It Lives Again (14 page)

Finished, it scampered off the dead doctor across the fallen table, over Dr. Perry’s priceless documentation. Those wild dreams of communicating with another species were all dashed away now, reduced to mere scraps of paper lying useless on the floor. Just a path for this thing, this creature, to crawl across, leaving behind it a trail of the doctor’s blood from its bloody claws.

Now the claw reached across and closed around Dr. Perry’s keys, the keys that opened the cages for the other two and the door to the basement. In a moment, if it had the intelligence, all three would be free, free to roam at will.

Outside, police were moving through the night, through the thick firebrush areas, armed and ready, surrounding every possible avenue of escape.

Approaching the estate from the other side, more police moved down the hillside, breaking their way through the dry undergrowth, hacking their way to positions above the house.

Mallory was with them. “Stay close together,” he instructed. “If it gets out of the house and into the brush, we won’t stand a chance. It’s got to be killed inside that house.” He pointed down to the house visible below them, a few lights on in the upper rooms.

One of those lights was in the room occupied by Frank Davis. He, along with others in the house, couldn’t sleep. He had gotten up, dressed, and was on his way downstairs, searching for something to read.

Down the long winding Spanish staircase he came, his shadow immense on the wall. He crossed to the front door, opened it, and looked out into the night.

Nothing, not that he had expected anything; just the wind, the chirping of crickets, and occasionally the passing of some sort of plane far above. Nothing else.

Then suddenly, a figure stepped in beside Frank, a hand touched him. Frank jumped.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” apologized Dr. Forrest. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“Oh, no, that’s okay. You didn’t frighten me,” Frank lied, so as not to embarrass the doctor. “You couldn’t sleep either, eh,” he laughed.

“Not a wink.” Dr. Forrest smiled. “What about some gin rummy?”

“Why not?” said Frank. And with Dr. Forrest leading the way, they entered what was once the great hall of the mansion.

Once carefully, exquisitely furnished, the hall now contained only a few pieces of furniture, makeshift stuff at that, scattered around. They sat down at a paint-smeared table. Dr. Forrest broke open a new package of playing cards.

“I brought these just in case,” he said, delighted at last to find someone who played.

“Oh, you did,” said Davis. “Seems to me I’m going up against some kind of a shark here.”

They both laughed, their laughter resounding up and echoing off the bare undraped walls.

Listening to their laughter, and drawn to it from the top of the stairway leading up from the basement, was one of the creatures. It heard that strange sound echoing in the huge room. The creature, curious, crossed the dining room leading to the great hall.

Reaching the large archway leading into the room, it stopped. Squinting, its eyesight not yet fully developed, it watched the two men hunched over the table, slapping small cardboard objects down onto that wooden table. The creature watched, enthralled, trying, perhaps, to figure out why this ritual, or whatever it was, amused those two men so much.

At the stairway another of the creatures crawled upward, up the stairs to the second floor.

In Eugene and Jody’s room, Jody had fallen, from complete exhaustion, into a mindless, dreamless sleep.

Eugene, on the other hand, lay there wide awake, staring at the ceiling. He heard something crawling! He got up on one elbow. He looked toward the window. No, he decided, it’s nothing. It’s just those winds brushing something up against the house, making a sound like that, like something crawling.

And in another part of the house, coming up the back stairs to the second floor, was the third creature. It came to a door, slightly ajar. Inside, it heard the rushing of water. Then the water stopped.

The creature moved closer and peered in.

Steven King, the karate expert, couldn’t sleep, either. After thrashing around in his bed for twenty minutes with no luck, he thought a shower might help. Now he had climbed out of the shower, drying himself vigorously with a towel. He looked over at his door, more than halfway open.

Did I leave it that far open? he wondered. Steven had left the door open intentionally. Earlier today he’d told Barbara, “any time you want it, it’s there waiting for you down in that little room. That’s the way I am,” he said. “I lay it right out on the line.”

“Yes, well, I’m the same way,” Barbara had said, “and I’m telling you, you’re going to be a lot older, and a lot grayer, with four prostate operations under your belt, before I come down to your little room.”

Typical bitch of a nurse, thought Steven, continuing to dry himself. If I were a doctor, she’d be there quick enough.

Dry now, he struck a karate pose in the mirror, then slapped his flat stomach. “Not bad, not bad,” he said aloud. “Dumb bitch don’t know what she’s missing.”

He started across the room to his bed, a large double bed with the bedclothes piled in all directions from his earlier efforts to get to sleep.

One pile, however, looked strangely suspicious, more like a lump, as if something were under the bedclothes, under the blankets.

Steven saw none of this. He crossed to the far wall and switched out the light. He turned for one last look down the hall. No Barbara. “Oh, well.” He got into bed. Kicking the covers away, he pulled the sheet over himself and lay back in the darkness.

Moments of silence and waiting. Then suddenly he jumped up, only to reach over and begin setting the alarm clock by his bed. He wound it . . . and wound it, and then lay back again on the bed.

Another moment; the covers next to him began to rise! Steven’s eyes flickered to the right. He saw it, this rising form beside him in the bed. Now the sheet fell away! He saw it . . . the creature! Instinctively his arm came up toward the infant in a lethal karate blow! The infant took it on the side of the head, fell down, and then was up growling, crawling up at its foe. Steven tried to scream, but the infant was there at his throat, tearing it open.

Steven King’s powerful arms flailed out in all directions, trying to get loose, hitting the alarm clock, knocking it onto the bed. The alarm went off. The infant grabbed it and intelligently muffled it under the covers. Now it looked at Steven, the thing that had hit it, who was dead.

It growled, as a crimson stain began to spread out on the sheet.

Below, Frank Davis and Dr. Forrest heard the growl.

“Did you hear something?” asked Frank.

“The door to the basement must be open,” said Dr. Forrest.

“And a phone,” said Frank. “Sounded as if a phone were ringing upstairs.”

Dr. Forrest got up. “I’m going to see about Dr. Perry,” he said.

Upstairs in Jody and Eugene’s small bedroom, Eugene sat upright in bed. He was soaked with perspiration. Over by the windows, the curtains, thin with age, were blowing; it was those hot winds again.

“Damned Santa Anas!” Eugene muttered.

He got up and looked over at Jody, sleeping soundly. He went to the window. Looking out, he watched the trees swaying easily in the breeze and saw, to the left, the swimming pool illuminated by a single floodlight at one end.

Why not? he said to himself, looking to see if Jody was still asleep.

A few minutes later Eugene, dressed in an old faded swimsuit he’d found the first day he was brought here, let himself quietly out the bedroom door and started quickly down the hall. At the top of the stairs he met Frank Davis coming up.

“Did you hear a phone or a doorbell, something like that?” asked Frank calmly.

“No,” said Eugene. “When?”

“Just before, well, never mind. Hey,” Frank said, “a swim’s not a bad idea. I may join you in a few minutes.”

“Why not?” said Eugene as he moved down the stairs and toward the front door.

Downstairs, Dr. Forrest had just reached the steel door of the basement laboratory. It was closed, but not locked. He opened it cautiously, as if he knew something was wrong. It was dark. The lights were out!

“Dr. Perry?” he called.

No answer.

He moved further into the room, feeling for a wall switch. Then he remembered. No such amenities as wall switches. The wiring had been put in this room most rapidly, and only a month or so ago. The only switch was an overchanging connection in the middle of the room.

Calling “Dr. Perry?” again, he moved step by cautious step into the pitch-black room as he felt overhead for the switch.

Then his foot touched something. Soft. Too soft to be a table or a chair.

“Dr. Perry,” he said again, a touch of panic in his voice. His arms still sawed at the air in search of that elusive light switch. “Dr. Perry?”

He felt the cordlike wire and quickly, frantically followed it to its connection and switched on the amber light.

The first thing he saw was the empty cages, three of them, the doors swinging open, the creatures gone.

As if not anxious to see what lay at his feet, he looked down slowly. He saw it; he nodded, expecting to see it all along. It was Dr. Perry, his body horribly twisted, horribly dead. He looked around the room; there was no sign of the infants.

Calmly he stepped over his friend’s body to the house intercom, which had been installed for just such an emergency.

“Perry’s dead,” he said into the device. “They’ve gotten out. All three of them have gotten out.”

Eugene had crossed the vast lawn leading to the pool. He stood looking down into the water, the light bouncing off it, making up his mind whether he should go in or not. Apart from the leaves that covered almost the entire length and breadth of the pool, the water itself seemed dark and still, as if the pool hadn’t been used for a long, long time.

Undecided, he reached down. He touched the water; it was cool, refreshing.

He stood and, feet first and with a splash, jumped in. Almost immediately he surfaced, holding his breath, making sure he didn’t swallow any of the water. He started slowly paddling around, picking out as he did floating leaves by the light of the solitary floodlight toward the end of the pool. Then he heard something. He looked up. Nothing, just the incessant chirping of crickets. He saw a weathered sign off to the side, just barely connected to a rusty, bent old pole. “SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK,” the sign said.

“That’s for sure,” Eugene murmured, smiling, picking out more leaves.

Then another sound, more than crickets this time; as if something were moving in the underbrush. It was the goddamn Santa Ana wind blowing the bushes—or was it? What else could it be? thought Eugene.

Suddenly the sound of a bulb shattering! Eugene looked quickly in that direction; the floodlight had gone out! Eugene was plunged into darkness all around him.

“Hey,” he said aloud, “what is this? . . . Is this a gag, or what?”

Nothing . . .

He tried again. “Hey, put that light back on, will you? . . . Davis?” he called. “Is that you?”

There was no answer. Eugene looked around. By the lights from the house he could barely make out a ladder on the far side of the pool. He started in that direction, then, all at once, he stopped. He’d heard something, something else, something much closer! The sound of something, someone, sliding across the concrete, pulling itself along, crawling—the exaggerated sound of something small and in motion, determined to get to where it was going!

Eugene, treading water, was in the center of the swimming pool, virtually helpless. “What’s going on?” he said, panic sneaking into his voice. “If there’s somebody there, say something . . .”

Nothing . . . no human response . . . just the sound of the Santa Ana winds blowing; the dull thud of the eucalyptus leaves as they fell into the pool; the slapping of the pool water against the concrete edge; and once in a while that crawling sound, and the crinkle of broken glass from the floodlight bulb as something crawled over the pieces.

“All right,” said Eugene, almost choking now, “who’s out there, who is it?”

And then a splash! Something had dropped into the pool behind Eugene Scott.

The sound of a living thing swimming in the pool! Coming toward him!

Eugene turned completely around, still treading water, facing the oncoming sound, the foul water a sloshing back and forth around him. He didn’t speak, he was beyond that now. A moan, that was all, a moan of fear was the only sound he could make. He heard it, whatever it was, something swimming in the pool, coming at him. Eugene’s only hope now was that someone in the house, someone very ruthlessly cruel or insensitive, was playing this vicious joke on him.

“Davis!” he finally managed to scream. “Davis, is that you?”

At the huge gate guarding the grounds, two policemen were working on the mechanism of the electric-eye control that operated the gate. Finally and noiselessly, the gate slid open and Detective Perkins, followed by several policemen, moved quickly onto the grounds. Behind them two police cars moved, just as noiselessly, up the driveway.

At another point far above the house, Mallory and a team of men were climbing over fences, advancing on the grounds.

Eugene, meanwhile, was frozen in the center of the swimming pool, afraid to look to the right or to the left for any means of escape. He could only stare straight ahead at whatever it was that was coming at him.

It was closer now, much closer. All hope of a joke gone, he could see it was much too small to be Davis. He could hear the panting, the guttural breathing of something extremely deadly—he was sure of it—drawing closer, ever closer, coming at him.

Suddenly a voice! . . . In the distance, but nevertheless a human voice!

“Eugene,” it said. It was Dr. Forrest’s voice!

Eugene tried to answer. He opened his mouth; all he got was a mouthful of that foul, putrid water. Again he tried to call out; all he managed was a gasp as a splash of the water slid disgustingly down his throat.

“Eugene!” the voice repeated, closer now. Dr. Forrest was moving across the lawn, for some reason drawn toward the pool, as if he knew Eugene was down there. Maybe Davis had told him.