“I’m sorry,” Dave said. “I’m sorry about the shooting. I didn’t mean for anyone to get hit.”
“We didn’t know you were here,” Joan said. She holstered her revolver and gave the flashlight to Dave. Bending down, she started to untie the red bandanna knotted around her leg.
Dave lowered his pistol but kept it in his hand. He doubted that these people would try anything. They seemed wary, confused, sad. And he saw something like hope in the eyes of a few.
“We’re trying to find my friends,” Debbie said. “Did you see them? Do you know where…?” Her voice faltered. “Their throats,” she whispered.
Some of the people nodded. Others grunted. Jim or Tim, one of the Siamese twins, touched a finger to the scar on his throat and mouthed a breathy, voiceless noise. “Haaaspaaa.”
“Jasper?” Dave asked. “Jasper Dunn?”
Nods, more grunts.
“He cut your vocal cords?” Joan blurted.
“Hyesss, hyesss, haaaspaaa.”
“Jesus,” Debbie muttered.
“He was keeping you prisoners here?” Dave asked.
The two-headed woman pointed at a door-size opening someone had chopped into the corridor wall.
“We’re gonna get you out of here,” Joan said. Dropping to her knees, she wrapped the bandanna around Wilma’s leg wound and knotted it tight.
“What about Jeremy?” Debbie asked, her voice high and pleading. “We have to find him!”
“We will, don’t worry.” Joan looked at the others. “Two kids,” she said. “A boy and a girl. Did you see them? Do you know where they are?”
The crowd parted, turned. A few hands pointed down the hallway.
Dave saw a door on the right, another at the far end.
But between here and the hallway’s end was a square of darkness where the floor should have been.
A trapdoor?
Debbie bolted. She leapt the body of Donna the Dog Woman and dashed through the break in the group.
“No!” Joan shouted.
Dave rushed after her.
Debbie was nearly clear of Jasper’s freaks when a hand darted out and grabbed her ankle. She yelped, crashed to the floor, and skidded.
Dave pounced and gripped the back of her neck, holding her down as she struggled to rise.
He looked back. A bald man lifted his head and made a grim smile. He had no legs. But he had two muscular arms, and the hand of one was wrapped tightly around Debbie’s ankle. Andy the Amazing Torso Man.
“Thanks,” Dave said.
He winked.
Joan patted his shoulder, stepped over him, and crouched on the other side of Debbie. “Dumb kid,” she muttered. “Just stick with us and don’t—”
Debbie gasped and flinched rigid.
Squeals and grunts erupted behind them.
Dave snapped his head around. Jasper’s freaks were going wild, some pointing down the hallway, others rushing toward the ragged hole in the wall, some racing for the ruins of the mirror maze.
“Dave.”
Joan’s voice. A mere whisper.
“Dave?”
He looked at her.
Joan’s wide, stunned eyes met his for an instant, then looked away.
Toward the other end of the hallway.
Dave followed their lead.
And saw black arachnoid legs waving in the candlelight. They hooked over the edge of the floor. Claws clicking and scraping on the wood, a huge spider clambered up from the darkness below the trapdoor.
On its back rode Jasper Dunn, top hat perched rakishly atop his head, a revolver in each hand.
Can’t be.
Dave felt as if he’d been clubbed in the belly.
He gaped at the spectacle—the monstrous spider scurrying toward him, Jasper mounted up there like a crazed cowpoke brandishing six-shooters.
Can’t be happening.
Dave rose on numb, shaky legs, pulling Debbie up with him by the back of her neck. “Go,” he said. His voice sounded far away. “Run.”
She stood beside him, frozen.
Joan rose to her feet, going for her .38 in slow motion as Dave raised his Beretta and Jasper brought down both barrels in their direction. Gunfire roared through the hallway. Bullets snapped past Dave’s face. The hat sailed off Jasper’s head. Debbie, hit, flew backward. An eye of the beast exploded in a red mist. A slug smashed through Jasper’s right wrist, and his revolver tumbled away. At the same moment, one caught him in the face. It snapped his head sideways and tore off half his chin. But he stayed on the spider, blasting at them with his remaining gun.
The beast was less than six feet away. It would be on them in seconds.
Dave concentrated his firepower on it. A bullet slashed the side of his arm, but he stood steady, squeezing the trigger. One of the spider’s front legs broke. As his bullets pounded holes in its squat, bristly head, he saw Joan rush forward.