Jayne Krentz: In Too Deep

The intruder started down into the basement.

“Welcome to my little game,” the man said. Unwholesome good cheer reverberated through the words. “I’ve never used local players. Too risky. But when I heard that the silly new real estate agent in town had hired an investigator to clear out the ghosts in the old Zander place, I knew I would have to change the rules for this round.”

The hunter paused midway down the steps.

“Then, again, you aren’t exactly local, are you? The office of Jones & Jones is over in Scargill Cove. So, I guess I’m not bending the rules all that much after all. Let’s see now, you’re hiding either under the stairs or behind the armoire. There is no other option in this room. Keeps the scoring simple. I’ll try the armoire first.”

Isabella sensed the hunter’s sudden movement on the staircase. At first she thought that he was rushing down toward the armoire. But in the next instant she heard the jarring thump of running shoes on the floor directly in front of her. The hunter had vaulted over the railing.

“Fooled you,” the stalker said happily. “I chose the stairs. Bonus points for me. My name is Nightman, by the way. Think of me as an avatar.”

A pair of eyes hot with madness and psi burned in the mist from a distance of less than two yards. The preternatural speed, balance and agility with which the intruder had moved, as well as the intense energy in the atmosphere, told Isabella that the intruder was a true hunter-talent.

“Well, well, well,” Nightman said, “I can sense a little energy in the atmosphere. Maybe you two aren’t complete frauds, after all, huh?”

“No,” Fallon said. “We’re the real deal.”

“Once in a while I pick up a player who has a little talent,” Nightman said. “Adds spice to the game. Tell you what, I’ll do you first, Mr. Private Eye. Save the lady for some fun later. After you and I are finished, I’ll take her upstairs and let her run. It’s so much fun to watch them try to find a door or a window in the darkness.”

“Where did you get the clock?” Fallon asked as if it were a matter of idle curiosity.

“Interesting gadget, isn’t it?” Nightman chuckled. “I found it in an old tunnel under the floor in this room a few months ago. I was checking out the place to see if it would be a good platform for my games. The innards of the clock were in pretty good shape considering that it had been sitting in a damp cave for quite a while. It was stored in a weird glass box. I cleaned it up and got it working. Imagine my surprise when I discovered what it could do.”

“It generates night,” Fallon said.

“Sure does.” Nightman laughed. “I have to tell you, it makes my little live-action video game very interesting for all concerned.”

“What turns off the clock?” Fallon asked, still speaking in tones of academic interest.

“It runs down after about three hours,” Nightman said. “Then it has to be rewound. It’s motion-sensitive, though. When I’m in the mood for a game, I pick up some junkie whore on the streets of Oakland or San Francisco and bring her here. I set the clock, explain the rules and turn the player loose in the house. We play until I get bored.”

“The bodies go under the floorboards here in the basement, right?” Fallon asked.

“There’s a tunnel down below. Probably an old smuggling route. This stretch of coastline is riddled with caves.”

Isabella could not stand to remain quiet any longer.

“You must have really freaked when you found out that Norma Spaulding had hired Jones & Jones to investigate this place,” she said.

The hunter’s vicious eyes switched to her. “I’m afraid I’ll have to do something about Norma. Can’t let her actually sell this place, not after I’ve put so much creative effort into my game.”

“How do you plan to explain the fact that we’re both missing?” she asked.

“Nothing to explain.” There was a shrug in Nightman’s voice. “There won’t be any bodies to find. I’ll drive your cars to one of the roadside lookouts and leave them there. No one’s going to look too hard for a couple of missing psychic detectives from Scargill Cove. Everyone knows the town is populated by crazies and losers.”

“What kind of weirdo loser picks a name like Nightman for his avatar?” Isabella demanded. She was pretty sure she heard Fallon heave a small sigh but she ignored him. “Or didn’t you know Nightman was what they used to call the guy who cleaned out the cesspools and emptied the privies in eighteenth-century England?”

“That’s a lie .” Nightman’s voice rose in shrill rage. “You’re laughing now, but wait until I start using my knife on you.”

“New rules tonight,” Fallon said.

Isabella felt energy flare fiercely in the unnatural night. She heard a choking gasp and knew that it came from Nightman.

The killer uttered a strangled scream. His eyes got hotter, this time with the energy of terror and comprehension of his impending death.

“No,” he wheezed. “I’m the winner. I’m always the winner. You can’t do this to me. It’s my game.”

There was a dull thud as his body hit the floorboards. The hot psi dimmed in his eyes and vanished altogether.

The clock continued to tick into the sharp silence that descended on the basement.

“Fallon?” Isabella whispered.

“Game over,” he said. His eyes were still hot.

She felt him move away from under the staircase and realized that he was crouching beside the fallen man.

“Dead?” she asked.

“I couldn’t let him live.” Fallon’s voice was flat on the surface but underneath there was a soul-deep weariness. “He was too strong. A hunter-talent of some kind. If the cops had tried to arrest him, it would have taken him about five minutes to escape and disappear.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t complaining. But what do we do now? There’s no way we can explain that clock to the police.”

“We’re not going to explain it to the cops. We’ll take it with us. They won’t need it to find the bodies and figure out what was going on here.”

She heard a rustling sound and realized that he was going through the killer’s clothes.

“We’ll have to find a way to stop that clock before you drive it back to Scargill Cove,” she said. “It’s generating too much energy, enough to fill this entire house. You might be able to see where you’re going, but the driver of any car that you pass will be temporarily blinded.”

“It’s just a damn clock,” Fallon said. “Got to be a way to stop it. Mrs. Bridewell’s curiosities all incorporated traditional mechanical escapements.”

She shuddered. “I can’t wait to hear more about this Mrs. Bridewell.”

“I’ll tell you later. The point is that, paranormal aspects aside, the clock’s mechanism is very similar to the one in my office.”

She sensed his movement when he got to his feet. He crossed through the strange night, a dark shadow silhouetted against the eerie mist. There was a squeak of small hinges and a cranking sound. The ticking stopped abruptly.

The flashlights reignited, spearing beams of light across the basement. At the top of the stairs, the entrance was once again filled with normal shadows.

“That worked,” Isabella said.

“Which means this really is one of her infernal devices, not some new variation,” Fallon said. “That’s the good news.”

“Why is it good news?”

“I wasn’t looking forward to hunting down a modern-day inventor who had decided to create a high-tech version of some of Bridewell’s gadgets. The originals are bad enough. The question now is, how did the clock get into this house? But we’ll deal with that later.”