The Cellar by Richard Laymon Read Free Book Online

drink. This time the coffee tasted better. “Are your nightmares about Beast House?” he asked.
    “Always.”
    “I’m surprised it took a newspaper story to start them, considering what you must’ve gone through at the time.”
    “The story, more or less, reactivated the nightmares. I had them constantly for several months following my…encounter. Doctors suggested psychiatric treatment, but my parents wouldn’t hear of it. Perceptive people that they were, they considered psychiatry to be the pursuit of fools and madmen. We moved away from Malcasa Point, and my nightmares rather quickly lost their intensity. I’ve always considered it a victory of common sense over quackery.” He smiled, apparently delighted by his wit, and indulged himself in another taste of coffee.
    “Unfortunately,” he continued, “we weren’t entirely able to leave the incident behind. Every now and then, an eager journalist would track us down for a story on the miserable tourist attraction. That would always start the nightmares again. Every major magazine, of course, has done the story.”
    “I’ve seen a couple of them.”
    “Did you read them?”
    “No.”
    “Lurid bunk. Reporters! Do you know what a reporteris? ‘A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.’ Ambrose Bierce. The single time I did allow one of those scavengers to interview me, he twisted my words so that I appeared a gibbering idiot. He concluded that the encounter had unhinged me! After that, I changed my name. Not one of those bastards has tracked me down, so far, and I’ve been free of nightmares about the beast until now…now that it’s killed again.”
    “It?”
    “Officially, since the time of the attack on the Lyles, it’s been a he , a knife-wielding maniac, something on the order of Jack the Ripper. Each attack, of course, is a different killer.”
    “And it’s not?”
    “Not at all. It’s a beast. Always the same beast.”
    Jud didn’t try to conceal the expression of doubt he knew was beginning to appear on his face.
    “Let me refill your cup, Judge.”
4.
    “I don’t know what the beast is,” Larry said. “Perhaps nobody knows. I’ve seen it, though. With the exception of old Maggie Kutch, I’m probably the only living person who has.
    “It is not human, Judge. Or if it is human, it’s some kind of unspeakable deformity. And it is very, very old. The first known attack occurred in 1903. Teddy Roosevelt was President then. That’sthe year the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk, for heaven’s sake. The beast killed three people that year.”
    “The original owner of the house?”
    “She survived. That was Lyle Thorn’s widow. Her sister, though, was killed. So were Lilly’s two children. The authorities blamed the atrocity on a mental defective they found on the outskirts of town. He was tried, convicted, and hanged from the house balcony. Even then, apparently, cover-up was the order of the day. They had to know the fellow was innocent.”
    “Why did they have to know that?”
    “The beast has claws,” Larry said. “They’re sharp, like nails. They shred the victim, his clothes, his flesh. They pierce him to hold him down while the beast…violates him.” The cup began to clatter against its saucer. He set it down on the table and folded his hands.
    “Were you…?”
    “My God, no! It never touched me. Not me . But I saw what it did to Tommy there in the bedroom. It was too…overcome…to bother with me. It had to finish with Tommy, first. Well, I put one over on it! The window gave me some nasty cuts, and I broke my arm in the fall, but I got away. I got away, goddamn it! I lived to tell the tale!”
    He managed another drink of coffee. His trembling hand set the cup back down on the table. The drink seemed to help restore his calm. In a quiet voice, he said, “Of course, no one believesthe tale. I’ve learned to keep it to myself. Now I suppose you think I’m mad.” He