The House of Thunder (32 page)

An exceptionally brilliant flash of lightning briefly transformed the night into day. Rain began falling harder than ever, and it seemed colder, too.

That was enough to propel Susan through the gate and up the walk to the front porch. She rang the bell.

She didn’t see what else she could do. She had nowhere else to go, no one to turn to except strangers chosen at random from all the houses full of strangers on all these strange, rain-scoured streets.

The porch light came on.

Susan smiled and tried to appear harmless. She knew that she must look wild: waterlogged, her hair curled into tight ringlets and tangled in knots by the rain and the wind, her face still somewhat emaciated, her eyes stark and haunted. She was afraid of presenting such a bad image that people would be discouraged from opening their doors to her. A tremulous smile was not enough to make her look like the Welcome Wagon lady, but it was all she could offer.

Happily, the door opened, and a woman peered out, blinking in surprise. She was in her middle or late forties, a cherub-faced brunette with a pixie-style haircut. She didn’t even wait for Susan to speak, but said, “Good gracious, whatever are you doing out on a night like this, without an umbrella or a raincoat? Is something wrong?”

“I’ve had some trouble,” Susan said. “I was—”

“Car trouble?” the brunette asked, but she didn’t wait for an answer. She was a bubbly, outgoing woman, and she seemed to have been waiting for someone who had an ear that needed talking off. “Oh, don’t they just always break down in weather like this! Never on a sunny day in June. Always at night and always in a storm. And never when you can find a mechanic or when you have change for a pay phone. You’ll be wanting to know if you can use our phone. That’s it, isn’t it? Well, of course, of course. Come in here where it’s warm, call whoever you want. And I think I’ll make you some hot coffee. By the look of you, you’ll need something hot if you’re going to stave off pneumonia.” She stepped aside so that Susan could enter.

Startled by the woman’s unreserved hospitality and by her nonstop chatter, Susan said, “Well... uh ... I’m dripping.”

“Won’t hurt a thing. We’ve got a dark carpet—have to with the kids. Just imagine what they’d do to a
white
carpet—and it’s an Antron Plus fiber, which means it just
won’t
take a stain no matter how hard the little devils try. Besides, you’re only dripping rainwater, not spaghetti sauce or chocolate syrup. A little rain isn’t going to hurt it. Come in, come in.”

Susan went inside, and the woman closed the door. They were standing in a cozy foyer. The flower-patterned wallpaper was too busy for Susan’s taste, but it wasn’t unattractive. A small table stood against one wall of the foyer; a brass-framed mirror hung above the table; an arrangement of dried flowers stood on the table, in front of the mirror.

A television set was playing in another room. It was tuned to an action show; tires squealed; people shouted; guns blazed; dramatic music swelled.

“My name’s Enid,” the brunette said. “Enid Shipstat.”

“I’m Susan Thorton.”

“You know, Susan, you should always carry an umbrella in your car, even when it doesn’t look like it’s going to rain, just in case something like this happens. An umbrella and a flashlight and a first-aid kit. Ed—that’s my hubby—he also keeps a little tire pump in the trunk, a little electric model that plugs right into the cigarette lighter, so if you get a flat that’s caused by a slow leak or a puncture, then you can reinflate it long enough to get to a gas station. That way you don’t have to change the tire yourself, out on the road, in bad weather, maybe in the middle of a storm like this. But good heavens, this isn’t the time to talk about being a good girl scout, is it? What in the world is wrong with me? Here I am offering you all sorts of unsolicited advice, when you’re standing there shaking like a leaf. Sometimes I think my mouth isn’t wired up to my brain. Come on back to the kitchen. That’s probably the warmest room in the house, and I can brew you up some good hot coffee. There’s a phone in the kitchen, too.”

Susan decided to wait until she’d had a few sips of coffee before explaining that her plight didn’t involve car trouble. She followed Enid Shipstat into a narrow hall, where the only light was that spilling in from the foyer and a bluish TV glow that came from the living room, on the right.

As they passed the living-room archway, Susan almost stopped and gaped in surprise at the sight beyond the arch. It was a relatively normal American living room, arranged around the TV as most American living rooms were, but it was overfurnished with chairs and sofas—and with children. A dozen kids ringed the television, sitting on the furniture and on the floor, all intently watching the softly glowing screen, which provided, along with one small lamp, the only light in the room. A dozen heads turned as if they were all part of a single organism, and a dozen young faces looked expressionlessly at Susan for a moment, eyes shining with reflected TV light, then turned to the screen again when their attention was drawn by a burst of gunfire and the wail of a police siren. Their rapt silence and their blank expressions were eerie.

“I only have Hills Brothers,” Enid said as she led Susan down the hall toward the kitchen. “That’s the only kind of coffee Ed will drink. Personally, I like Folger’s just as well, but Ed thinks it’s not as mellow as Hills Brothers, and he just can’t
stand
that Mrs. Olsen on the commercials. He says she reminds him of a busybody old schoolteacher he once had.”

“Anything you’ve got is fine,” Susan said.

“Well, like I told you, all we have is just Hills Brothers, I’m afraid, so I hope you like Hills Brothers.”

“That’ll be fine.”

Susan wondered how the Shipstats managed to raise a dozen children in this simple, two-story house. It was a fairly large place, but not
that
large. The bedrooms would have to be organized like army barracks, with sets of bunk beds, at least four kids to a room.

As Enid Shipstat pushed open the swinging kitchen door, Susan said, “You’ve got quite a family.”

“You
see
why we don’t have a white carpet?” Enid said, and she laughed.

They stepped into the kitchen, a brightly lit room with clean yellow ceramic-tile counters and white cabinets with yellow porcelain knobs on the doors and drawers.

A young man was sitting sideways to the door, his elbows propped on the kitchen table, his head buried in his hands, bent over a large textbook.

“That’s Tom, my oldest boy,” Enid said with pride. “He’s in his senior year at college, always studying. He’s going to be a rich lawyer some day, and then he’s going to support his poor old mom and dad in luxury. Isn’t that right, Tom?” She winked at Susan to show that she was only kidding.

Tom took his hands down from his face, raised his head, and looked at Susan.

It was Ernest Harch.

Madness
, Susan thought, her heart lurching into high gear.
Sheer madness.

“This lady’s had some trouble with her car,” Enid told her son. “She needs to use our phone.”

Harch smiled and said, “Hello, Susan.”

Enid blinked. “Oh, you
know
each other.”

“Yeah,” Harch said. “We know each other real well.”

The room seemed to tilt beneath Susan’s feet.

Harch stood up.

Susan backed up, bumped against the refrigerator.

“Mom,” Harch said to Enid, “I can help Susan, if you want to get back to your TV show.”

“Well,” Enid said, looking back and forth between Susan and Harch, “I was going to make some coffee...”

“I’ve already brewed up a pot,” Harch said. “I always need coffee when I’ve got a long night of studying ahead of me. You know that, Mom.”

“Well,” Enid said to Susan, pretending not to notice the sudden tension in the room, “you see, it
is
one of my favorite shows, and I hate to miss it even one week because the story kind of continues episode to episode—”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!”
Susan said in a voice that was half whimper, half snarl. “Just cut the crap.”

Enid’s mouth fell open, and she blinked stupidly, as if she was genuinely amazed by Susan’s outburst and was utterly unable to imagine the reason for it.

Harch laughed.

Susan took a step toward the swinging door through which she and Enid had entered the kitchen. “Don’t try to stop me. I swear to God, I’ll claw your eyes and I’ll try my damnedest to bite your jugular open. I
swear
I will.”

“Are you
crazy?”
Enid Shipstat said.

Still laughing, Harch started around the table.

Enid said, “Tom, is your friend joking, or what?”

“Don’t try to stop me,” Susan warned him as she edged away from the refrigerator.

“If this is a joke, it doesn’t seem the least bit funny to me,” Enid said.

Harch said, “Susan, Susan, it’s no use. Don’t you know that by now?”

Susan turned, slammed through the kitchen door, bolted into the hall. She half expected to find the children blocking her exit, but the hallway was deserted. The kids were still sitting in the living room when she ran past the archway. Bathed in blue light and the flickering reflections of the images on the screen, they appeared to be oblivious to the shouting in the kitchen.

What kind of house
is
this? Susan wondered desperately as she hurried down the shadowy hall. What kind of kids
are
they? Little zombies in front of that TV.

She reached the front door, tried it, and found that it was locked.

Harch entered the hall from the kitchen. He was pursuing her but without urgency, just as Jellicoe and Parker had done. “Listen, you stupid bitch, we’ll get you whether you run or not.”

Susan twisted the doorknob back and forth.

Harch approached leisurely along the shadowy hall. “Tomorrow night you’ll pay for what you did to us. Tomorrow night, I’ll have been dead for seven years, and you’ll pay for that. We’ll screw you, all four of us, every which way we can, turn you inside out and upside down, screw your damned brains out—”

The door shuddered as she pulled frantically on it, but it would not open.

“—screw you like we should have that night in the cave, and then we’ll slit you wide open, all the way up the middle, and cut your pretty head off, just exactly the way we should have handled you, just like I
wanted
to do thirteen years ago.”

Susan wished that she had the courage to spin around and face him, strike him, and go for his throat with her teeth. She could do something like that if she were sure it would hurt him; it wouldn’t turn her stomach. She had the nerve and the rage to feel his blood bubbling in her mouth without gagging on it. But she was afraid that she would cut him and find that he
didn’t
bleed, that he was dead, after all. She knew that was impossible. But now that she had encountered Harch again, now that she had seen those peculiar gray eyes once more, had seen them filled with an arctic hatred, she could no longer hold on to her carefully reasoned refutation of the supernatural. Her faith in the scientific method and in logic was crumbling again; she was being reduced to babbling fear once more, losing control, hating it, despising herself, but losing control nevertheless.

Jellicoe’s words came back to her:
For you, for a little while, this is Hell.

She wrenched at the door in blind panic, and it opened with a scraping sound. It hadn’t been locked, just warped by the damp weather.

“You’re wasting your energy, baby,” Harch called after her. “Save it for Friday. I’d be angry if you were too worn out to be any fun on Friday.”

She stumbled through the door, onto the porch, and down the three steps to the walk. She ran to the gate in the picket fence, into the rain and wind.

As she pelted along the dark street, splashing through deep puddles that came over the tops of her shoes, she heard Harch calling to her from back at the house.

“... pointless... no use... nowhere to hide...”

 
 
Susan approached the Main Street Cinema by way of alleys and parking lots. Before rounding the corner of the theater, onto the well-lighted Main Street sidewalk, she looked both ways, studying the rain-slashed night for signs of the police.

The ticket booth was closed. The last show for the night was already underway; no more tickets could be sold.

She pushed through the outer doors, into the lobby. It was deserted.

But it was warm, gloriously warm.

The lights had been turned off behind the refreshment counter, which seemed odd. Since theaters made more money from selling food and beverages than they did from their share of the ticket sales, they usually kept the refreshment stand open until the last patron had gone home after seeing the last scene of the final show of the night.

From inside the theater auditorium, music swelled, and Dudley Moore’s voice was raised in drunken laughter. Obviously, the movie currently unreeling was
Arthur.

She had come to the theater because she needed to get warm and dry; but more than that, she had to have a chance to sit and think, think, think—before she lost her mind altogether. From the moment she had walked into the sheriff’s offices and had encountered Jellicoe, she had been
re
acting rather than acting, and she knew she must stop drifting wherever they pushed her. She had to regain control of events.

She had considered going up the street to the Plenty Good Coffee Shop instead of to the theater, but she had worried about the police cruising by and spotting her through the restaurant’s big plate-glass windows. By contrast, the movie theater was a dark and private sanctuary.

She crossed the clean, plushly carpeted lobby to the padded inner doors, opened one of them just far enough to slip through, and closed it quickly behind her.