In the last episode of Special Delivery, the Weller mansion was being hit by a landslide, and Frank Weller, while tending to his wife, was touched by the highly toxic, radiation-laden thumb of the statue Il Pollice Nero. Meanwhile, Rocky needs to find Frank's mistress, who is somewhere in the house, and then find a way out...
The wall cracked. It was just a matter of time before the whole mess came tumbling down on our heads, burying all the beautiful things, from statues to furniture to people, in piles of wood, plaster and glass. The rumbling continued. Jesse Weller knew it was time to break character and jumped to her feet, ready to find a way out. Her husband stared up at her with glassy eyes, but remained in a kneeling position on the floor, confused by his wife's sudden recovery. Perhaps he was already feeling the certain death that the statue's now-broken thumb was about to deliver, because he made no motion to remove himself from his penitent stance, even as I crossed by him on my way out the door.
Jesse was behind me and she was running. She was looking for a way out and I was looking for that mistress of Frank's, who struck me as the hysterical type who would sit trembling in the corner when the world was crashing down around her ears.
“Where would he put her?” I shouted back at her. She just laughed. I thought she would.
I heard glass breaking. The rumble grew, I could feel it beneath my feet as I ran. The doors along the hall were closed and I flung them open. Somewhere along the line Jesse passed me, and the last I saw of her was when she disappeared around a corner and to the left. By the time I got there I saw why she had turned: another hallway led to a set of stairs, and at the top there was a door leading out. She had made it that far, but that was as far as she would get. A simple turn of the doorknob revealed what was behind, the avalanche of mud and rocks that was shaking the building. It poured out at her. I didn't stop to see where she would land, because I was right in the line of fire. In the time it took to get three steps forward, the slide was practically on me, lapping at my ankles, but I managed to get out of the way before I became part of the wall. There was no turning back.
The only one left in the house yet unaccounted for made herself known. I could hear her screaming. She was hoarse from making noise and I wondered why all of a sudden she could be heard over the rumble. But I knew that already: the landslide, seemingly through with its anger, had stopped its push down the hill.
I located the girl in what had to have been the Wellers' master bedroom, a large room with most of its furniture upset by the shaking of the house. She sat in a chair on the far side, gripping the life out of the arm-rests, dressed only in her slip. My presence didn't keep her from screaming. She didn't even look at me. Her eyes were fixed on the middle of the room, where a two-foot crack had opened up in the floor, extending along the wall to the ceiling.
She took a breath and realized the noise had stopped. I said: “We've got to go.”
Finally she saw me and she squealed. “W-where's Frank?”
No sense explaining. I carefully crossed over the chasm in the floor and landed on her side. The floor was a bit shaky and I could see why she was skittish. What I had to do, I had to do quickly. I took her hand and pulled her on to my back. She squealed again and told me to put her down, but there was no chance of that. I skipped across with her and everything held for a moment. It wasn't until I got to the door that the crack opened in full, losing its attachment to the house proper. That part of the room fell a few feet, landing at an angle. The thump against the ground shook the house another time and I nearly lost control of my passenger.
When we made it into the hall, I let her off and finally saw the damage. The slide had pushed through the wall to the outside, leaving a trail of mud and rocks three feet tall in its wake. A single hand emerged from this mess, a left hand that bore the biggest ring I had ever seen.
Will Rocky be able to get out of the house? Find out next week in The Adventures of Rocky Stone!
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