Bentley Little - The Burning

He reached the door and tried to open it, but the latch pressing against his hand did not retain its shape or function and squished out from between his fingers like rotten black gelatin. Crying out in surprise and disgust, he flung the bulk of the mess onto the ground, wiping the rest on his pants, rubbing his skin compulsively against the material until he was sure it was completely gone.

Malcolm had passed through the connector to the car in front, and Dennis cut in front of the professor and followed.

Only the car wasn't there.

The connector remained the same as it had been when they'd initially entered, but the first passenger car had been replaced with what appeared to be a grotto made from mold and mud. Faces peered out of the walls, faces that looked vaguely familiar, that had no doubt been the passengers they'd passed on their way in, but they were frozen in expressions of agony. It was how they'd looked at the second they'd died, Dennis realized, and he understood that whatever process had brought them to this point was reversing itself. The dead were reverting to their previous forms. If the rest of them did not get out at this instant, they could be trapped here forever-wherever here was. Malcolm backed up and so did he and so did the professor. The housewife and a computer programmer, meanwhile, had found a way to open the door. The slimy goo that had been the latch was still lying in globs on the floor where he'd thrown it, but the rest of the door had somehow remained intact and was sliding open. Through the doorway, they could see night sky and what looked like thousands upon thousands of people holding hands and chanting on a desert plain.

Promontory Point, Dennis thought.

This was where it had all begun, and this was where it was destined to end.

Other trains were here, he saw, other railroads carrying more of the wronged, the massacred, the dead.

The programmer and the housewife stepped down, went outside.

Taking a deep breath, Dennis followed.

Thirty-five

Bear Flats, California

They pulled up in front of the Williams place in the FBI agents' car: the two agents, Skylar and Jolene. Her mother remained back at the house in case Leslie showed up. Their headlights shone on another car already parked in the circular drive and on two more identically attired agents who stood with Ned Tanner and an officer she didn't know, who were obviously waiting for them to arrive.

Jolene got out of the backseat, holding tightly to Skylar's hand. She still didn't want him to be here, but she recognized that he was connected to all of this in some strange way she did not understand. Even if she tried to keep him out of it, he was involved, and the safest thing to do was keep him with her at all times.

Ned smiled a greeting, and Jolene nodded back, walking over. The four agents met by the other car and briefly conferred before splitting apart. Saldana seemed to be the man in charge, and he approached the police chief. "You have the key?"

Ned handed it to him.

"I'd like to see the spot where Mrs. Carter was killed."

"It's in one of the bedrooms."

"Show me." The agent motioned to Jolene and Skylar, indicating that they were to come, too.

Ned instructed the other Bear Flats officer to stay outside while the rest of them entered the house. Just inside the doorway, someone flipped on the lights. It looked the same as it had two days ago, when she and Leslie had come back for the diaries, but the atmosphere was different, stranger, more sinister and overtly threatening, the way it had been the day Anna May had been murdered.

And Skylar had been naked in the cellar.

She didn't want to think about that.

"Ow!" Skylar said. "You're hurting my hand!"

"Sorry," Jolene said. She'd been unaware that she'd been squeezing so hard.

Ned led the way up the stairs. Darkness lay at the top of the steps, and no one seemed to know where the light switch was. There was some fumbling around by Ned and one of the other agents, and Jolene was filled with the irrational certainty that the two of them would be engulfed by the darkness and eaten by whatever was hiding in there. Her breathing grew shallow, and she had to make a concerted effort not to squeeze Skylar's hand too tightly.

Then Ned found the switch and the upstairs hallway was illuminated before them. Everyone was here, everyone was fine, but the sense of dread did not dissipate. If anything, it became stronger as they approached the bedroom. Jolene remembered the loud thump they'd heard from downstairs when Anna May's body had hit the floor. She recalled with perfect clarity the way the old woman had been not only beaten, her head nothing but a bloody pulpy mess, but slashed open, the gashes in her legs so deep that the white of bone was visible through the red of flesh.

"I don't think I closed that door," Ned said in front of them, and Jolene could tell that he was scared, too.

He pushed open the bedroom door.

They stood there, looking in, flashlights shining on blackness. The interior of the bedroom was now completely covered with mold. It was impossible to tell whether the black fungus was consuming the room or transforming it, but it was no longer merely a faint shadow on the walls. A thick layer that looked like the fur coat of an animal grew over every available inch of space-floor, ceiling, furniture-erasing distinctions and imposing uniformity. The enclosed area looked less like a room now than a cave.

No. Not a cave. There wasn't the haphazard naturalness that a cavern would possess. Instead, the metamorphosed walls possessed an almost mechanical aspect, and she thought that it looked more like a boiler room or ...

Or the cabin of a train engine.

Even the FBI agents seemed caught off guard by the condition of the room.

"Where was the body?" Saldana asked. The police chief pointed. Neither made an effort to enter.

Jolene pulled Skylar away from the doorway, back down the hall. From somewhere else within the house came the faint sound of laughter. It was muffled, hard to hear, its source impossible to pinpoint. Though the tone was a deep masculine baritone, there was something flighty and vaguely feminine about the cadence, and the juxtaposition sent a shiver down her spine.

"Ow!" Skylar said.

"Sorry," she told him, loosening her grip.

"Where was your son found?" Saldana asked. "I want to see that basement."

They descended the stairs, none of them remarking upon the black room they had just left, and Jolene found herself more frightened than she had been before. Whatever small confidence the authority of the FBI had instilled in her was gone. Saldana and his men could not have learned much from their brief look at the bedroom, and they certainly hadn't accomplished anything. Which meant that the agents were as lost as she was in the face of this horror.

Still, they all went down to the basement, although she and Skylar ventured no farther than the bottom of the steps in case they had to make a quick getaway.

The door in the floor was closed. Ned again expressed surprise at that, since he was the last person who'd been in here and it had been open when he'd left yesterday afternoon.

Saldana pointed. "That's it? Down there?" His voice was not quite as loud as it had been, as though in deference to this place.

Jolene nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

"And there's no other entrance or exit?"

"None," Ned said. "I checked myself." He was about to pull open the trapdoor when from beneath the thick wood came an indistinct scratching followed instantly by the sound of wood hitting wood.

Someone was down there.

As one, the FBI agents and the police chief drew their holstered guns. Jolene's heart was pounding so hard she could barely hear over the thumping in her ears. She backed up, holding tightly to her son, retreating slowly up the steps. She thought of that low terrible space with its dirt floor, its foul smell and that single bookcase in the center. It had been ghastly enough in the middle of the day. At night, it seemed more terrifying than anything she had ever encountered or could ever have imagined, and the thought that Skylar had had to spend even a second alone in that dark horrible space filled her with anguish.