The Cellar

PROLOGUE

Jenson grabbed the radio mike. His thumb froze on the speak button. He looked again at the upstairs window of the old, Victorian house across the street, and saw only the sheen of the moon on the glass pane. He lowered the mike to his lap.

Then a beam of light again flashed inside the dark house.

He raised the mike to his mouth. He forced his thumb down on the button. “Jenson to headquarters.”

“Headquarters, go ahead.”

“We’ve got a prowler in Beast House.”

“Ten-nine, Dan. What’s the matter with you? Speak up.”

“I said we’ve got a prowler in Beast House!”

“Jeezus! You’d better go in.”

“Send me a backup.”

“Sweeny’s ten-seven.”

“So phone him, for Christsake! He never eats anyplace but the Welcome Inn. Phone him.”

“Just go in, Jenson.”

“I’m not going inside that fucking place alone. You get Sweeny out here, or we can forget the whole thing.”

“I’ll try to raise Sweeny. You stay put, and keep an eye on the place if you’re too yellow to go in. And watch your language on the airways, buddy.”

“Ten-four.”

Patrolman Dan Jenson put down his radio mike and looked at the distant upstairs window. He saw no sign of the flashlight. His eyes moved to other windows, to the hooded darkness of the balcony over the porch, to the windows of the room with the peaked roof, then back again.

There, in the nearest window, the slim white beam of a flashlight made a quick curlicue and vanished. Jenson felt his skin shrivel as if spiders were scurrying up his back. He rolled up his window. With his elbow, he punched down the lock button of his door. The spiders didn’t go away.

Inside the house, the boy was trying hard not to cry as his father pulled him by the arm from one dark room to the next.

“See? Nothing here. Do you see anything?”

“No,” the boy whimpered.

“No ghost, no boogie man, no monster?”

“No.”

“All right.”

“Can we go?” the boy asked.

“Not yet, young man. We haven’t seen the attic yet.”

“She said it’s locked.”

“We’ll get in.”

“No. Please.”

“The monster might be waiting for us in the attic, right? Now where was that?” He pulled open a hall door and shined his flashlight inside. The beam illuminated an empty closet. Roughly, he pulled the boy behind him toward a door farther up the narrow corridor.

“Dad, let’s go home.”

“Afraid the beast will get you?” The father laughed bitterly. “We’re not stepping outside this cruddy old house until you admit there is no beast. I won’t have a son of mine cowering and whimpering his way through life, jumping at shadows, afraid of the dark.”

“There is a beast,” the boy insisted.

“Show it to me.”

“The guide, she said…”

“The guide handed us a load of bull. That’s her job. You’ve gotta learn to know bull when it smacks you in the face, young man. Monsters are bull. Ghosts and goblins and witches are bull. And so is the beast.” He grabbed a knob, jerked open the door, and swung the beam of his flashlight inside. The staircase was a steep, narrow tunnel leading upward to a closed door. “Come on.”

“No. Please, Dad.”

“Don’t no me.”

The boy tried to free his arm from his father’s grip, but couldn’t. He began to cry.

“Stop blubbering, you little chicken.”

“I want to go home.” The man shook him violently. “We-are-going-up-those-stairs. The sooner we get into the attic and look for this monster of yours, the sooner we’ll leave here. But not a minute earlier, do you hear me?”

“Yes,” the boy managed.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

At his father’s side, he started up the stairs. The wooden steps groaned and squeaked. The flashlight made a bright, small disk on each stair as they climbed. A halo surrounded the disk, dimly lighting their legs and the walls, and the next few stairs.

“Dad!”

“Quiet.”

The disk of light swung up the stairway and made a spot on the attic door high above them.

The boy wanted to sniff, but was afraid to make a sound. He let the warm fluid roll down to his upper lip, then licked it away. It tasted salty.

“See,” the father whispered. “We’re almost…”

From above them came a sound like a sniffing dog.

The man’s hand flinched, squeezing pain into his son’s arm. The boy took a single step backward, probing for the stair behind him as the attic door swung slowly open.

The flashlight beam pushed through empty darkness beyond the door.

A throaty laugh crept through the silence. It sounded to the boy like the laughter of a very old, dry man.

But it wasn’t an old man who leaped through the doorway. As the flashlight dropped, its beam lit a snouted, hairless face.

When the scream came, Dan Jenson knew he couldn’t wait for Sweeny. Pulling his 12-gauge Browning off its mount, he threw open the patrolcar door and leaped to the street. He dashed across it. The ticket booth was lighted by a streetlamp. The big wooden sign above it spelled beast house in dripping letters meant to resemble blood.

He shoved the turnstile. It held fast, so he vaulted it.

More screams came from the house, screams of pain torn from a child.

Sprinting up the walkway, Jenson took the porch steps two at a time. He tried the door. Locked. He pumped a cartridge into the shotgun chamber, aimed at the lock face, and pulled the trigger. The 00 shot slammed a hole through the door. He kicked. The door whipped back. He stepped into the foyer.

From above came tearing sounds and breathless animal grunts.

Enough moonlight poured through the front windows to show him the foot of the staircase. Grabbing the bannister post, he swung himself onto the stairs. Blackness swallowed him. With one hand on the railing to guide him, he climbed. At the top of the stairs, he stopped and listened. Grunting, snarling sounds came from the left.

Cocking the shotgun, he jumped into the hallway and whirled to the right, ready to fire.

All was dark except for a puddle of brightness spilling across the hall floor. It came from the end of a flashlight.

Jenson wanted that flashlight. Needed it. But it lay far down the hall, close to the black center of the quick loud gasping sounds.

Shotgun pointed up the hallway, he dashed toward the flashlight, his shoes pounding echoes, his own sharp breaths masking the rasp of the other breathing. Then his foot came down on something round like a club, but soft. Maybe an arm. His other foot kicked a hard object, and he heard its teeth clash shut as he stumbled headlong into the darkness. The shotgun mashed his fingers against the floor.

Stretching his right arm, he reached the flashlight. He swung its beam in the direction of the grunts.

The creature loosed its teeth from the nape of the boy’s neck. It turned its head. The skin of its face was white and puffy like the belly of a dead fish. It seemed to smile. It writhed, freeing itself from the boy.

Jenson dropped the flashlight and tried to raise the shotgun.

He heard soft, dry laughter, and the beast took him.