Dance of Death (27 page)

She stuffed the notes back in her purse. The silence, the dimness, was starting to get to her. She'd take in the rest of the show some other time, in broad daylight, when the halls were bustling with people.

She had just turned to retrace her steps when she heard a loud clatter, like a board falling, in the next room.

She jumped, heart suddenly pounding in her ears. A minute passed with no further sound.

Her heart slowing again, Margo advanced to the archway and peered into the dimness of the exhibit beyond. It was a depiction of the interior of Arizona's haunting House of Hands Cave, painted by the Anasazi a thousand years ago. But the room was empty, and the quantity of cut lumber still lying around indicated that what she'd heard was just a propped-up board which had finally gotten around to falling.

She took a deep breath. The watchful stillness, the spookiness of the exhibition, had finally gotten to her. That was all.
Don't think about what happened before. The museum's changed since then, changed
utterly She was probably in the safest place in New York City. The security had been upgraded half a dozen times since the debacle seven years ago. This latest system-still being finalized-was the best money could buy. Nobody could get into this hall without a magnetic key card, and the card reader recorded the identity of each person who passed through, as well as the time.

She turned again, preparing to walk back out of the exhibition, humming to herself as a defense against the silence. But before she had even crossed the exhibit, she was stopped again by the clatter of lumber-this time from the room ahead of her.

"Hello?" she called out, her voice unnaturally loud in the quiet hall. "Somebody there?"

There was no answer.

She decided it must be the guard making his rounds, tripping over loose boards. In the old days, the guards, having discovered the tanks of grain alcohol preservative stored in the Entomology Department, were sometimes found drunk at night.
I guess some things never change.

Once again, she headed back in the direction of the entrance, wending her way through the dark exhibits, walking briskly, her heels making a reassuring
click-click
on the tiled floor.

With a sudden
snap!,
the exhibition was plunged into blackness.

An instant later, the emergency lights came to life, rows of fluorescent tubes set in the ceiling, popping and humming as they winked on, one by one.

Once again, she tried to calm her wildly beating heart. This was silly. It wasn't the first time she'd been in the museum during a power failure; they happened all the time in the old building. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, to worry about.

She had barely taken another step when she heard yet another clatter of lumber, this time from the room she had just passed through. It sounded almost deliberate-as if someone were deliberately trying to spook her.

"Who's there?" she asked, whirling around, suddenly angry.

But the hall behind her-a crimson-painted crypt arrayed with the cruel trappings of a black mass-was empty.

"If this is some kind of joke, I don't appreciate it."

She waited, tense as a spring, but there was no sound.

She wondered if it was just a coincidence: another board falling on its own, the exhibition settling down after a hectic day. She reached into her handbag, feeling around for something she might use as a weapon. There was nothing. In years past, following the trauma of the museum killings and their aftermath, she had taken to keeping a pistol in her bag. But this was a habit she'd dropped when she left the museum and went to work for GeneDyne. Now she cursed herself for letting down her guard.

Then she spied a box cutter, sitting on a worktable on the far side of the exhibit. She ran to it, snatched it up, and-holding it out aggressively before her-resumed her walk toward the entrance.

Another clatter, this one louder than the others, as if someone had tossed something.

Now Margo was sure there was someone else with her in the exhibition: someone deliberately trying to scare her. Was it possible it was somebody who objected to her editorial and was now trying to intimidate her? She'd find out from security who else had been in the hall and report them immediately.

She broke into a trot. She passed through the Japanese tea room and had just entered the looted Egyptian tomb when there was another sharp
snap!
This time the emergency lights went out and the windowless hall was plunged into total blackness.

She halted, almost paralyzed by sudden fear and a chilling sense of déjà vu as she recalled a similar moment in another exhibition, years earlier, in this same museum.

"Who is it?" she cried.

"It's just me," a voice said.

THIRTY-TWO

Smithback froze, all senses on high alert. He looked left and right, eyes straining in the greenish dark. But there was no sound; no figure rushing toward him, black upon black.

Must be my imagination,
he thought. The creepy place was enough to give anybody the heebie-jeebies.

Much as he hated to leave the faint light of the boiler room, he knew he had to move on. He needed to find the loading dock and- just as important-a good hiding place nearby. If the last ten minutes were any indication, it might take him a while.

He waited a good five minutes, listening, making sure the coast was clear. Then he crept back out of the vast room and, turning, began making his way toward what he thought must be the back of the mansion. The pale light faded away and he once again slowed his pace, putting his arms out in front of him, shuffling his feet gingerly so as not to bark his shins a second time.

He paused. Was that another sound? Was somebody down here with him?

Heart still hammering uncomfortably in his chest, he stopped to wait again. But he heard nothing but the faint squeak of mice and, after another minute, resumed his slow progress.

Suddenly, his hands encountered another wall: rough stone, slick with moisture. Following it to the right, he encountered a perpendicular wall, with what felt like a steel door bolted into it. His fingers probed along the jamb until they found the handle. He seized it, turned.

The handle refused to move.

Taking a deep breath, he yanked with all his might. No good: the thing wouldn't budge.

With a curse, he went back along the wall in the other direction. After about twenty paces, the wall ended and his hands groped once again on open space. He turned the corner, then stopped, his heart in his throat.

There was a sudden glow of light ahead, framing a turn in the corridor. Someone had just turned on the lights up ahead. Or had they been on all this time?

Smithback paused, frozen with indecision. That was the way he had to go, he was sure of it, and the light was welcoming. But was anyone waiting up there for him?

He crept forward, keeping close to the wall, and peered around the corner.

The corridor ahead was lit by a string of dim bulbs hanging from the ceiling. They were few and far between, and the light they shed was feeble, but at least he'd be able to see where he was going. Best of all, the corridor was empty. Nobody had turned on the lights, Smithback decided-they'd been on all along. He just hadn't noticed them at first. Or maybe he'd been too far away to catch their light.

He walked slowly down the stone corridor. On both sides, ancient doors lay open, yawning gulfs of barely penetrable murk. He paused to look into a few. A wine cellar, rows of bottles and heavy oaken kegs covered in dense cobwebs. An old storage room, wooden file cabinets bursting with yellowing documents. A billiard room, the felt of its table torn and curled. Just what you'd expect in a manor house that had been converted into an insane asylum for the rich.

Smithback walked on, confidence returning. It was a good plan.

The basement couldn't go on forever. He had to be getting near the loading dock. He
had
to...

There it was again: that nagging sensation he was being stalked; that someone was deliberately trying to conceal the sound of their footsteps with his own.

He stopped abruptly. He couldn't be certain, but he thought he'd heard the sound of an interrupted tread, as if someone in the darkness behind had frozen in the act of taking a step. He wheeled. The corridor, at least the lighted part, stretched empty behind him.

Smithback licked his lips. "Pendergast?" he tried to say, but his throat was thick and dry and his tongue didn't want to work. Just as well, because he knew in his gut there
was
somebody back there, and it wasn't Pendergast; oh, God, no, it wasn't Pendergast...

He began walking forward again, heart pounding furiously. Suddenly, the pools of faint light were no longer a godsend. They were treacherous, revealing... And he was suddenly terribly certain somebody
had
turned on the lights, the better to see him with.

There is a killer after you. A supremely dangerous killer of almost supernatural ability...

He fought against the instinct to run. Panic wasn't the answer here. He needed to think this through. He needed to find a dark corner, a place where he could hide. But first he had to be sure. Absolutely sure.

He passed quickly beneath another bulb and into the interval of darkness beyond. He slowed his pace, trying to get the timing right. Then, tensing, he turned abruptly.

Behind, a dark form-cloaked, strangely muffled-shrank back from the light into the dark oblivion of the basement.

At this sight, expected yet unutterably awful, Smithback's failing nerves deserted him. He turned and ran like a frightened rabbit, tearing down the corridor, heedless of any hidden obstacles to his escape.

The sound of heavy boots closing in from behind spurred him on.

Lungs burning, Smithback tore down the corridor, beyond the last of the hanging bulbs and back into absolute, endless, protective darkness...

And then something cold and unyielding slammed up against him, stopping him dead. A savage pain tore through his head and chest; white light exploded in his skull; and, as consciousness fled away and he sank to the ground, his last impression was of a claw-like grasp, hard as steel, fastening onto his shoulder.

THIRTY-THREE

"who?" Margo almost shrieked, holding the box cutter toward the sound, swinging it back and forth. "Who is it?"

"Me."

"Who is 'me' and what the hell do you want?"

"I'm looking for an honest man ... or woman, as the case may be." The voice was small and almost effeminate in its exactitude.

"Don't you come near me," she cried, brandishing the box cutter in the blackness. She tried to calm her pounding heart and focus. This was no joker: she sensed instinctively that this man was dangerous. The emergency lights would come back on shortly; they must-it was automatic. But as the seconds ticked by, she felt her terror continue to escalate. Had the man himself cut the emergency backup? It didn't seem possible. What was going on?

Struggling to master herself, she inched forward as silently as possible, sliding her feet along the floor, stepping carefully over objects as she encountered them, poking the box cutter out in different directions. She had a vague idea of where the entrance was, and for now the man seemed to have shut up-perhaps as confounded by the darkness as she was. She reached the far wall and began feeling her way along it. Then her hands encountered the cool steel of the security door. With a flood of relief, she felt for the handle, found the card reader, pulled her card from her bag, and swiped it through.

Nothing.

As quickly as it had come, the relief ebbed away, replaced by a dull, pounding fear.
Of course:
the magnetic lock was electric and the power was off. She tried opening the door, rattling the knob and throwing her weight against it, but it didn't budge.

"When the power goes off," came the thin voice, "the security system locks everything down. You can't get out."

"Get close to me and I'll cut you!" she cried, spinning around and putting her back to the door, brandishing the box cutter at the darkness.

"You wouldn't want to do that. The sight of blood leaves me faint... faint with pleasure."

In the clarity of her fear, Margo realized that she had to stop responding. She had to go on the offensive. She fought to control her breathing, control her fear. She had to do something unpredictable, surprise him, turn the tables. She took a noiseless step forward.

"What does the sight of blood do to you, Margo?" came the gentle whisper.

She inched toward the voice.

"Blood is such a strange substance, isn't it? Such a perfect, exquisite color, and so teeming with life, packed with all those red and white cells and antibodies and hormones. It's a living liquid. Even spilled on a dirty museum floor, it lives on-at least for a time."

She took another step toward the voice. She was very close now. She braced herself. Then, in one desperate motion, she sprang forward and brought the box cutter around in a slashing arc; it contacted something and ripped through it. As she jumped back, she heard a stumbling noise, a muffled sound of surprise.

She waited, tensing in the blackness, hoping she'd opened up an artery.