It Lives Again Page 11

Now she was in the room. She moved back toward the dressing table. Again she picked up the lipstick. “Whose could this be?” she wondered aloud. She began to twist the cap, trying to open it, but it wouldn’t come off.

  Eugene, in bed, listened to her going on about the lipstick. Talking about it because she couldn’t bear to talk about what they really must talk about, that ‘thing’ in the basement. Finally he could stand it no longer; he blurted it out. “What do you care whose lipstick it is? Turn the light off, please.”

  A pause, then he heard the lipstick being replaced on the table.

  “Oh,” she said, “I’m sorry.” She went to the wall light switch and turned it off.

  He heard her padding back across the floor in her bare feet, lying down on the other bed. The words “I’m sorry” formed on his lips, but he couldn’t say them; why should he, what was the use? . . .

  The lipstick sat there, throwing off a faint glow in the dark room. If she had kept at it, if Eugene hadn’t said anything, with one more twist Jody would have had the top open. She would have seen what it was: an electronic transmitter with a “sending” radius of up to ten miles. The device that was responsible for leading Mallory and the large contingent of Los Angeles police to the position they were in right now—not fifty yards away from the room occupied by Eugene Scott and his wife.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Outside, special Los Angeles Police units, armed to the teeth, piled out of vans, taking up their positions along the fence of the estate. Behind them at least a dozen police cars sat waiting. This was to be a massive assault on the old Spanish building.

  The police had been forewarned as to what this creature could do, what it was capable of, how dangerous it was.

  What they did not know, however—had no possibility of knowing—was that in that dark, lurking house up ahead there was not one, but three of these creatures. No one had told them that.

  And in the basement of the dark house, Dr. Eric Perry took a small .22 caliber pistol from a cabinet high on the opposite wall.

  Placing it in his pocket, he said aloud, “Can’t be too careful,” as he moved, smiling, over to his charges.

  Switching on a tape recorder, he set out a bell, a buzzer, and some numbered wooden blocks on the experiment table at the end of a huge maze.

  Then he took his set of keys from his pocket, and moving toward the enclosure, said, “All right, it’s lesson time.”

  From the cage, from the three of them, came a low growl.

  “Come on,” said Dr. Perry, “all of you. As long as you’re up we might as well not waste the night. Let’s watch Adam go through the maze again.”

  Dr. Perry unlocked Adam’s cage; another growl, louder this time.

  “Oh,” said Dr. Perry, raising the barred door, “feeling mean tonight, aren’t you, Adam?”

  Dr. Perry saw only a blur! That was all he saw, a blur of a face contorted in a fierce snarl as the tiny body catapulted out of the cage, leaping on the surprised doctor.

  Dr. Perry was thrown backward by the sudden attack of the monster infant. His glasses were knocked from his face and shattered against the far wall. They ended up in the corner, broken, bent grotesquely out of shape.

  Dr. Perry, confused and totally disoriented, groped for his gun. He pulled it out of his jacket and it fell from his trembling fingers; he was lost without his glasses. His face was scratched and bleeding, the blood running freely.

  Desperately, with hands out in front of him, he felt around the experiment table, trying to find the telephone intercom so that he could warn the rest of the house.

  Suddenly something pulling at his leg made him trip. He fell over the table that held his precious notes.

  There, lying defenseless on the floor, he heard the sound of something, something with long claws scratching its way across the cement floor coming toward him.

  “Oh, no!” he cried. “No!” He’d heard reports of the Davis baby, that it would murder people. He never really believed them. He did now!

  Frantically he felt around, searching, reaching for his gun. He found it! Blindly, he tried to adjust it in his hand. Just as he did, something, a claw, ripped across his arm and sent the gun skidding across the floor. The doctor’s arm was useless, mangled, almost dismembered, the blood seeping down onto his stomach.

  He tried to scream, but he couldn’t. Above him he heard the other two infants in their cages, shrieking, aroused by this sudden blood lust.

  Now the doctor felt the creature crawling up his body, over the mangled arm, going, he knew, for his throat.

  “No!” he cried, finding his voice. “Don’t!”

  It was too late. The creature was at its teacher’s throat, doing what it did best, tearing this man’s life away.

  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.