The Captive Page 0,61

Laurel's, Faye's. The vacant Victorian. The Hendersons', Adam's, Suzan's, Sean's...

"It's at your house, Cassie," Deborah shouted.

Yes. Cassie knew it would be. Something inside her had known even before they started out.

A maple tree showed up like a black skeleton against the red light that engulfed the house at Number Twelve. But the red wasn't fire. It was some witch-light, a crimson aura of evil.

Cassie remembered how much she had hated this house when she'd first seen it. She'd hated it for being huge and ugly, with its peeling gray clapboards and its sagging eaves and unwashed windows. But now she cared about it. It was her family's ancient home; it belonged to her. And more important than anything, her mother and grandmother were inside.

Chapter Fifteen

Cassie jumped off the motorcycle and ran up the driveway. But as soon as she entered the red light, she slowed. Something about the light made it hard to move through it, hard even to breathe. It was as if the air here had thickened.

In slow motion, Cassie fought her way to the door. It was open. Inside, the ordinary lights, the lamps in the hallway, looked feeble and silly against the red glow that pervaded everything, like flashlights in the daytime.

Then Cassie saw something that made her breath catch.

Footprints.

Something had tracked mud across her grandmother's pine-board floor. Only it wasn't mud. It was black as tar and it steamed slightly, like some primordial muck from hell. The prints went up the stairs and then back down again.

Cassie was afraid to go any farther.

"What is this?" Nick shouted, coming in behind her. His shout didn't go very far in the thickened air; it sounded muffled and dragging. Cassie turned toward him, and it was like turning in a dream, where every motion is reduced to a crawl.

"Come on," Nick said, pulling at her. Cassie looked behind her and saw Deborah and Melanie and Laurel in the doorway, also moving in slow motion.

Cassie let Nick guide her and they fought their way up the stairs. The red glow was dimmer up here; it was hard to see any prints. But Cassie followed them more by intuition than by sight down the hall to the door of her mother's room, and she pointed to it. She was too frightened to go in.

Nick's hand grasped the doorknob, turned it. The door slowly flew open. Cassie stared at her mother's empty bed.

"No!" she screamed, and the red light seemed to catch the word and draw it out endlessly. She forgot to be frightened then and ran forward-slowly-into the middle of the room. The bed was rumpled, slept-in, but the covers had been thrown back and there was no sign of her mother.

Cassie looked around the deserted room in anguish. The window was closed. She had a terrible sense of loss, a terrible premonition. Those black and steaming footprints went to the side of her mother's bed. Some thing had come and stood here, beside her mother, and then...

"Come on! Downstairs," Nick was shouting from the doorway. Cassie turned to him-and screamed.

The door was swinging slowly shut again. And in the shadows behind it was a pale and ghostly figure.

Cassie's second scream was cut off as the figure stepped forward, showing a drawn white face and dark hair falling loose over slender shoulders. It was wearing a long, white nightgown. It was her mother.

"Mom," Cassie cried, and she launched herself forward, throwing her arms around her mother's waist. Oh, thank God, thank God, she thought. Now everything would be all right. Her mother was safe, her mother would take care of things. "Oh, Mom, I was so scared," she gasped.

But something was wrong. Her mother wasn't hugging her back. There was no response at all from the upright but lifeless body in the nightgown. Cassie's mother just stood there, and when Cassie pulled back, she saw her mother was staring emptily.

"Mom? Mom?" she said. She shook the slender white figure. "Mom.' What's the matter?"

Her mother's beautiful eyes were blank, like a doll's eyes. Unseeing. The black circles underneath seemed to swallow them up. Her mother's arms stayed limp at her sides.

"Mom," Cassie said again, almost crying now.

Nick had pushed the door open again. "We have to get her out of here," he told Cassie.

Yes, Cassie thought. She tried to convince herself that it was the light, that maybe outside of the red glow her mother would be okay. They each took one of the limp arms and led the unresisting