need a few things,” Melina said, moving toward the case. She also kept a pepper sprayer in it, for when she had to walk to her car after dark.
Kiwi and Mrs. Hamogeorgakis both laughed as she picked up the case and took it to the side of the bed.
“Foolish girl,” Mrs. Hamogeorgakis said. “Your silly powders and notions would only make a ridiculous clown of me.”
“Just wait. I’ve got some great new products here…” Melina bent to open her case, even as Kiwi walked toward her with the knife.
“Don’t be foolish,” Mrs. Hamogeorgakis said. “We know what we are doing. We have done this many times before. So many times. So many stupid girls.”
Melina lifted the case and scattered its contents on the bed and the floor. She found the cell phone and jammed it in a pants pocket. She then spotted the pepper sprayer, snatched it up and fired a stream toward Kiwi’s eyes.
“You bitch!” the old woman screamed, dropping the knife. Melina turned and fired the sprayer at Mrs. Hamogeorgakis—and missed. The creature slid off the bed and reached for the blade.
“No you don’t!” Melina screamed, kicking Mrs. Hamogeorgakis out of her way. The old woman uttered a gurgling squeal, and then turned her head quickly to rake her teeth across the girl’s ankle. Melina grabbed the knife with her free hand and ran out of the room.
Tyler Marsh was running down the hall toward her.
She ran to meet him and plunged the knife into his gut. What else could she do? It was her only choice
“Very good!” Mrs. Hamogeorgakis cried from the doorway. “Such spirit!” Kiwi appeared behind the creature, rubbing furiously at her streaming eyes.
The man clutched at the knife handle and fell to the floor screaming.
Melina ran down the hall, looking frantically for the stairs. Finally she saw them to her left. She look behind her—Kiwi and Mrs. Hamogeorgakis were less than ten feet away. The hideous fish-woman was holding the bloody knife.
The girl raised the pepper sprayer and pumped at the cylinder furiously, creating a cloud of the spray between her and the two women. They stopped immediately.
“So clever,” Mrs. Hamogeorgakis said. A hard smile played on her lips. “What a pity you must die.”
Melina rushed down the stairs, pulling the phone from her pocket. She frantically punched in Kyle’s number.
“Call the police!” she screamed into the phone. “The fire department, anybody! Then come help me!”
“Sure! Okay, but wha—”
She cut off the call—there just wasn’t enough time to explain. She was about to call 911 when she saw the two old women rushing down the stairs, frantically fanning the spray fumes away with their hands.
She tried to remember which way to turn to get to the front door…Finally, hoping for the best, she chose left. At one point she bumped into a small table and fell down, overturning the table and smashing the vase on top. She scrambled back to her feet and continued down the hall. But soon she saw some paintings she hadn’t seen earlier. She must have turned the wrong way. She decided to keep running until she found either an exit or a place to hide and call the police.
After she had turned down a new hall, she came across large double doors with golden handles. Double doors? She opened one and rushed through into a huge hallway, over twenty feet wide with pine-board walls and a cheap linoleum floor. The lighting fixtures were simply yellow bulbs. Maybe deliveries came through this way—which meant it led out of the building. Yes, she decided, that had to be it. She ran on until she’d turned a corner. She couldn’t hear them behind her—now she could call the police. She jammed a hand into one pocket, then another.
The phone was gone.
Had she even put it back in a pocket after she’d called Kyle? She must have dropped it when she ran into that table. She couldn’t go back. The only thing to do was to follow the hallway.
The floor seemed to slope slightly downward. She rounded a few more corners, and as time passed, it occurred to her that she had traveled a considerable distance. Too great a distance to still be in the house. Was she in some kind of tunnel?
Eventually she came to the top of a spiral staircase made of huge beams and well-worn board steps. The walls here were brick, coated with layers of mildew and cobwebs. The cracked, eroded bricks were probably red, but the light of the yellow bulbs gave them a pumpkin-orange cast.
She followed the stairs downward. They were slippery, so she had to hang on to the filthy banister. Soon her hands were smeared with black mildew.
She walked down another hall. The damp floor was surfaced with thousands of small, flat stones. She began to hear faint splashing sounds. She figured she had to be underground—how far, she couldn’t even guess.
Hey, I’m not scared, she thought. She was impressed with herself. Even though she was in some strange underground passage, she really wasn’t frightened. That horrible fish-woman had been terrifying, but she’d managed to escape that. Surely she’d find an exit pretty soon. Surely this nightmare was nearing its end.
Then the hall brought her to a large open area.
A cave.
The people gathered in the cave, lounging on rocks around an algae-choked pool, were totally naked. But that was not the most startling aspect of the sight that confronted her.
All of these pale, flabby people had scales and wild eyes, like Mrs. Hamogeorgakis. Then she noticed they all looked a little like Kyle—in fact, one of them was his uncle Carl. But he was covered with scales now, and had webbed fingers, claws, and needlelike teeth. She had to cover her mouth with her hands so not to cry out, or scream, or even laugh hysterically. So this was what had happened to those relatives of his. They had…changed…with age. They had to be one of those families from the sea the horrible old woman had mentioned…
The sea-people turned and glared at her. But they didn’t try to attack her—they didn’t even change their positions. A few simply bared their needle-teeth in smiles—cruel smiles that said, We know something that you don’t.
Then she saw a statue, half-hidden in a shadowed alcove. It was carved from pale yellow stone, and stood almost eight feet tall. It looked like a bloated man with scaly skin and a wide, fish-lipped, horribly pouting mouth. The eyes were huge black gems. She saw gnawed bones piled around the base of the statue. Dry, rotten loops of intestines were wrapped around the body and legs, as though bored, monstrous children that tried to clothe the thing.
She moved quickly along the wall of the cave, desperately hoping to get to the far end without touching any of the creatures. The other side had to have an opening to the outside world. Maybe it led to an opening behind the rocks—the ones at the base of the cliff that she and Kyle had seen from the seaside pavilion.
When she reached the other side, she found only a low passage hewn out of the dirt and stone, shored up with timber and rocks. The yellow bulbs did not go down this path—probably because it was so wet. The muddy walls dripped and ran with moisture. The tunnel led off into midnight blackness.
Tired but determined, she crawled in.
She closed her eyes, even though she was in total darkness, and crawled and crawled, on and on, through mud and slime. Soon her pants were soaked with cold water and filth, and the air in the tunnel took on the stench of rotting fish.
I wish I had my vanilla cigarettes. They’d make this place smell better, she thought. A half-laugh, half-sob escaped her lips. God, I’m trying to find my way out of Hell and I’m thinking about cigarettes.
Suddenly she realized: her lighter was in the breast pocket of her blouse.
She dried off one hand as best she could on her shirt, and then found the lighter. She flipped up the cover and lit it.
The