Behold the Child (12 page)

Suddenly, Doc swore. He'd gotten his foot snared in a throw rug. Irritated, he kicked it out of the way; lost his balance and just barely caught himself in the doorway. "God damn it," he grunted, "let's get out of this dump."

"Wait," Kenzie said softly. "Look at this."

He rolled up the rug and used it to wipe a thin coating of dust away from the floorboards. Saw a brass handle.

"Is that a fucking trapdoor?" Doc whispered.

Kenzie drew his sidearm again. He held a finger to his lips. His skin went cold and damp with perspiration. He motioned for Doc to aim the shotgun and then eased the trapdoor open. The hidden hinges squeaked like the gate to a graveyard. More powder scattered and swirled through the beam from the flashlight.

Doc looked terrified. "Oh, you go first," he said, trying to inject some humor. "Really, I insist."

Kenzie saw stairs leading down into what appeared to be a large basement. It must have taken years to hollow out this enormous a space in the hard, rocky ground.

'Doc," Kenzie said, "you wait up here and keep watch." He held the gun even with the flashlight and dropped into the hole. He eased down the steps, searching the basement with his tired eyes. No sign of life. He waited for his eyes to adjust.

"Kenzie, you okay? Can I come down too?"

Doc sounded frightened to be alone upstairs. "No way," Kenzie called. "I need you to stay up there and watch our ass end."

"Oh, man . . . "

Kenzie looked around. He shook his head. "Doc, you're not going to believe this."

Meanwhile, upstairs: "The devil's alternative." Doc took one last look around the house, which seemed even more terrifying than before now that Kenzie was no longer in sight. He forced his bulky body down the steps.

"You're right. I don't believe it."

Kenzie whirled "I told you to stay up there, damn it."

But Doc was staring, speechless. Kenzie knew why. Klaus Wachner had hacked out a laboratory beneath the old cabin, added electrical power and then plastered the dirt and rock walls well enough to hang blackboards. The symbols were everywhere again, the letters EMR appearing over and over. Doc shook his head and whistled.

"Hell of a lot of trouble to go to."

Kenzie nodded. "But a great place to hide bodies. You see another light switch anywhere?"

Doc searched the wall nearest the steps. A simple dimmer switch lay half-buried between two chunks of stone. He dialed it up and three rows of recessed ceiling lights came on. So did some kind of generator. Something started to hum, so low they barely noticed it.

"What the hell is this place?"

"Saw this movie once," Doc said. "It was about some guy supposedly had this beautiful mind. Turns out he was all messed up. Thought he worked for the government, but he didn't. He had nonsense written all over the walls, map coordinates, sketches and diagrams and numbers and letters. But none of it meant anything. Looked an awful lot like this."

The air was still thick with haze. Kenzie fought back another sneeze. He pointed at a handle buried in the wall. "What's that?"

Doc lumbered over, transferred the shotgun to one hand and tugged hard. Nothing happened. "Don't know," he said. "This metal is colder than my ex-wife's ass, though."

"Try again."

Doc rested the shotgun against the rock. He grabbed the handle with both hands, put his formidable weight to work and tugged again. Kenzie heard a crisp snapping sound, like a branch breaking. The door boomed and began to move outward. The generator sound grew in intensity and moved from a hum to a low rumble. Doc pulled one last time, and yet another room was revealed.

"Well I'll be damned."

It was some kind of homemade walk-in freezer. Doc stood silently, inadvertently blocking the doorway. Kenzie crowded closer and peered around him to look inside.

The two men were momentarily speechless. Kenzie groped along the interior and exterior walls, searching for a new light switch. At the same time, he splashed the flashlight beam along the interior of the freezer.

What he found made him drop the flashlight in alarm. The freezer went dark. Kenzie and Doc tried to step out of the doorway at the same time. They wedged themselves together, almost comically. The Sheriff turned sideways and escaped back into the cellar.

"Jesus fucking Christ!" he exploded. "What the hell was that?"

Doc rubbed his face. "That," he said, "looked to me to be a freeze-dried child. A little girl, to be precise."

Kenzie paced the cellar, rubbing his arms to rid himself of goose flesh. He was revolted. "Do you recognize her, Doc? Is she one of those missing kids?"

Doc had gone green, too. When he spoke again, it was with an eerie calm. "No, she's not one of our locals, Sheriff. Unless I miss my guess, that's Klaus Wachner's dead daughter in there."

"And I thought I'd just about seen it all," Kenzie said. "Did you notice any other kids, or just her?"

"Just her, I think. And them words."

"Words?"

"Latin words. Almost the same as upstairs," Doc said. "E-something, M-something and R-something."

Kenzie blinked. "You saw words, though? Upstairs it's only the letters. Let me see." He elbowed Doc out of the way and went into the freezer on his hands and knees, searching for the flashlight.

"Sheriff," Doc asked quietly, "where's the fucking shotgun?"

Kenzie sensed something in Doc's tone and his guts clenched. "You left it by the door," he said. His voice echoed slightly in the freezer. His hand closed on the handle of the flashlight just as Doc said: "I know. And now it's gone."

Kenzie had a premonition, then, something he could not have explained. He sensed his life was over. He hesitated a long moment, and then turned on the flashlight.

The little girl was nearly naked and encased entirely in some kind of special, bluish ice. Her eyes and mouth were closed. She looked perfectly preserved. Her genitals were artistically covered, and her little hands still had manicured nails.

"Sheriff," Doc said nervously, "did you hear me? The fucking gun ain't here anymore."

Kenzie didn't answer. He raised the beam and examined the three words carefully. His throat tightened up and his bowels begin to loosen. He knew what they said, even though it had been many years since he'd studied Latin. He slowly backed out of the freezer, hand on his own weapon. He turned in the doorway and got to his feet, his eyes searching the cellar. Nothing but flickering light and powdery air.

"Doc?"

The big man was sweating profusely and his eyes were wide with terror. He didn't answer. Kenzie slapped him on the back. "Doc, it says
E Moritus Revoco
. Does than mean what I think it does?"

Doc nodded his head. His eyes were fixed on the stairs leading up out of the cellar as if he already knew what was coming. "I know the whole passage from somewhere," Doc said. "It says 'from the dead, I summon thee, from the dust I recreate thee'."

I poke death, man . . . Oso meant I revoke death! SHIT!
And that figure eight on its side, the Ourabouris sign, was right there on the wall.

The trap door slammed shut, and more dust flew. Someone or something slid the locking bolt into place.

Klaus Wachner had completely outmaneuvered them.

That's when the truth hit Kenzie with the force of a sledge hammer. Suddenly he knew why the old man had always seemed oddly familiar. He had been the man driving the Nissan the evening Kenzie had been shot. He'd honked three times to warn Oso and sped away. Wachner must have been coming to pick up the kidnapped child.

He had been the missing man involved in the LA child murders.

Wachner had moved to Twin Forks to set things up, probably right after reading about the 'cowboy cop' who had nearly destroyed his life's work. He'd been implementing this revenge when he mailed a letter offering Kenzie a job back in his home town. And Kenzie had walked right into the trap.

Panicked, Kenzie tried his cell phone. The walls were too thick to get a signal.

I can't stand the pain, ese!
The pain of his guilt?

Something moved.

Kenzie brought up his weapon, but there was nothing to shoot. Except . . . right at the foot of the steps, a strange creature had begun to form itself, something that was at once alien and unspeakable. It was short, like a human child, but the features—formed mostly of dirt, trash and spider webs—were distorted, garish and smeared. It had the keen, hungry teeth of a predator; the canines came to nasty little points.

"Klaus didn't murder his own child, Doc," Kenzie said, his voice cracking. The demonic specter in the corner shifted and floated towards them, malformed feet not even touching the floor. Kenzie saw that several others had somehow assembled themselves in various nooks and crannies. They also approached, each of them grinning and drooling in anticipation.

"Fuck this!"

Kenzie fired his weapon three times. The explosions were nearly deafening in the confined space. The bullets passed through the things and harmlessly punched knuckle-sized holes in the wall.

Kenzie cringed, but was somehow not surprised, when one phantom looked a bit like his dead sister. He shook his head in amazement.

"Hell no, Doc. We blew it. Wachner didn't kill her, he tried to save her."

Doc gasped and clutched himself. His chest seemed to have tightened unbearably, as if death anxiety now raced his heart past the breaking point. His voice began to grow weak and feathery. He mumbled: "He was experimenting, trying to find some way bring her back."

"And they," Kenzie said in a broken voice, indicating the approaching ghouls, "are the practice runs."

The lights went out and Kenzie was suddenly in darkness. He thought of Laura all alone in the world, and his eyes filled with tears. There came a faint but busy noise, like the warning of a nest of angry diamondbacks; or the sound of a child's toy rattle.
Oh my God the rattle, the rattle was meant as a warning . . .
Doc fell heavily to the floor, mercifully unconscious.

Sam Kenzie heard the hideous sound of the several children giggling; then the rustle and rip of clothing and the smacking of their greedy little lips.

Amidst his horror and revulsion, Kenzie realized why the killer had waited so many months before luring him here. Wachner had wanted to have these creatures to feed him to. Kenzie knew that backup would eventually arrive, but also that they would be far too late.

He put the gun in his mouth and gripped it as tightly as possible.

He promised himself he would pull the trigger the second he could no longer stand the pain.