He walked up the hill; the place had that empty feel to it-- no one had come to the front door to meet him.
"Dennis?"
"Maureen? I'm not going to shoot you, you can come out; I understand now. It's okay, I'm with you now."
He looked around the Improper; nope, nobody there but Ray's headless corpse. He went to the basement. Dennis had broken through the wall and obviously into the tunnel. But he left the gas can at the tunnel's entrance.
Mark grabbed a flashlight, the gas and the matches; he climbed through the newly created hole and into the tunnel. As he walked through, he recalled how similar the stone construction was to what he saw in his dreams-- plenty of headroom, plenty of torchholders.
During his walk through the tunnel, he stopped once, thinking that maybe there was someone (or something!) following him through the tunnel. He stopped and got real quiet and he listened-- just couldn't tell; he continued on. This subterranean passageway sure contained a lot of shadows.
It took a few minutes to get to the Historical Society's basement; there must have been a brick wall there. Dennis had broken through; there were bricks everywhere. He climbed out of the tunnel and into the Historical Society's basement.
He took an appreciative whiff of the gasoline. Out of the shadows came a baseball bat wielding foaming at the mouth Tommy Binder. Like some sort of crazed assassin, Binder smashed Mark across the back with the bat-- sending Mark and the gas and the flashlight flying.
"You fucking people! I talked to your uncle the other night! Yeah, rabies nothing to be afraid of, it's a new beginning is all-- the disease will sharpen my senses!..... He began speaking in alien, wholly unfamiliar tongues. Binder swung again and missed, thereby exposing his back-- Mark shot him in the back twice.
"I am the guy now! I'm the big guy! You got that?" He fired into Binder's back again. Binder was clumsily trying to scramble back into the darkness, bumping into the tunnel's entrance and slumping to the ground-- blood and foam spilling from his mouth.