Treasure Box Page 0,115

The floorboards under Roz's body buckled as if some immense gopher were burrowing there. The rippling moved like a wave under the pedestal; the box fell and crumpled. The wave passed under Quentin and threw him off his feet. Now the walls were rippling, as paintings leapt out and fell to the floor, as plaster split away in chunks and slid down the wall.

"Get out," said Mrs. Tyler. "Both of you."

Quentin got up, tried to take Rowena's hand to help her. She shoved him away. "I just killed my baby," she whispered. "I'm not leaving her."

With the room bucking like a horse, Quentin staggered for the door and hurled himself into the entry hall.

If anything, it was worse out here. The foot of the stairway had come loose and was now pawing at the ground like a cat's foot, daring him to try to get past without being caught and crushed. There was no way he could reach the front door.

He ran for the library. Books were flying from the walls, smacking him like a flock of suicidal birds. There was no passage there. The dining room. The stairway snatched at him as he passed, but he made it inside. But as he stood there, panting, the dustcover on the table came to life and fluttered toward him as if to engulf him in a net of fine embroidery. It blocked all doors leading from the room. So Quentin ran for the tall window and threw himself through it like a high jumper, back first, shattering glass around him into shards like icicles.

He landed in leafless bushes, prickly and thorny, but it was kinder than the glass would have been. Scratched and bleeding, he pulled himself free and ran around to the front of the house. Ray Duncan was standing in the open door of the Lincoln, staring horrified at the house, which was trembling and, here and there, bulging with the passage of the invisible beast.

"What's happening? What's happening?" he demanded when he saw Quentin.

"Get in the car and drive!" cried Quentin.

"Rowena's in there! Roz! My little girl!"

"Roz is dead and Rowena won't come out. Come on, man! Save yourself!"

"Roz!" cried Duncan. "Rowena!" He ran up the stairs to the porch.

The moment he reached the front door, the front wall suddenly burst as the stamping foot of the stairway lunged out, knocking him down, then smashing him, again, again, his lifeless body flopping under the stairs like a mouse under a cat's paw.

Quentin left the Lincoln and ran to his own car, got in, started it, backed it all the way out to the highway. Then he stopped. "Lizzy," he said. Roz had said they brought Lizzy's prison with them.

He tried to drive back into the property, but the wheels spun and his car slid sideways. He stopped, got out of the car and ran, slipping and sliding on ice and snow, toward the house. As he ran, he plunged his right hand - still bloody from the veins that had been attached to it - into his jacket pocket and pulled out his cellular phone. He punched in 911, pushed send. "Tell the Mixinack police to get down to the old Laurent house! I don't know the address, they'll know where it is! The Laurent house. Send fire trucks. Ambulances! No, I can't stay on the line."

He jammed the phone back into his pocket as he reached the Lincoln. The house was shuddering on its foundations. The top story collapsed into the third floor. Glass burst and flew out in all directions. He reached in through the driver's door and fumbled to remove the key from the ignition. Got it. He ran back to the trunk and opened it. Then he flung the key toward the porch, where Ray Duncan might have dropped it as he ran for the house.

There was only one suitcase in the trunk of the car. He yanked it out, flung it open on the snow, and pawed through it. Only a few articles of clothing, a few kit items. A champagne bottle. Had Roz really been that certain of having a celebration afterward?

He opened every zipper compartment. He found only a couple of boxes, one holding stationery, the other some gold chains and pearls. There was nothing else that could hold a relic of Lizzy's. Roz lied. She didn't have Lizzy's prison with them.

Then he looked again at the champagne bottle. Picked it up. Could some part of Lizzy possibly fit inside?

Suddenly Mrs.