House Of Blood Part 5

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A scream of pain, judging from the shrillness of the cry.

Karen's heart lurched.

Shane!

She vaulted the guardrail, scrambled up the slight rise, and plunged into the woods. She didn't realize what an impediment her alcohol-slowed reflexes would be until she ran into a low-hanging tree limb a second after seeing it. The limb smacked her forehead and sent her tumbling to the forest floor, where the back of her head struck something hard and unyielding. She never lost consciousness, but everything went gray for a moment, and she only caught a fuzzy glimpse of the creature that emerged from the shadows to stand over her. She sensed only that it was something very large and entirely outside her experience. It seemed to contemplate her for a moment, the way a patron of a restaurant would study a slab of meat prior to impaling it with knife and fork, then its head jerked up at the sound of her approaching friends.

They were calling her name, getting closer by the moment.

Then it was gone.

Karen blinked her eyes in surprise. There hadn't even been enough time to be properly scared, but now a tsunami-sized wave of terror was sweeping in, oh, yes.

"What the f.u.c.k was that?" she panted.

She heard a crackling of branches somewhere in front of her, then a brutal burst of knowledge arrived in her head fully formed.

Shane had already encountered that... thing.

Which meant...

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"SHANE!"

She started to get up, but then a hand fell on her shoulder and held her down. She screamed.

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Eddie proceeded the only way imaginable under the circ.u.mstances-with the most extreme degree of caution he could muster. He was in the kitchen of The Master's home. It looked much the same as he remembered from his prior experience. Here was the same large, wellstocked pantry. In the middle of the room was a large island with cupboards and a sink. Beyond it was a table, the same one at which he'd partaken of his last normal meal prior to his imprisonment Below.

He'd arrived here some six months earlier, a lost and weary traveler in search of a telephone. He had been returning from a business trip to North Carolina, where he'd a.s.sisted in setting up a new distribution center for the company that employed him, when his car-a year-old Lexus-began to sputter and cough. He'd pulled off the highway in desperation, figuring he would call Triple A

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from his cell phone. Only his cell phone, a brand-new, company-provided Motorola, had also decided to stop working.

Eddie was a low-key guy, laid-back and not given to fits of temper; he chalked up the mechanical failures to a quirk of fate, the kind of thing he could turn into a funny story at the next corporate meeting. So he got out of his car and started walking, certain he would soon reach a place to crash for the night. In the morning he would call Triple A from a phone provided by the hotel. They would tow his car and soon he would be on his way in a Hertz rental.

Things didn't work out quite that way.

He walked and walked for what seemed like forever. He was good at judging distance by foot from his days on the high school track team. A mile went by. Two. Three. He began to tire. Huffing and puffing, he stopped to try his cell phone one more time. Nothing. So he trudged on. Five miles and no sign of civilization. Okay, there was a winding asphalt road, bordered on each side by guardrails. Clearly man-made stuff. But he hadn't encountered even one road sign, not one billboard, nothing at all to indicate he was in a populated area. Which was just absurd. He knew where he was. He'd pa.s.sed through Knoxville not long before the Lexus started misbehaving. So there should be something. Some tiny telltale indication of a human presence.

But there was nothing.

He was beginning to despair when his eyes detected the faint pinpoint of a distant car's headlights winding along a curve in the road. He listened to it draw nearer, suddenly

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all too aware of how rarely he himself stopped for hitchhikers, which was approximately never. As the car entered a straightaway that led to where Eddie was standing, he stepped into the center of the road and began waving his arms up and down.

He remembered thinking, I look like a crazy man.

The car, a sleek black Bentley slowed down as it approached him, but instead of going around him it drew to a stop beside him and the driver's-side window whirred down. He walked over and peered down into the face of a stern-faced woman, whose hair was pulled back into a tight black bun. Her face was implacable and ghost-pale as she listened to his tale of woe.

After babbling for what seemed like a day or so, Eddie concluded with, "So, if you could get me to the nearest hotel, I would be forever in your debt." He fumbled for his wallet. "I could pay you a generous-"

The woman's expression didn't change as she said, "Get in."

Eddie thought there was something strange about her, but he'd been in no position to hesitate or question why she was so willing to pick up a total stranger. She told him only that she would take him to her employer's house, where he could use a phone.

"A hotel would be better," he'd said.

To which she hadn't replied.

He was happy to no longer be stranded, so he didn't press the matter.

And so it was that he'd arrived at the house he was once again in. An una.s.suming two-story abode that sat hunched against an East Tennessee mountain. He was too tired to

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be disturbed by its utter isolation. He wouldn't know it for a few more hours yet, but his life as a free man had come to an end the moment the front door swung shut. There had been times since when he'd thought this season in h.e.l.l would never end, but maybe there was hope after all.

So get moving, he thought.

He padded slowly through the kitchen on his bare feet. He stopped at the island to extract a long carving knife from a wooden block. The knife would provide precious little defense against The Master himself, but just being armed at all made him feel a little better.

A few more quiet, shuffling steps and he was out of the kitchen. He peered around a corner into a hallway. To his left, at the far end of the hallway, was the closed front door of the house. He willed himself to resist the impulse to immediately dash in that direction. He had to be patient, had to make sure no one was watching. To his immediate right was a staircase that led to a series of bedrooms and The Master's chambers.

The devil's playground.

The memory of his one night ensconced in one of the second-floor rooms made him s.h.i.+ver-a return trip to that place would be nearly as bad as a return Below.

He shuffled past the staircase and peered around another corner. He saw a plushly decorated living room with opposing sofas, a coffee table, bookshelves, and a bar. Eddie remembered this room, too-it was where The Master entertained "guests." He heard a low murmur of voices issuing from the far end of the room.

Two male voices.

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Eddie sucked in a breath.

One of them- The Master.

The timbre of that hated voice was unmistakable.

Eddie edged away from the corner and stood staring at the closed front door, wondering if he should make a run for it now or spend more precious time looking for an alternate way out. He was smart enough to know the latter choice was the only sensible one, but something primal in him rebelled against the notion of spending even one extra moment in this house of horrors.

Gotta get out, he thought.

Eddie trembled and took a shaky step toward the door. His heart racing, he took another step. And another. He kept expecting The Master to suddenly appear before him, all imposing six-feet-plus of him, leering at Eddie like a raincoat-wearing pervert as he closed in for a quick kill. Or perhaps he would toy with Eddie the way a cat does with a trapped mouse. The latter seemed far more likely.

He took another careful step.

Then froze.

s.h.i.+t!

He heard a m.u.f.fled jangle of keys from the other side of the door. His breath caught in his throat as he watched the k.n.o.b begin to turn. It was the b.i.t.c.h, returning with yet another new fly caught in The Master's web. The s.a.d.i.s.tic "housekeeper." Ms. Wickman, she was called, but Eddie had come to think of her as "lisa of the Manor." She wasn't quite as voluptuous and strangely alluring as Dyanne Thome, that cinematic icon of bondage and discipline, but this woman was the real thing, the personal overseer

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of the methodical torture administered to The Master's newly arrived guests.

There wasn't anyone he feared as much as The Master.

But one person came close.

lisa of the motherf.u.c.king Manor.

Without thinking about what he was doing-there wasn't time for thought-Eddie turned and raced up the stairs. When he remembered where he was going and the horrors that awaited him, he had to suppress a scream. An impulse to turn around and go back flashed through him, but he dismissed it as the closed option it had obviously become. He reached the second-floor landing, looked down the long, empty hallway he'd entered, and trembled. There were rooms here that resembled normal bedrooms, but they were all equipped with cleverly concealed implements of the sort favored by sophisticated s.a.d.i.s.ts everywhere. Other rooms, usually locked to prevent premature entrance by new arrivals, were full-scale torture chambers.

Eddie performed a speedy a.n.a.lysis of his current situation and decided death at his own hands might be the best option all around. He looked at the carving knife and tried to imagine piercing his own flesh with it. But not his wrists, of course. Too slow a way to get the job done. He'd have to slash his own throat.

He grimaced at the image.

Aw, f.u.c.k it.

The door downstairs opened, and he heard his suspicions confirmed. Ms. Wickman had an accent that was vaguely British, like the way an expatriate Brit might sound after decades of living in the United States. Then there was another voice, a refined southern gentleman's voice.

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Some unfortunate old duffer who had no idea how dire his circ.u.mstances really were.

Eddie, unfortunately, was in no position to warn him.

He made himself focus on the content of their conversation. There was something about The Master being busy at the moment. In the meantime, the b.i.t.c.h said, she could show him to his room. There came a creak of old wood as the two began ascending the staircase.

The knife almost slipped from Eddie's hand. He was shaking again. He clenched his hand tighter around the handle and willed the tremors still as he backed down the hallway. He was scared s.h.i.+tless. There was no way out, no obvious escape route available, but perhaps he could find a place to hide. He tried the k.n.o.bs of the doors as he pa.s.sed them, finding each one locked until his hand closed around one that yielded about midway down the hallway. He rushed into the room, then pushed the door quickly but gently shut. He turned the lock and backed into the room.

He turned away from the door and gasped at the sight of a girl emerging from the bathroom. She saw him a second later and opened her mouth wide. Eddie braced for the scream that would bring death running, but a low, susurring sound emanated from that open cavity. Eddie stared at her for a moment, his face a study in perplexity. Then it dawned on him-she was mute. She was also young, maybe fifteen or sixteen, with long black hair and porcelain skin. She was wearing a long dress made of velvet that exposed small, ghostly shoulders, and there was a scarlet choker around her thin throat. A tiny black kitten purred in her embrace even as it glared at Eddie.

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