her arms against her chest, made small fists of her hands, and pulled
away within herself.
"Let me carry my little Jesus he said, "my sweet little lamb,It will be
my privilege to carry you." There was no warmth in his voice in spite of
the way he was talking. Only hatred and scorn. She knew that tone, had
heard it before. No matter how hard you tried to fit in and be
everybody's friend, some kids hated you if you were too different, and
in their voices you heard this same thing, and shrank from it.
He carried her through the open, broken, rotting doors into a darkness
that made her feel so small.
Lindsey didn't even bother getting out of the car to see if the gate
could be opened. When Hatch pointed the way, she jammed the accelerator
to the floor. The car bucked, shot forward. They crashed onto the
grounds of the park, demolishing the gate and sustaining more damage to
their already battered car, including one shattered headlight.
At Hatch's direction, she followed a service loop around half the park.
On the left was a high fence covered with the gnarled and bristling
remnants of a vine that once might have concealed the chainlink entirely
but had died when the irrigation system had been shut off. On the right
were the backs of rides that had been too permanently constructed to be
dismantled easily. There were also buildings fronted by fantastic
facades held up by angled supports that could be seen from behind.
Leaving the service road, they drove between two structures and onto
what had once been a winding promenade along which crowds had moved
throughout the park. The largest Ferris wheel she had ever seen,
savaged by wind and sun and years of neglect, rose in the night like the
bones of a leviathan picked clean by unknown carrion-eaters.
a car was parked beside what appeared to be a drained pool in front of
an emmense structure.
"The funhouse," Hatch said, for he had seen it before through other
eyes.
It had a roof with multiple peaks like a three-ring circus tent, and
disintegrating stucco walls. She could view only one narrow aspect of
the structure at a time, as the headlights swept across it, but she did
not like any part of what she saw. She was not by nature a
superstitious person although she was fast becoming one in response to
recent experience-but she sensed an aura of death around the funhouse as
surely as she could have felt cold air rising off a block of ice.
She parked behind the other car. A Honda. Its occupants had departed
in such a hurry that both front doors were open, and the interior lights
were on.
Snatching up her Browning and a flashlight, she got out of the
Mitsubishi and ran to the Honda, looked inside. No sign of Regina.
She had discovered there was a point at which fear could grow no
greater. Every nerve was raw. The brain could not process more input,
so it merely sustained the peak of terror once achieved. Each new
shock, each new terrible thought did not add to the burden of fear
because the brain just dumped old data to make way for the new. She
could hardly remember anything of what had happened at the house, or the
surreal drive to the park; most of it was gone for now, only a few
scraps of memory remaining, leaving her focused on the immediate moment.
On the ground at her feet, visible in the spill of light from the open
car door and then in her flashlight beam, was a four-foot length of
sturdy cord. She picked it up and saw that it had once been tied in a
loop and later cut at the knot.
Hatch took the cord out of her hand. "It was around Regina's ankles.
He wanted her to walk."
"Where are they now?"
He pointed with his flashlight across the drained lagoon, past the three
large gray canted gondolas with prodigious mastheads, to a pair of
wooden doors in the base of the funhouse. One sagged on broken hinges,
and the other was open wide. The flashlight was a four-battery model,
just strong enough to cast some dim light on those far doors but not to
penetrate the terrible darkness beyond.
Lindsey took off around the car and scrambled over the lagoon wall.
Though Hatch called out, "Lindsey, wait," she could not delay another
moment-and how could he?-with the thought of Regina in the hands of
Nyebern's resurrected, psychotic son.
As Lindsey crossed the lagoon, fear for Regina still far outweighed any
concern she might have for her own safety. However, realizing that she
herself, must survive if the girl were to have any chance at all, she
swept' the flashlight beam side to side, side to side, wary of an attack
from behind one of the huge gondolas.
Old leaves and paper trash danced in the wind, for the most part
waltzing across the floor of the dry lagoon, but sometimes spinning up
in columns and churning to a faster beat. Nothing else move Hatch
caught up with her by the time she reached the funhouse entrance. He
had delayed only to use the cord she had found to bind his flashlight to
the back of the crucifix. Now he carry both in one hand, pointing the
head of Christ at anything upon which he directed the light.
That left his right hand free for the Browning 9mm. He had left the
Mossberg behind. If he had tied the flashlight to the 12-gauge, he
could have brought both the handgun and the shotgun. Evidently he felt
that the crucifix was a better weapon than the Mossberg.
She didn't know why he had taken the icon from the wall of Regina's
room. She didn't think he knew, either. They were wading hip deep in
the big muddy river of the unknown, and in addition to the cross, she
would have welcomed a necklace of garlic, a vial of holy water, a few
silver bullets, and anything else that might have helped.
As an artist, she had always known that the world of the five senses,
solid and secure, was not the whole of existence, and she had
incorporated that understanding into her work. Now she was merely
incorporating it into the rest of her life, surprised that she had not
done so a long time ago.
With both flashlights carving through the darkness in front of them,
they entered the funhouse.
All of Regina's tricks for coping were not exhausted, after all. She in
vented one more.
She found a room deep inside her mind, where she could go and close the
door and be safe, a place only she knew about, in which she could never
be found. It was a pretty room with peach-colored walls, soft lighting,
and a bed covered with painted flowers. Once she had entered, the door
could only be opened again from her side. There were no windows.
Once she was in that most secret of all retreats, it didn't matter what
was done to the other her, the physical Regina in the hateful world
outside.
The real Regina was sale in her hideaway, beyond fear and pain, beyond
tears and doubt and sadness. She could hear nothing beyond the room,
most especially not the wickedly soft voice of the man in black. She
could see nothing beyond the room, only the peach walls and her painted
bed and soft light, never darkness. Nothing beyond the room could
really touch her, certainly not his pale quick hands which had recently
shed their gloves.
Most important, the only smell in her sanctuary was the scent of roses
like those painted on the bed, a clean sweet fragrance. Never the
stentch of dead things. Never the awful choking odor of decomposition
that could bring a sour saliva gushing into the back of your throat and
nearly strangle you when your mouth was full of crushed scarf. Nothing
like that, no, never, not in her secret room, her blessed room, her deep
and safe and solitary haven.
Something had happened to the girl. The singular vitality that had made
her so appealing was gone.
When he put her on the floor of Hell, with her back against the base of
the towering Lucifer, he thought she'd passed out. But that wasn't it.
For one thing, when he crouched in front of her and put his hand against
her chest, he felt her heart leaping like a rabbit whose hindquarters
were already in the jaws of the fox. No one could possibly be
unconscious with a thundering heartbeat like that.
Besides, her eyes were open. They were staring blindly, as if she could
find nothing upon which to fix her gaze. Of course, she could not see
him in the dark as he could see her, couldn't see anything else for that
matter, but that wasn't the reason she was staring through him. When he
flicked the eyelash over her right eye with his fingertip, she did not
flinch, did not even blink. Tears were drying on her cheeks, but no new
tears welled up.
Catatonic. The little bitch had blanked out on him, closed her mind
down, become a vegetable. That didn't suit his purpose at all. The
value of the offering was in the vitality of the subject. Art was about
energy, vibrancy, pain, and terror. What statement could he make with
his little grand Christ if she could not experience and express her
agony?
He was so angry with her, just so spitting angry, that he didn't want to
play with her any more. Keeping one hand on her chest, above her
rabbity heart, he took his switchblade from his jacket pocket and popped
it open.
Control.
He would have opened her then, and had the intense pleasure of feeling
her heart go still in his grip, except that he was a Master of the Game
who knew the meaning and value of control. He could deny himself such
transitory thrills in the pursuit of more meaningful and enduring
rewards.
He hesitated only a moment before putting the knife away.
He was better than that.
His lapse surprised him.
Perhaps she would come out of her trance by the time he was ready to
incorporate her into his collection. If not, then he felt sure that the
first driven nail would bring her to her senses and transform her into
the radiant work of art that he knew she had the potential to be.
He turned from her to the tools that were piled at the point where the
art of his collection currently ended. He had hammers and screwdrivers,
wrenches and pliers, saws and a miter box, a battery-powered drill with
an array of bits, screws and nails, rope and wire, brackets of all
kinds, and everything else a handyman might need, all of it purchased at
Sears when he had realized that properly arranging and displaying each
piece in his collection would require the construction of some clever
supports and, in a couple of cases, thematic backdrops.
His chosen medium was not as easy to work with as oil paints or
watercolors or clay or sculptor's granite, for gravity tended to quickly
distort each effect that he achieved.
He knew he was short on time, that on his heels were those who did not
understand his art and would make the amusement park impossible for him
by morning. But that would not matter if he made one more addition to
the collection that rounded it out and earned him the approbation he
sought.
Haste, then.
The first thing to do, before hauling the girl to her feet and bracing
her in a standing position, was to see if the material that composed the
segmented, reptilian belly and chest of the funhouse Lucifer would take
a nail. It seemed to be a hard rubber, perhaps soft plastic.
Depending on thickness, brittleness, and resiliency of the material, a
nail would either drive into it as smoothly as into wood, bounce off, or
bend. If the fake devil's hide proved too resistant, he'd have to use
the battery-powered drill instead of the hammer, two-inch screws instead
of nails, but it shouldn't detract from the artistic integrity of the
piece to lend a modern touch to the reinactment of this ancient ritual.
He hefted the hammer. He placed the nail. The first blow drove it a
quarter of the way into Lucifer's abdomen. The second blow slammed it
So nails would work just fine.
He looked down at the girl, who still sat on the floor with her back to
the base of the statue. She had not reacted to either of the hammer
blows. He was disappointed but not yet desparing.
Before lifting her into place, he quickly collected everything he would
need. A couple of two-by-fours to serve as braces until the acquisition
was firmly fixed in place. Two nails. Plus one longer and more
wickedly pointed number that could fairly be called a spike. The
hammer, of course.
Hurry. Smaller nails, barely more than tacks, a score of which could be
placed just-so in her brow to represent the crown of thorns. The switch
blade, with which to recreate the spear wound attributed to the taunting
Centurion. Anything else? Think. Quickly now. He had no vinegar or
sponge to soak it in, therefore could not offer that traditional drink
to the dying lips, but he didn't think the absence of that detail would
in any way detract from the composition.
He was ready.
Hatch and Lindsey were deep in the gondola tunnel, proceding as fast as
they dared, but slowed by the need to shine flashlights into the deepest
reaches of each niche and room-size display area that opened off the
flanking walls. The moving beams caused black shadows to fly and dance
off concrete stalactites and stalagmites and other manmade rock
formations, but all of those dangerous spaces were empty.
Two solid thuds, like hammer blows, echoed to them from farther in the
funhouse, one immediately after the other. Then silence.
"He's ahead of us somewhere," Lindsey whispered, "not real close. We
can move faster."
Hatch agreed.
They proceeded along the tunnel without scanning all the deep recesses,
which once had held clockwork monsters. Along the way, the bond between
Hatch and Jeremy Nyebern was established again. He sensed the madman's
excitement, an obscene and palpitating need. He received, as well,
disconnected images: nails, a spike, a hammer, two lengths of two
by-four, a scattering of tacks, the slender steel blade of a knife
popping out of its spring-loaded ban......
His anger mixing with his fear, determined not to let the
disorienting
visions impede his advance, he reached the end of the horizontal tunnel
and stumbled a few steps down the incline before he realized that the
angle of the floor had changed radically under his feet.
The first of the odors hit him. Drifting upward on a natural draft.
He gagged, heard Lindsey do the same, then tightened his throat and
swallowed hard.
He knew what lay below. At least some of it. Glimpses of the
collection had been among the visions that had pounded him when he had
been in the car on the highway. If he didn't get an iron grip on
himself--and stifle his repulsion now, he would never make it all the
way into the depths of this hellhole, and he had to go there in order to
save Regina.
Apparently Lindsey understood, for she found the will to repress her
retching, and she followed him down the steep slope.
The first thing to attract Vassago's attention was the glow of light
high up toward one end of the cavern, far back in the tunnel that led to
the spillway. The rapid rate at which the light grew brighter convinced
him that he would not have time to add the girl to his collection before
the intruders were upon him.
He knew who they were. He had seen them in visions as they, evidently,
had seen him. Lindsey and her husband had followed him all the way from
Laguna Niguel. He was just beginning to recognize that more forces were
at work in this affair than had appeared to be the case at first.