Boothe"s hand was on the money, caressing it. "You know where she is. You"ve got to kill her. It"s the right thing to do."
Dan shook his head. "She"s only a child."
"She"s killed eight men already," Boothe said.
"Men?" Dan laughed humorlessly. "Could men have done to her what you people did? Tortured her with electric shock? Where did you put the electrodes? On her neck? On her arms? On her little backside? On her genitals? Yes, I"ll bet you did. On the genitals. Maximum effect. That"s what torturers always go for. Maximum effect. Men? Eight men men, you say? There"s a certain level of amorality, a bottom line of ruthlessness below which you can"t call yourself a man anymore."
"Eight men." Boothe refused to acknowledge what Dan had said. "The girl"s a monster, a psychopathic monster."
"She"s deeply disturbed. She can"t be held accountable for her actions." Dan had never imagined that he could enjoy seeing another human being squirm as much as he was enjoying the growing horror and desperation on these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds" faces as they realized that their last hope of survival had been a false hope.
"You"re an officer of the law," Boothe said angrily. "You have a duty to prevent violence wherever you can."
"Shooting a nine-year-old girl is the commission of violence, not the prevention."
"But if you don"t kill her, she"ll kill us," Boothe said. "Two deaths instead of one. Kill her, and the net effect is that you save one life."
"A net balance of one life to my credit, huh? Gee, what an interesting way to think of it. You know, Mr. Boothe, when you get down there in h.e.l.l, I"ll bet the devil makes you an accountant of souls."
A sudden all-consuming fury pulled the white-haired publisher"s face into a grotesque mask of hatred and impotent rage. He threw his whiskey gla.s.s at Dan"s head.
Dan ducked, and the fine crystal struck the floor far behind him, shattering on impact.
"You stupid f.u.c.king son of a b.i.t.c.h," Boothe said.
"My, my. Mustn"t ever let your friends at the Rotary Club hear you talking like that. Why, they"d be shocked."
Boothe turned away from him, stood facing the darkness where the books waited silently on their shelves. He was shaking with rage, but he did not speak.
Dan had learned everything he needed to know. He was ready to leave.
Laura couldn"t wake Melanie. She was causing an ever greater disturbance in the theater, angering other patrons, but she couldn"t make the child respond with even a murmur or a flutter of her eyes.
Earl had stood up and put his hand on the gun inside his coat.
Laura looked around wildly, waiting for the first sign of the apparition, the explosion of occult force.
But the chill abruptly went away, and the air grew warm again without any supernatural violence.
Whatever had been there a moment ago had now gone.
Uhlander"s gaze had drifted back to the mosaic of stained gla.s.s through which the room"s only light rose in colorful beams. Though he stared at the scene depicted on the shade, he did not seem to see it; the unfocused nature of his stare was reminiscent of Melanie"s haunting detachment. The author was probably seeing his future in that light, although his future was only darkness. In a thin and tremulous voice, he said, "Lieutenant, listen, please ... you don"t have to like us ... to take pity on us."
"Pity? You think it would be an appropriate expression of pity for me to blow the brains out of a nine-year-old girl?"
Trembling, Palmer Boothe swung back to him. "It won"t just be our our lives you"ll be saving. For G.o.d"s sake, don"t you see? She"s running amok. She has a taste for blood, and it"s not very d.a.m.ned likely that she"ll stop with us. She"s crazy. You said so yourself. You said we drove her crazy and she"s not responsible for what she"s done. All right! She"s not responsible, but she"s out of control, and she"s probably getting more powerful all the time, learning more about her psychic abilities every hour, and maybe if somebody doesn"t stop her soon, maybe n.o.body will lives you"ll be saving. For G.o.d"s sake, don"t you see? She"s running amok. She has a taste for blood, and it"s not very d.a.m.ned likely that she"ll stop with us. She"s crazy. You said so yourself. You said we drove her crazy and she"s not responsible for what she"s done. All right! She"s not responsible, but she"s out of control, and she"s probably getting more powerful all the time, learning more about her psychic abilities every hour, and maybe if somebody doesn"t stop her soon, maybe n.o.body will ever ever be able to stop her. It"s not just Albert and me. How many others may die?" be able to stop her. It"s not just Albert and me. How many others may die?"
"No others," Dan said.
"What?"
"She"ll kill the two of you, the last of the conspirators from the gray room, and then ... then she"ll kill herself."
When he put it in words, it hit him hard. A sudden, heavy ache bloomed in his chest at the prospect of Melanie taking her own life in despair over what she had done.
"Kill herself?" Boothe said.
"Where"d you get an idea like that?" Uhlander asked.
Succinctly, he told them about Laura"s hypnotic-therapy sessions and about the strange things that Melanie had said regarding her own vulnerability. "When she said It It would come after her once it had killed everyone else, we had no idea what the creature might be. Spirit, demon - it seemed impossible that such a thing could exist, but we saw evidence that something strange was loose in the world. Now we know it wasn"t a spirit or a demon, and we know that ... well, once she"s eliminated the two of you, she plans to take her own life, turn her psychic powers upon herself. So you see, the only lives hanging in the balance are yours and hers, and I"m afraid hers is the only one I have any chance of saving." would come after her once it had killed everyone else, we had no idea what the creature might be. Spirit, demon - it seemed impossible that such a thing could exist, but we saw evidence that something strange was loose in the world. Now we know it wasn"t a spirit or a demon, and we know that ... well, once she"s eliminated the two of you, she plans to take her own life, turn her psychic powers upon herself. So you see, the only lives hanging in the balance are yours and hers, and I"m afraid hers is the only one I have any chance of saving."
Boothe, whose morality was about as admirable as that of Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin, who had hired torturers and murderers with a clear conscience, who would clearly have committed any number of murders with his own bare hands if that were the only way he could save his own d.a.m.ned skin, this thoroughly corrupted and corrupting snake was aghast that Dan, an officer of the law, was not only going to let them die but seemed to welcome the idea that they would soon be removed from this world. "But ... but ... if she kills us, and you could have stopped her and didn"t ... then you"re just as guilty of our murder as she is."
Dan stared at him, then nodded. "Yes. But that doesn"t shock me. I"ve always known I"m like everyone else in that regard. I"ve always known, given the right circ.u.mstances, I have the capacity for cold-blooded murder."
He turned his back on them.
He walked away from them, toward the library door.
When Dan was halfway to the door, Uhlander said, "How long do you think we have?"
Dan paused, looked back at them. "After reading part of your book this morning, I thought I understood at least some of what was going on. So when I left them, I warned Laura to keep Melanie awake and to keep her from slipping into a deeper catatonic state. I didn"t want her to come for you until we had a chance to talk. But tonight I don"t intend to keep Melanie from going to bed. And when she goes to bed and finally sleeps ..."
They were all silent.
The only sound was the faraway gurgle and sizzle of rain.
"So we have a few hours," Boothe said at last, and he sounded like a different man from the one who had welcomed Dan into the library a short while ago, a much weaker and less impressive man. "Just a few hours ..."
But they didn"t even have that much time. As Palmer Boothe"s voice faded into a silence composed of terror and self-pity, the air temperature in the library dropped twenty degrees from one second to the next.
Laura hadn"t been able to keep Melanie alert.
"No!" Uhlander gasped.
Books exploded off one of the highest library shelves and rained over Boothe and Uhlander.
The two men cried out and threw their arms over their heads.
A heavy chair rose off the floor, eight feet into the air, hung there, spinning around and around, then was thrown all the way across the library, where it struck the French windows. The brittle sounds of breaking gla.s.s and splintering mullions was followed by the crash of the chair rebounding from the window frame and falling to the floor.
Melanie was there. The etheric half of her. The astral body or psychogeist.
Dan thought of trying to speak to her and reason with her now, before she killed again, but he knew there was no hope of getting through to her, no more hope than her mother had had in hypnotic-therapy sessions. He could not save Boothe and Uhlander, and he really had no desire to save them. The only life he might be able to save now was Melanie"s, for he had thought of something - a plan, a trick - that might stop her from turning her psychic power upon herself in a suicidal response to her self-loathing and horror. It was a shaky plan. Not much chance that he could make it work. But in order even to try, he had to be with the girl"s body, with her physical self, when her astral body returned. Which meant he had to get back to Westwood, to the theater, before she was finished in Bel Air, and he didn"t have time to waste in a fruitless attempt to dissuade her from destroying Boothe and Uhlander.
Unseen hands swept another shelf clean of books, and the volumes crashed to the floor, all across the room.
Boothe was screaming.
The bar exploded as if a bomb had gone off in it, and the air reeked of whiskey.
Uhlander was begging for mercy.
Dan saw the Tiffany lamp rising into the air, floating up like a balloon on its cord. Before the lamp had risen to the length of that tether, Dan recovered his wits, regained his sense of urgency. He ran the last few steps to the end of the room. As he pulled open the door, the light went out behind him, and the library was plunged into darkness.
He pulled the door shut as he stepped out of the room. He raced back through the house, retracing the route along which the butler had brought him earlier.
In a room with peach-colored walls and an elaborately molded white ceiling, he encountered that servant rushing the opposite direction in response to the hideous screaming in the library.
Dan said, "Call the police!" He was sure that Melanie wouldn"t harm anyone other than those who had been in the gray room or those closely a.s.sociated with the conspiracy against her. Nevertheless, as the butler stopped in confusion, Dan said, "Don"t go in the library. Call the police. For G.o.d"s sake, don"t don"t go in there yourself". go in there yourself".
The dark theater no longer seemed like a sanctuary to Laura. She was claustrophobic. The rows of seats were confining. The darkness threatened her. Why in the name of G.o.d had they taken refuge in a place of darkness. It It probably thrived on darkness. probably thrived on darkness.
What would happen if the air grew cold again and the thing returned.
And it would return.
She was sure of that.
Soon.
The enormous iron gates began to swing slowly open when Dan had descended half the long driveway.
Ordinarily, the butler probably called ahead to the gatehouse, and the guard opened the gates even as the guest was pulling his car out of the parking circle in front of the house. But at the moment, the butler was calling 911, scared witless by the bloodcurdling screams and battle sounds coming from the library, so the guard had activated the gate controls only when he"d seen the headlights knifing down toward him through the early darkness and rain.
Dan had also slapped the detachable emergency beacon to the roof. He rocketed down the long hill, pressing the accelerator almost to the floor, counting on the gateman to get the barrier out of his way in time to prevent a nasty collision. That ironwork had appeared to be capable of stopping a tank. If he hit it, he would most likely be decapitated or skewered by a jagged bar that would pierce the windshield.
He could have descended the hill at a more reasonable pace, but seconds counted. Even if the girl"s astral body did not finish with Boothe and Uhlander for a few minutes, it would no doubt return to that Westwood theater well ahead of Dan; the spirit surely didn"t travel as slowly as an automobile, but moved from place to place in the wink of an eye. Besides, the butler might soon collect his wits and get the idea that Dan had done something to cause all the screaming in the library. If such a suspicion arose, the gatehouse guard might be alerted to close the gates again the instant that they finished opening, blocking Dan"s escape; then whole minutes would be lost.
Thirty feet from the gates, as they continued to swing open, he finally eased up on the accelerator and touched the brakes. The car started to slide, but he held it to the road and kept its nose pointed where it should be. A sharp snap, a thin squeal: the rear b.u.mper sc.r.a.ped one of the still-moving portals. Then he was on that short length of driveway beyond the walls of the estate. No traffic on the street ahead. He didn"t slow down when he turned left. The sedan fishtailed to the far curb, but he maintained control, losing only a little momentum.
Emergency beacon flashing, he pushed the car to its limits, plunging down from the heights of Bel Air, from one twisting street to another, taking unconscionable chances with his own life and the lives of anyone who might have been in his way around any of several blind and half-blind curves.
His thoughts arced back in time: Delmar, Carrie, Cindy Lakey ...
Not again.
Melanie was a killer, yes, but she did not deserve to die for what she had done. She"d not been in her right mind when she killed them. Besides, if murder in self-defense had ever been a justifiable plea, it was now. If she hadn"t killed them, every last one, then they would have come for her, not necessarily to exact revenge, but to conduct further experiments with her. If she hadn"t killed all ten men, the torture would have continued.
He had to get that idea through to her. He thought he knew a way of doing it.
G.o.d, please, let it work.
Westwood was not far away. With the beacon, with no thought for his own mortality, he should reach the theater in a lot less than five minutes.
Delmar, Carrie, Cindy Lakey ... Melanie ...
No!
The theater was a refrigerator.
Melanie whimpered.
Laura leaped up from her seat, not sure what to do, knowing only that she couldn"t sit still as It It approached. approached.
The air temperature plummeted. In fact, it seemed colder than it had been in the kitchen the previous night or in the motel room, when It had paid them other visits.
From the row behind, someone asked Laura to please sit down, and heads turned her way from across the aisle too. But after a moment, everyone"s attention shifted to the incredibly abrupt chill that had gripped the theater.
Earl was on his feet too, and this time he"d drawn the revolver from his shoulder holster.
Melanie let out a thin, pathetic cry, but her eyes didn"t open.
Laura grabbed her, shook her. "Baby, wake up! Wake up!" Soft exclamatory comments swept in a wave across the auditorium as other patrons reacted not to Laura and Melanie but to the fact that they were freezing. Then the crowd was shocked into a brief silence as the giant movie screen tore open from top to bottom with a ripping noise that sounded as though G.o.d had rent the heavens. A jagged line of blackness appeared through the center of the projected images, and the figures on the screen rippled and acquired distorted faces and bodies as the silvery surface on which they existed began to wrinkle and bulge and sag.
Melanie writhed in her seat and struck at the empty air. Her blows landed on Laura, who tried to force the girl to wake up.
No sooner had the screen torn, silencing the audience, than the heavy curtains flanking it were pulled out of the tracks in the ceiling. They flapped in the air like great wings, as if the devil himself had risen into the theater and was unfolding his batlike appendages; then they collapsed with a whoosh! whoosh! into huge piles of lifeless material. into huge piles of lifeless material.
That was too much for the audience. Confused and frightened, people rose from their seats.
After taking a score of hard blows on her arms and face, Laura got hold of Melanie"s wrists and kept her still. She looked over her shoulder, toward the front of the theater.
The projectionist had not touched his equipment yet, so a queer luminosity still bounced off the ruined screen, and a vague amber radiance was provided by the torch-shaped emergency lamps along the walls. The light was just sufficient for everyone to see what happened next. Empty seats in the front row tore loose of the floor, to which they were bolted, and shot violently up and backward, into the air. They struck the large screen, punched through the fabric, destroying what remained of it.
People began to scream, and a few ran toward the exits at the back of the theater.
Someone yelled, "Earthquake!"
An earthquake didn"t explain it, of course, and it wasn"t likely that anyone believed that explanation. But that word, much dreaded in California since the Northridge temblor, stoked the panic. More seats - those in the second row - erupted from the floor: bolts snapped, metal shredded, concrete burst.
It was, Laura thought, as if some gigantic invisible best had entered at the front of the theater and was making its way toward them, destroying everything in its path.
"Let"s get out of here," Earl shouted, although he knew as well as she did that they could not run from this thing, whatever it was.
Melanie had ceased struggling. She was limp, like a pile of knotted rags, so limp that she might have been dead. The projectionist switched off his machinery and turned up the house lights. Everyone but Laura, Melanie, and Earl had surged to the back of the theater, and half the audience had already spilled out into the lobby.