668, page 15
She stared at him.
He shrugged. “Okay, so they know what to do with it. Maybe I can bargain with them.”
“What for?”
“To stall, darlin’,” he said. “To stall. Long enough, if I’m lucky, to figure something out.”
Without waiting for a response, which he didn’t want to hear anyway because he had guessed what it would be, he hurried into the tunnel as the house began to vibrate a little, and the tools on the workbench began to sway to the gentle rhythm of impending doom.
Another pulse of green followed hard behind, forcing them to notice that the pulses were coming more rapidly, closer together, and more intensely, which was, for the pulses as they’d studied them in the limited time available, natural.
“They won’t bargain, you know,” Chita pointed out, keeping so close to him that he could feel her soft hot breath on the back of his neck which, under different circumstances, would have added a dash of Latin spice to the adventure; as it was, it only made him sweat.
“If I threaten to tear it up in front of their eyes so they can’t use whatever it is they need to do for whatever it is they need to do, they’ll bargain.”
“Last count,” she said, “there were seven of them and four of us, if you count the girl and her boyfriend.”
The rumbling through the tunnel returned, this time more violently. Subsequently it was difficult to keep their feet, and the roof and pieces of supporting plank and beam began to fall in a shower of dust and parts of the roof and some of the supporting planks and beams. Chita fell once in the race toward safety and cried out; Kent turned at the unexpected, and potent, obscenity, saw her vanishing in the swirl of tunnel debris, and grabbed her hand, yanked her free and to her feet, and embraced her quickly before moving on. When she tripped a second time over a pile of animal bones, he again returned her to her feet and embraced her quickly to reassure her that they would, given luck and a shorter tunnel, make it back to the house alive. When she tripped a third time, he stared at her.
“Hey,” she said, scrambling to her feet on her own, “you gotta take moments of personal comfort when you can, you know what I mean?”
They ran on.
Although the growling and the rumbling from the well was no longer audible, Kent figured it was because the rumbling in the tunnel was growing steadily louder. At the same time, and distressingly so, stones and pebbles falling from the walls and roof were replaced by rocks and boulders; the puddles slipped noisily through widening cracks that began to appear in the floor; the overhead beams used to hold up the roof were losing their grip with a lot of moaning and groaning; and not a single thing scurried from shadow to shadow.
Kent shifted the notorious Bingomomicron to carry it under his left arm, then reached out and grabbed Chita with his free hand. They ran on.
A distant explosion behind them sent a tidal wave, or a fairly large cloud, or a steamy breath, of madly swirling dust after them. They were soon enveloped in the wave, cloud, or steamy breath and were effectively rendered blind. In such a manner then did they continue to run, not worrying about where the walls were because they found them fairly well without half trying; also the moaning supporting beams, some good-size rocks, and a boulder that had worked its way out of the wall and partially blocked their escape until Kent used his nearly superhuman strength born of desperation to get the hell out of here in one piece to squeeze past it and pull Chita safely after him.
They ran on, but he didn’t think they were going to make it.
They made it.
They stumbled into the ratty, disgusting, half-rotten basement of Number 668, fell gratefully to their knees and coughed, retched, coughed, choked, gagged, and wiped their eyes with the backs of whatever hands they happened to have open at the time.
Though most of the dust didn’t follow, the rumbling, and some of the vibrating, did.
As they recovered, he noticed that, as Chita helped him to his feet, she made every attempt not to touch the Bingomomicron, and he didn’t blame her. It wasn’t covered with slime, but it felt like it; it wasn’t coated with poison, but it felt like it; it wasn’t dripping blood or acid or ichor or intestinal remnants, but it felt like it.
Jesus, he thought, and threw it on the floor.
The rumbling stopped.
The vibrations eased.
Dust clung to the air like a funereal fog.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Chita shook her ruffles. “I’m never gonna get this thing clean.”
She was all right.
So he cast the cleaver aside, glanced at the refrigerator, and picked the book up gingerly, nodded to the stairs, stared when she shook her head in an emphatic no way in hell fashion, nodded more forcefully, and started up without waiting for another objection; he had, after all, plenty of objections of his own, and no one had listened to him, so why should he listen to her.
As he climbed, he realized that he still had no idea what he was going to do once he got into the kitchen, but he hoped that something would come to him. Not that it usually did in situations like this. Usually he was at a loss until something came to him, and sometimes something came just a beat too late for it to do him any good. Usually it was damn clever, too, which was a shame.
It wasn’t until he had reached the top step that the distant echoes of the rumbling in the collapsing tunnel faded completely and he could hear the replacement rumbling of many voices; it wasn’t until he was in the kitchen, blinking in the bright light of the tomato-shaped chandelier, that he realized the replacement rumbling was chanting.
“Damn,” he said in a lowered voice as Chita joined him, still shaking her ruffles and leaving rocks behind, “it’s already started.”
The chanting stopped.
Kent frowned.
Then he heard someone say, “Hi, Pop,” and looked at Chita for an explanation.
She shrugged.
He started for the dining room, stopped, opened a random cupboard door and shoved the book inside, closed the door, and started for the dining room. There, standing in the entrance to the back parlor, were Quentin and Sheila.
And: “Son of a bitch,” he said. “Rex.”
Rex Regal looked over the heads of the embracing young couple and said, “Goddamn. Kent.”
“So,” Kent said. “Rex.”
“Ah,” said Rex. “Kent.”
“Hey,” said Chita. “What?”
For an answer, and one he thought was pretty good all things considered, he pulled out his gun.
Immediately, Quentin protested the unwarranted show of force, although he had sense enough to pull Sheila out of the way as Kent moved forward, backing a wryly smiling Rex into the other room where the others fell instantly silent when Rex backed in, smiling wryly, and Kent came in frontward, and Chita came in behind them with a butcher knife in her hand.
“What is the meaning of this intrusion?” John Laste demanded haughtily.
Kent leaned deceptively casually against the jamb and used the gun to wave Rex across the room until he had seated himself beside Pilandra Eddye. The man never once exhibited a trace of nervousness, nor did he betray any thought of attempting to disarm Kent, or escape, for which Kent was grateful since he’d just remembered that, having forgotten the matches, he’d also forgotten if he’d remembered to load the gun after he’d taken it out of his suitcase up in his bedroom without the bed.
Bluffing, however, was an integral part of a baron’s upbringing, especially when Nanny was showing four cards to a straight flush, ace high.
He allowed himself the temporary luxury of a one-sided, brief smile. “So,” he said to the room at large. “You’re the ones who want to sacrifice me tonight.”
“Ah,” said John carefully when recognition arrived a skipped heartbeat later. “It’s you, is it?”
Kent nodded.
The others murmured.
“How … how did you know about the you know what?” Wally asked timidly. He cleared his throat loudly. “And how dare you assume that we are involved.”
To which Kent replied, “Bugger off.”
“Well!”
“Exactly.”
Idly, lips pursed in a silent moist whistle, Chita began to clean her fingernails with the butcher knife; a nice touch, Kent thought, since it kept the others watching her instead of him, unless it had something to do with the fact that some of her ruffles had fallen off. What he was going to do about it was another question entirely.
He decided to go for it, what the hell: “Anybody got a match?”
Caroline immediately plucked her spangled purse from the floor and began to sift through it. Wally gaped, slapped the purse from her hands, and indicated without a word why Kent wanted the combustible device. When she understood, she turned angrily and said, “Baron!”
He shrugged; nothing ventured, nothing gained, you’re not as stupid as you look even if Marsha over there had made a move toward her own purse.
“It doesn’t make any difference, actually, does it?” he said. “I have the Bingomomicron, and you don’t. I have the only means by which you can make that final call to the Older Deities, and you don’t. I have what you require for your grotesque plan to succeed, and you don’t.” His smile, though not charmingly evil, was baronial enough to make most of them shiver; all, in fact, except Rex, who merely shifted uncomfortably.
John Laste paled and sputtered. “But… but you must let us have it, Baron. You must. You don’t know what you’re dealing with here.”
Kent pushed away from the jamb and glared at him. “My friend, I know more than you think.”
“Then you know we will all die unless you give me that book without another second’s delay.”
“John,” he answered calmly, “if I’m going to die, I’m not going to be the only one.”
“Hey,” Chita said.
Behind him, Sheila sobbed and broke from Quentin’s embrace.
“You know nothing,” sneered Dr. Smith.
Kent sighed and shook his head.
“Hey, Lord, can I sit down?” Chita asked when she saw him take a breath.
He looked at her, affronted that she would imply a need to rest her legs because he was about to become long-winded.
She reminded him with an impatient sweep of the knife that long-winded would get them killed since those guys in the well weren’t going to wait for lengthy expositions, this being real life and all.
He nodded at the point well taken and would she mind aiming it elsewhere.
Chita stuck the knife into the wall.
He turned to the others, cleared his throat, ignored Chita’s groan, and said:
“You all know, of course, that Rex here is, in reality, Quentin’s father, the result of a short but significant liaison between himself and Pilandra Eddye just before her husband drowned heroically in that tragic accident at the ice cream factory some twenty-some years ago. Naturally she never told anyone who the real father was, not even her husband, who was dead. Just as she never told Wally there that her brief but inconsequential liaison with him had been keenly observed by Dr. Smith there, who was blackmailing Marsha there into financing his orchestrated experiments in genetic engineering being conducted in the basement laboratory under his office. What Dr. Smith didn’t know, of course, is that Caroline, as a result of her concurrent liaison with him, knew all about it and threatened to expose him with his clothes on if he didn’t convince Wally that she could not bear children, since she didn’t want to have to buy all new clothes since Wally’s business had been ruined by his ex-wife, which is why he killed her.”
He paused dramatically then for an assortment of gasps and feeble denials.
“Meanwhile, Caroline and Rex were messing around in a fairly platonic way so that Rex could gain entrance to Langford Place society in order to keep an eye on his growing son, who he didn’t know he had until he heard about it from Amy, the busybody hippo in the Gutted Oyster. What he didn’t know, however, was that John over there had messed around with Caroline over here just long enough for Caroline to become utterly dependent upon his erotic ministrations so that he could, eventually, blackmail Wally about the ex-wife’s murder and not worry about Caroline screwing things up because he was blackmailing her too. Wally, unbeknownst to John, however, was already plotting with Kenilworth to drive John out of town because John had had a liaison with Caroline, Marsha had slipped on the odd mattress with Wally and Kenilworth, and Pilandra had it all on video tape thanks to the electronic genius of her son, who took after his father, even though he didn’t know that his real father wasn’t dead until tonight, when he, being a well-trained observant actor, recognized the telltale Eddye hair.”
One of the women fainted noisily, unless it was Wally.
“However,” Kent continued grimly, “what none of you really knew was that Hester Kerwin was in reality Chita Juarel, who was never Howmaster’s mistress at all, but a spy hired by me to make sure that Howmaster never bothered me again. When she learned of the diabolical plan you had planned, however, she made sure Maclemmon’s will was altered so that I would become the sole heir, come to Hamtucket, and expose you all.
“Yes, my astonished, bug-eyed friends, it was Chita who called you all tonight in order to upset your equilibria and fuzzy your thinking processes. It was she who pretended to be Lorenzo Jones, Dr. Smith’s former partner squeezed out of the genetic proceeds by his allergies to Petrie dishes; it was she who pretended to be the dead ex-wife of Wally Putney; and through the miracle of her home English language and dialect mimicking course, it was indeed she who pretended to be the disowned disenchanted children of John and Marsha returned to take rightful possession of their possessions.”
Then he laughed at their consternation.
“Yes,” he said. “While you were all plotting and scheming and planning and sneaking about, I knew all along what was going on.” He snapped his fingers. “And now I shall take care of the Bingomomicron and end this farce forever.”
A fraction of a second passed while the threat made the rounds.
Then: “The hell you will,” said Wally Putney as he leapt boldly to his feet and pulled out his weapon.
“Damn right,” John agreed, leaping to his feet and pulling out his weapon.
“All for one, damnit,” Smith concurred eagerly, leaping to his feet, grabbing his black bag, opening it, and pulling out his weapon.
Marsha reached into her demure neckline, pulled out her weapon, but didn’t bother to leap to her feet; all this talk had exhausted her emotionally.
Pilandra didn’t move.
And Rex didn’t leap to his feet or pull out his weapon, but he did cross his legs and dare Kent with a disdainful look to try to shoot them all before the Older Deities showed up and finished the job for him.
Kent, sneering at Rex for his blond naiveté, mentioned in the faces of danger and all those pointing weapons that Maclemmon was neither their protector nor their benefactor, as they had formally believed. Being true to his nature, he had tricked them all into believing that the Older Deities really needed their ceremonial supplications to find out where to land, when, in fact, they were already here! at this very moment climbing out of a well! in the house next door! and he didn’t think they gave a damn one way or the other who was waiting for them.
“Because, you see,” he concluded ominously, “when they get here, you pitiful sods, they’re going to be … hungry.”
No one spoke.
“I don’t believe it,” John said at last.
“Which part?”
“Howmaster’s not really needing us, of course.”
“Why, John!” Marsha exclaimed.
“Well, that part too, my dear. It goes without saying.”
“It already did,” she said, and shot him.
John gaped at the shallow but agonizing crease that neatly traversed his evening trouser leg and fell back onto his chair, which collapsed. He had no opportunity to complain, however, because Caroline, miffed at his refusal to deny their personal relationship, creased his other leg just before Wally creased his left arm, sending his personally made .357 derringer skittering across the floor to Rex’s feet. Rex instantly picked the gun up and aimed it at Kent, but was distracted when Dr. Smith creased Wally’s right arm, Caroline creased Smith in the left thigh, Marsha, who was getting pretty good, creased Caroline just at the hemline, and John, gasping but cleverly using his one good hand, winged his wife, Caroline, Wally, and just missed taking off Kenilworth’s left ear.
It all happened so fast that Kent didn’t have a chance to move.
Chita, on the other hand, darted into the dining room, grabbed the back of his sweater and yanked him safely out of the way.
“You know,” she told him, as the firing continued sporadically in the next room, “I didn’t do none of that stuff like you said I did.”
“I know.”
“You know? Then how did you know all that other stuff?”
“I didn’t.”
“You didn’t?”
He shook his head. “But I always wanted to say lines like that. The butler never said lines like that. I got to comment on the weather once in a while, but that was about it.” He grinned. “God, it felt good.”
“I’m happy for you,” Chita said crabbily.
“Excuse me, but someone’s at the door,” Quentin interrupted nervously.
“Don’t answer it,” Kent ordered.
“Why?”
“Because,” he answered grimly, “I know who it is.”
“Oh, go on.” Quentin laughed. “You can’t know. It’s impossible.”
“Trust me,” Kent said flatly. “I know.”
The house took to vibrating again, not quite as gently as it had done earlier.
The chandeliers swayed.
Things rattled softly in the kitchen.
Shots were fired in the back parlor, but since they were without the accompaniment of death-screams and the thud of falling bodies, Kent reckoned they were still wounding and creasing and winging and scratching each other all to hell. Another mental calculation suggested that he had about five minutes before they ran out of ammunition, moaned a lot, checked the flow of blood, and finally realized that he, their sacrifice, wasn’t in there anymore.
