Free The Beast House by Richard Laymon Page A

“Oh, Dan’s not far off. No, indeed. Just down the road a spell. Can’t miss it. A place called Beast House.”
    “He lives there?” Tyler asked.
    “I wouldn’t say that, not exactly. Go on by in the morning. Tell him Captain Frank sent you, and give Danny boy my regards.” He waved them away.
    “Thanks,” Tyler called.
    They started walking.
    “He must work as a guard there,” Nora said.
    “Yeah. I suppose. But he must live someplace.”
    Nora shrugged. “You can ask him all about it tomorrow.”
    “I guess this means we’ll have to take the tour.”
    “You’ll love it. Tacky tacky.”
    “I can’t wait,” she muttered.
    “Let’s get back to the inn and get tanked.”

CHAPTER EIGHT
    Tyler pulled to a stop in front of their bungalow at the Welcome Inn. “It’ll take me a while to get cleaned up and changed,” she said. “You can go on ahead to the restaurant, if you’d like.”
    “Fine,” Nora said. “Meet you there.”
    They climbed from the car.
    Alone in her room, Tyler checked a drawer of the night stand between the beds. She found a Gideon Bible and a telephone book. She looked up Jenson, Daniel in the directory. The address listed after his name was 10 Seaside Lane.
    According to Captain Frank, he didn’t live there now. Not anymore. No indeed.
    She flipped the directory shut. The date on its cover was February 1978, making the book more than a year and a half old.
    She considered dialing information.
    Maybe later. Right now, she had neither the energy nor the desire. She sat motionless on the edge of the bed, the phone book resting on her thigh, and stared into space. She felt weary. Her mind seemed out of focus. In the pit of her stomach was a tiny knot of fear.
    She wished that she was home in her own apartment, her life untouched by Barbie Doll, the horrible man on the highway, the leering Bix, the man who stared out like a specter from his cottage on Seaside, or Captain Frank on top of his grimly painted bus. Give Danny boy my regards.
    And then she thought, Why not leave in the morning? First thing. As Nora pointed out, there’s no law you have to go looking for Dan.
    Just get in the car, tomorrow, and bid farewell to all this. Tyler suddenly felt better, as if realizing she could leave had lifted an oppressive weight from her spirits. The knot of fear in her stomach loosened. She could leave. Nobody would force her to seek out Dan. Nobody would force her to take the Beast House tour.
    If I don’t want to, she thought, I won’t.
    She put away the telephone directory, pulled the curtains across the windows, and took off her clothes. Inspecting her bra in the dim light, she doubted she could ever remove the bloodstains entirely. Even if she succeeded, she would never forget this was the bra she had worn when the man attacked her. It would always be a reminder. So she took it into the bathroom and dropped it into the waste basket.
    Standing by the road, she had cleaned most of the blood from her skin. But she hadn’t taken off her bra. Some blood had soaked through it, leaving faint rust-colored blotches on her breasts.
    In the shower, she lathered her body with a thin bar of motel soap and used a washcloth to scrub her face and neck, her shoulders, her arms, her breasts—every inch of skin that had been touched by the man or his blood. She rinsed. She turned her back to the spray and looked down. Her breasts were tawny to the tan line, then creamy white to the darker flesh of her nipples. No trace of the blood stains remained. Nevertheless, she soaped the washcloth and scoured herself once more before leaving the tub.
    The bath towel was threadbare and half the size of her towels at home. After drying herself, she wrapped it around her waist and left the steamy bathroom. She turned on a lamp. The towel pulled loose as she sat down at the dressing table. She left it draping her lap and brushed her hair. Only the fringes at her neck were damp from the shower. With the short length,