparations were made, she probably had to work herself up to actually getting in there and doing the job.”

Larry frowned. “Why, for heaven’s sake, did you try to stop her?”

“I didn’t go inside to stop her. I went in to find out who she was, and what she was up to. Until I heard the scream.”

“Oh my God.” Donna could feel a chill, in spite of the covers. “How badly was she hurt?”

“She was dead.”

“The same as the others?” Larry asked.

“The same as the gal in the parlor. Ethel? This one was in fairly much the same shape, if the wax figure was accurate. I gave her a close look, after the…killer…got away.”

“Could you tell if she’d been sexually molested?” Larry asked.

Jud nodded. “It was fairly obvious.”

The thought of it made Donna press her legs tightly together. She became aware that she could
still feel Jud inside her, as if he had left an imprint. Her fear and repulsion subsided. She wondered, for a moment, how she might arrange to be alone with him again.

“I knew she’d been molested,” said Larry. “The beast…that’s its motive. Sexual gratification. Of course, I should be glad, I suppose. That’s what saved my life. The creature was more interested in satiating its lust with Tommy…”

“I don’t think sex is the main thing.”

“Oh?” Larry sounded skeptical.

“Let me give you my theory. I think this beast is a man.”

“Then your theory’s shit.”

“Just listen. It’s a man in a costume. The costume has claws.”

“No.”

“Listen, damn it. You too, Donna, and see what you think. The original killings, the Thorn lady’s sister and kids, were done by Gus Goucher, the man they hanged.”

“No,” Larry said.

“Why not?”

“They were torn apart with claws.”

“According to whom?”

“According to morgue photos.”

“Have you seen those photos?”

“No, but Maggie Kutch has.”

“If you believe her. Who has possession of the photos?”

“Maggie, I suppose.”

“Maybe we can get a look at them.”

“I rather doubt it.”

“Okay, we’ll let that go for the time being. It’s not that important. Gus Goucher’s jury must’ve seen the photos, must’ve heard testimony…”

“According to the old newspaper accounts, they did.”

“And what the jury heard was sufficient for them to condemn the man.”

“Granted.”

“We ought to check this, but I have the impression that, until the Kutch murders thirty years later, Goucher was pretty much accepted as being the Thorn killer.”

“It was made to look like he was. They needed a scapegoat.”

“No. They needed a suspect. He was a likely one. And he was, quite possibly, the guilty one.”

“They hanged Goucher,” Donna said. “So he certainly wasn’t responsible for the attack on Maggie Kutch and her family.”

“In a way, he might have been. Look at what Maggie did after the killings. She moved out of the house, took in Wick Hapson, and opened Beast House for tours. I think she and Wick decided they’d be happier without Mr. Kutch, killed him using an MO similar to the Thorn murders, and cooked up this business about a beast to cover themselves. When they saw how much interest there was in this fictional beast of theirs, they decided
to profit from it by opening the house for tours.”

Larry shook his head and said nothing.

“One thing,” Donna said. “I can’t see a woman murdering her own children.”

“That part threw me, too. It still throws me, in fact. For their beast story to hold up, though, the kids had to go.”

“She wouldn’t do it. No mother could do that.”

“Let’s say it’s unlikely,” Jud corrected. “Mothers have been know to murder their own children. What’s more likely, though, is that Wick took care of the kids.”

“Your theory is ridiculous,” Larry said.

“Why?”

“Because there is a beast in that house.”

“The beast is a rubber suit with claws.”

“No.”

Donna frowned. “Do you think it was Wick Hapson tonight?”

“If it was Wick, he’s damn strong for a man his age.”

“Axel?”

“It can’t be Axel. He’s too short, too broad in the shoulders, too awkward in his movements.”

“Then who?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s the beast,” Larry explained. “It’s not a man in a rubber suit, it’s a beast!”

“Just tell us why you’re so sure.”

“I know.”

“How?”

“I know. The beast is not human.”

“Will you believe me when I show you its costume?”

Smiling strangely, Larry nodded. “Of course. You do that. You show me its costume, and I’ll believe.”

“How’s tomorrow night?”

“Tomorrow night will…” He was silenced by a knocking on the door.

Donna watched Jud cross to the door and open it. “Well hello,” he said.

“Is my mother here?”

“Sure she is. Come on in.”

Sandy, hair rumpled from sleep and her blue robe a bit too small on her, stepped into the room. When her eyes met Donna’s, Sandy sighed with exaggerated relief. “So there you are. What are you doing in bed?”

“Keeping warm. What are you doing
out
of bed?”

“You were gone.”

“Just for a few minutes.” She looked at Jud. “I guess I’d better get back now.” She climbed out of bed, and moved with Sandy toward the door. Jud opened it for them. She wanted to kiss him good night, wanted to hold him tightly, feeling his strength and warmth against her body. Not in front of Sandy, though. Not in front of Larry.

“See you in the morning,” she said.

“I’ll walk you back.”

“That isn’t necessary.”

“Sure it is.”

He walked beside Donna, not touching her. Sandy ran ahead of them. She opened the door and waited.