Shadowfires

the way with the barrel of
the shotgun and went through with his customary caution.
    Guarding the rear, Rachael remained in the living room, where she
could see the open front door, the two closed doors, the kitchen
arch, but where she also had a view of the room into which Benny had
gone. It was a bedroom, wrecked in the same way that the bedroom in
the Villa Park mansion and the kitchen in the Palm Springs house had
been wrecked, proof that Eric had been here and that he had been
seized by another demented rage.
    In the bedroom, Benny gingerly rolled aside one of the large
mirrored doors on a closet, looked warily inside, apparently found
nothing of interest. He moved across the bedroom to the adjoining
bath, where he passed out of Rachael's sight.
    She glanced nervously at the front door, at the porch beyond, at
the kitchen archway, at each of the other two closed doors.
    Outside, the gusty breeze moaned softly under the overhanging roof
and made a low, eager whining noise. The rustle of wind-stirred trees
carried through the open front door.
    Inside the cabin, the deep silence grew even deeper. Curiously
enough, that stillness had the same effect on Rachael as a crescendo
in a symphony: while it built, she became tenser, more convinced that
events were hurtling toward an explosive climax.
    Eric, damn it, where are you? Where are you, Eric?
    Benny seemed to have been gone an ominously long time. She was on
the verge of calling to him in panic, but finally he reappeared,
unharmed, shaking his head to indicate that he had found no sign of
Eric and nothing else of interest.
    They discovered that the two closed doors opened onto two more
bedrooms that shared a second bath between them, although Eric had
furnished neither chamber with beds. Benny explored both rooms,
closets, and the connecting bath, while Rachael stood in the living
room by one doorway and then by the other, watching. She could see
that the first room was a study with several bookshelves laden with
thick volumes, a desk, and a computer; the second was empty,
unused.
    When it became clear that Benny was not going to find Eric in that
part of the cabin, either, Rachael bent down, plucked up a few sheets
of paper-Xerox copies, she noted-from the floor, and quickly scanned
them. By the time Benny returned, she knew what she had found, and
her heart was racing.
“It's the Wildcard file,” she said sotto voce. “He must've kept
another copy here.”
    She started to gather up more of the scattered pages, but Benny
stopped her. “We've got to find Eric first,” he whispered.
    Nodding agreement, she reluctantly dropped the papers.
    Benny went to the front door, eased open the creaky screen door
with the least amount of noise he could manage, and satisfied himself
that the plank-floored porch was deserted. Then Rachael followed him
into the kitchen again.
    She slipped the tilted chair out from under the knob of the
basement door, pulled the door open, and backed quickly out of the
way as Benny covered it with the shotgun.
    Eric did not come roaring out of the darkness.
    With tiny beads of sweat shimmering on his forehead, Benny went to
the threshold, found the switch on the wall of the stairwell, and
flicked on the lights below.
    Rachael was also sweating. As was surely the case with Benny, her
perspiration was not occasioned by the warm summer air.
    It was still not advisable for Rachael to accompany Benny into the
windowless chamber below. Eric might be outside, watching the house,
and he might slip inside at the opportune moment; then, as they
returned to the kitchen, they might be ambushed from above when they
were in the middle of the stairs and most vulnerable. So she remained
at the threshold, where she could look down the cellar steps and also
have a clear view of the entire kitchen, including the archway to the
living room and the open door to the rear porch.
    Benny descended the plank stairs more quietly than seemed humanly
possible, although some noise was unavoidable: a few creaks, a couple
of scraping noises. At the bottom, he hesitated, then turned left,
out of sight. For a moment Rachael saw his shadow on the wall down
there, made large and twisted into an odd shape by the angle of the
light, but as he moved farther into the cellar, the shadow dwindled
and finally went with him.
    She glanced at the archway. She could see a portion of the living
room, which remained deserted and still.
    In the