“There!” Quinn said.
He’d found a pull switch. A single bare bulb in the center of the attic cast a bizarre, wavering glow over the attic—and all the toys and junk and things within it.
There were boxes here and there, stacked high. There were hooks of all kinds that held clothing, old clothing, costumes, perhaps. There were….
Creepy masks, set on bodiless pre-fab wig-heads.
There were tombstones, miniature coffins.
“Quinn!” she gasped suddenly.
Behind a number of boxes and next to a life-sized werewolf prop was something tall, shrouded in black.
It was a…man!
No, a woman…
No…but there was a figure standing there and it seemed to be watching them in the surreal light.
It felt like it was watching them!
“That’s it,” Quinn said softly, and they both moved forward.
It was the zombie-nun. It had indeed been moved to the attic.
It was clad in the black traditional robes of a nun and it was certainly one of the creepiest fabricated creations Danni had ever seen. The body beneath the robes was skeletal—but bits and pieces of torn and ravished flesh seemed to remain upon the bones. The mouth was open, as if in a horrific scream. The eyes—sockets in the skull—still seemed to have the ability to stare out—to watch, to see, to follow a person as they moved around the thing.
“Pretty bad, huh?” Quinn asked.
“Would have scared the hell out of me,” Danni agreed.
As they spoke, one of the hands suddenly jerked up. Danni screamed—startled--and backed away.
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” Quinn said. “It’s a robot, really, run by batteries, I believe. Remember, an animatronic—set to move for filming.”
“So maybe we can find the battery case and turn the damned thing off!” Danni said.
Quinn smiled and told her, “Let’s get it up and out of here. I can inspect it better downstairs.”
“Okay. Be careful coming down,” Danni warned. She knew what had frightened Kathy Kennedy so badly; the thing seemed to reek of evil. She reminded herself that it was meant to look horrible and evil—it had come from a horror movie.
But, she knew, too, that it was true—things could be imbued with evil by those who had been evil, who had practiced alchemy or black magic or…. at the very least, had the power of a hatred and a thirst for power or revenge that was so strong, that the evil surrounding that person’s life could remain, could be instilled in things….
“It’s just an animatronic, Danni,” Quinn said softly.
“Yes.”
He made it down the attic stairs and then to the parlor with the thing—heavy enough, Danni was sure—beneath his arms. In the parlor, Danni jumped a mile when the cat meowed again—a meow that seemed like the most horrible and haunted scream ever.
Waldorf disappeared beneath the sofa.
“Waldorf, it’s okay, we’re here,” Danni said.
The cat would have none of it.
Quinn turned on every light, pulled off the black cassock, and let the thing—the bone structure—stand in the bright light of every bulb in the parlor.
There was a box at the back, set into the spine. Quinn unsealed the rubbery substance used to create the thing and pulled out the box, dumping the batteries from it.
“There, Waldorf—it can’t hurt you anymore,” Quinn said.
Danni studied the thing. The workmanship was excellent. She shook her head. “I can see where this might have scared anyone,” she said. “So, what do we do? Pack it up, take it back to New Orleans—try to sell it for Colby? Or burn it?”
Quinn stood there studying it as well. His phone rang and he answered it briefly with just his name. As he listened, Danni picked up one of the hands. It looked as if blood really dripped from the skeletal fingers with their sharply pointed nails.
Quinn suddenly strode over to the entertainment center and found the remote—still on the phone, frowning fiercely. The television popped to life—on a news channel.
Danni stood in front of the screen. A reporter was standing in front of cemetery gates; police were scrambling around and a crowd had gathered. In the background, she could see that there were a number of television news vans around and that there were a number of reporters covering whatever had happened there in the night.