Free The Cellar by Richard Laymon Page B

the right, across from Lilly’s bedroom. Donna hunted the floor for wax bodies, but found none, though a four-paneled papier-mâché screen blocked one corner and window.
    “Joseph and I were sleeping here. The night was the seventh of May 1931. That’s more than forty years back, but it’s burned in my mind. There’d been a good deal of rain that day. It slowed down after dark. We had those windows open. I could hear the drizzle outside. The girls were fast asleep at the end of the hall, and the baby, Theodore, was snug in the nursery.
    “I fell asleep, feeling all peaceful and safe. But long about midnight, I was awakened by a loudcrash of glass. The sound came from downstairs. Joseph, who also heard it, got up real quiet and tiptoed over here to the chest. He always kept his pistol here.” Opening a top drawer, she pulled out a Colt .45 service automatic. “ This pistol. It made a frightful loud sound when he worked its top.” Clamping her cane under one arm, she gripped the black hood of the automatic and quickly slid it back and forward with a scraping clamor of metal parts. Her thumb gently lowered the hammer. She returned the gun to its drawer.
    “Joseph took the pistol with him and left the room. When I heard his footsteps on the stairs, I stole out of bed, myself. Quiet as I could, I started down the hall. I had to get to my children, you see.”
    The group followed her into the corridor.
    “I was right here, at the top of the stairway, when I heard gunshots from downstairs. I heard a scream from Joseph such as I’d never heard before. There were sounds of a scuffle, then scampering feet. I stood right here, scared frozen, listening to footsteps climb the stairs. I wanted to run off, and take my children to safety, but fear held me tight so I couldn’t move.
    “Out of the darkness below me came the beast. I couldn’t see how it looked, except it walked upright like a man. It made kind of a laugh, and then it leaped on me and dragged me down to the floor. It ripped me with its claws and teeth. I tried to fight it off, but of course I was no match for the thing. I was preparing myself to meet the Lordwhen little Theodore started crying in his nursery at the end of the hall. The beast climbed off me and ran to the nursery.
    “Wounded as I was, I chased after it. I had to save my baby.”
    The group followed her to the end of the corridor. Maggie stopped in front of a closed door.
    “This door stood open,” she said, and tapped it with her cane. “In the light from its windows I saw the pale beast drag my child from the cradle and fall upon him. I knew that little Theodore was beyond my power to help him.
    “I was watching, filled with horror, when a hand tugged at my nightdress. I found Cynthia and Diana behind me, all in tears. I took a hand of each, and led them silently away from the nursery door.”
    She took the group again past the rope-connected chairs.
    “We were just here when the snarling beast ran out of the nursery. This was the nearest door.” She opened it, revealing a steep, narrow staircase with a door at the top. “We ducked inside, and I got the door shut only a second ahead of the beast. The three of us ran up these stairs as fast as our legs could carry us, stumbling and crying out in the darkness. At the top, we passed through that door. I bolted it after us. Then we sat in the musty blackness of the attic, waiting.
    “We heard the beast come up the stairs. It made laughing, hissing sounds. It sniffed the door. And then, somehow, with such quickness we couldn’tmove, the door burst open and the beast sprang among us. In the first moments, it killed Cynthia and Diana. Then it leaped onto me. It held me down with its claws, and I waited for it to tear out my life. But it didn’t. It just stayed on top of me, breathing its foul breath against my face. Then it climbed off. It scampered down the attic and vanished. I have never seen the beast since that night. But others