Кей Хупер - Chill Of Fear

"They hunted him down. And when they caught him, they put him here. Shut him underground. Left him to die here. Alone."

"Him?" Nate's voice was so wary it was just a bit unsteady. "Diana, who're you talking about?"

Her head tilted slightly, as though she were listening to a soft, distant voice. "He was evil. He walked like a man and talked like a man, but he was something else. Something that fed on terror. Something without a soul."

Quentin tightened his grip on her hand, fearing that if he let go of her, he'd somehow lose her for good, because he had the apprehensive sense that some part of her was already elsewhere, tied to the here and now only by the flesh-to-flesh connection of their linked hands.

He wanted to stop this, to pull Diana back from wherever that absent part of her was, but every instinct told him not to. Not yet. This, whatever it was, was important. This was something she had to tell them. Something he had to listen to.

"It's coming."

He hadn't listened to Missy.

He intended to listen to Diana.

"They thought he was an animal, so they trapped him like one," she murmured. "They had no idea... what he was really capable of. No idea how rage could give him the strength to keep going. They had no idea death wouldn't stop him. They destroyed the flesh, but that only set the evil free."

Quentin kept his voice low when he asked, "Who are they, Diana?"

She looked at him, seemed to see him for the first time, even though her eyes held a peculiar flat shine. "They created The Lodge. Just a handful of men, wealthy men. They didn't intend it to be a place of secrets, but that's what it became. After that night, after they buried a killer alive and swore they'd never tell.

"But people around here... some of them knew. There were stories. There always are. A whisper here, a question there. Then years passed, decades, and it was just legends. Superstitions. And most everybody forgot what had roamed these mountains — and been buried alive inside them."

Abruptly, she stepped out into the cavern, moving with the certainty of someone who knew where they were going.

"What the hell?" Nate muttered.

"Let's find out," Quentin told him, holding on to Diana's hand and shining his flashlight to illuminate her way.

Still muttering, Nate said, "I don't mind telling you the hair on the back of my neck is standing straight up." He had his free hand on his weapon.

Quentin knew how he felt. There was something almost unbearably creepy about being in this dark, dank underground place and listening to Diana's soft, serene voice speaking of a horrible past event that had the power to send chills up the spine. It wasn't so much what she said as how she said it, her voice almost sweet almost... childlike.

Quentin felt a stronger chill when he realized that, when he suddenly understood that it wasn't Diana they had been listening to.

When the voice coming out of her struck a chord of familiarity so deep inside him it was like a splinter of ice in his heart.

Before he could react to that, before he could even try to somehow break the trance she was in, she led them into one of the passageways on the other side of the cavern. But this passageway was short, only a few feet, opening into another, smaller cavern.

Even before their flashlights showed them what was there, Quentin could smell it. The old, old stench of decay, of blood spilled and flesh rotted and moldering bones.

Death.

"Jesus Christ," Nate breathed.

"This is where it brings some of them," Diana said in that sweet, childlike voice that was, now, sad and contemplative. "They die where he died."

Quentin dropped his flashlight in order to catch her as she abruptly collapsed, and when the light rolled across the stone floor and came to rest against a rock, the beam starkly illuminated a grinning human skull lying on its side at the base of a tangled mound of bones.

From their position not far from the gazebo, Madison watched worriedly as the tall blond man carried Diana from the barn and up the path toward The Lodge.

"Is she all right?"

Becca shook her head slowly. "I don't know. I thought she was ready, but... maybe not."

"Did — did it get her?"

"No. No, it needs her. Just like we need her. But it doesn't know what she is yet. We have to make her understand, so she can help us. Before it figures out what we're doing and tries to stop us. That's why Missy thought this was the best way."

"What was the best way?"

"To speak through Diana."

Madison frowned. "How could she do that?"

"Diana can see us, you know that. Open doors for us to come to this side. She can visit the gray time too. She can be the voice for one of us if we need to speak to someone on this side. But what makes her really special is that she can cross over all the way."

"You mean..."

"I mean she can walk with the dead."

"Even though she's alive?"

Becca nodded. "It's really, really dangerous for her. Especially now, when she doesn't understand what she can do. She could lose her way, get trapped in our world or in the gray time between."

"What would happen then?"

"She'd be one of us. She'd be dead too. Or as good as."

Madison shivered again, wishing she'd worn a jacket but knowing it wouldn't have mattered. "Then she shouldn't do that, Becca. She shouldn't cross over. Somebody should warn her not to even try that."

"Yeah. I expect you're right. The thing is... once she finds out about Missy, once she understands that part of it, she'll probably try anyway. And maybe she's supposed to."

"Maybe?"

"Well, I don't know for sure." Becca frowned. "Maybe that's what's needed. So she can fight it. Face it the way nobody else has ever been able to do. So it can be destroyed once and for all."

"That's where it is? On the other side? You didn't tell me it was dead, Becca."

"Part of it died. Part of it is still alive. And that's the part they can't see, the part we have to fight. We've waited a long time, until we were strong enough. And until we had the one thing we needed most. Somebody to help us fight it. Somebody strong enough to open the right door."

"Diana?"

"Diana. If she can. If he can help her."

"I've sent for a forensic anthropological team," Nate told Stephanie, sounding as tired as he felt. "God knows how long some of those bones have been down there, but we have to find out as much as we can about them."

She pushed his coffee cup across the desk to him and poured one for herself, surprised that her hands were steady. "And you have no idea how extensive the caves and tunnels might be?"

"Not a clue. When Diana collapsed, the priority was to get her out of there, so we didn't keep exploring. I did point my flashlight through a couple of other openings, and it looked like they led to longer passageways, but there's no way to know for sure without going back down there." He shook his head. "Frankly, I'd rather not."

"I don't blame you," Stephanie murmured.

With a sigh, he said, "I don't know that it's a place for cops anyway. When I called Quentin's cell a few minutes ago, he said there was an FBI unit that specialized in exploring and mapping underground passageways. Said he'd get in touch with them." Nate paused, adding wryly, "I decided not to ask him why such a unit even existed."

Stephanie thought about that, then said, "It does seem odd, doesn't it?"

"Yeah."

"Umm. How's Diana?"

"Asleep, he said. Closer to unconscious, I gather. But apparently normal after an experience like that. Normal. Jesus."

"What happened to her down there?"

"Beats the hell out of me. All I can tell you is that I had the creepy feeling somebody else was using Diana to talk to us."

"Somebody else? Who?"