The Inn (32 page)

F
or Richard, it was almost as if time stood still. There he was, running for his very life, away from things he never believed existed just moments before, and yet, despite all those dangers, he was thinking of Amy.

He was thinking about how very much he had loved her. And how much he missed her. And how he would never love any woman ever again the way he had loved Amy, no matter how long he lived.

He had failed to save Amy. How he had tried. He had never accepted her diagnosis. Richard had taken his wife to see specialist after specialist. He'd investigated every new drug, every alternative treatment. But still Amy had died. Still she'd left him alone.

He'd saved Annabel, however. Richard felt confident that was true.

As he positioned her by the window so she could jump out onto the front porch roof, he realized something.

He hadn't saved Annabel. She had saved herself.

He had seen how she'd bashed that creature against the wall. Annabel had survived this house of horrors. Her escape was entirely due to her. Richard was just driving the getaway car.

Annabel could survive anything.

Just like Amy. Richard hadn't failed her, because there was nothing to fail: Amy had been entirely in control the whole time. It was Richard who'd used terms like “beating this.” Amy had always said, “I will face whatever I need to face with grace and purpose.” And she had, right up until the end. Before she had fallen into her coma, she had looked up at Richard from her hospital bed, told him she loved him, and said she looked forward to the time they would meet again.

How very much he had loved Amy.

“Richard!” Annabel suddenly screamed, looking back from the window. “Look out!”

He only had a momentary flash of the gray-haired woman—Cindy—coming into the room behind him with a knife. He never had time to reach for his gun or feel the knife pierce his heart.

He was already with Amy.

“N
oo!” Annabel shouted, leaping down from the window to shove Cindy off Richard's fallen body. “Noooo!”

Cindy pulled back, hissing like an affronted swan. Annabel knelt down beside Richard's body.

“Don't die,” she begged. “Don't leave me alone.... I can't get out of here without you. I can't, I can't, I can't. . . .”

Her tears dripped onto Richard's face. But his glassy eyes stared up at her. He was dead. This time, he wasn't coming back.

Annabel felt herself falling. She was tumbling back into her black hole, unable to move, unable to think. Once more, it was the only way she could handle the terrible things happening outside her. She shut down. She was like a turtle pulling into its shell, only her shell was soft and vulnerable, and would not protect her.

“You stay inside there, you bad little girl,” Daddy Ron's voice shouted through the closet door. “You stay in there in the dark because you're bad. Very bad.”

“I'm not bad,” Annabel replied, in a very small voice.

“Don't argue with me, you little bitch. You are bad!”

“No, I'm not!” Annabel suddenly shrieked, and she lashed out, kicking the closet door down with her feet.

She looked up. Cindy stood a few feet away from her, watching her with wild eyes.

I can't shut down, Annabel thought. I shut down and I die.

And if I'm going to die,
she reasoned,
I'll die fighting to live.

She turned and started to climb up onto the windowsill.

But Cindy leapt onto her back. Annabel tried to throw her off, but Cindy was so terribly strong. Her arms encircled Annabel in a vise grip, threatening to choke off her air. Annabel did the only thing she could do. She fell backwards, toppling down from the window with Cindy underneath her. It momentarily knocked the wind out of Cindy and the arms that had held Annabel so tightly suddenly opened.

Annabel jumped free and lunged for Richard's gun.

But Cindy was too fast for her. She nudged the gun away, out of Annabel's grip. Then she grabbed hold of Annabel's wrist, wrestling her down to the floor.

“Jack!” Annabel screamed.

He might help her. He might at least call Cindy off her.

“Jack!”

Cindy lifted the knife over her head, its point aimed at Annabel's chest.

Annabel looked up into the madwoman's face. She was a little girl once, a happy child, until coming to this place. Even in that moment, Annabel felt pity for her.

Suddenly there came a shot.

And Cindy's face, so tensed with rage just a moment before, suddenly relaxed. A look of peace filled her eyes just before her body slumped over to the right, the knife she'd been holding in her hand clattering to the floor.

A
nnabel looked in the direction of the doorway into the eyes of her savior.

Jack stood there, holding Richard's first gun in his hand. The gun was smoking.

“I had to do it,” he said sadly. “I couldn't let her kill you, baby cakes.”

“Oh, Jack . . .” Annabel stood up, trembling terribly.

Jack approached his dead sister. “I mean, she couldn't go on this way. Like I said, if she kept escaping from the attic to slash our guests, we'd never be successful.”

He knelt down beside Cindy's body. He had shot her clean through the chest. The blood that now seeped through her clothes, turning her blue dress purple, was her own.

“She was such a sweet little girl,” Jack said, stroking her hair. “She used to have a real nice singing voice.

She loved to dance. We used to watch
Sesame Street
together.”

In the midst of everything—after all the horrors and all the abuse Jack had done to her—Annabel felt sorry for him. They had loved each other once. It had been a long time ago, but they had loved each other. Back then, Jack had been kind and good. Whatever demonic forces controlled this house, they had taken Jack's mind and warped it.

“Jack,” Annabel said, stooping down beside her husband, “come with me. Let's get out of this house together. We'll go out through the window and ride back into town. I'll explain that you only shot Cindy to save me. No one will blame you for anything here. They'll come, they'll see what this house is, and they'll understand. . . they'll understand none of it was your fault.”

Her husband snapped his face up to look at her. “Oh, but that's impossible,” he said quickly. “The house won't let us leave, Annabel.”

She studied his eyes. She didn't know what he meant.

But then she looked around and his meaning became unmistakably clear.

The room was filled with little men.

Once again they were coming up through the floorboards and stepping out of sliding panels from the walls. There were dozens of them. The house was infested with them, like cockroaches or termites. Three of them even sat in the window, blocking the way if Annabel suddenly tried to make an escape.

“No,” Annabel said. “Please, no . . .”

They were coming closer. Slowly, steadily, their little feet moved, closing in on Annabel and Jack.

The little men were muttering among themselves.

“It's Cindy,” Annabel realized. “They're angry about Cindy.”

“She was their friend,” Jack said, standing up now, facing them.

“Shoot them, Jack!” Annabel shouted.

“No,” Jack said. “They're going to make me rich.”

“No, they're not, Jack! They're going to put you down the fireplace!”

Too late he lifted the gun in their direction. Five or six of the creatures crawled up Jack's body, snatching the gun out of his hand and tossing it out the window. Then a dozen more covered him, knocking him to his knees. They were under him, trying to lift him and carry him away.

Annabel screamed in horror.

“No!” Jack cried. “I'm your friend! I will take care of you!”

The little demons ignored his words.

“She's the one!” Jack shrieked, managing to point over at Annabel. “She's the one who wants to destroy you! She'll destroy the house!”

His eyes met Annabel's.

She had just offered him a chance at salvation. He was offering the demons her life for his.

Annabel knew in that instant it wasn't the house that had warped Jack. He'd already been that way the day they arrived at this place. And probably for some time before that.

“Take her!” Jack was screaming. “Take Annabel instead!”

All at once, the little men stopped moving. They looked at each other. Then they set Jack down on the floor and turned their terrible blue eyes at Annabel.

“No!” she screamed.

The creatures marched toward her.

A
nnabel backed up against the wall in a vain attempt to get away from the little men. But the creatures were dropping down from the ceiling now, and crawling up her legs.

Annabel tried to fight them off, but it was useless. There were too many.

They had her. Their little pincers sunk into her flesh and held her tightly. They knocked her off her feet and scrambled under her back, hoisting her off the floor and carrying her across the room.

Annabel screamed.

Jack had vanished. He had condemned her to death, and would do nothing to save her.

Annabel's only hope was the gun—the one that Cindy had knocked from her hands and sent sliding across the floor. Annabel could see it as the creatures carried her past. She might be able to grab it—

She stretched out her arm when they drew close to the gun, which was sitting undisturbed in the middle of the floor. The little men seemed to have no interest in it. Their tiny fingers—claws—would not have been able to pull the trigger. Annabel had to grab it. She had to shoot them as Richard had, and she would take such delight in watching them explode into filthy protoplasm.

Her fingers touched metal. Yes! She closed her fingers around the barrel of the gun—

But the creatures were moving her too quickly. Annabel was unable to grab hold of the weapon. It slipped past her hand as she was carried past.

“Noo!” Annabel cried in frustration.

There was no more hope. She would die. She would be stuffed into a small, enclosed space and she would be eaten alive by dozens of Tommy Trickies.

Her mind shut down as she was carried out of the room, through the corridor, and down the stairs.

A series of images passed through her brain in those last few moments.

A picture of her father. Her real father. Colonel Malcolm Wish, in his beige-and-white camouflage from the Gulf War.

Her mother, her weary face at the end of the long day, her fear of Daddy Ron evident in the way her eyes flickered at the slightest sound....

Jack, on their wedding day . . .

A party in New York, laughter, lights, music, the smell of cocaine in her nose . . .

The stultifying air of the hospital, the sense of being trapped, the sound of people crying down the hall . . .

Neville's face.

Chad's.

Richard's.

Had Richard said that to her?

Suddenly, Annabel opened her eyes. She was being carried through the parlor now. At any moment, the creatures were going to force her headfirst down the chimney. There were others, she knew, waiting inside to pull her down.

“No,” she said quietly.

She thrashed her head from side to side. She spotted Jack across the room, watching from a dark corner, his eyes emotionless.

“No,” Annabel said more loudly.

Such strength the house had given Jack, and Cindy, too.

But not as much as it's given me
, Annabel thought.

“Get off of me, you filthy bastards!” she screamed, and in one powerful move, she shook the things off her, sending several of them flying.

The surprise on their little faces was beautiful to see.

They tried scrambling back at her, but Annabel managed to stand up, crushing one of the things under her bare foot as she did so, hearing its loathsome neck snap. The little men began making chittering sounds like monkeys. A number of them kept lunging at her, their pincers clawing into her legs, but others were backing away from her, not sure what to make of this suddenly powerful creature who had the ability to resist them.

“You only think you're real,” she spat at them. “Mother told me you're not.”

She shook the last of them off her legs.

“Grab her!” Jack shouted. “Grab her now or she'll get away.”

The sound of Jack's voice drew their attention away from Annabel. A moment passed as all the little men turned to look at Jack.

Then, instantaneously, as if some psychic command had passed among them, they all started running toward him.

“Get away from me!” Jack cried. “It's her you want! Take her!”

But they overran him, knocking him to the floor.

Jack screamed.

A
nnabel watched as the creatures lifted Jack and carried him across the floor toward the fireplace. He swung his arms and tried to kick his feet, crying hysterically.

“Annabel!” he called to her. “Help me, baby cakes!”

But that wasn't going to happen.

Instead, Annabel turned and walked out of the parlor at the moment Jack's head was pushed down into the fireplace. Heading into the kitchen, she could hear Jack's muffled scream as the creatures devoured him.

She knew what she had to do.

The first thing was practical. Annabel found the boots she had kicked off, one in the pantry and the other in the kitchen. She replaced them on her feet and tied them as tightly as possible. She worked deliberately, but also quickly. She had very little time. Whether the creatures would come back for her, she didn't know. Perhaps she had proven herself to them, and they would leave her alone now. But they might be back for another round.

Still, if they did try, Annabel felt confident that she could beat them off again. But frankly, she didn't want to have to bother.

Her boots on her feet, she walked over to the stove and grabbed the box of kitchen matches that were kept there.

Zeke had had the right idea.

Those little men weren't real. Tommy Tricky had been used to torment her, manipulate her, frighten her, exploit her. But he hadn't been real.

Her mother told her he wasn't.

And Annabel intended to make sure it stayed that way.

She walked back into the parlor, clutching the box of matches in her hand.

The little creatures were dancing around, celebrating Jack's death. The house had been fed. They were pleased.

Not for long.

Zeke had sprinkled gasoline all over the floor—the rugs—the drapes. Annabel could smell it.

She struck a match against the side of the box.

A little flame sparked into life.

The creature nearest to her turned his face up to the match. Its flame reflected in his demonic little eyes.

“Good-bye, Tommy,” Annabel told the creature, and dropped the match to the floor. The rug under the little man burst into flame, taking the terrified creature with it. Its face melted like wax in the conflagration.

Instantly, the parlor was ablaze, the room Annabel had thought she would modernize, make pretty, turn into a home. The drapes caught. The sofa was obliterated. As Annabel turned to leave, she caught a glimpse of flames hopping like rabbits up the stairs. The little men were screaming.

Walking out into the kitchen, Annabel kept striking more matches and dropping them to the floor. Little explosions followed in her wake.

She threw a lighted match into the pantry and listened to the roar. She placed a match on the center of the gas-soaked kitchen table, which burst into flames. Soon the whole room was an inferno. Annabel could hear the fire consuming the walls around her and ripping through the ceiling above her. But best of all, she could hear the high-pitched screams of the little men as the flames consumed their unholy blue flesh.

Calmly, she walked out the back door.

Making her way across the path that Zeke had dug for her, Annabel noticed that the snow had stopped and that breaks of blue were appearing in the sky. By the time she had crunched across the yard to Richard's snowmobile, the house behind her was burning out of control, sending a giant plume of black smoke rising above the trees.

Annabel mounted the snowmobile. She unzipped her coat pocket and removed the keys. Inserting the larger of the two keys into the ignition, she turned it to the ON position.

The snowmobile didn't start.

Was she going to be able to drive this thing?

Of course, she was.

She figured she could do anything now.

Instinctively, she pulled a cord in front of her and pushed the handlebars up, and the motor beneath her hummed into life.

Annabel sailed off across the snow.