Jack tried to hold on to the sheet. It was a feeble and pointless effort to resist whatever power was wrecking the room, but it was the only thing he could think to do, and he simply had had to do something. The sheet was quickly wrenched out of his hands with such force that he was thrown off balance. He stumbled and fell to his knees. to do something. The sheet was quickly wrenched out of his hands with such force that he was thrown off balance. He stumbled and fell to his knees.
On a wheeled TV stand in the corner, the portable television set snapped on of its own accord, the volume booming. A fat woman was dancing the cha-cha with a cat, and a thunderous chorus was singing the praises of Purina Cat Chow.
Jack scrambled to his feet.
The mattress cover was skinned off the bed, lifted into the air, rolled into a ball, and thrown at Rebecca.
On the TV, George Plimpton was shouting like a baboon about the virtues of Intellivision.
The mattress was bare now. The quilted sheath dimpled; a rent appeared in it. The fabric tore right down the middle, from top to bottom, and stuffing erupted along with a few uncoiling springs that rose like cobras to an unheard music.
More wallpaper peeled down.
On the TV, a barker for the American Beef Council was shouting about the benefits of eating meat, while an unseen chef carved a b.l.o.o.d.y roast on camera.
The closet door slammed so hard that it jumped partially out of its track and rattled back and forth.
The TV screen imploded. Simultaneously with the sound of breaking gla.s.s, there was a brief flash of light within the guts of the set, and then a little smoke.
Silence.
Stillness.
Jack glanced at Rebecca.
She looked bewildered. And terrified.
The telephone rang.
The instant Jack heard it, he knew who was calling. He s.n.a.t.c.hed up the receiver, held it to his ear, said nothing.
"You"re panting like a dog, Detective Dawson," Lavelle said. "Excited? Evidently, my little demonstration thrilled you."
Jack was shaking so badly and uncontrollably that he didn"t trust his voice. He didn"t reply because he didn"t want Lavelle to hear how scared he was.
Besides, Lavelle didn"t seem interested in anything Jack might have to say; he didn"t wait long enough to hear a reply even if one had been offered. The Bocor Bocor said, "When you see your kids-dead, mangled, their eyes torn out, their lips eaten off, their fingers bitten to the bone-remember that you could have saved them. Remember that you"re the one who signed their death warrants. You bear the responsibility for their deaths as surely as if you"d seen them walking in front of a train and didn"t even bother to call out a warning to them. You threw away their lives as if they were nothing but garbage to you." said, "When you see your kids-dead, mangled, their eyes torn out, their lips eaten off, their fingers bitten to the bone-remember that you could have saved them. Remember that you"re the one who signed their death warrants. You bear the responsibility for their deaths as surely as if you"d seen them walking in front of a train and didn"t even bother to call out a warning to them. You threw away their lives as if they were nothing but garbage to you."
A torrent of words spewed from Jack before he even realized he was going to speak: "You f.u.c.king sleazy son of a b.i.t.c.h, you"d better not touch one hair on them! You"d better not-"
Lavelle had hung up.
Rebecca said, "Who-"
"Lavelle."
"You mean* all of this?"
"You believe in black magic now? Sorcery? Voodoo?"
"Oh, my G.o.d."
"I sure as h.e.l.l believe in it now." sure as h.e.l.l believe in it now."
She looked around at the demolished room, shaking her head, trying without success to deny the evidence before her eyes.
Jack remembered his own skepticism when Carver Hampton had told him about the falling bottles and the black serpent. No skepticism now. Only terror now.
He thought of the bodies he had seen this morning and this afternoon, those hideously ravaged corpses.
His heart jackhammered. He was short of breath. He felt as if he might vomit.
He still had the phone in his hand. He punched out a number.
Rebecca said, "Who"re you calling?"
"Faye. She"s got to get the kids out of there, fast."
"But Lavelle can"t know where they are."
"He couldn"t have known where I I was, either. I didn"t tell anyone I was coming to see you. I wasn"t followed here; I"m sure I wasn"t. He couldn"t have known where to find me-and yet he was, either. I didn"t tell anyone I was coming to see you. I wasn"t followed here; I"m sure I wasn"t. He couldn"t have known where to find me-and yet he knew knew. So he probably knows where to find the kids, too. d.a.m.nit, why isn"t it ringing?"
He rattled the telephone b.u.t.tons, got another dial tone, tried Faye"s number again. This time he got a recording telling him that her phone was no longer in service. Not true, of course.
"Somehow, Lavelle"s screwed up Faye"s line," he said, dropping the receiver. "We"ve got to get over there right away. Jesus, we"ve got to get the kids out!"
Rebecca had stripped off her robe, had yanked a pair of jeans and a pull-over sweater from the closet. She was already half dressed.
"Don"t worry," she said. "It"ll be all right. We"ll get to them before Lavelle does."
But Jack had the sickening feeling that they were already too late.
Chapter Five.
I.
Again, sitting alone in his dark bedroom, with only the phosphoric light of the snowstorm piercing the windows, Lavelle reached up with his mind and tapped the psychic rivers of malignant energy that coursed through the night above the city.
His sorceror"s power was not only depleted this time but utterly exhausted. Calling forth a poltergeist and maintaining control over it-as he had done in order to arrange the demonstration for Jack Dawson a few minutes ago-was one of the most draining of all the rituals of black magic.
Unfortunately, it wasn"t possible to use a poltergeist to destroy one"s enemies. Poltergeists were merely mischievous-at worst, nasty-spirits; they were not evil. If a Bocor Bocor, having conjured up such an ent.i.ty, attempted to employ it to murder someone, it would then be able to break free of his controlling spell and turn its energies upon him.
However, when used only as a tool to exhibit a Bocor Bocor"s powers, a poltergeist produced impressive results. Skeptics were transformed into believers. The bold were made meek. After witnessing the work of a poltergeist, those who were already believers in voodoo and the supernatural were humbled, frightened, and reduced to obedient servants, pitifully eager to do whatever a Bocor Bocor demanded of them. demanded of them.
Lavelle"s rocking chair creaked in the quiet room.
In the darkness, he smiled and smiled.
From the night sky, malignant energy poured down.
Lavelle, the vessel, was soon overflowing with power.
He sighed, for he was renewed.
Before long, the fun would begin.
The slaughter.
II.
Penny sat on the edge of her bed, listening.
The sounds came again. Sc.r.a.ping, hissing. A soft thump, a faint clink, and again a thump. A far-off, rattling, shuffling noise.
Far off-but getting closer.
She snapped on the bedside lamp. The small pool of light was warm and welcome.
Davey remained asleep, undisturbed by the peculiar sounds. She decided to let him go on sleeping for the time being. She could wake him quickly if she had to, and one scream would bring Aunt Faye and Uncle Keith.
The raspy cry came again, faint, though perhaps not quite as faint as it had been before.
Penny got up from the bed, went to the dresser, which lay in shadows, beyond the fan of light from her nightstand lamp. In the wall above the dresser, approximately a foot below the ceiling, was a vent for the heating and air-conditioning systems. She c.o.c.ked her head, trying to hear the distant and furtive noises, and she became convinced that they were being transmitted through the ducts in the walls.
She climbed onto the dresser, but the vent was still almost a foot above her head. She climbed down. She fetched her pillow from the bed and put it on the dresser. She took the thick seat cushions from the two chairs that flanked the window, and she piled those atop her bed pillow. She felt very clever and capable. Once on the dresser again, she stretched, rose up onto her toes, and was able to put her ear against the vent plate that covered the outlet from the ventilation system.
She had thought the goblins were in other apartments or common hallways, farther down in the building; she had thought the ducts were only carrying the sound of them. Now, with a jolt, she realized the ducts were carrying not merely the sound of the goblins but the goblins themselves. This This was how they intended to get into the bedroom, not through the door or window, not through some imaginary tunnel in the back of the closet. They were in the ventilation network, making their way up through the building, twisting and turning, slithering and creeping, hurrying along the horizontal pipes, climbing laboriously through the vertical sections of the system, but steadily rising nearer and nearer as surely as the warm air was rising from the huge furnace below. was how they intended to get into the bedroom, not through the door or window, not through some imaginary tunnel in the back of the closet. They were in the ventilation network, making their way up through the building, twisting and turning, slithering and creeping, hurrying along the horizontal pipes, climbing laboriously through the vertical sections of the system, but steadily rising nearer and nearer as surely as the warm air was rising from the huge furnace below.
Trembling, teeth chattering, gripped by fear to which she refused refused to succ.u.mb, Penny put her face to the vent plate and peered through the slots, into the duct beyond. The darkness in there was as deep and as black and as smooth as the darkness in a tomb. to succ.u.mb, Penny put her face to the vent plate and peered through the slots, into the duct beyond. The darkness in there was as deep and as black and as smooth as the darkness in a tomb.
III.
Jack hunched over the wheel, squinting at the wintry street ahead.
The windshield was icing up. A thin, milky skin of ice had formed around the edges of the gla.s.s and was creeping inward. The wipers were caked with snow that was steadily compacting into lumps of ice.
"Is that d.a.m.ned defroster on full-blast?" he asked, even though he could feel the waves of heat washing up into his face.
Rebecca leaned forward and checked the heater controls. "Full-blast," she affirmed.
"Temperature sure dropped once it got dark."
"Must be ten degrees out there. Colder, if you figure in the wind-chill factor."
Trains of snowplows moved along the main avenues, but they were having difficulty getting the upper hand on the blizzard. Snow was falling in blinding sheets, so thick it obscured everything beyond the distance of one block. Worse, the fierce wind piled the snow in drifts that began to form again and reclaim the pavement only minutes after the plows had sc.r.a.ped it clean.
Jack had expected to make a fast trip to the Jamisons" apartment building. The streets held little or no traffic to get in his way. Furthermore, although his car was unmarked, it had a siren. And he had clamped the detachable red emergency beacon to the metal heading at the edge of the roof, thereby insuring right-of-way over what other traffic there was. He had expected to be holding Penny and Davey in his arms in ten minutes. Now, clearly, the trip was going to take twice that long.
Every time he tried to put on a little speed, the car started to slide, in spite of the snow chains on the tires.
"We could walk walk faster than this!" Jack said ferociously. faster than this!" Jack said ferociously.
"We"ll get there in time," Rebecca said.
"What if Lavelle is already there?"
"He"s not. Of course he"s not."
And then a terrible thought rocked him, and he didn"t want to put it into words, but he couldn"t stop himself: "What if he called called from the Jamisons?" from the Jamisons?"
"He didn"t," she said.
But Jack was abruptly obsessed with that horrendous possibility, and he could not control the morbid compulsion to say it aloud, even though the words brought hideous images to him.
"What if he killed all of them-"
(Mangled bodies.) "-killed Penny and Davey-"
(Eyeb.a.l.l.s torn from sockets.) "-killed Faye and Keith-"
(Throats chewed open.) "-and then called from right there-"
(Fingertips bitten off.) "-called me from right there in the apartment, for Christ"s sake-"
(Lips torn, ears hanging loose.) "-while he was standing over their bodies!"
She had been trying to interrupt him. Now she shouted at him: "Stop torturing yourself, Jack! We"ll make it in time."
"How the h.e.l.l do you know we"ll make it in time?" he demanded angrily, not sure why he was angry with her, just striking out at her because she was a convenient target, because he couldn"t strike out at Lavelle or at the weather that was hindering him, and because he had had to strike out at someone, something, or go absolutely crazy from the tension that was building in him like excess current flowing into an already overcharged battery. "You can"t to strike out at someone, something, or go absolutely crazy from the tension that was building in him like excess current flowing into an already overcharged battery. "You can"t know!" know!"
"I know," she insisted calmly. "Just drive."
"G.o.dd.a.m.nit, stop patronizing me!"
"Jack-"
"He"s got my kids!"
He accelerated too abruptly, and the car immediately began to slide toward the right-hand curb.
He tried to correct their course by pulling on the steering wheel, instead of going along with the slide and turning into the direction of it, and even as he realized his mistake the car started to spin, and for a moment they were traveling sideways-and Jack had the gutwrenching feeling that they were going to slam into the curb at high speed, tip, and roll over-but even as they continued to slide they also continued to swing around on their axis until they were completely reversed from where they had been, a full one hundred and eighty degrees, half the circ.u.mference of a circle, now sliding backwards along the street, looking out the icy windshield at where they had been instead of at where they were going, and still they turned, turned like a carousel, until at last the car stopped just short of one entire revolution.
With a shudder engendered by a mental image of what might have happened to them, but aware that he couldn"t waste time dwelling on their close escape, Jack started up again. He handled the wheel with even greater caution than before, and he pressed his foot lightly and slowly down on the accelerator.