The Cellar (9 page)

From his position on Front Street near the south corner of the wrought-iron fence, Jud watched half a dozen people leave Beast House. The final tour of the day was over. He looked at his wristwatch. Almost four.

Maggie Kutch left the house last, and locked the door. She made her way slowly down the porch steps, leaning heavily on her cane. The strain of guiding tourists showed plainly in the weariness of her walk.

At the ticket booth, she met Wick Hapson. They finished locking up. Then, taking her arm, Wick walked with her across Front Street. They went slowly up the dirt driveway and finally disappeared into the windowless house.

Jud slid a cigar out of his shirt pocket. He tore
the wrapper off, crumbled it into a tiny ball, and flipped it onto the car floor. Then he took a book of matches from the same pocket. He lit the cigar and waited.

At four twenty-five, an old pickup truck backed out of the garage beside the Kutch house and came down the driveway trailing a cloud of dust. It turned onto Front Street and headed toward Jud. He pretended to study a road map. The truck slowed and swung across the street.

Looking up from his map, Jud saw a man leap to the ground and hobble toward the fence. At the corner was a wide gate, chained shut and padlocked. The short, heavy man opened the lock, unwound the chain, and pushed the gate open. He drove through, then locked the gate again.

Jud watched the truck move over tire tracks worn into the lawn, and park at the side of Beast House. The driver climbed out. He let down the truck’s tailgate and hopped onto its bed. Bending down, he slid a board ramp to the ground. Then he rolled a power lawnmower down the ramp.

As soon as the man started the mower, Jud made a U-turn. He drove slowly, studying the left side of the road. Two miles south of Malcasa Point, he found a fire road leading into the forest. Nothing closer. It was no good. He used it to turn around, and headed back toward town.

A hundred yards behind the spot where he’d parked to watch the house front, he pulled completely off the road. He got out of his car. Nothing
was in sight except the bending road and wooded slopes. He stood motionless for a few seconds, making sure.

He heard the far-off motor of the lawnmower. He heard the wind stirring leaves high overhead, and the sounds of countless birds. A fly buzzed near his face. He waved it away and opened the trunk of his car.

He put on the parka, first. Then he hooked a web belt around his waist under the coat, and made sure the holster flap was snapped shut. He lifted out a backpack, and put it on. He took out his rifle case. Then he shut the trunk.

His trek through the pathless woods took him up the side of a hill, over rock clusters and fallen trees, and finally into the sunlight of a clearing at the top. He rubbed sweat out of his stinging eyes. He drank tepid water from his canteen. Then he started down the left side of the hill, seeking an outcropping of rock that he’d noticed that morning through the back windows of Beast House.

He finally saw the rocks ahead. He made his way forward and easily climbed the outcropping, hopping from one rock to the next. When he peered over the top, a clear view of Beast House lay below him.

The short, limping man, apparently finished with the front lawn, was now mowing the back. Jud watched him slowly walk the yard, disappear behind a weathered gazebo, and reappear.

It would be a long wait.

But he didn’t intend to do it this way, crouched and peeking over a ledge of rock. Too damned uncomfortable. He backed off. He found a level area between a pair of midget pines several feet from the top. There he set down his rifle case. He shrugged the pack off his shoulders and propped it against one of the pines. Then he removed his coat. The breeze cooled his sweaty shirt. He took the shirt off, used it to wipe his face, and spread it out on a rock to let the sun dry it.

Next, he opened his pack. He pulled out his binoculars case, and a sandwich from a paper bag. Donna had made the sandwich for him earlier in the afternoon.

They’d returned to the Welcome Inn after the scene with Larry at the beach. Donna and Sandy had changed out of their swimsuits, and Larry had wandered off, presumably to have a drink in the motel bar. Then Jud, accompanied by the two women, had walked into town. He bought the sandwich ingredients at a grocery store near Sarah’s Diner. Back in Donna’s cabin at the inn, she put the sandwiches together. Four of them. When she asked where he would spend the night, he told her only that he would return in the morning.

With the binoculars and sandwich, he scouted for a suitable watching place. Crouching at the top, he found it: a level area halfway down the face, protected by a shield of upthrust rock.

Before moving down to it, he unwrapped his sandwich, a sourdough roll packed with mayonnaise,
jack cheese, and salami. He ate, looking across the distance at the back of Beast House.

The guy was still mowing.

Jud watched through his Bushnell binoculars. The man’s hairless head was shiny with perspiration. In spite of the heat, he wore a sweatshirt and gloves. Occasionally he wiped a sleeve across his face.

Poor bastard.

Jud looked down at the sweaty man, appreciating his own comfort: the feel of the breeze on his bare skin, the piny smell of the air, the taste of his sandwich, and the good solid knowledge that he’d found a woman, today, who mattered to him.

Done with the sandwich, he climbed down to the flat area where he’d left his pack and rifle. His shirt was still damp. He loaded it into the pack, along with his binoculars and parka, then returned to his observation point.

After the pickup left the grounds of Beast House, nothing moved inside the perimeter of the fence—nothing within the area visible to Jud, at least. That included the entire back of the house, and its southern side.

Jud wasn’t much concerned about the front. In the Thorn and Kutch killings, the assailant had apparently entered by breaking rear windows. He must’ve come across the yard from the woods behind the house.

If anyone entered tonight, Jud would get a look at him.

But not a shot at him.

That would have to wait. You don’t take down a bastard just because he goes into a house at night, or because he’s wearing a monkey suit. You’ve gotta be sure.

He scanned the area with his binoculars. Then he ate another sandwich, washing it down with canteen water.

When the sun was too low to keep him warm, he put on his shirt. It was dry, now, and slightly stiff. He tucked it into his jeans.

Lighting another cigar, he leaned back against the steep rock face. The protective uprise of rocks at the front of his ledge blocked some of his view. The entire backside of the house was still visible, though. He would settle for that. A fair exchange, so he wouldn’t have to squat or crouch his way through the night.

After watching the house for an hour, he folded his parka and sat on it. Its thickness not only padded the hard ground but also gave him extra height, improving his view.

As he watched, he thought of many things. He concentrated on what he’d learned of the beast, searching for the most plausible explanation of its identity. Always, he came back to the time element: the first killings in 1903, the most recent in 1977. That certainly seemed to rule out the possibility that one man had performed all the killings.

Yet he couldn’t buy the idea that the killer was some ageless, clawed monster. In spite of what Larry had said. In spite of Maggie Kutch’s stories.

In spite of the scars on Larry’s back?

A human could have made those scars. If not with fingernails, then with the claws of artificial paws. A human dressed up in a monkey suit—or a beast suit.

What about the time element, then? Almost seventy-five years.

Okay, several humans in beast suits.

Okay, who and why?

Suddenly he had a theory. The more he puzzled over his theory, the better it looked. As he began to reflect on ways to gather proof, however, he noticed that darkness had come.

He crawled forward quickly to the stone lip. The house was black. Its lawn was a dark expanse, empty of detail like the surface of a lake on a cloudy night. Reaching into his pack, Jud pulled out a leather case. He opened its snap and removed a Starlight Noctron IV. Putting it to his eye, he made a quick scan of the house and lawn. In the eerie red light generated by his infrared scope, nothing seemed out of place.

When his legs ached from squatting, he backed away from the front. He lowered the Starlight long enough to put on his coat. Then he stood, leaning back against the rock face, and continued his surveillance.

If his theory was correct, he had nothing to gain
by spending a cold night up here. He wouldn’t see any beast.

Well, it couldn’t hurt to stick around.

We should’ve put somebody inside the house. Bait.

Who’d go in?

Me, that’s who.

Too early in the game for that. This is time for surveillance, a good look from a safe distance. Learn the nature of the enemy.

If nothing else, I learn that the enemy didn’t enter the house tonight from the rear.

The scope was growing heavy. He put it down and removed the final sandwich from his pack. As he ate it, he watched without the aid of his expensive scope, and could see little except darkness. He finished the sandwich quickly and returned to using the scope.

After a while, he knelt and rested his elbows on the ledge of rock. He scanned the yard, the edges of the forest, the gazebo, even the windows of the house, though their glass would block most heat that the scope might pick up.

Leaving the scope in place on the rock, he stepped around his backpack and urinated into the darkness.

He returned to the scope. He swept the grounds. Nothing. He glanced at his wristwatch. Just after ten-thirty. He settled down, then, and watched for nearly an hour without changing position.

During that time, he thought about the beast.
Thought about his theory. Thought about other nights he’d spent alone with a Starlight and a rifle. Thought a lot about Donna.

He thought about the way she looked that morning in her corduroys and blouse, hands tucked into the hip pockets of her pants. They became his hands, stroking the warm smooth curves of her rump. Then he saw his hands unfastening the buttons of her blouse, slowly parting it, touching breasts he had never seen but could vividly imagine.

Hard, his penis strained against the front of his pants.

Think about the beast.

Into his mind came the fat, black face of General Field Marshal and Emperor for Life Euphrates D. Kenyata. One of the big, round eyes vanished as a bullet ripped through it and took out the back of the emperor’s skull.

The Beast of Kampala was dead.

And so was Jud’s erection.

The guards—if they’d caught him. But they hadn’t. They hadn’t even come close. No closer than he’d allowed for, at least. Still, if they’d caught him…

There!

Just this side of the fence.

He held the scope steady. Though something—probably a bush—blocked portions of the heat image, he could see that the crouching figure had the basic shape of a human.

It lay down flat. It shoved something forward,
apparently through a gap beneath the fence. Then it squirmed under the fence, itself. On the other side, it picked up the object and stood upright on two legs. It looked both ways, turning.

In profile, it had breasts.

It ran to the back of the house, climbed stairs, and disappeared into a porch.

A few seconds passed. Then Jud heard a quick, faint crash of breaking glass.

When Jud reached the fence, gasping and hurting from his rush down the dark hillside, he didn’t take time to find the burrow. He tossed his flashlight through the bars of the fence, leaped up, and grasped the high crossbar with both hands. He flung himself upward. Stiff-armed, he braced himself above the bar. A muffled scream came from the house. His weight shifted forward too much, and he felt the point of a spike prod his belly. He leaned back, and kicked up his left leg. His foot found the bar. He shoved hard upward, letting go. His right leg cleared the spikes. He fell for a long time. When he hit the ground, he tumbled, rolled to his feet, and retrieved the flashlight. Then he sprinted to the back of the house.

As he rushed up the porch steps, he unholstered his Colt .45 automatic. He wondered briefly if he should change clips—exchange the standard seven-shot magazine for the twenty-shot oversize
he kept in his parka. Hell, if he couldn’t get it with seven…
it
?

Inside the porch, the house door stood open. One of its glass panes was broken.

He entered. He flicked on his flashlight, swung its beam. The kitchen. He ran through a doorway into a narrow hall. Ahead, he saw the stuffedmonkey umbrella holder, and the front door. He shined his light over his left shoulder. It lit the staircase bannister. He rushed to the foot of the stairs, checked to the left and right, then swung his beam up the stairway.

Halfway up, it lit the red of a gasoline can lying on its side. He climbed to the can. Its caps were still in place. A three-foot length of rope had been passed through its handle and knotted, forming a sling. Liquid sloshed inside the can as he set it upright. He holstered his pistol and unscrewed one of the caps. He dropped it into his shirt pocket and sniffed the opening. Gasoline, all right. As he reached into his pocket for the cap, he heard breathing above him. Then a sound of parched laughter.

His beam climbed the stairs, lit a bare leg running blood, a hip, a mauled breast, a face. Hair hung down the face. Blood trickled from its chin. A flap of forehead skin hung down, hiding one eye.

More laughter came, as if trickling from her open mouth along with blood.

“Mary?” Jud called quietly up the stairs. “Mrs. Ziegler?”

She came forward in a strange, gliding way, her
arms swinging loosely, her legs barely seeming to move.

Jud lowered his flashlight enough to see that her feet were two inches off the floor.