CHAPTER 69
Horrific screams reverberated down the mine shaft. It sounded like the baying of a wounded animal, but Tracy knew it to be human. House had returned, and he was not alone.
The filament in the bulb had nearly extinguished, and the room had returned to near darkness. Tracy hurried to make a final scratch in the wall, determined to finish what Sarah had started.
I am not
I am not afraid
I am not afraid
of the dark
The cries grew louder, echoing wails of agony and pain. Then, just as suddenly and horrifically, they stopped.
Tracy swept the remaining bits and pieces of concrete that she’d chipped from around the bolts holding the plate to the wall into the hole she’d created while unearthing Sarah’s metal spike. She covered them with dirt and patted it flat. A clattering and banging arose from the other side of the wall as she aligned the piece of carpet with the others.
The door banged open.
House entered with his back to her, grunting as he struggled to drag something heavy into the room. He dropped his kill near one of the vertical wood beams in the gray light from the doorway. The shadows prevented Tracy from making out the body’s face with any clarity. She assumed it to be Parker.
Next, House threw a length of chain over the nearest horizontal beam, gripped it, and stepped back. He pulled on the links of chain hand over hand, as if he was raising a boat’s sail. The body rose, arms extended overhead. House continued to pull until it hung like a slab of meat in a butcher’s window. He gave a final grunt and slid a link of the chain onto a hook protruding from the vertical beam, holding the body up. Finished, he fell back against one of the other posts, hands on his knees, bent over and breathing heavily. After a minute to catch his breath, he jabbed at the air with a fist, staggered forward, and fell to his knees. Tracy could hear his labored breathing as he cranked the generator handle. The filament pulsed and glowed, the drone becoming louder. The circumference of light took back the shadows, slowly revealing the body.
Roy Calloway hung by his wrists, slumped against the vertical beam, the horizontal beam not high enough for him to hang free. As the light fell across Calloway’s face, Tracy thought he was dead. Snow and ice clung to his face and clothing. The light filtered down his body, and over the .357 still in its holster on Calloway’s hip. Farther down, the light revealed his right leg sticking out at an odd and twisted angle just below the knee, where the metal teeth of the bear trap gripped his leg. His pants were torn and saturated in blood.
Tracy got to her knees and moved toward Calloway, but there was not enough slack in the chain to reach him.
House stopped cranking the handle of the generator and fell back against the table, chest still heaving. Sweat and melted snow matted his hair to his head and dripped down his face. He pulled off his gloves, unzipped his coat, and shook it free, throwing everything onto the bed. His long-sleeved shirt stuck to his chest. He stood staring at Roy Calloway as if to admire a prize elk. One he was about to gut.
Calloway moaned.
House reached out and grabbed his face. “That’s right. Don’t you dare die on me, you son of a bitch! That would be too good for you. Death is too good for any of you. You’re all going to suffer in a way that will make twenty years feel like they were nothing.” House turned Calloway’s head to face Tracy. “Take a look, Sheriff. All your efforts and lies and you still failed.”
“You’re an idiot,” Tracy said.
House released his grip. “What did you call me?”
Tracy shook her head derisively. “I said, you’re an idiot.”
He came toward her, though still out of her reach.
She said, “Have you really thought this through?”
Calloway shifted his legs, tried to stand, and screamed in pain, regaining House’s attention. House leaned an arm against the beam, his and Calloway’s noses nearly touching. “Do you know what solitary confinement is like, Roy? It’s like someone stuck you in a hole and deprived you of all your senses. It’s like you don’t exist, like the world doesn’t exist. That’s what I’m going to do to you. I’m going to keep you in this hole and make you feel like you don’t exist. I’m going to make you wish you were dead.”
“You really are a first-class fuckup,” Tracy said.
House pushed away from the beam. “You don’t know shit. If you did, you wouldn’t be here.”
“I know you screwed up, twice. I know you got caught, twice. And I know you ended up in jail, twice. Did you ever stop to think maybe it’s because you aren’t as smart as you think you are?”
“Shut the fuck up. You don’t know anything.”
“A smart man learns from his mistakes,” she said, mocking him. “Isn’t that what you said? It doesn’t look like you’ve learned shit to me.”
“I said shut up.”
“You brought the Sheriff of Cedar Grove here. How fucking stupid can you be? Parker is still alive, Edmund. Do you think Calloway came alone? They know where you are. You’re going back to jail. Strike three. Three strikes and you’re out, Edmund.”
“I’m not going anywhere until him and me are finished. After that, I’m going to take care of you.” House lifted the generator onto the table and turned it around. The back of the crate was open, revealing wires protruding from large battery cells just as Tracy had suspected.
He loosened the wing nuts and fastened stripped-copper wires around the bolts projecting out of the top of the battery. When he turned to speak to Tracy, the ends of the wires inadvertently touched, causing a spark. House grimaced and flinched at the shock. “Goddamn it.”
“Jesus, you’re stupid.”
He took a step toward her, still holding the wires. “Do not call me stupid.”
“How do you think he got here? Did you stop to think about that? They’re coming for you, Edmund. You’re going to lose again.”
“Shut up.”
“You haven’t learned anything. You were in the clear. They weren’t even going to retry you. You were going to walk away free, but you let your ego get in the way.”
“I didn’t want to get away. I wanted my revenge. And I’m getting it. I’ve had twenty years to think through what I would do to them and to you.”
“Which is why you’re a two-strike loser. Because you’re an idiot.”
“Stop calling me an idiot!”
“You had the chance every convict hopes for, dreams for, and you blew it because you’re too stupid.”
“Stop calling me—”
“You haven’t won anything. You’ve lost, again. You’re just too stupid to know it. You’re an idiot.”
He dropped the wires and rushed her, eyes wide, enraged. Tracy waited, letting him come, her hand on the flat end of the spike in her boot. When House was nearly upon her she rose up, pushing off her back leg with all her strength, her arm swinging up from the ground. She drove the sharpened tip of the metal stake just beneath House’s rib cage, his momentum and all of her strength embedding it deep in his flesh.
House roared in pain and fell back.
Tracy spun, shoved a boot against the wall, wrapped the length of chain around her hands, and yanked hard on the metal plate. Bits and pieces of cement and plaster dust sprayed the room as the rusted bolts ripped free of the wall. Her wrists still manacled, the foot-long piece of chain between them, she lunged for the big revolver on Roy Calloway’s hip. She was fumbling to free the snap on the holster when she was yanked violently backward. Edmund House had grabbed the chain and tugged on it like a leash. She fell onto her ass, got to her knees, stood, and reached again for the gun. House wrapped the chain around her neck. She lifted a boot against the beam and shoved off, propelling herself backward into him.
They crashed into and overturned the makeshift table, sending the generator to the floor. Tracy landed with her back atop House. He continued to choke her. She whipped her head backward, trying to butt him, and kicked and elbowed behind herself too. The chain tightened. Tracy fought to dig her fingers beneath the links, but House was too strong and her fingers wouldn’t fit. She lowered a hand, searching, felt the head of the spike and applied pressure. House screamed and cursed but the chain remained tight.
She yanked up on the spike, hard. House screamed. The chain loosened. This time, when she whipped her head back, she struck something solid, and heard the bridge of his nose crack. The chain slackened more, enough for her to pull it over her head. She rolled off, fighting to catch her breath, her throat on fire. She crawled across the ground, hoping there was enough slack in the chain, which remained wrapped around House’s hand. She reached Calloway and freed the snap on the holster. This time she’d gripped the handle of the revolver before the chain pulled taut, yanking the manacles around Tracy’s wrists and violently jerking her arms. The gun flew from her hands, landing somewhere in the shadows across the room.
House had staggered to his feet, the chain wrapped around his massive forearm. Blood stained his shirt where the end of the spike protruded and dripped from his nose down his chin.
Tracy tried to stand but he yanked the chain again, causing her to sprawl onto the floor. He came toward her. The generator lay on the ground beside her. She grabbed the two copper wires and started to her feet. House tugged again. She did not resist.
She flew into him, knocking him backward. When they landed, she pressed the stripped copper wires to the iron spike, creating a spark. There was a loud snap, and the smell of flesh burning. House quivered and twitched and jerked as the electricity passed through his body. In her head, she heard her student Enrique at Cedar Grove High shouting conductor. She lost the connection, found it again. House’s body jolted. Then he went limp.
Tracy rolled off. This time she pulled the chain from his arm as she scrambled across the room in search of the gun. House moaned behind her. She looked back over her shoulder and watched him somehow roll to his hands and knees, like a bear struggling to get up. She felt blindly along the ground where it met the wall.
House rose.
Tracy’s hand swept the ground.
House stumbled forward.
She swept along the wall and felt the gun.
House quickly crossed the room, too quickly for almost anyone to get off a shot. Almost.
Tracy rolled onto her back, already pulling back the hammer. She fired, cocked the hammer, fired, cocked, and fired a third time.