Midnight's Lair (30 page)

    Long hair. The hair didn't necessarily prove that these were women, but their hips seemed to flare out and their rumps looked female.

    Women, all right.

    But neither one was Paula.

    And neither wore a guide's blue uniform.

    'What do you see?' Chris asked.

    'They're not our kids,' he said outright to save her even a moment of wondering. 'Two dead bodies. Female.'

    'My God. You're sure…?'

    'Darcy wore one of those uniforms like Lynn?'

    'Yes.'

    'That's what I figured. She's not one of them.' He saw a square-cornered, metal boat a short distance to the left. Bundles of clothing rested on seats. 'And there's an empty boat. There's a lake over here.' he added.

    'The Lake of Charon,' Chris said.

    'What's it doing here?'

    'Ely's Wall dammed the stream. They take you over the lake on those boats.'

    From his perch on the edge of the wall, Hank could see inside the boat. He didn't see any oars or motor.

    'How big is this lake?' he asked.

    'I don't know, it's maybe fifty yards to the docks. It's not very deep, though. I think Darcy said four or five feet.'

    That was about the depth he would've guessed from the look of the rocky bottom, but he knew that the clear water could distort his perspective and the lake might be considerably deeper than it appeared.

    'I guess we take a dip,' he said.

    He climbed through the hole, sat on the wall's edge and lowered his legs into the lake. Holding the lantern high, he scooted forward and dropped. The water wrapped him to the chest. Its chill squeezed his breath out. 'Uhhh.'

    'You all right?'

    'Colder than a witch's… nose.'

    Turning around, he saw Chris appear in the opening. 'Just a minute,' he said. He waded to the boat. Draped across a seat near the front were a plaid shirt and blue jeans similar to those worn by the dead woman. Propped against the seat was a four-foot length of board, the upper half of it burnt black. Another pair of pants rested on a seat near the middle. He saw a grey sweatshirt there. And a green sweater (not Paula's).

    Hank set the lantern on one of its seats, then returned to the wall and reached up. Chris handed the baby to him. He held the small, squirming bundle against the side of his face.

    Chris crawled onto the edge of the hole. As she positioned herself to jump, she stared past Hank - a look of revulsion on her face. Then she glanced down, and leaped. She entered the water with a small splash. Her eyes went wide and she gritted her teeth.

    'Nippy, huh?'

    'Gawd.' She waded to him, moving stiffly.

    'You okay?'

    She responded with a stiff nod.

    'You want the baby or the lantern?'

    'Baby,' she gasped.

    Hank passed it to her. She nuzzled the infant against her cheek. It made quiet cooing sounds.

    She stayed at Hank's side as he waded back to the boat.

    'That piece of wood there,' he said. 'Looks like they used it for a torch. See the clothes? Must've been at least two men in the boat. And those women.'

    'And Darcy,' Chris muttered. 'She would've been with them.'

    'Maybe not.'

    'She's the leader.'

    'She might've stayed behind. But even if she was here… whoever belongs to the second set of clothes must've gotten away. Probably others did, too.' He lifted the lantern off its seat. 'The whole group might've been here.'

    'It takes two boats to hold everyone.'

    'Well, the other boat doesn't seem to be around. Maybe the rest of them got away in the second boat.'

    'Maybe.' Chris sounded doubtful.

    'Wonder where the oars are,' he said.

    'Aren't any,' Chris told him. 'Spikes in the walls. When I was on the tour yesterday, Darcy stood up and… pulled the boat from spike to spike.'

    'Weird.'

    'It's how they do it.'

    'Why don't you climb aboard, I'll push.'

    'Don't you think…? Quicker if we walk.'

    'Probably, but…'

    'Let's hurry.'

    'Yeah.'

    They walked, staying close to the side of the boat so Chris wouldn't have to pass near the bodies. Hank would've liked to take a look at them and see how they were killed, but he refrained for Chris's sake. Besides, she was right. They had to hurry. Every second might count.

    Someone, he was sure, had come through the hole in Ely's Wall and murdered at least three of those who had approached in the boat.

    Someone, perhaps, who had lived in that strange nest with the girl he'd killed.

    He thought about how she had attacked him for no reason. With a weapon of bone and razor blades.

    He thought about her teeth, filed to points.

    Some kind of savage.

    What the hell was she doing there?

    Did others live in that place?

    Was one of them responsible for the hideous display of human remains they'd found along the banks of the stream?

    How many are there?

    Where are they now?

    He heard only the sounds of his breathing, Chris's breathing, quiet gurgles and coos from the baby, the soft sloshing sounds of their own movement through the lake.

    He wished he did hear others.

    Savages coming toward them out of the darkness.

    Let them attack.

    
At least I'd know they're here and not chasing down Paula somewhere.

    'I'm scared, Hank.'

    'Yeah, me too.' He put a hand on her back.

    'What if Darcy and Paula…?'

    'I'm sure they're all right.'
Sure I am
, he thought. He was only sure of his hope. He knew that hope wasn't enough. You hope for the best, you hope against the worst, but what he'd learned during two tours in Vietnam was that the worst could happen and often it pushed beyond the boundaries of what he had hoped against, pushed into the black territories of the unthinkable.

    But hope was all he had, so he clung to it.

    'Even if they were here,' he said, 'it doesn't mean… How many people were on the tour?'

    'Thirty or forty, I guess.'

    'That many couldn't have been… And we've only seen three bodies.'

    'So far,' Chris said.

    Seconds later, as if to shrink the hope, they found another body. Chris saw it first, gasped and flinched back.

    This body didn't float. It hung spread-eagled in the lake a couple of feet below the surface. Like the two women, its long hair was spread out, drifting around its head like a strange seaweed.

    'A man,' Hank said. Stepping in front of Chris, he reached down into the water and grabbed the man's hair. It felt thick and greasy. He lifted. As the head came up dripping, he turned the face toward him.

    One glimpse, and Hank knew that this was not a man from the tour.

    Bushy eyebrows. A heavy black beard. Skin so white it may never have been touched by sunlight. Pointed teeth.

    When Hank was a boy, his father used to frighten him with tales of the Wild Man of Borneo. He'd loved the stories and begged for more, though sometimes the Wild Man stalked him through nightmares.

    Staring at the face of this dead savage, Hank felt as if he'd slid back into his childhood.

    Shivers crawled up his back.

    'The Wild Man of Borneo,' he muttered. 'In the flesh.'

    'It's one of them?' Chris asked in a small, high voice.

    'Just like the girl.' He plunged the head down into the water and pushed. The body glided away, feet first. Hank rubbed his hand on the leg of his warm-up pants. When he finished, it still seemed coated with an oily film.

    They started walking again.

    He kept his hand underwater, kept rubbing it on his leg.

    He wished he had a bar of soap.

    
Forget about it,
he told himself.
So the guy had dirty hair. Real big deal. You were up to your wrists in a dead girl's guts ten or fifteen minutes ago.

    But this. Such a little thing.

    Like finding a stranger's hair in your soup.

    'I wonder how many others…' Chris said. She was looking around.

    
Won't even see the ones submerged like that guy,
Hank thought.
Not till we're right on top of them.

    Those with enough water in their lungs would stay below the surface, he knew, until they started to decompose and the trapped gasses popped their bloated carcasses to the top.

    'At least he was on the right side,' Hank said.

    'They might be all around us,' she whispered.

    'The more like him, the better.'

    'It's… almost worse than the other place.'

    Hank knew she meant the madman's gallery. She was right. There, you could see the things.

    And there, it had never crossed Hank's mind that one of the corpses might be his own daughter.

    She could be here.

    
No!

    
She's fine. Darcy's fine. Others had been killed, not our girls. The horror stops there. It has to.

    Hank, like Chris, scanned the surface of the lake.

    And then, near the far reach of the lantern's glow, he saw the dull gleam of a square-cornered boat. A few steps more, and a dock came into view.

    Chris moaned.

    She saw it, too - another body. This one lying flat on the floor of the dock.

    Cold dread seized Hank.

    They waded closer.

    A woman's body. Naked. Torn up.

    Faceless in the distance and dim light.

    She seemed taller, thinner than Paula, but…

    Clothing lay scattered beside her.

    A white sweater and blouse and kilt? A blue uniform?

    He just couldn't see!

    Chris began to weep.

    Hank lunged forward, leaning into the chest-high water, trying to run. The water pressed against him like hands holding him off. But he waded closer and closer, leaving Chris behind.

    The clothing.

    Those were blue slacks in a pile beside the body's hip.

    Not Paula's kilt. But pants like Darcy's.

    
Oh God, no!

    'Chris, stay back!'

    'What?'

    He trudged past the bow of the boat, rammed the lantern down on the dock, and thrust himself out of the water. On hands and knees, he crawled to the side of the corpse. The flesh gaped with deep wounds as if chunks had been chewed out. The left arm had been torn from its socket and partly devoured.

    The face was intact.

    A face frozen in a rictus of horror.

    A face that had never been beautiful - not like Chris, not like Chris's daughter must be.

    And it was the face of a woman who must have been pushing forty.

    Hank let out a long, trembling sigh.

    He looked over his shoulder. Chris was yards away, a dim shape in the faint glow that reached her from the lantern.

    Hank was pleased; she'd done as he asked and stayed put.

    'It's all right,' he said.

    
It's all right? The woman's dead. They ate at her. And it's all right?

    'Not one of our girls,' he explained.

    Chris nodded and started forward. Not wanting her to see how the body had been ravaged, Hank slid the severed arm against its side. He covered the body from the waist down with the slacks, then spread the blouse over the torso. He didn't try to hide the face.

    Crawling to the edge of the dock, he reached down. Chris handed the baby to him. From the slow sound of its breathing, he guessed it was asleep. He marvelled that the child could sleep through a situation like this.

    
Lucky kid,
he thought.
Doesn't have the foggiest idea what's going on.

    Probably thinks Chris is its mother.

    Chris boosted herself up and scrambled onto the dock. She looked at the corpse. She sniffed and wiped her eyes. 'Why did you cover her?'

    'She's… partly eaten.'

    'They ate her?'

    'Must've worked on her for a while. And I think… too much was gone for one person to have done it. I'd guess there must've been a few of them.'

    'Aw, Jesus.'

    'In a way, it's looking better.'

    'How can you say that? They…'

    'That guy on the other side of the wall, he hadn't been dead very long. An hour at the most. Then, some kind of struggle took place here at the lake. That used up some time. Then, those bastards didn't go straight after the survivors. (If there were survivors, he thought.) They stuck around for a while and had themselves a meal. So they probably don't have much of a headstart on us.'

    'You think we might have a chance of catching up with them?'

    'We might,' he said, though that was almost too much to hope for.

    He picked up the lantern. They got to their feet and started walking quickly up the dock.

    'Another thing in our favour,' Hank said. 'They probably don't have any light, and we do. That means they won't be able to move as fast as…'

    He went silent.

    Out of the darkness ahead came faint, human voices shouting and screaming.

    
We're too late!

    

    

    Darcy trotted through the black, one hand on Greg's bare shoulder, the other hand gliding along the metal bar of the railing.