"The Stake" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laymon Richard)

Four

“My God!” Pete shouted.

Jean, racing up the stairs, called out, “Hang on!”

“I’m slipping! Hurry!”

Larry dashed toward the foot of the stairs. He didn’t hear Pete coming. “Where areyou, man?”

“Get up there and grab her!” Pete snapped.

“Oh shit,” Barbara groaned.

Larry swung himself around the newel post. As he rushed up behind Jean he saw the hazy glow of Pete’s flashlight ahead and to the right of the stairs. Hadn’t the guy moved? Was he still down there in front of the crucifix?

Jean sank to her knees at the edge of the landing.

Barbara, her back to the lower stairs, looked like someone being swallowed by quicksand. She was hunched forward, pressing her chest against the remaining boards, bracing herself up with her elbows.

Jean crawled aside to make a space for Larry, then hooked an arm under Barbara’s left armpit. “Gotcha,” she gasped. “I gotcha. You’re not gonna fall.”

“Are you okay?” Pete called up.

“No, damn it!”

Larry dropped against the landing and stairs, looked down into a six-inch gap between the broken planks and the white of Barbara’s blouse. Blackness.

A bottomless pit, he thought. An abyss.

Ridiculous, he told himself. Probably no more than a six— or seven-foot drop, all told, from the landing to the lobby floor. She was already about halfway there.

What if the floor doesn’t extend under the staircase?

Or she breaks through that, too?

Even if she had only a four-foot fall, she would end up trapped under the staircase. And the broken boards might scrape her up pretty good on the way down.

He squirmed forward until his face met the hair on the back of Barbara’s head. He wrapped his arms around her. They squeezed her breasts. Muttering “Sorry,” he worked them lower and hugged her rib cage.

“Pete!” he yelled.

“You got her?” Pete’s voice still came from below.

“Just barely. If you’d give us a goddamn hand!”

He heard a crack of splitting wood. For a moment he thought that more of the landing was giving out. Nothing happened, though.

“Yah!” Barbara yelped, jerking in Larry’s embrace. “Something’s got me!”

“It’s just me, hon.”

For an instant a pale tongue of light licked the darkness beside Larry’s right shoulder. It had risen through the broken boards.

Pete’s under us, he realized.

“How’d you get down there?” Jean asked. She sounded amazed, relieved.

“Tire tool magic,” Pete said. “Okay, I’ve got you, hon. Let’s lower her gently.”

“No no no, don’t! I’ll fall.”

“We gotta get you down outa there.”

“Well, boost me up, okay?” Her voice was controlled, but tight with pain or fear. “If I try to go down, I’ll get wracked up even more.”

“All right. We’ll give it a try. You guys ready up there? On the count of three.”

“You gonna push her up by her legs?” Jean asked.

“That’s the idea. One. Two.”

“Take it easy,” Barbara urged him, “or I’ll end up with a bunch of wood in me.”

“Okay. One. Two. Three.”

Barbara came up slowly through the break as if she were standing on an elevator. Still hugging her chest, Larry struggled to his knees. She swayed back against him. He slid a hand down the slick, bare skin of her belly. She gasped and flinched. Then he grabbed her belt buckle, yanked upward, pulled her hard against him, and she came to rest sitting at the brink of the gap.

“Okay,” she gasped. “I’m okay. Give me a second to catch my breath.”

Larry and Jean held onto her arms.

“All right up there?” Pete asked. The beam of his flashlight swept back and forth through the break in front of Barbara’s knees.

Barbara didn’t answer.

“She’s safe,” Jean called down.

The beam slid away and only a faint glow drifted out of the opening.

“I want to go home,” Barbara muttered. Larry and Jean held her steady while she leaned back and drew her legs up. She planted her shoes against the rim of splintered wood at the gap’s far side.

“Jesus!” Startled, scared.

Barbara went rigid. “Pete! What’s wrong!”

“Holy jumpin‘... Oh, man.” Not quite so scared now. Amazed. “Hey, you’re not gonna believe this. Honest to motherin’ God. Larry, get down here.”

“What?”

Barbara leaned forward and peered between her spread legs. “What is it?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“This is no time for games, Peter.”

“You’re just damn lucky you didn’t wind up down here.”

For a moment no one said anything.

Then Pete’s voice came up through the crevice. “You would’ve had company.”

Shivers ran up Larry’s back.

“There’s an old stiff in here.”

He’s kidding, Larry thought. But his body knew that Pete was telling the truth. His cheeks suddenly felt numb. He had trouble getting enough breath. His bowels went shaky. His scrotum shriveled up tight, as if someone had just grabbed it with a handful of ice.

“Oh jeez,” Barbara muttered. Jean and Larry got out of her way as she twisted around, grabbed the banister, and struggled to her feet. They followed her down the stairs. She held the railing and moved slowly, hunched over just a bit. Her blouse now hung all the way down her back.

“I knew I didn’t like this place,” Jean whispered.

Barbara went straight to the hotel door and threw it open. Daylight flooded in. She stopped in the doorway and turned sideways. She was squinting. Her teeth were bared. Though Larry was several feet away, he could see her trembling. Her hands shook as she pinched the edges of her blouse and spread its front wide. She gazed down at the raw band of skin across her belly.

Her breasts looked very white through the open patterns of her bra. Larry glimpsed the darker skin of her nipples. She was too hurt and dazed for modesty, and Larry felt like a cheap voyeur taking advantage of her carelessness. In spite of the guilt, he didn’t want to look away. There was a dead body under the stairs. Somehow, the sight of Barbara’s skin through the black lace bra eased his sick dread.

But he forced his eyes lower. The right leg of her shorts was rucked up higher than the left. Both thighs were scraped, her shins bleeding. The right was worse than the left, but both legs had been abraded in the fall.

Jean went to her. “You really didget wracked up.”

“You’re telling me.”

“Where is everyone?” Pete called. His voice sounded muffled.

“Barbara’s really banged up,” Larry answered. “Come on out of there and let’s go home.”

“You’ve gotta see this! It’ll just take a minute.”

I don’t want to see it.

“Man, your wife is hurt.”

“What’s one more minute or two? We’ve got a dead bodyhere. You’re a writer, for godsake. A horrorwriter. I’m telling you, this isn’t something you want to miss. Come on.”

“Go ahead if you want,” Jean told him. “We’ll start on over for the van.”

Larry wrinkled his nose.

Barbara nodded, still grimacing and shaking. Her face and chest were shiny with sweat. Larry found himself looking again at her breasts. “Go on,” she said. “It’ll make him happy.”

“You gals don’t want to see it?”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Jean said.

“Just make it quick,” Barbara told him.

He turned away from the door. He walked slowly across the lobby floor. Glancing back, he saw Jean and Barbara step outside.

He felt abandoned.

I don’t have to be here, he thought. I could be out there with them.

He did not want to see a damn corpse.

But his weak legs kept moving him away from the sunlight.

Alongside the staircase a wide section of paneling had been ripped loose and gaped open a couple of feet. The glow of Pete’s flashlight showed through the space. Larry turned sideways and stepped into the enclosure.

“Thought you were going to chicken out on me,” Pete said.

“Can’t miss a chance like this.”

He found Pete standing on a couple of boards that had fallen from the landing. He looked frozen there, back rigid, his right arm straight out, aiming the flashlight almost as if it were a pistol. Aiming it at the coffin that was jammed headfirst against the underside of a low stair.

The body was covered, at least to the neck, by an old brown blanket. The blanket was rumpled as if it had been tossed into the coffin by someone who didn’t care to straighten it.

The corpse had long yellow hair. The skin of its face looked tight and leathery. Larry saw sunken eyelids, hollow cheeks, lips that were stretched back in a mad grin that exposed teeth and gums.

“You believe this?” Pete whispered.

Larry shook his head. “Maybe it isn’t real.”

“My ass. I know a stiff when I see one.”

“Looks almost mummified.”

“Yeah. Guess we oughta check it out, huh?”

Shoulder to shoulder, they moved slowly forward. Pete kept his light on the corpse.

Hideous, Larry thought. He’d never seen such a thing. His experience with bodies was limited to three open-casket funerals. Those people had looked almost good enough to sit up and shake hands with you.

This one looked as if it might want to sit up and take a bite out of you.

Don’t think that stuff, Larry told himself.

The underside of the stairway slanted down in front of them. They had to duck as they stepped to the foot of the coffin. Pete sank into a squat and waddled in farther. Larry started in, crouching. But after one step a sense of suffocation stopped him. The stairs seemed to be pressing down on him, wanting to shove him lower, to rub his face in the corpse. He dropped to his knees and reached out, ready to brace himself on the wooden edge of the coffin. Just before he touched it, he realized what he was about to do. He jerked his hands back and clutched his thighs.

The blanket piled on top of the corpse didn’t cover its ankles and feet. They were bare, the color of stained wood, and bones showed through the tight skin. The nails were so long that they curled over the tops of the toes. Larry recalled that hair and nails supposedly continued to grow after death. But he’d heard that that was just a myth; they only appearedto grow because the skin sank in around them.

“Bet it’s been here a long time,” Pete whispered. He reached over the side of the coffin. With his index finger he brushed the corpse’s forehead.

Larry moaned.

“What’s wrong?”

“How can you touchit?”

“No big deal. Try it. Feels like shoe leather.” He drew his finger across a blond eyebrow.

Larry imagined Pete’s finger sliding down the ridge of the eye socket, touching the lid, denting it, sinking in to the second knuckle.

“Go on and touch it,” Pete urged him. “How you going to write about this stuff if you don’t experience it?”

“Thanks, anyway. I’ll rely on my imagi...”

“We changed our minds.”

He flinched at the sound of Barbara’s voice. So did Pete. Pete’s head slammed the underside of a stair. He cried, “Ah!” ducked down close to the face of the corpse and grabbed the back of his head. “Shit! Damn it, Barb!”

“Sorry.”

Larry looked over his shoulder at the women and smiled. Though his startled heart was drumming, he was gladthey were here.

He felt as if some of the real world had come back.

“Guess you weren’t kidding,” Barbara whispered. “Jesus, look at that thing.”

“Yuck,” was all Jean said.

Barbara crouched over the end of the coffin. Jean stayed behind her and peered over her head.

“Didn’t want us to have all the fun?” Larry asked.

“That’s about the size of it,” Jean said, her voice hushed.

“Curiosity got the best of us,” Barbara added. Then she reached into the coffin and touched the foot of the corpse.

She’s just like Pete, Larry thought. Whatever their differences, they’re sure a set.

“I think I’m bleeding,” Pete muttered.

“That makes two of us,” Barbara said, still rubbing the dead foot. “It’s like the skin on a salami.”

“Salami’s oily,” Pete told her. “This is more like leather.”

“Okay, we’ve seen it,” Jean said. “Everyone ready to go?”

“Yeah, just about.” Pete stopped rubbing his head, reached one arm down over the covered torso and snatched off the blanket. Larry lurched backward on his knees, wishing to God he’d known this was coming. He’d already seen too much.

Now the corpse was stretched in front of his face.

It was naked.

It was female.

It had a wooden stake in its chest.

“Holy shit,” Barbara whispered.

“Let’s get out of here!” Jean gasped in a high, tight voice. She didn’t wait for a consensus. She bolted.

Pete threw the blanket down. It landed in a pile, covering the blunt top of the stake, the corpse’s flat breasts and the slats of its ribs. Barbara leaned forward, grabbed a bit of the blanket and jerked it down to cover the groin.

Blond pubic hair.

Larry groaned.

Then he was scurrying after Barbara. The white seat of her shorts was still smudged with yellow from the rock where she’d rested in the creek bed.

Seemed like a century ago.

Why did we do this?

Larry followed her through the open section of paneling. Jean was still in the lobby. Her fists were clenched at her sides and she was prancing as if she had to pee. “Let’s go, let’s go!” she gasped.

Larry waited for Pete.

Together they pushed the slab of wood into place.

Shutting the door of the tomb.

Pete backed away as if afraid to take his eyes off it.

In the beam of his flashlight the crucified body of Jesus gleamed.