Nebulon Horror Page 17

  At the top of the stairs he turned along the upper hall toward the front of the house. Two doors were open there. He paused in the first doorway. The room was a bedroom, a large one. The bed was empty but had been used. He walked in and placed a hand on it but could not decide whether it was still warm because the night itself was unusually warm.

  He went through the other doorway into a second bedroom, a smaller one. It, too, was empty. Was the house deserted after all? Could he have switched lights on and really searched it? No, that would have brought Terry Hinson running, and Chief Lighthill would not be pleased at having his stakeout interfered with.

  He went along the hall to the rear of the house and discovered some closed doors. There were five of them. Starting with the three on the right, he found the first and second rooms empty of everything, even furniture. The third door was locked.

  He turned to the doors on the left and reached for a knob. Hearing something beyond the barrier, he withdrew his hand. It was a woman singing, but not really singing. Chanting was more the word. Something like that, anyway. It had no words. At least, they were not English words. Olive had a phonograph record something like it, a recording of ancient religious chants or psalms. He had never liked it. It gave him the creeps.

  This did, too. Before reaching for the knob a second time, he had to build up his courage by deeply breathing. Then, holding his breath, he slowly turned the knob and inched the door open.

  Before him in the center of an empty room knelt Elizabeth Peckham in a dress as long and dark as the window drapes downstairs. Her feet were bare. Her back was toward him and she held a large glass bowl in her left hand. It seemed to be half full of some kind of white powder.

  There were curtains at the room's one window, blocking out most of the moonlight. Nothing was clearly Visible except the diagram Elizabeth was drawing on the floor with powder from the bowl.

  25

  Chief Lighthill finished talking on the telephone and put the instrument down. Rising, he went to the door of his office and looked out into the main room of the station. A sergeant sat at the desk there. "Did I hear Worth Blair a few minutes ago?" the chief asked.

  "He's in the back room with Wilding, Chief, getting some coffee."

  "Ask them to bring their coffee into my office, will you?"

  The two men came in without waiting for their refreshment, and Lighthill motioned them to sit.

  "Willard Ellstrom just phoned me." As best he could, he recounted what the photographer had told him about the call from Oregon. They discussed it for ten minutes, trying to find a fresh lead in it. They were still vainly batting it back and forth when Doc Broderick walked in.

  Doc nodded to them and sat down and listened. When the next stillness occurred, he filled it in by saying, "Willard called me, too. I got an idea afterward and thought I'd better bring it over here."

  He told them about Jerri Jansen's door and her apparent fear of punishment.

  Worth Blair said, "It goes right back to those books in Gustave's study. I know it does."

  "You've examined the books twice," the chief said. "You haven't found a thing."

  "I'm an incompetent cop, that's all."

  "Forget it. We're all tired."

  Blair beat his fist on his knee and shook his head from side to side while staring angrily at the floor. He said, "Damn, damn, damn." For days he had been like a man tormented by a familiar song, the name of which he could not recall though it was on the tip of his tongue. He felt that a college man with police training ought to do better.

  The chief sensed his self-disapprobation and felt sorry for him, knowing that being a good policeman was also a matter of time and experience.

  "I should have stuck to writing poetry," Blair said bitterly. "At least I'm getting a book of poems published."

  "Sure," the chief said.

  Blair stopped pounding his knee and jerked his head up. "That's it!" he shouted. He leaped to his feet and brandished his fists in the air. "That's it! That's it! The publisher!"

  The chief and Doc and Keith Wilding looked at him and waited, all of them aware that the office fairly crackled with a charge of something like electricity.

  "I was looking for something in the books," Blair said loudly, in gleeful triumph. "My mind was stuck on explaining that blasted diagram. And all the time the answer was right there in plain view! Those two books published by the Mason Nicolini Company!"

  A patient man, the chief realized his young colleague was entitled to a bit of time. "So?" he prompted gently.

  "She told us she hadn't touched a thing in that room since Gustave died. Isn't that what she said? Nothing added, nothing removed?"

  "That's what she said."

  "She's a liar. Mason Nicolini wasn't in existence when Gustave was alive. I sent them my poems when they first advertised in a writers' magazine, saying they were a new company and wanted material. Those two books never belonged to Gustave. They have to be hers. She's been using those books on life after death. She's been trying to open that door Ellstrom called you about."

  "That's why she had the key in her pocket," Lighthill said. He put his hands flat on the desk and pushed himself erect with a forceful heave. "Okay. That ties her in with the diagram, with the missing Hostetter boy and Jerri Jansen. Maybe with the whole ball of wax. Let's go hold those books up in front of her and see if she'll talk this time."

  26

  The diagram was nearly finished, Vin Otto observed. He should know. He had studied the one in the nursery long enough. The kneeling woman with her back to him continued to intone her dreary non-English chant as she dipped her hand into the bowl and let the white powder dribble from her fingers. It must have taken her a long time to learn to draw with powder. She had learned well, though. Her hand never once faltered as she completed the intricate pattern.

  The room was dark but not so dark that Vin could not see what she was doing. It would have been bright with moonlight had there been no curtains at the single window. Even with the curtains, enough light entered to make the powder seem luminous. The diagram appeared to glow with an inner life.

  Vin was not afraid. Why should he be? The kneeling figure before him was a woman and alone. She was older than he. She was merely the town librarian, Elizabeth Peckham. He stood in the doorway watching her, curious to know what would happen next.

  What happened was that the floor began to smoke.

  No, it was not smoke. It was more the kind of mist that rose from a bottomland slough in early morning. Nor was it coming from the floor. The floor had nothing to do with it. It rose from the intricate lines of the diagram. The white powder must be some kind of chemical that reacted with the air.

  Vin watched it and wondered.

  The mist or whatever it was rose slowly from the interwoven lines of powder to a height of two feet or so, retaining the form of the diagram. It was as though the diagram had sent up a vaporous duplicate of itself that would just float there. But now the floating symbol began to assume an identity of its own. Its lines broadened and blended with one another to form a transparent layer of fog, and the fog slowly flowed toward the kneeling woman as though she were somehow drawing it. It assumed the shape of a horizontal funnel-cloud and began to revolve like a small tornado with the point of the funnel aimed at Elizabeth Peckham's body. As Vin watched in amazement and now in fear, it bored its way into the woman and became part of her.

  A violent shudder seized Elizabeth as this happened. Her whole body seemed racked by it for a moment. The bowl of powder dropped from her hand and rolled unbroken away from her, spilling most of its remaining contents in a line curving part way around her. She had already stopped chanting. Vin had been too curious about the purpose of the mist to notice just when the sound of silence had taken over. Now, still shuddering, she began to rise from her knees.

  As she did so, the violent trembling gradually ceased. At full height she no longer shook at all but simply stood there tall and straight with her back still t
oward him. Then she turned to face him and he fell back a step while his eyes widened in horror.

  Vin Otto knew Elizabeth Peckham. Though he had never been inside her house before, he had met her a number of times when stopping by to pick up Jerri. He had talked to her in the library as well. He knew her to be a tall, stiff, unfriendly woman in her early thirties, not good-looking but certainly not conspicuously ugly.

  The woman confronting him now was indeed tall and stiff, but her face was a sunken mass of wrinkles. The hands dangling at her sides were claws. She was incredibly old. Her eyes . . .

  He could not really see her eyes, he realized. All he could make out was the challenging red glare they directed at him.

  She came toward him, moving slowly and stiffly in her long dark dress, and he tried to retreat and found he could not. His mind screamed at him to turn and run but his body would not obey the command. The eyes came closer. The red glare actually lit up the space between her face and his, and he could see every wrinkle and crease in her skin. Her teeth were old and rotten, disgusting him as she opened her almost lip-less mouth to speak. But he could not turn his face away from the expected foulness of her breath.

  "What you want?" she said.

  She said? It was another shock. The creature before him was or had been Elizabeth Peckham. It wore a dress he certainly had seen on Elizabeth Peckham before. The face at least faintly resembled hers even though aged beyond belief. But the voice was not her voice. It was deep. It spoke with an accent. Elizabeth would have said precisely "What do you want here?" or "What do you wish here?" Not "What you want?

  It didn't matter. He was unable to answer. Nothing his mind instructed his body to do could be done while those eyes stared at him.

  One of the dangling claws reached out to him and a straightened forefinger, scarcely more than bone with a covering of wrinkled skin, touched his chest. "You fool to come here tonight. Some other time I would be amused maybe. Tonight no, we got things to do. Stand there." The finger left his chest and pointed to a wall. The eyes staring at his face were twin fires.

  He tried to obey but could not.

  The mouth twisted down at one side and a sound of laughter cackled from it. "You can't, eh? Ha. Watching the little ones do their kindergarten tricks sometimes, I forget I have more power." The twin fires began to fade. Now they were only fire beetles glowing in the dark of the room. Now the eyes Vin Otto looked into were empty sockets.

  He felt himself retreating. His stockinged feet whispered back over the floor until one of his heels hit the wall. He stood there gazing at the ancient, wrinkled face with no eyes, and slowly the glow came back into the eyes and slowly it intensified.

  "Stay there," the voice instructed. "I let you watch for now. Be thankful you got eyes to watch with." There was a sound of giggling in the hall.

  Vin looked at the doorway. Through it came the small shapes and glowing eyes he had seen at Keith Wilding's nursery. The children. Except for the eyes, there appeared to be nothing unusual about them. They were any normal gang of kids on a lark. He counted them as they filed into the room. There were eleven. Teresa Crosser led them. One of those in line was Jerri.

  He could see them plainly—all of them, no matter where they stood in the room as they lined up to face the creature who should have been Elizabeth. There was only a pale glow of moonlight at the window, true. But the diagram on the floor gave off a glow. The eyes of the children themselves contributed to the illumination. Brightest of all were the eyes of Elizabeth.

  Jerri's eyes were not glowing, he noticed. They were those of a normal child. She had not come into the room the way the others had, whispering and giggling like kids entering a schoolroom. She seemed subdued. She stood there gazing at her feet. Some of the others turned their heads to look at her.

  "Where you come from?" the guttural voice asked.

  Vin looked at Elizabeth. He had to think of her as Elizabeth though he knew the voice and the body were not hers. She stood at the edge of the diagram he had watched her create only a few moments ago. She motioned the children to line up in a semicircle in front of her, with Jerri in the center. Again she said "Where you come from?" in a voice, an accent, a use of English that were foreign to the woman who lived here.

  "We hid at the Ianuccis' place," Teresa Crosser said. "No one's been there since we killed them."

  "No one saw you come here?"

  "Oh, no. There's a policeman watching the house, but he's stupid. We know lots of ways, like the time we brought Raymond from school. This time we came in through the backyard, past the well."

  "How'd you finally catch this one?"

  "We were at Mister Wilding's nursery," Teresa said, "and we did what you told us. When the grown-ups weren't expecting it, we stood together at a window and thought it into her head to come out to us."

  "You learning," Elizabeth said.

  "Then we thought it into her head she had to come here with us and be punished, like you said."

  "Goot." The ancient head moved up and down. Then the flaming eyes focused on Jerri Jansen and the voice said, "You know why you got to be punished?"

  "Yes," the child answered, staring at the floor.

  "Tell us why!"

  "I broke the first of all the rules, the same as Raymond did. I gave away the secret of the door."

  "You gave away the secret of the door. Yah. Come here."

  Lifting her head to look at the creature, Jerri stepped forward. Elizabeth's bony hand came to rest on her shoulder and they stood facing each other, the yellow-haired, cherub-faced daughter of Olive Jansen gazing fixedly at the monstrous face of the woman who had been Elizabeth Peckham. The child's mouth began to quiver. Against the wall Vin Otto made a superhuman effort and took one wooden step forward.

  The fiery eyes flashed a glance at him and he staggered back, his shoulders thudding against the plaster.

  "Jerri Jansen, stand there in the door," Elizabeth Peckham said, turning. The bony forefinger that had touched Vin earlier now pointed to the center of the intricate network of lines and geometric figures glowing whitely on the wooden floor. Then it curled to motion the child forward.

  "No," Jerri whimpered. "Please don't!"

  "Children."

  The semicircle of watching children closed in. Glowing eyes brightened and their target was the whimpering victim. Vin Otto struggled again to leave the wall but succeeded only in nearly drowning himself in his own sweat and could make no sound.

  The child stepped forward in a trance. She reached the spot she apparently knew she must occupy. Woodenly she turned to face her playmates.

  The eyes of the children reddened and brightened still more. No fire beetles now, they were laser beams focused on the one to be punished. But somewhere in the house a doorbell had begun ringing.

  "Wait," the crone Elizabeth instructed.

  The eyes paled. The room filled with listening as all in it, including Vin Otto, awaited a repetition of the sound.

  It came again, longer and more insistent.

  "Someone is at the front door," Teresa Crosser said calmly.

  The crone nodded. "Just wait."

  The bell rang a third time and the sound went jangling through the house. It climbed the stairs. It died away in echoes. It was followed by a splintering crash as the front door was broken open. Then by footsteps and voices.

  Vin Otto recognized the voices. Doc Broderick's said, "Upstairs. Don't waste time down here."

  The voice of Worth Blair said, "Let's have a look at that study."

  Chief Lighthill's growl said, "To hell with that. Find her."

  The intruders reached the stairs and began climbing. The sound of their ascent filled the upper hall. Vin Otto suddenly realized the grip on him had relaxed a little, perhaps because Elizabeth Peckham was so intently watching the door. With a prodigious effort he took a step away from the wall.

  No one noticed.

  He took another. He filled his chest with air and like a chained man bursti
ng his bonds hurled himself with his arms outthrust toward Jerri. Elizabeth whirled toward him with her long dark skirt flying. Her eyes brought him down.

  But not all the way. His momentum carried him to the diagram as he pitched to his knees. In agony he still scrabbled toward the child, working his arms as though swimming through pitch. His hands, arms, and body wriggled over the diagram and blurred it before the glare of the crone's eyes succeeded in stopping him.

  They did that just as Chief Lighthill appeared in the doorway. Behind the chief were Worth Blair, Keith Wilding, and Doc Broderick. The chief's hand held a revolver. He looked at Vin Otto groveling on the floor and at Elizabeth Peckham. He caught the full force of the woman's blazing eyes and staggered back as though struck by a lightning bolt.

  The tightening of the chief's trigger finger was purely reflex action. The revolver filled the room with thunder and Elizabeth Peckham clutched at her stomach, uttering an old man's croak of pain. Then slowly she sank to her knees.

  Vin Otto, the chief, and those who had come with him all saw what happened then. They saw it clearly because Blair, after the weapon went off, wiped his hand down the wall by the door in search of a light switch, and the room turned bright.

  The eyes of the crone on her knees lost their fire. The redness faded and went out. As Doc Broderick stepped forward and took her under the arms to keep her from collapsing, another change came over her. A thing of smoke or mist disengaged itself from her slumping form and swirled toward the blurred diagram. It hovered over the diagram, over Vin Otto who lay there still struggling to reach the seemingly hypnotized child in its center. The writhing mist seemed to try several times to find an opening and at last, after twisting itself into a barely visible thread, disappeared as though into the floor.

  Doc lifted Elizabeth to her feet and looked at her face and said, "My God," because her face was changing. It had been a mass of wrinkles but these were fading and her skin was becoming smooth again. She had been a creature of old age that looked more male than female. Now she was again a woman in her thirties. He had noticed her yellow teeth. They were white now and without a blemish. He had no idea what was happening.