It Lives Again (18 page)

“Okay,” said Perkins, “I’ll cancel the reservations!” As Perkins left, Mallory stood there smiling at Eugene.

“There’s no reason to look so smug about it, Mr. Mallory. I’m a funny guy. Show me a couple of murders and suddenly I get the point,” Eugene said facetiously.

“Listen, Mr. Scott, we all went through the same thing.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you did,” said Eugene, suddenly very angry. He had to tell this bastard, once and for all, what he thought of him.

“Let me tell you something, Mr. Mallory. You might have had me on your side a long time ago if you didn’t take such obvious pleasure in killing these creatures, these babies, whatever the hell they are.”

Mallory was about to retort, but then he stopped. He turned to face the wall, as if he couldn’t bear to look at Eugene when he told him the truth.

“My real name is Preston,” he began slowly. “The one that was born in Seattle two years ago . . . it was mine. It killed my wife in childbirth . . . tore her apart. I came home, found it in the apartment standing over her. I knew it would kill me. I was a cop then, too. I had my service revolver. That was it. I killed it.”

“And then you made a profession out of it,” Eugene said. “If you were right, you had to keep proving it over and over again.”

Mallory turned. “I was right,” he said evenly. “They don’t belong on this earth. But they’ll keep coming, and as long as there are guys like Davis, they’ll survive. They’ll destroy us all. They’ll take over.”

“Listen,” said Eugene. “If you believe in God, you’ve got to believe they’ve been put here for a reason.

“Yeah, sure, just like plane crashes. Well, I don’t believe in God, Mr. Scott. I don’t believe in God any more. And you want to know the day I stopped? The day I came home and found that thing standing over my wife’s body.”

Later that afternoon, in one of those expensive houses lying flush up against the hills, a birthday party was in progress on the patio behind the house.

Balloons and streamers were everywhere, and the mother, health-club thin, was marching triumphantly from the kitchen carrying an enormous, made-to-order, bakery-shop cake, complete with ten burning candles.

“Here we are,” she said. “Here we are, Cindy.”

Cindy, the birthday girl, ten years old, turned shrewdly, appraising the cake, making sure it was as big as or even bigger than her sister Val’s, whose birthday had taken place last month.

It was.

“All right, make a wish,” cried the mother. “Make a wish!”

A pause, and then Cindy, an old hand at this sort of thing, blew out the candles. No problem.

A big cheer from the grown-ups who surrounded the table. The youngsters sat there bored, wondering why adults went crazy when some child blew out birthday candles. What were you supposed to have at ten years old, emphysema or something?

The father appeared, beaming through the open patio door. “I mixed a fresh pitcher of martinis,” he said, addressing the adults. “The little monsters can take care of themselves.”

Another big cheer from the adults as they filed into the house, leaving the children to their cake.

Val, Cindy’s older sister, looked distastefully at her piece of cake. “Ugh, this cake is terrible,” she moaned.

“Oh, shut up,” said Cindy.

Val jumped up from the table. “Let’s play hide-and seek,” she said. “You’re it, Cindy!”

“I don’t wanna be it,” Cindy pouted.

“Oh, no,” said Val, teasing her, “it’s your party and you gotta be it.”

“That’s right,” shouted the other children, agreeing with Val.

“Oh, all right,” said Cindy, getting up from the table with the others, the large cake with elaborate decorations forgotten.

Cindy, against a pole, covered her eyes with her forearm and started to count.

“No cheating,” called Val, watching Cindy peeking out from under her arm.

Cindy ignored her and continued her methodical drone, “Nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen,” as Val led the other children up into the brush-covered hills.

Reaching a small rise a little way up the hill, Val turned again to check on her sister. “No peeking, Cindy,” she screamed down at her.

Cindy just kept on counting, “Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four . . .”

A little boy, not so sure this was a good idea, approached Val. “What if there’s rattlesnakes up here?” he asked.

“Oh, don’t be chicken, Alex,” said Val, running off into the deeper brush with some of the bigger children.

Alex turned. He saw a small dog that had decided to follow them up the hill. He picked it up, figuring he’d like to have the dog along when he hid in the brush.

“If you bark, I’ll kill you,” the boy threatened as he went off carrying the little dog.

Cindy had mysteriously gone from “thirty-six, thirty-seven” to “ninety-eight, ninety-nine, a hundred.” She opened her eyes. “Anyone near my base is it,” she said, spinning around. “Ready or not, here I come.”

Cindy started up the steep hill. The dry earth slid under her feet, getting into her shoes. She reached the same small rise as the other children had before her and stopped, looking farther up into the hills.

“Here I come,” she repeated.

“Here I come,” called back a voice, her sister Val, mimicking her.

Then all the children took it up. “Here I come,” they yelled, shaking the bushes they were hiding behind, giggling down at the birthday girl.

Cindy began climbing again, higher, more dirt getting into her shoes. “Ouch!” she said, taking off her shoe, emptying it, and starting again. She was quickly getting tired of this game.

Suddenly she heard a rustling sound and turned quickly. The bushes moved; somebody was in those bushes.

“Okay,” yelled Cindy, “somebody’s behind that bush. You’re it.”

There was no response . . . just the sound of something crawling!

“No fair!” cried Cindy impatiently. “Is that you, Val? Come on out . . .”

No answer.

Cindy stepped forward to break a long branch off a dead tree, then she approached the bushes ready to strike with it.

“Okay for you, Val,” she said. “It’s my birthday and you’re ruining it. Come on out!”

She shoved the long branch into the bushes and, really angry now, she screamed, “And I don’t want your present, either! You didn’t even buy it with your own money.”

As Cindy poked the stick into the bushes, the rustling noise seemed to be getting louder—until suddenly it became a roar!

Val and the rest of the youngsters farther up the hill looked skyward. A police helicopter was coming over the hill.

Below, the pilot saw the children hiding in the brush. He grabbed his loudspeaker and shouted down at them over the roar of his engines.

“Clear this area. Go back to your homes. Repeat,” he said, “clear this area now!”

Confused and frightened, the children left their hiding places. They clustered around Val and started down the hillside as the shadow of the helicopter swept over them, going off to warn the other hillside residents.

Farther down the hill, Cindy had heard the roar, seen the helicopter, but had not heard the warning, so obsessed was she with what was behind those bushes. “Come on out,” she cried, poking even more violently. “You really are a bitch, Val!”

Suddenly her childish features contorted in terror! She tripped and tumbled to the ground among the dead leaves! She screamed again, looking at the thing that was coming at her. The rustling grew louder as it cleared the bushes, about to strike. It was a . . . rattlesnake!

She screamed again! And then heard an explosion of gunshots.

The children above scampered, crawled, and ran down the hill to see policemen, their guns smoking, standing over the dead rattlesnake.

Cindy lay sobbing on the ground. The officers helped her up. “Run on home and stay there,” an officer told her.

The other children were all around Cindy now, looking down with disgust at the dead rattlesnake. Val grabbed her sister and started off down the hill.

“I’ll never be mean to you again,” she sobbed.

“Oh, Val,” Cindy said, more controlled now than Val, “I really liked your present, really I did.”

The two went off, helping each other down the hill as the rest of their friends stumbled after them.

As they reached the bottom of the hill, Alex, still holding the dog for protection, saw something up by the house.

“Look!” he screamed.

The children followed his gaze.

The cake, the decorations, all the paper goods were ripped apart.

The children moved closer, looking especially at the cake.

“Look,” said Val in horror. “There’s claw marks all over the cake. Mommy!” she cried. “Mommy!”

The mother appeared at the patio door, carrying a martini glass.

“Dear,” she admonished, “I’ve told you never to scream like that.”

“Look, Mommy,” Val cried again, “look!”

Her mother finally looked. “Oh, my God!” she moaned, dropping her glass. She whirled back into the house. “Dave!” she cried. “Dave!”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

An unmarked police car moved quickly along the narrow roads up by the reservoir, its very speed signifying it had come this way before; sure of the way.

Mile after mile of brush-filled terrain sped by, and then suddenly, amid all this dryness, the man-made lake appeared, glistening in the late-afternoon sun, its banks completely symmetrical.

The road followed it for a stretch, rutted, wash-boardy, then it veered off into a deep wood, getting even bumpier until it ended abruptly in front of a smallish, two-story house.

The house surprised people used to southern California. Buried there deep in the woods, it looked like a farm house one would find off the main roads in Missouri.

The car door opened and Lieutenant Perkins got out. He spoke to some other people still in the car. “Supervisor of the reservoir usually lives here. We moved him to a motel,” he said.

Jody appeared. “Here, let me help you,” said Perkins, helping her out of the back seat. Eugene was getting out the other side, stiff from his bandages.

As Jody, Eugene, and Perkins crossed the front lawn, the driver, a uniformed policeman, reached into the back seat and took out several hangers bearing clothes.

Another car appeared up the tree-shaded driveway. It stopped, letting out its one passenger, Mallory.

He walked toward the three, inspecting the house as he approached.

“Cozy,” he said, smiling, meaning to be funny.

Jody stiffened. Even after Eugene had told her who he was and why he acted the way he did, she still couldn’t stand the man. What was she doing here with these men, with these clothes they had bought for her and Eugene with funds from the city budget?

Gene had explained the whole thing in the hospital. They were to be brought to this house near where Frank Davis was killed. How do they know that? Jody thought. Gene saw the body—oh, he wouldn’t miss it, as if he were the county coroner, or something—but how do they know the baby, my baby, killed him? Why would he kill Frank Davis? He was the only one trying to save his life, for God’s sake!

Now we’re supposed to be the—what did he call it? The bait. Yes, that’s it, the bait. We’re supposed to sit here in the middle of these woods and wait for the baby, looking for his mother, to show up, so they can blast him, kill him, with their guns.

“Will you get the groceries out of the trunk?” Perkins asked, turning to the policeman.

“Sure thing,” said the policeman, handing Jody her new clothes.

“Thank you,” said Jody, just as her mother taught her. Groceries! Boy, they think of everything. I bet they had the city nutritionist figure out what the average mother and father would eat, waiting as “bait” two or three days for someone to kill their child.

“How do you like it, Mrs. Scott?” asked Mallory, trying to be friendly.

“It’s funny,” said Jody. “I saw a house like this in a dream once. No, more than once. It kept coming back. Maybe it was a nightmare.”

Perkins looked at her strangely, anxious to change the subject, get them in the house, get this whole thing worked out, finish this damn thing and be done with it.

“The bedrooms are upstairs. Two of them,” he said, leading them toward the house.

“That’ll be perfect,” said Eugene. Jody was not the only one who had been thinking. Eugene still remembered how Jody had turned away from him in that room. And then at the hospital, not a word about his wounds, nothing. Only, “Where’s the baby?” The baby! That thing is no baby . . . Well, she can sleep alone from now on. At least until she makes the first move.

“Well, let’s go. Might as well get it over with,” said Eugene, offering a hand to Jody. That was the best he could do—help her up the stairs.

Jody coldly turned the other way.

Eugene shrugged and bounded up the stairs and through the door Perkins held open for them.

Inside, Perkins showed them around the tiny house. The uniformed policeman was stacking the shelves and the refrigerator with the city-bought groceries.

Finished downstairs, Perkins led the Scotts up the narrow stairway to the second floor.

“This is the hall,” said Perkins.

“No kidding,” remarked Jody under her breath.

Eugene turned, annoyed. Perkins apparently had not heard as he brightly led them into the first bedroom.

Jody didn’t care who had heard as she followed Perkins into the bedroom.

Very quaint. The interior decorator could have been Norman Rockwell. It was all there, the canopy bed, the furnishings complete in Colonial decor.

I can just imagine the supervisor of the reservoir’s sex life, said Jody wickedly to herself.

“The only thing they warned us about were some holes in the roof. But the forecast doesn’t predict rain,” said Perkins. “If there’s one thing this city could use, it’s rain.”

The required small talk, thought Jody, trying to put us all at ease. And now the other one, the other killer, is going to talk. Mallory looked as if he were getting ready to speak.

“We patched in special direct lines yesterday,” he said. “If you need us, you can dial seven. We made several dry runs. We can be here in under five minutes.”