Nebulon Horror (25 page)

"She told us she hadn't touched a thing in that room since Gustave died. Isn't that what she said? Nothing added, nothing removed?"

"That's what she said."

"She's a liar. Mason Nicolini wasn't in existence when Gustave was alive. I sent them my poems when they first advertised in a writers' magazine, saying they were a new company and wanted material. Those two books never belonged to Gustave. They have to be hers.
She's
been using those books on life after death.
She's
been trying to open that door Ellstrom called you about."

"That's why she had the key in her pocket," Lighthill said. He put his hands flat on the desk and pushed himself erect with a forceful heave. "Okay. That ties her in with the diagram, with the missing Hostetter boy and Jerri Jansen. Maybe with the whole ball of wax. Let's go hold those books up in front of her and see if she'll talk this time."

T
he diagram was nearly finished, Vin Otto observed. He should know. He had studied the one in the nursery long enough. The kneeling woman with her back to him continued to intone her dreary non-English chant as she dipped her hand into the bowl and let the white powder dribble from her fingers. It must have taken her a long time to learn to draw with powder. She had learned well, though. Her hand never once faltered as she completed the intricate pattern.

The room was dark but not so dark that Vin could not see what she was doing. It would have been bright with moonlight had there been no curtains at the single window. Even with the curtains, enough light entered to make the powder seem luminous. The diagram appeared to glow with an inner life.

Vin was not afraid. Why should he be? The kneeling figure before him was a woman and alone. She was older than he. She was merely the town librarian, Elizabeth Peckham. He stood in the doorway watching her, curious to know what would happen next.

What happened was that the floor began to smoke.

No, it was not smoke. It was more the kind of mist that rose from a bottomland slough in early morning. Nor was it coming from the floor. The floor had nothing to do with it. It rose from the intricate lines
of the diagram. The white powder must be some kind of chemical that reacted with the air.

Vin watched it and wondered.

The mist or whatever it was rose slowly from the interwoven lines of powder to a height of two feet or so, retaining the form of the diagram. It was as though the diagram had sent up a vaporous duplicate of itself that would just float there. But now the floating symbol began to assume an identity of its own. Its lines broadened and blended with one another to form a transparent layer of fog, and the fog slowly flowed toward the kneeling woman as though she were somehow drawing it. It assumed the shape of a horizontal funnel-cloud and began to revolve like a small tornado with the point of the funnel aimed at Elizabeth Peckham's body. As Vin watched in amazement and now in fear, it bored its way into the woman and became part of her.

A violent shudder seized Elizabeth as this happened. Her whole body seemed racked by it for a moment. The bowl of powder dropped from her hand and rolled unbroken away from her, spilling most of its remaining contents in a line curving part way around her. She had already stopped chanting. Vin had been too curious about the purpose of the mist to notice just when the sound of silence had taken over. Now, still shuddering, she began to rise from her knees.

As she did so, the violent trembling gradually ceased. At full height she no longer shook at all but simply stood there tall and straight with her back still toward him. Then she turned to face him and he fell back a step while his eyes widened in horror.

Vin Otto knew Elizabeth Peckham. Though he had never been inside her house before, he had met her a
number of times when stopping by to pick up Jerri. He had talked to her in the library as well. He knew
her to be a tall, stiff, unfriendly woman in her early thirties, not good-looking but certainly not conspicuously ugly.

The woman confronting him now was indeed tall and stiff, but her face was a sunken mass of wrinkles. The hands dangling at her sides were claws. She was incredibly old. Her eyes . . .

He could not really see her eyes, he realized. All he could make out was the challenging red glare they directed at him.

She came toward him, moving slowly and stiffly in her long dark dress, and he tried to retreat and found he could not. His mind screamed at him to turn and run but his body would not obey the command. The eyes came closer. The red glare actually lit up the space between her face and his, and he could see every wrinkle and crease in her skin. Her teeth were old and rotten, disgusting him as she opened her almost lip-less mouth to speak. But he could not turn his face away from the expected foulness of her breath.

"What you want?" she said.

She
said? It was another shock. The creature before him was or had been Elizabeth Peckham. It wore a dress he certainly had seen on Elizabeth Peckham before. The face at least faintly resembled hers even though aged beyond belief. But the voice was not her voice. It was deep. It spoke with an accent. Elizabeth would have said precisely "What do you want here?" or "What do you wish here?" Not "What you want?

It didn't matter. He was unable to answer. Nothing his mind instructed his body to do could be done while those eyes stared at him.

One of the dangling claws reached out to him and a straightened forefinger, scarcely more than bone with a covering of wrinkled skin, touched his chest. "You fool to come here tonight. Some other time I would be amused maybe. Tonight no, we got things to do. Stand there." The finger left his chest and pointed to a wall. The eyes staring at his face were twin fires.

He tried to obey but could not.

The mouth twisted down at one side and a sound of laughter cackled from it. "You can't, eh? Ha. Watching the little ones do their kindergarten tricks sometimes, I forget I have more power." The twin fires began to fade. Now they were only fire beetles glowing in the dark of the room. Now the eyes Vin Otto looked into were empty sockets.

He felt himself retreating. His stockinged feet whispered back over the floor until one of his heels hit the wall. He stood there gazing at the ancient, wrinkled face with no eyes, and slowly the glow came back into the eyes and slowly it intensified.

"Stay there," the voice instructed. "I let you watch for now. Be thankful you got eyes to watch with." There was a sound of giggling in the hall.

Vin looked at the doorway. Through it came the small shapes and glowing eyes he had seen at Keith Wilding's nursery. The children. Except for the eyes, there appeared to be nothing unusual about them. They were any normal gang of kids on a lark. He counted them as they filed into the room. There were eleven. Teresa Crosser led them. One of those in line was Jerri.

He could see them plainly—all of them, no matter where they stood in the room as they lined up to face the creature who should have been Elizabeth. There was only a pale glow of moonlight at the window, true. But the diagram on the floor gave off a glow. The eyes of the children themselves contributed to the illumination. Brightest of all were the eyes of Elizabeth.

Jerri's eyes were not glowing, he noticed. They were those of a normal child. She had not come into the room the way the others had, whispering and giggling like kids entering a schoolroom. She seemed subdued. She stood there gazing at her feet. Some of the others turned their heads to look at her.

"Where you come from?" the guttural voice asked.

Vin looked at Elizabeth. He had to think of her as Elizabeth though he knew the voice and the body were not hers. She stood at the edge of the diagram he had watched her create only a few moments ago. She motioned the children to line up in a semicircle in front of her, with Jerri in the center. Again she said "Where you come from?" in a voice, an accent, a use of English that were foreign to the woman who lived here.

"We hid at the Ianuccis' place," Teresa Crosser said. "No one's been there since we killed them."

"No one saw you come here?"

"Oh, no. There's a policeman watching the house, but he's stupid. We know lots of ways, like the time we brought Raymond from school. This time we came in through the backyard, past the well."

"How'd you finally catch this one?"

"We were at Mister Wilding's nursery," Teresa said, "and we did what you told us. When the grown-ups weren't expecting it, we stood together at a window and thought it into her head to come out to us."

"You learning," Elizabeth said.

"Then we thought it into her head she had to come here with us and be punished, like you said."

"Goot." The ancient head moved up and down. Then the flaming eyes focused on Jerri Jansen and the voice said, "You know why you got to be punished?"

"Yes," the child answered, staring at the floor.

"Tell us why!"

"I broke the first of all the rules, the same as Raymond did. I gave away the secret of the door."

"You gave away the secret of the door. Yah. Come here."

Lifting her head to look at the creature, Jerri stepped forward. Elizabeth's bony hand came to rest
on her shoulder and they stood facing each other, the
yellow-haired, cherub-faced daughter of Olive Jansen gazing fixedly at the monstrous face of the woman
who had been Elizabeth Peckham. The child's mouth
began to quiver. Against the wall Vin Otto made a superhuman effort and took one wooden step forward.

The fiery eyes flashed a glance at him and he staggered back, his shoulders thudding against the plaster.

"Jerri Jansen, stand there in the door," Elizabeth Peckham said, turning. The bony forefinger that had
touched Vin earlier now pointed to the center of the intricate network of lines and geometric figures glow
ing whitely on the wooden floor. Then it curled to motion the child forward.

"No," Jerri whimpered. "Please don't!"

"Children."

The semicircle of watching children closed in. Glowing eyes brightened and their target was the whimpering victim. Vin Otto struggled again to leave the wall but succeeded only in nearly drowning himself in his own sweat and could make no sound.

The child stepped forward in a trance. She reached the spot she apparently knew she must occupy. Woodenly she turned to face her playmates.

The eyes of the children reddened and brightened still more. No fire beetles now, they were laser beams focused on the one to be punished. But somewhere in
the house a doorbell had begun ringing.

"Wait," the crone Elizabeth instructed.

The eyes paled. The room filled with listening as
all in it, including Vin Otto, awaited a repetition of the sound.

It came again, longer and more insistent.

"Someone is at the front door," Teresa Crosser said calmly.

The crone nodded. "Just wait."

The bell rang a third time and the sound went jangling through the house. It climbed the stairs. It died away in echoes. It was followed by a splintering crash as the front door was broken open. Then by footsteps and voices.

Vin Otto recognized the voices. Doc Broderick's said, "Upstairs. Don't waste time down here."

The voice of Worth Blair said, "Let's have a look at that study."

Chief Lighthill's growl said, "To hell with that.
Find her."

The intruders reached the stairs and began climbing. The sound of their ascent filled the upper hall. Vin Otto suddenly realized the grip on him had relaxed a little, perhaps because Elizabeth Peckham was so intently watching the door. With a prodigious effort he took a step away from the wall.

No one noticed.

He took another. He filled his chest with air and like a chained man bursting his bonds hurled himself with his arms outthrust toward Jerri. Elizabeth whirled toward him with her long dark skirt flying. Her eyes brought him down.

But not all the way. His momentum carried him to the diagram as he pitched to his knees. In agony he still scrabbled toward the child, working his arms as though swimming through pitch. His hands, arms, and body wriggled over the diagram and blurred it before the glare of the crone's eyes succeeded in stopping him.

They did that just as Chief Lighthill appeared in the doorway. Behind the chief were Worth Blair,
Keith Wilding, and Doc Broderick. The chief's hand held a revolver. He looked at Vin Otto groveling on the floor and at Elizabeth Peckham. He caught the full force of the woman's blazing eyes and staggered back as though struck by a lightning bolt.

The tightening of the chief's trigger finger was purely reflex action. The revolver filled the room with
thunder and Elizabeth Peckham clutched at her stomach, uttering an old man's croak of pain. Then slowly she sank to her knees.