Shaun Hutson - Heathen/Nemesis

Donna was quivering.

‘How do you think he knew so much about us? Why should we consider him such a danger unless he could damage us?’

‘He took the Grimoire. That was why you wanted him dead,’ Donna said.

‘But how do you think he got close enough to take it in the first place?’

Donna shook her head.

‘What did he tell you?’ Dashwood asked. ‘Did he tell you he was one of us?’

Donna didn’t answer.

‘No. He didn’t, did he?’ Dashwood said, smiling.

‘He couldn’t have been,’ she shouted. ‘I know about you. I know about what you do. You kill.’

‘Some things are worth killing for,’ Dashwood told her. ‘Some knowledge has a high price.’

‘He wasn’t one of you,’ she said defiantly. ‘He wouldn’t have done the things he ...’

‘What things, Mrs Ward?’

‘The initiation rites. I read about them.’

‘What wouldn’t he have done?’ Dashwood chided.

‘He wouldn’t have killed . . .’ The sentence trailed off.

‘Killed a child?’ Dashwood smiled broadly. ‘He wouldn’t have killed a child, is that what you were going to say? He wouldn’t have fornicated in front of us, he wouldn’t have taken the life of a child, he wouldn’t have urinated on the cross. You think he wouldn’t have pissed on Christ.’ Dashwood bellowed the final words, the noise echoing around the chamber. ‘How well did you know your husband, you bitch? How well did you know him? Could you see into his mind? You ignorant, stupid bitch.’

Donna leapt forward, grabbing the .45.

She rolled over, aiming it at Dashwood, squeezing the trigger.

Nothing happened.

He merely stepped back, away from her through the exit.

As he did she saw him raise his hand, the index finger pointing at something behind her.

Donna kept squeezing the trigger until, finally, she hurled the automatic away with a wail of despair.

The door of the chamber was slammed shut. She and Julie were trapped.

They ran to the door but it was firmly closed, unyielding despite their frantic efforts to open it. Julie turned, sliding exhausted down the damp wood, her back to the door. Donna continued thumping at the recalcitrant partition.

‘Donna.’

Julie could scarcely force the word out. She grabbed her sister’s leg, waiting until she’d turned before pointing at something inside the chamber.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ Donna whispered.

Was this imagination? Or madness?

The wax figures in the tableau of Sharon Tate’s murder were moving frenziedly.

Rooted to the spot, their limbs jerked insanely, as if charged with some kind of kinetic energy. Arms and legs thrashed wildly.

Then the sounds began.

Screams of pain and terror rose from frozen throats and drummed in the ears of Donna and Julie.

Those who’d died that night in 1969 were dying again, their agony finding a new voice.

Donna watched, her eyes bulging in their sockets, her throat constricted.

Julie too found that she was paralysed by the sight.

Only when the figure of Charles Manson turned and looked at her did she finally allow her own scream to escape. It mingled with the others in a hideous cacophony of suffering.

The figure took a step towards them.

Eighty-One

In some obscene parody of a child’s first steps, the Manson figure lurched from its position on the display, steadying itself against a wall.

From the tableau itself the large figure of the man who had been known as Charles ‘Tex’ Watson also struggled free and turned on the two women. Both the effigies held knives.

Donna, her mind still reeling, looked around for the discarded .22 Pathfinder.

It lay ten or twelve feet away, beneath the rack of the Inquisition victim.

To reach it she would have to pass the figures of Manson and Watson.

Donna ran towards the weapon, but Manson moved towards her. The waxwork moved with surprising speed; Donna felt cold hands grabbing at her.

The knife slashed down and carved through the air only inches from her face. She turned and lashed out, feeling her hand connect with the hard wax of the face. The eyes fixed her in their glassy, stare, the eyes of a dead fish on a skillet.

The screams continued, over and over again.

Manson grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her towards him.

Towards the knife.

Donna managed to twist in his grip and drove a foot into his midriff, knocking him backwards. He crashed into the effigy of a torturer burning the eyes from his victim.

Donna lunged towards the gun and scooped it into her hand, rolling over in time to see Watson bearing down on Julie.

The younger woman avoided the knife-thrust and hurled herself to one side, rolling beneath a table on which a man was being subjected to the Chinese Water Torture.

The dust and grime was thick beneath the table and Julie coughed as it clogged in her throat and nostrils.

Watson turned and came at her again, his movements thankfully slow.

Donna rose to one knee and swung the Pathfinder up into position.

She fired twice, the retort, even from a pistol as small as a .22, quite deafening within the confines of the chamber.

The first bullet struck him in the back of the head, the second in the side of the face, blasting most of the area from the temple to the chin away. Fragments of wax flew into the air.

Watson continued moving towards Julie.

Donna thumbed back the hammer and pumped two shots into Manson with similarly useless results. She saw the body quiver, saw the burns on the shirt of the mannequin. She even heard the sharp crack as the slugs thumped into the hard wax. The figure did not pause, merely raised the knife and lunged forward.

Donna rolled away beneath the table and came up on the other side.

The Manson figure made a sudden movement and the knife came hurtling down, burying itself in the wood, missing her hand by inches.

Donna made a grab for the knife but Manson’s hand closed over hers. Again she felt the clammy chill of wax; it was like being touched by a dead man. She struggled to escape the grip. Using the pistol as a club she slammed it into the side of the figure’s head with such force that one of the glass eyes popped out, the wax around it splintering.

The grip on her hand was released and she backed off.

The Manson figure kept coming.

Julie scrambled to her feet, pushing other figures over in an effort to halt the inexorable progress of Watson, who had the blade brandished high.

The screaming continued, great racking caterwauls of agony that deafened the women as surely as the retorts of the pistol. The backdrop of sound was intolerable.

Donna ran towards a scene showing the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. As the Manson figure advanced on her, she dragged the axe from the frozen grip of the headsman. It was heavy, the razor-sharp blade comfortingly lethal.

With all her strength she swung it, burying the blade in Manson’s chest.

The figure wobbled.

Donna struck again, her own shouts of defiance and fear mingling with the screams all around her.

The next blow sheared off an arm.

Manson still advanced.

‘Bastard,’ roared Donna and struck his head from his shoulders.

The effigy flew into the air, the wax head spinning, the fake hair flowing out wildly.

The waxwork toppled over and lay still.

‘Donna,’ shrieked Julie, and she looked over to see her sister trapped in a corner, the Watson figure only a couple of feet away.

Watson swung the knife, the cut slicing through the material of Julie’s shirt and gashing her forearm. She looked up into the sightless glass eyes, unable to move as the knife was raised again.

Donna ran at the figure, bringing the axe down with manic force. The blow was so powerful it cleft the wax head cleanly in two and bit into the torso as deep as the shoulders.