“Yes. Her name was Katya Lupi and — ”
“I know who she was,” Eppstadt replied. “I’ve seen some of her movies. Trash. Kitsch trash.”
It was impossible, of course, that the woman who’d built this Spanish mausoleum was the same individual who’d escorted Todd Pickett into the surf. That woman might have been her grandchild, Eppstadt supposed, at a stretch; a great-grandchild more likely.
He was about to correct Brahms on his generational details when a chorus of yelping coyotes erupted across the Canyon. Eppstadt knew what coyotes sounded like, of course. He had plenty of friends who lived in the Hills, and considered the animals harmless scavengers, digging through their trash and occasionally dining on a pet cat. But there was something about the noise they were making now, as the sun came up, that made his stomach twitch and his skin crawl. It was like a soundtrack of one of the horror movies he’d never green-lit.
And then, just as suddenly as the chorus of coyotes had erupted, it ceased. There were three seconds of total silence.
Then everything began to shake. The walls, the chandelier, the ancient floorboards beneath their feet.
“Earthquake!” Sawyer yelled. He grabbed hold of Maxine’s arm. She screeched, and ran for the kitchen door.
“Outside!” she shrieked. “We’re all safer outside!”
She could move fast when she needed to. She dragged Sawyer after her, down to the back door. Jerry tried to follow, but the shaking in the ground had become a roll, and he missed his handhold.
Joe, Mid-Western boy that he was, had never experienced an earthquake before. He just stood on the pitching ground repeating the name of his savior over and over and over again, in perfect sincerity.
It’s going to stop any minute, Eppstadt thought (he’d lived through many of these, big and small), but this one kept going, escalating. The floor was undulating in front of him. If he’d seen it in dailies he would have fired the physical effects guy for creating something that looked so phony. Solid matter like wood and nails simply didn’t move that way. It was ludicrous.
But still it escalated, and Joe’s calls to his savior became shouts:
“Christ! Christ! Christ! Christ!”
“When’s it going to stop?” Jerry gasped.
He’d given up trying to rise. He just lay on the ground while the rattling and the rolling continued unabated.
There was a crash from an adjacent room, as something was thrown over. And then, from further off, a whole succession of further crashes, as shelves came unseated, and their contents were scattered. A short length of plaster molding came down from the ceiling and smashed on the ground a foot from where Eppstadt was standing, its shards spreading in all directions. He looked up, in case there was more to come. A fine rain of plaster-dust was descending, stinging his eyes. Meanwhile, the quake continued to make the house creak and crack on all sides, Eppstadt’s semi-blinded condition only making the event seem all the more apocalyptic. He reached towards Joe, who was hoarse from reciting his one-word prayer, and caught hold of him.
“What’s that noise?” the kid yelled over the din.
It seemed like a particularly witless question in the midst of such a cacophony, but interestingly, Eppstadt grasped exactly what the kid was talking about.
There was one sound, amongst the terrifying orchestration of groans and crashes from all over the house, that was deeper than all the others, and seemed to be coming from directly beneath them. It sounded like two titanic sets of teeth grinding together, grinding so hard they were destroying themselves in the process.
“I don’t know what it is,” admitted Eppstadt. Tears were pouring from his eyes, washing them dear of the plaster-dust.
“Well I want it to fucking stop,” Joe said with nice Mid-Western directness.
He’d no sooner spoken than the noise in the earth started to die away, and moments later the rest of the din and motion followed.
“It’s over … “Jerry sobbed.
He’d spoken too soon. There was one last, short jolt in the ground, which brought a further series of crashes from around the house, and from below what sounded like a door being thrown open so violently it cracked its back against the wall.