Intensity. Part 16

She gripped the long stainless-steel, U-shaped handle. When she pulled, the vinyl-encased door softly sc.r.a.ped and squeaked across the upholstery on the jamb. The fit was snug: When the door swung all the way free of the jamb and the seal was broken, there was a faint sound similar to that made when one opened a jar of vacuum-packed peanuts.

The door was upholstered on the inside as well. The overall thickness was in excess of five inches.

Beyond this new threshold lay a six-foot-square chamber with a low ceiling, which reminded her of an elevator, except that every surface other than the floor was upholstered. The floor was covered with a rubber mat of the kind used in many restaurant kitchens for the comfort of cooks who worked on their feet for hours at a time. In the dim light from the recessed overhead bulb, she saw that the fabric here wasn't vinyl but gray cotton with a nubbly texture.

The strangeness of the place sharpened her fear, yet at the same time she was so sure she understood the purpose of the padded vestibule that her stomach rolled with faint nausea.

Directly opposite the door that Chyna held open was one more door. It was also padded and set in an upholstered frame.

Finally, here were locks. The gray upholstery plumped around two heavy-duty bra.s.s lock cylinders. She couldn't proceed without keys.

Then she noticed a small padded panel overlying the door itself-at eye level, perhaps six by ten inches with a k.n.o.b attached. It was like the sliding panel over the view port in the solid door of a maximum-security prison cell.

Tatta-tatta-tatta...

The killer seemed to be taking an unusually long shower. On the other hand, Chyna hadn't been in the house more than three minutes; it just seemed longer. If he was having a leisurely scrub, he might not be half done.

Tatta-tatta...

She would have preferred to hold open the outer door while she stepped into the vestibule and slid aside the panel on the inner view port, but the distance was too great. She had to let the door fall shut behind her.

The moment that the upholstered door met the upholstered jamb with a whisper-squeak of softly abraded vinyl, Chyna could no longer hear the vibrating water pipe. The quiet was so profound that even her ragged breathing was barely audible. Under the padding, the walls must have been covered with layers of sound-attenuating insulation.

Or perhaps the killer had shut off the shower just as the door had fallen shut. And was now toweling dry. Or pulling on a robe without bothering to towel off. On his way downstairs.

Fearful, unable to breathe, she opened the door again.

Tatta-tatta-tatta and the rush of water moving at high velocity, under pressure. and the rush of water moving at high velocity, under pressure.

She exhaled explosively with relief.

She was still safe.

All right, okay, be cool, keep moving, find out if the girl is here and then do what has to be done.

Reluctantly she allowed the door to fall shut. The rattling of the pipe was again sealed out.

She felt as though she was suffocating. Perhaps ventilation in the vestibule was inadequate, but it was the sound-deadening effect of the padded walls, at least as much as poor airflow, that made the atmosphere seem as thick as smoke and unbreathable.

Chyna slid aside the padded panel on the inner door.

Beyond was rose-colored light.

The port was fitted with a st.u.r.dy screen to protect the viewer from a.s.sault by whoever or whatever was within.

Chyna put her face to the port and saw a large chamber nearly the size of the living room under which it was situated. In portions of the s.p.a.ce, shadows were pooled deep, and the only light came from three lamps with fringed fabric shades and pink bulbs that were each putting out about forty watts.

At two places along the back wall were panels of red and gold brocade that hung from bra.s.s rods as if covering windows, but there could be no windows underground; the brocade was just set dressing to make the room more comfortable. On the wall to the left, barely touched by light, was a large tattered tapestry: a scene of women in long dresses and cloche hats riding horses sidesaddle through spring gra.s.s and flowers, past a verdant forest.

The furnishings included a plump armchair with antimaca.s.sars, a double bed with a white headboard painted with a scene not quite discernible in the rose light, bookcases with acanthus-leaf molding, cabinets with mullioned doors, a small dining table with a heavily carved ap.r.o.n, two Directoire chairs with flower-pattern upholstery flanking the table, and a refrigerator. An immense dark-stained armoire, featuring crackle-glazed flower appliques on all the door panels, was old but probably not a genuine antique, battered but handsome. A padded vanity bench sat before a makeup table with a triptych mirror in a gilded, fluted frame. In a far corner was a toilet and a sink.

As weird as this subterranean room was, like a storage vault for the stage furniture from a production of a.r.s.enic and Old Lace, a.r.s.enic and Old Lace, the collection of dolls was by far the strangest thing about it. Kewpie dolls, Cabbage Patch Kids, Raggedy Ann, and numerous other varieties, both old and new, some more than three feet tall, some smaller than a milk carton, were dressed in diapers, snowsuits, elaborate bridal dresses, checkered rompers, cowboy outfits, tennis togs, pajamas, hula skirts, kimonos, clown suits, overalls, nighties, and sailor suits. They filled the bookshelves, peered out through the gla.s.s doors of some of the cabinets, perched on the armoire, sat atop the refrigerator, stood and sat on the floor along the walls. Others were piled atop one another in a corner and at the foot of the bed, legs and arms jutting at odd stiff angles, heads c.o.c.ked as on broken necks, like stacks of gaily attired corpses awaiting transport to a crematorium. Two hundred, or three hundred, or more small faces either glowed in the gentle light or were ghost-pale in the shadows, some of bisque and some of china and some of cloth, some wood and some plastic. Their gla.s.s, tin, b.u.t.ton, cloth, and painted-ceramic eyes reflected the light, shone brightly where the dolls were placed near any of the three lamps, glowed as moodily as banked coals where they were consigned to the darker corners. the collection of dolls was by far the strangest thing about it. Kewpie dolls, Cabbage Patch Kids, Raggedy Ann, and numerous other varieties, both old and new, some more than three feet tall, some smaller than a milk carton, were dressed in diapers, snowsuits, elaborate bridal dresses, checkered rompers, cowboy outfits, tennis togs, pajamas, hula skirts, kimonos, clown suits, overalls, nighties, and sailor suits. They filled the bookshelves, peered out through the gla.s.s doors of some of the cabinets, perched on the armoire, sat atop the refrigerator, stood and sat on the floor along the walls. Others were piled atop one another in a corner and at the foot of the bed, legs and arms jutting at odd stiff angles, heads c.o.c.ked as on broken necks, like stacks of gaily attired corpses awaiting transport to a crematorium. Two hundred, or three hundred, or more small faces either glowed in the gentle light or were ghost-pale in the shadows, some of bisque and some of china and some of cloth, some wood and some plastic. Their gla.s.s, tin, b.u.t.ton, cloth, and painted-ceramic eyes reflected the light, shone brightly where the dolls were placed near any of the three lamps, glowed as moodily as banked coals where they were consigned to the darker corners.

For a moment, Chyna was half convinced that these dolls could actually see, except for a few individuals who appeared to be blind behind cataracts of rose light, and that awareness awareness glimmered in their terrible eyes. Although none of them moved-or even shifted their gaze-they had an aura of life about them. Their power was uncanny, as though the killer were also a warlock who stole the souls of those he murdered and imprisoned them in these figures. glimmered in their terrible eyes. Although none of them moved-or even shifted their gaze-they had an aura of life about them. Their power was uncanny, as though the killer were also a warlock who stole the souls of those he murdered and imprisoned them in these figures.

Then quiet movement in the room, a shadow coming out of gloom, proved to be the captive, and when she stepped into sight, the dolls lost their eerie magic. She was the most beautiful child that Chyna had ever seen, more beautiful even than in the Polaroid snapshot, with straight l.u.s.trous hair that was an enchanting shade of auburn in the peculiar light though platinum blond in reality. Fine-boned, slender, graceful, she possessed a beauty that was ethereal, angelic, and she seemed to be not a real girl but an apparition bearing a message about redemption, a manger, hope, and a guiding star.

She was dressed in black penny loafers, white knee socks, a blue or black skirt, and a short-sleeved white blouse with dark piping on the collar and across the pocket flap, as though she was in the uniform of a parochial school.

No doubt the killer provided the girl with the clothes that he wished her to wear, and Chyna saw at once why he would favor outfits like this. Though physically she was undoubtedly sixteen, she seemed younger when dressed in this fashion; with her slender arms, with her delicate wrists and hands, in this blushing light, the demure uniform made her seem like a child of eleven, shy of her confirmation Sunday, naive and innocent.

Sociopaths like this man were drawn to beauty and to innocence, because they were compelled to defile it. When innocence was stripped away, when beauty was cut and crushed, the malformed beast could at last feel superior to this person he had coveted. After the innocent and the beautiful were left dead and rotting, the world was to some degree made to more closely resemble the killer's interior landscape.

The girl sat in the armchair.

She was holding a book. She opened it, turned a few pages, and appeared to read.

Although she had surely heard the panel sliding back from the view port in the door, she did not look up. Apparently she a.s.sumed that her visitor was, as always, the eater of spiders.

With a rush of emotion that pinched her heart and surprised her with its intensity, Chyna said, "Ariel."

The name fell through the port as into an airless void, having carried no distance whatsoever, creating no echo.

The girl's cell obviously had been lined with numerous layers of soundproofing, perhaps with even more layers than the vestibule, and all this attention to the containment of her shouts and screams seemed to indicate that from time to time the killer invited people into his home. Perhaps to dinner. Or to have a few beers and watch a football game. That he would dare such a thing was only one more proof of his outrageous boldness.

But that he would have friends at all chilled Chyna, friends not demented like him, who would be horrified to discover the girl in his cellar and to know that their host slaughtered whole families for his entertainment. He pa.s.sed for human in the workaday world. People laughed at his jokes. Sought his advice. Shared their joys and sorrows with him. Perhaps he attended church. On some Sat.u.r.day nights, did he go dancing, smoothly two-stepping around the floor with a smiling woman in his arms, keeping time to the same music everyone else heard?

Chyna raised her voice: "Ariel."

The girl failed to look up.

Louder still, all but shouting it through the screened port in the padded door: "Ariel!" "Ariel!"

In the chair, knees primly together, the book in her lap, head bowed to the page, wings of hair hiding most of her face, Ariel sat as if deaf-or as if she were a girl in the back of a closet, tuning out the shouted arguments of drunk and drug-sodden adults, tuning out further and further until she was in a great deep silent place of her own, untouchable.

Chyna recalled times, as a young girl, when simply hiding from her mother and her mother's more dangerous friends had not provided her with a sufficient sense of security. Sometimes the arguments or the celebrations became too violent or too boisterous; the chaos of noise and crazy laughter and cursing spun like a tornado around her even where she had concealed herself, and her fear spiraled out of control, until she thought that her heart would burst or her head explode. Then she went away to more welcoming places in her mind, through the back of the old wardrobe into the land of Narnia, which she had read about in the wonderful books of Mr. C. S. Lewis, or to visit Toad Hall and the Wild Wood from The Wind in the Willows, The Wind in the Willows, or into realms that she herself invented. or into realms that she herself invented.

She had always been able to come back from those escapements. But on occasion, she had thought about how wonderful it would be to stay in that faraway place, where neither her mother nor her mother's kind would ever be able to find her again, no matter how hard they looked. In those exotic kingdoms, there was often danger, but there were also true and faithful friends like none found on this this side of magical wardrobes. side of magical wardrobes.

Now, peering through the screened port at the girl in the chair, Chyna was sure that Ariel had sought refuge in just such a far place and was detached from this sorry world in every way that counted. After a year in this dismal hole, from time to time suffering the attentions of the sociopath upstairs, perhaps she had wandered so far along the road of inner adventure that she could not easily-or ever-return.

In fact, the girl raised her gaze from the book and sat staring neither at Chyna's face in the door port nor apparently at anything in the room, but at something in a world twice removed from this one. Even in the inadequate rose light, Chyna could see that Ariel's eyes were out of focus and as strange as the eyes of any of the dolls that surrounded her.

The killer had told the men at the service station that he had not yet touched Ariel in "that way," and Chyna believed him. Because once he had taken her innocence, he would need to smash her beauty; and when that was done, he would kill her. The fact that she was alive argued that she was still untouched.

Yet day after day, month after dreadful month, she had lived in exhausting suspense, waiting for the hateful son of a b.i.t.c.h to decide that she was "ripe," waiting for his brutal a.s.sault, his sour breath on her face, his hot and insistent hands, the terrible irresistible weight of him, every indignity and humiliation. In her single room, there had been nowhere to hide; she could not escape to the rooftop, to the beach, to the attic, to the crawls.p.a.ce, to the upper limbs of the tree in the backyard.

"Ariel."

The refuge to which she had escaped might be in the pages of the book that she now held. She functioned in this world, grooming and feeding and bathing and dressing herself, but she lived lived in some other dimension. in some other dimension.

Chyna's heart rolled in a sea of sorrow in a storm of rage, and through the port in the upholstered door, she said, "I'm here, Ariel. I'm here. You aren't alone any more."

Ariel's gaze didn't shift out of dreams, and she was as still as any of the dolls.

"I am your guardian, Ariel. I'll keep you safe."

As the girl followed a long and winding road farther into her private Elsewhere, her hands relaxed, and the book slipped out of them. It slid off the edge of the chair and thumped to the floor, and all except a whisper of the sound was absorbed by the special walls and ceiling. She was not aware of having dropped the volume, and she sat unmoving.

"I'm your guardian," Chyna repeated, and wondered vaguely at her choice of words.

She was more afraid for Ariel than for herself, and her heart was racing faster than ever before.

"Your guardian."

Hot tears blurred Chyna's vision, disabling tears, an indulgence she could not afford. She blinked furiously until her eyes were dry and her vision was clear.

She turned from the locked inner door and angrily pushed open the outer one.

Tatta-tatta-tatta-tatta-tatta...

As she stepped out of the heavy sound-baffling of the vestibule and into the first room in the bas.e.m.e.nt, the rattling pipe seemed louder than she remembered.

Tatta-tatta-tatta...

Perhaps a minute had pa.s.sed since she'd slid aside the padded panel on the view port.

The son of a b.i.t.c.h b.a.s.t.a.r.d freak was still in his shower, naked and defenseless. And now that Chyna knew where Ariel was, she didn't have to worry that the cops would need him to lead them to the girl.

The gun felt good in her hand.

It felt wonderful in her hand.

If she could have freed Ariel and gotten her out of there, she would have done that rather than take the violent option. But she didn't possess a key, and that inner door was not going to be easy to break down.

Tatta-tatta-tatta...

She had only one choice. She went to the cellar stairs.

Blue steel gleaming in her hand.

Even if he finished showering and shut off the water before Chyna was able to reach him, he'd still be naked and defenseless, toweling off, so she would go in there, into the bathroom, and open fire on him point-blank, shoot him down, empty the revolver into him, the first shot right through his f.u.c.king heart, then put at least one round in his face, to be sure that he was really done for. Take no chances. No chances at all. Use every round, squeeze the trigger until the hammer click-click-clicked on the expended cartridges in a totally empty cylinder. She could do it. Kill the crazy freak, kill him over and over again, kill him until he stayed killed. She could do it, would would do it. do it.

She climbed the steep stairs, treading on wet footprints that she'd left in her descent: Chyna Shepherd no longer hiding, up and out of that hole, untouched, alive, coming out of Narnia forever.

Tatta-tatta-tatta...

Thinking ahead as she moved, Chyna wondered if she should shoot him through the shower curtain-if it was, in fact, a curtain instead of a gla.s.s door-because if she didn't didn't shoot him through it, then she would have to hold the revolver in just one hand while she yanked the curtain or the door aside. That would be risky, because a strange and dismaying weakness was creeping into her fingers and into her wrists. Her arms were shaking so badly that already she had to grip the weapon with both hands to prevent herself from dropping it. shoot him through it, then she would have to hold the revolver in just one hand while she yanked the curtain or the door aside. That would be risky, because a strange and dismaying weakness was creeping into her fingers and into her wrists. Her arms were shaking so badly that already she had to grip the weapon with both hands to prevent herself from dropping it.

Her heart rattling like the copper pipe, scared about the coming confrontation even if the crazy geek was was naked and defenseless, Chyna reached the upper landing and entered the laundry room. naked and defenseless, Chyna reached the upper landing and entered the laundry room.

She couldn't shoot him through the curtain, because she wouldn't know whether she'd hit him or not. She'd be shooting blind, unable to aim for his chest or head.

Past the dryer and the washer, through the fragrance of laundry detergent, she reached the open door to the kitchen. Crossing the threshold, she belatedly registered the important thing that she had seen on the landing at the head of the cellar stairs: wet shoeprints larger than her own, among her prints, overlapping her prints, where he had stood only a short while ago.

She was already rushing into the kitchen, with too much momentum to halt, and the killer came at her from the right, past the dinette set. He was big, strong, a juggernaut, neither naked nor defenseless, the shower having been a ruse all along.

He was fast, but she was marginally faster. He tried to drive her backward and slam her against the cabinets, but she slid out of the way, raising the revolver, with the muzzle three feet from his face, and she pulled the trigger, and the hammer made a dry, stick-breaking sound as it fell on an empty chamber.

She backed hard into the side of the refrigerator, dislodging the kittens-and-lilies calendar, which clattered to the floor at her feet.

The killer was still rushing at her.

She squeezed the trigger, and the revolver clicked again, which made no sense-s.h.i.t-because the clerk in the service station never had a chance to fire it before he had been blown away by the shotgun. No cartridges should be missing.

This was the first time that she had seen the killer's face. Always before, she'd glimpsed just the back of his head, the top of his skull, the side of his face but from a distance. He was not what she had expected, not moonfaced and pale-lipped and heavy-jawed. He was handsome, with blue eyes that were a beautiful contrast with his dark hair-nothing crazy in his clear eyes-broad clean features, and a nice smile.

Smiling, he continued to come straight at her as she squeezed the trigger a third time, and the hammer fell yet again on an empty chamber. Smiling, he tore the revolver out of her hand with such force that she thought her finger broke before it slipped through the trigger guard, and she squealed in pain.

The killer backed away from her, holding the weapon, his eyes sparkling with excitement. "What a kick that that was." was."

Chyna huddled against the side of the refrigerator, tramping on kitten faces.

"I knew it was the same gun," he said, "but what if I'd been wrong? I'd have one big hole in my face right now, wouldn't I, little lady?"

Weak and dizzy with terror, she looked around desperately for anything that could be used as a weapon, but there was nothing close at hand.

"One big hole in my face," he repeated, as if he found that prospect amusing.

One of the cabinets might contain knives, but she had no way of knowing which drawer to check.

"Intense," he said, smiling at the revolver in his hand.

A pistol lay on the counter across the kitchen, beside the sink, well out of her reach. Chyna couldn't believe this: He had brought a gun of his own, but he hadn't used it, had set it aside, and had gone for her bare-handed instead.

"You're an attractive woman."

She looked away from the pistol, hoping he hadn't noticed that she'd seen it. But she was fooling herself, and she knew it, because he saw everything, everything.

He pointed the revolver at her. "You were back there in the service station last night."

She was gasping for breath, but she didn't seem to be drawing any air. She was breathing too fast and too shallowly, in danger of hyperventilating, and she was furious with herself, furious, furious, because he was so calm. because he was so calm.

He said, "I know you were there, somehow, somewhere, and I know you found this Chief's Special after I left, but for the life of me, I can't figure why you're here here."

Maybe she would be able to get to the pistol before he could stop her. It was a million-to-one chance. Two million, three. h.e.l.l, face it, impossible.

From five feet away, aiming the revolver at the bridge of her nose, his voice bubbly with exhilaration, the killer said, "But even though it was the Asian's piece, I was walking into the mouth of the dragon here. I was lucky just now. Are you?"