Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set

Chapter 45

The scream had come from the edge of the group, as if a shark had sliced from the dark depths and taken prey.

All Wayne could do was cling to the wall and wait for the clamor to die down.

“What the hell?” Gelbaugh shouted.

“It touched me,” a woman said.

“I thought you wanted it to touch you.”

“Not like that.”

“Are you hurt?” Wayne shouted across the basement.

“I can’t tell,” the woman said. “It was all slithery.”

The group members talked over one another, and one of them must have braved the stairs again, because the door shuddered with dull blows. Someone else fled the group, smacking into a stone wall and groaning in pain.

“Stay where you are,” Wayne said.

“Easy for you to say.” Wayne recognized the voice as Cappie’s. “You’re way over there and something’s probing around.”

“Belial,” said Amelia George.

The furnace burst to life again, with a great chuffing of heat. The flames drew sighs and screams from the group, and Wayne could see some of them had fled. The woman, presumably the one who had been touched, was kneeling at the foot of a support wall, holding her bloody head in her hands and rocking back and forth. Another hunter, a short man in a vest, was hammering at the door, shouting against the thick wood. Amelia stood in the middle of the others, arms raised as if calling forth demons.

And maybe she is.

An hour ago, he might have believed in telekinetic powers. But now the rules seemed to be changing minute by minute, and the White Horse Inn no longer belonged to the realm of physics and logic.

This was now Demon Country.

The flickering flames cast long fingers of light across the basement and onto the scared faces of the group members. Wayne could see the maze of pipes around him, cast iron, lead, and polyvinyl in different sizes. Twenty feet away was a shadowed recess that suggested a door.

The furnace inhaled—that was the only word Wayne could use to describe the action—and the flames subsided to a dull glow. Wayne took advantage of the lingering glow to move forward.

“Come to me,” Amelia said. “Use me if you need it. Take me.”

Amelia’s husband eased a couple of steps away from her, unwilling to be caught in the crossfire of her spiritual recklessness. “Honey, maybe you should—”

“Kill you,” she bellowed, lowering her hands from their uplifted, summoning position and reaching for her husband with curled fingers.

“Christ, lady,” Gelbaugh said. “The cameras aren’t working so there’s no need for a show.”

“Open this damned door,” said the man on the stairs, now yanking on the handle with the force of his ample weight.

Wayne hurried to the recess, which blended with the larger shadows when the flames weakened. He ducked under a rusty drain pipe that disappeared into the dirt, and came up ready to reach for the door he hoped would be there. His hand struck soft, yielding flesh.

“Digger,” wheezed a voice.

The furnace breathed again and the basement flashed orange and red. In the fleeting light, Wayne made out a bruised, bleeding face, the eyes swollen nearly shut and the grin missing a couple of teeth. But it was the uniform, and the night-vision goggles perched atop the soggy mess, that clenched his guts.

“Rodney?” Wayne whispered.

The light dimmed again, but Wayne assembled the memory of the glimpsed image: The Roach’s dark jumpsuit was soaked with blood, the equipment belt empty. The Roach held his thumb over the jagged end of a copper pipe.

Wayne squinted into the shadows. “What happened?”

“You wouldn’t believe.” The Roach’s voice cracked like an ice sculpture under an axe blow.

“Are you hurt?”

“You wouldn’t believe.” A sob in it.

“Is that a door behind you?”

“You wouldn’t fucking believe.”

“You might have a concussion.” Wayne moved closer as the furnace pulsated again, throwing a lunatic sheen onto Rodney’s bloody, sweating, filthy face.

“I have proof now, Digger.”

“I know. But right now we need to get these people out of here.”

With his free hand, Rodney slid his night-vision goggles into place. “They won’t allow that.”

The basement went dim again, and Rodney released the copper line. Wayne smelled propane. The line must have run from an outside tank to the kitchen stoves. Rodney must have found the ruptured pipe, and maybe he’d stayed down here holding it closed until someone could shut off the tank. That would explain his absence, but not the gashes and bruises.

“Got a light?” Rodney asked.

As if in answer, the furnace roared again, and the propane fed it.

Whooosh.

“Mission accomplished,” Rodney said, just before the concussive blast stole the air and shot an expanding fireball across the basement. The heat slapped Wayne like a volcanic tidal wave and shoved him against Rodney, and they fell together against the door as support timbers groaned and splintered.

In the chaos of collapse, Wayne thought he heard Beth’s voice, or maybe it was the muffled screams of Amelia George.