"IT'S RAINING HARDER," RAVEN SAID AS NEW RETURNED FROM his room in the Briartop cabin. He'd put on a pair of jeans and wore a patched brown corduroy jacket over his flannel shirt. "The roads are going to be flooded."

"Maybe," he said distractedly. He glanced at his mother, who sat silently in a chair, with the picture of Bobby in her lap. Rain dripped from a dozen leaks in the ceiling, tinkling and plopping into a variety of bowls, cups, and metal pots. Raven and New had reached the cabin when the storm broke, its thunder shaking the flimsy walls.

"You're not goin' down there." Myra didn't look at her son; her Fingers ran repeatedly over Bobby's picture. "You're just a boy. You don't know your own mind."

"I'm the man of the house." New tugged at the sleeves of his jacket. "It's time I acted like it."

"How? By gettin' yourself killed? Or worse?" Her watery, unfocused gaze found Raven, who stood across the room, peering out the window at the storm. Raven's black hair was soaked, and matted into tight curls. "Miz Dunstan," Myra said, with heartfelt pleading in her voice, "don't let my boy go down there alone. Please . . . I'm beggin' you."

"We're going together," Raven said, "as soon as the storm lets up."

"No." New zipped his jacket up. "We're not goin' together." He looked defiantly at Raven. "I'm goin' by myself, Miz Dunstan. You're stayin' right here. And I'm not waitin' for the storm to play out, either."

"I meant what I said at the office. God knows, I wish there was another way, but there isn't. I'm going with you."

"The Lodge wants me, not you. I can't stand here and say I can protect you, 'cause it'd be a lie."

"I can take care of myself," Raven said firmly. "I have, for a long time."

New stared at her, probing for a weak spot. She was a stubborn woman, and he sensed that she wasn't easily moved, once she'd made up her mind. His ma was water, but Raven Dunstan was mountain rock.

Thunder cracked and boomed. The windows rattled in their frames.

- New -

The summons was stronger now, pulling him urgently toward Usherland and the Lodge.

- come home -

It faded in and out, drifted away in a silken hiss that became the noise of rain on the roof.

"Don't go." Myra's voice cracked. "Oh Lord, don't go, don't go, don't go . . ."

"I have to find out what happened to Nathan," he told her. "I won't sit on this mountain for another harvest season while the Pumpkin Man takes his pick. And I'm gonna face whatever it is in the Lodge, Ma."

Raven touched New's shoulder, and as he turned his attention to her, intending to command her to stay in the cabin until the storm had passed, he saw the fierce strength in her eyes, the need to know for herself what lay inside the Lodge's walls. He remembered the poster of the children's faces. Maybe she did deserve to find the answer she sought, but he was still afraid for her. How could he protect her against something as strong as the power that called him from Usherland? He almost delivered the command - almost - but then he said, "I'm ready to go now. Are you?"

"I'm ready."

"Lord God," Myra breathed, and caught back a sob.

New retrieved the stick from where he'd propped it near the door. "Ma?" he said, and when she looked up at him from the picture, tears spilled down her face. "I'm gonna come back," he vowed. "But this is somethin' I nave to do. Can you understand that?"

"Your pa wouldn't have - "

"I'm not him. I'm nobody but me. I love you, Ma, but I've got to go down to that house."

She gazed at him for a long moment, and then she whispered, "God help you, then. The both of you."

New bent over her and kissed her cheek. Her tears dropped softly to his father's picture.

"I love you," she said, as New and Raven started to leave -  and the sound of those words gave New a resolve he'd never known before.

The rain thrashed down as New guided the pickup truck away from the cabin. Only the windshield wiper on his side worked, but it kept the glass clear enough to see through. The two plastic bull's-eye lanterns that Raven had bought at the hardware store sat between them, and Raven wore her camera case around her neck.

"The tape," Raven said. "What did you use it for?"

"My snare," he replied, and offered no more.

The summons was in his mind, throbbing through his bones, eagerly calling to him from Usherland. The first narrow road that New followed was blocked by a fallen tree. He backed up and found another. It, too, was obstructed by deep craters of water and thorns. The third was too steep for the truck to negotiate. As New drove the truck down a fourth trail that twisted precariously through the woods, the tires slipped on loose rocks. The trail narrowed, the fenders barely scraping between tree trunks. Raven rolled down her window to help guide him, the rain flailing into her face.

"We can't make it!" Raven told him. "We'll have to turn back!"

He didn't answer. The beckoning voice of the Lodge was stronger, almost joyful with triumph, an eerie merging of the wind, rain, and thunder. Inching along the trail, the truck steadily penetrated deeper into Usherland.

And abruptly, as the truck rounded a sharp curve, the summons stopped.

New put his foot on the brake. The truck slid forward ten feet before the wheels locked.

Directly in front of them, the trail ended at what appeared to be a dense thicket of dark green vegetation. The truck's headlights couldn't penetrate it. On both sides of the trail, black thorns grew in vicious whorls, like barbed wire.

"There's no way to get through there," Raven said. "You'd need a damned tank!"

But New was staring into the underbrush ahead. This trail had been used recently, and used often; the ruts were too deep, too fresh. He guided the truck forward, and saw something metal glint in the midst of the thicket. He let the truck slide down to where the trail ended before he braked again, and at this distance it was clear what lay just ahead.

It was some kind of square structure, covered over with green netting that effectively served as forest camouflage. A large hole had been cut through the netting at ground level, the rest of it securely staked down.

Raven's first thought was that it might be a squatter's cabin -  but what squatter would live on Usherland? The camouflage netting disturbed her. Whatever the structure was, it was meant to be hidden.

"Let's take a look," New said, and picked up one of the lanterns. He grasped the stick and got out of the truck. Raven followed him through the driving rain, carrying the second lantern.

As New ducked through the hole, he switched on his light. It was a green-painted clapboard structure, larger inside than it had first appeared. Their lanterns reflected off corroded metal.

"A garage," Raven said softly. "What's a garage doing out here?"

It held three vehicles: a battered old tan Ford, a dark green pickup truck, and a black Rambler pitted with rust holes. None of them had license plates, but shoved back in a cobwebby corner was a cardboard box that gave up a few old North Carolina plates to Raven's light. Most of their numerals were obscured beneath dried mud.

New shone his light into the Ford. A black canvas bag lay in the rear floorboard.

It was large enough, he thought grimly, to hold a child's body.

On the front seat of the pickup truck was a scatter of peppermint candies, still in their wrappers.

Raven looked into the black Rambler. On the floorboard was a map, and she opened the door to examine it. As she picked it up, a large gray rat squeaked and scurried from beneath it, under the protection of the seat.

"Jesus," she said quietly, but she opened the map and saw that it depicted the immediate area around Usherland. There were red checkmarks - dozens of them - near the thin lines of backcountry roads. Raven's stomach had begun to clench, and she heard New say in a taut voice, "Over here."

He was standing at the rear of the garage, pointing his light downward. When Raven reached him, she felt cold air on her face. A thick, damp smell wafted up. She aimed her own lantern toward the ground.

The floor was made of hardpacked dirt. But their lights disappeared down a narrow set of stone steps cut into the earth.

New took a deep breath and descended them, probing his way with the stick. There were eight steps, and at the bottom a tunnel formed of rough, damp stones stretched on beyond the range of New's light.

But his lantern picked out an object lying on the tunnel floor perhaps ten feet away. His heart hammering, New bent to grasp it, and his hand closed around the object.

"What is it?" Raven asked as he came out. "What did you find?"

"A tunnel. I think I know where it goes." His voice was hollow, and above the light, New's eyes were rimmed with darkness. "And I know why it's here." He opened his hand to show her what lay in it.

It was a child's toy, Raven saw. A blue yo-yo.

"Nathan's," New said. "The Pumpkin Man took Nathan along that tunnel. I think . . . this was left here for me to find."

"Then the tunnel - "

"Leads to the Lodge. Maybe it goes right under the lake." He slipped Nathan's toy into his jeans pocket. "Are you still sure you want to go with me?"

"We need a weapon," she said. "We should've brought a gun, or - "

"That wouldn't do any good. Whatever it is would be expectin' a gun. But maybe I know somethin' it might not expect."

"What?"

"I am a weapon," he said. "You can go back, if you like. I'll give you the keys, and you can take the truck."

"No," she replied. "I have to see for myself."

New searched her steady gaze. "All right. Then I'll go through first. Stay close to me."

He didn't have to tell her a second time. They started into the tunnel, and within a moment or two the noise of the storm faded away. Water began leaking from the ceiling, and when Raven caught some of it in her hand and held it to the light, she saw the black stain of peat. They were underneath the lake

As Raven followed the mountain boy, her nerve threatened to snap. Hairline cracks in the ceiling streamed with water. The tunnel had been here for a long time. Who had built it? Hudson Usher, when he first constructed the Lodge? If the Ushers and the Pumpkin Man were somehow connected, why was it that the Pumpkin Man hadn't appeared until 1872? The Ushers had been here since the 1840s. What was the Pumpkin Man, and how had he been able to roam freely for more than a hundred years? What had happened to the missing children? Her answers, she felt, lay before her in the darkness at the other end of this tunnel.

Distant thunder echoed along the tunnel. It must have been a huge crash, she thought, for them to be able to hear it down here.

New stopped. "Listen," he whispered.

Coming from the tunnel beyond was a low bass rumble, the growl of an awakening beast. But it wasn't an animal's noise; it sounded like a combination of off-key notes, the bass vibration of some kind of machine. Raven felt the sound in her bones, and even her teeth ached. New touched the walls of the tunnel. The stones were trembling. They could feel the vibration in the floor. Stressed mortar cracked and popped all around them.

Then, as suddenly as they had begun, the strange notes died away.

An earth tremor? Raven wondered. My God, she thought; if a quake split the tunnel ceiling open, the lake would pour in over their heads. But what had caused that rumbling noise? Raven's teeth were still throbbing.

"Okay?" New asked, his voice echoing okay? . . . okay?

"Yeah," she said shakily. "I'm still with you."

But as she followed New, trying to concentrate solely on the circle of light before her, Raven became increasingly aware of soft scraping noises from the darkness at her back.

She turned and shone her light in the direction from which they'd come.

"What is it?" New asked.

"I don't know." Raven brushed her damp curls back from her forehead. The light showed nothing but tunnel stones and trickles of water.

But from the darkness beyond came a faint chirrrrr that sounded like the warning of a rattlesnake.

And then New realized why the hole had been cut into the camouflage netting. The panther had entered the tunnel behind them, and blocked the way out. "Let's keep goin'," he told her. "I want you to watch behind us. If you see anythin' move, let out a holler."

"Damn straight," she breathed.

They continued. Raven heard quick, furtive scrapings - like the sound of claws on stone - but whatever was following them stayed far enough behind to avoid the light.

New's beam illuminated another set of steps, leading up to an open doorway. They had come to the end of the tunnel. Above them sprawled the massive Lodge, he suspected, and within it the answers to questions that would change him forever. He paused, a chill of indecision and fear sweeping through him.

Satan finds the man, the Mountain King had said.

His ancestor had been a man who worshiped the lord of darkness. Was there a spark of that same kind of evil in him? Had he been beckoned and lured by a force that could fan that spark into a flame again?

He remembered how he'd made his mother act like a mindless puppet on strings. But the worst part, the very worst, was that he'd liked the power. It had first broken free from his rage in the thorn pit, but now he knew that the act of controlling the magic knife, or making his mother do what he wanted just by thinking about it, was child's play. There were other things he could do, other powers that lay deep inside him, steaming and pulsing to be set loose from the furnace of his soul. He wanted to set them free, wanted to explore the limits - if there were any - of the powers he commanded. He felt like a greedy flame that could burn his old life, as a boy trapped by the confines of Briartop Mountain, into ashes.

And suddenly he feared himself - what lived in him, in the darkest basement of his soul - most of all.

Raven let out a quick, hoarse gasp. "Oh . . . my God," she whispered.

New turned.

Greediguts' eyes were golden-green lamps in the dark. Slowly the monster emerged into Raven's light - first its blood-smeared maw, then its black skull with the lightning-streak burn across it - and began to slink toward them. Its muscular body blocked the tunnel, and its leathery, scaled tail rose up and snapped brutally in the air.

P/S: Copyright -->www_novelfreereadonline_Com

***