He looked at the blizzard-swept night outside.
He shuddered.
IV.
Breathless, Jack and Rebecca and the kids reached the fourth-floor landing in the brownstone apartment house.
Jack looked down the stairs they"d just climbed. So far, nothing was after them.
Of course, something could pop out of one of the walls at any moment. The whole d.a.m.ned world had become a carnival funhouse.
Four apartments opened off the hall. Jack led the others past all four of them without knocking, without ringing any doorbells.
There was no help to be found here. These people could do nothing for them. They were on their own.
At the end of the hall was an unmarked door. Jack hoped to G.o.d it was what he thought it was. He tried the k.n.o.b. From this side, the door was unlocked. He opened it hesitantly, afraid that the goblins might be waiting on the other side. Darkness. Nothing rushed at him. He felt for a light switch, half expecting to put his hand on something hideous. But he didn"t. No goblins. Just the switch. Click Click. And, yes, it was what he hoped: a final flight of steps, considerably steeper and narrower than the eight flights they had already conquered, leading up to a barred door.
"Come on," he said.
Following him without question, Davey and Penny and Rebecca clumped noisily up the stairs, weary but still too driven by fear to slacken their pace.
At the top of the steps, the door was equipped with two deadbolt locks, and it was braced by an iron bar. No burglar was going to get into this place by way of the roof. Jack snapped open both deadbolts and lifted the bar out of its braces, stood it to one side.
The wind tried to hold the door shut. Jack shouldered it open, and then the wind caught it and pulled on it instead of pushing, tore it away from him, flung it outward with such tremendous force that it banged against the outside wall. He stepped across the threshold, onto the flat roof.
Up here, the storm was a living thing. With a lion"s ferocity, it leapt out of the night, across the parapet, roaring and sniffing and snorting. It tugged at Jack"s coat. It stood his hair on end, then plastered it to his head, then stood it on end again. It expelled its frigid breath in his face and slipped cold fingers under the collar of his coat.
He crossed to that edge of the roof which was nearest the next brownstone. The crenelated parapet was waist-high. He leaned against it, looked out and down. As he had expected, the gap between the buildings was only about four feet wide.
Rebecca and the kids joined him, and Jack said, "We"ll cross over."
"How do we bridge it?" Rebecca asked.
"Must be something around that"ll do the job."
He turned and surveyed the roof, which wasn"t entirely cast in darkness; in fact, it possessed a moon-pale luminescence, thanks to the sparkling blanket of snow that covered it. As far as he could see, there were no loose pieces of lumber or anything else that could be used to make a bridge between the two buildings. He ran to the elevator housing and looked on the other side of it, and he looked on the far side of the exit box that contained the door at the head of the stairs, but he found nothing. Perhaps something useful lay underneath the snow, but there was no way he could locate it without first shoveling off the entire roof.
He returned to Rebecca and the kids. Penny and Davey remained hunkered down by the parapet, sheltering against it, keeping out of the biting wind, but Rebecca rose to meet him.
He said, "We"ll have to jump."
"What?"
"Across. We"ll have to jump across."
"We can"t," she said.
"It"s less than four feet."
"But we can"t get a running start."
"Don"t need it. Just a small gap."
"We"ll have to stand on this wall," she said, touching the parapet, "and jump from there."
"Yeah."
"In this wind, at least one of us is sure as h.e.l.l going to lose his balance even before he makes the jump-get hit by a hard gust of wind and just fall right off the wall."
"We"ll make it," Jack said, trying to pump up his own enthusiasm for the venture.
She shook her head. Her hair blew in her face. She pushed it out of her eyes. She said, "Maybe, with luck, both you and I could do it. Maybe. But not the kids."
"Okay. So one of us will jump on the other roof, and one of us will stay here, and between us we"ll hand the kids across, from here to there."
"Pa.s.s them over the gap?"
"Yeah."
"Over a fifty-foot drop?"
"There"s really not much danger," he said, wishing he believed it. "From these two roofs, we could reach across and hold hands."
"Holding hands is one thing. But transferring something as heavy as a child-"
"I"ll make sure you have a good grip on each of them before I let go. And as you haul them in, you can brace yourself against the parapet over there. No sweat."
"Penny"s getting to be a pretty big girl."
"Not that big. We can handle her."
"But-"
"Rebecca, those things things are in this building, right under our feet, looking for us right this very minute." are in this building, right under our feet, looking for us right this very minute."
She nodded. "Who goes first?"
"You."
"Gee, thanks."
He said, "I can help you get up on top of the wall, and I can hold you until just a split second before you jump. That way, there"s hardly any chance you could lose your balance and fall."
"But after I"m over there and after we"ve pa.s.sed the kids across, who"s going to help you you get on top of the wall and keep your balance up there?" get on top of the wall and keep your balance up there?"
"Let me worry about that when the time comes," he said.
Wind like a freight train whistled across the roof.
V.
Snow didn"t cling to the corrugated metal storage shed at the rear of Lavelle"s property. The falling flakes melted when they touched the roof and walls of that small structure. Wisps of steam were actually rising from the leeward slope of the roof; those pale snakes of vapor writhed up until they came within range of the wind"s brisk broom; then they were swept away.
Inside, the shed was stifling hot.
Nothing moved except the shadows. Rising out of the hole in the floor, the irregularly pulsing orange light was slightly brighter than it had been earlier. The flickering of it caused the shadows to shiver, giving an illusion of movement to every inanimate object in the dirt-floored room.
The cold night air wasn"t the only thing that failed to penetrate these metal walls. Even the shrieking and soughing of the storm was inaudible herein. The atmosphere within the shed was unnatural, uncanny, disquieting, as if the room had been lifted out of the ordinary flow of tape and s.p.a.ce, and was now suspended in a void.
The only sound was that which came from deep within the pit. It was a distant hissing-murmuring-whispering-growling, like ten thousand voices in a far-off place, the distance-m.u.f.fled roar of a crowd. An angry crowd.
Suddenly, the sound grew louder. Not a great deal louder. Just a little.
At the same moment, the orange light beamed brighter than ever before. Not a lot brighter. Just a little. It was as if a furnace door, already ajar, had been pushed open another inch.
The interior of the shed grew slightly warmer, too.
The vaguely sulphurous odor became stronger.
And something strange happened to the hole in the floor. All the way around the perimeter, bits of earth broke loose and fell inward, away from the rim, vanishing into the mysterious light at the bottom. Like the increase in the brilliance of that light, this alteration in the rim of the hole wasn"t major; only an incremental change. The diameter was increased by less than one inch. The dirt stopped falling away. The perimeter stabilized. Once more, everything in the shed was perfectly still.
But now the pit was bigger.
VI.
The top of the parapet was ten inches wide. To Rebecca it seemed no wider than a tightrope.
At least it wasn"t icy. The wind scoured the snow off the narrow surface, kept it clean and dry.
With Jack"s help, Rebecca balanced on the wall, in a half crouch. The wind buffeted her, and she was sure that she would have been toppled by it if Jack hadn"t been there.
She tried to ignore the wind and the stinging snow that p.r.i.c.ked her exposed face, ignored the chasm in front of her, and focused both her eyes and her mind on the roof of the next building. She had to jump far enough to clear the parapet over there and land on the roof. If she came down a bit short, on top of that waist-high wall, on that meager strip of stone, she would be unbalanced for a moment, even if she landed flat on both feet. In that instant of supreme vulnerability, the wind would s.n.a.t.c.h at her, and she might fall, either forward onto the roof, or backward into the empty air between the buildings. She didn"t dare let herself think about that that possibility, and she didn"t look down. possibility, and she didn"t look down.
She tensed her muscles, tucked her arms in against her sides, and said, "Now," and Jack let go of her, and she jumped into the night and the wind and the driving snow.
Airborne, she knew at once that she hadn"t put enough power into the jump, knew she was not going to make it to the other roof, knew she would crash into the parapet, knew she would fall backwards, knew that she was going to die.
But what she knew knew would happen would happen didn"t didn"t happen. She cleared the parapet, landed on the roof, and her feet slipped out from under her, and she went down on her backside, hard enough to hurt but not hard enough to break any bones. happen. She cleared the parapet, landed on the roof, and her feet slipped out from under her, and she went down on her backside, hard enough to hurt but not hard enough to break any bones.
As she got to her feet, she saw the dilapidated pigeon coop. Pigeon-keeping was neither a common nor an unusual hobby in this city; in fact, this coop was smaller than some, only six feet long. At a glance she was able to tell that it hadn"t been used for years. It was so weathered and in such disrepair that it would soon cease to be a coop and would become just a pile of junk.
She shouted to Jack, who was watching from the other building: "I think maybe I"ve found our bridge!"
Aware of how fast time was running out, she brushed some of the snow from the roof of the coop and saw that it appeared to be formed by a single six-foot sheet of one-inch plywood. That was even better than she had hoped; now they wouldn"t have to deal with two or three loose planks. The plywood had been painted many times over the years, and the paint had protected it from rot once the coop was abandoned and maintenance discontinued; it seemed st.u.r.dy enough to support the kids and even Jack. It was loose along one entire side, which was a great help to her. Once she brushed the rest of the snow off the coop roof, she gripped it by the loose end, pulled it up and back. Some of the nails popped out, and some snapped off because they were rusted clear through. In a few seconds she had wrenched the plywood free.
She dragged it to the parapet. If she tried to lever it onto the wall and shove it out toward Jack, the strong wind would get under it, treat it like a sail, lift it, tear it out of her hands, and send it kiting off into the storm. She had to wait for a lull. One came fairly soon, and she quickly heaved the plywood up, balanced it on top of the parapet, slid it out toward Jack"s reaching hands. In a moment, as the wind whipped up once more, they had the bridge in place. Now, with the two of them holding it, they would be able to keep it down even if a fierce wind got under it.
Penny made the short journey first, to show Davey how easily it could be done. She wriggled across on her belly, gripping the edges of the board with her hands, pulling herself along. Convinced it could be done, Davey followed safely after her.
Jack came last. As soon as he was on the bridge, there was, of course, no one holding the far end of it. However, his weight held it in place, and he didn"t scramble completely off until there was another lull in the wind. Then he helped Rebecca drag the plywood back onto the roof.
"Now what?" she asked.
"One building"s not enough," he said. "We"ve got to put more distance between us and them."
Using the plywood, they crossed the gulf between the second and third apartment houses, went from the third roof to the fourth, then from the fourth to the fifth. The next building was ten or twelve stories higher than this one. Their roof-hopping had come to an end, which was just as well, since their arms were beginning to ache from dragging and lifting the heavy sheet of plywood.
At the rear of the fourth brownstone, Rebecca leaned over the parapet and looked down into the alley, four stories below. There was some light down there: a streetlamp at each end of the block, another in the middle, plus the glow that came from all the windows of the first-floor apartments. She couldn"t see any goblins in the alley, or any other living creatures for that matter-just snow in blankets and mounds, snow twirling in small and short-lived tornadoes, snow in vaguely phosph.o.r.escent sheets like the gowns of ghosts racing in front of the wind. Maybe there were goblins crouching in the shadows somewhere, but she didn"t really think so because she couldn"t see any glowing white eyes.
A black, iron, switchback fire escape descended to the alley in a zig-zag path along the rear face of the building. Jack went down first, stopping at each landing to wait for Penny and Davey; he was prepared to break their fall if they slipped on the cold, snow- covered, and occasionally ice-sheathed steps.
Rebecca was the last off the roof. At each landing on the fire escape, she paused to look down at the alley, and each time she expected to see strange, threatening creatures loping through the snow toward the foot of the iron steps. But each time, she saw nothing.
When they were all in the alley, they turned right, away from the row of brownstones, and ran as fast as they could toward the cross street. When they reached the street, already slowing from a run to a fast walk, they turned away from Third Avenue and headed back toward the center of the city.
Nothing followed them.
Nothing came out of the dark doorways they pa.s.sed.
For the moment they seemed safe. But more than that* they seemed to have the entire metropolis to themselves, as if they were the only four survivors of doomsday.
Rebecca had never seen it snow this hard. This was a rampaging, lashing, hammering storm more suitable to the savage polar ice fields than to New York. Her face was numb, and her eyes were watering, and she ached in every joint and muscle from the constant struggle required to resist the insistent wind.
Two-thirds of the way to Lexington Avenue, Davey stumbled and fell and simply couldn"t find the energy to continue on his own. Jack carried him.
From the look of her, Penny was rapidly using up the last of her reserves, as well. Soon, Rebecca would have to take Davey, so Jack could then carry Penny.
And how far and how fast could they expect to travel under those circ.u.mstances? Not far. Not very d.a.m.ned fast. They needed to find transportation within the next few minutes.
They reached the avenue, and Jack led them to a large steel grate which was set in the pavement and from which issued clouds of steam. It was a vent from one sort of underground tunnel or another, most likely from the subway system. Jack put Davey down, and the boy was able to stand on his own feet. But it was obvious that he would still have to be carried when they started out again. He looked terrible; his small face was drawn, pinched, and very pale except for enormous dark circles around his eyes. Rebecca"s heart went out to him, and she wished there was something she could do to make him feel better, but she didn"t feel so terrific herself.
The night was too cold and the heated air rising out of the street wasn"t heated enough to warm Rebecca as she stood at the edge of the grate and allowed the wind to blow the foul-smelling steam in her face; however, there was an illusion of warmth, if not the real thing, and at the moment the mere illusion was sufficiently spirit- lifting to forestall everyone"s complaints.
To Penny, Rebecca said, "How"re you doing, honey?"
"I"m okay," the girl said, although she looked haggard. "I"m just worried about Davey."
Rebecca was amazed by the girl"s resilience and s.p.u.n.k.
Jack said, "We"ve got to get a car. I"ll only feel safe when we"re in a car, rolling, moving; they can"t get at us when we"re moving."
"And it"ll b-b-be warm in a c-car," Davey said.
But the only cars on the street were those that were parked at the curb, unreachable beyond a wall of snow thrown up by the plows and not yet hauled away. If any cars had been abandoned in the middle of the avenue, they had already been towed away by the snow emergency crews.
None of those workmen were in sight now. No plows, either.
"Even if we could find a car along here that wasn"t plowed in," Rebecca said, "it isn"t likely there"d be keys in it-or snow chains on the tires."