the base of the statue. She had not reacted to either of the hammer
blows. He was disappointed but not yet desparing.
Before lifting her into place, he quickly collected everything he would
need. A couple of two-by-fours to serve as braces until the acquisition
was firmly fixed in place. Two nails. Plus one longer and more
wickedly pointed number that could fairly be called a spike. The
hammer, of course.
Hurry. Smaller nails, barely more than tacks, a score of which could be
placed just-so in her brow to represent the crown of thorns. The switch
blade, with which to recreate the spear wound attributed to the taunting
Centurion. Anything else? Think. Quickly now. He had no vinegar or
sponge to soak it in, therefore could not offer that traditional drink
to the dying lips, but he didn’t think the absence of that detail would
in any way detract from the composition.
He was ready.
Hatch and Lindsey were deep in the gondola tunnel, proceding as fast as
they dared, but slowed by the need to shine flashlights into the deepest
reaches of each niche and room-size display area that opened off the
flanking walls. The moving beams caused black shadows to fly and dance
off concrete stalactites and stalagmites and other manmade rock
formations, but all of those dangerous spaces were empty.
Two solid thuds, like hammer blows, echoed to them from farther in the
funhouse, one immediately after the other. Then silence.
“He’s ahead of us somewhere,” Lindsey whispered, “not real close. We
can move faster.”
Hatch agreed.
They proceeded along the tunnel without scanning all the deep recesses,
which once had held clockwork monsters. Along the way, the bond between
Hatch and Jeremy Nyebern was established again. He sensed the madman’s
excitement, an obscene and palpitating need. He received, as well,
disconnected images: nails, a spike, a hammer, two lengths of two
by-four, a scattering of tacks, the slender steel blade of a knife
popping out of its spring-loaded ban……
His anger mixing with his fear, determined not to let the disorienting
visions impede his advance, he reached the end of the horizontal tunnel
and stumbled a few steps down the incline before he realized that the
angle of the floor had changed radically under his feet.
The first of the odors hit him. Drifting upward on a natural draft.
He gagged, heard Lindsey do the same, then tightened his throat and
swallowed hard.
He knew what lay below. At least some of it. Glimpses of the
collection had been among the visions that had pounded him when he had
been in the car on the highway. If he didn’t get an iron grip on
himself–and stifle his repulsion now, he would never make it all the
way into the depths of this hellhole, and he had to go there in order to
save Regina.
Apparently Lindsey understood, for she found the will to repress her
retching, and she followed him down the steep slope.
The first thing to attract Vassago’s attention was the glow of light
high up toward one end of the cavern, far back in the tunnel that led to
the spillway. The rapid rate at which the light grew brighter convinced
him that he would not have time to add the girl to his collection before
the intruders were upon him.
He knew who they were. He had seen them in visions as they, evidently,
had seen him. Lindsey and her husband had followed him all the way from
Laguna Niguel. He was just beginning to recognize that more forces were
at work in this affair than had appeared to be the case at first.
He considered letting them descend the spillway into Hell, slipping
behind them, killing the man, disabling the woman, and then proceeding
with a dual crucifxion. But there was something about the husband that
unsettled him. He couldn’t put his finger on it.
But he realized now that, in spite of his bravado, he had been avoiding
a confrontation with the husband. In their house earlier in the night,
when the element of surprise had still been his, he should have circled
behind the husband and disposed of him first, before going after either