Beware. Part 29

Lacey dropped to her knees. She tried to grab the girl's flailing hands. "Stop!" she cried. Then she clutched a foot and dragged Nancy from the closet. She pulled the girl to her feet, tugged her into the hall.

From there, she saw Dukane slam the bathroom door, shutting himself and Scott inside.

Screams filled her ears as she led Nancy through the living room. "Wait in the car," she said.

Then she raced to the hall.

The bathroom door flew open. Dukane staggered backward through it, and fell. The wooden hilt of a butcher knife stood upright in his belly.

As she ran toward him, she heard a whup like the sound of a windflapped canvas. Fire exploded through the doorway.

"Scott!" she shrieked.

The fire lapped her body, forcing her away from the door. She shielded her eyes and gazed into the inferno. Near the floor, she saw a hole in the fire as if a tunnel had been dug in the flames-a writhing tunnel shaped like a man.

A pa.s.sage opened in the blaze. It rushed toward her. Smashed her aside. She tripped over Dukane. As she slammed the far wall, she saw a flaming figure race down the hallway, arms waving, hair ablaze.

Scott? She ran after it. As it lurched across the living room, she realized she could see through it: the fire blazed around a hollow sh.e.l.l. It fell against a window. The curtains caught fire. As it lurched out the front door, it turned and Lacey glimpsed its fire-wrapped face, its b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

She rushed back to the bathroom.

"Scott!" she cried out. "Scott!"

The wall of fire roared.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX.

Lacey circled the block twice, watching for strangers, then killed the headlights and steered the Firebird up the narrow driveway to her garage. She put it into the garage, and entered her house by the back door.

The lights were off. She left them that way.

Searching the dark house, she remembered how she and Cliff had gone through it that night so long ago-only a few days ago. They'd found no one then. Lacey found no one now. But she couldn't be certain she was alone: she could never be sure of that again.

Though filthy, she was afraid to use her tub.

Though dazed and weary, she was afraid to use her bed.

She arranged blankets inside her walkin closet, and lay down there. It reminded her of the nest in the hallway that she'd shared with Scott.

Thoughts of Scott swirled through her mind as she tried to sleep. Other thoughts, too. Bad ones that made her shake.

Three times during the night, she heard sounds in the house that made her sweat and hold her breath. Afraid to investigate, she lay there rigid until exhaustion forced her to fall limp and gasp for air.

Once, as she drifted off, the closet door swung silently open. The dark figure of a man knelt over her. She quaked with terror until he spoke.

"It's just me," he said.

"Scott?"

"I had a hard time finding you. What're you hiding from?"

"Everything."

"Don't be afraid."

"Oh Scott, I thought you were dead."

Then he came down and kissed her, and his charred lips crumbled and filled her mouth with ashes.

She bolted upright, gasping, and found herself alone in the closet. Its door was still shut.

After a moment's hesitation, she pushed open the door. She studied the familiar, night shadows of her bedroom, then crawled over the carpet to the alarm clock. Four thirty.

Time to begin.

Lacey tiptoed through the dark silence of the house. She searched cupboards in the kitchen, found what she wanted, and stepped outside.

She entered her garage through a side door connecting it to the laundry room. A dim light went on inside the Firebird when she opened its door. Kneeling on the pa.s.senger seat, she reached out and drew its keys from the ignition.

The Firebird was one of the four cars she'd found after she ran from the burning house and discovered the keys of the Rolls Royce were gone. She and Nancy had dashed up the long entry road, and come upon the cars of the dead people. She'd insisted Nancy take one of them, and leave her.

Now, keys in hand, Lacey crawled out of the Firebird. She left its door open for light, and walked over the warm concrete to the trunk. Taking a deep breath, she unlocked it. The lid swung up.

As dawn lightened the sky, Lacey twisted off the plastic cap. She raised the bottle to her lips. Its strong fumes made her throat clutch, but she filled her mouth anyway to wash out the other taste-the sour taste of the vomit that had flooded out after the blood.

She spat the brandy onto the loose earth at her feet, then upended the bottle. The amber fluid gurgled out, splashing onto the dirt.

When it was empty, she tossed it aside. It fell to the gra.s.s beside the cellophane package of beans and the knife.

She put her clothes back on, covering her blood-spattered nakedness.

Then she picked up her shovel. She set it inside the laundry room. Shutting the door, she started for her house.

A man stepped around the corner.

Numb with fear, she staggered back.

The man didn't move.

She gazed at him, at his blackened face and torso, his hairless scalp, his scorched and tattered pants-and recognized the phantom from her nightmares. She pressed trembling hands to her eyes. At the sound of footsteps, she lowered them.

He was walking toward her, his sooty hands reaching out.

"Thought you'd be glad to see me," he said. "I know I look like a wreck, but..."

"Scott," she muttered.

He clutched her shoulders and drew her against his body. His cracked, dry lips pressed her mouth. She felt the wetness of his tongue. His hands stroked her hair, the sides of her face.

"It is you?" she whispered. Scott's grimy, grinning face blurred as tears filled Lacey's eyes.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN.

He guzzled half a bottle of Bud, leaned back on the kitchen chair, and sighed.

"That was Hoffman we heard screaming. When Matt and I ran in the bathroom, all we saw was this butcher knife jerking around right above the floor. And the handcuffs shaking. Laveda must've made herself invisible when the shooting started. Must've had a bean left over from the time she'd gone through the process a year ago."

"She went for Matt. That gave me a chance to douse her with gas and touch her off. The whole gas can went up, though. I thought I was cooked, but I dived out the bathroom window. The fall...it knocked me out cold. Don't think I was out for long, but by the time I reached the front of the house, I saw you and Nancy running off."

"Why didn't you yell?"

He shook his head and took another gulp of beer. "I figured I could catch up later. The main thing was to get Matt out of the house."

"You went back in?"

"Had to. Couldn't leave him in there. I got to him just before the fire did, dragged him out, patched up his stomach wound the best I could, and threw him into the car. When I drove up the road, you and Nancy were nowhere in sight. I figured you'd be all right, though, so I drove like h.e.l.l back to Tucson and got him into an emergency room. I didn't think he'd make it, but he's a tough son of a b.i.t.c.h. They had him in stable condition by the time I left."

"He's alive?" Lacey grinned. "Well. What do you know?"

"When I got back to the house and couldn't find you, I suspected you might come back here."

"I didn't know where else to go."

"Not the greatest hideout in the world."

"I had a plan," she admitted, and lowered her eyes. Until now, the plan had seemed like her only chance for survival. With Scott sitting across the breakfast table, it seemed ridiculous and perverse. She didn't want to tell him about it.

"In your place," Scott said, "I might've tried the same thing."

"You know?"

"I saw the empty brandy bottle out back. And the sack of beans. And where you dug the hole."

"The...the rest of the body's still in the garage. I found her...near where they'd left their cars. After I sent Nancy away, I...a bean was in the dirt by her mouth. That's what gave me the idea. If I were invisible, n.o.body could get me. I tried the bean, but it didn't make me invisible. So then I put her body in the trunk of a car and...G.o.d, it was all burned and crumbly and..."

"It was Laveda!"

Lacey nodded. "I guess so."

Reaching out, Scott squeezed her hand. "Then it's over."

That night, he dug up the head. They drove far out in the desert, and poured gasoline over the remains of Laveda. The fire burned for a long time. When it finally dwindled, they dug two holes in the sand and buried the smoldering head a great distance from the body.

RAVE REVIEWS FOR RICHARD LAYMON!.

"I've always been a Laymon fan. He manages to raise serious gooseflesh."

-Bentley Little.

"Laymon is incapable of writing a disappointing book."

-New York Review of Science Fiction.

"Laymon always takes it to the max. No one writes like him and you're going to have a good time with anything he writes."

-Dean Koontz.

"If you've missed Laymon, you've missed a treat!"

-Stephen King.

"A brilliant writer."

-Sunday Express.

"I've read every book of Laymon's I could get my hands on. I'm absolutely a longtime fan."

-Jack Ketchum, Author of Old Flames "One of horror's rarest talents."