The Cellar Page 7

  “Is it definitely known, now, that Gus Goucher was innocent?”

  “I don’t know how innocent he was.”

  Some of the people laughed. The man looked around at her. She avoided his eyes.

  “He might’ve been rowdy and a sneak and a nogood. He was surely a stupid man. But everyone in Malcasa Point knew, the minute they clapped eyes on the poor man, that he didn’t attack the Thorns.”

  “How could they tell?”

  “He didn’t have claws, sweetie.”

  A few in the group tittered. The chubby boy arched an eyebrow at Donna and turned away. The man from the cafe still looked at her. She met his eyes. They held her, penetrated her, set warm fluid spreading in her loins. He didn’t look away for a long time. Shaken, Donna tried to recover her composure. She finally returned her attention to the tour.

  “…through a window out in the kitchen. If you’ll just step around the screen here.”

  As they moved to the front of a three-paneled papier-mâché screen that partitioned off a corner of the room, someone screamed. Several members of the group gasped with shock. Others mumbled. Some groaned with repugnance. Donna followed her daughter around the screen, glimpsed an outstretched bloody hand on the floor, and stumbled as Sandy bolted back.

  Maggie chuckled at the group’s reaction.

  Donna led Sandy around the end of the screen. Lying on the floor, one leg propped high on the dusty cushion of a couch, was the form of a woman. Her shiny eyes gazed upward. Her bloody face was twisted in a grimace of terror and agony. Tatters of her stained linen gown draped her body, covering little except her breasts and pubic area.

  “The beast tore down the screen,” said Maggie, “and leaped over the back of the couch, taking Ethel Hughes by surprise while she was reading The Saturday Evening Post. This is the very magazine she was reading at the time.” Maggie stretched her cane across the body and poked the magazine. “Everything is just as it was on that awful night.” She smiled pleasantly. “Except for the body, of course. This replica was created in wax by Mssr. Claude Dubois, at my request, way back in 1936. Every detail is guaranteed authentic, down to the tiniest bite mark on her poor neck. We used morgue photos.

  “Of course, this is the gown that Ethel actually wore that night. These dark places are made by her blood.”

  “Was there sexual assault?” the white-haired man asked in a strained voice.

  Maggie’s pleasant eyes hardened, flicking toward his face. “No,” she said.

  “That’s not what I heard.”

  “I can’t be responsible for what you heard, sir. I only know what I know, and I know more about the beast of this house than any other person, living or dead. The beast of this house has never carnally abused its victims.”

  “Then I apologize,” he said in a cold voice.

  “When the beast was done with Ethel, it rampaged through the parlor. It knocked this alabaster bust of Caesar off the mantle, breaking the nose.” The nose rested on the fireplace mantle beside the bust. “It dashed half a dozen figurines into the fireplace. It upset chairs. This fine rosewood pedestal table was thrown through the bay window. The racket, of course, awakened the rest of the household. Lilly’s room was right up there.” Maggie pointed toward the high ceiling with her cane. “The beast must’ve heard her stirring. It went for the stairs.”

  Silently, she led the group out of the parlor and up a broad stairway to the second floor hall. They turned to the left. Maggie stepped through a side doorway and into a bedroom.

  “We’re now above the parlor. Here’s where Lilly Thorn was sleeping the night of the beast attack.” A wax figure, dressed in a lacy pink gown, was sitting upright, staring fearfully over the brass scrollwork at the foot of the bed. “When the commotion woke Lilly up, she dragged the dressing table from there”—she pointed her cane at the heavy rosewood table and mirror beside the window—“to there, barricading the door. Then she made her escape through the window. She jumped to the roof of the bay window below, then to the ground.

  “It’s always been a wonder to me that she didn’t try to save her children.”

  They followed Maggie out of the bedroom.

  “When the beast found that he couldn’t get into her room, he came down the hall this way.”

  They passed the top of the stairs. Ahead, four Brentwood chairs blocked the center of the corridor. Clothesline was strung from one chair to the next, closing off the center space. The members of the group squeezed between one of the lines and the wall.

  “This is where we’ll put our new display. The figures are already on order, but we don’t expect to have them much before spring.”

  “That’s a shame,” the man with the two children told his wife in a sarcastic voice.

  Maggie entered a door to the right. “The beast found this door open,” she said.

  The windows of the room faced the wooded hillside behind the house. The room’s two brass beds looked much like the one in Lilly’s room, but the covers were heaped in disarray. A rocking horse with faded paint stood in one corner, next to the wash stand.

  “Earl was ten,” Maggie said. “His brother, Sam, was eight.”

  Their wax bodies, torn and chewed, lay sprawled face down between the two beds. Both wore the remains of striped nightshirts that concealed little except their buttocks.

  “Let’s go,” said the man with the two children. “This is the most crude, tasteless excuse for a voyeuristic thrill I’ve ever come across.”

  His wife smiled apologetically at Maggie.

  “Twelve bucks for this!” the man spat. “Good God!” His wife and children followed him out of the room.

  A trim woman in a white blouse and shorts took her teenage son by the elbow. “We’re going, too.”

  “Mother!”

  “No argument. We’ve both seen too much already.”

  “Aw geez!”

  She tugged him out the door.

  When they were gone, Maggie laughed quietly. “They left before we got to the best part,” she said.

  Nervous laughter whispered through the remaining members of the group.

  2.

  “We lived sixteen nights in this house before the beast struck.” She led them through the corridor, past the blocking chairs and past the stairway. “My husband, Joseph, he had a distaste for the rooms where the murders happened. That’s partly why we left ’em well enough alone, and settled ourselves elsewhere. Cynthia and Diana weren’t so squeamish. They stayed in the boys’ room we just left.”

  She took the group through a doorway on the right, across from Lilly’s bedroom. Donna hunted the floor for wax bodies, but found none, though a four-paneled papier-mâché screen blocked one corner and window.

  “Joseph and I were sleeping here. The night was the seventh of May 1931. That’s more than forty years back, but it’s burned in my mind. There’d been a good deal of rain that day. It slowed down after dark. We had those windows open. I could hear the drizzle outside. The girls were fast asleep at the end of the hall, and the baby, Theodore, was snug in the nursery.

  “I fell asleep, feeling all peaceful and safe. But long about midnight, I was awakened by a loud crash of glass. The sound came from downstairs. Joseph, who also heard it, got up real quiet and tiptoed over here to the chest. He always kept his pistol here.” Opening a top drawer, she pulled out a Colt .45 service automatic. “This pistol. It made a frightful loud sound when he worked its top.” Clamping her cane under one arm, she gripped the black hood of the automatic and quickly slid it back and forward with a scraping clamor of metal parts. Her thumb gently lowered the hammer. She returned the gun to its drawer.

  “Joseph took the pistol with him and left the room. When I heard his footsteps on the stairs, I stole out of bed, myself. Quiet as I could, I started down the hall. I had to get to my children, you see.”

  The group followed her into the corridor.

  “I was right here, at the top of the stairway, when I heard gunshots from
downstairs. I heard a scream from Joseph such as I’d never heard before. There were sounds of a scuffle, then scampering feet. I stood right here, scared frozen, listening to footsteps climb the stairs. I wanted to run off, and take my children to safety, but fear held me tight so I couldn’t move.

  “Out of the darkness below me came the beast. I couldn’t see how it looked, except it walked upright like a man. It made kind of a laugh, and then it leaped on me and dragged me down to the floor. It ripped me with its claws and teeth. I tried to fight it off, but of course I was no match for the thing. I was preparing myself to meet the Lord when little Theodore started crying in his nursery at the end of the hall. The beast climbed off me and ran to the nursery.

  “Wounded as I was, I chased after it. I had to save my baby.”

  The group followed her to the end of the corridor. Maggie stopped in front of a closed door.

  “This door stood open,” she said, and tapped it with her cane. “In the light from its windows I saw the pale beast drag my child from the cradle and fall upon him. I knew that little Theodore was beyond my power to help him.

  “I was watching, filled with horror, when a hand tugged at my nightdress. I found Cynthia and Diana behind me, all in tears. I took a hand of each, and led them silently away from the nursery door.”

  She took the group again past the rope-connected chairs.

  “We were just here when the snarling beast ran out of the nursery. This was the nearest door.” She opened it, revealing a steep, narrow staircase with a door at the top. “We ducked inside, and I got the door shut only a second ahead of the beast. The three of us ran up these stairs as fast as our legs could carry us, stumbling and crying out in the darkness. At the top, we passed through that door. I bolted it after us. Then we sat in the musty blackness of the attic, waiting.

  “We heard the beast come up the stairs. It made laughing, hissing sounds. It sniffed the door. And then, somehow, with such quickness we couldn’t move, the door burst open and the beast sprang among us. In the first moments, it killed Cynthia and Diana. Then it leaped onto me. It held me down with its claws, and I waited for it to tear out my life. But it didn’t. It just stayed on top of me, breathing its foul breath against my face. Then it climbed off. It scampered down the attic and vanished. I have never seen the beast since that night. But others have.”

  3.

  “Why didn’t it kill you?” asked the girl whose round face bloomed with acne.

  “I’ve often wondered that. Though I’ll never know, this side of the grave, I sometimes think the beast let me stay alive ‘to report its cause aright to the unsatisfied,’ as the dying Hamlet asked Horatio to do. Maybe it didn’t want another Gus Goucher strung up for its crimes.”

  “It seems to me,” said the white-haired man, “that you give this beast a great deal of credit.”

  “Let’s see the attic,” said the chubby, critical boy.

  “I don’t show the attic. I keep it locked—always.”

  “The nursery, then.”

  “I never show that, either.”

  “You don’t have more dummies?”

  “There’re no wax figures of my kin,” she said.

  With arched eyebrows, the boy scanned the group as if looking for others who shared his disdain for the woman’s selective presentation of history. “Well, what about those other two guys? They weren’t your kin.”

  “The two guys this young man refers to, they’re Tom Bagley and Larry Maywood.” She shut the door to the attic staircase and led the group back down the corridor to her bedroom. “Tom and Larry were twelve years old. I knew both of them well. They came along on several tours, and probably knew more about Beast House than just about anyone.

  “Lord knows why they didn’t have more sense than to come in here at night. They weren’t ignorant like those Ziegler characters: They knew good and well what to expect. But they come breaking in, anyhow. This was back in ’51.

  “They were in the house a long spell, nosing around. They tried to pick the locks of the nursery and attic, but couldn’t. They were snooping through this room when the beast came.

  “It took down little Tom Bagley, and Larry Maywood ran for the window.”

  Maggie pulled aside the papier-mâché screen that blocked the window and several feet of floor space in front of it. Some of the group jumped back. The girl with acne whirled away, gagging. A woman muttered, “Really!,” her voice rich with disgust.

  The wax figure of Larry Maywood, trying to raise the window, was looking back at the same mangled body as the other spectators in the room. Its clothes were shredded, leaving it bare except for the buttocks. The skin of its back was deeply scored. Its head lay half a foot from the pulpy neck, face up, eyes open, mouth twisted wide.

  “Leaving his friend at the mercy of the beast, Larry Maywood jumped from…”

  “I’m Larry Maywood!” cried the white-haired man. “And you are lying! Tommy was dead! He was dead before I jumped. I saw the beast twist off his head! I’m no coward! I didn’t leave him there to die!”

  Sandy squeezed Donna’s hand tightly.

  One of the children began to cry.

  “This is slander! Out-and-out slander!” Spinning away, the man marched out of the room. His friend from the cafe followed.

  “I’ve seen about enough,” Donna whispered.

  “Me too.”

  “That concludes our tour for this morning, ladies and gentlemen.” Maggie left the room, followed by the group. “We do have a gift shop on the first floor, where you can purchase an illustrated booklet on the history of Beast House. You can also purchase 35 mm color slides of the house, including the murder scenes. We have Beast House T-shirts, bumper stickers, and all sorts of fine souvenirs. The Ziegler display will be ready next spring. You won’t want to miss it.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  1.

  “Imagine the gall of that hag, suggesting I ran out on Tommy to save my own skin! That miserable bag of guts, that abomination! I’ll take legal action!”

  “I wish you hadn’t leaked your identity.”

  “Well, I’m sorry.” He shook his head, frowning in misery. “But really, Judge, you heard what she said about me.”

  “I heard.”

  “The contemptible vial of swamp gas!”

  “Excuse me!” a woman’s voice called from behind.

  “Oh dear,” Larry muttered.

  They looked around at the woman hurrying up the sidewalk toward them, a blond girl in tow. Jud recognized them both.

  “We’ll make a run for the car,” Larry whispered.

  “I don’t think that’s necessary.”

  “Judge, please! She’s undoubtedly a reporter or some other species of uncouth snoop.”

  “She looks couth to me.”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake!” He stamped his foot. “Please!”

  “You go to the car, and I’ll check her out.” Jud held out the keys. Larry snatched them away and hurried off several paces ahead of the woman. “He has a healthy fear of the press,” Jud told her.

  “I’m not the press,” she said.

  “I didn’t think so.”

  She smiled.

  “But if you’re not the press, why did you chase us?”

  “Afraid you’d get away.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes.” Head tilted to one side, she shrugged. “I’m Donna Hayes.” She offered a hand. Jud held it lightly. “This is my daughter, Sandy.”

  “I’m Jud Rucker,” he said, still holding her hand. “What can I do for you?”

  “We saw you at breakfast.”

  “I didn’t,” Sandy said.

  “Well, I did.”

  Jud frowned, enjoying himself and still holding her hand. “Oh yes,” he finally said. “You were at the table behind me, weren’t you?”

  Donna nodded. “We were on the tour, too.”

  “Right. Did you enjoy it?”

  “I thought it was dreadful.”

  “
I liked it,” the girl said. “It was so gross.”

  “It was gross, all right.” He turned his eyes to Donna and stayed quiet, waiting.

  “Anyway,” she said. She took a deep breath. In spite of her smile, she looked worried.

  “How’d you like that crazy woman before the tour?” Sandy asked him.

  The worry suddenly vanished from Donna’s face. In a voice thick with sincerity, she said, “That’s why I wanted to see you, why I…chased you the way I did.” She smiled shyly. “I wanted to tell you how refreshing it was, the way you stuck up for that woman. The way you helped her. It was such a thoughtful thing to do.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You should’ve given that turkey a knuckle sandwich,” Sandy told him.

  “I gave the matter lots of thought.”

  “You should’ve punched out his lights.”

  “He backed off.”

  “Sandy has a taste for violence,” Donna said.

  “Well,” said Jud. He let the single word stand like a period, ending his part of the conversation.

  “Well,” Donna echoed. Though she kept her smile, Jud could see her start to deflate. “I just wanted to let you know…how much I admired the way you helped the woman.”

  “Thank you. Nice to meet both of you.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Sandy said.

  Donna started to pull her hand away, but Jud tightened his grip. “Do you have time for a Bloody Mary?” he asked.

  “Well…”

  “Sandy,” he said, “how about a Coke or 7-up?”

  “Sure!”

  “How about it?” he asked Donna.

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “I think the Welcome Inn should have what we’re looking for. Are you on foot?”

  “We’ve been on them all morning,” said Donna.

  “In that case, I’ll personally chauffeur you to the door.” He walked beside them to his Chrysler, and found it locked. Larry grinned out at him, brimming with satisfaction. Jud made a cranking motion. With a humming sound, the passenger window opened.

  “Yes?” Larry asked innocently.