Spawn of Hell (16 page)

“Susan Benson, will you come out now?”

The spooky sensations were too much for her, and she turned, responding to the urgency in Emily’s voice. She could always come back here some other day. She’d talk Doug into taking her, and they’d bring flashlights and a picnic lunch and a blanket . . .

Something touched her leg. She froze, trying to see what it was. Then she felt something crawling over the one arm that still hung by her side, as the other had come up to cover her mouth. She opened her lips to let out a scream, but the sudden sharp pain that shot through her ankle, right down to the very bone, cut it off before it could sound. She felt something wet and slimy and smooth push against her, knocking her to the floor of the cave. Her ears and nose were filled with the sounds and smells of the creatures, but her eyes could still see nothing. Whatever it was, it was on top of her now, and she sensed that there was more than one of them surrounding her. She felt life rapidly draining away.

Outside in the woods her friends were losing patience. “Look how dark it’s getting,” Emily pouted, pointing to the sky with a needless gesture.
“Will you come on, Sue?”

Jack looked disturbed. “She doesn’t answer. She might be hurt,” he said.

“Or maybe she’s playing a joke on us,” Doug snickered. “I’ll go get her.” He set off toward the cave, shaking his head with annoyance, his lips set in a grin which suggested that he was used to his girlfriend’s behavior.

Jack and Emily went after him. It was so dark now that although the sun had not yet completely set, the moon stood out clearly in the sky. A full moon.

And when the horrible, agonized screams of the three youths rang out from the confines of the cave, the moon was the only one who heard them.

It was too early and too chilly that morning for David and Anna to say much of anything to each other. Upon his arrival, Anna had simply thanked David again, invited him in for a quick cup of coffee—Derek was nowhere to be seen—and then led him to the garage where they kept their car. They were taking Derek’s compact job, a smooth-riding and comfortable vehicle that, Anna claimed, got very good mileage. The man seemed to take forever until he drove the vehicle up the ramp. A lot of fussing with keys; Anna was nervous. Finally they pulled out into the early morning Manhattan traffic. Considering all, however, Anna seemed to be holding herself together pretty well. By 10:35 they were on the road to Milbourne.

David had had the good fortune to fall asleep quickly upon entering bed last night, and to sleep well and deeply, without any dreams, at least without any that he remembered. He hadn’t had a chance to mull over the fact that this would be the first time he had been in an automobile since the day of the accident. For just a second, at the garage, he had panicked, afraid that Anna was going to ask him to drive. Luckily, she hadn’t. He had to get used to simply being in a car before he could take over the wheel again. Not that he’d been driving
that
day, but the accident had left him with a fear of holding his—or anyone else’s—life in his hands on the highway.

By the time they approached the bridge out of the city, David felt enough at ease to picture himself offering to drive on the way back. Or was it only an illusion he was perpetrating upon himself in order to keep from acting like a fool? He kept telling himself,
I’m in a car, I’m in a car, I can’t believe I’m in a car,
but he knew that sooner or later it was something he would have had to face. He was glad this first time was with Anna, a nice way to end a kind of virginity. Still, she was an unknown factor, or at least her driving was. She
seemed
to handle the wheel nicely.

He tried to relax.

They made small talk for a while, bat there was nothing much to say about the events ahead. Anna didn’t really want to think about what might be facing her, about what the authorities might tell her, about whether or not this trip was just a waste of time. If she went along in that vein, it threatened to overwhelm her. She concentrated on the road.

Her thoughts kept coming back to the man sitting next to her, who now had his eyes closed (although the lids kept fluttering open as if he were trying to keep awake). She thought she might be in love with him. Already? That was unlikely. Yet, there
was
something there. She felt a stab of embarrassment as she recalled how she had acted the night he’d come for dinner, the night the police had called with the news of Jeffrey’s death. She saw herself at the dinner table, making inane and silly remarks, confusing a combination of cuteness and petulance with sensuality. Had she really acted that way, like an intoxicated kewpie doll flirting with a good-looking nitwit, like a playboy bunny thrusting her boobs in some old man’s leering face? Now she was going overboard. She had been
silly,
that was all. She always acted silly when she was nervous. He would forgive her. He
had
forgiven her, his presence in the car was ample proof of that.

“Sleepy?” she asked. “I don’t blame you.”

“I shouldn’t be.” He smiled. “I slept pretty good last night.”

“Wish I could say the same.”

“It’s understandable.”

David opened his mouth again, about to say something, and she hesitated, not knowing whether or not to speak. When he kept silent, she asked, “Were you about to say something?”

He had been wondering whether or not to tell her about the accident. Surely she had noticed his limp; it had been rather pronounced this morning. She might feel more at ease if he offered an explanation for it. But this was the wrong time . . . in an automobile yet! He answered her question instead by saying, “Do you ever want to comment on something, then forget what it was?” She nodded. “It couldn’t have been important,” he said.

They talked for a while about the emerging sun above their heads, the way the temperature was rising, the flat, ugly look of the topography around them. There were not many cars on the highway—another thing adding to David’s comfort—and they were making good time.

They fell silent again, sharing each other’s space comfortably and quietly, feeling no need to shatter the moment with idle, aimless chatter. They knew that was when two people felt good around each other; the silences were as important as the rest.

They stopped for coffee at one of the roadside restaurants—all of gray brick, and all with picnic areas— that dotted the highway every few miles. They got out and walked to the restaurant, passing only a few people: tourists, families, a businessman or two. A little kid stood in a patch of flowers by the restaurant’s big window, crying for his mother. The woman came and carried him off angrily. A handsome young man with sad eyes licked an ice cream cone as he held the door for Anna.

Inside they sat at a booth in the back. If anyone recognized Anna, they kept it to themselves. Both of them were grateful for that. The waitress came over and they both ordered coffee. Anna also asked for a chocolate donut. “Won’t you have breakfast?” Anna asked. “Eggs or something? My treat.”

God, she was sweet. But he declined. He really wasn’t that hungry. Did she realize just how poor he was? She lived in a world so far removed from financial stress and strain that it wouldn’t have surprised him if she’d not given the matter any thought at all. We all assume everyone we meet is in the same social class we are, David thought.

Almost as if she could read his mind, Anna asked him about the job he had mentioned briefly earlier that morning.

“It doesn’t really start for a few weeks yet. But they did give me some free-lance assignments.”

“An artist,” she sighed. “I’d love to see some of your work sometime.”

“You will. Hopefully on a greeting card one of these days.”

“Is that your specialty? “

“No. I’ve also dabbled in cartooning, commercial art —of a different type. Y’know, for ads and things.”

“I once had a friend who drew comic books.”

“Ah, a lucrative field. For the publishers, at least. I’m afraid my style isn’t really suited for that kind of thing, although I admire their work. Some comic books and comic strips are beautifully done.”

Their coffee came. Record time, thought David. The place was underpopulated and overstaffed this morning.

“Has your work appeared in magazines? Anything I might have seen?”

He paused for a moment, wondering how much humiliation he was prepared to endure at this moment. “Uh, Anna, I’m an artist, but,” he laughed without humor, “not a
successful
artist. I’m really just starting out. In fact, I’ve been ‘starting out’ for the last ten years. This job I’ve told you about is my first real break. My work has yet to grace a greeting card, but now . . . that might just change. Finally.”

She smiled very warmly and understandingly, and put her hand over his. “It always takes time. Lots of people work hard all their lives, and boom—they’re forty-five and famous. Look at it this way. You’re a step ahead of them, you’re still in your thirties.”

“Forget famous, at this point I’ll settle for being solvent.”
Idiot! Why did you have to say that?

“I think you’ll be very successful.” She raised her coffee cup, and prompted him to do the same. She clinked his cup with hers. “To the future.”

The coffee was lukewarm, weak and bitter, but somehow he just didn’t care. In fact, he barely noticed, so intent was he upon her smile.

It was a quiet day in the town of Milbourne, like every other day (except perhaps for the time when Jake Astor’s convertible had crashed into the five-and-ten store on a drunken Saturday night). When things, bad things, happened, people usually
whispered
the news from family to family, nodding their heads in sympathy, calling the bereaved with kind words, calling on them with warm soup. That was how the news of Jeffrey Braddon’s death got circulated.

But now something had happened which eclipsed the man’s horrible death—the “full” facts of which were known to only a few—and that was the disappearance of four Milbourne youths who had been camping down by Hunter’s Mountain.

Chief Walters had received a call from Sue Benson’s mother the previous night after supper. She had called the parents of the other three children—two boys, one girl—who had accompanied her daughter, but none of them had known what might have been the cause of their delay. Jack Potter’s father was half-drunk as usual; he neither knew nor cared where his son might be. Emily Silverstein’s folks were worried, but had wanted to wait a while longer before pressing the panic button. After all, the children were only an hour or so overdue. Mrs. Benson couldn’t believe that her daughter would stay out later than she had promised to unless something awful had happened. Taking the initiative, something she frequently did to her husband’s regret, she called up Walters and demanded that he send out a search party.

In the city, the Police Chief thought, in the city they would have laughed at her. Four kids kicking around, not even a few hours late? Big deal. In the city they would have laughed at the woman and told her to call back in twenty-four, hell, forty-eight hours. But in a small town like this there was room for leeway. The Bensons were comparative newcomers to the town, and they were overprotective of their daughter, but Joe Walters knew what the mountains and the forest were like after dark, knew that four kids fooling around could get in serious trouble, and decided to get Patrolman Hanson and take a run up to the area himself.

They’d found the cars all right, but no sign of the kids. They’d poked and probed around with their flashlights, but there was nothing to indicate foul play or much of anything else. The kids could have gone anywhere, in any direction. All Chief Walters could do was notify the parents and hope the children came back to their cars from wherever they went and were back in their beds before midnight.

Doug Withers’ parents called him almost every hour on the hour. Sam Withers drove up to the picnic area and looked around himself. They’d not spent all those years raising their beloved son, building their hopes for the boy’s future, only to see him lost in the forest. By the time dawn came, all the parents—except for Jack’s father—were there at the encampment, along with Patrolmen Hanson and Stevens. The brunt of the blame was placed squarely on Jack Potter, who had been doomed to pay for the “sins of the father” until his untimely death. “I know that damn kid is behind this,” Sam Withers kept saying over and over, as if the boy’s guilt would somehow bring his son back to him. By noontime, the wives had gone back home for sleep and consolation, while the men stayed out beating through the brush, struggling up and down little-used trails, tip and down cowpaths, through fields and along streams, shouting out the names of four people who would never be able to answer.

Chief Walters was grabbing a quick bite at his desk when Anna Braddon—
the
Anna Braddon—walked in with a bright-faced young man he had never seen before.

They introduced themselves. Cecilia, the dispatcher, a tubby, middle-aged lady with shockingly bleached hair, was staring at them unabashedly, and Tony, the building’s janitor, stopped his sweeping to survey that woman he swore he saw huckstering goods on the television set virtually every night. The police station, actually a substation since the town was so small, was just a big, square room with partitioned offices in the back, a lot of desks in the front, and the switchboard off to one side. The building was old. The floorboards creaked and the paint was peeling. The only thing modern about the room, the newly installed fluorescent lights overhead, seemed out of place, and lent the room a harsh glow that bathed everything in an ugly, eye-straining hue.

Before Anna could say anything more, Walters said, “You didn’t have to come all the way up here, Mrs. Braddon. We could have handled everything over the phone. Shipping the body, everything. Of course, there are your brother’s personal effects. But there’s no—uh— hurry for that.”

“We—I came here for information, Officer. There are a lot of things I don’t understand about Jeffrey’s death and . . .” She looked at the chair in front of Walter’s desk. “May I sit down?”