Best Little Witch-House in Arkham. Mark McLaughlin

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СКАЧАТЬ walls had numerous portraits hung on them. Most of the people in the pictures were fat and toadlike, like Tyler. Others were large-eyed and gangly, with loose folds of skin around their throats.

      They came to a room with a black, heavily lacquered door. Marsh tapped on the shiny surface with a knuckle. “Your visitor is here.”

      The door opened halfway and Kiwi looked out into the hall. “Thank you, Tyler. Please come in, Melina. Come and meet Mrs. Hamogeorgakis.”

      The man handed the make-up case to Kiwi and shuffled off down the hall.

      Melina entered the room. It was very large, with beautiful old furniture, including several bookcases filled with leather-bound volumes. The wallpaper pattern seemed to be either leafy vines or tendrils of seaweed, or maybe both. The carpet’s design depicted a scattering of seashells and rounded, multi-colored stones.

      Along the far wall was a four-poster bed with sky-blue silk curtains. Lounging in the middle of the bed on a pile of navy blue pillows was a willowy dark-haired woman in a white dressing gown edged with pink lace.

      She seemed normal enough—from a distance. But as Melina walked closer, she gradually realized there was something very wrong with the woman.

      Mrs. Hamogeorgakis had fine bone structure and large blue eyes. But the eyes had an intense, vicious look to them, like those of a wild animal.

      The woman’s pale skin had a slight olive cast—and was coated with a shining layer of tiny, iridescent scales.

      Her dark hair was full and lustrous—far too lustrous. It glistened with a slick sheen, as though covered with a layer of oil.

      Mrs. Hamogeorgakis smiled, revealing a mouthful of yellow, needle-thin teeth. “So this is the fancy expert,” she said in a wet rumble of a voice. “The miracle worker. Do you think you will be able to make a goddess of me?”

      Melina turned toward Kiwi, who was standing by the door, pointing a knife at her.

      “We shall begin very soon,” Kiwi said.

      Melina stared again at the woman on the bed. Woman? She looked more like some kind of deep-sea creature.

      “Do I frighten you, little girl?” Mrs. Hamogeorgakis said. “So sorry. I didn’t always look like this. I used to be very pretty, like you. Men used to fight over me. But there are families…” She paused to clear her throat, spitting a thick fluid into a handkerchief. “Families that come from the sea. Some are here in Innsmouth. Some are in Crete. And in other places, many other places. We are all related. We are the children of Dagon, the Sea Father.”

      Melina realized that these two old freaks were as scary as Hell, and whatever they were planning, they probably had no intention of letting her leave. She had to get to her cell phone, which was in the make-up case next to Kiwi.

      “I’ll need a few things,” Melina said, moving toward the case. She also kept a pepper sprayer in it, for when she had to walk to her car after dark.

      Kiwi and Mrs. Hamogeorgakis both laughed as she picked up the case and took it to the side of the bed.

      “Foolish girl,” Mrs. Hamogeorgakis said. “Your silly powders and notions would only make a ridiculous clown of me.”

      “Just wait. I’ve got some great new products here…” Melina bent to open her case, even as Kiwi walked toward her with the knife.

      “Don’t be foolish,” Mrs. Hamogeorgakis said. “We know what we are doing. We have done this many times before. So many times. So many stupid girls.”

      Melina lifted the case and scattered its contents on the bed and the floor. She found the cell phone and jammed it in a pants pocket. She then spotted the pepper sprayer, snatched it up and fired a stream toward Kiwi’s eyes.

      “You bitch!” the old woman screamed, dropping the knife. Melina turned and fired the sprayer at Mrs. Hamogeorgakis—and missed. The creature slid off the bed and reached for the blade.

      “No you don’t!” Melina screamed, kicking Mrs. Hamogeorgakis out of her way. The old woman uttered a gurgling squeal, and then turned her head quickly to rake her teeth across the girl’s ankle. Melina grabbed the knife with her free hand and ran out of the room.

      Tyler Marsh was running down the hall toward her.

      She ran to meet him and plunged the knife into his gut. What else could she do? It was her only choice

      “Very good!” Mrs. Hamogeorgakis cried from the doorway. “Such spirit!” Kiwi appeared behind the creature, rubbing furiously at her streaming eyes.

      The man clutched at the knife handle and fell to the floor screaming.

      Melina ran down the hall, looking frantically for the stairs. Finally she saw them to her left. She look behind her—Kiwi and Mrs. Hamogeorgakis were less than ten feet away. The hideous fish-woman was holding the bloody knife.

      The girl raised the pepper sprayer and pumped at the cylinder furiously, creating a cloud of the spray between her and the two women. They stopped immediately.

      “So clever,” Mrs. Hamogeorgakis said. A hard smile played on her lips. “What a pity you must die.”

      Melina rushed down the stairs, pulling the phone from her pocket. She frantically punched in Kyle’s number.

      “Call the police!” she screamed into the phone. “The fire department, anybody! Then come help me!”

      “Sure! Okay, but wha—”

      She cut off the call—there just wasn’t enough time to explain. She was about to call 911 when she saw the two old women rushing down the stairs, frantically fanning the spray fumes away with their hands.

      She tried to remember which way to turn to get to the front door…Finally, hoping for the best, she chose left. At one point she bumped into a small table and fell down, overturning the table and smashing the vase on top. She scrambled back to her feet and continued down the hall. But soon she saw some paintings she hadn’t seen earlier. She must have turned the wrong way. She decided to keep running until she found either an exit or a place to hide and call the police.

      After she had turned down a new hall, she came across large double doors with golden handles. Double doors? She opened one and rushed through into a huge hallway, over twenty feet wide with pine-board walls and a cheap linoleum floor. The lighting fixtures were simply yellow bulbs. Maybe deliveries came through this way—which meant it led out of the building. Yes, she decided, that had to be it. She ran on until she’d turned a corner. She couldn’t hear them behind her—now she could call the police. She jammed a hand into one pocket, then another.

      The phone was gone.

      Had she even put it back in a pocket after she’d called Kyle? She must have dropped it when she ran into that table. She couldn’t go back. The only thing to do was to follow the hallway.

      The floor seemed to slope slightly downward. She rounded a few more corners, and as time passed, it occurred to her that she had traveled a considerable distance. Too great a distance to still be in the house. Was she in some kind of tunnel?

      Eventually she came to the top of a spiral staircase made СКАЧАТЬ