The Headsman (51 page)

A few feet farther along he came to another door. He opened this one the same way, as cautiously as possible. But what he found was much like the one he’d seen earlier, merely a storage space of some kind, its floor littered with empty crates and moldy cloth and unrecognizable junk.

He was beginning to think he was chasing shadows. As much reason as he had to trust this young woman with the strange psychic powers and to believe what she’d told him, he was finding nothing here. How much of what she had seen was accurate, and how much of it might simply be the product of her imagination? Or even hallucinations? It was impossible to tell. In the meantime, here he was wandering around in the cellar of this stinking old wreck of a house while a blizzard raged outside.

And a killer was on the loose.

He was sure of one thing: Billy Swanson was dead, his head chopped off in exactly the same manner as Marcy Dickens’ had been and Buddy Harper’s as well. And Sally? Was
she
in danger also, as Karen was so convinced she was?

Jud couldn’t afford to lose faith now. Karen Wilson had got him this far, and events had proven her correct. A crazy thought flashed through his mind. If he could only find Sally safe he’d grab her and Karen and just get the fuck out of here. He’d take them somewhere that was warm and safe and be grateful they were alive. But first he had to find her.

Around a bend he came to the end of the passageway. And set in the wall, dead ahead of him, was another door. He stopped, and again gripped the heavy revolver, holding it with barrel pointed upward, his thumb on the hammer. Once more he used the hand holding the flashlight to try the door. It swung open noiselessly.

This was still another room, smaller and narrower than the others. Three of the walls had been built of stones set in rough mortar. The fourth was covered entirely with crude wooden cabinets. Apparently the space was similar to the others, just one more storage area. He stepped to the nearest cabinet and pulled open the door.

Inside was a shelf.

On the shelf was Paul Mulgrave’s head.

3

Jud felt revulsion as he looked at the museum curator’s features. The eyes were not merely open; the sockets where they had been were empty.

He realized the rats must have eaten Mulgrave’s eyes. Jud could see bitemarks on parts of the face as well, in the tissue of the lips and the nostrils. Some of the flesh at the edges of the terrible wound in the neck had also been chewed away.

He stepped back, taking in what he was seeing and then looking down the wall. Dreading what he would find, he reached for another door and opened it. Resting on the dusty wooden shelf, its facial features contorted in an expression of agony, was the head of Billy Swanson.

This one was obviously fresh. The blood on the bottom of the neck was still slightly wet, slowly drying to a crusty black smear. The head had to have been placed here only a short time ago. What Karen had told him was the precise truth. It was sickening to look at, knowing how the boy had died, realizing the pain and the fear he must have suffered.

Jud opened another door. And then another. Inside each was a severed head. Unlike Mulgrave’s or Billy Swanson’s, these were not of people he could recognize. The heads were obviously old, the skin leathery and dessicated, the hair as wispy as cobwebs. The rats had evidently eaten the eyes out of these as well, and some of the flesh, but beyond that they were relatively intact. Whose heads they were and how long they’d been here he’d probably never know.

He opened another cabinet and found himself looking at the head of a woman. This one was also very old, but despite its dried-up, mummified appearance, there was something about it he seemed to recognize. She looked like someone he knew—someone he could almost recall. Almost, but not quite. Despite the cold, Jud was sweating. Realization hit him.
Jesus
—
it was Joan Donovan
.

But that was impossible. So who—?

He got it then. What he was looking at was the head of a Donovan woman, all right. But it wasn’t Joan Donovan’s head. It was her mother’s. This was what was left of Janet Donovan, the body part that had disappeared on that fateful night so many years ago. This was what the little girl had seen the headsman holding in his black-gloved hand after he had beheaded her mother. This was the head that had been missing—and adding to the headsman lore—for all the years since the night of the murder.

There were still other doors in this macabre wall, many of them. Jud looked at the doors, now knowing full well what lay behind each of them. Here was a black history of Braddock, a bizarre record of crime and punishment. It was as if the town were somehow rooted in the past, as if it had never progressed beyond the ignorant prejudices of the eighteenth century.

Of these people, some long dead, some who had been alive until only a brief time ago, how many had indeed been guilty of any transgression? How many had in fact committed crimes, and how many had died by the ax simply because the man who wielded it was a wanton murderer?

And what about Marcy Dickens—why had her head been left at the scene of the murder? Probably because the headsman had intended her execution to be as shocking as possible. He had
wanted
her head to be discovered.

Almost idly, Jud reached out and opened one more of the crudely fashioned doors. As well prepared as he thought he was by now for what he would find there, the sight was another blow.

Resting on the shelf in a pool of dried blood was the head of Sergeant Joseph Grady.

Jud stared at the obscene thing, horror and guilt and remorse washing over him in waves.

Even though this one had been worked over by the rats, it obviously hadn’t been here very long. As Jud looked at it, he saw something fat and white crawling inside the mouth.

He moved back, resisting the urge to vomit. Then he thought of Karen, realizing suddenly that she’d be horrified as well. He turned to her.

But Karen wasn’t there.

4

The hands were not like hands at all, but more like metal clamps that crushed Karen’s mouth and her ribs and prevented her from crying out, even keeping her from breathing. She tried to struggle, but she couldn’t so much as move. The hands swept her up off the floor, and although she wanted to kick at whoever was holding her and to break free, it was impossible. She was held as securely as if she were a tiny child.

After a moment the lack of oxygen caused a roaring in her ears and she grew weak and then she was incapable of putting up any resistance at all. She was dimly aware that she was being carried, but she couldn’t see where; it was dark in the passageway.

A moment later she lost consciousness.

When she came to, the sight that greeted her was eerily familiar. She was in a chamber with stone walls, lighted by torches set in holders. The floor was of dirt, and positioned against the far wall was a low wooden platform. Resting in the center of the platform was a well-worn chopping block.

She knew where she was. She had seen this place before, as clearly as she was seeing it now. She was in the dungeon that had appeared in her vision. The dungeon where the dark-haired woman was a prisoner. The dungeon where the headsman carried out his executions.

The woman was nowhere in sight.

But the headsman was.

Karen was half-sitting against a wall, watching the terrible scene come to life. The headsman was exactly as the images had revealed him to her, exactly as he’d looked in the old painting the chief of police had shown her. As she gazed at him, the awful truth of where she was and what was happening to her was driven into her mind with numbing force.

The headsman stepped closer and then stood over her, seeming immense in his foul black rags, the eyes burning in their slanted holes in the hood as he stared at her. He reached down, and one gloved hand seized her hair. She felt herself being dragged onto the platform, the pain causing her eyes to fill with tears.

She struggled, raising her hands in a feeble effort to grasp one of his legs, but all that brought her was a kick in the ribs that knocked the wind out of her and left her close to fainting.

But she wouldn’t let this unspeakable thing happen to her without a fight. Choking, fighting for breath, she twisted and clawed at him, trying to bring her mouth close enough to bite him. This time the response was even more savage. A heavy, black-booted foot drew back, then slammed into the pit of her stomach. And while she lay paralyzed with agony and fear, the boot struck her again, this time in the mouth.

She felt her teeth splinter, and her mouth was suddenly filled with warm, salty liquid. She gagged, choking on the blood and gasping for air. As desperate as she was, she could no longer make her body respond. She lay still, totally helpless.

As she looked up, she realized she was lying on her back with her head on the block. Above her, she saw the towering black-clad man raise the ax. The blade flashed in the torchlight as it whipped over his head and descended toward her throat.

In a last, valiant effort, she managed to move just a little. But one of her last thoughts before the ax struck her throat was that it wasn’t enough.

Even as dazed as she was, the impact was astonishing. The blade struck with explosive force, just below her larynx. His aim had been spoiled by her last-ditch struggle, but the blow cleaved her neck cleanly, the steel chopping through flesh and sinews and arteries and bone and biting into the wooden block beneath her head with a loud whack.

Oddly, she felt no pain. She was aware of a hand snatching her head aloft, and as it did she looked down and saw her headless body lying on the platform, a brilliant red torrent gushing from her severed neck.

In that horrifying instant, realization came to her at last. What she had seen in her vision had been accurate. The headsman had indeed been preparing to execute a dark-haired woman.

But that woman was not Sally Benson.

The woman was Karen herself.

And in that final, all-knowing moment, her mouth opened, and her larynx constricted, pouring out the last sound it would utter on this earth.

“
Jud-d-d
…”

And then it trailed off, and her eyesight failed, and her brain ceased to function as the soul of Karen Wilson was borne away to a place where it would find peace at last.

Nineteen

A TIME TO DIE

1

T
HE VOICE THAT
called his name didn’t sound human. It was more like the mournful cry of an animal, a dismal howl that a moment later was gone. Could it have been Karen? What in God’s name had happened to her? He stepped back out into the narrow passageway and then moved in the direction the cry had come from.

Oddly, it had sounded as if it originated in one of the empty rooms he’d explored earlier. When he reached the first of them he went into it, sweeping the area with the flashlight beam.

Nothing.

He turned to leave, and another sound reached his ears. It was a dull thump, different from the creaking of the building’s old timbers, but distinct. It might have come from behind one of the walls in here. He stepped over to it.

At one end of the wall, in a dark corner hidden by shadows, was a narrow opening. Jud went through it and found himself in another passageway even tighter than the one he’d been exploring. He moved around a bend, and the sight that greeted him was staggering.

Standing directly ahead of him, his hulking form filling the passage, was the headsman.

A jumble of thoughts raced through Jud’s mind. The creature looked exactly like the man in the old painting Mulgrave had given him. And exactly as he’d been described by Karen Wilson. He wore tight-fitting black clothing, and his eyes seemed to burn as they looked out from inside the slanted devil-holes in the hood that covered his head.

In his hands was a huge, double-bladed ax.

Jud stood totally still, so startled he was unable to move. The headsman, too, was motionless, holding him in his piercing gaze. They stood facing each other for a long moment, implacable enemies in a confrontation at last.

The headsman moved first. He raised the ax chest-high and stepped forward.

Jud wouldn’t waste his breath issuing a warning. He held the flashlight beam on the advancing monster, and with his right hand leveled his revolver. He thumbed back the hammer for maximum accuracy, and fired.

The headsman kept coming.

Jud fired again. And again. The pistol shots were shatteringly loud in the confined space. These were copper-jacketed .357 Magnum slugs, capable of stopping any animal on the North American continent, including a grizzly bear. But they seemed to have no effect on the thing in front of him.

The sixth shot struck the headsman in the dead center of his chest from a distance of no more than two feet. Every round had gone home; Jud could see the holes in the tunic. He raised the pistol to club his enemy, but the headsman was too quick for him. The black-gloved hands made a lightning-fast snapping motion, and the axhead flashed upward, its flat side catching Jud under his jaw.

There was a burst of light as the heavy steel weapon crashed into his face.

2

He was out for a time. The first thing he became conscious of was torchlight flickering against the ancient stone walls. Then he made out the wooden platform and the chopping block. The platform and the block were drenched with fresh blood.

Lying to one side of the platform was the headless body of a woman. Her head was nearby, resting on the earthen floor, its eyes bulging in the same expression of terror he’d first seen on Marcy Dickens’ face, and later on Buddy Harper’s.

The head was Karen Wilson’s.

Jud then realized his hands and feet had been tied with a length of heavy cord. He was propped up with his back against one of the stone walls, and every heartbeat drove pain into his skull. He heard a sound to his left and, with an effort, turned his head.

To his horror, he saw the headsman drag Sally into the room. She was bound as he was, hand and foot. There were bruises on her cheeks and her jaw, and she appeared to be only semiconscious. The headsman crouched over her, gripping her by the hair. The bastard must have beaten her until she was no longer able to resist. As Jud watched, the executioner looked up and caught sight of Jud.